All posts by TREX

I picked up a Scosche 24 HR band back in May and for the most part it’s been okay.   There are some runs where the readings are questionable (pretty sure I’ve never hit 208 BPM in my life and that it would kill me to do so now) and some runs where there was a lot of drop outs, especially if my watch and my scosche were on opposite arms, and a few runs where it just shut off in the middle of a run.

Hmm you know it sounds like maybe it’s just barely been ‘okay’.

In the last 3 weeks I’ve gotten significantly shorter battery life than it was giving me prior.  And I’ve been very careful after the first unexpected ‘no charge’ incident on my 5th run after a full charge to keep an eye on it and make sure I’m not leaving it on.

Today things took a turn for the worse though.  While out on a run I was getting a high reading on my watch.  My Scosche was on the outside of my forearm so I pulled the strap to spin it where I could see if it had turned off and “Pop” it flew off my arm.

I picked it up and saw it was missing a watch pin (the spring loaded pin that the bands hook on).  Well crap.  I finish the run and come home and the spare pins I have from my Fenix watches are about half a MM too long to fit.  So I google “Scosche 24 pin failure” to find out what the size is, thinking I’d just pick one up and replace it, and I start seeing post after post on Amazon from other people saying they’d lost a pin and theirs was because the case had cracked as well.

Sure enough I put mine under a strong light and one of the pin mounts is cracked.  Well double crap.

This particular area doesn’t seem all that well designed to me.  The screws that hold the top and bottom case parts together are in such a position it forms a natural weak point due to lack of material in this area.  And although I’m not a destruction testing scientist, nor do I play one on T.V., the material for the lower half of the case has that shiny ‘snap like a twig’ plastic look to it.

Maybe it’s a QC issue, bad choice in materials for the case or just bad design but whatever the case it’s unusable at this time.   I might be able to design and 3D print some kind of cage to put the unit in and that will attach to the 24 band or possible one of the old version’s velcro bands.   But that’s not going to be an option for 99.999% of their customer base.

I’ve dropped them an email explaining the situation, hopefully there will be a happier outcome but at this time I’m not sure I can recommend the Scosche 24.   There’s no android app to check firmware, I’m getting random shutdowns, battery life seems to have broken after 3 months and now I find you apparently have to really baby the case putting it on and off or you’ll crack it.

I’m hoping these things get fixed as I really, really, like the Scosche, it’s far more comfortable to me than a chest belt, the readings are almost, for me, as good as a chest monitor and in general it’s a good piece of kit, when it works and doesn’t break.

This is the end of Week 3 of our Run Salty 50 Plan.   Our runs this week were

• Monday – Core/Rest
• Tuesday – 2K Double which is a 2K warm up, 2K sprint, 1K recover, 2K sprint, 1K recover, 2K cooldown (10K total)
• Wednesday – 6K Slow
• Thursday – 10K Hill Repeats (we did repeats for 70 minutes and then had to bail due to commitments) on Lipbuster at Turkey Mountain
• Friday – Core/Rest
• Saturday – 15K Easy
• Sunday – 25K Easy
• Total 37 Miles, less than scheduled due to the Hill Repeats on Thursday getting cut short.

I was doing okay up until today, Sunday.   I’ve been trying to run continuously lately even though we race Run/Walk style in varying schedules.  Today for whatever reason was pretty brutal.  The first 15K went okayish but the last 10K and especially the last 5K everything fell apart.   Blame it on dieting while trying to train, removing all but a smidge of carbs from diet, the heat and the last 10K being in full sun, or something else but whatever the cause it was just bad for me out there.

So we ran 40K this weekend, just shy of a marathon.

On the way home, like usual, I stopped to pick up some iced tea for myself and my non-running wife and a doughnut for my kids, just something I do after a long Sunday run.   While waiting in line I was hit with a bad case of nausea and almost lost the contents of my stomach, not that there was anything in it but water and possibly whatever remained of the 2 tablespoons of peanut butter I had around mile 7.   But a few deep breaths and frankly iron clad willpower to not throw up inside a store I escaped without making an ass of myself and kept things tightly wrapped till the feeling passed.

