2012 Medved Madness Race report

Two Sunday's ago was a race that I've always loved doing in the Rochester area.  It was the Medved Madness 15 mile trail race in Mendon Ponds Park.  They put it on as a relay and also a solo endeavor.  Me loving everything having to do with endurance, I chose the 15 miler in the solo division.  This race is another fantastic "bang for your buck deal" and the only reason that I didn't sign up earlier in the year was that I didn't know where Kim and I would be (OH vs. NY) at this point in the year, so when fellow running buddy Tim asked me on the Tuesday prior if I was racing, I immediately signed up.

You see, I already had a 14 miler on tap for Sunday anyway and as I said before this was a way to go out for a long run with some friends, get a great catered chicken BBQ afterwards, and a North Face tech tee to each registrant.  (with the NF shirt valued at $28, and the race entry fee being only $25, how can you pass that up?!?!)

Race morning was beautiful and good enough to wear arm warmers for the entire thing.  We all lined up and Dan "Magellan" Andrus threw us through the pond for the first loop as normal.  We got some misdirection in the opening few meters which allowed me to once again lead the entire field off course for about 200m and made the chase back up to the front runners a little hectic, but we made it back.

 So I've had a lot of things going on lately and I don't like to throw around excuses, but I don't know where my racing mojo went for this one.  Things kinda fell apart on loop 3 for me.  I ran thru the first two loops with the eventual winner and was feeling pretty good about life up until about mile #9.  He gapped me a tad while we went thru the timing mat for leg#2 to leg#3 and I knew he had far substantially better legs than I did that day.  I had been throwing little surges into him in the woods on the previous two legs and it felt like I was going to break him, but he got me by only a few yards after we went thru Hopkins Point and he was just gone.

I immediately lost all will to chase and mentally I was done.  I think I just wanted to get thru the last few miles and finish this race up.  I slowed WAY down and went from running 6:30's in the woods to running 8's or even 9's.  My HR never climbed above 132 for the final loop and subconsciously that is exactly the Ironman marathon pace that I've been running all my runs at lately.  So maybe my body just went back into "training mode"?  I don't know.  Either way a BUNCH of folks passed me and the same buddy that told me about the race, Tim, blew by sometime in that loop as well.  (He would eventually place 3rd overall)

I got passed by several folks and hit the line in somewhere around 1:51:xx and that was good for about 11th place (I don;t really know as the timing company screwed up big time and has me listed as 2nd overall in the results currently) Not a fun day racing wise, but still a good jaunt in the woods and I got my miles in.  The Chicken BBQ was fantastic and somehow I managed an Age Group Win as well, so was able to score a $15 gift cert to Medved.  Always nice swag.  Results are HERE, but they're still messed up.  Oh well.

Well a rest week was last week and I'm back at a bike focus (trying for 20+hours of SOLELY biking this week) and a run focus for the following week (trying for 45-50 miles that week - AKA wedding week) So there will likely be no blogging until we arrive back from Costa Rica.  Travel, train and be safe my friends.  Cheers!

Change is coming...

A good friend once told me that life is more than just multi sport, and while I understand that fact and truly believe him, things are moving quick here in the land of Keep Moving Forward.  That's not a bad thing either.  many people have commented on all the stresses happening in life lately, but the way that we look at it - there's really nothing exceptionally BAD happening.  No one has died, no one has lost their job, the sun is still coming up and things are going well.

For those that don't know and are completely lost by the not-so subtle context above, here is the run-down of things happening in life lately that's causing this blog post:

1. I'm getting married to my best friend and future Mrs. Keep Moving Forward in about 2.5 weeks (not like anyone is excited and counting down or anything!) and we're travelling to Naples, FL to tie the knot :-)
2. We're travelling immediately afterwards to Costa Rica for our Honeymoon and will return home to Rochester on June 3rd.
3. We're moving to Ohio on June 8th. (yes-that's only 5 days after we come home from the honeymoon) You see, Kim got a huge promotion at her job and subsequently will be working out of the corporate HQ in Columbus, OH.  My work is currently allowing me to work remotely from home which is awesome, and helping the transition immensely.  
4. We're also building a house, but to compound on the problem, it's not going to be completed until mid-July.  So that means staying in an extended stay hotel for a few weeks while the house gets finished up.
5. Since about March, Kim's been on a schedule with the new position that requires her to be in Columbus about every other week.  
6. Kim also had to turn in the company car and we had to buy a new vehicle for her.  That's pretty much all taken care of right now, but it was still good stuff that happened in the last few weeks.

So with that all being said, there are a lot of other things in there as well that coincide with the 6 big stressors above.  Like we had to organize finances and get the mortgage paperwork together.  Get all of this stuff done semi-remotely as Kim was in Columbus every other week and I have still been in NY.  Along with showers, bachelor parties, an intense house-hunting weekend trip to Ohio, a trip to hike the Grand Canyon and everything else, it's been a little hectic in our world lately.

