So Now What?

It's a confusing time for a lot of people when they reach the point in time that they've set for any specific goal. There's a huge buildup that culminates in some kind of event, and once the event passes there's a huge emotional and physical release. There can be elation from having crushed the goal, satisfaction from having achieved the goal, or dissapointment from having come up short. Regardless, you have come to a point where the question is there... Now what?

Doesn't matter what the goal was, this will always be the case. You could have set a goal to be able to do an unassisted pullup or lose 2 inches off your waist or be able to fit into that bathing suit that's been sitting in your drawer for 5 years and is sooo out of style by now :) Or it could be to climb your bike up Mt Washington in 1:10. The date that you set for yourself to achieve this goal will come and go and you will be faced with a "what's next" scenario.

I've set many goals for myself over the years. It's what keeps me focused. It drives me. It's a huge part of who I am. This last goal for me was a big one and I ended up coming up way short of where I had initially hoped. I'm OK with this for a number of reasons. First, I put everything I had into the race and could not have gotten a better time on that particular day under those particular conditions. Second, there were several positives to come out of the race. I achieved a top notch time and will start with the elite field next time I do the race, I ended up 16th out of 106 finishers in my field (there were many DNF's that day), I came in ahead of almost 20% of this year's elite field. These are all positives. There are also several negatives that I need to learn from. My training needs to be better. I need to be even more focused than I have been in the past. I need to get stronger both physically and mentally.

When I reach this point in time when I'm asking myself "what's next?" I already have a list of things I want to work towards. I don't rest. I don't take it easy for a while. Why should I? I've reached a certain point and it's time to work to get better. I will always be able to improve on something until the day I die. I raced my bike up Mt Washington on Saturday. At 10:00am on Saturday morning that race was in the past and it was time to look forward. Sunday I hiked up Mt Jefferson. Monday I rested because my body was beat to shit. Tuesday I was in the gym doing an intense bodyweight workout and on the bike doing sprints. Yesterday I was in the gym doing kettlebell work and on the bike doing threshold and high tempo work. My immediate goal is to have a good cyclocross season in the elite Masters field. "Good" can mean many things, one guage I have for "good" will be whether or not I can finish in the top half in points in the Verge New England Championship series. This is a lofty goal. But I'm going to work my ass off to do it. It's what I do. In the back of my mind is the Mt Washington race next August. I'll be back again and I'll be shooting for 1:10 again.

I guess my point is this... If you reach a goal that you've set it doesn't mean you've come to the end. It means you've reached a new beginning. If you've lost the two inches you wanted to lose it doesn't mean you can let up on the workouts and start eating ice cream every night. It means you have to up the ante and decide you're going to run a 5k... If you can finally do an unassisted pullup, it doesn't mean you can stop training. It means you have to shoot for 5. Maybe set a goal of being able to do a handstand.. Why not? Handstands are fun, they require great functional, full body strength, and a super strong core.. It's an awesome goal. You've been placing top 10 in your sprint triathlons. Time to go to the Olympic distance.. There's always another level to take it. That's what it's all about. Strive for excellence. Dedicate yourself to continued improvement in all aspects of your life.

My first cross race is Sept 19.. My first Verge series weekend is Sept 26-27. I am going to be as ready as I can possibly be. Oh yeah, and I'm going to have a ton of fun doing it :)

Best,
Kevin

Careful What You Wish For....

Leading up to the Mt Washington Hillclimb race you wish for perfect weather. Low winds, mild temperatures. Perfect weather for a bike ride. Earlier this week I looked at an extended forecast for Mt Washington and it looked about as perfect as you could possibly ask for. Clear skies, low winds, temps in the 50's. I started thinking about whether or not I could achieve my goal under these ideal conditions. The goal I set in January was to hit 1:10, but my training for the year wasn't consistent enough for that to be realistic today. Life and a new business kind of get in the way sometimes. But in the last month I made a huge push to get my fitness level better than it's ever been. My conclusion (and the expectations I set for myself), based on the training I've been doing and the numbers I was able to hit on Mt Ascutney and the practice ride up Mt Washington a month ago was that, realistically, I might be able to get to about 1:14 with an outside chance of 1:12. This would make me very happy all things considered.

I woke up this morning at 5:30. Actually, I woke up at 11pm, 11:40, 12:05, 12:20, 1:30, 2:15, 2:45... you get the picture.. By the time I actually crawled out of bed I had spent the better part of the night tossing around like a sock in the dryer agonizing about how badly I needed to be sleeping. Whatever, this is nothing new for me the night prior to a race. I woke up with nasty butterflies, did a joint mobility routine, choked down about 600 calories worth of fuel, 20oz of water and 12oz of coffee. I had two hours till showtime and I was feeling nervous but strong. It was about 52 degrees outside with a forecast of 87. "Ummm, I hope they're not talking about the mountain. That would really suck."

The organizers pushed the start of the race back an hour this year to allow people more time to chill out in the morning before having to get all the cars up the mountain. Seemed like a good idea at the time. We got to the mountain, I got my numbers and made sure my bike was in perfect working order. The atmosphere at the base of the mountain on race day is like a festival. In fact, there was one woman there who must have thought she was at Woodstock as she stripped down naked in the middle of the field to get into her bike kit. That was a new one. Pretty sure the 12 year old boy a couple cars over from her broke his fingers texting his buddies about the peep show he just got.

I started my warmup ride with a guy from Philly named Jay that I had never met before. He was on a gorgeous Italian bike, a Colnago. I looked at his gearing and was a little surprised at the fact that he appeared to be riding with regular road gearing. I said to him, "Never did this before, or are you just really pissed off at your knees?".. "What do you mean?", he asked. "What do you have for gears there?". "34-25", he said....I laughed... "What?", Jay laughed back. OK, so if Jay was a pro, that would work. You can tell a pro when you're riding next to one. Jay was not a pro. "This isn't the type of mountain you ride with the gearing you would use in a crit" I tried to explain. We had a good laugh about it and he told me about all the crap his buddies gave him back home when he started talking about gearing down for the race and how he decided to "man up" and just ride the 34-25. I saw Jay later after the race and all he had to say to me was that next time he didn't give a shit what his buddies said, he's gearing down for the race. Still, he had a big smile on his face and was really proud of his achievement of finishing the toughest hillclimb race in the world.

