Ridiculously hard, according to the list of goals I compiled. Spend 55 nights in a tent, for instance. Or do a 50-mile trail run, a 55-mile mountain bike race, do 55 pushups in a row, run 11 5Ks. Individually, doable. But cumulatively a challenge even if I’d had the financial luxury of devoting my entire year to just these goals. I did manage a couple: I did a 55(ish)-mile backpack trip in December and my resting heart rate is 55 (though it was 54 a year ago).

While I didn’t check off the majority of my 55 goals, the year was far from a wash. I gravitated away from 5Ks to the less-punishing, longer trail runs, completing the 12-mile MST Challenge and the 20-mile version of the Uwharrie Mountain Run. In the climbing world, I didn’t do a 5.5 climb outdoors, but I have done a 5.9 indoors. I didn’t do a 55-mile mountain bike race, but I did manage to survive Charlie Storm’s 42-mile January Mountain Bike Marathon. And, I’m in the process of getting my open water recertification in Scuba. Not a bad 55th year.

This year, I’ll still have goals but they won’t be arbitrarily set over a health report and too much caffeine. Instead, my goal is to constantly have a goal. Knock off one event, make sure another is lined up to keep me from slacking off. My 56th gets off to a good start with two epics: Next Wednesday, my buddy Alan and I will celebrate our birthdays (his is May 10) by riding 60 (his age) miles at Umstead, Crabtree and surrounding environs. Then, the following Monday I get to serve as Diane Van Deren’s trail guide for the day as she runs across North Carolina. I’ll be doing somewhere between 31 and 39 miles with her as part of the MST Endurance Run.

Not a bad start to year 56. Here’s hoping it ends just as well.

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Oddly, I’ve never thought about doing this after a race. Or I hadn’t until Charles West sent out a Facebook race report following Saturday’s Uwharrie Mountain Run. The 11-point report was intended to shed light on what he learned during his 10 hours, 46 minutes and 16 seconds running 40 miles of hilly, rocky, rooty trail. He began point #1 by stating his objective for the race — “to log some mileage to prep for Graveyard 100 on March 10th” — and gave a quick assessment: “Any miles whether it was 8, 18, or 40 would have been fine with me. As it turns out I did all 40 with apparently no problems with the knee. It felt like I could have easily done another 20 before I started wondering how far I could REALLY go.”

Ten additional observations analyzing his performance followed. He talked about gear performance: “Gear fail #3: Gloves that are REALLY nice, comfy and warm, but are difficult to take off and put on multiple times.” He talked about nutrition: “ I had the alarm set on my watch for every 20 minutes. DING! Grab the bag-o-cookies and eat. DING! Eat a gel. …” He talked about protecting a balky knee, about paying attention to form, about when it’s not only OK to walk, but a really good idea.

Having done the 20-mile version of UMR, I was especially intrigued by his analysis. Much of it I  agreed with. #3, “Develop a climbing gear,” for instance. “Short, quick steps work magic and don’t wear you out nearly as badly as those lunging long strides going up the side of a fricking mountain.” How true. One or two I didn’t. “ … run or stomp straight THROUGH the creeks,” decreed #9. “Do NOT try to skip along top of the rocks.” Maybe it’s just me, but I hate running/hiking/biking in wet feet. Even damp feet, for me, are a guarantee of blisters. Maybe there’s a secret sock or magic shoe at the root of Charles’ splash-and-dash approach. Or maybe there’s something I’m missing … .

Others found his race analysis helpful as well. Of the 29 comments the post received, many were from fellow UMRers. Amy Martin Scott admitted to a “poor job of #4 (“Fueling”) and had some depressing miles as a result … coke in my nathan pack at mile 31 changed my whole outlook on life.” Mike Walsh, meanwhile, built on #4, noting he made nutritional adjustments based on what his body was telling him: “Going with gels, and less solid foods, because that is what was working.” Karen Martin made a note to pay attention to #6 (paying attention to form) on her next long outing. “At the end of my long runs I know I know I look like a Hunchback,” she commented. “Maybe being more aware of doing something about it will help, thanks.”

