Offically an offical

Do these kakis make my butt look big? I joked to my daughter. She just rolled her eyes in typical 13 year old girl fashion and walked away. It’s every Dads duty to try and embarrass his daughter in public and I do a fine job of it. My shopping spree was brought on by the eminent threat of being a first time USAT official at the local Elephant man Olympic distance triathlon, in Elephant butte NM. Or as it seems to have become know, the Elf butt. Thus my joke about my butt looking big, humor totally wasted on my daughter. Oh well, I found it amusing.

I needed some non-work kaki colored pants to wear as part of the USAT official dress code. Yes, I’m now a certified USAT Category 4 official. Which means I’m not the lowest of the low (as far as officials go) but pretty low on the ladder of officialdom. But still, I have the uniform, and you know how women love guys in uniform! Haha, yeah that was the big joke, I was going to use my new found power to lure the girls into my evil grasp!

It was a whole different perspective looking at the race as an official and it was lot of fun. The hardest part for me was not getting caught up in the competition, I wanted to talk about strategy, get ready for the race, layout my gear and talk smack. Oh well, there will be plenty of time for that at IMAZ. The coolest part is I got to look at/inspect everyone’s bike and nobody batted an eye. Oh, was I supposed to be looking for safety issues? Yeah that’s what I was supposed to be doing. But it was more like, wow that is an incredible looking bike how does it ride? Or, do you have any problems riding the 808’s in the wind. Yeah safety, that’s why I was looking at the bikes… All joking aside, I was actually pretty serious about looking for safety issues, but there was just so much bike porn!

From a personal perspective I really liked the whole venue. Kori is a fantastic race director, she kept people informed, organized, had plenty of volunteers, the course seemed well marked, and everyone had a super friendly attitude.

The race has just about everything you could want in an Olympic distance race, Medical tent, massage, food, lots of volunteers, A challenging course, open water swim, sand and the best Outlaw aid station money can buy.

Speaking about the aid station, Many thanks to Jane & her people, Misty, Steven, Courtney, Orlando and Connor (who, I think built rock piles?). You guys rocked!

The bike course seems especially challenging. While I haven’t ridden the course I did traverse it multiple times on the motorcycle and I have to say it looks like a lot of fun to ride. The rolling hills, turns, and that climb out of the canyon that looks like it will never end seems like a lot of fun. The run course looked like it had about 2 miles of sand (out and then the same section back) and loose pack which looks like it would really be tough to run.

If you are looking for a good local challenge this might be the race you are looking for. Between the multiple wave swim starts and hills there were virtually no packs of riders or congestion on the bike course. It seems like this race is one of the up and coming must do races for the series.

Colorado Relay

It was a dark and stormy night, and morning and afternoon. That just about describes the beginning of the 11th annual Colorado Relay. Arriving the night before the race in Georgetown CO, the start of the relay, we were greeted with rain, rain and more rain. And guess what, it was still raining the next morning, obviously we weren’t in New Mexico any longer. Ahhh, but we did get a reprieve from the rain, that is, after running up the side of the mountain to about 12000 feet, the rain turned to snow. Yep lots of snow. We had the pleasure of starting in the worst conditions in the history of the race, lucky us. Now that we are veterans of the race we will be able to reminisce about the fall of ’08 when the conditions were the worst in the history of the race! It’s funny how Jane and Dave’s absurdly long packing list didn’t seem quite so absurd when the realization of our situation finally settled in. Jane said to plan for the worst and sure enough, we got it!

I’ll let other folks describe the legs of their runs. I do want to say what an impressive bunch of athletes and genuinely great people were on the team. Everyone had a great attitude and we really got to know each other.

My leg started at the top of Guanella pass at 11,669 feet. When I started out running my heart rate immediately jumped to 160, when it should have been at a comfortable 120-130, guess the altitude makes the ticker work a bit harder. My leg was a decent of about 2,050 for a distance of 8 miles. After about 2 miles my calves and quads were really hurting and I decided to stop and look around. The view up the mountain was just as spectacular as the view down the mountain. wow what an incredible run, even though my feet were soaked and my sunglasses were covered in snow and totally useless it was a fantastic run. Quick exchange of the bracelet and Debi was on her way.

I really tried to run as fast as I thought I could but I still had two more legs ahead of me so I didn’t want to push that hard on the first leg. My time was right at one hour with an AVERAGE hr of 157. I’m not sure how the difficulty of the legs was figured but the overall rating of my legs at 7 out of 10, with the first run rated as very hard. I think the folks running uphill had a much harder legs but for a shorter distance.

After picking up Debi we had a few hours to kill so we found a recreation center at and just kind of hung out and ate lunch. We also did a little shopping for some gloves for Margaret and a rain jacket for DP.