The race had about 680 registered with a Men's 40-44 field about 120-130 strong. It was a massive field full of some of the strongest climbers around. They come from all over for this one. Colorado, Canada, up and down the East Coast, other parts of the world. This is an international event full of people who are willing to put their bodies into unimaginable amounts of pain to achieve a goal of getting up one of the nastiest mountain roads in the world. I got to the staging area early and positioned

myself right at the front of the field so I wouldn't get caught up at the start. Not that it matters much since you hit the climb about 200 yards into the race, but it probably saved me about 10 seconds, and every second counts.

At the start of these races I'm so nervous that a calm actually comes over me. It's like my body is buzzing and my head is in a cloud. My heart rate just sitting there waiting was at 90bpm which is about 45 beats over my normal resting heart rate.. The ideal conditions that I had expected turned into 70+ degrees at the bottom and getting hotter by the minute. I was sweating just sitting there, thankful that I took a sodium tablet before leaving the motel. Heat was not going to be my friend today.

My group was the third wave, we started 10 minutes after the "Top Notch" group which was made up of all the racers who were either pros or had done the race before in under 1:20. A select group of the top climbers around, a group that I was determined to join... The cannon went off and we blasted out of the staging area. I led the pack into the climb and then settled into my power zone I needed to stay in for the next 70+ minutes. Riders started passing me, but not many, and not for long as most of them would blow up from going out too hard. I was trying hard not to go out too hard which is tough at the beginning when you're feeling really strong and people are passing you. I just kept telling myself you have a power number you need to stay at. Go too hard and your day is done early.

Damn was it hot. I was 1 mile into the race and I could feel the onset of dehydration and my heart rate had already climbed to 173 bpm. My max HR is 179 bpm (as I found out at the top of the mountain) so I was already above where I wanted to be. To maintain my threshold power I do best when I'm at about 168-169 bpm. But it was really hot and my body was working extra hard to try to cool itself down. I was sweating a lot, which was a good sign, since it proved I wasn't too dehydrated yet. 2 miles in and we hit the first extended section of about 18% grade. Crushing. I'm under 5mph and I'm passing people. My heart rate is 174 and I'm maintaining 270W output. But I'm thinking that there is no way I can sustain 174bpm the whole way and continue to push the pedals this hard. For the life of me, there is nothing I can do to bring my heart rate down. I'm 3 miles in and I'm hurting. The only way to bring the heart rate down would be to stop. There are no breaks on this climb, it is straight up for 7.6 miles at grades that they don't allow cars to pass on in the Winter. At 4 miles I stop sweating. This is bad. My power numbers are dropping. I'm barely half way there and I decide that this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. I'm on pace to hit a PR, but my heart rate is pegged at 174-175 and it won't drop. My power numbers? They'll continue to drop. Mile 5 I hit the gravel section. 15-18% for over a mile. This is absolutely devastating. I'm going 4.5 MPH. I'm still passing people though. Everybody is suffering in the heat. It's excruciating. At this point we're completely exposed, we have about 2.5 miles to go, and I'm in as much pain as I've ever been in on a bike. Every time I take a hand off the bars to grab my water bottle for a quick drink, my heart rate spikes to 176. I'm about 45 minutes in and I have absolutely no idea how I've been able to maintain this heart rate for this long. At this point I'm passing people who are walking. I don't walk. My brain pleads with me to walk. But I don't walk. If I'm off my bike at this point it's because I'm dead.. Think I'm kidding? I'm not..... 6 miles. Geographically, I know I'm almost there. 1.6 more miles feels like 160.. At this point every second feels like an hour. It absolutely sucks beyond belief. Heart rate: 175. Power: 220 at best. I'm fucked. My goal is out the window. I'm completely blown up. 1:14 goes by.. 1:15 goes by... 1:16. Power barely hitting 200W.. I have under 4 minutes to get to the top before I lose my chance at Top Notch. I come around a corner and hear the screaming from the crowd. I look up the road and see Sandy with Jake. She's screaming at me to dig deep, telling me I'm so close. There's about 1/4 mile to go and I absolutely turn myself inside out. There...is....no....fucking.....way....I'm .... not ......getting..... Top.......Notch!!!!

The top of the auto road is a joke. It's a wall. It's 22%. I've been climbing for 1:18

and I see the wall. There's a guy in front of me who just passed me about 1/10th of a mile back and I was kind of pissed about it. My race has come down to this. This one guy. He wasn't even in my group, he started 5 minutes ahead of me and I caught him just like the 100 or so other people who started in front of me that I caught. But this last one had to be beaten. I put everything into it. I was absolutely gasping. People were screaming like we were sprinting for the win. I dropped him and kept pushing as hard as I possibly could. I see the timer and it's ticking up 1:28:57... 1:28:58 (it's 10 minutes more than my time because my group started 10 minutes back)... I'm getting Top Notch!! I come across the line at 1:19:06. I'm starting to black out. I can't really see, everything just kind of goes white and spotty. Two officials hold my bike up as I fall off and out of the way. It takes a long time before I get up..

Typically, it takes me weeks before I decide to do the race again. It's so miserable, so unimaginably awful, so brutal in so many ways. There's no good reason to ever do it more than once. This time I decide to do it again before I even catch my breath. I'm dissapointed with my time. I have unfinished business. I'm going to finish it next year, re-focused and re-committed. I'll be starting with the pros in the top notch category..

For the day I ended up 16th out of a field of about 120-130.. I was 95th overall out of 530 finishers and probably another 100 that DNF'd. I was 10th out of all the racers in the state of NH. The top times for the day were all off by about 4 minutes. Hardly anybody had a good day, and on average, everybody I talked to was off from where they thought they would be, or where they had been in the past, by about 3 or 4 minutes. It was my 5th time up the mountain and it was more painful than any of the previous times. My average heart rate was over 97% for the last 70 minutes of the race. I looked at my heart rate data and at the top of the mountain my heart rate hit 100% max at 179bpm.. The sprint at the top was the most pain I've ever been in under any other set of circumstances in my life. Next year will be no different in that regard. What will be different is the time on the board. Next year I'm hitting 1:10.

Here's a video that Michele took at the top. This is me turned inside out (in case you were wondering what that might look like)

The Hay is in the Barn...

This is a saying that my buddy Bill's coach once used with him in the week leading up to the Mt Washington Autoroad Bicycle Hillclimb. The race known as "The World's Most Challenging Race" which, of course, they couldn't say if it wasn't true since that would be false marketing :) Bill is one of my best friends who initially inspired me to attempt to climb this beast of a mountain on my bike. One of the craziest things I've ever done was agree to it, but it was also one of the most rewarding experiences I've ever had.