Charles’ report drove home the importance of recording a post-event account of one’s performance. Why accumulate the experience of such events if you don’t plan to learn from them? From a competitive standpoint, the post-race report makes as much sense as the training runs that precede it. Yet Charles most salient point, #11, didn’t pertain to performance. It had to do with motivation.

“The Uwharrie National Forest on a cloudy, foggy, rainy, overcast day is a magical place that’ll remind you of why it’s so awesome to be alive and do something epic with incredible people who do things that amaze and inspire you.”

Noted Lauren Beach Wilkins, “Goes back to why we run these things.”

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Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.

Today’s 90-Second Escape: The Uwharrie Mountain Run.

The last time I did the Uwharrie Recreation Trail it took two days, with an overnight stop at a lovely campsite along Dutchman’s Creek. This past Saturday I did the 20-mile trail in 4 hours and 15 minutes.

The first Saturday of every February, 800 or so runners gather at the north end of this trail that runs the length of the Uwharrie National Forest for the Uwharrie Mountain Run. Some runners do and 8-mile stretch of the trail. I and a few hundred others did 20 miles on the trail, while others did the 20 miles out, then ran 20 miles back. It’s not an easy race. The trail is a rock-studded rollercoaster, going up and down through this ancient mountain range in central North Carolina. But it is a lot of fun, as you’ll see in this 90 Second Escape.

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“I’m thinking about doing Georgia this year,” Alan said midway through our weekly 18-mile mountain bike ride at Umstead early yesterday morning. He said it wistfully, and punctuated it with a sigh.

The mention of Georgia a month into the new year was a trial balloon of sorts for Alan. Not so much to gauge my reaction; rather, for him to think out loud about what Georgia really meant.

“Georgia” is a three-day training ride organized by some of Alan’s younger (he’s 59), hard-core racing buddies. It’s a test of their pre-season conditioning: three days of riding Georgia’s bumpy high country, including at least one assault of legendary Brasstown Bald, a 10.3-mile grind that gets bell-curve steep as it nears the 4,643-foot summit. It was the climb fatale of the Tour de Georgia, the nation’s premier bike race from 2003-2008. It’s a climb that Alan, a born climber, once relished for his ability to put younger and otherwise stronger riders in their place — namely, off his back wheel.

Alan last did the ride two years ago. Last year, he discovered a life outside cycling, a life that included more hiking, more backpacking and, not coincidentally, a new girlfriend who likes to hike and backpack. Alan is quick (but not too quick) to acknowledge he’s happier and in better overall shape, but that wistfulness surfaces on occasion when he speaks of his past life in the saddle. To get in shape for Georgia, just two months away, he’d need to step up his riding, significantly. “For one, I’d need to start riding 100 miles a week immediately. I’d need to get in some long rides; I’d need to do some 60- and 70-mile rides … .” And that would mean less time hiking and backpacking with Lois. Hence the sigh.

Balance and happiness vs. the drive to compete.

I’m familiar with the competitive dilemma. For the past three months I’ve been training for this Saturday’s Uwharrie Mountain Run, a 20-mile race on rocky, rooty trail in the Uwharrie National Forest. For the last three months I’ve also been training for a series of mountain bike races, starting with this past Sunday’s Mountain Bike Marathon in Sanford. Now, I’m a big advocate of cross-training. It keeps you from getting bored doing the same thing over and over. It also reduces your chance of injury from overuse. And it insures that a non-natural athlete such as myself finishes 81st out of 112 riders.

Not that I have illusions of winning. Still, I like to at least feel competitive.

The competitiveness issue came up during a backpack trip in December with Chris David. In the 1980s and 1990s, Chris, who is 67, was a competitive marathoner, logging 68 races with times dipping under 3 hours. He took racing seriously, putting in the requisite miles and watching his diet. A traditionalist, he bemoaned the recent trend of people who sign up for a marathon only to walk the entire thing. “To me, finishing in six hours isn’t ‘running’ a marathon,” he huffed.

