On Boston.

 

I am not certain how any of us can truly wrap our mind around what happened in Boston yesterday. I don’t want to highlight this specifically with the effect that it belittle some of the other tragic shootings of recent, but this one hits close to home for many of us.

I had to “turn off” my access to the news for a while today.  More and more photos show up, more and more videos go viral on twitter and more and more you replay how you were RIGHT THERE.  I didn’t let myself open up how vulnerable I felt even though I had no plans to attempt to run Boston in the past few years until I talked to Kendra about how we were RIGHT THERE.  Until several friends asked if I was in Boston and I was asking friends if their runners and spectators were safe. You remember how your were RIGHT THERE as a spectator, as a runner, how your friends and family were in that spot, how any day, that was any one of us.

So I to tune out the news, I went for a run afterwork.  I wore my Boston jacket, which still is “THE jacket” and I saw four others running in Boston jackets or shirts.  Then I let myself feel grateful and lucky, that we can still go for a run.  That for the most part this country is in good enough shape that for these events are still safe, that our neighborhoods are still safe, and that dirty bombs in popular neighborhoods, events and crowded streets are not a part of our daily life.

Many thoughts and well wishes to those affected by the acts of horror at the Boston Marathon, may strength come your way.

Jackson

I went to Jackson. Didn’t really take many pictures, but I tell you, there is magic in the air up there.

Waihe’e Ridge Trail run – Maui

Not being a winter person, I decided after my last winter in Colorado that I need to go somewhere sunny and warm this year.  I know, Colorado is sunny all year and not too cold, so I shouldn’t complain, but I do anyway.  A few days after a backcountry ski trip to a yurt where the temperature dropped to -20 F (Zimms, I’m counting on you to write about that one), I flew to Maui with Toberer and met up with his mother, who was escaping rainy Oregon.  While I was plenty excited to lie on the beach, snorkel, and whale watch, I was also really looking forward to some warm, non-snow-covered trail runs.  So, we headed to the wet side of the island in search of trails, and found the Waihe’e Ridge Trail.

The run began up a steep private road and then passed through some fields (maybe the first 1.5 mi?) before gaining the ridge.  Once we entered the forested, jungle-y ridge, the trail got very muddy and steep.  Almost un-runnably-muddy and steep, because the two combined together meant every step forward slid half a step back.  From my experience, this is pretty standard for Hawaiian trails anytime of year, and is just part of the fun.  But I did find myself thinking of how similar it felt to running in the ice and snow at home, and wondering if screw shoes would help…

Despite the slow pace, we made upward progress through several different types of microclimates relatively quickly, through open fields and jungles with roots everywhere and ridgelines, past waterfalls, steep, forested cliffs, eucalyptus groves, and even some evergreen-looking trees.

In some areas, it wasn’t clear from above that there was even a trail there.

At one point, we were above the helicopters giving people aerial tours of the valleys below.

As we ran up, the mist moved in, making us glad we had gotten an early start to enjoy the views.  By the time we were back at the car, most everything above us was shrouded in fog, and the rest of the tourists had begun hiking up.  I wonder if they realized what they were missing.

We looked back down at Maui and the trail below, its sugarcane fields, beaches, and waves far below.

We hit the top and headed back down the slippery trail.  The way down took almost as long as the way up, and there were a few moments of mud skiing, but no complete falls.  I enviously looked on as a hiker made his way up with trekking poles.  Next time!

All in all, a perfect way to spend a winter morning.

Strava route here.

Spike’s 2012 in photos

I was inspired by Adele who was inspired by Jill to do a 2012 photos post.  When comparing my posts to theirs, please do remember I live in a swamp and not in the mountains!

January- I had some success at work, and celebrated the only way I know how, by buying a new bike!  Meet Pierre the Peugeot.

February- In February I ran the Gainesville Half marathon.  Here, you can see my pre-race tradition of laying out all of my clothes the night before.  You can also see the breakfast of champions, a snickers bar.