The hay is in the barn.... What this means is that the training is over. There is no further possibility of getting stronger prior to the event. The reserves are full. It's time to sit back and take it easy. Get full recovery into the muscles while still giving them short efforts to remind them of what they need to do come race day. Today was one of the most beautiful days we've had this Summer. About 75 degrees with relatively low humidity. What an amazing day for a bike ride. I thought about this as I pedaled my bike on the rollers in the driveway watching a cyclist speed past the house. I was on the rollers because it's too hilly where I live and I can't go out for a ride and keep my power output low enough to where I need to for the type of ride I needed to do today which was a recovery effort. So I sat there turning the pedals at somewhere between 130-140 watts of power output (half what I need to generate up the mountain) sweating my ass off in the driveway for an hour. That's dedication and focus. Or so I tell myself to rationalize pedaling to nowhere in my driveway on a gorgeous Summer afternoon.

I'm 63.5 hours from heading up the mountain for the 5th time in my life. Each time up I've been a little faster than the time before. I'm stronger than I've ever been on the bike. In the past month I have made ridiculous gains in strength. I've been eating super clean. Tons of fruit and veggies, fish, chicken and eggs, nuts and seeds. Hardly any processed carbs or refined sugars. I just finished my recovery ride and ate a half canteloupe and 2 hard boiled eggs. (Random interjection: why do cage free organic eggs come in a tri-fold plastic container with non-water soluble CFO markings on the shells? Seems counter-intuitive to me).

I'm not as nervous as I thought I'd be. In fact, I am so looking forward to doing this on Saturday that it's surprising even me. Although I know when I'm in the staging area I'll practically be ready to puke with the butterflies. My goal that I set at the beginning of the year was 1:10. Very aggressive considering that, at the time, my best ever time was 1:20. 4 weeks ago I did it in 1:18 at the end of a hard training week, the day after a brutal race up Mt Ascutney, and into a 50 MPH headwind for good part of the last couple miles. I would have to have an absolutely incredible day under absolutely perfect conditions to hit 1:10 on Saturday. If I hit it I will be the happiest man on the planet. My secondary goal was to do better than 1:15. My level of happiness at the end of the race will be relative to how far in front of 1:15 I am as I cross the line. A time greater than 1:15 is not an option.

One thing is for certain, I am going to absolutely crush myself trying to achieve my goal and there will be no doubting whether or not I could have done better. I am going to leave everything on the mountain. I'm ready. The hay is in the barn.....

When I'm 100....

I'll get up in the morning do 10 Hindu pushups, 10 Hindu squats and a joint mobility routine to get loosened up for the day. Make a triple shot of espresso, maybe blog a little bit about how cool it is to be so old and still be in better shape than people a quarter my age. Figure out whether we're going to head out for a hike in the woods behind our log cabin in Vermont, Maine, or British Columbia (Michele and I are still trying to figure out which), get on the bikes for an easy trail ride or maybe go do a little canoeing. I'm going to be lean, I'm going to be fit, and I'm going to be sharp. I'm going to be "that guy" that local people talk about to their visiting friends and relatives when they say "Did you see that guy in front of that log cabin chopping wood? Guess how old he is?". Their friends will respond, "I don't know, in his 60's?". They'll be choking on their Angry Whopper when they hear the answer come back "100!".

I won't be on 12 different medications. I won't be assigned to the bed in room 1204. I won't be wearing diapers. I'll be eating organic. I'll be active. I'll be living. I'll be smiling.... A lot.

Last weekend we were at Acadia National Park for 5 days. Hiking, biking, swimming, walking around, playing, eating good food. One day we were at Echo Lake, swimming. An older woman came down to the lake that had an aura about her that really left an impression on me. She was in her bathing suit ready to go for a swim. Her body was tight with lean muscle. She had a huge beaming smile on her face. Not smiling at anybody in particular since she wasn't with anybody. She just walked through the crowd, head high, really happy to be there. The wrinkles on her face gave her age away to be well into her 70's, maybe 80's, possibly older, she seemed ageless. Regardless, she moved better than most people half her age. She went over to a rock, dove into the lake and started backstroking out into the middle, away from all the people closer to shore, the smile never left her face. It was inspirational.

This woman made a commitment much earlier in her life, 30, 40, 50 years ago, to be swimming at Echo Lake on this particular day last weekend. I will guarantee you that she didn't spend the last 40 years filling her body with refined sugars, processed carbs, and saturated fats, leading a sedentary lifestyle, hopping on a treadmill for 30 minutes every couple days for "exercise". A long time ago she made an investment in herself. She decided that she was going to take care of herself, eat right and stay active so that when she was 80 she was going to be enjoying her life to the fullest with a permanent smile on her face that would require plastic surgery to remove. She would hike up mountains on the weekends, ride her bike at lunchtime, go cross country skiing in the Winter. She didn't waste her time in 1974 lifting weights and walking on treadmills because she knew then, just like she knows now, that it wasn't going to help her enjoy the things in life she enjoys and it wasn't going to help her swim across Echo Lake when she's in her 80's. I can guarantee you she wasn't 60 years old at 45% bodyfat with a counter full of medications wishing she hadn't spent the last 25 years eating at Pizza Hut and Wendy's because she just didn't have the time or money to eat right and exercise.

Her investment paid off big time. She absolutely nailed it. I could feel the confidence and happiness as she walked by me. Contrast this to most people you see nowadays who are between the ages of 35 and 60, are seriously overweight and deconditioned. If I walked up to 10,000 of these deconditioned people and asked them "When you're retired, would you rather be living on medications, fighting off chronic diseases and feeling like shit for the better part of the rest of your life, or would you like to be lean, healthy, unmedicated and fit enough to be able to do anything you want?", I'm pretty sure I would get 10,000 responses affirming the latter. Yet, they do nothing about it. Why not? Why don't people make the investment in themselves to do it? There's lots of reasons, but I'm going to focus on two of them (maybe three, not really sure where i end up going with this yet...).

Reason #1: I'm not feeling that bad yet so why do anything about it?

It can always get worse, right? There's always somebody worse off than you to make you feel better about how badly you let yourself go. You weigh 350 lbs, but at least you don't weigh 450 like the guy in front of you who just super-sized his order of fries. And here you are ordering a diet coke with your Triple Decker Bacon Burger. Good man!

You have too much to drink 3 or 4 nights a week, but hey, look at that homeless guy passed out on the sidewalk. I'm not that bad.