I also made the mistake today of assuming things were going to go well and didn’t bring any cold frozen water and out of ALL the public water fountains on our entire ‘street running turf’ which is comprised of about 20 miles of Riverside Trail and Creek Turnpike Trail, there is a single water fountain that is remotely cool and we didn’t reach it today.  All the rest are low pressure, ambient air temperature at best.   I’ll try to make that mistake less often.

This coming up week 4 is is a light week and I’m considering dropping the 6K on Wednesday to add some more recovery time in there.   Every 4th week I scaled back the mileage to be in the low 20’s.   Each week the mileage goes up by roughly 7-10% other than off weeks.

Right now I couldn’t walk a 50K much less run/walk one.   My Paradigm 3.0’s are just about shot and I’m only ‘okay’ with the Paradigm 4.0’s I’ve got.   They’re nothing special or earthshaking in terms for me personally.  My Lone Peak 3.5’s are still doing okay for trail and I have a pair of Altra Olympus 4’s coming in size 13 to replace the size 14’s that were just too big.   Once again you just can’t tell what size Altra to get until you’ve put them on your feet.  Some I’m a 13, some I’m a 14.

I’m hoping training gets better as the heat goes down and we have some down time next week.  Assuming the heat goes down.

But to say I’m not at least a little concerned about DFL / DNF on our scheduled 50’s would be a lie.  50K in Nov, 50M in February, 50K in April and somewhere in there I’ve already entered a triple, back to back to back Halves race that I forgot about.  Early registration and the discounts can result in some schedule chaos.

Week 2 of our 50 plan has come and gone and we did our back to back long runs over the weekend.  One of the things I’ve put in our training schedule is one weekend a month we do both long runs on the same day, one in the morning, one around 9:00 p.m.

This weekend we did the night run on the Snake trail at Turkey.  There’s a reason it’s called the Snake trail.  We had to shoo off, go around or jump over about half a dozen copperhead snakes between 18″ to maybe 30″ long.   Copperheads are typically non-aggressive and rarely fatal although they can leave you with some pretty nasty tissue damage.

The snakes were somewhat easy to spot in advance, it was the giant spiders constantly spinning webs across the trail as we did the multiple out and backs that were really annoying.   Being the slowest #boatanchor member of the group running I ran in front mostly to set the pace and as a result I got to clear the path of all the spiders and webs as we ran.  Mostly by running through the webs.

On week 5(ish) of dropping carbs from the diet and I’m still feeling the hit to some degree.  My pace is off by a fair bit for one, heart rate still on the high side for any given pace and in general just don’t feel ‘fast’ not that I ever did but it’s worse. A factor in this is that I don’t really have a ‘low intensity’ speed so converting stored fats to fuels is slow for me.

One semi-interesting thing is that even though we’d already done one 9 mile run that morning the second 9 miles that evening didn’t feel much different than the first one.

On a more useful topic is lighting.  Running Wife #1 forgot her headlamp and I didn’t have the spare I normally carry with me so I loaned her my headlamp and used the backup backup light I carry in my bag.  It’s one of many flashlights I’ve carried for a few years now, a Quark / 4 Sevens light, I’d give the model but you can’t get them anymore.   On medium which I used it puts out about 160 lumens OTF which I found very usable.  Not great at that setting for spotlighting far up the trail but I didn’t need to see that far out.

The biggest take away is that a light that’s not in line with your face is far more useful in terms of spotting hazards that might trip you up due to the sole fact that it casts shadows you can see unlike a light 1″ above your eyes.

As a result I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on lights, specifically L shaped lights I can use to attach to a belt or vest or carry easily and more naturally in my hand as I run.

