Training Run Report: TWOT '09

It's official. I am no longer a TWOT virgin! Now now, get your minds out of the gutter you pervs. I'm referring to my first time running The Wild Oak Trail, aka TWOT. The event is technically a 100 mile run (4 x 25mi loops), but few people attempt more than 1 or 2 loops due to the beating that you ensue from the killer climbs. Needless to say, Keith Knipling holds the course record for 4 TWOT loops with the ridiculously fast time of 27:11:10. Being a TWOT virgin and with my Holiday Lake race next weekend, I opted to run just one loop. Smart move I must say. Below is the course from my GPS.


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I carpooled down with some friends who are preparing for the upcoming Libyan Challenge. It was forecasted to be 60 but at 7:30am the temps hovered around freezing, so we chose to stay in the car until go-time.

The Libyan Challenge American Team and myself before the start. Why am I the only one in shorts?

2009 TWOT Runners at the start

We headed out at 8am in the clockwise direction. Within a mile it warmed up significantly and I shred my headband, gloves and arm warmers. *Sigh of relief* For the first few miles I was running with Sophie Speidel, Marc Griffin and Marlin Yoder, all of whom had run these trails before, so as seems to be the norm with my training runs I was getting a full on guided tour of the TWOT loop. Eventually this became known as Sophie's Tour de TWOT. The TdT was extremely helpful because part of the trail is run on the Grindstone 100 course that I'll be running in October. It's never too early to start training, right?

A group on our way up Hankey Mountain

Top of Hankey? Should've payed better attention to Sophie's tour.

I was relieved when we got to the top of Hankey Mountain. It was the first of 3 major climbs that we were to encounter throughout the day, but unfortunately it was the easiest (see elevation profile below).

8500ft of elevation gain. Sweetness!

As we descended from Hankey we came to the first aide station of the day (at Camp Todd I believe). This was a total surprise to me since I thought the entire event was unsupported. Thanks go out to Dennis Herr for not only organizing the run and being a definite ultra-legend, but also for the unexpected aide that hit the spot. The sandwiches, gingersnaps and gatorade were a welcome to treat to say the least.

We left the aide station and began our ascent of climb #2, Big Bald Knob. This climb sucked. Energy management with ultrarunning tells you to walk the hills, but I don't think it would be physically possible to move any faster than a slow walk up at this point. Just prior to the top we leveled off for a bit and I made an ode to TWOT in the snow.

Snowy TWOT

We also ran into Sean Andrish since he was running in the reverse direction. Even though we ran into him after our halfway point, he still finished first for the day with a time of 5:57, so he must have had a late start (either that or a teleportation device).

Sean and Marc

The descent from Big Bald was fun and fast. I took a video around this part to show how beautiful the trail was with fresh white powder on the ground. There's something about running on snow while wearing shorts and a tshirt that makes me all warm inside. There's also something about quickly melting snow that makes my shoes all wet inside, but that wasn't really much of a problem since I had on my Drymax socks and those suckers go from drenched to dry in all of maybe a quarter mile. Seriously, try a pair if you haven't already. I love those socks!

Dennis showed up with aide station #2 (of 2) right as we approached the bottom of Big Bald, and just in time to prep us for a stream crossing followed by the ascent up Little Bald.

Sophie trying desperately to not get her feet wet. She obviously hasn't learned of Drymax socks yet!

"Are we *gasp* at the *gasp* top yet?" Yes.

Reaching the top of Little Bald was a fantastic feeling. I wouldn't say I was totally beat up at this point since I had been running at a fairly conservative pace all day, but it was nice to know that the climbs were over and it was smooth downhill running for the remaining 6 or so miles. We cruised on down from there and finished our loop in 6:41. My Garmin read 27.23 miles, so it was slightly longer than the 26 I was told, but I'll gladly take extra mileage any day of the week! (watch these words come back and haunt me)

Marc, Sophie and myself after some great TWOT action

An ice cold river makes a great ice bath substitute!

Finish line festivities

These crazy fools went on to do 2 loops! Mitchell's pants provided enough light for them to run into the wee hours of the night.

