 The coveted finishers buckle. It was about as smooth as they get for me. That’s my take as I reflect on last weekend’s Bear 100 run. Considering how many different ways one can come up short in these things, and that I ran the race without any crew or pacers, smooth is good. And to finish near the front with a sense of things being somewhat routine made it even better. In fact, read more>>>  Christy, cruising into the mile 37 aid station at Cow Creek. Christy ran the inaugural Run Rabbit Run 100 miler in Steamboat last weekend. It’s been a few years since she covered that distance– three to be exact– and when it was all done, she said she had forgotten just how hard 100 milers can be. Obviously 100 milers are tough, but when you consider that only 47% of the overall field and only 34% of the elite division finished on this course, it’s pretty clear that this one was quite a bit harder than many of the 135 starters expected. You can lump Christy in that group, she really had to “dig deep” out there. Kathy Fry and I crewed and paced for her, and we were excited to see the day start out great– she definitely has the fifty mile distance figured out. However, somewhere around the halfway point her stomach started causing problems. Unable to keep food and fluids down, she was soon exhausted physically and mentally, and never really recovered. When I started my pacing leg with her around mile 72, she was still unable to eat or drink. She had been going for 21 hours and was running on empty, literally, and the thought of having to go an additional 30 miles seemed almost impossible. read more>>> Thanks to the efforts of pacer/friend Chris Davenport, I ended up with some video footage from Hardrock earlier this summer. I have to confess, I wasn’t always in the mood to talk when he turned on the Contour HD camera during the late stages of the race, but when I finally got to looking at the footage recently, I was psyched he had brought it with him. read more>>>  Morley McBride on the course. [Christy here]Wow. What a weekend. I would definitely recommend a trip out to Lake Tahoe for the Tahoe Rim Trail 50 mile run. Not knowing anything about this event before I signed up, I was blown away by the course, and the fun, summer lake scene only added to the weekend. Heading out to Lake Tahoe for a long weekend in the middle of July is kind of a big deal for us, so we were psyched that it ended up being a great trip. read more>>>  The crew– Christy, Neal Beidleman and Chris Davenport. They deserve a lot of the credit for getting me here while it was still breakfast hour on Saturday in Silverton. Thanks guys, you’re awesome. In the days that follow this enormous undertaking, I’m usually so drained– mentally, physically, and emotionally– that I struggle to assimilate all that took place. I recall it in bits and pieces– mental images of the course, fragments of conversations with crew and pacers, or memories of thoughts as to how I was feeling or what was happening. To look back on it can almost take on a Hollywood-esque “life flashing before you eyes” retrospective, like a montage of moments pasted together in a crude slideshow. read more>>>  Hopefully I’ll keep myself together better than the old Hardrock, which broke to pieces and had to be replaced with this one for 2012. Hardrock’s here, and I couldn’t be more excited. This is my 5th time running the course, but only my 2nd time around in the clockwise direction around the loop. Just as a reminder, because I doubt anyone is really keeping track, the last time I ran the course this way was in 2010, and I finished in my fastest time yet, 30:21. The course layout in this direction suits me well, with shorter, more direct uphills, and longer, mellower descents. Add to that the experience I’ve accumulated here through the years and the added miles I’ve logged this summer thanks to our dry spring, and I feel that if things go well, I could have a pretty fast time. As is always the case, anything can happen out there so I’m just going to see how the day unfolds and try to put together my usual come-from-behind back half. Unfortunately, the Tom Chapman vs. Telluride (read here) land dispute that resulted in a re-route last year is still unresolved, so the course to Telluride is, once again, a couple miles longer. That doesn’t bode well for PR’s necessarily, but I’m still going to try. Christy will be on the scene as crew boss, read more>>> |
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