You smoke a pack a day, but you cut back from two packs and you're now smoking wicked-ultra lights which are so light they're almost good for you (said it on the pack so it must be true), and at least you're not hooked up to an oxygen tank like that guy you saw at the oncologist's office last week.

So let me give you some advice, instead of trying to make yourself feel better by comparing yourself to people who are obviously worse off than you, why don't you start comparing yourself to people who are better off than you and make a goal to get there. Compare yourself to the woman I was talking about before. Compare yourself to the group of people you see riding their bikes on their Saturday morning group ride. Compare yourself to the people hiking up Mt Monadnock. Compare yourself to the people shopping at the local farm stand for organic fruits or vegetables. Yes, it can always be worse, and if you don't do something about it now I will guarantee you that it will be.

Reason #2: I can't afford it.

This is the investment part. People buy processed foods and low grade meats because it costs more to buy organic, nutritious foods. If you look at the implications of filling your body with non-nutritious crap, then you will find that it will cost you a lot more money down the road in doctor's visits, medications, hospitalizations, surgeries, and nursing homes, then you could possibly spend on eating healthy. Same goes for exercise. I've put together a lot of training programs for people that get them the best results they've ever seen and put them on the path to living a long healthy life. We're more into helping everybody commit to a healthy lifestyle than just giving a workout routine. We want to get your body working properly and pain-free with full range of motion, maximum mobility and functionality, great strength and endurance. We want to help you with your nutrition. We'll give you workouts to do while you're away on business travel or vacations. We've developed an atmosphere of like-minded, supportive individuals who all want to be spending the rest of their lives in the best shape possible. And yes, it costs more than going to the traditional gym, but there is no comparison in what you're getting. It costs more, because it takes a lot more time and effort to give you the experience that we give you. We care about you. If we don't see you for a while you're getting a phone call or an email. We're never going to be the type of gym with 3000 members, 80% of which stop going after a couple months, and the other 20% doing useless bodybuilding type exercises that do more damage to their bodies than if they did nothing at all.. Ever see a 70 year old who spent too many of his younger years bodybuilding? Not pretty. We're a gym who will have about 100 members who all know each other, support each other, work towards common goals, work their asses off to get in great shape, and commit to a healthy lifestyle. These are the people who are going to be beaming with confidence at 85 years old while they're out playing in the back yard with their great-grandkids. So if I told you that to feel that way when you're 85 would cost less than the 2 bottles of wine you buy every week, or about the same as a good dinner out and a movie every month, or a couple lunches out with colleagues every week, would you still say you can't afford it? Is it that you can't afford it, or that you won't afford it? And like I said before, it will cost you a whole hell of a lot less now than it will later if you let yourself go. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I could not put a price on how I feel now. Being healthy and fit is the single most important thing in my life because without it everything else goes to shit. With health and fitness comes happiness, solid relationships, confidence, the ability to cope with difficult situations.. The list is endless. Some may be able to put a price on that, I can't. Next time you're trying to decide on whether or not you can afford something that is an investment on your own personal well-being, you might want to ask yourself how can you afford not to...

Reason #3: It's too ________ (fill in the blank with your favorite excuse)

Some popular ones that I hear are, "It's too late", or "It's too hard"... It's never too late to start taking care of yourself. And just because you may have spent a lot of time abusing yourself, it doesn't mean the right thing to do is to continue. That would be stupid and is the most illogical excuse of all. Everybody has a starting point to work from. Doesn't matter where that starting point is, the important thing is that you start. One of my favorite quotes is from Lao Tzu, "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". Well, in the case of Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, it starts with the 63 steps to the 4th floor. But we will definitely take you on a journey that you will never regret :) For those who say it's too hard I will only say this, it's easy to be fat and out of shape, anybody can do that and you can see it everywhere, everyday. It's tough to stay in shape and make the right decisions about what to eat and how to take the best care of yourself. That's why it's so key to find something that you enjoy, keeps your mind from getting bored, and gets you awesome results. That's why what we're doing at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning works. The workouts are hard but fun, challenging and always different to keep the mind stimulated. They're short and intense and they get you in phenomenal shape.

We have a bunch of new exciting programs starting up in October, the Dynamic Performance program, the 90 Day Fitness Challenge, Combat Conditioning for combat athletes, and a program that Michele and I are very excited to be offering, "Boomers", that is targeted specifically at those 55 and older that are ready to commit to spending the rest of their lives in the best shape possible.

When I'm 100 I'm going to get up every morning and I'm going to be smiling. I'm going to make a decision every day about what I'm going to do with my time that day. I'm not going to have decisions made for me later in life because I made the wrong decisions earlier in my life...

All the best,

Kevin

A Sense of Achievement

Obtaining a sense of achievement keeps a person more driven towards a goal or committed to a plan (workout program or otherwise) than almost anything else. When you're involved in a workout program that allows you to meet your goals, then you get a sense of achievement that gives you self esteem and confidence and it makes you feel fantastic. When you're involved in a workout program in which you get a sense of achievement just from finishing the workout, that's even better. There are two types of gyms out there. The kind where the workouts give you a sense of achievement, like Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. And the other kind, like the shiniest of the chrome and fern palaces (I won't mention their name, but it starts with a "G" and it rhymes with "colds") that run promotions like Cankle Awareness Month in July and have everybody doing extra toe raises. I'm not kidding. They're just finishing up Cankle Awareness Month. Apparently, when your calf and ankle kind of blend together they call this a cankle and the khaki-clad cardboard cutouts at Gold's are telling their members that they can spot reduce fat calves with lots of toe raises. I've also been working on my cankles, but I prefer riding my bike, hiking, jumping rope, doing lots of closed chain exercises driving power through my feet into the floor (like anything we do with a kettlebell), and in general, just doing really active full body movements like 100% of the exercises you do at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning.. You'll notice from the picture below that there is a definite lack of cankles as a result of my functional conditioning workout regimen:

Back to the topic.... When you come to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning you get a sense of achievement. You leave feeling like you achieved something special and pushed yourself to a place that most people on the planet never push themselves to. The people that leave our gym tell all their friends and co-workers what they did. They facebook about it. They email stories. They tell people about the time they were doing stair sprints and burpees for 20 minutes, thought they would die, couldn't believe they completed it, hated me for making them do it, but then loved how it made them feel after because of the sense of achievement it gave them. They talk about the kettlebell omelettes where we keep the kettlebell moving for 30 minutes without putting it down. They talk about the prison workouts and how fast they were able to get through them. If you ever worked out at a traditional gym, how often have you ever went to work and told everybody about the toe raises you did that morning? Why not? First, because nobody gives a shit. Second, because it doesn't give you that sense of achievement. It's unimpressive. Anybody can work one muscle at a time in isolation and stay fat and out of shape. That's easy. It's hard work to come to my gym and work your whole body hard to achieve your goals. That's impressive! Those of you that are coming to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning are working harder than anybody else and you're getting better results than anybody else :)

