So now we're in 2011.  One great thing about regular exercise is that it increases your overall energy, helps you to sleep better, feel better, and makes it a lot easier to, well, exercise regularly.

Conversely, not exercising somewhere between "not much" and "not at all" for a couple years makes it nearly impossible to find the wherewithal to get up and run.  Too tired, too hot at work, no trails, don't want to run at night in San Francisco... whatever it was, it just got easier over time to find an excuse to not exercise.

Then, in the spring a coworker started rounding up a group of people to participate in the Tough Mudder race up at Squaw Valley in September.  I started running again.  Not jogging, but running.  Strides, tempo runs, etc.  Not exactly the right way to climb out of two years of not running.  It seemed to go well, up until it didn't, when I got sidelined by injury.  It was either a bad case of shin splints, or actual stress fractures.  I never bothered to go check it out with a doctor, because I knew the course of treatment would be the same for either one: rest, back off, stop running.

The problem was that I had an athletic mindset, but not an athletic body.  I was willing to put myself through some momentary discomfort in order to train hard, but was not thinking about the longer-term effects this approach was going to have.  So, humbled by the injuries and finally willing to adopt a more sensible strategy, I took a couple months off, vowing to go out slow and not worry at all about speed.  I started running again in August, and while I would often feel hints of the old shin pain, I could feel myself slowly getting stronger (as opposed to slowly getting hurt).

Flash forward five months, to my first ultra in 5 years, the Rodeo Beach 50k (the RD's report and some photos).  Not an awesome time as 50k's go (about 6:30), going from couch to 50k in that timespan, on an average of about 20 to 25 miles per week, I can't complain.  The race went exactly as I'd predicted, insofar as I knew what would happen the first 20 miles and after that all bets were off.  I slowed down a lot on those last ten, and in hindsight saw that in addition to the minor dehydration and cramping I experienced, I was also underfueled.  Still, I finished and had a great time in the process, which was the goal I'd set out with.

(By the way, Inside Trail does a great job with their events -- check 'em out!)

Dick Collins Firetrails 50, Part 1

I've wanted to do this race for years.

When Firetrails 50 first came onto my radar around 2007, I knew all of nothing about ultramarathons, but I definitely knew about the trails in the east bay hills, and I was no stranger to covering long, long distances.  Five years earlier, I had spent four months walking from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail, a hike that made such a profound impression on me that scarcely a day went by that I did not think of the trail.  Sometimes the thoughts were fleeting impressions.  Other times they were the product of full-blown nostalgia for the ground I walked and people I'd met along the way.

In college I would occasionally hike, bike, or even run the trails in Tilden Park in Berkeley, but the PCT experience made me look at those smae trails differently.  Now, the prospect of just taking the trails for as long as my body would carry me seemed not only possible, but very, very compelling.

While training for a half-ironman triathlon, I ran across the website for the race, and something about it called to me.  The simplicity, the welcoming tone of the info about the race, the beautiful photos of trails I had not visited in years... and the prospect of going 50 miles.  More importantly, there was something missing from the description of the event.  There was no mention about this being tough, or that its participants were anything other than normal people.  No macho poses, no "m-dot" tattoos (more on that topic later -- nothing substantive, just opinionated ranting).

You don't see many of these at an ultra!

Short story, I trained for the tri, did it, then did the Death Ride, and knew FT was not in the cards, so I signed up for the Skyline 50k.  I was hooked.  I had a great time, and I quickly gave up on training.  The experience of running trails along ridgelines and in redwood forests with wonderful people completely soured me on the notion of running alone, on concrete, at night in San Francisco.

Flash forward 4 years, now with two kids, and a commute to a new job in the south bay, increasingly out of shape, stuck in that loop of knowing that regular exercise would give me more energy, but lacking the energy to regularly exercise.

"Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger." -- Captain Willard, Apocalypse Now

Next: A (brief) return to running.

First!

Before anything else, I should probably at least explain the origin of the blog's name.  Turns out when trying to come up with a name that's broad enough that it would cover anything I might write about, that sounds like I put at least five seconds of thought into it, and that was not already taken, it's not all that easy.

So, that brings us to "relentlessly forward."  As in "Relentless Forward Progress," a common ultramarathon mantra, and the title of Bryon Powell's book on ultrarunning.  It basically means that whether you're running or walking, feeling great or hurting, just hold one thing in mind and you'll be ok.

Keep...

...moving...

...forward.

One foot in front of the other.  Repeat as necessary.