Adventures in Onionism

I'll recap 2021 soon, but what should I run in 2022? As per usual, I'd like to run about one race a month, but I don't mind stringing together back to back weekends if it makes for a nice vacation. I didn't get into States or Hardrock, and I don't have major hiking plans, since my usual hiking partner did get in.  For the first time I'm thinking about a European race. Likely at most one trip to conserve PTO for a trip to Alaska sometime in the future, but I put a bunch of the UTMB World Series races on the list--they look gorgeous. I'm assuming I'll be based in Southern California, but that depends on a lot. Anybody have any thoughts? Bold =already signed up, or just mandatory; *=Western States qualifier Jan 23: Calico 30K/50K (about as local as a race gets)  Feb 5: Sean O’Brien 100K* Feb 13: Black Canyon 100K* March: Barkley (waitlisted, very unlikely--2023 or 2024 more likely) April 3: Cherry Blossom 10 Miler (Great time to be in Washington...

For those of you who subscribe to my blog via e-mail, thank you. Also, I was using Feedburner to send those e-mails, but Google stopped supporting that feature this summer, so I switched to Mailchimp. In case I messed something up in the transition, my three recent posts are about my July adventures , the Kodiak 100K , and the Mogollon Monster 100 .  If you aren't getting e-mails and you want to, you can subscribe under the menu on the left side. Here's a big Joshua Tree for your troubles  

I finally got revenge against the Mogollon Monster.  I tried running the race in 2014, but it was cancelled mid-race due to rain. If you prefer I suppose you could call it a thunderstorm, but I'll stick with "rain." You can see my report from that year here . The race is under new management, and both the management and the aid station tents seem much sturdier, so I was confident the race would go off without a hitch. Gf and the dogs and I drove to Pine, AZ the day before the race. We were mostly on HWY 60, which I don't think I'd seen before, and was gorgeous though, duh, really hot. Saguaros everywhere. I bought a hat. As is my wont, we camped near the start on any old dirt road pullout we could find. There was a little more traffic than ideal because hunting season just started (elk archery, I think). Plus we couldn't get very far off the pavement because damn, when a Prius says it has 5 inches of clearance, it's 5 inches tops . We made it through the s...

I ran the Kodiak 100K in Big Bear, California in August. Prior to moving to the desert, the Kodiak ultras were not really on my radar. I'd heard of them but never had interest in running them. I can't remember why, but whatever reason I might have had (the name makes you think Alaska, not SoCal?) was dumb, because the race is great. This year in ultra distances they offered 100K and 100 miles. I wanted to save a bit of my legs for the Mogollon Monster in September, so I wasn't interested in the full 100 miles. I was excited to sign up for what is basically the "local" race, or the closest ultra to my house of which I'm aware, in mountains that I can see from my front yard. I also signed up with my one local running buddy, though he eventually did not feel confidently prepared and withdrew, and Nano actually signed up last minute as a final adventure before he went off to the Himalaya. The pre-race set up was fine, though I would have preferred if there were ra...

Summer's over. I had some good adventures and ran a few races. In July we did a couple east Sierra trips, I ran Sespe Creek through the condor sanctuary in the Sespe Wilderness, and I did not make it up to Tahoe for a group Desolation adventure because of the Tamarack fire. In August I ran the Kodiak 100K in Big Bear, and in September I ran Mogollon Monster 100. I'll describe the July trips here and the races in other posts. For July 4 did a short trip to the Horseshoe Meadows area outside Lone Pine. Margo cut herself in the yard somehow, so she was hiking in her cone of shame. It was a fun low-key trip but it ended poorly when I contracted food poisoning on the drive home and ended up in the hospital that night. That was miserable, and the billing has been annoying, but I think my insurance will end up covering everything. Chicken Spring Lake Sespe Creek   I went to Z's house in Ventura to hike Sespe Creek through the condor sanctuary. The sanctuary was created in 1947, an...

I ran the Black Hills 100 last weekend. It was fine. Nothing extraordinary, just fine. I've liked the Black Hills ever since my sister and I drove across the country after I graduated high school. Badlands National Park is quite impressive if you ever get a chance. Mt. Rushmore and Devil's Tower, sure, I guess, go once in your life if you want. It's a Friday-Saturday race, so I flew to Rapid City, SD on Thursday. My buddy DYK picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at the Sturgis Downtown RV Park that served as race check in, and was walking distance from the start at the Sturgis city park. DYK offered to let me stay with him and M at their AirBnB, but I declined, then felt stupid about it lying in my tent in the rain, but then met some other nice camping runners so it all worked out. I had a little time to walk around Sturgis, and I wasn't blown away. The hills in the distance are pretty, but I mistook the highway through town for Main Street, which is one block...

SKIP this paragraph if you understand the Backyard/last-person-standing race format: Start. Run a 4.16 mile loop in under one hour. Stop and wait for the clock to strike the next hour. Repeat the loop. If at any time you fail to complete the loop in under one hour, or fail to start the loop at precisely the top of the hour, you're out. Repeat until only one person completes the loop. This could take days. No, you can't bank time. That's why I said "Stop and wait." Read the BBC article if you're not following.  -- Well, it's definitely not me; I was not the last person standing. By the time the race ended, I had slept for the better part of 20 hours. The only race I've ever won was the 2015 4 MPH Challenge, also a last person standing event, so I went in thinking I could do well. I'd wanted to try another for a while, and a DC race organizer/runner friend told me about the Capital Backyard in 2019 before it even officially became a thing. I signed...

 I'm writing this from my new home in Yucca Valley, California a few days after running Canyons 100K in Auburn.  Whatyousay? (Aside, why am I blogging? No one does that anymore. What's more, Google's Feedburner blog e-mail subscriptions are going away, so I'll have to port my subscribers to some other service like MailChimp.) Anyway, yes, I'm back in California, I finally managed to buy a house here, and I ran my first race in a long time. I injured my hamstring January 2020, and it didn't fully heal until after my Hayduke hike in September. The only ultra I ran in 2020 was the virtual Potomac Heritage 50K in November, which took me over 9 hours. I started and finished at my house, and I had to call Gf from the far end and beg her to take a cab across town to hide some water and a flashlight for me so that I could actually finish. "I know you haven't been in a car in months, but this is my only ultra this whole year and I really don't want to DNF......