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2014 Annual Summary

(Better late than never, right?)

2014 can be split into two very different halves. The first “half” of the year (actually the first eight months) was all about running and traveling all over the world. The second “half” was all about recovery from all that activity.

When the year started, I was tapering for the longest run of my life, Brazil 135. Elizabeth threw me a great birthday/race send-off party and then Aaron and I set off for São Paulo, Brazil.

The trip was awesome, the race went fantastic, and Aaron and I had a blast together. We made some new friends down there and had some great Brazilian experiences.

Then, in early February, I found out that I’d gotten into Badwater. A race I’d been thinking about for a long time. I had five months to prepare, but first I needed to recover from Brazil. (I got into Wasatch 100 as well, but knew all along that doing a super tough 100 just six weeks after Badwater was a longshot.)

Soon after getting the news about Badwater and still fresh on the heels of my trip to Brazil, Elizabeth and I spent two weeks in Thailand and Cambodia. Neither of us had ever been to Asia before and we had an awesome time. It was a great way to finish up recovery from the race in Brazil. We saws tons of amazing sites around Bangkok and had a nice few days on a secluded beach in Thailand, but the highlight of the trip for me was the time we spent in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Angkor Wat and the other local temples were stunning and we had a blast walking around Pub Street and the surrounding markets each night.

March and April were spent getting back into running and putting in the base miles for Brazil.

I’d worn a GoPro camera on my head during Brazil 135 and when I got back, I handed all the footage to friends at Buzzfeed who were going to see if they could put something together. On April 9, the video “What It’s Like to Run 135 Miles” was published on Buzzfeed Yellow.

I love the video. I think it captured my experience at the race really well and even more importantly was a perfect depiction of why I run. I didn’t expect this at all, but within hours it had 100,000s of views and was picked up by all kinds of media websites. It quickly hit 3,000,000 views (!) and now has nearly 4,000,000. Even for an introvert like me, I really enjoyed the flurry of attention. I got contacted by a few companies, including Rudy Project (scroll down to the middle of the page for a little bit about me), did a podcast with Trail Runner Nation and was interviewed for an article on Action Hub.

In May, I did race #2 for the year, Whoo’s in El Moro. The race is fairly local and the RD is a friend. I decided last minute to jump in, test my fitness and see what a “shorter” race felt like. I found out all right. It hurts.

During the spring, I was working with Billy, now the famous proprietor of Billy Yang Films on a series of 3 (or 2) short films about my journey to Badwater. The first one, called “My Time”, came out in June. I had fun filming it and writing the script with him, but had no idea his magic would make all that create something this fantastic.

April, May and June were peak training months for Badwater. I was running my ass off and feeling great doing it. I was hitting the trails two or three times a week with friends and doing a couple long solo road runs every week as well. In early June, Billy and Colin drove out to Lone Pine with me to do a weekend of Badwater course recon. I got to run both “new” sections of the course (Horseshoe Meadows road and the Cerro Gordo climb) and we spent an afternoon hanging out with Badwater Ben Jones.

It was made pretty obvious that this race was going to try its best to kick my ass. My other most memorable runs were the two runs I did up the Angeles Crest Highway from La Cañada-Flintridge to Mt. Wilson. Those were fun runs on a road that pretty much no one runs. I felt great both times and felt like a badass doing it.

Later in June, as I was finishing up training for Badwater, Elizabeth and I took a trip to New York to see my inlaws and spend some time in Wainscott. During our drive out from JFK on the pitch black NY-27, I hit and killed a deer. I also totaled our rental car.

Thankfully, other than the deer and a pretty nasty cut on my left knee, Elizabeth, the dogs and I were all fine.

July was spent tapering and taking care of Badwater race logistics (and there are a ton). I was also doing fundraising for CAF (Challenged Athletes Foundation) and ended up raising over $6,000!

Billy published the second Tailwind/Badwater film right before the race. It’s called “The Road to 135” and is mostly about my race preparations and our Lone Pine training/recon weekend. Billy really kicks ass at this stuff.

Badwater started on July 21. I was out there with a top-notch crew of Aaron, Billy, Colin and Sally, with Elizabeth as back-up in Lone Pine. The race was everything I hoped it would be. And I loved nearly every minute of it.

Right after Badwater, I recorded another podcast with Rich Roll for the Rich Roll Podcast. I always have a blast hanging out with Rich and he brings out the best in all of his guests.

Then, just 13 days after Badwater and literally hours after crewing and pacing Billy to his first 100 mile finish at AC100, Elizabeth and I jumped on a plane for a vacation in France. We spent most of the trip at a villa in Sainte Rémy and finished the trip with three nights in Paris. The whole trip was great but I really loved Paris, especially riding Velib bikes around town.

My foot had been bothering me pretty bad in the days after Badwater and the I got full-blown achilles tendinitis. Six weeks of PT took care of the achilles but for the rest of 2014 I was never able to get back into running. It was constantly one thing or another that was swollen or painful or “wrong” enough that I didn’t feel like I could run. And it rotated across my lower body: right knee, left hamstring, left adductor, right abdomen, right low back. I tried taking time off, ART, massage, doing PT and strength training. Nothing helped. So I barely ran the rest of 2014. Something like 130 miles between August and December. And mostly, I’d start to feel better, do a couple weeks of easy running and then have a set-back that would derail it all for a few weeks. Feel better, repeat. On the other hand, I got back into swimming and swam a ton. More and more each month in the second half of the year and October, November and especially December were three of my biggest swimming months ever. Swimming felt good and kept me from going crazy from not running.

2014 by the numbers:
Swim: 143,424 meters (89.1 miles – 60% was in October, November and December)
Cycling (outdoors): 17.6 miles
Cycling (indoors): 0:00 (hours) (I stopped tracking this since it’s irrelevant now)
Run: 1966.2 miles (1,836 miles or 93% of this was in January-July)
Total Run Elevation Gain: 280,548 feet
Strength Training/Yoga: 71 sessions

Approximate annual total training/racing time: 496 hours

2015 is definitely going to be a “different” type of year.

I don’t have any races on my calendar and actually am not sure that I’ll actually doing any (or any big ones at least) this year. As I’m (knock on wood) just getting back into running after those months off, for now, I’m currently feeling content about running just to enjoy running in 2015. I’m hoping to participate in some big races on the other side, as crew, pacer or volunteer, rather than participant. I’ve also got some looming medical issues that I still need to resolve and that could affect my training. And finally, one of my goals for 2015 is to make some life changes and I doubt I’ll able to focus on training like I’ve done in recent years. Thanks for reading and following along in my journeys! Stay tuned.