Jumping Castles as Physical Therapy and Brian Finds Gollum in a Tunnel!

(Photo above is of Camelback Mountain, near our neighborhood).

Quite a week. My wife has been working out of town more often and that means low mileage weekdays. To keep my weekly mileage climbing, it also means I need to hammer the miles when she's around. It actually works out well since I'm trying to prepare for big back to back days in Nevada this June (50 miles/day for 10 days).


Friday this week I ran to school but wasn't sure the day before if it would happen so when I decided to go, I hadn't taken any extra clothes beforehand. That meant I had to run with my bigger pack, a much heavier load than my normal two water bottles. That also turned out alright because the afternoon return run was in 97 degrees on our first "warm" day of spring. Phoenicians are hesitant to call anything under 100 "hot" since that would only wussify you when the real heat sets in later (Phoenix has gone 32 days without dropping below 110 degrees F. - including nights). My bigger pack has a 70 ounce hydration bladder and I drained it on the 13 mile commute home. 26 for the day.

Saturday I wanted to get in 32 miles but also wanted to be around to spend some time with the family. Being gone for 5 and 6 hour runs takes its toll on everyone after awhile. I started with a ten mile morning run up a local steep climb called Camelback Mountain. 300k people each year scramble around this thing and the 1.5 mile, 1200-foot ascent challenges all. I had a morning date with my daughter for ballet so I only was able to get to the saddle before having to turn around. It's a great workout and one I should really be doing more to improve my climbing.

After ballet, it was off to a birthday party for a classmate of my daughters. The party was at one of those indoor jumping castle places. Amazing efficiency. Start the party in one room filled with inflatable jumping structures. Let 'em tire of that for about 20 minutes then herd everyone in a second room with a whole different set of objects. Finally, it was off to the cake and present room where we ended the party before the next gaggle came through the door with another sheet cake with Tinkerbell, Dora, Rapunzel, or Barbie emblazened over two feet of icing.

Most of the parents were standing around watching the mayhem of 20 five year olds. But I distinctly noted there was no signage barring adults from the play structures. The staff were certainly bouncing around, helping the kids have a good time, so I joined in and became the biggest five year old in the group. Later that afternoon, I thought I felt my muscles had been stretched in a good way with all of the bouncing around.

But there was still running to do, so at 6 pm, Saturday, I planned to head north for a 22 miler to Sweet Republic, one of the best ice cream shops in Phoenix. I ate a quick plate of spaghetti with the family before heading out but it wasn't enough. At the store, I got a triple scoop of real mint ice cream and on the way back I could feel a major bonk coming on. I hadn't fueled the fire and the flames were going out. It was a long run home but I made it around 10 pm, 32 for the day.

I was spent from Saturday's events and wasn't sure how I would pull off my planned 35miles for Sunday. I decided to again spend the day with the family and didn't get on the road until 5:30 pm. That's bit late for starting a 50k. I had my headlamp, blinker light and the goal of an out and back on the Arizona Canal, first heading west.

I wanted to prevent another bonk and for the first 10 minutes, I walked, trying to figure out if my legs were even going to let me break into a trot. To my surprise, after about a mile I was off and finding my rhythm. I tried to put something in me each hour. As I left home I munched on half a turkey sandwich and a Cliff Bar. At one hour, I downed 20 ounces of Powerade at a gas station. At 2 hours I gobbled down a quarter pounder with cheese. That did wonders and I could feel the fire starting to flame up again. At three hours I hit my turnaround in the city of Peoria after 16.5 miles and went into a Target for a Gatorade and granola bar. I had grossly miscalculated my time and had told Lydia I'd be home in half the time it was going to take. Instead of being home at 9:30 (as Bill Cosby said, "that's when the monsters come out"), I now knew it would be midnight before I returned. Lydia's reaction on the phone wasn't ecstatic. It seems she had also grown up learning about monsters from the Cos. Luckily, I had music on my iPod, which the king of comedy himself says is all you need to keep them at bay. More than monsters, I was still worried about bonking at the end of this long weekend of running.

As far as routes go, I despise out and back courses. I view running as a way to get somewhere and merely repeating what you've already seen usually seems like a wasted opportunity to see some new territory. But an interesting thing has happened this spring as I've increased my mileage. By running out and back courses, I've found that the longer runs don't seem quite so daunting if I think about them only as far as I have to go out, before the turnaround. Everything after that is just considered "returning home", and not really part of the workout. I've successfully bumped my mileage from what used to be a respectable 10 miler to now being able to think about 30+ without much concern. It's only 3 hours out, I tell myself.

With iPod on low (just in case I needed to hear any monsters), I trotted down the dark canal at 9:30 pm. There are bike underpasses along the canal to keep trail users off the major crossroads and during the day I have no problem using them. Using the tunnels is even a little bit of a hill workout, exiting up the ramp from a tunnel back to the surface. But tonight, as I approached my first, under a major interstate, I wondered what the possibility was that I'd meet someone I'd prefer not to in one of these cement corridors. Some of them are quite long and narrow, say 10 feet wide as opposed to the trail above ground, which is closer to 30 feet. But they are well lit and signed with warnings about various city codes against sleeping, loitering, camping, obstructing and otherwise spooking a lonely runner late at night trying to get home.

As I neared the next tunnel, the approach to it had a slight bend so that you couldn't first check to see if the path was empty before already being inside. I didn't see the man lying on the pavement until I was most of the way down the ramp, with high cement walls now on either side of me and tall wrought iron fencing above that. He was off to the side and had a number of bottles, wrappers and food lined up across from him. He hadn't been there on my way out but looked to now have set up camp for the night. The only reason I decided to continue rather than turn around was that he was lying still and I figured he was asleep or passed out and I could scoot by without waking him. As I neared however, I quickly realized that certain things which should be fitted at the waist, were actually at his knees. At this point, I was only a few feet away and eager to get past him and be gone. As I passed, he proved that he was still among the living, if only biologically speaking. I was about 3 strides past him when he started shouting a string of incoherent things to me, as if Tom Waits was having an especially bad night at the piano and couldn't find the keyboard, or his pants.

In 16 miles of mostly dark, shrub-lined trail, facing whole city blocks of warehouses, storage units, and dark office buildings, it's amazing to me that people will take to the most illuminated and narrow section of trail for things that should be not be public. Then, as if to demonstrate how far off their sense of reason has become, they get irate when someone intrudes on their personal bedroom. I'm all about making ends meet and being creative when times call for it, but I would never propose trying to get away with what comedian Steven Wright once said, "I'm gonna build a house at the end of the interstate and tell everyone to get off my driveway."

After my underground experience, I didn't have to worry about bonking as my pace actually picked up for the remaining 13 miles. 94 miles in the past three days and 112 for the week.