I get a sense of achievement from my workouts all the time. Yesterday was no different. I've been training really hard this season for my Mt W goal, as you all know. This week was another tough training week. I did some tough interval sessions on the bike and I did a couple tough workouts in the gym. Yesterday I entered one of the hardest races in New England, The Tour of the Hilltowns. This is a 57 mile bike race, over 5000' of elevation gain and two major climbs. To put the climbs in perspective, one of them would be considered a Category 2 and the other a Category 3 in the Tour de France.. Tough climbs. I was in the Master's field again, a field which is ridiculously strong with guys who spent years racing in pro fields. These guys kick my ass every time I race with them, which is why I keep coming back. My goal is to become a strong Masters racer.

In the staging area, the race official was telling us about some of the things to watch out for on the race course, like the potholes and long craters on one of the fast descents that they didn't have time to deal with since they got 2 inches of rain in 30 minutes the night before. Everybody knows tough roads is part of racing and you really just hope you get lucky enough not to hit a hole because in a lot of cases, when you're in a pack, you can't really avoid them. The race starts and the guys immediately start putting in massive accelerations. I think there were a few guys that were trying to blow the field apart well before the first big descent just to spread things out a little bit. I was feeling really strong and staying right to the front of the group, which is an unusual place for me to be in the master's. I was matching every acceleration and staying within the first 10-15 riders in our field of about 60. The field stayed together into the first major descent at about 10 miles. And then the potholes started coming. We're doing about 40 MPH and you start hearing it... POP! Psssshhhh.. "F--K!"... POP! Psssshhhhh.. "F--K".. Three riders flatted in the group.. Every time you hear the POP!, you hope it's not you but you can't really tell for a few seconds until all the air runs out of the tire.. I had a decent line of sight through the riders ahead of me so I was able to avoid a lot of the holes, which was great because we were flying. But then my line of sight closed up for a split second, and I rode right over a pothole. At 40MPH there's really no way to avoid a hole that quickly.. POP! pssshhh.. in my head I'm saying "don't be me, don't be me, don't be me".. the "pssssshhhh" sound faded so I thought it was behind me and I was OK.. But then the "thump, thump, thump, thump..." came and I knew I was out.. Unlucky.. I made my way to the side of the road. Now, if you watch the Tour de France, when a guy punctures there is a team car there within two seconds, they do a NASCAR 5 second pit stop, and then a couple of the guy's teammates who stayed back pace him back up to the peloton. So I'm standing there on the side road waiting for my team car and looking for my teammates. Hmmm.. Could be a long wait. Supposedly there was a neutral support vehicle in each field that had extra wheels, but with three flats behind me, who knows how long it would take for them to get to me. Luckily I had a spare tube and CO cartridge with me so I start changing my tube. I'm almost done with my tube change and the wheel vehicle comes up and stops. "Hey, you need a wheel?" then he sees me changing the tube myself and he says, incredulously "You're changing it yourself???". I told him I didn't know how long he'd be, what choice did I have.. So since it would have been quicker at this point to take a new wheel than to finish what I was doing with my wheel, I took the new wheel. I lost at least 5 minutes and knew there was no way I would see my field again for the rest of the day. It's crushing to get all psyched up for an event, start out strong, and with one quick stroke of misfortune have everything end for you. I was about 10 miles from the start, and about 40 miles and two brutal climbs of solo effort from the finish. The thoughts go through your head, "screw it, your day is over just go back".. But I'm in this for a sense of achievement and hell if I'm not finishing this race. So I set a goal to get to the finish as fast as I could without getting passed by any of the groups that started behind me, which is a bit unrealistic since I had 50 miles to go and probably a 3 minute gap on the group that started behind us at this point and groups will always be faster than solo riders. But it's a goal that would keep me working as hard as I could the rest of the way and make the most out of my race that has now become just another hard training ride.... So off I went at time trial pace, which was dumb because holding a threshold effort for 50 miles over two tough climbs isn't possible, and even if it was, it would probably kill me. I passed by a couple more riders that had also flatted. I kept going at a really hard pace and at about mile 18 I started to see somebody from my group ahead of me. I went into pursuit mode since I really wanted somebody else to ride with so that we could work together the rest of the way. I caught him at mile 20 at the base of the cat2 climb. This is a 3 mile climb at about 8-9% avg grade, it's brutal. Unfortunately, my pursuit of the rider ahead of me left me with little to stay with him on the climb and I was dropped. I was suffering a ton at this point. I got to the top of the climb and kept my effort up as hard as I could go. I still hadn't got caught by the group that started behind us so I was pretty happy about that. They wouldn't catch me until about mile 35, a good effort on my part to stay away from them that long. The group that caught me was a 20 rider Cat 4 break off a field of about 100. I'm not allowed to catch on with this group since it's the lead group from another field so I situp, let them pass, and then continue on. Over the next 10 miles I started passing racers that were dropped off their fields, looks of misery on their faces as they trudge into the finish. I catch a racer from the cat3 group that started ahead of us who had run into some mechanical issue earlier in the race and him and I ride together for a while. A chase group of about 20 racers from the cat4 field comes up behind us and we catch on the back of that for a couple miles.. As long as it's not part of the lead group it's not a big deal at this point. The cat 3 racer and I sit in for a couple miles and enjoy the almost conversation pace of the cat 4 group :) My legs needed a bit of a rest after spending the last 35 miles in solo TT mode and there was one major climb coming into the finish, so this was a nice break. We come into the last climb of the day which is about 5 miles long that's steep enough in 3 sections that they break the roadway up to add a "slow traffic" lane.. I decide I'm giving it everything I have the rest of the way so I stand up and ride away from the group. I turn around and they're putting in a hard effort to chase but I've opened up a decent gap on them. After about 1/3 of the climb, one of the racers from the chase group bridges up to me and we work together the rest of the way putting in a huge effort that left my legs and lungs ready to explode. We must have passed about 10 guys that were dropped from earlier groups like they were standing still as we charged up the remainder of the hill in the big ring as if we were fighting it out for first. Awesome end for a finish that really meant nothing in the standings, but meant everything in my head. I got a huge sense of achievement out of this because it would have been so easy to not finish, or even to just take it a little easier the rest of the way after I flatted. A brutal race course where you spend 3/4 of it solo and still give it everything you have is definitely a big accomplishment and a great show of physical and mental strength. And hey, I got a great workout on my cankles :)

Best,

kevin

Hitting the Hills... Or Is It the Other Way Around?