I have some very specific needs though which makes it tough (impossible) to get a perfect light.

I’m currently looking at the following (no direct links as they are likely to go dead over time)

WowTec A2S ($30 on Amazon at the time of this post)

Skilhunt H03 ($30 to $45 depending on where you get it)

Skilhunt H03 RC ($55 various places)

Zebralight 600 Mark IV ($85 from vendor)

Armytek Wizard ($65 from vendor)

Armytek Wizard Pro ($80 from vendor)

I’ve ordered the WowTec A2S, got it today actually and a Zebra to test out.  Will likely pick up a Skilhunt as well.

Here’s the bigger problems I have – None of these lights are programmable so you have to use the settings they come with.

None of them have the perfect light levels for me.  I’d like a medium or high around 250-300 lumens to get the best efficiency at that level for me.   I’d like another setting in the 150-190 lumens range.   One that’s around 20-30 lumens and a ‘moonlight or firefly’ mode.

I need them to have a decent spill as well as okay spot but without a hot spot and I need it in a warm color range to make it easier to spot things like snakes that are almost the same color as the dirt I’m running on.  Warmer lights to me make it a fair bit easier to distinguish smaller color changes in greens and browns.

The TURBO!!!! modes I have no use for personally.   I just don’t see a point in having a light that in theory can throw 1100 to 2500 lumens for all of 30 seconds before the temp controls cycle it down significantly nor having a light that on the highest sustained power that doesn’t burn it up lasts an hour.

“Why don’t you get a dedicated trail running light?”

Good question, best answer I have is that Trail running specific vendors are lagging behind lighting technology and in general aren’t cutting edge in technology.   Not that bleeding edge is necessary or even a great thing but when it comes to a light the fewer batteries you have to potentially carry, the tougher the thing is, the more light it throws per watt, these are all good things.  And frankly most of them are pretty expensive for what you’re getting compared to the rest of the lighting world.

As I test these various lights specifically as options for trail running at night I’ll post my thoughts of each one, stay tuned.

A couple of the local TATUR group took Bunny on a elevation route and we ran it last Sunday.  Run being an exaggeration as it’s not runnable by old dinosaurs such as myself.  Too much vertical in too short a space.

The ‘general’ loop we have is roughly 1 mile and stops at the parking lot so you can get by with carrying nothing which is nice.  I use the term general because we rarely come back down the same way so far.

You can watch a short little video of the route up here.  As you can see we hold true to the RunSalty Prime Directive “If it’s a run day, you run.”
(Unless you have existing injuries that running will make worse in which case use your judgement)

This is the first week of our 50 training plan.   50K, 50M, take your pick.   We’ll be possibly over training for a 50k and honestly possibly under training for a 50M.   But at the end of this particular road is just a 50K on November 18th so I’d rather be extra ready for it than not ready enough.

Our first long run tomorrow I’ll be doing solo because Bunny will elsewhere #sadface and Eric who has decided to run with us will be also elsewhere #sadface.

On this training plan which is of my own personal devising the first long run is a 20K with a 10k the day before. I ran the 10K this morning on trails and thanks to it being 30 degrees cooler this morning than it was on Thursday afternoon I didn’t end it feeling like I was dying.

The RunSalty 50 Plan is based on other published plans I’ve seen and books I’ve read but set up to fit my schedule of STWTS with MF rest/core/cross train days.    W is almost always a 6K, just a shake out run plus some core/cross training work.   Tu is usually something complicated like a pyramid or threshholds or intervals.  Th tends to have longer slower runs with hills and the like.

One weekend a month our Su long run starts at midnight.

One weekday a month we have a morning and evening run, usually for a total of 10k-15k between the two.

One week a month is a recovery week with mileage of around 25-27 miles max.

Mileage is set to increase 8-10% a week over the 4.5 month plan with the last .5 (two weeks) being a taper and the last long run being a marathon.   The longest run happens a week or two prior to that.

