Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Eiger Ultra Trail 101k

I participated in the first Eiger Ultra Trail, a 101km run around the hills of Grindelwald, Switzerland.  There was a total of 6700 meters of climbing and descending with the highest point being the summit of Faulhorn (2680m).  The views of the Eiger, Jungfrau and surrounding mountains provided a breathtaking backdrop for an incredible event.

Highlights included, in chronological order:
  • Sunrise lighting up the tip of the Eiger
  • Amazing wildflowers
  • Random bloody nose
  • Glissading/shoe skiing down snowfields off the Faulhorn
  • Slipping on and then falling in slippery wet cow shit. 
  • At the an aid station I took a mouthful of what I expected to be cubed apples but was actually hot sweaty "Mountain Cheese"
  • The heat
  • Seeing Aileen at the halfway aid station and telling her that I was feeling pretty fine despite being covered in sweat, blood and cow shit
  • Thunderstorm that washed off sweat, blood and cow shit
  • Diving and then hunkering into a ditch after lightning struck chairlift pole right in front of me.
  • Bombing off mountain to get away from the lightning
  • Lounging in Wengernalp station for about 40 minutes waiting for thunderstorms to pass and for the race to resume.
  • Being told to continue although we weren't allowed up the climb to Eigergletscher and took an alternate route down the valley.
  • The last 12k which was mostly downhill, I felt amazingly fresh and strong and passed people.
  • Finishing
  • Expecting totally thrashed quads, my leg muscles were not sore after the race which was really confusing.  My main theory is that I experienced The Repeated-bout Effect because I did a big fast downhill run on the Tuesday before the race which gave me sore quads that lasted up until raceday.   
Here are the incredibly scenic photos

Sunrise



Near the top of Faulhorn
Snowfields near Faulhorn
Getting up to Mannlichen with storms approaching
Saw this guy on the trail from Mannlichen

Finish
Here's some data from the timing company.

category :E101 Herren Seniors
overall :E101 Herren Overall
bib :(85)

Finish Time :17:19.16,0
Category Place:29.
Overall Place :56.

Location :Time of DayElapsed TImeCategory PlaceOverall Place
Start5:00.25,1

E101-Faulhorn :10:50.25,75:50.00,656.130.
E101-Burglauenen :13:55.59,68:55.34,545.99.
E101-Männlichen :17:52.09,112:51.44,041.83.
E101-Alpiglen :20:39.27,315:39.02,234.69.
Voravis :22:19.04,217:18.39,129.56.
Finish :22:19.41,117:19.16,029.56.


SegmentTimeCategory RankOverall Rank.
E101 Start-Faulhorn :5:50.00,656.130.
E101 Faulhorn-Burglauenen :3:05.33,938.77.
E101 Burglauenen-Männlichen :3:56.09,542.120.
E101 Männlichen-Alpiglen :2:47.18,247.155.
E101 Alpiglen-Ziel :1:40.13,88.18.

Here's my GPS data for the run.  Unfortunately my watch battery died 6km from the finish.

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Lysefjorden Inn

This past weekend I had the privilege of running the first Lysefjorden Inn.  An ultramarathon that runs the length of Lysefjord starting in Oanes and ending in Lysebotn.  The route follows roads and trails along the northside of the fjord featuring some pretty rough terrain.  Thanks so much to Willy Steinskog and his crew for putting on an incredible event.

Here's an article on the Aftenbladet website.

Here are a few shots from the course.

About a mile from the start looking up the fjord.


Through the tunnel.


Beautiful section between and Preikestolen and Brattli


Descending into Bakken


Almost to Songesand


Boggy part 


Road to Lysebotn.
Here's my GPS data from the race.



Thursday, February 14, 2013

Force traffic through your Cisco AnyConnect VPN connection on Mac or Linux

Scenario: You need to access a public IP address (x.x.x.x) that is only accessible from a private network that you have VPN access to using Cisco AnyConnect.  But, when you try to go to x.x.x.x, you are blocked because you were routed through the internet instead of the VPN.

Solution:  Add a route to your routing table to force network traffic through the VPN and add rules to your firewall because the default rules set up by Cisco AnyConnect won't allow this traffic.

Steps:
1) Sign into the VPN and open a command terminal.  Note, I'm using version 3.0.11024 for this.

2) Get the destination IP address if you don't already know it.  You could try pinging the hostname if thats all you have.  Make note of it.

DESTINATION_IP=x.x.x.x

3) Get the IP address of the VPN gateway.  Look at you network interfaces using the ifconfig command.  Cisco AnyConnect should have added it, identified by an interface id called utun0 (Mac) or cscotun0 (Linux).  Or, look at your AnyConnect client.  The IP address should be in there somwhere as "Client Address".  Make note of it.

VPN_GATEWAY_IP=y.y.y.y

On Mac OS X:

4) Add the route to your routing table.  I would suggest listing the routing table before and after adding the new route to ensure it gets added.  List the routing table using the command netstat -nr.  Add the new route with this command

sudo route add -host $DESTINATION_IP $VPN_GATEWAY_IP

5) Add rules to the firewall to allow all IP traffic to and from the destination using the VPN network interface.  Again, look at the existing rules before and after using the command sudo ipfw list to ensure it gets added.  Insert the rules with these 2 commands

sudo ipfw add 00025 skipto 33 ip from $VPN_GATEWAY_IP to $DESTINATION_IP out

sudo ipfw add 00025 skipto 33 ip from $DESTINATION_IP to $VPN_GATEWAY_IP in

### NOTE:  Line numbers 00025 and 33 worked for me, but these are dependent on the rules that your VPN client has defined.  The important thing is that the new rules go before the rule "deny ip from any to any" and skipto goes  beyond it.

On Linux:

The steps are the same as described above but syntax is different.  Here are the commands you'll need.  You will probably have to do these with sudo or as root

4) Add the route to your routing table using the route command.  I would suggest listing the routing table before and after adding the new route to ensure it gets added.  List the routing table using the command route alone.  Add the new route with this command

route add $DESTINATION_IP gw $VPN_GATEWAY_IP

5) Add rules to the firewall to allow all IP traffic to and from the destination using the VPN network interface.  Again, look at the existing rules before and after using the command iptables -L to ensure it gets added.  Insert the rules with these 2 commands

iptables -I ciscovpn 32 -j ciscovpnfw -p all -s $DESTINATION_IP/32 -d $VPN_GATEWAY_IP 

iptables -I ciscovpn 32 -j ciscovpnfw -p all -d $DESTINATION_IP/32 -s $VPN_GATEWAY_IP 

### NOTE: Line number 32 worked for me.  The important thing is that the new rules go before the rule "DROP all -- anywhere anywhere"



You could obviously modify the steps above to grant access to a whole network or range of IP address if required.

Monday, January 21, 2013