Kirstin, Jill and Debbie - the Sassy Lollygagging Ultra Tarts (get it?)

Me and the JMU mountain-bikers who opted to do the loop by foot for a change

At this point you might be asking yourself "So what happened to your Libyan Challenge crew?" Well, they spent the day running/hiking the TWOT course while wearing fully loaded packs to simulate what it will be like running in Libya. Needless to say, killer TWOT climbs + heavy packs = slow pace. I hung out at the finish after everyone had left, knowing that they'd be showing up at some point. The sun started to go down and I started to worry since I knew they didn't bring headlamps or flashlights. Two runners, Barb and Vicki, had come in from their loop not too long before dark. They took a short break to put on some warmer clothes, gathered up all the headlamps and flashlights they could find and headed back out to find the Libyan Challenge crew and bring them light so they could safely navigate their way back. Barb and Vicki were no more than 100 feet onto the trail when I heard Rebecca calling from the distance. Safe and sound! Whew, what a relief! Isabella and Cason (her son) had a train to catch back in DC, 3 hours away, so we jumped in the car and booked it back. I put on my teleportation skills and got them back with 10 minutes to spare.

Libyan Challenge crew throwing their stuff into the car for the pleasantly-smelling ride home

All in all, my first TWOT was a huge success. I took it easy and still finished in a respectable time (although Tommy C gave me a hard time since he's an old man and he finished before me). Thanks again to Dennis Herr for organizing the event and bringing aide when it was least expected! Special thanks also go out to Vince for having hot soup at the finish. That hit the spot.

Honk honk!

TWOT '09 Links:
Results
All of my pics
Sophie's pics
Sophie's blog
Charlie's pics

Quick weekend update Feb. 7-8

Popping in real quick to give a very brief recap of the weekend. Got in 27 miles at TWOT on Saturday in 6:41, then did 5 skydives out at West Point on Sunday. My camera with my TWOT pics is at a friend's house, so I'll post those shots and a race report on Wednesday. In the meantime, here's a quick video from Sunday's jumps. I shot the footage from my helmet-cam and Ahmed edited it all together. For not having jumped in 4 months, it's nice to see we didn't suck too bad!

Wingsuit BASE Proximity Flying video

Wingsuit BASE Proximity Flying from Ali on Vimeo.

I feel like I had to post this video for some reason. Probably because over the course of the last four days I have been sent multiple emails, IMs, facebook messages, twitter messages, post-it notes and singing telegrams all asking me if I've done this before.

No, I have nowhere near the skills and/or cajones necessary to take up Proximity Flying. I own and fly a wingsuit, but only out of planes. I don't BASE jump (parachute from fixed objects), and although I think I'd absolutely love it, I'm keeping myself away from BASE because I know I have an addictive personality.

Wingsuit Weekend at Skydive Nagambie in Australia, 2004. I'm on the far right.

However, I do have tremendous respect and admiration for Loic Jean Albert, the tall skinny French dude in the video who flies within feet of rock ledges while roaring by at 120mph. This guy is one of the pioneers of wingsuit flight, so he is one of only a handful of people who have the skillset necessary to pull off successful flights in such close proximity to solid objects. When flying a wingsuit, small body movements translate into large changes in your flight pattern. In the sky or to a lesser extent flying away from a cliff, it's not the end of the world if you have some side-to-side flutter or you can't control your exact glide ratio. Flying within feet of fixed objects and small inconsistencies like that could prove to be fatal... but MAN does it make for some sick footage!

I am reminded of a quote, but can't recall who said it: "Take risks not to escape life, but to keep life from escaping."

These guys are definitely taking risks, but they are definitely living life to the max and not letting life escape them. Have fun out there and be safe, but don't forget to take risks every once in a while!

Training run report - Boyer's Furnace 40-Miler

UPDATE 1/7: New pictures now included. One gross pic, so don't look while eating.

Sunday I had my first taste of the Massanutten Mountain Trail while participating in the Boyer's Furnace 40-miler. I chose to run 31 miles (50k) of the distance to keep my weekly mileage total a bit lower. I'm still ramping up my mileage after taking some time off in December due to injury, so it's important that I don't jump back into the mileage too quickly or I'll risk injury.