Another contemporary, Peter Hollis, claims not to be competitive. He says he races mountain bikes just to stay in shape — the fact that he frequently podiums in the 50+ age group is an unintended consequence. The notion makes me smile every time I run into Peter, who is especially fond of “staying in shape” in front of younger riders. Like when I saw him training at Umstead last month. “My race age this year is officially 60,” he said. “I think before every race they should announce our age.” Or more recently when I hobbled to the finish of Sunday’s 42-mile Mountain Bike Marathon. Peter, having finished more than a half hour earlier, was already in street clothes and looking refreshed. “You know what I’m thinking of doing?” he asked. (I was thinking of getting the feeling back in my legs.) “I’m thinking of doing intervals at Umstead once or twice a week over lunch.”

You know, just to stay in shape.

Then there’s Steve Rogers, also a fellow 50+ mountain biker who’s a bit more forthcoming. I was clinging to Steve’s wheel during the Huck-A-Buck mtb race at Lake Crabtree a couple years back when suddenly he slowed and pulled over. I pulled up beside him. “My seat’s coming off,” he said. He fiddled with it for a minute or so as I watched. Suddenly, he stopped and looked up. “We’re in a race, you know,” he said, trying not to overstate the obvious, that as fellow 50-plusers we were racing against each other. “Go,” he said. “Go!” Steve was competitive to the point of having to remind me that we were competing.

Society tends to swing on the competitiveness issue. One decade it’s “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing,“ the next, “We’re all winners!” Sometimes, though, the “prevailing mood” is declared by those not intimately familiar with the subject. Did the leader of the “Everyone’s a winner!” movement ever lose a podium spot by a stride length in a 5K? I’m guessing no, because if finishing in the back-of-the-pack is as rewarding as winning a sprint finish, what’s the point in training hard? Why get up and run at 6 on a frigid winter morning, or go for a training ride after a draining 10-hour work day?

Or why, if you’re already a record-setting endurance athlete and an icon in your sport, feel compelled to come out of a 30-year retirement at age 60.

For the 1970s, Diana Nyad was the world’s top long-distance swimmer. Routinely, she was in the news, for swimming the 102.5 miles from Bimini in the Bahamas to Florida, for swimming around Manhattan Island in a record time of 7 hours and 57 minutes. Yet it was a failure, her 1978 attempt to swim the 100 miles from Cuba to Florida that stuck with her. After swimming for 41 hours and 49 minutes, Nyad withdrew due to strong currents and bad weather. Despite her storied career, despite being a pioneer in the nascent arena of athletic extremism, that one failure haunted her. In the ensuing years she’s been plagued by what she terms “monkey chatter” in her head.

“I’d do a 100-mile bike ride and I wasn’t looking at the horizon of the ocean,” she said yesterday on public radio’s The Story. “I wasn’t taking in the flora and the fauna. The whole hundred miles I’d be asking myself why, why am I not doing this better? Why? Why? Why? I was just beating myself up.”

Last year, she decided to try the Strait of Florida again. That attempt was foiled when stings from a school of jellyfish sent her into respiratory distress. She plans to try again this summer.

“At 60,” she told The Story host Dick Gordon, “I’m gonna to do something that is so tough, so big that it takes so much of me that there’s not going to be room for all those regrets. … There will not be time for that.”

Essentially, in the struggle over one’s own competitiveness, that’s what it comes down to. Whether you go to Georgia, or split your time between two passions, or convince yourself that it’s only about staying in shape, or need to silence the monkey chatter, you want to make sure of that one thing there won’t be time for in the end.

Regrets.

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Listen to Dick Gordon’s interview with Diana Nyad on The Story here.

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While most of you are staring down Day 3 of your 2012 New Year’s resolutions, I find myself with less than five months to go on my annual birthday resolutions. Make that “first” annual birthday resolutions: When I turned 55 last May 11 I got to Googling and discovered that 55 is a somewhat pivital year for a male. Among other things, our muscles and organs begin to atrophy; we shrink, on average, 0.4 inches a year; we dehydrate more easily; our joints stiffen … . Suffice it to say that on May 11 of last year I didn’t feel I could wait seven months to set some goals, so I set 10 immediately.  All with a theme of 55.

