Cinti #FightforAirClimb, Any Monkey Can Win

Except if I was late to work, I never ran up a single flight of stairs.  The longest “run” I’ve done since Christmas is 90 seconds.  I’m not rubbing it in or bragging about finishing tied for 3^rd at the American Lung Association's Fight for Air Climb at Cincinnati's Carew Tower.  Aside from giggling at my dumb luck, I am pointing out that “run” and “stairs” are not the operative words.  Climbing the Carew Tower is not about running stairs.  It’s pretty much climbing like a monkey, a very fit and determined monkey. 

Me 2nd from Right with the Rewind 94.9 Rump Shakers

Climbing is the operative word.  In fact, I’m pretty certain I heard a hair raising cackle echo in the stairwell on my way up that gave me chicken skin.  “Ooh ooh ah ah ah ahhh!” No doubt I am half man, half monkey.  Ask my wife.  If I could’ve clawed the handrails and walls with my feet, I would have.  Now I’m not saying it was easy.  To the contrary, it was donkey wheezing, sniveling, spastic arms flailing being chased the boogie man hard.  Bounding is a good term.  Tree-squirreling would be another.  It was not pretty, but fast and effective.

Evil Monkey in Full-Effect

Aside from finding a similarly tight stairwell with handrails within reach on both sides, the 2^nd best training would be boarding a cruise ship as it pulls away from port.  You’re not running a gangway so much as getting from the dock to the ship before the rope-railed gangway goes crashing into the ocean.  The 3^rd best training would be running from an axe murderer in your basement.  You would not run.  You would not step on the stairs.  With your heart rate pegged at max you would go from basement to 1^st floor by whatever means possible, a foot on a wall, a hand on a pipe.  If you must run stairs, the closest analogy is running the pedestrian stairs over an overpass...as it crumbles onto the freeway below.  That is the Fight for Air Climb.

Secret Weapons

As it turns out for me, cyclocross bike racing was a near perfect training.  You don’t run up the stairs.  Hands reaching and grasping, you pull your way up, your feet cross-eye aimed at two steps higher.  Look at the position of a cyclist.  Handlebars become handrails.  Pedals are two-stairs high.  In cyclocross and mountain bike racing, we’re used to getting the “holeshot”, first into the first corner with quick fast twitch speed, trying to essentially eliminate your competition by the first turn.  Most races are all about the first lap, the first 7 to 7.5 minutes of the race.  My time at Climb The Carew was 6:27.  I trained for the Cyclocross Masters World Championships in January with months of 30 and 15 second sprint intervals.  Obviously, some of that fitness is still with me.  The cycling training success fits the advice Marty Sanders, 2012 Vertical Mile Winner, gave me before the start.  He said, “Take two stairs at a time, use the hand rails, don’t run and give ‘er hell when you hit the hallway with 15 stories to go.”  Marty is also an accomplished cyclist and half monkey as well.

I’m not kidding.  I don’t think I could race a 5k without being laid up with sore hammies for two days.  To confess, I have been running, if you want to call it that.  I “run” on a treadmill.  My fastest and longest run is 90 seconds at 7.5mph.  High speed intervals.  In my head I run like Jason Bourne for 90 seconds, and then walk for a minute.  In reality I run like I'm escaping a house fire and walk like a zombie.  Then I do it over and over again for about 15 minutes.  That’s it.

The Next Best Thing to Monkey Feet

I will confess.  I did inadvertently have a secret weapon, maybe two, okay 3.  It was chilly, so I wore a thin set of full-finger gloves on a short jog from my car the Carew Tower.  Made for cycling, they had sticky grippers on the palm and fingers, perfect for gripping handlebars and as it turns out 45 stories of railings.  I wore a pair of tall day glow green tall striped socks (pictured above).  They make me go fast to run away from the heckling.  Oh yeah, and I just got a new pair of Pearl Izumi Peak II trail running shoes.  They’re light, have a snug and soft close fit, and are the perfect color of blue.  While most running shoes might come close to those attributes, the killer grip of Pearl Izumi's sole stands out.  No matter where my feet happened to land, I didn’t slip once, obviously the next best thing to having monkey feet.

