The race was awesome. Reflecting on it briefly here, a few things stick out– I improved on my prior 2007 time, cutting off 1:16, with a good amount of credit due to meeting my goal of getting through aids stops faster. A crash in the early parts slowed me down for a bit, a simplified strategy for food and fluids worked better than my mixed menu last time and the...
You’re only considered to have finished when you kiss the rock. The Hardrock 100 starts tomorrow at 6am, and with any luck could be over sometime Saturday. How will it go? Well, there’s so much to this race, so many variables and unknowns that it’s impossible to say for sure, until it’s over. So I have to fall back on the cliche for my answer– it’s hard telling, not knowing....
Nearing the “Narrows” aid station, near mile 15 Christy and I have run the San Juan Solstice 50 two times now and decided we wanted to try something new. So in place of the Lake City, Colorado race, with it’s huge vertical gains and high elevations, we ventured to a different 50 miler we had long heard of, in northern Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains. The Bighorn Wild & Scenic race weekend...
The ten second countdown to the start of a 100 mile race is a crash course in coping. I often feel a bit sick to my stomach and while standing there I can’t help but think about what is happening, what kind of mistake I’ve made. How did I get in this situation? Why would anyone voluntarily sign up for this, let alone pay money to participate? Will I really watch the sun rise twice while...