Here’s a status report:

1. Run 11 5Ks (11 x 5 = 55). So far, I’ve run three, all last summer. The good news is that 5Ks are a dime a dozen — or more accurately, at least one a weekend, so the opportunities are there. Plus, I’ve ramped up my running of late (prompted by a more immediate and daunting goal, the Uwharrie Mountain Run on Feb. 4) and feel ready to get back into a 5K rythym. I should fess up, though, that on New Year’s Day I blew off a prime 5K opportunity: the Run in the New Year Run, which was, literally, three blocks from my house. But it started at midnight and my wife laid odds, based on my New Year’s Eve track record, that I wouldn’t make it past 10 (I didn’t). Still, I’m optimistic
2. Climb “The Mummy” at Linville Gorge, a 5.5-rated rock climb. This remains unchecked as well, though again, hope springs eternal. I’ve hooked up with the Triangle Rock Club’s Climbing Meetup, been climbing with them at the TRC and know that when it gets warmer, the group’s leadership (comprised of climbing instructors for the Boy Scouts) will be leadings us outdoors. Asterisk: The leadership being leaders and deciding things like where to go, I may have to substitute another climb of equal or greater difficulty.
3. Do a 55-mile backpacking trip. Bit of a conundrum here. Two weeks ago, Chris David and I did a 50-mile backpack trip on the North Carolina Bartram Trail and the Appalachian Trail. Chris, who’s been backpacking since the 1960s, said it was the hardest trip he’s done. Hence, the conundrum: Does the level of difficulty compensate for coming up five miles short? I’m inclined to say yes, especially if I can’t pull off a planned 60-mile backpack trip on the Mountains-to-Sea Trail along Falls Lake.
4. Do a 55-mile canoe trip. Again, unchecked but confidence reigns. I’m in the midst of writing a book on adventure sports in the Carolinas, with paddling as a primary focus. The trip may take place in a kayak rather than a canoe, but the fun factor alone should assure that this happens.
5. Do 55 continuous push-ups. As I wrote last May: “I’ve been especially slack over the years on strength training; with my muscles atrophying staying strong becomes even more important.” Turns out, I’ve discovered, the “atrophying muscles” claim isn’t speculation. I’ve been doing pushups regularly, three to five times a week, in sets of three or four. On the last set, I do as many as I can pump out. In October, I got up to 38 on that last set and plateaued. I’ve recommitted on this one and hope to cross it from the list by the end of February.
6. 55: Total of my waist size (30) and BMI (25). Now, three days after the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s bacchanal, is not the time to be taking measure of one’s waist and BMI. Again, check back the end of February.
7. Resting heart rate of 55. Just measured it: 48. (Confession: It was already 54 when I set the goal.)
8. 55-mile mountain bike race. That book I mentioned that I’m writing? Mountain biking is another focus area. I’m looking to accomplish this goal at the Pisgah Mountain Bike Adventure Race in May. The race takes place in the Davidson River area near Brevard and ranges from 45 to 70 miles depending upon your orientation skills. That should assure I get in at least 55 miles.
9. 55 miles on my mountain bike on my birthday. This didn’t happen, I noted at the time, because I had to pick up the kids from school. So when I do it between now and this coming May 11, I’ll add an asterisk. Oh, and at least half of the total — 28 miles — needs to be on singletrack.
10. Umstead 100 endurance run. First timers such as myself are restricted to just (“just”?) 50 miles in the Umstead 100 endurance run, which is March 31. Alas, I missed the registration deadline and the race is full. In search of an alternative. Suggestions welcome.

Let’s see, according to the 55 for 55 Goals Tote Board that makes me two for 10 with just over four months to go. Wish me luck with my goals, and best of luck with yours in 2012!

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