Saturday was the Sunlight Endurance Challenge, a.k.a. the 12 Hours of Sunlight.

Last year, Christy and I managed to win the co-ed relay division of this unique uphill/downhill race. Despite a pretty thin field with only a few teams competing, it was still a really close finish against our friends from town, Lyndsay Meyer and Adam Frisch. After twelve hours and 20 laps up and down the 1,500 vertical foot course, only 3 minutes separated us.

This year didn’t quite pan out the same. Like 2011, Adam and Lyndsay took the lead from the start, but instead of a come-from-behind finish on our behalf, they simply added to their lead on us with each lap, and finished the clear winners. Nice job out there, Team Frisch-Meyer. Results can be found here.

You can’t win them all, obviously. Actually, Christy and I rarely win anything outright. We simply like to go out for the challenge of the events, which is our motivation for taking on much of what we do. We do some things simply for the training miles/hours. If we’re feeling strong, we’ll take some events more seriously, but don’t pressure ourselves too much. Still, other events are on our calendar because we’d like to do as best we can, i.e. the Grand Traverse or Hardrock 100. And no matter how they all turn out, at the end of a summer/winter season we’ve accrued– among other things– a lot of fitness, a good amount of experience, a few T-shirts and goodie bags, some sore knees, a little dehydration, and a whole bunch of good memories (at least once the suffering is forgotten).

And besides, second place isn’t too shabby. Hopefully the 19 laps we did as a team will help us with the Aspen/Snowmass Power of Four race this weekend. I guess we’ll just see how it goes. I bet it will be just fine.

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