Went up Grays and Torreys this morning for my weekly jaunt. I was worried that I was not going to get in the summits this week due to work schedules and the storm, but decided to give it a try today since this was my only open day and I didn't want to break my weekly streak (12 straight). The storm that rolled through last night dropped about 3" at Bakersville, providing a fresh layer of snow from the start. By the time I got to the summer trailhead, it was closer to +5" and the winds had done a wonderful job of completely covering the trail with nice thigh-high drifts. Needless to say, it was slow going and exhausting, as breaking trail the entire way quickly wore me out. However, I pushed on and found some snow free spots around the big sign before hitting the real deep stuff near the bottom of the face. I've got the trail fairly wired, so it was no big deal that it was totally obscured for parts of the way, but breaking trail over talus can be frustrating. The winds were howling and low hanging clouds persisted the entire time, so there was no clear summit shots. The lone mountain goat that I saw last week was there, in almost the same spot as last time. Other than him, I had the entire mountain and valley all to myself. With all of the snow it took me 4:09 for the roundtrip from Bakersville, which is OK given the conditions. On the way down I ran into some idiots who tried to drive up and got their car stuck - only about 500 yards from Bakersville!
A series of new articles just were published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. The titles are:
EFFECTS OF DIETARY NITRATE SUPPLEMENTATION ON 5 KM RUNNING TIME TRIAL PERFORMANCE IN TRAINED FEMALE RUNNERS - looks like it might be time to start taking nitrate supplements (via beetroot juice) if you want to improve your 5K or shorter times. Previous research has also demonstrated a benefit of nitrate supplementation (see here and here).
CHANGES IN LABORATORY AND FIELD-BASED MEASUREMENTS IN HIGHLY TRAINED ENDURANCE RUNNERS ACROSS A TRAINING YEAR - If you want to improve, increase training distance AND percentage of time spent above threshold velocity. More, longer, and harder (with qualifications).
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN OXYGEN UPTAKE AND WORK RATE BELOW AND ABOVE LACTATE THRESHOLD - Looks like if you get tested, the methods being used are pretty accurate in terms of predicting max V02.
Good stuff from The BSJ.
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