March- By the time March rolled around, I had been riding Pierre around a lot and had run a Half Marathon. In light of this I spent the month eating girl scout cookies.  Yum!

April-  After eating all of those cookies in March, I figured I had to get back in shape via marathon training.  This time I had an amazing 18 mile run while visiting with friends in New Orleans for the French Quarter music festival.

May- I took a trip out to San Diego to enjoy some coastal California fun, and to meet Barlo’s newest addition to the family, meet Aaron.

June- June was a bit of a strange month. Originally, I was supposed to run a marathon in mid-May, but had to cancel due to a bout of tonsillitis and a 103 degree fever.  So my back up marathon became the Rock n’ Roll Seattle marathon.  In early June, I got to go to Sydney, Australia for work and while there went on an incredibly beautiful 19 mile loop run, most of which was along the coast.

July- July involved rock climbing and sea kayaking in Thailand.  This is a photo from Railay Beach, a place I had always stared at photos of longingly in the climbing magazines.

August- I did what any reasonable person who lives 100 feet above sea level would do.   I went to Colorado and ran the Aspen Backcountry Marathon, where the lowest point (aka the starting line) was at 8000 feet in elevation.

September- In full disclosure, the August run was just to prove that I wouldn’t die at altitude and was all part of my training to pace Jeanni in the Wasatch 100.

October- I took a trip out to Colorado to visit Toberer and Adele, and got to enjoy the first snowfall of the season, trail runs, snowshoeing, and Golden City Brewery.

November- ran the Savannah Rock n’ Roll Half marathon with friends.

December- My second trip down under of 2012, this time to visit my sister who recently moved to Perth.  Here, I was able to dip my toes and run along the Southern Ocean, the 4th of the worlds 5 oceans I was able to run along this year including the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian Oceans.

Adele’s 2012 in photos

I’m inspired by Jill to do a 2012 in photos post- here’s a recap of my year.

January – a snowy run up to Bergen Peak.  Calling it a run is a bit of a stretch, since we were postholing at the top.

February – the front range got dumped on a few times last winter (while the mountains got next to no snow).  Chester swims through the powder at White Ranch.

March – the snow finally melted off.  We took advantage of it by going for a warm and sunny run through the Flatirons.

April – Desert RATS trail race in Fruita.  We ran along the Kokopelli trail with amazing views.

May – birthday run up Evergreen Mountain with Chester.  Perfect.

June – North Fork 50K.  Part of the run went through this burn zone.

July – Eccles Pass, Chester’s last run.  One last swim in an alpine lake.

August – Aspen Backcountry Marathon.  Single track through the trees.

September – Pawnee Pass area in Indian Peaks- my kind of fall colors.

October – This is the only photo I took all month.  It was taken from my office window, as I looked out to enjoy the color of the leaves.  I spent most of October indoors working on an NSF proposal.

November – Thanksgiving in Moab.  There were so many good photos from this trip, but this one sums it up- after trail running, mountain biking, and hiking, Boris is finally tired, and takes a nap by a cairn on our way to an unnamed arch (which we called Bonus Arch).

December – Our new puppy, Dessa, charges through the snow on Christmas.

25 Hours in Frog Hollow

A few days after Frog Hollow, I was finding myself searching for my next mountain bike race online.  After a summer of burning myself out on running, without losing the desire to get out on the trails as much as possible, I’ve re-discovered mountain biking.  When Jeanni asked if I wanted to join a 5-person team to do Frog Hollow sometime last spring, I hadn’t ridden my mountain bike a single time in over a year, but I figured why not?  It’s an excuse to take a trip to the desert, hang out with friends, maybe ride a bit, and if it didn’t go well, there would be four other people to pick up the slack.  The lap is 13 miles, and at worst, I could just do one.  In the last few months, I have gone on a few rides to prepare for this.  The most recent one involved a minor crash in which I landed 100% on my face.  Luckily, I wasn’t going very fast, but it did remind me of why helmets should be reasonably tight…