Going Out For Lunch in Cincinnati's Eden Park

Magnolias near Krohn Conservatory

I want to run

Snap photos in the park

Jump jack by the fountain

Revisit an old face

Daily Dare Devil

See something new

Clop up stone stairs

Breeze past the wall scaler

And hear a familiar wind whisper my ear

Carved Stone Pillar

Hesitate at the point

See a Magnolia in bloom

Snag the water bottle from my car

And drink it from the open tailgate

My Favorite Public Steps

So I abandon writing

Click close the windows

Open the double glass doors

And run in Eden Park

Number Pinning For Dummies

Barry Wicks ain’t no dummy. I’ve searched the internet and in my entire cycling life, I have only seen one example of this genius number pinning technique. Back then, I was too green to have the epiphany I had Sunday. Over the weekend at the Cincinnati UCI-3 International Cyclocross Festival, more specifically at Harbin Park, the Kona truck was parked behind me. As I rolled back and leaned my bike against my car after my race, Barry Wicks was inside the Kona truck pinning on his bib number and I nearly crapped my chamois, not because I was star struck or because I saw his schmengie (I did not), but because I saw how pro’s pin their numbers.

I’ve have a teammate that nearly reaches a near Tourettes syndrome nervous tick trying to get his number pinned on correctly. Sometimes the number accidently gets pinned through the base layer. Sometimes it goes a bit deeper. “Ouch! “Sorry Brother.” “I’m good.”

Sometimes you get the number on perfectly, only to have a pin blow out when the jersey is pulled in. Or, maybe you’ve got a lycra-phobic friend who isn’t quite cool with delicately touching a man in spandex. I’ve heard all the tips: put your jersey on the hood of the car, you got to leave room for jersey stretch…blabidty blabidty blah blah.

I wish I had taken a photo of Wicks pinning his numbers to his jersey. Then again, it’s not cool for a man to take a photo of another man who’s about to don spandex. And…he’s bigger than me. So, I took a photo of myself to demonstrate this technique. Behold my children:

Maybe it’s something secret you only learn after a pro hazing or written on a flyer when your pro license arrives in the mail. Maybe I’ll be lynched by Lance Armstrong for sharing this with mere amateurs. But, I’m going to lay it on you anyway.

There’s a number of ways to get to the point in the photo. I did not see how Barry got his jersey or skinsuit around his legs. As far as I can figure, you can zip up your jersey part way, and then pull it on your legs with your feet going through the arm-holes till the body of the jersey comes up over your quads. Or you can zip your jersey around your upper legs, skipping your feet in the arm holes, and then twist the jersey around your legs till the back is facing up and the zipper is down. Or if it's a skinsuit, maybe just pull it on backwards so the back lies on your upper thighs. Now the jersey/skinsuit is pre-stretched to the approximate dimensions of your upper body and you can precisely pin it so that when you put it on your upper body, your number will be flat and perfect every time. At least you’ll look pro. And, please don’t tell anyone I told you this or I could get man-slapped by a gang of skinny bean-armed pro cyclists.

Check out Barry Wicks Blog "Wick Nasty" by clicking here.

Mohican 100 Mountain Bike Race - Three Short Stories

Historic Firsts For $300 Alex

I recently saw Michael Phelps on 60 Minutes.  The reporter was surprised to find his gold medals were not on display.  It didn’t surprise me in the least.  Most athletes I know don’t like to wave their success in others faces.  You nearly have to back them into a corner and shake it out of them.  Otherwise, if you just ask them how the race went, they’ll disappointingly say, “I had fun,” only to find out later that they won or hit a momentous mile stone.  Adam Schmidt is one of those guys.  While everyone would love to win, there are often other more subtle ambitions that cause an athlete to compete.  For some it’s the physical act of enduring.  For others it’s an act of discovery.  From personal experience, I’ve found there’s always something in every race, from natural beauty or internal feelings that I’d prefer to put on the mantle over a trophy.  Adam runs competitively, everything from church festival 5k’s to off road marathons and beyond.  Adam also races bikes, short punchy cyclocross to marathon mountain bike races.  In 2008 he completed the Mohican 100 mile trail run.  Think about that, a 100 mile foot race.  That’s like running nearly four consecutive marathons, on dirt.  Hardcore.  Even though he proudly wears the commemorative belt buckle, I’m convinced it’s more of a reminder of the real prize: his vivid stories of floating elephant hallucinations and coming across dead looking people sleeping along a fog shrouded trail at 4am.  This year, Adam Schmidt of Cincinnati became the first person ever to complete the Mohican 100 mile trail run and the Mohican 100 mile mountain bike race.  Congratulations.

