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Century, Ring, Pain

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I've had increasing pain in my foot pretty much this entire year. Have I mentioned this already? Literally on January 1, I ran past an a lady with two off leash dogs that made Margo go nuts. I caught my toe and tripped (leash your dogs, lady). I think the plantar flexion caused some nerve pain, and then maybe I altered my gait a little. But who really knows, because I changed more than one variable at a time and I only have the one universe and no ability to randomize, so the causal evidence is weak. I also started wearing nearly exclusively next generation foam shoes. I also hammered the last four paved miles of hone Quarry 40-miler in March. I also got a year older and kept trying to run 2,500-3,000 miles per year. So who knows what caused it. But even before Wyoming Range 100, I was definitely not planning on running much after the race. Podiatry and PT appointments and MRIs came and went and nothing worse nor more clear than "maybe some edema" [i.e. a bone bruise] and...
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Wyoming Range 100

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Back in August I ran Wyoming Range 100. Here's the very late report.  I ran Hardrock in July. I did very little for a week but then got back into it. The second weekend I ran Catherine's Fatass 50K. It's fairly runnable as far as the Massanuttens go, so I didn't hate life, but I wasn't particularly fast--it took me nearly 8 hours. My friend Heather told the RD that I enjoy being teased about being slow, so there was a lot of that.I found a bunch of chanterelle mushrooms, which were delicious later. Another halfway decent week of training and then tapering, and then in the first week of August Wyoming Range was upon us. I flew to Salt Lake on Wednesday after work. My flight was delayed in departure by four hours but the departure gate was nice enough to not have hostile architecture (seats without armrests) so I laid down and slept. I didn't get to my friends until 1AM, but having slept at the airport it didn't feel awful. I got a ride with a fellow runner fr...
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My Third Hardrock

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I ran my third Hardrock in July. Here's the report. Before   I flew from Fairbanks, Alaska to Durango, Colorado a week before the race. I got my rental car and drove to Silverton. The next day (July 4) I picked up my race gear that I mailed to my friends' house in Ouray. I ran the Telluride to Kroger's Pass section of trail. The climb went well, but on the way down my quads started to burn so I deliberately took it easy. I spent the evening with friends in Norwood, CO. I drove over to Lake City and did the Sherman climb the next day. My legs were unfortunately quite toasted from the Kroger's climb the day before, but of course I could still hike.  The next day the air quality was terrible. Did I mention there was a fire? The Gold Mountain Fire started under 1/4 from my friends' house in Ouray about a week prior. Thankfully that's on the east side of town and prevailing winds kept pushing it east away from town. Of course that means it took a lot of wilderness wi...
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Alaska 2026

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It's raining out, I'm resting my foot, and I'm tired of trying and failing to fix my refrigerator. So I'm going to write blog posts.  You'll probably remember that I went to Alaska in June. I already wrote summary thoughts (which, thank you, dear reader, engendered multiple comments) but I'll put everything here and re-organize it as well. I flew to Fairbanks and took the Dalton Highway Express (DHE) shuttle ~12 hours north to the Brooks Range. It's not as bad as it sounds. Yes, the road was bumpy, but every single other passenger was a fellow adventurer, and the drivers had interesting Alaska experience, so I enjoyed it. (I do wish one guy had shut up for a single moment, but it was still fun despite his non-stop inane comments.)  I backpacked about 80 miles in 6 full days, went over five 5,000' passes (one of which was over 6,000), plus a couple other lower ones. I didn't see much wildlife, except for this cute fox after I was done hiking and waiti...
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