I carpooled down with my friend Amy (who recently joined Team Montrail, go Amy!). We left my car at the 31 mile mark then hitched a ride to the start from my coach, Mike Broderick. The usual VHTRC troublemakers were there, and by that I mean Gary Knipling was in attendance and was carrying around a Dallas Cowboys G-string. Why you ask? Well, it's Gary. That should be enough explanation.

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The 20 or so runners gathered for a quick photo and at 7:15 we were off. We headed out of Roosevelt Gap on the Eastern Ridge and started making our way north. The forecast was calling for rain in the low 30's, aka sleet, so I donned my big and bulky rain coat since I figured that would be better than getting hypothermia up in the mountains. After a mile or so I couldn't bare the claminess of my rain jacket so I stashed it on my pack, thus adding an extra pound or so to the 70 oz of water and other miscellaneous crap I was carrying. After I got done strapping my jacket down, I picked the pace up to catch up with the group I had been running with. I passed Amy and, with most of her running lately having been on roads, she ever-so pleasantly admitted "oh man I'm gonna get schooled." How right she was. More on that later.

I got into a comfortable pace with Coach Mike and Tom Corris. I was in good hands since each of them had run MMT 100 at least a few times, so they definitely knew the trails. At every trail intersection I'd get briefed on where we were and what time of day it would be if we were running MMT. It was extremely helpful since I had no idea where I was. Around mile 6 we caught up with Greg Loomis (the RD) and Keith Knipling. At this point we knew something was up. Either we were going out too fast or something was wrong with Keith. Apparently he rolled his ankle so he was taking it easy and slowly navigating his way to the nearest aide station. Oh yeah, the first aide station was at mile 17! Talk about true ultra perseverance.

The view from atop the Eastern Ridge looking west

The five of us continued on together for a bit and eventually Keith backed off. Smart move on his behalf I'd say. The trails were vicious that day. It's a difficult trail to run on the nicest of days due to the sharp jagged rocks, some of which are loose, that cover so much of the ground that it's nearly impossible to actually "run" on many of the sections. It takes the cake as the most difficult trail I've ever seen (although I'm still young and naive, so what do I know?). But to add insult to injury, the trail was covered in many spots with nearly a foot of leaves. Knowing that there were rocks, we had to shuffle through the leaves and feel our way through the footing. This amounted to some blazing fast 20 minute miles!

At Veach Gap, mile 17, we descended into the valley and came to the first aide station. It was unmanned but Greg had gone out in the wee hours of the morning and dropped off the typical ultra fare: some water, soda, pringles, oreos, etc. (just another reason I love ultras - I can eat like a fat kid again!). There was a big ol' bag of double stuffed mint oreos. Mmm mmm mmm. I probably had a few too many, but hey, carbs are carbs! Tom had planted his car at Veach so he dropped there while myself, Mike and Greg continued on to the "dirt road" section of the course which lasted about 6 miles. I say "dirt road" in quotes because, according to my tour guide the RD, there used to be maybe one hunting cabin in this part of the valley and everything was dirt roads. Lately more folks have been purchasing second homes so the roads are getting paved. I could've sworn that we were in a recession and that most Americans drove SUV's... hmm... shows how much I know.

The dirt/paved roads were runnable until we hit the climb up onto the Western Ridge at Woodstock Tower. Sweet jebus that was a long climb (see the elevation profile below). Thankfully this was an ultra and running uphill is a no-no. Unfortunately walking fast uphill is no easy task either. The burning hip flexors showed us how out of shape we were after our holiday hibernating. Ouch.