My Twin

You always hear that twins can sometimes experience each others feelings and thoughts, even miles apart.  As I zipped past the last rest stop of the Mohican 100, I wasn’t looking forward to the pint glass of ice cold Sierra Nevada, a shower or being able to lay my bike down.  As if I could see the finish line through her eyes, all I could think about was my wife at the finish line, watching the clock, seeing the first finishers cross and knowing in her heart that I wasn’t far behind.  She knew my goal for the race and it was if I knew that she knew I was on pace to beat it.  My clock read 12:30pm.  There were 7-ish miles to go.  It was as if her cheers and thoughts found me miles away.  As if my bike was floating an inch above the trail while being pulled by an invisible string attached to my handlebars at one end and her hand at the other.  I rode the last 7 miles of single track with this incredible speed and precision that I only recall feeling twice before.   When I turned off the last stretch of fire road and into the finish shoot seven minutes under my goal time and saw her, I'm convinced we felt the same elation inside.  For those of you wishing to back me into a corner and shake me upside down, I finished the Mohican 100k in 18th place (out of over 150) in 6 hours 8 minutes.

How Not To Crash A Campground

You walk a fine line between axe murderer and chummy fellow mountain biker when you crash a campground.  I’m still not convinced there wasn’t a chainsaw inside the duffle bag of the dude from Arkansas who made camp behind our cabins.  Mountain bikers are a very open group.  At one time or another I’ve had to do a race on the cheap, so when he asked if we minded if he set up a tent behind our cabins, we obliged.  After he got settled, he made a peace offering of chocolate and sat down to share in the campground stories.  Through conversation his story seemed believable and twisted at the same time.  He took an expensive flight from Little Rock to Columbus and rented a car, yet he slept in a hammock and we discovered he had false teeth.  He got his nutrition ready the night before the race, but we never actually saw his bike.  One moment he was cool to be around and the next we got the feeling that we better lock the cabin door tonight.  I can’t remember how exactly he ended up in our cabin alone, but I’m guessing it sounded something like this “If you don’t mind, I’m just going to pop in your cabin and fill my water bottles.”  Suddenly we felt insecure and each one of us began to quietly lock our bikes up overnight.  Later he kindly offered his tent to a teammate who was sleeping on the floor.  Only the next morning, did we find out he kicked that guy out of the tent and asked the single girl sleeping inside the cabin if she’d like to sleep with him inside his tent.  We never saw the guy the entire day of the race.  The Sunday after the Mohican 100, as we were packing up, he grabbed up his stuff and went on his way home.  Now I feel like I should check the local paper to make sure no one turned up missing.

Looking for results?  Check here at this link.

Don’t Hate On The Run Homie: Three Running Rules For Cyclists

I used to be a hater of the run, quite frankly because the echoes of my Full Metal Jacket wannabe 7^th grade gym teacher screaming “pull hard, finish strong” still tortures me to this day.  Running a mile and militant Phy-Ed teachers rank right up there with your parent’s choice in music on the suck-o-meter when you’re 12.  Now, a couple of decades later, I’ve realized running can live in harmony with my bike, maybe Mister Keller wasn’t a complete tool and maybe the 70’s band Bread wasn’t totally lame.  As a cyclist, running can be great training and just as great an escape, if you choose your routes carefully.  You could only snap the photo above of the Dorado, Puerto Rico coastline on foot.  In that way, running makes me appreciate my rides more.

Rule number one: I only run where I can’t ride a bike.  That can be the first challenge.  Goat path trails and/or stairs mark every running route I do.  Last week on vacation in Puerto Rico coral cliffs, deepish sand and the steep cuts of stream inlets marked my ocean front run.  At home in Cincinnati, I always choose a route that incorporates a couple flights of the cities famous public steps or a detour through the downed branch strewn hiking trails in a local park.  Choosing a route I couldn’t tackle on two wheels helps me explain the running to the evil cyclist in my head.  Being slower, running can reveal details of scenery a bike can’t deliver, like those in these photos of my runs in Dorado, Puerto Rico last week. 

Rule number two: while I usually run 2-3 times a week, I only run when I can’t ride.  Lunch hour is a perfect time to eek in a 40-45 minute run and still have time for a sink shower and wolf down a sandwich in the same time your coworkers drive to McDonalds and make a stop at the mall.  Plus, you can double up on the day with bike ride after work.  At home I run at night, or when weekend trips to Target, fixing this old house, or weather get in the way of a respectable length ride. 

Rule number three: while I usually run anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, I never usually run the entire time.  It makes running more exciting.  I break up my runs with 3-4 sets of crunches, pushups and other core/plyometric exercises.  On my work run, I split the run up at the tops of three big lookout hills.  I did the same in Puerto Rico, stopping at incredible vistas.  At each stop, I hit the dirt and give my 7^th grade drill sergeant 25 crunches, 15 pushups, 25 jumping jacks and 15 star jumps.  As I continue on toward the next hill, I hear “pull hard, finish strong” in my head.