Monthly Summary – June 2014
June is done. And that means that Badwater is exactly three weeks from today. That final countdown thing is really starting now.
June was a good month, not as strong a training month as May (and less than I’d planned for the month), but I managed a decent amount of mileage and climbing and feel like I’ve put myself in a good position to be ready for Badwater.
The training highlight of the month was the weekend trip Colin, Billy and I took to Lone Pine to do recon on the race course. As I’ve mentioned here many times, permit issues forced the course to be changed for this year’s race and there are two big sections of the course that I’d never seen before. During our weekend trip, we got to check out both of those sections. Saturday we ran on the Horseshoe Meadows Road. That 46 mile out-and-back is going to be a challenging way to start the race! The views of Owens Valley down below are pretty sweet though.
We spent Sunday with “Badwater” Ben Jones. He crewed us during our run up to, and back down from, Cerro Gordo (miles 59-75 of the race). It was great to hear his stories about the race history and his life in Lone Pine. He also took a ton of pictures, like the one at the top of this post, which is near the top of the Cerro Gordo climb, with Owens Valley and the Sierras off in the distance.
At the beginning of the month, the first video in a three video series that Tailwind and Billy are producing came out. The video came out and perfectly captures a lot of my feelings about running and why I run. The second video should come out in the next couple of weeks and will focus on our training weekend in Lone Pine. Remember that if you order Tailwind between now and Badwater (July 21) and put the code “#GoJoshGo” in the comments section of your online shopping cart, Tailwind will donate 5% of the purchase price to CAF on my behalf.
The month ended with a trip to New York. I don’t particularly enjoy travel and this trip was especially trying because we tried to do too much. I was headed there for work and Elizabeth and the dogs flew out to spend time with my in-laws at the beach house in Wainscott. In addition to the days flying cross-country, I ended up spending a lot of time in cars and buses moving between JFK or the City and the Hamptons. I love spending time at the beach house, but I never felt like I had a chance to relax on the trip.
Oh, and I also hit and killed a deer in our rental car on our first night there, during our drive from JFK to Wainscott. That part of Highway 27 (near Hampton Bays) is pitch black and the deer jumped out of the median. I barely had a chance to react. The deer was dead, the car was (probably) totaled but somehow, thank goodness, Elizabeth and the dogs and I were all fine. I cut up my left leg a bit, but that’s healing and is mostly a reminder of how much worse it could have been.
I managed a few runs in New York, two in Wainscott and two in Central Park. Running in Central Park was pretty fun as usual. There were tons and tons of people out there, running, walking, cycling. It was really humid and I sweat plenty as it is, so I was dripping wet. While running in Central Park was fun, I’d never trade our mountains and beaches for the Park.
Back in March, I decided I’d like to run between 1,000 – 1,100 miles during April, May and June. I was hoping to hit 1,100. As it turns out, I ran 1,060 miles during those three months. Those 40 mile should have come during June, but between travel and some family obligations I ended up taking an extra couple days off and a cut a few other runs short. I’m happy I still made it to the pool every so often. I would have liked to do more strength training or yoga, but during June, nearly every time I went to the gym it was just for the sauna.
Twenty one days from right now, I’ll be eight hours into Badwater and should be somewhere on the road down from Horseshoe Meadows!