All runs are mileage based and heart rate zone targeted with most runs falling on HR Zone 2.

Total mileage over the 14 weeks including the 50K race is right at 800 miles.

I don’t believe there’s anything basically egregious about it even though I don’t even play a coach or trainer on T.V.   I’ve poured over lots of training plans for marathons, 50K’s, 50M’s, 100K’s and 100M’s and other than making things fit our needs (4 month training with 2 week taper after).

One of the bad things about Garmin is there is no way to share, download, copy or otherwise make sure multiple runners have the same schedule.  At least out of the box but Eric found a java based tool that can take a CSV file saved out of Excel and create both the runs and schedule them.  By piping the output into all of our Garmin Connect accounts I was able to somewhat easily create the same schedule for all of us with the same workouts.   And far faster and less prone to human error than trying to manually create the plans on all of our schedules.

Here’s a Google Sheets copy of the export file that should make it semi easy to figure out what each work out is.

Here’s an example of the first 3 weeks in Garmin.  I gave all the workouts a 50P prefix to their names so I know what they are and to avoid potentially stomping on any existing workouts.

I installed a SSL cert on the site to make sure that browsers, particularly Chrome, will behave when visiting.  Without HTTPS support which the certificate provides browsers will start whining about it and quite possibly eventually stop displaying them without a user clicking “yes it’s okay to go there” in some kind of pop up.

Do I think SSL has its place?  Of course.  Is it necessary on a site such as this one that displays static information to visitors and doesn’t process any kind of interactions and allows for the transfer of no personal or to be honest data of any kind?  Eh, maybe not so much.

But there you go, all socket layers are secure.

I used my Garmin Course function for the first time this last weekend.  This was on a Fenix 5X but it’s available on a lot of the running models.

It worked very well with a couple of caveats.  To use the Course and a Training workout at the same time you have to start a Run, hold the menu (middle left on a Fenix) scroll down to Navigation, Course, select your Course, Do Course which will take you back to the Run main screen.  Then do the same thing and select Training, My Workouts or Training Calendar (whichever) and then select your workout or day then Do Workout which takes you back to the main Run menu then select Start (upper right).

That’s caveat one.   The other one is that you have to have Course and Map data screens installed on your activity.  What I found was since the course was 1 lap and we were doing 3 laps after the first lap the Course screen was blank, just black.   But I could use the Map datascreen to show the path that we’d just run and voila we could repeat it as often as we wanted.

It helped because for the first time outside a marked/laid out race course this was the first time we’ve ever run the route that we intended to run at Turkey mountain other than the Powerline out and back.   On the return loop of the first lap I went left instead of right at a Y and it was obvious within 30 feet we were off course.

I’m not sure when I might want to use it again but it’s nice to know it’s there.

I had a 5K on July 4th.  Coming into this 5K with Keto and a 20 mile run 3 days prior had me feeling pretty… less than speedy.   I can certainly relate to the ‘carbs are HIIT, fat is for endurance’ now.  I had no energy during this 5K and it was 4 minutes off my PR, which is pretty bad on a 5K. My legs were like lead.

All in all I wasn’t happy with the run, I ended up feeling like it was a non-event.  If I’d of broken 30 I’d of been okay with it I’m pretty sure but not breaking 30 even if by only a minute over and it felt like a yucky run.

Later that day I went out and ran another 5K as penance, and because I was bored, and to burn off some calories.   That 5K was at a 90 second slower pace.

All in all I think I’m going to add some 400’s or 800’s to our 50 training plan just to get some speed in there. There will be a few shorter races between now and then and I’d like to see if I can get a new 5K PR.

This weekend we’re going to do some trail running, 11-12 miles worth, doing the Snake Run course at Turkey Mountain 3 times and maybe some Lipbuster hills in there afterwards when we’re getting to that point of tiredness that you really don’t want to have to go up a 45 degree grade.

