Shenandoah Dec 2015 Trip

I had the great fortune to take a 2-day solo sojourn to SNP this past Sunday/Monday.

As is my MO, I hit the road at 3:51 a.m. and arrived at Panorama at 7:20.  I was surprised to see the gates to Skyline open (usually this time of year they open at 8) and proceeded North to Elkwallow, the start of my first day's hike.  I had elected to do the Knob Mountain/Jeremy's Run hike.  I've done Jeremy's--a 14 crossing ascent adjacent to the Run a couple of times before but I took the slightly shorter, but more vertical Neighbor Mountain approach.  The weather was absolutely perfect.  It was 40 degrees at the outset and rose to about 52/53.  No clouds and very little breeze--as good as it gets!



After about 7 miles of delightful hiking I found myself down to the bottom of Jeremy's Run and soon realized that it was a good deal higher than in my prior trips.  I searched and searched for a way across and discovered that there really wasn't one.  The water was a good two feet deep (much deeper than my boots) and so off came the boots and up rolled the pants.  Because I was coming from the west of the Run, I actually had to cross the stream 15 times and had to remove my boots for 5 of them.  The other 10 times had a variety of challenging problems to solve--very stimulating ascent!







The water was very cold, the current pretty swift in places and the rocks quite slick but i was fortunate enough to avoid any mishaps and stayed pleasantly dry and warm!

This next picture shows the tree that I "cowboyed" across (it was a good 3-4 feet above the waterline):



I (carefully) walked across this tree:




This accumulation of stuff was my ticket across the stream here:

In total it took me 7:12 minutes to complete the 13.9 mile/2700+ vertical ascent circuit.  I probably used a good 45 minutes looking for crossings and taking my boots and socks off and on.  A great and rewarding day in the woods.

Here is the data on the hike:

After the traditional night at the Speakeasy (nice Jazz quartet) and the Best Western in Luray, VA, I was once again at the Thornton Gap entrance before scheduled opening and entered just as the gates opened at 7:15.  By 7:55, I was on my way for the second hike of this trip.  For this trek, I entered the AT near Jenkins Gap between MP 12/13 about 2/3 rds up into the Northern section of SNP.  The first 5.5 miles were on the AT and featured summits of Northern and Southern Marshall--the later being the more prominent peak.  There was a 3rd peak as well but its probably a subsidiary peak of South Marshall.  The hike along the AT was very pleasant as once again the conditions were simply perfect--a repeat of yesterday!

At one point I passed this old house foundation--an unintended monument to the time the NPS kicked some 2,500 people out of SNP to open up the land that is Shenandoah today:

I soon came upon the Gravel Springs Hut area, a place that I've penciled for our first night camping when we go for a thru-hike of the AT in SNP (107 miles) next year:





The final 8 miles of this trek were along the Bluff and Mt. Marshall trails.  I saw on my topo map that these two trails seemed to follow along between 2000 and 2500 feet so I anticipated relatively easy hiking.  This proved to be true--mostly gentle rolling terrain for the most part and this led to a beautiful, and relatively quick hike on a spectacular December day.  I had a couple of little pitches and a stream or two but the last part of this trek was quite mellow:

Here's the data (13.8 miles/6:17/2,300 feet of vertical):

Two fun solo days--very grateful to be able to do this!  The knee and legs held up pretty well (although I was very stiff when I tried to get out of the car back in DE on Monday night!).  My new Hoka boots are awesome--the cushion is a real plus!

Thanks for reading.

Last week's numbers

OK--first week back in the saddle--here is what I did:

Swim: 2000 yards
Bike: 99 miles
Run:  11.5 miles
Weights/stretch: 2:20
Trekking: 13.9 miles
Totaal time: 19:37

Tough week to fit everything in with a 3 day trip up to Boston and a trip to Shenandoah.  biggest casualty was my swim--just one session this week.  Modest run week was impacted by big hike on sunday.

All-in-all, not a bad way to spend the first week on December.