After 10 hours of driving, Sean and I made it to Hurricane, UT, around 4:30PM.  We planned to do a lap that evening to check it out, and somehow it ended up being 5:30 by the time we got started, so we were racing the sun to finish before dark.  No one really brought lights, but we did bring Boris, who was dying to get some running in, but needs to take breaks and drink water occasionally since he can’t coast like we can.  I have a bit of a history of pushing dogs too hard, so I figured I could take my chances with getting stuck out in the dark for the sake of not killing my dog.  Mark and Sean went ahead, and Jeanni stayed with me and Boris for the rest of the lap.  The trail begins with a climb up a fire road, which is pretty rolling and not too steep, and nontechnical.  Then, there’s a rolling, swoopy downhill section of non-technical singletrack, which is really fun.  The last two or so miles- which I grew to hate immensely- involve big, flat rocks sticking out of the trail to varying degrees, most of which was rideable for me but occasional sections were not.  Parts of this are also along a canyon edge, but not in a dangerous way.  I considered this the most technical section of the trail, and yet I somehow ended up riding it in the dark, without proper lights, twice.

When we got back to camp, it was fully dark out, the rest of the team had arrived, and the dome was being assembled.  The geodesic dome was originally built by Mark and Danny for Burning Man, but has since made an appearance at several of their camping trips.  I feel like this picture does not capture the true scale of the enormous dome.  It was an amazing and memorable basecamp, providing much-needed shade from the desert sun as well as provoking stares and envy from the other campers.

This bit of BLM land was transformed into a tent city of mountain bikers, with RVs, pop-ups, generators, and even a coffee cart.

I have to admit, I was a little jealous that my bike did not have a buffalo costume.

The race kicked off Saturday morning at 10AM, which immediately became 9AM as we set our clocks back to “Frog Time” to take advantage of daylight savings time a few hours early.  Brian took the first lap, and finished with the fast kids at 9:55.  Then he shared a story that I heard countless times over the course of the race: he was on track for a 50-minute lap, but then there was someone with a flat tire who brought no spares or tools, and stopped to help, left him some tools, etc., and thus lost a few minutes.  There were a lot of competitors who apparently thought they could save some weight by carrying nothing, and then would have to be bailed out by other racers.

Sean was up next, also bringing in a sub-hour lap, and then Jeanni with a fast 1:15.  I was fourth, with plenty of time for a full daylight lap.  I was a bit nervous to be out in a race, on singletrack, knowing that people were doing such fast laps and that my lap the night before had been somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 hours (including the water stops for Boris and riding in darkness, but still).  I did get passed a lot, that’s for sure, but the trail flowed much more smoothly the second time around.  I tried to ride more of the sections I had pushed, including a steep downhill which reminded me of coming over the corner on a steep ski run.  You know how sometimes you can’t see the slope below you until you actually drop in?  This section was like that, and as I pulled over to take a look, another racer shot by me yelling “You can dooooo iiiiiiiittt…” as he raced into the distance.  He was right.  There is something to be said for riding the same lap multiple times.  I finished this lap in 1:26, and Mark took off for his lap.

The nice thing about racing on a team of five is that there’s plenty of time in between laps to take the dogs for a nice off-leash walk through the desert, where they can chase each other around and find bones to chew on, making the many hours of driving worth it for everyone.  Boris and Tele did some zooming and then got to pass out in the dome again until it was time for their next walk.  By the end of the trip, they were both completely red-brown from running through the desert and lying in the dust.

The other nice thing about a team of five is that no one is pushing their limits in terms of endurance, and because of that, and the fact that the race goes through the night, many of the team members decided to start doing double laps.  Jeanni kicked it off with a double at sunset, and was even hardcore enough to ride her singlespeed for the first of the two laps!  She finished around 8, and I took off for my first night lap.  This was my first experience riding at night (on purpose, anyway), and I had borrowed a 900-lumen bike light as well as attaching my 150-lumen headlamp to my helmet as a backup.  There was definitely some trepidation on my part, but I took off and immediately felt great.  I started up the climb, noticed my chain making some awful noises, ignored it, and kept going.  Riding at night felt very zen to me, with the focus entirely on my light’s spot on the trail ahead, no distractions.  I felt very alone, despite the fact that there were probably still as many people out as there had been during the day.  I only saw them when they passed me occasionally, and otherwise it was all quiet.

