Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage Recap

by Brandon  
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I spent this past weekend running 187 miles through western Washington with 5 friends at the Ragnar Relay Northwest Passage.

The short version: it was an awesome, epic adventure with a great group of runners that was easily the most fun I’ve ever had running, and I can’t wait to do it again!

The long version:

For those not familiar with it, Ragnar is a series of running relays all over the country, very similar to Hood to Coast. The Northwest Passage relay is from Blaine, WA (right on the border with Canada), down to Whidbey Island 187 miles away. Relay teams are typically made up of 2 vans with a total of 12 runners. For various reasons (insanity?), we decided to register as an “ultra” team with only 6 runners. This means that we each had to run twice as many legs as most teams.

I had the great pleasure of running this relay with 5 really awesome people. I already knew Sharla, Tara and Mac from their blogs/Twitter, and had actually met all 3 of them in person before this race. Then there was Lindsay who we picked up from the Ragnar website, and Ryan who we actually found on Craigslist. Lindsay was the only one of us who had actually run a relay like this before (also on an ultra team). For me, doing this relay was much more about the experience and spending time with friends new and old, than it was about the race itself – though that part was fun too!

As an ultra team, we each ran 3 sets of 2 “regular” legs back-to-back, leaving around 8-10 hours of downtime between legs. But with the stop-and-go nature of running a relay (the teams were encouraged to leap frog their runner in the van to cheer them on along the course), and the fact that as an ultra team, we had no “off” van, getting anything resembling quality sleep was difficult to say the least. I would say that the lack of sleep was more difficult to deal with than the actual number miles we had to run. I got maybe an hour of sleep in the van after my 2nd leg – if I’m lucky.

Leg 1: 9.56 miles in 1:29 (9:18 pace)

I started my first leg around 1pm on Friday, and oh boy were there some serious hills on this one! The Ragnar website has elevation profiles for all the legs, but sometimes it’s difficult to understand just how big or steep some hills are from those small images, especially depending on the scale that they use. It turns out I had really underestimated how difficult this first leg was going to be. Luckily I also got to run along several miles of trails during this leg, so that helped to distract me and (somewhat) made up for the difficulty. I also got to run on a boardwalk along the Bellingham waterfront, where there was even an Alaska ferry docked at the time, which was a nice reminder of home.

Leg 2: 15.0 miles in 2:21 (9:23 pace)

My longest leg started around 11pm on Friday and brought me straight through to early Saturday morning. At this point I had not slept any yet. It was a new experience for me to run in the pitch black like this. I’ve run plenty in the dark around Anchorage (since it’s pretty much always dark during the winter here), but everywhere I run is at least partially lit by street lights. Out on the back roads of western Washington, not so much. Ragnar required that we wear a head lamp, reflective vest, and LED “butt light” while running during night hours. Pretty much all you could see was the small area illuminated in front of you by your headlamp, and the bouncing butt lights of any runners ahead of you. It was also kind of eerie running through the darkness, having a faster runner come up from behind and pass you seemingly out of nowhere.

Leg 3: 12.6 miles in 2:15 (10:42 pace)

My 3rd and final leg was my most difficult. Not that it was a particularly difficult leg, but just that the lack of sleep had definitely caught up to me by this point. During this leg, I ran along with another runner for a while from a team called the Ragnarcissists. It was nice to have someone to chat with for a while, and take my mind off how tired I felt. We had never gotten each other’s names, but at one point I had told him that I was from Alaska. The rest of the day, our teams kept leap-frogging each other, and every time I saw him he’d scream out ALASKA! One other thing that just melted my heart and put a big smile on my face: after a particularly long hill, there were 2 young girls on the side of the road offering runners Gatorade and lemonade. I stopped briefly for a quick drink of Gatorade, gave them a huge thanks, and ran on with a bit of an extra spring in my step.

My total mileage: 37.2 miles in 6:05 (9:48 pace)

Running a big relay like this is a huge amount of fun. There is a ton of commeraderie, not only amongst your own teamates, but with the other teams as well. There’s lots of mutual cheering and encouragement, goofing off and having fun – with a little running thrown in there too 🙂

One of the most enjoyable parts of this race was seeing all the other creative team names, van decorations, and costumes. Some teams really went all out with this, especially the team that all dressed up as characters from Lord of the Rings, many even running their legs in full costume (their “You Shall Not Pass!” tagline on the window was genius, as was Gandalf proclaiming “You Shall Not Poop!” in a port-a-potty line).