This weekend I did a couple massive hillclimbs on my bike.. Saturday was a bike race up Mt Ascutney in Vermont and Sunday was a practice ride up Mt Washington in preparation for the big race on August 15th. The Mt Ascutney autoroad has 2300 feet of ascent over 3.7 miles. An average grade of 12% with extended sections of 18-19%. The Mt Washington autoroad is 7.6 miles with 4700 feet of ascent, an average grade of 12%, extended sections of 18-19% and the last 50 yds at 22%. These are brutal, relentless climbs that test you to your absolute maximum limits. The only way to understand how hard it is to climb something like this is to try it. And then once you're done trying it, do it again and try to do it as fast as you possibly can. This requires a level of mental and physical strength that most don't possess. Which is why there really aren't a whole lot of people doing it. To train for this I train on the biggest, toughest hills in the area around Wilton, Mason, New Ipswich, the Pack Monadnock Autoroad, and sometimes up into the White Mountains but those hills are easy compared to the ones I did this weekend. None of those climbs take more than about 10 minutes to complete and none of them, with the exception of Pack Monadnock, approach the steepness of the mountain autoroads.

This past week was a tough training week for me. From Monday to Wednesday I did two really hard workouts in the gym with kettlebells, sandbags and bodyweight exercises and I put in about 100 miles on the bike with some really tough threshold and VO max intervals. I went pretty easy on Thursday and Friday and showed up at Mt Ascutney feeling pretty good Saturday morning. I had never done the Mt Ascutney autoroad, which would come back to bite me later. I use a power meter for my training so I have a good idea of how hard I can push for extended periods of time. Racing with the power meter helps at the beginning of a race like this because you can pace yourself a little at the start to prevent blowing up too early. For example,

when the gun sounded, a bunch of guys in my field went off really hard. Too hard. They stayed out in front of me for about a mile, but then they would blow up one by one and I started picking them off. Going by them as they would be all over their bike huffing and puffing. Blown up. Only the strongest would stay out in front and be able to maintain that kind of pace. To be fair, it wasn't like I was taking it easy. Within 5 minutes my heart rate had climbed to about 95% max. But I was able to hold it there the whole way. My heart felt like a blender running on the ice crush setting for the 33:46 it took me to complete the race as I came across 36th out of about 200 racers. My field was clearly the strongest in the race placing more than 20 riders in the top 50. I was 13th in my field of about 55. The one part of the race that I made a mistake was near the top. The road flattened out for an extended section and I was thinking that I was very close to the finish and that maybe there was one last little kicker to climb at the finish. So I hammered on the flat section and gave it everything I had left, only to turn a corner and see a 1/4 mile wall that I had to make my way up. Devastating. I was way over redline and it was all I could do to make the last 1/4 mile, but I made it.. In a ton of pain...

Now that I'm done with the race, this is the part where you see why people that do hillclimbs are such a mental bunch. When I get across the line at these races it is so painful to stay on the bike that I usually just point the front wheel towards an empty patch of land, fall off and lay there for a couple minutes. I'm not the only one, by the way. One person who came across after me practically landed on me as he obviously had his eye on the same empty patch of land I had my eye on... Once I catch my breath, I'll get back on the bike and spin for a bit and look for somebody I know. So I found a friend of mine and pull over to him. I ask him how he did. He says "that sucked. but i think i PR'd" (means got a personal record).. Somebody else pulls up to us and, unprovoked, says "that sucked".. somebody else pulls up to us and says "holy shit, did that suck". I'm not kidding. Nobody says "wow, what a great race". Nobody climbs hills because it's fun. We do it because it sucks so bad that getting to the top is a huge accomplishment. When you tackle something like Mt Ascutney or Mt Washington you are among an infinitesimal percentage of people in the world who would even consider doing something like that, never mind actually achieving it. It pushes you to your absolute limit. Every time you do it, you prove something to yourself. And it's miserable. But the feeling after you're done is something that is very difficult to describe and it makes it all worthwhile.. Well, maybe not immediately :)

I was pretty happy with my result and I hit a new personal best for 30 minute power output. So I'm definitely getting stronger as time goes on. And then it was off to Mt Washington..

I get up Sunday morning at 4:45 so I can get some food in me a couple hours before I plan to go off at about 6:45. My best move of the weekend was to bring my little espresso maker on the trip with me. I fire up the espresso maker and start the process of my own version of doping. Quad-shots of Espresso, bagels, peanut butter, and bananas. Sufficiently, doped, I head off to the Mt Washington autoroad to get warmed up. My legs were feeling a little tight from the previous day's effort, but of more concern was my lungs. I was still suffering from some exercise induced asthma from my "ice crush" effort the day before and I was worried that I wouldn't have the lung capacity to push as hard as I would need to today. This was going to suck. Which, of course, is exactly why I was doing it :) I was warming up on my rollers in the parking lot waiting for my buddy Bill to show up. Bill is one of the top hillclimbers around and has climbed Mt Washington 5 times finishing top 10 in the race on a couple occasions. While I was waiting, a woman and her husband showed up and parked next to me while i was warming up. The woman was getting ready to climb. Here's a little excerpt from our discussion:

Me: "Ever ride it before?"

Her: "No, how is it?"

Me: "It sucks beyond belief."

Her: "Hahaha."

Me: "No really, I'm not going to lie to you, it's miserable."

Her husband: "Hahaha glad I'm not doing it, have fun honey..."

She quickly warmed up and headed out a while before Bill and I went off.. I ended up passing her later on at about the halfway point and she was suffering big time.. I gave her a "Cmon, you're doing great!" as i went by and she responded with "Unnhh".. It was nice to see the development of a true hillclimber.. Now when she gets to the top she'll be just like the rest of us as we commiserate with each other mumbling our mantra, "man, that sucked."

Back to the story.... Bill showed up, we finished our warmup and headed up the mountain. I heard a "ping" come from my rear wheel which I thought sounded like a broken spoke but when I looked around I didn't see a spoke flopping around so I kept going. Come to find out later, one of the spoke nipples had sheared causing the wheel to come out of true to the point that the wheel was just slightly rubbing the brake in one spot. But I'm working so hard to get up the mountain anyways that I never noticed it. Oh well, the suck factor goes up by a little for the day. Whatever.

