Down but not Out and Vancouver

Some of the joy and challenge that comes with being an endurance athlete is that your physical and at times mental fitness ride an undulating roller coaster through peaks of fitness and troughs of injury or weakness. These large meta-cycles can include months of strength and vigor and are absolutely fabulous when you are in the midst of such a peak, but because there is opposition in all things, there is the other side of these cycles where body and mind revolt and spirit is dampened for a time. This month has turned out to be one of those mega trough's for me. Don't get me wrong, I have had some great runs on the weekends and found many clear days to run, but because of my workload at school and the point I am in my degree everything seemed to pile up this month and surpass a critical point where I met a breaking point and found my mental rigor and self motivation plummeting. My running has been anything but consistent and I have struggled to find that extra oomph that forces one out the door and onto the trails day in and day out.

This last week was my worst yet with almost zero runs to report. I did have to go to UBC to use the electron microprobe this week which included a scramble on Sunday and Monday to prepare for Tuesday and Wednesday in Vancouver. I got my samples together and caught the 7:00 am ferry to Vancouver. I then took a bus with a transfer and found my way to campus at about 10:30. I than spent the following 8 hours on the probe analyzing my experiments. It is fun to be involved in my second Winter Olympics and it was cool to see the various workers hastily making their final preparations to welcome the World's winter athletes. The night was rough as nights away from my family usually are and I didn't sleep much. I was up by 6 and working by 7 at UBC. I finished in the afternoon and then made the 4 hour journey back to the Island (I did see my first pod of wild Orcas while coming back on the ferry, unbelievable!). The following Thursday was spent working on my course work and than it was basically the weekend. I just didn't make time to run.

I am going to stop complaining about this pitiful past month and look into a brighter future. I struggled with finding motivation and inspiration this month, but leave it to a blog from Krupicka to get the lead out and inspire me to get back at a consistent running schedule. In his blog he discusses how he is going to run to the summit of Green Mountain in Boulder Co 100 times in 100 days this year. He is now 30 days in and 30 summits into his goal. This isn't a sissy hill either but a 8,000 foot + frozen monolith on the Western skyline of Boulder.

I don't have the opportunity to hit the base of a 3,000 foot vertical climb each morning but I do have several hills near my home with plenty of steep trails and a good 500 feet of elevation gain. So to take inspiration from Krupicka I am going to see how many summit's of Mount Doug I can sack this Month and then try to break the record in March. So starting tomorrow the 1st of February I will start my copycat experiment and start summit repeats on Mt. Doug. I don't quite know what to expect, but I can't see why I can't tackle 60 summits this month. I hope that I can stay motivated and balance my ever increasing workload so that I can run at least an hour each day. It will be a fun experiment and exactly the type of game and motivation I need to pull out of this nosedive I have found myself in, and get my fitness and strength back. I will have to manage time impeccably and sacrifice some sleep but that is the point, to get me excited to make the changes necessary to get back into the game.