This current week will be a bit wacky as well as I only have one full day in DE this week (today).  4 nights in boston and yesterday was the 2nd long hike down in shennandoah.  I'll post data and pics from the hikes shortly.

Expect a similar week this week....

Resumption of "Standard Triathlon Operations"

Continuing to progress--although, we took a slight detour with a fun week with the family down in Costa Rica.

Specifically, I've begun planning and logging my workouts with the current focus on building my fitness up in front of IM70.3 Oceanside in early april.

The upshot of this is I'll once again be providing weekly (at least) up dates on my training activity.  It also symbolizes my return to the world of "working triathletes" as I follow a more focused and coherent training approach designed to yield at least a modest level of triathlon racing competence in 2015.

I'm looking for some where around 20 hours this week as I have a rather long trek scheduled for Sunday....more on that latter.

It's good to be back!

My comeback--2 months in--miscellaneous musings

Hey folks--the comeback seems to be working.  I more or less started about 2 months ago to recover from my various (elbow, knee, calf, and back) issues and to attempt to return to reasonable long-distance triathlon and high altitude mountaineering fitness.  so far so good.

Frequent visitors to this blog know I'm currently trying to just get back to a fitness level that lets me attempt to do longer triathlons (HIM and IM) and climb bigger mountains and trek lengthy hikes....

I've left this first couple of months purposefully unstructured as I wasn't sure if my back et al would allow me to come back but so far so good:

-I had a couple of 6+ hour days down in SNP hiking away--albeit at a leisurely pace

-I'm back in the pool and know hitting 5000 yards plus for a week and 2000 for my bigger swims

-I'll probably get about 18 miles of running this week and today happily completed my first back-to-back run sessions--a very long way to go but I'm ambitious with low expectations!

-I haven't really spiked up on my biking yet but my computrainer sessions are getting better...

All this is to say I think I'm ready to really return to a rigorous training schedule.  I'm going to take the next week a bit easy and enjoy T-day with the fam and then starting Dec 1 I'm going to plan and record my workouts in my historical fashion.  I'll be reporting them here and I'm hopeful that they will chronicle a continued upward ark back to a semblance of my historical capabilities.

I've begun to think about my multi-sport schedule for 2016.  Several highlights:

- I'd like to do two HIMs and one IM--I've signed up for challenge Roth and IMCA70.3 already

-I want to do one of the seven summits--first prize is Kili with Alex but if that falls through, I'd like to do Elbrus with Anders

-I plan to do a thru hike of SNP on the AT in early May--all 108 miles of it

-plus--hopefully, a lot of local sprint kinda tris commencing out in Cali in the late winter....and a few other fun things that present themselves


I think this is going to happen--life's rich tapestry 

Back from LA

Back in DE after a nice visit with Kara and Anders out in LA.  I ran with Anders and did a nice trek/hike with Kara.  also got in the water for a mini-bodyboarding session and threw in a couple of rides.

Had to take it a little easy because my knee acted up a bit.  Back in DE now and settling back into my routine.  Knee fees better and going for a 50+ minute run today. (plus trainer ride, pool and some weights)  Onward and upward.

Training Plan, Update and the PT news

First off, a quick update on the state of my bod and what I'm doing about it.  2-3 months ago I had a return of pretty significant upper, outer left calf pain and inflexibility.  It was quite bad and addition to making it difficult to run, the lack of flexibility/pain even began to impact my bike stroke (notably painful when my left leg was at the top of the pedal stroke).

I was convinced that this was driven by my chronic left knee problems and with the blessing of my orthodoc I went to see a local PT for an evaluation.  He concurred it was a knee problem at the source.  He found massive imbalance between my left and right legs.  For example, my left calf was 2.2 cm smaller in circumference.  I had substantially less strength in all the major muscle groups of my left leg.  Clearly, my stride adjustments driven by my knee pain where now beginning to catch up with me.  My PT also offered that perhaps it was time to think about pulling the trigger on the knee replacement.