The first major malfunction happened just a few miles in, during the fire road climb, when I dropped my chain.  Losing a chain is pretty routine for someone like me who is very neglectful of bike maintenance, so I pulled over to put it back on without too much concern.  It turned out that it was stuck in between the frame and crank arm, and I mean really stuck.  I yanked, jiggled, and flexed it, all to no avail.  During this time, every single person who passed asked if I needed help, but there was really nothing they could have done.  Finally, I managed to get the pedals to turn a bit, then more, and then I was slowly able to work it free.  The whole process took about 15 minutes, and probably involved shaving some metal off the frame to get it loose, but I was just happy to be able to ride again.  Soon after that, my front derailleur stopped working.  Luckily, this was near the end of the climb, so I could just put it in the bigger gear and forget about it.  I returned to cruising along, immersed in the darkness and stars and silence.

As soon as the trail started going down, another issue manifested itself: my bike light wasn’t on tight enough, and kept falling down.  It was held in place basically by a rubber band that wasn’t adjustable, so I had to reposition it every time I hit a bump, which nearly resulted in a few crashes from taking a hand off while simultaneously not being able to see where I was going.  During the night, though, there were some race volunteers out with bonfires, and I stopped at one for help, hoping for some duct tape to keep the light in place.  The volunteer took one look at my light, made some very inappropriate jokes about Chinese manufacturing, and stuck an empty Gu packet under the rubber band, which actually held it in place quite well.  Then, when I was about two miles from the finish- just as the rocky, technical section was beginning- my light went out.  I was glad to have a headlamp, which gave me enough light to walk the bike but not really to ride, and began the long walk to the end.  I did manage to slowly ride a few very smooth sections, but since I could never really see what was coming, I would jump off the bike at the slightest hint of a rock and walk again.  The end finally came, and Mark started the next lap while I went back to camp for a hot bowl of chili and bed.

Despite all the gear issues, the night lap was a blast.  Being out in the desert at night, alone, on a bike, was exactly what I needed.  It reminded me of college trips to Joshua Tree, where we would drive out at midnight on a Friday night, snag a campsite, and go scramble around on the rocks in the dark.  Whenever I arrived at JTree, I was immediately in my happy place- away from the city and the stresses of work, and in the desert, at peace.  That was always what felt real to me, and the human constructs of everyday life were what felt unnatural and confining.  This is what I seek out when I go into the wilderness.  I don’t think I had realized until then that the Frog Hollow base camp, for all its comforts that I was appreciative of, felt too much like civilization, with its crowds of people, generators, and RVs.  The night lap was the real vacation from civilization.

Because the rest of the team was planning on riding double laps through the night, I got a full night’s sleep and rose at sunrise for my morning lap.  Jeanni had taken the sunrise lap, and on her return at 8, I still had plenty of time to ride a lap and get Mark out the door before the 10AM cutoff for a final lap for the team.  After a bit of oil to my chain and derailleurs, my bike worked flawlessly for the final lap, and my legs, though a little tired, worked pretty well too.  It was cool to re-visit the same loop again, in the daylight, and once again ride more of it than any of the laps before.  I rode for a while with a guy who was on lap #21 for him, a solo rider, and was in 2nd place.  He had not taken any breaks to sleep or eat much, but was determined to catch the guy ahead of him, also on lap #21.  I hope he did!  I finished by 9:30, and enjoyed some delicious eggs that had been made for breakfast while Mark rode the final lap.  Sometimes, civilization is good.  Awesome teammates are always good.