I want to give a big shout-out to Sharla and Tara. Before this weekend, the longest that either of them had ran was a half marathon. Over the course of about 24 hours, they ran more than 30 miles each. Seeing the looks of sheer will and determination on their faces was an awesome thing to behold, and truly inspirational. You ladies ROCK!

And one last shout-out to our awesome volunteers/crew – Meegan, Jessi, and Michael (who was originally going to run with us, but had to have shoulder surgery). Thank you all so much, it was great to have you along on this amazing journey with us.

If you haven’t guessed by now, I had a hell of a lot of fun running this relay. I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to do it with, and I sincerely hope that we can all do it again.

Why and How I Switched to a Standing Desk

by Brandon  

Although I really haven’t mentioned it up until this point (mostly because I wanted to see how I liked it first), I’ve been using a standing desk at work for the past 4 or 5 weeks.

Why make the switch to a standing desk? I’ve written several times in the past about my history of back pain. Since losing 90+ pounds last year, I haven’t had any “major issues” per se with my back, but I’ve still experienced lingering back pain from time to time. And more recently, “from time to time” was becoming more and more often. I work 4 10’s at my job as a software developer, so basically I sit in front of a computer for 10 hours a day. Over the past few months, I began noticing that many evenings after work, my back would be sore and achy. But on the weekends when I didn’t spend all day sitting in front of the computer, my back felt fine. Coincidence? I think not.

More recently, I had been reading quite a bit about the benefits of using a standing desk (and the many health pitfalls of sitting all day). I decided I wanted to give it a try, but I wasn’t sure how I would like standing all day. I know there’s all kind of fancy solutions out there like adjustable height desks, so that you can alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day. Before I committed to anything like that, I just wanted to get a taste of what standing all day at work would be like. So I grabbed a couple of empty cardboard boxes to put my keyboard and mouse on, and put my monitors up on the shelf in my cube. Voila, my do-it-yourself standing desk:

I decided to start my standing desk experiment on a Friday, as I thought that standing all day may end up doing a number on my legs and feet. That way, my introduction would only be for one day, then I’d have the weekend to recover if need be. While standing all day certainly has its’ share of hardships (my feet did get pretty sore, especially the first week or so), overall I really like it. My back hasn’t been hurting after work the way it used to, and overall I just feel more energized at work. As much as I would try to keep reminding myself to sit nicely and keep a good posture, over the course of 10 hours it was almost inevitable that I’d start slouching from time to time. Standing, I have almost no choice but to keep good posture all day.

About 3 weeks into my experiment, I was getting ready to leave on a 2 week vacation. Up until this point, I hadn’t specifically said anything to anyone at work about my new desk arrangment. A few people had walked by and commented or asked me questions about it, but I don’t really work near the “main drag” of the office, so not many people just happen to wander past my cube. The day before I left on vacation, the office admin comes by my cube and starts asking me all sorts of questions about my current setup and about ordering me an adjustable desk. The whole thing makes me feel kind of awkward, because I don’t want to be “that” person, who demands all kinds of special accommodations. So I kind of downplay it, telling her that I’m still just trying things out to see how I like it and to see if my back feels any better.

We left it at that, and I went on my 2 week vacation, only to come back to this:

Turns out she went ahead and ordered me the fancy adjustable standing desk anyway 🙂 I will admit, it definitely is nice! Though I’ll also admit that in the 2 weeks that I’ve been back, I’ve never adjusted it to sit down once. I’ve learned that I actually like standing all day, and once I got past the first week or so, my feet handle it just fine. Though I guess it is nice to have that option, that I don’t have to sit down all day.

Besides simply not sitting, there are other benefits of standing all day at work. The constant shifting/balancing act is a nice leg workout! You can also burn up to an extra 50 calories per hour by standing instead of sitting – that’s 500 calories per day for my 10 hour shifts!

And look, I’m not the only crazy person standing all day at work – here’s some links to others who are doing the same thing, as well as a few links with more info on why you too should think about moving to a standing desk at work!