As we headed south from Woodstock Tower we were presented with gorgeous views of the valley and also the Eastern Ridge that we just tackled. Not to say we didn't have similar views from the other side, we did, I just forgot to mention it. Most of the time I was up on the ridges I was playing a game with myself to see how long I could take in the view before needing to get my eyes back on the technical footing. I think my longest streak was about 1.5 seconds. Stupid leaves. The last 8 miles were similar to the first 17: technical, leafy and slow. When we hit mile 31 at Edinburg Gap, I was glad I had planned ahead and didn't have to run the last 9 miles. It had been a blast, but I was beat and I had gotten my fair share of time-on-feet and technical footing practice. It took us 7:18 to run the 50k distance. Definitely not a PR for me, but I needed those long, slow, technical miles to prepare for the upcoming ultra season, and you can't get better MMT training than running the MMT trails.

Coach Mike dropped with me and we sat there enjoying the aide. I was waiting for Amy to finish and figured she'd be about 30 minutes to an hour behind us, so there was plenty of time to chill and enjoy being out in nature. That's when Carter, another runner who had dropped earlier at mile 17 I believe, came up and asked if I was waiting for Amy. "Yeah." "Oh, did you hear what happened to her?" "F*ck." Remember when I passed Amy earlier and she said she was gonna get schooled? The girl is psychic (or maybe psycho, haven't quite wrapped my finger around this one yet). Around mile 6.5 she tripped and fell on either a sharp rock or a small tree that was recently cut down. She gashed her left knee open down to the bone. Luckily there were some runners 2 minutes behind her and they called an ambulance and arranged a meeting spot. Unfortunately that meeting spot was down the mountain at Habron Gap and it took them about 2 hours to make the hike down.

Getting some much-needed medical attention

Lesson to all you kiddos - watch your step.

I bolted down to the hospital expecting to see some poor, pathetic soul lying there all disappointed that she got rocked (literally) by the trail. Instead, this is what I saw:

Thumbs up if you got schooled by MMT trails!

She was in great spirits. Then again, she was getting some pretty sweet drugs and half her body was numb from the surgery, so I'd probably be in in a good mood too. Thankfully there was no bone, muscle or ligament damage. The tights she was wearing kept everything around her knee nice and together during the long hike down the mountain and they kept debris from getting into the open wound. The docs stitched her up and now her leg is immobilized for 10 days while the wound heals. After that the stitches will come out and she should be good as new and back to running like nothing ever happened. She's even still planning on running her first 100-miler, Rocky Raccoon, which is just 5 weeks away. The girl is a trooper, that's for sure! I'll be pacing her for that race, so I've got my work cut out for me (aka I'm the stump detector).

Amy's graphic illustration of how the day went

All in all it was an action-packed day. Up at 4am on little sleep, 2 hour drive, then 31 miles of super-technical footing and a little more than 6,500 feet of altitude gain in 7:18. Top that off with an unfortunate but hilarious trip to the hospital and the day definitely earned it's spot in the books. I'm still amazed at all the hospitality that was shown by the group of runners that helped Amy down the mountain, called EMS, and followed her to the hospital to make sure she was alright. The ultra community has some extremely caring and thoughtful individuals. The more ultras I do the more I realize this.

Thanks to everyone who sacrificed their run for the safety of others, and thanks for the good company from those that I had the pleasure of running with! With that, I'll leave you with a video depicting one of the many quotes of the day:

"It's just a flesh wound!"

I don't mean to inject politics into my blog

...but this is just too funny not to post.

Weekend video

Just a quick video from this weekend of jump #701, filmed from my perspective of a freefly jump with Ahmed. I ended up having to work on jump #700 since another instructor hurt his foot, so nothing too out of the ordinary on that milestone jump (is 700 really that significant though?), but this video shows us doing some head down docks, a linked transition from head to sit, and some nice solid sit docks. Overall, very happy with how far our freeflying has progressed! (Freefall doesn't sound pretty on video. You might want to turn your sound down before playing this clip.)

Video from this weekend

This past weekend I finally made my way out to the dropzone and got some good jumping in - 9 jumps total. Showed up late on Saturday and they put me right into the thick of it with all the tandems we had booked for the day. On Sunday business was much slower so I took advantage of it and got in some great freefly jumps (and a wingsuit jump too).

Here is the video of a head down freefly I did with Lisa on Sunday (filmed from her perspective). It was the first time I've docked on someone while head down... and I did it twice! What an amazing feeling. I had a blast!