When I climb the mountain I know I'm in for unspeakable pain but I try to keep my sense of humor as long as possible. I crack lame jokes to people as I pass by them "Are we there yet?", "Mind if i get in behind you and draft for a little bit?" (remember we're moving about 6 MPH).. My sense of humor usually lasts about 30 minutes and goes away right about the time you get above tree line and start getting pummeled with wind. Today's ride was no different. Within the first mile my heart rate settles out to about 168 bpm which is about 92% max. A little less than the "ice crush" rate I maintained on Mt Ascutney yesterday, but still pretty damn high, and my lungs were already searing. Legs warmed up nice and my power numbers were right where I wanted them. Get through mile 1 pretty easy even though it's a nasty 12-14% grade. During the next 2 miles there are extended sections of up to 18% grade which most people have never seen on a paved road before. Between mile 3 and 4 every part of your body is in pain and there is absolutely no position, sitting or standing, that provides any relief. And I'm not even half way there. This is where the mind games start for real. "Dude, you're not even half way. You're never going to be able to keep it up.". But I do. Once above the treeline at about mile 4 I'm a little over half way there and I'm getting long looks of what's to come and it's really, really ugly. I can see half a mile up the road at a time some times and it's just so steep and I'm in so much pain that my mind is screaming at me to quit. But I don't. I keep turning the pedals as if my life depended on it. Not only that, but since I'm trying to accomplish a PR, I'm turning them as hard as I can. My heart is beating out of my chest at about mile 5 as I turn into a half mile stretch of gravel that's at 18% grade with a 50MPH headwind that freezes my fingers and practically knocks me off the bike a couple times. Now we're having fun, right? Um no. Did I mention how bad these rides suck? The last couple miles are a blur. My lungs are gurgling, there's shit coming out of my nose and mouth that's freezing to my cheeks and eyelashes with the wind chill at about 30deg. My lower back is killing me. My legs are killing me. My arms are killing me from pulling on the bars. I stand up, it hurts. I sit down, it hurts. I pass people that have gotten off their bikes and started walking. I would rather die than be one of those people. I didn't come to walk my fk'n bike to the top of this mountain. I get to the top of long steep sections that end into a turn, hoping to get around the bend and see something flatter. But it's not. It's as steep if not steeper than what I just came off. Then at mile 7 I enter the cloud. It's cold and wet and the scene is surreal. Moonlike, with nothing but rocks and fog all around. (I know this from when I was on the Moon and that's exactly what it looked like).. I come to a flat spot and I know I'm getting close to the finish. I hammer the flat spot and come into the last uphill section of the climb. I hear the people cheering at the top as I come around the last little kick in the teeth which is about 50yds at a mind-numbing 22% grade. I cross the line and look at my clock, just under 1:18. A new personal best. This is at the end of one of the toughest training weeks I've put in. The day after a monster effort up Mt Ascutney. A 50 MPH headwind at the top. And a rear wheel that had a slight rub all the way. My goal is to hit 1:10 on August 15th. Cutting 8 minutes in 4 weeks may be unrealistic even under ideal conditions, but if there's one thing that's for certain it will be that I will give it my best. I left everything I had on Mt Ascutney yesterday. I ate, slept, got up the next morning and left everything I had left on Mt Washington. I set personal bests on both days. The efforts sucked beyond belief and my body is hurting a lot. But I accomplished things this weekend that most people will never accomplish in their lives and, for that, it's all worthwhile.

And now.... I'm going to eat a giant bowl of Jake's Ice Cream...

Best,

kevin

Does Everything Have to be an Adventure?

One of the guys that's been coming to the gym since just about day 1 set a goal for himself to climb Mt Washington. Kirk's on the back end of his 50's and when he first came to the gym, the climb up the stairs was about all he could take, so tackling the tallest, nastiest peak in the east is no small accomplishment. Actually, climbing Mt Washington isn't an easy accomplishment for anybody regardless of age or fitness level. It's one of the most strenuous climbs around. Kirk has been training with us 3 days a week for the last 8 months and he's gotten incredibly strong. He's bounding up the 6 flights of stairs to the gym and he's doing 20+ box jumps on a 24" box in a 40 second interval. He works his butt off with kettlebells, medicine balls, and bodyweight exercises, side by side with guys and girls in their 20's. This guy is fitter than most people half his age. When Kirk, Alison, Danielle, Michele, Jake and I set out to hike Mt Washington on July 4th we expected a challenge but we weren't expecting it to be the adventure it turned out to be. But Mt Washington has a sign at the top that says "The Worst Weather in the World" for a reason, and even though it was July we really had to work to achieve Kirk's goal of summitting that day.

Like any hike in the Whites, it started out with a nice walk in the woods through sheltered forests and past falling waters. Fairly mild grades, but nothing too steep. Right about the time that Kirk commented "this isn't too bad", the trail turned upwards so that we were climbing about 1000ft per mile for the next couple miles. Pretty steep. The forecast called for possible

thundershowers and a little rain, but up until this point it was really just cloudy. The only wetness in the air was from the endless waterfalls that we were passing on the Amonoosuc Ravine Trail. Absolutely stunning trail. What we lacked in views due to no visibility from the fog and cloud cover we got back tenfold from the beauty of the headwaters of the Amonoosuc River and the never ending waterfalls. We got to treeline and put on our rain jackets since it was misty out, but left the rain pants in the packs since it really wasn't that bad. As we were to soon find out, this was a big mistake. We hiked up to the Lake of the Clouds Hut, which is a really cool AMC full service hut. We took a short break and I grabbed a cup of coffee. The coffee they use is called Java Juice. It's an extract that you mix with hot water. It was one of the most disgusting things I've ever tried. I'm thinking the "Java Juice" is some kind of Dung Beetle extract and the people at the hut use it to ensure nobody is hanging around drinking coffee. Because there's no way anybody is having a second cup of that crap.