We checked our stats at the end- we came in 9th out of 10 teams- so, not last!  More importantly, the 50 miles I rode over the weekend probably doubled the number of miles I’d put on my bike in the last year, and got me excited to do some longer rides (just in time for the snow…).  Then we packed up, and Sean, Boris, and I headed out for the real endurance event that was the 10-hour drive home.

Wasatch Part 1. In Search of a Belt Buckle.

I have to start this post by saying a huge Thank You! to everyone; not just my crew, but especially my crew, because without you, maybe I could have done it, but it would have been very disorganized and painful.  Also a huge thank you to so many friends and family who have always supported crazy dreams.  Because for me, this, these runs in the mountains and years ago, my 4:30 am cornfield runs in Champaign, became a lifestyle, a means of sanity, a way to see the world and something through which I have not only found myself, but met so many other wonderful people in my life.  So thank you, I finally have my belt buckle!

Grab a coffee or a beer, this one is long!

… It was approximately 5 am on Saturday morning, meaning I was 24 hours in to the race.  24 hours after I left East Mountain Wilderness Park in Kaysville staring up at the moon each time I had a second to glimpse away from the path in front of me.

“I need to get out of here.” I said, looking at my watch.  ”I need to get moving.”

All of a sudden reality had set in, I had been in Brighton Lodge for 35 minutes, was in the middle of minor foot surgery and surrounded by my crew amidst noise and chaos that was drowning even my own thoughts. I became acutely aware that I shivering and approaching what they call “The Graveyard”.  If I sat there for too much longer, I might actually crash.  I was just over 75 miles in to my first 100 miler and all I had left to  do was get out the door.  If I could get out that door and 3 miles over the pass, then I could finish.

The next 15 minutes were a time period that seemed like forever, I couldn’t get out fast enough.  Brian finished re-taping my feet, we did a dance with the idea of taping my IT Bands and eventually dropped it.  I kept trying to finish choking down my ghetto coffee-mocha mix that B picked up on his way and sipping broth and ginger ale; the fact that I couldn’t really take in GU or sugar anymore was looming over my head.  I probably didn’t have enough calories, but at the risk of losing it, I couldn’t shove anything else in me.

Pacer Exchange: Trading Jenny for Eric

Finally I managed to get myself back together, trade Jenny in for Eric and get out that door.  At 5:15 am, Eric and I slowly walked up the hill towards Point Supreme.  Filled with a mix of being over heated, relieved, and nauseous, I kept my eyes on the dark trail and headed up.  Bit by bit, we very slowly picked off people who were clearly in worse shape than I, and slowly headed up.  Probably an hour later, I saw my second sunrise as we got up to Catherine’s pass.

Backing up to how I got to Brighton over 2 hours later than anticipated… Wasatch wasn’t going exactly as planned, but it’s 100 miles, there is plenty of time for things to go askew, I suppose it could have been worse.

Headlamp Trails: Start of the 2012 Wasatch 100 (Photo credit: Lori Burlison)

I fell in line with Mike and Adele by missing the official start of the race while in the porta potty.  No worries to be had, if a minute or two was going to ruin my race, then I would probably be in bigger trouble anyway.  The first 13 miles were flawless, smooth easy pace, occasionally fighting to get to a place in line that was “my pace”, but I had it pretty much sorted out by the time we jumped on to the Great Western Trail.  If you don’t know anything about the Wasatch course, or even if you do, now would be a great time to watch the flyover.  I didn’t take any pictures of the course, and I am more than certain that I’ll glaze over all the climbs as 1000 foot rollers, they flyover will give you a much better perspective.  From mile 4 to 10, it’s pretty much up, up, up and a really good time to take it easy.  Once up top, the sun was up and I fought my way over some of those big rollers on the ridge line.  I felt pretty great rolling into Grobben’s Corner around mile 13.6. From there we had 4 miles of fairly gentle downhill on fire road.  This part should have been easy.  This is where everything started to go awry.  I ran, fairly easy, and within a mile my right IT Band locked up; within another mile my left one went too.  The remainder of the way down into the Francis aid station I would run and stop and stretch with a little relief.

