OK, all you 'ultra runners' out there, picture this hypothetical scenario. I'm kind of curious how this would make you feel: You're cruising along the mesa trail in Boulder on your easy recovery day. Your heart rate is very relaxed in the mid 130's, just trotting down a downhill section enjoying the mountain air, running through pine tree single track. Then you turn a corner and notice a runner on a switch back below you out of the corner of your eye, and you just keep cruising down. Then you do a double take since your brain has now processed the long hair, the beard, the smooth stride, and you realize you're catching up to Tony Krupicka...and yet you're barely breathing from lack of effort. What the?!? Then by the time you get down the switch back he's out of site like a deer that pranced off into the woods, and you're back to reality, realizing he must surely have just barely jumped on the trail in front of you and was then bounding off up the nearest mountain at some ludicrous speed. But your curiosity is still peaked, so you pick up the pace a little, and around the next bend, just behind NCAR by the mallory trail he's still just ahead of you, much closer now. Weird! So you catch up to him and then slow the pace down to run and chat for ten minutes or so as you cruise up the mesa trail past bear canyon and up the steeper Fern canyon trail for a little while. OK, so how does that make you feel/think? Alright, you may have guessed that there was a little too much detail there for me to be making that up by now, so I'll tell you what I felt...Heck Yeah!! I'm in awesome shape right now! I was hardly breathing and I was catching up to Tony on my easy day! Wahoooo! I'm going to win Western States this year! (OK, that very last line was fabricated just now, I didn't actually feel/think that at any point) Amazing what a little 'positive mental attitude' can cover up isn't it? And hey, maybe if you lie to yourself long enough eventually it may turn to the truth? The good news is, our subconscious mind can't seem to differentiate all the time. While in reality, my logical mind is well aware that I most likely just happened to hop on the mesa trail from the skunk canyon trail a couple hundred yards after Tony had just run by and we were most likely running a similar easy pace. Then once I saw him, I definitely picked up the pace a lot in order to catch up and run with him for a bit. Then I slowed back down to the pace I was at before so I could run and chat with him. But even though I know all that, my conscious knowledge of that still isn't taking away the really cool feeling that occured when I noticed myself catching up to Tony even though I was running really easy. That event told my sub-conscious in no uncertain terms that I must be in good shape, and that I can run with fast guys. And it embedded that in my belief set for now. And it increased my confidence to some degree, despite all the logical explanations my mind can come up with for why that may or may not be the case. Interesting stuff..... Thanks Tony...for going slow sometimes so I can feel fast! It was nice chatting with Tony for a while about his upcoming race at Rocky Raccoon and other stuff. Also, I appreciated him asking about my upcoming race and giving me some beta on the Moab Red Hot course. He took 2nd place there to Kyle Skaggs by only 1 second in 4:03:03 in 2008. For the morning: 7.55 Miles - 1:06:35 - 8:51avg - HR: 138avg - 1300' vertical - I am pleased that 5:30-6:00 pace is feeling like easy recovery pace coming down from the mesa trail and my HR is not getting even into the 140's for that section/pace
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