The peak of Mt Monroe is about 3/10 of a mile from the Lake of the Clouds Hut so we decided to summit that first before heading towards Mt Washington. This is where the day became an adventure. We're above treeline and totally exposed at this point and it was getting really windy, maybe 30mph winds with 50mph gusts. Not a huge deal, at least it wasn't raining.... As we get within 30 feet of the summit of Monroe we start getting pummeled with sleet and some small hail. Initially I'm thinking, well if it's just sleet maybe my pants won't get wet and I'll have a chance to get my rain pants on when we get back down off the top of Monroe. There was no shelter anywhere and it was too nasty with the wind and weather to open up the packs and try to get the

rain pants on at this point anyways. We summit Mt Monroe, I do my customary peak handstand (which is really challenging when the wind is blowing 50mph and sleet is hitting you sideways in the face)

and we head back down, pants and gloves still dry since it remained sleet and hail to this point.. And then the rains came, and when it did, it came in drops the size of grapes. My pants soaked through in about 10 milliseconds, soaking my legs with the water running straight into my boots. Now we all have soaked legs, feet and hands as we scrambled back down Mt Monroe. The temps were in the 40's with the wind chill in the 30's. We got back to the Lake of the Clouds Hut in a much different state than the first time. There was a look of dread on a couple faces. Kirk found out that his jacket wasn't waterproof, and he also didn't have rain pants. But he did have a poncho, which I told him he should put on, secretly knowing the entertainment value of watching somebody hike up a mountain in 50 mph winds wearing a poncho :) Just kidding Kirk, I was honestly hoping it would keep you dryer.

We had Jake with us and he wasn't allowed in the hut, so Michele and I went down to a little emergency shelter they had under the hut and tried to dry off, hoping the weather would pass. It was decision time. The peak of Mt Washington was 1.5 miles away with another 1400 feet of climbing and totally exposed. There was just enough visibility to see from one cairn to the next, the sleet, rain and hail was being driven sideways by winds that were increasing to a sustained 40-50mph, the wind chill was in the 30's and our extremities were soaked. In these conditions we would be lucky to make the peak in less than an hour and a half. Easy decision, right? We should have turned around. But like I said to Kirk (half-jokingly), "Anybody can summit Mt

Washington on a sunny day.".. So we went for it. This was probably stupid, and given the choice again I'd probably turn around. But Kirk had worked really hard to achieve this goal, we were almost there. We had plenty of food. The observatory at the top was open and we could have bailed at that point and got a ride to the bottom if necessary. And as long as we kept moving I knew we'd stay warm enough. So off we went. We trudged along without talking. Step by step. We marched right past the sign that says "STOP. People have died of exposure in the Summer in bad weather. If there is bad weather then turn around.". We hiked with heads down because the sleet was stinging our faces if you looked up. Miserable conditions. But I was surprisingly upbeat at this point because it was challenging and I enjoy challenges. Plus I was still feeling strong and wasn't tiring at all. Would have been nice to have a nice leisurely hike up the mountain with spectacular blue sky views, but I enjoy being tested. And we can get views on another day. Today was about getting to the top regardless of what was thrown at us. After a good hour or more we finally got to the top. I turned around and I see Kirk sprinting with a huge smile on his face. How great is that? It's July 4th and it's like February and this guy is sprinting up the top of the highest climb in the Whites with a beaming smile on his face... People are getting off their tour busses in amazement as they watch the 5 of us plus a dog walking out of a cloud towards the observatory. They ask us "you didn't just hike up here did you?".

At the summit, goal completed (at least the part of getting up the mountain), Kirk is a very happy man despite the atrocious conditions we've been climbing in..

We hung out at the top for an hour hoping to warmup. I had a really good cup of coffee, but to be honest, compared to the Java Juice I had at the Hut anything would have tasted like cappuccino in an Italian cafe at this point. We were eating our trail mix, bananas, and energy bars while watching the tour bus crowd stuffing their faces with hot dogs and nasty, doughy pizza. People were in the gift shop buying those silly "This Car Climbed Mt Washington" bumper stickers.. So many people out there that need Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, so little time :)

The weather board in the observatory said that the winds were at 50mph sustained with 70mph gusts. It was raining and sleeting. We could have decided to try to get a shuttle to the bottom, but that wasn't going to be an option for me. And as it turned out it wasn't going to be an option for anybody else

either. After my customary peak handstand (which I couldn't hold for more than a half second because of the 70mph wind gusts) we headed back down. Warming up for an hour and then heading back out in this miserable weather was a real test. But the goal was to get down out of the exposed section as quickly as possible. So why we chose the Jewell Trail makes no sense to me now, (although I think it did at the time). An excerpt on the Jewell Trail from the AMC White Mountains guidebook: "...featuring a great length of ridge walking above the treeline with fine views, but this part is also greatly exposed to the weather and offers no shelter between summit and treeline. In bad weather, or if afternoon thundershowers threaten, it is safer to descend from Mt Washington via Lakes of the Clouds Hut and the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail, despite the steep and slippery footing on the latter trail."... Ok, so the weather sucks, afternoon thundershowers are possible, we want to get below treeline as quickly as possible. The guide says don't take the Jewell Trail. Let's take the Jewell Trail! In retrospect, we chose the Jewell Trail because the Ammonoosuc would have been really tricky in parts to descend in these wet conditions. So we chose exposure over technical difficulty because we felt the chance of injury was probably greater on the Ammonoosuc.

Going down was more difficult than going up. Above treeline it's all rocks that are covered with some kind of lichens that are wicked slippery when wet. So every step has to be taken carefully which slowed us down considerably. Plus, at this point we're starting to show signs of wear and tear. We've been out for about 6 hours, we're cold and wet because even with rain gear, when the rain is driven into you sideways at 70mph it finds a way under your gear, and there's no let up in sight. We're still trudging along with just enough visibility to see from one cairn to the next. We're coming down the Gulfside Trail looking for the Jewell Trail. We come across one sign that tells us we're going in the right direction, but when the Jewell Trail splits off from the Gulfside Trail about 1/4 mile past that sign, there is no other sign that tells us that. With our heads down, we continue following the cairns on the Gulfside Trail. I knew the book said that we would spend a good amount of time traversing a ledge but I started thinking we were spending too much time going sideways when we should have started heading down by now. As it turns out I was right, and luckily we only went about 1/3 of a mile past where we should have been. As we tracked back I started to see a line of cairns about 100 feet below us that we hadn't seen on our way past before because of the limited visibility and the fact that we were spending a lot of time with our heads down to avoid getting pummeled by the persistent sleet which hadn't let up since we came off Mt Monroe about 3 hours ago. There was no sign saying that the cairns below were on the Jewell Trail, but according to the map it had to be. So we got on it and stayed on it the rest of the way. By the time we got back to the cars we had been out 11 hours. Pretty exhausted and beaten down but definitely exhilarated. We had just climbed the toughest peak in the east in about the worst conditions imaginable for the middle of summer. And Kirk had just completed his goal! It was an incredible day and a great adventure and I'm really psyched that I was able to be a part of it.

All the best,

Kevin