I could continue on and describe how the situation got progressively worse between there and Big Mountain, but the truth is that I was able to move at a pretty respectable pace until then.  While some of the nasty steep descents made me very conscious of a well known truth (once you wake up your IT Bands, the only place you can go is damage control), there was a large amount of beautiful mellow trail that I could run reasonably well on.  At that point the game became a balance of not blowing up but moving as fast as I could to minimize exposure; it was hot and things were certainly going to blow up later, might as well get as far as I could as fast as I could while I still could.  In the meantime, I let myself get lost in this section.  I took no photos of my own and the space out there was this personal section of joy.  I never really questioned my ability to get through it, I was simply just going to make it to Big Mountain and then everything was really going to start, so I just enjoyed the views, the emptiness and the open air.  Some photos of the course can be found here or here for perspective, but in short that section is a fantastic mix of alpine, aspen, scrub oak and high desert in what is probably a least traveled area of the Wasatch Front.    Every time I set foot out there, I continue to be amazed at what is just outside my back door.  I have a list of all these places I need to go to, just in a 6-8 hour radius from Salt Lake, but the list within the 1 hour local radius has grown immensely throughout the year I’ve lived here.

Entering Big Mountain Aid Station

A little bit more than 10 hours into the race, I made it into Big Mountain.  Notice that I’m actually running at this point… yeah that’s the last time you’ll see me running (with two small exceptions) for 3 weeks.  This was the first time I saw my crew and they managed to feed me Jimmy Johns and give me a sponge bath and sunscreen application all at once.  Future crews take note, they’ve set the bar pretty high!

mmmmm…. Jimmy John’s (that was an excellent plan, btw)

A 15 minute stop there was well worth it, and I was glad to see my friends and see that they were, at the very least, pretending that they were enjoying themselves.  Lathered up in sunscreen, I headed out into what should have been a quick 13 miles with a net downhill but what turned out to be the most demoralizing section of the course.  If there was any hope of me running the rest of that course, the ridiculously steep and loose drop off Bald Mountain tore it to shreds, for the first time in the race I actually questioned at what point my knees would just lock up and stop moving.

Out of Alexander Ridge, as I phrased it “the Never Ending Road to Hell” we followed two-track next to an oil pipeline going the wrong direction for way too long.

Fortunately the Never Ending Road to Hell actually did end, and fed into some fun and pretty twisty trails through Aspens and over some creek beds and I had a brief resurgence in running before reaching Mile 53, my crew, my pacer and some warm clothes at Lambs Canyon.

After posing for an obligatory facebook photo…

Grabbing food and warm clothes…Along with my super pacer!

We were off!

The section from Lambs to Brighton was the darkest of the race, literally and figuratively.  It’s post sunset, you’re tired, things are starting to fail, you’re cold and you start to think.  Getting up and over the pass into Millcreek was work, nothing felt good, I was naseous, I was tired, the uphill hurt, the downhill hurt… you get the picture.  3 hours later we made it to the Big Water trail head and I suddenly understood what the death zone of a hundred mile race looked like.  It was very cold and it sucked you in with the giant propane heaters. I looked around, drinking my hot chocolate and all of a sudden there were runners on cots with multiple sleeping bags over them, their sullen pacers gently telling them to get moving.  I looked at my watch, looked at Jenny and set a time limit.  I was not going to end there.  This next section all the way to the road into Brighton is by far some of my favorite trail in the Wasatch, so I did enjoy it.  The moon put on a nice show for us, and there’s something great about being on the Crest in the middle of the night.  The ups were hurting my left IT Band, the downs hurting my right… I didn’t have a win out of this one and seriously questioned my ability to make it.  I could make it to Brighton, the question was, would the descent kill me in the process?  Jenny kept me moving, often times telling me I was almost to the top of a hill when I wasn’t (and my brain kept muttering ‘um, yeah, nope’).  Thankfully Jenny and my knees proved my brain wrong and I was able to walk, at a decent clip all the way down to the Lodge.

