A week from today I’ll finally be on the Mt. Whitney trail, heading up to 14,500ft, and most probably in a great deal of pain. My run up Mt. Baldy last week provided some insight as to what to expect, and that expectation is cramps, fatigue, and a slight case of altitude sickness. Can’t wait!
Being a runner for most of my life, and a hard core trail runner for the past fifteen years, I’m confident that I’ll come close to my 8 hour target for the entire 22 miles, but man, I still find myself nervous just thinking about Mt. Whitney. My stomach is doing flip-flops, and my mind races with doubts and uncertainties.
Taking a look for the 100th time at my various Mt. Whitney books, I saw something today that I never really noticed before:
Why are the mile markers in the shape of tombstones? That does not fill me with confidence
Ahhh….I’m just psyching myself out, I know it. It’ll be fine. Won’t it?
This past weekend I took a training run up Mt. Baldy’s (Mt. San Antonio) Baldy Bowl/Sierra Ski Hut trail. I was curious to see how my body was going to react to running at altitude. I was pleasantly surprised at how well I was able to perform at 10,000+ feet above sea level. I now have a greater understanding of how I should fuel up prior to my Mt. Whitney assault in September, and what food I need to consume during the run up.
I drank less water than I thought I would on this 11.2 mile run. Considering that I went from 5,000ft above sea level to just over 10,000ft in five miles, I wasn’t that thirsty. That means I need to force myself to drink more that I did. When I did finally make it back to the car and stopped running, my vision was a bit blurred (it like someone turned the Photoshop “brightness” up ten notches too high), which I attribute to a combination of lack of food and altitude. After downing a sandwich I began to feel human again.
My performance was hindered a bit by the wildfires in the Los Angeles area. The smell of smoke was thick, making for less than ideal conditions for a run up this grueling trail. Regardless, I finished the run / hike / run up and down in 3.5 hours. That puts me on target for an 8 hour round trip up Whitney, but I plan to slow the pace down a bit for Whitney. Whitney will be a bit more forgiving on the uphill side, but the length and higher altitude (22 miles @ 14.5K feet) deserves a bit more respect than Baldy.
The trail I took splits off to the left from the dirt road. Follow the road up to the Devil's Backbone. Follow the path to the left for the Ski Hut trail.
Hikers on the trail
Panorama shot, showing the smoke in the air. Click to embiggen...
Click to enlarge
I’m anxious to run this trail again, hopefully on a day with less smoke in the air. Everyone I met in the parking lot and on the trail was very friendly and easy to approach. If you think you might be lost, the hikers around you will gladly point you in the right direction.
Bring plenty of water and a Cliff Bar for the uphill journey. It’ll make your hike much more enjoyable!
Now, I’d like to say that I broke in in a desperate Muay Thai death match, in a bare hands wrestling match with the last panda on Earth, or while hiking barefoot across the vast exploding lava fields of Hawaii’s Big Island, but alas this was not the case. I broke it, pedestrianly enough, tripping over the tub while attempting to lower the window blinds.
My dead sexy, gorgeous foot...disfigured!
The pain isn’t relegated to my toe, but instead tends to occasionally travel halfway up my shin in threads of dull pain. My Mt. Whitney run is in less than a month, and now I get to finish my training runs with a busted toe. This should be interesting.
The more I watch this clip, the more I’m reminded of the movie District B13. Doing a quick IMDB search for Damien Walters, I’m surprised to discover that he hasn’t had the opportunity to display his skills on screen.
If you haven’t seen District B13, then you’re in for a treat. Although I think some of the stunts that Damien Walters demonstrates in his video steals some of D-B13′s thunder, it’s still well worth the rental price.
….and that’s it for me for the week. Woot! Happy Friday!
At this weekend’s Celebrity Championship tour, Michael Jordan was greeted with this unusual sighting at the 17th green:
Umm….wow. They certainly take their golf seriously up in Tahoe. I was watching this on television and wasn’t sure I saw what I thought I saw until I found it posted on youtube. I figured somebody must have posted it online, and I wasn’t disappointed when I went looking for it:
Thank God for the webbernets, preserving those important moments for all time…
