Leadville

Ugh. With your bearded shaggy haired ultra runners. So cliche.

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Hardrock 34:42

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It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel...
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Second Hardrock, Same as the First.

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  Just a little bit hotter and a little bit worse! I finished my second Hardrock last week. It was a fun experience. I ran 1 hour 47 minutes slower than my 2017 time (in the same counter-clockwise direction) but it was a million degrees hotter, the course is two miles longer, and I took an additional 1.6-mile wrong turn. I placed essentially the same: 35th this time, 36th last time. I feel like I normally finish as the median runner, but when the going gets  very  tough, I do relatively better. I think the easiest explanation might just be that elevation wrecks some really good runners and I barely notice it up to 13,000 feet. Thanks, genetics. Or, when a race is high enough and steep enough that almost everyone is hiking, I'm a relatively fast hiker with better endurance. Regardless, it worked out reasonably well for me again. Training I've been telling myself since last October that I should hire a coach to write a training plan for me, or at least write a plan myself. ...
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The Hayduke Trail: Summary

I finished thru-hiking the Hayduke Trail two weeks ago. It was an incredible experience. Overview:   The Hayduke Trail isn’t a trail, it’s a route. It’s a mix of trailless canyons, washes, gullies, jeep roads, some trail, and a tiny amount of pavement. The route connects many of the highlights of the Colorado Plateau in Utah and Arizona. It takes you through Arches, Bears Ears, Canyonlands, Glen Canyon NRA, Capitol Reef, Grand Staircase, Bryce, Grand Canyon, and Zion. The route is approximately 800 miles long, and it took us 5.5 weeks, September 8 to October 15. We hiked westbound from Moab to Zion, and everything written here is from that perspective. I would rate this hike as very difficult, somewhat on par on a per-mile basis with my previous trips to Alaska or the Sierra High Route. The route includes significant class 3 scrambling. The weather was very hot, resupplies are far apart, and there was not a lot of water, so we had to carry heavy packs, and doing this scrambling w...
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