Taken 3/27/2012

4-6-2012

4/24/2012

5/7/2012

But with this being a multi-sport blog I wanted to let you all know that I've been still pounding out the hours in prep for Rev3 at Cedar Point this September and I've been consistently in the 20+ hours of training per week club since about the first week of February.  But with training so much and everything else still going on, I've cut back on racing for some time until September.  I just hopped into a trail race on Sunday and that was a blast, but I'll post a separate entry about that later.  I wanted to shoot up a few good pics of the house progression and my most favorite from the Grand Canyon trip.

Life's been crazy, but good lately.  Just wanted to share the journey.  Keep training hard friends and I'll see you on the roads and trails.  Cheers.

Seneca7 Relay race report

Well it was that time of the year again to run the insanely fun Seneca7 relay.  We had run the race last year and had an absolute blast doing so.  Race report from 2011 can be found HERE.  But I digress, this was going to be a new year with a semi-new cast of characters, but still the same bad race at the same bad time. 

Our team name this year was going to be an homage to the previous year where we were known only as, "Dude where's my car?" for being the innovators that we are and one of our teammates coming up with the crazy fun idea that we would ride bikes instead of drive a van around the lake.  If you read the report from 2011, you'll realize that along with having a ridiculously hilarious time during the day, we got a little lost.  (Thank you Matt...haha!) but anyway, our team name this year was none other than "Dude, where's 414?" because that was the infamous left hander that Matt just flew by and proceeded to climb about 1000' vertically within 4 miles and make a 4mile leg into a 10 miler.

But this year we had a distinct Buffalo contingent of two runners from last year Steve and Charlie (who are both crazy Iron-folk and young guns with a newly christened ultra-running background) Steve did a 50 miler this past winter and is focusing on the NYC marathon this year and Charlie was silly enough to complete a 100 miler this past winter as well within 24 hours.  Both solid guys and they brought with them our 7th runner and just really funny guy Joe.  Joe I had met in 2010 when we were killing time in line to register for IMLP and he added a good tone to the day (along with throwing down some difficult legs)

Photo credit Charlie Watson

The Rochester crew consisted of myself, Tim Howland (if you don't know him, just read through some old posts and peruse the comments section.  You'll laugh hysterically.) Brian and Ian.  All of whom are great friends as well who I've run with for the last several years and had MANY a fun time with.

Race morning was pretty darn chilly out and the high for the day was supposed to be about 45 or so.  I think I speak for the entire team when I say that we all probably had some trouble packing our backpacks for the day as it was hard to find enough clothes to stay warm, yet not enough that you would sweat a lot and then get chilled.  I don't know about the rest of the team, but I know that I FROZE all day and didn't really warm up until about 10pm after a good shower and about 5 bowls of chili. (which left some dastardly effects....but I digress)

Leg #1 was pretty chilly, leg#2 seemed to warm up a tad and I was able to run in shorts and a t-shirt, then leg #3 the sun must have gone behind a cloud and I was forced back into shorts and 2 long sleeve t's.  The race went great though despite the cold and some of the Garmin files for the particular legs that I ran can be found here:

Leg #3 - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/172902922

Leg #2 - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/172902791

Leg #1 - http://connect.garmin.com/activity/172902752

As you can see, we all (at least I kinda did) fell apart late in the day and everyone was complaining about having to bike in.  Brian at one point bought some beef jerky and we all kinda devoured it at an exchange point midway through.  The weather would have been great if we were in a van, but on the bikes, wearing helmets and sunglasses, most of us got REALLY burnt from the sunglass line down on our faces.  

I'll take that as a badge of honor.  :o)  When the final leg came up, our anchor man Joe was leading the charge to the line and we were all limping home via bikes.  He held on strong though and we made it to the line in 7th place overall and that was good enough for the fastest "eco-friendly team" there!  So with that came a recycle box of swag (each person got all this stuff below) and we got our picture taken on the apple crate podium that was on stage.

It was a long day after we went off in the last wave (they apparently seeded everyone this year, which was a great idea for the fast and slow folks alike) we all seemed to finish AROUND the same time and hung out in the cold and had some delicious veggie and meat friendly chili and some brews.  All in all a really fun day on bikes and running with everyone and I'm super stoked to see this race grow so much.  Upstate NY needed something crazy like this and I can totally see it turning into something like Reach the Beach or Hood2coast in the upcoming years.

Final results can be found HERE and looking at that we were able to hang onto 6:42/mile pace and got marked as the fastest eco team. (a recognition that was truly earned that day due to the cold) Also as a nice feather in our caps, we were crowned on the record boards found HERE. Pretty cool indeed. But fun day and good swag aside, this race is one you'll want to check out in the future.  Totally fun experience!  But now back to multisport work once more.  September is coming soon so be safe out there friends, be sure to train hard and stay out of the sun. Cheers.