We did the Midnight Madness by TATUR.  The race started at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday and ran into Sunday which happens to be my birthday.

We ‘just’ did the 20 mile as the 50 is still way out of my league.  Even the 20 was ridiculously hard for me.  Blame it on the heat, the OMGodly humidity, that we ran a marathon 2 weeks prior or that we had ‘gone keto’ 10 days prior to the race, whatever the reasons it was hard.

So hard that we finished a bit over an hour longer than our last 20 mile run time.

At mile 6, 10 and 14 I had to refill my bladder with ice and a little water and drank the water as the ice melted until the next stop.  So about 4.5 liters of water just from my bladders.   Add in one half liter soft bottle I started with and another half liter water bottle I picked up at mile 10 at the start/finish aid station and almost 6 liters of water was consumed during this run.

I put out a lot of heat, a bladder full of ice melts under these conditions in about 2 to 3 miles tops at which point it’s just cold water.  Another mile and what’s left is just cool water.

The first 10 went okay under the circumstances.  The next 5 was harder.  Note that there was an option to drop from the 20 to the 10 after the first lap but… not an option for us cause ‘we don’t go back’.

The last 5 was harder still.  by mile 18 from the neck down was painful, from the hips down was a virtual horror show.  Glutes, calves, quads, feet, you name it, it was being a whiny little bitch.

Even Bunny was hurting at this point, I could tell by her stride and form, I’ve seen her run well over a 1000 miles and 18 months with me so I have a fair idea of what’s normal and what’s not with her.

As a ‘keto runner’, all in the name of losing weight mind you, I didn’t fuel much at all on this run.  A few mixed nuts, a small piece of keto pound cake over the course of the run although at mile 16 I did have a couple of small cubes of watermelon because watermelon is delicious.

I also did not carb load obviously for the run.  Prior to the run I’d lost about 10 lbs in the 10 days prior.   A fair amount of that, probably 3 to 4 lbs was cherry pick weight, just the water weight you drop by dropping your glycogen stores.  It’s a freebie almost.   The rest is a combination of fat and water weight loss.

I could certainly feel a distinct energy lack over the course of the run.  Again could be the training schedule, the heat and humidity, the keto, your guess is as good as mine as to what was the most significant contributor to the run or lack of running.

But in the end we finished it and with only a couple of exceptions that’s always been my primary goal for a race.   We landed about mid pack in terms of finish times so better than I expected to be honest.  It also gives you some idea of how the race was for other people.

One of our co-workers did the 50, finishing in a little over 13 hours.  She somewhat recently did a 100 mile run and was running with a slower runner or she’d of come in sooner.

Under these conditions a 50K, 100K, 50M, 100M seem all the more daunting.

But we do have on our schedule our 50K in November with last long run of the Bass Pro marathon and we have a 50M planned for February.

Not sure how I’m going to do with those but even if I finish DFL I’ll still do what I can to make sure I finish.  A DNF won’t shatter my ego or kill my pysche but it’s certainly not something I want to do unless there is injury or conditions such that it becomes long term impacting or deadly.

Bunny and I, mostly me because she can’t afford to lose much, are going ‘keto’.   I’ve done this before back when it was called Atkin’s Diet.   I had good success with weight loss during the 10-11 months I did it, then my twins were born, I started having a heart arrhythmia and it fell by the wayside.   Plus, no offense or fault for all the restrictive diet folks but cutting out a significant sized source of calories isn’t enjoyable to me.   I like all foods, I like bread, cake, veggies, fruits, meat of every source that runs on legs (no seafood) and trying to come up with half assed “almost as good as” substitutes sucks for me.  Life’s too short to try to pretend that cauliflower makes a great substitute for mashed potatoes or pizza crust or that jack fruit makes for great pulled pork sandwiches.  That’s not to denigrate anyone’s choices, I’ll support your choices to the bitter end, just that those choices aren’t permanently for me.

