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Cold Winter

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Running has been hard this winter. The snowcrete storm at the end of January was followed by nine days with temps not getting above freezing. Trail running required traction devices so I got my screw shoes out of the closet, and eagerly scanned social media and run-group e-mails as we reported on trail conditions and road plowing updates. It reduced my mileage by maybe 20 miles one week and 10 another. Not that bad, but it took a lot of mental energy and reduced quality runs waiting to pass people on single-shovel width sidewalk paths and constantly scanning for ice. I had plans to go run The Wild Oak Trail (Cold TWOT) President's Day Weekend, but the event was cancelled due to snow conditions. I also was stressed by almost getting off the wait list at the last minute for an event in Tennessee which I hadn't planned for. At the last minute since both of those were out, I decided to keep the rental car and dogsitter I had arranged and go to Shenandoah National Park and work on m...
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2025 Year of Running in Review

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How'd it go in 2025, running-wise?  Volume   As of noon on December 31st, I have run 3,061 miles. That's the most I've ever run in a year, so I feel pretty good about that. I got less vert than I did last year, and have still never cracked 450,000 feet in a year. You can see data from most of the past decade below. (2018 was low thanks to a long summer hike and 2020 had the pandemic, injury, and a long hike.)    2025 Races At the end of 2024 I only planned out   the first half of 2025: my buildup to Hardrock. Not much else in life went according to plan, but the races did: March 8: Seneca Creek Greenway 50K  March 15: Elizabeth Furnace 50K  April 26: Lake Sonoma 50 Miler May 9-10: Hellbender 100 Miler July 11-12: Hardrock 100 Miler   I wasn't quite as fast at Hardrock as I was eight years ago, but I still had a good day.    In the second half of the year I ended up running two more races, where I slightly improved my times over previous ...
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California International Marathon

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Pre-Race My final race of the year was Sacramento's California International Marathon. I'd run it twice before: once in grad school on little training when I had a goal to run a marathon every year but didn't much care about my time (I've since upped that goal to a 100-miler), and in 2021 when I trained for it fairly seriously and set a PR of 2:59:18.  The West has two types of marathon courses: hilly ones and downhill ones, and then there's CIM, which is mostly flat. There's slight rollers through 15 miles or so, but the biggest is probably 30-40 feet at most, so you can still run any mile with a hill at roughly the same pace, and there's a net drop of ~350 feet.  Anyway, it's a really good course to run fast: so much so that I believe it produces the largest number of Olympic Trials Qualifiers and Boston Qualifiers of any race. That means the race is relatively crowded at the front. Here are the percentages of finishers who ran in under 3:00:00 at a fe...
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Location: Washington, DC, USA
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IMTUF 10 Years Later

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I've long said I don't like repeating races (Western States and Hardrock aside) but I decided to do IMTUF again this year. I ran it in 2015 as part of my 400-mile Onion Slam [ race report ].  2015 was a fire year, so the course was significantly different than the standard at the time. The start was further north at Bugdorf Hot Springs, but the new "Super Course" starts at the sound end at Jug Mountain Ranch, which makes staying at a Bay Area friend's cabin nearby much easier, and made it nice for Amy to come along and make a weekend of it, and meant I'd only seen something like 40% of the course before.  2015 v 2025 course   I trained pretty well, maxing out at two 90+ mile weeks (90+ running, 120+ if you include biking) three and four weeks before the race. I tapered and was well-rested for the race. My goal was 30 hours, compared to 31:46 in 2015. To my pleasant surprise, my friend Zak from Washington state called me the day before the race and let me know ...
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Summer is Over

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I just returned from an overnight trip to Shenandoah National Park. I'm slowly working away at all 500 miles of official trail in the park, as I did in Joshua Tree. It's something to do, I guess. The dogs are allowed to come with me, so that's nice, but I don't think George's hips are up for it. Long Green Tunnel, just beginning to turn red Margo happy at the one sunny spot The trip to the Boundary Waters was fun. I prefer mountains, but a canoe is a nice change of pace, and I could definitely see Amy and I spending a month or more in a boat sometime if the opportunity ever arises. It would have been better if I were more confident in my chanterelle identification, since they were all over the place.  Kevlar canoes make this way easier than I remembered Caught & Released The trip to Western States and Hardrock back in June/July was obviously the highlight of my summer, but I just finished my third and likely final 100-miler of the year last weekend: IMTUF. I fir...
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BWCA Day 5: Exit

We woke up at 6:00 and started packing in a light rain. I made quick oatmeal and coffee and we were off by 7:30 or so. We were half a mile from the big portage from Vera to Ensign. We went straight in and made quick work of it. Something about Ensign Lake was different. I cast a line in, MFS said maybe let it get deep and just trawl it behind the boat, and pretty much instantly I had a Walleye in the boat. It was surely the biggest fish I ever caught, though maybe I caught a big rainbow trout on the Madison in Montana when I spent a day at a friend's cabin outside Yellowstone. To Joe's dismay, I threw the fish back and it eagerly swam away. We had plenty of food left and were only a few miles from our exit pickup. A few minutes later I cast again, or rather, tried to cast and accidentally plopped the line in the water a foot from the canoe. Oh well, let it play out. Then a few seconds later a northern pike was in the boat. I squeezed it to keep it still and it barfed up its lun...
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BWCAW Night 4: Vera Lake

Woke up early and got out of camp around 7:45 when the water was still glassy. Did a series of several short portages, then one half-miler (180 or 200 "rods" an absurd unit of measure) that took the guys a while. We moved on to Vera Lake and took a break for a late lunch before attempting the next long portage, except that the clouds were really building and looked bad. So we stayed out and withing minutes it was pouring rain. I got my tent up east, then got wet trying to set up the group tarp. Three of us sat under it counting the sight/sound gap for the lightning. Mostly 4-6 seconds, a couple less than one, not that fun. The rain kept coming, so I eventually went to bed early with nothing but hot chocolate for dinner. Too wet, not worth it. The storm put on a good show, and I read a few more chapters of Lonesome Dove.
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