Have you heard why I’m running the Marine Corps Marathon in October? I’m raising money for TAPS, a wonderful organization that provides support to the families of our fallen soldiers. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated already. If you can, please click here to make a donation to TAPS. No amount is too small, even a few bucks is a tremendous help and greatly appreciated.

Mayor’s Marathon Recap

by Brandon  
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Real quick, have you heard why I’m running the Marine Corps Marathon in October? I’m raising money for TAPS, a wonderful organization that provides support to the families of our fallen soldiers. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated already. If you can, please click here to make a donation to TAPS. No amount is too small, even a few bucks is a tremendous help and greatly appreciated.

This Saturday, I ran the Mayor’s Midnight Sun Marathon here in Anchorage. This was my 2nd full marathon, after running the Rock n’ Roll Las Vegas Marathon back in December. I finished that first marathon in 4:25:42, and in the back of my mind, I was really hoping to be able to go sub-4 this 2nd time around. But I knew that was going to be a bit of a long shot, between my ITBS issues earlier this year that put a bit of a crimp in my training, and the simple fact that this was a much hillier course than Vegas. At the end of the day, I finished in 4:16:51, a nearly 9 minute PR, which I was very happy with.

When I woke up the morning of the race, I knew it was going to be a good day to run a marathon. At just before 6am, the sun was already shining, and the sky was clear. And one of the upsides of living in Alaska is that we can have a beautiful sunny day like that, with the temperature never getting above 65. The race started in the parking lot of a local high school, but we almost immediately got funneled onto a bike path along the highway, which made running pretty cramped for the first few miles. But soon enough we transitioned onto a road, and we were able to spread out much more.

Around mile 7, we turned onto a gravel road that lasted for 6 or 7 miles. At first this was a nice change of pace, but there were some areas that had some pretty large rocks that were actually starting to hurt my feet a bit. I saw a girl in front of me wearing Vibrams, which I imagine must have been pretty rough through this section. This was also the section where most of the hills of the course were. Next, we moved onto about 1 or 2 miles of single track trail, which was a really nice change of pace for my feet – I just wish this section had been longer! Around mile 14, I knew I was going to be reaching the point where a family friend was going to be out cheering. I had asked her ahead of time to bring me a banana, because I know from my long training runs how much better I do with some real food in my stomach, instead of all gels and Shot Bloks. When I reached her, I stopped for a quick minute, gave a sweaty hug, posed for a photo, and took off again with banana in hand.

Once we left the single-track trail, pretty much the rest of the course was on paved trails through Anchorage. My family came out to cheer me on around mile 19 (and then quickly jumped in the car to head over to the finish). At my first marathon in Vegas, these last miles were very mentally tough on me. Partly because it was near the end of the race and I was tired, but also because that part of the course in Vegas was pretty boring, winding through industrial areas off the strip. At this race, however, these last miles were on beautiful wooded trails through Anchorage. And they’re trails that I’m very familiar with, that I’ve run on many many times before, so I had a very good idea of exactly how much farther I had to go. Yes, physically I was pretty tired at this point, but mentally, this felt much easier than my first marathon.

Even though my legs were feeling pretty heavy at this point, the last few miles clicked by fairly quickly. Around mile 22  I saw a guy sitting on the side of the trail with several medics giving him oxygen. Hopefully he was alright. Then, around mile 25, came the part of the course I was “looking forward to” all day long: the really big hill right before the end. I knew it was coming, so it was no big surprise, but that certainly didn’t make it any easier. There was one last aid station right at the bottom of the hill, and as soon as I came around the corner, I could see literally everyone walking up the hill. The first section of the hill was quite steep, and being right at the end of the course like this, we were all pretty much spent. I saw one guy off to the side retching pretty loudly – he must have been the one guy who actually tried running up this last hill. Then, as the hill started to get less steep and even out a little better, I picked up the pace again to bring it in for the home stretch.

The race finished on the track of a different high school, and for a race with only about 1400 runners, there was a pretty good crowd of spectators at the end. I saw my family cheering and waving as I neared the finish line. I kicked it up a notch to bring it in strong, and smiled widely as I crossed the finished line, knowing that I was a marathoner…again.

The race medals we got I thought were very nice, or if nothing else, huge! The two-sided design was a nice touch, though I guess it doesn’t really leave any room for engraving if you’re into that sort of thing.