My next leg was at night. I’ve kind of lost track of time but I think it was around 10:00 PM or so. The leg was downhill again and my legs were doing their share of protesting, luckily I got to run with one of the Rubber chicken team members and we had a great little chat as the frost was visibly falling through our headlight beams and our breath obscured our vision. The run was great but not the most scenic since it was at night along some type of frontage road. I can’t remember the time for the leg, I think sleep deprivation had starting setting in and it was way past my bed time!

We made our way to the next exchange point and met up with the other van. It was really interesting to learn what our fellow team mates were up to. Between doing laundry and eating at fancy Italian restaurants I’m surprised they even had time to race :)

Our down time was spend in a hotel lobby trying to get some sleep (3:00 AM) , it didn’t work for me but DP sure didn’t seem to mind crashing anywhere. Man I was jealous!

(Some outlaws just hanging out around - 12:00 the next day - don't they have someplace to run or something? From left to right, Brian, Mike, Jimmy, Jane, Margaret)

The third run was gorgeous (about 7:00 AM), It was along the bike path below the Pearl Harbor memorial highway. The river was on the right and it was in this beautiful valley, at times the roaring of the river over the rapids overpowered everything and at other times all you could hear were your footsteps and breathing. My time for this slight downhill leg was 32-33 minutes for a 4.7 mile run, not to bad for running on beat up legs.

Post race was a nice soak in the Glenwood hotsprings, yeah I know, it’s probably the worst thing you can do for recovery, but hey, it was there and it felt so great!! Then on to the condos, pizza, another hot tub and a whole bunch of catching up with the other Van.

Is it still an adventure race if you have all sorts of technology assisting you? In each van we had two way radios and a hand held radios for the times when you were out of the van. Yep just like the cops have! In our van alone we had no fewer than 5 GPS units, one mounted to the windshield, we used the “real” GPS extensively to plot a course to the next exchange point and to find places to hang out. Our clothes were no less high-tech with everyone sporting water resistant, wicking, thin and warm materials we didn’t suffer much from the elements. Oh, don’t forget the 25 thousand dollar van we rented and we had all the sugary snacks that make the dentist’s ears perk up. Yep we were roughing it, after all it was an adventure race.

The race was an incredible experience and I can’t believe that I waited so long to do something like this. If you get the chance, definitely go for it! Oh and don’t worry about the sleep deprivation, 30+ hours without sleep just makes things more interesting!

Special thanks to the Dread Pirate, who did all the leg work, organized all the meetings, kept us on track and planed the whole race.

Very special thanks to Damon, the driver of the “B” van and van mother. He brought the two way radios, GPS units, planned the routes, make sure folks were on time for their runs, not to mention volunteering 4 days of his time to drive a van full of crazy triathletes all over Colorado.



Yep, we are all finished for now. 29 hours and 26 minutes. Not bad for a team that just want's to have fun. Wonder what next year will bring?

Colorado Relay

The Colorado relay is looming! Here’s the scoop: 11 of us are heading to Colorado tomorrow morning to run 170 miles across Colorado, in something like 24-28 hours, non-stop. Yep through rain or snow and dark of night we will be running, that’ll be us, yep, sounds like fun….I keep telling myself that.

The logistics of this race have been kind of a pain but fortunately our fearless leader the Dread Pirate has pulled it all together and it looks like everything is a go. Lots of kudos to her!

There are 10 runners, mostly Outlaws, and one driver and two vans. Even the most staunch of athletes succumbs to scheduling problems so our two backup runners are now full members of the team. And we are short a driver, it looks like we will be taking turns at the wheel. Hopefully the Dread Pirate won’t lash us if we make a wrong turn or something!

I get to run leg 4, 14 and 24 which translates to a run in the morning, a run in the late evening around 8:00 pm and another run in the early morning.

This should be an adventure!

Foothills

The Colorado relay has been on my mind a lot lately since we have been training in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains every weekend. Here’s a Google Earth view of a good portion of the run as well as the elevation and my HR for the run. I have forgotten how beautiful the foot hills are at this time of year. The Google Earth view doesn’t really do justice of the foot hills. The terrain is rugged and very green considering its high desert and on the Dry west side of the mountains.

The idea is that we get some tough hill workouts plus a little altitude. Albuquerque is about 5500 feet and the top altitude on our trail run is about 6700 feet so we are at altitude plus we have almost 3000 feet of altitude change. We don’t really want to run the top of the mountain because you don’t get enough oxygen to your legs which makes for a poor quality workout.

It has been about 10 years since I’ve run in the foot hills and I have forgotten how tough the trails were and what how intense the hills and altitude make the workout it was a lot of fun, but definitely not a base building workout.