We’ll be trying for the TKD or Traditional Keto Diet of shooting for 80% calories from Fats, 15% from proteins and 5% from carbs while keeping total carbs below 50g.

80% calories from fats is tough if you actually like food.  I don’t know about you but I don’t eat a stick of butter or a box of cream cheese as a normal diet, nor do I sip heavy cream blended with coconut oil as a beverage.  So it’s tough if you actually enjoy all kinds of foods like myself.

With our first 50K, Dead Horse Ultra, looming ever closer, okay it’s roughly 5 months out at this point, I’ve decided, not so much that I want to ‘run keto’ but I do want to drop a fair percentage of my body fat to make that run more enjoyable.

It’s a race that I want to have the mental and physical energy to enjoy the route, the people, the desert, the views, everything involved with it as I won’t have too many of these fairly pricey ‘destination races’ in what’s left of my lifespan.

It’s not so I can burn out a awesome PR because at the end of the day I just want to finish the race and a) not be DFL and b) not be DNF.   I shoot on the low side of goals in running.  🙂

Keto has it’s downsides other than food options of course for ultra running.   Increased oxygen demands in an already potentially oxygen deficit function impacts ability.   Very little in the way to look forward to at an aid station, no chips, gels, pizza, pbj sandwiches, drink mixes, pretzels, etc and so on.  Just give me more water, let me take this yummy salt tablet and head back out.

I’ve read up enough on it that to me the biggest performance boost is from weight loss for a Keto runner.   Other than that running efficiency seems to go down on Keto at least for middle and back of hte packers like myself.  It really can’t not if nothing else from the oxygen costs to turn fat into fuel but additionally the energy increase to do the conversion compared to burning carbs, these increase work loads on the body without any performance boosting benefits.

So long story short, we’re going LCHF solely for weight loss benefits.  If I can replicate the success I had 15 years ago when I did it the first time then I’ll be in much better shape to handle our first 50K.

Today was my first longer run after reducing carbs to under 50g a day; it was roughly 10 miles and I was out of energy hard around mile 6 and have been feeling wiped all day afterwards.   My average pace ended up close to 2 minutes slower than normal.

We were going to hold off a bit for personal reasons on starting our Keto roadmap but we’re doing a 20 Mile Midnight Madness run in 2 weeks and I thought that would make a great test case.   It takes, let’s make up a generic time frame, 2 weeks to start getting fat adapted and, another generic time frame, 4 weeks to get fully comfortable.   That’s a snide comment on how time units are always so nice and neat when they apply to the ‘average’ person.   Why 2 weeks?  Why isn’t it 13 days?  Or 16 days?   2 weeks is just too neat and tidy of a time unit which makes me question is there any science behind it or it did folks just round it to a basic unit that everyone will be comfortable with.

I digress, but I do that.

So last weekend we ran our second marathon, in 90 degree heat no less, on trails.   Saturday I tested my legs with a 3 mile ‘normal’ pace for me and it wasn’t too bad, I hit my usual casual run pace of 10’s without feeling too bad.  But I still had stored carbs for fuel.    Today I decided to stretch it out a bit to see how much damage I was looking at and muscle/tendon wise I wasn’t bad.  Quads were slightly ‘bouncy’ when I was walking but nothing serious.   But oh my goodness, energy levels dropped like a stone during the run.

But it’s only been two days of no carbs and based on my basil metabolism and my exertion levels and just how many calories it costs me to move my not insignificant mass forward, I would have been running out of glucogen about half way through the 10 mile run and that’s about where it went sideways on me.

This week we’ll take it easier with some Z2 5K’s and next Sunday we’ll try another 10 mile run and see where we are.   Because we have a 20 mile run a week after that and I don’t want to be a back of the packer because the race director deliberately oversold the race so there’s a lack of medals for every finisher I’m not going to try to burn things out and see where we are.

Anyway that’s our going Keto story.   We’ll post updates if there’s anything of interest that pops up.