There was tons of great food at the finish line. They even had little kiddie pools setup for doing mini ice baths, and an area where they were giving free massages. Too bad I had to head out of there pretty quickly after finishing the race, because I had a cousin’s wedding to go to.

One last thing, I just want to give a big shout-out to the awesome race support along the course. The volunteers at the aid stations were great – most were also handing out orange slices and pretzels, instead of just the usual water and sports drink. A few had sprinklers set out, because at least by Alaska standards, it was a pretty hot day 🙂

This was a very enjoyable and memorable race for me, one that I’ll definitely be doing again next year.

Why I’m Running the Marine Corps Marathon

by Brandon  
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I’m excited to announce that on October 30th of this year, I’ll be running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington D.C.

But I’m not going to be just running this marathon. This time around, I have a much more important goal on my mind.

I’m going to be doing something that will be a first for me; I’m running this marathon to raise money for a charity that is very near and dear to my heart: TAPS (Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors).

TAPS’ mission, from their website:

TAPS provides ongoing emotional help, hope, and healing to all who are grieving the death of a loved one in military service to America, regardless of relationship to the deceased, geography, or circumstance of the death. TAPS meets its mission by providing peer-based support, crisis care, casualty casework assistance, and grief and trauma resources.

TAPS provides a wonderful service to the families of fallen soldiers. My wife has volunteered for them for a number of years, and first became involved with TAPS as a recipient of their services.

On the morning September 22, 1995, an AWACS took off from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, AK. Shortly after takeoff, they struck a flock of geese, and the plane went down. This is a similar incident to what happened with “Captain Sully” a few years ago, only they weren’t as lucky, and didn’t have the Hudson River to crashland into. All 24 service members aboard the plane were killed that morning, including my future father-in-law. My wife, the oldest of 3 kids, was 15 at the time. Her brother, the youngest, was only 6. It saddens me every time I think about the fact that I never got to meet him, and that my own kids will never know their grandfather.

So on October 30, I’ll be running in rememberance of not only my father-in-law, but of every service member who has been killed in defense of this country. Regardless of how you feel about the current administration, or about the various conflicts we’re currently involved in around the world, I think we can all agree that our soldiers are doing brave and honorable work. And when one of them makes the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of this country, their families deserve to be taken care of and helped through the grieving process.

Since 1994, TAPS has assisted over 30,000 surviving family members, casualty officers, and caregivers. I’m now asking you to please help me help TAPS by making a donation, so they can keep doing the great work that they do for the families of our fallen soldiers.

No amount is too small. From the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Click here to make a donation to TAPS.

Eagle River Challenge 10k Trail Race Recap (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Trail Running)

by Brandon  
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This past Saturday, I ran in my first trail race, a 10k named the Eagle River Challenge. Eagle River is actually the small town I grew up in, about 10 miles outside of Anchorage. Before the race even began, I knew it was going to be a good day when this was the scenery that greeted me at the start line:

Being my first trail race – and my first 10k – I really had no idea what to expect in terms of pace and overall time. Before the race began, the race director warned us that this was a fairly technical course, and that we shouldn’t be expecting any PR’s! As we got moving, I quickly learned that pacing on trails is completely different than pacing on the road. There were lots of ups and downs, where I followed the lead of others and walked some of the steeper sections of trail. Other sections were covered in roots and rocks, making it difficult to move very quickly. And it even got pretty muddy in a few places, which left me with wet feet and a decent blister on my right foot.

At the end of the day, I crossed the finish line in 1:09:30. But even more important than my time, was the freedom and joy I found running out on that trail. The feeling of running through the woods on barely-there trails was a feeling like I had never experienced running on roads, or even the paved trails in Anchorage.

Many times, I feel like I get tot focused on the mechanics of running. One foot in front of the other. How’s my breathing? Am I keeping a fast enough pace? How’s my heart rate? Running out on the trails, all of those thoughts just sort of melted away, and I just ran – and had the time of my life doing it. I definitely see a lot more trail running in my future. One of the upsides of living in Alaska, is that we have tons of trails, they can just be a little harder to get to than just heading down the street or to one of the paved trails around Anchorage. But I learned this weekend, that the extra bit of effort is totally worth it.

When I started telling people that I had signed up for my first trail race, many of them said something along the lines of “be careful, trail running can be addictive!” And now I know exactly what they meant – I may have a hard time going back to road running 🙂