Second Sunrise – I am on my way

Back to that sunrise! We made it over the pass and boy, they are right, when the sun comes back up, there’s a whole new level of energy!  Once we dropped over that pass, I knew I was going to finish.  It was easier to finish the last 20 miles, steep drops and all than to climb back up out of Ant Knolls to Brighton.

Dropping Down Dry Fork into Ant Knolls AS

The morning alpenglow beautifully bounced off the canyon walls as we descended into Ant Knolls aid station.  The volunteers there were equally as awesome as all the ones prior, but they will hold a special place in my heart because they had pancakes and hashbrowns and coffee and camp fire.  Fantastic!  I ran into my friend Mike who regaled me with his story of somehow getting vomit in his eyes?!  That added for a nice distraction as we left and headed up one of the last (tough) climbs of the course.  (*In all honesty I like these better than the “little” stupid ones that never seem to go away).

Ridge Trail No. 157

Out from there, we gained more amazing trail, the Ridge Trail No. 157, which true to it’s name, bounces on and off the ridge, frolics through pine trees and aspens and gives amazing views of the Timp.  It was slow going for a run, but with Eric’s help and great attitude, I kept my sprits up and we made good time power hiking.  I’d try and run occasionally, only to take 4 or 5 steps and realize, that yes, it still hurt like hell.  By the time we got through Mill Peak and the nice trail, it was getting hot and I was ready to be DONE.

The Plunge… or something like that: the nasty loose steep stuff on the way to Pot Bottom

The really obnoxious section into Pot Bottom would be really pretty if it weren’t for the ridiculous pattern of nasty descending and steep climbing thrown in.  Each time I’ve done this, the section tries my patience and the race was no exception.  After telling Eric that we were really at the last part at least three times, we finally reached the next nasty drop into the aid station.  Well 7 miles to go!  That is 1.5ish miles of climbing followed by way too long of dropping down off-camber two track with giant loose rocks of “I can see the finish, now get me off this mountain!”

A bit of pleasant distraction on the way down

The thought of taking my shoes off and being in the shade became a very powerful motivator to move as fast as I could.  2 hour of that nonsense later, we dropped on to the road in Midway and shortly after, into the finish!

Wasatch 100 – 2012 Finisher 33:23:06

I think that was the most anti-climatic finish ever.  All of a sudden you go from wanting to be done, to being done.  No bells and whistles, friends and family just walking over to say congrats and then… then you don’t know what to do with yourself.  The thing I wanted most when I finished (no, it was not beer, or even coffee) was to take my shoes off.  That’s all I knew how to do.  I didn’t know how to jump up and down and cheer, or even what to do next, what to say, or what to think.  But I did know that my shoes needed to be off.  I think that’s where I left off, why it was so hard to think about the race, because I left my shoes off but didn’t know where the rest of it was and I didn’t start to figure it out until I put them back on last weekend.

Finish with Wonderful Friends and Family

In the post-race aftermath, I am running again.  The ankle, which proved to be the source of the IT Band madness, is better, the IT Bands themselves, seem better and the withdrawal is going away.  I’m still so overwhelmed at the wonderful support I got from friends, family, co-workers, everyone really, so thank you. Everyone except my dog, who is just now accepting me back into her life because we’re starting to run together again.  Before the race started I was telling everyone that I didn’t need to do a 100 again; I’m wondering how many bets were placed against that because everyone seemed to laugh “yeah, right.”  But I’ll stand by it.  Maybe later on, and if I did do it, I’d love to do Wasatch again, but right now I want to have my weekends back, go on runs with my puppy dog and pace Jenny when she does her first 100.  I’m guessing this will prove to be like Boston, I got my jacket there and don’t really need to go back; now I have my belt buckle and can put that one to bed. Although, despite my troubles on the course, I never puked, I never fell asleep… anywhere, I never had hallucinations, peed blood, or had any of the other woes that I think Adele assumed is par for the course in any ultra, so maybe I got gipped and need to do another (someday).  :-)