I put that suggestion aside and begin seeing the PT twice a week and was able to get some quick improvement in flexibility and pain reduction in the calf.  My fibula head was manipulated (was possibly putting pressure on my sciatic nerve) and a lot of deep tissue work seemed to help quite a bit.  I was also given a regime of strengthening/flexibility exercises all focused on my left leg to address my imbalance.

We also noted how swollen my knee looked and i returned to the orthodoc and he extracted 22 cc of clear fluid from the knee.  He then injected the first of my knee Eflexa injections.  I returned the next week and he took another 29 cc out of the knee (almost 2 fluid oz in total!).  He also decided to suspend my Euflexxa injections in favor of a cortisone injection.  This had an immediate and dramatic impact.  The swelling has not returned and while I don't have full range of motion it is now much closer to that on my right side.

I had re-eval yesterday and I have graduated to home care.  I'm much closer in strength on my left side as compared to the right as well.  My left calf is now just 1.2 cm smaller--more work to do but moving in the right direction.

More importantly, I easily handled two big days down in Shenandoah and have now had 3 50 minute runs where, while not fast, actually felt like I was running again--its been a very long time since that has happened!

Let me turn now to my overall approach to training and how things are going.  My principal focus between now and the end of the year is to get my body's baseline fitness back to the point where I can begin training as a long-distance triathlete again.  The key elements of my typical week look like this now:

- 3 days per week in the gym doing about 80 minutes of weights and flexibility work
- 6-7 days per week on the bike--most of it Z1 but 1 hard computrainer session per week focused at this point on VO2 max intervals (for example: 8 X 2 minutes @280-300 watts w/ 3 min spin)
- 3-4 runs per week (two 50 min and two 30 min)--some light fartlek
- 3 days swimming a week (now at 1500 yds/session)
- 1-2 sessions of trekking per week (2-7 hours per session)

I'll gradually build on this through the end of 2015.  I'll start adding longer AT intervals on the bike and begin to through in a longer (3 hour) ride every week.  I won't start speed work on the run until I get to California in February but hope to gradually increase my longer runs up to 90 minutes.  When the new year starts, I hope to be at around 10,000 yds/week and in the pool 4 times most weeks.

I intend to race a couple of sprints out in California in Feb/March to get back in the swing of things and then my first significant race in 2016 will be the IM70.3 at Oceanside.  I'm not super focused on going fast there but want to be able to comfortably and masterfully execute and complete the race.  Frankly, anything under 6 hours would be just fine.

At that point I will do a 12-14 week IM-specific training block and prepare myself to complete Challenge Roth on July 17th.  Again, my mission will be to comfortably complete the race--I won't be that concerned with my finishing time.  I'll sprinkle some other races in before and after the IM and see how competitive I can be in my local AG races.

I also will probably do a major climb in June (Kilimanjaro) and no doubt do a number 2-3 day trekking blocks down in the mountains of Virginia.

If all goes well and my body can tolerate the training and racing load I hope to position myself to try to qualify for Kona 2018 at an IM in 2017.  I'll be up in the 60-64 AG in 2017 and that will probably be my last realistic chance to qualify as I probably don't have too many more IMs left in me.

That's a long ways off and for now, I'm trying to get back into the habits of a structured triathlon training regime and so far so good.  It feels great to begin to feel fitness returning to my body after a full year away from the triathlon world!

Shenandoah Fall 2015

The wilmington crew undertook a foray down to SNP for two days of hiking/climbing.  The first day was a traverse from Panorama to Skyland--about 10.6 miles.  it was a fantastic day and the colors were superb.  Here are some of the stats from that effort:

Day two put us on Old Rag for a challenging summit climb in wet and slippery conditions:

I put together a little slideshow of the event that you can check out here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQ2zP2HRWXA

Great trip and lots of fun with good friends.  My body feels very good and is responding to all of the PT and training work.  an update on that will follow in the next day or so....