Adventures in Onionism

Chicago Marathon When I was planning my races for the year, I thought that after my June and July 100s, I'd switch over to speed training, and try to set a PR at the Chicago Marathon in October. It was an excuse to visit my good friend in Chicago, it's a flat and fast course, and after Boston would be the only one of the World Majors that I've run.  I needed some time in late July and early August to recover from Crazy Mountain 100, so that took a couple weeks. Then I traveled to DC and back to Yucca Valley, and tried to do some mile repeats there, but I also just wanted to go run trails in Joshua Tree National Park as part of my project to run every maintained trail in the park. Then finally in September when Amy and I had a weekend with no travel where I could train, I didn't want to spend my birthday weekend running a flat or paved trail, so of course we went camping in the Sierra and I did a long mountain run instead. It wasn't optimal training to try and run a ...

I ran the Crazy Mountain 100 in Montana at the end of July. The course was absolutely gorgeous and the race organization, swag, and vibes were all excellent. I performed OK but not great: my hamstring was weak but not outright painful for a portion of the race but eventually cooperated. I spent a nice couple days in Montana after the race. I flew to Bozeman Thursday the 27th and picked up my rental car. Oddly the cheapest car available was an F-150, which I was happy to rent so I could easily get to a backcountry aid station, even though I think modern big American trucks are stupid stupid stupid (evil). My trip reinforced my beliefs since the truck was a gas hog, was a pain in the ass to park, and seeing over the high hood is indeed child-killingly difficult . I also turned out not to need to get to any backcountry aid stations because my pacer broke his elbow a week before the race and had to drop, so there was no need to drive on rough roads, and a Prius would have been just fine. O...

I ran the 50th Western States Endurance Run June 24-25 in a disappointing 28:54.  I mean, 50 years ago a guy ran a horse race, and 47 times since then a footrace of similar distance has been held. (There was one fire cancellation and one COVID cancellation.) So it's kind of the 48th running in the 50th year, but whatever. By disappointing I mean it took me longer than 24 hours, and it took me longer than the 25:30 it took me when I did it 10 years ago. (And by 10 years ago I mean 10 years, not eight, though I believe I applied eight times in those 10 years, having not bothered to apply in 2014, and if I remember correctly, COVID meant they rolled over 2020 without a new lottery.) I trained hard and consistently from early March through May 20, going as far as hiring an online coach. That seemed to work well, until it didn't. I hurt my hamstring running the Silver State 50K (more on that in my previous post ) and babied my hamstring for the final five weeks prior to Western Stat...

After the Black Canyon Double (still no swag!) I started training fairly consistently. I've done six consecutive weeks of 50+ miles of running, and 10 total with at least 45+. I hired a coach for the first time ever. This week, with only 30 miles of running, is my lowest since the first week of March, when everything was covered in snow. Everything is good, except for the fact that I'm a little bit injured. In more detail, I decided to hire a coach because I really want to break 24 hours at Western States. I delayed more than I should have, but finally pulled the trigger after listening to a podcast with Jeff Browning, who is kicking butt in his early 50's and sounded like a great coach. I was a little leery of his anti-carbohydrate leanings, and it seemed a bit expensive, so I looked around a little more and decided to go with Gary Robbins' Ridgeline Athletics, since I met Gary at Barkley and he seemed like a great guy, and I'd had the idea last year around Tor tha...

As I mentioned in my previous post, I ran the 2023 Black Canyon 100K/60K double in February. Aravaipa doesn't have a webpage posting results for other doublers, so I figured I'd do the math myself. I copied the Ultrasignup results into spreadsheets and compared them. To my surprise, only 9 people finished the double (compared to 682 100K finishers and 323 60K finishers). I didn't check if anyone attempted to double but DNF'd both or either. Here are the combined results in order of total finish time:   Ignore the 01jan1960 part--that's just an artifact of the programming. Ratio is the sum of the two Ultrasignup ranks (the winner's time divided by your time), and place is the sum of placements. I was 7th place out of 9. Nothing spectacularly interesting seems to have happened across the two days, other than the second place guy day one finishing fourth day two and thus third overall. Basically I'd say people were consistent. That goes to a point I was thinkin...

It's been almost two months now, but I stopped in Phoenix on my way home from DC in February and ran the Black Canyon double. The Black Canyon 100K has become a competitive early season race (it's a Western States Golden Ticket race). It's a net downhill course, and it seems like a relatively reliable way to get decent race weather in February, since it's at lower elevations not too far north of Phoenix. I flew to Phoenix after work on Friday the 17th. I am a cheapskate and airfare and race entry fees were already expensive enough, so I rented a Prius so I could crash in the back and not pay for a hotel room. Due to the battery configuration in a Prius, the rear seats fold down perfectly flat. This seems more common in SUVs, but SUVs are bad . For fellow hikers who don't want to kill pedestrians, here's a good discussion of other vehicles that may fit the fold-flat-seats bill. You can use Turo to rent the exact model of car you're looking for. Another perk ...

I'll get around to my Black Canyons 100K/60K Double race report eventually. Instead, here are some reviews. I'm going to go running and check out the flow on the Truckee River. Anybody want to packraft it with me? Books: Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard: A- Millard writes popular history books about lesser-known aspects of popular figures--Teddy Roosevelt's post-presidency trip down the second-longest river in the Amazon, Winston Churchill's early life in the Boer War, or this: the brief presidency and assassination of James Garfield. Either Garfield was a badass anti-racism anti-corruption math-whiz devoted scholar surprise battle-winning Union general philosopher-king who had the Republican nomination forced upon him, or the book is a bit hagiographic. Either way, the book is an inspiring read/listen. A bit of post-listen googling seems to indicate he mostly was an awesome guy. The downside to the book is vivid description of the two months of Garfield's s...

Strava says I ran 1,934 miles in 2022. I wanted to step down a bit from my 2,650 miles in 2021, but not by that much. I got about the same vert that I usually get (300K) without really focusing on it. I was pretty happy with my running for most of the year. I set a marathon PR in December 2021 but as usual I did not really convert that into trail speed. I ran these races in 2022: January: Calico 50K February: Sean O'Brien 100K February: Yucca Valley 5K April: Cherry Blossom 10-miler  June: San Diego 100-miler July: Standhope 100-miler September: Tor des Geants 220-miler November: Mountain Masochist 50K (50-miler DNF) I did fine but not great at June and July 100's, and then I did quite well at Tor. It was an amazing experience, but it took a lot out of me. So much so that I didn't run for a solid month, and then when I tried to start up again a few weeks after that, I had to downgrade from the 50-mile to the 50K at Mountain Masochist in November. (I slept very poorly the ni...