Crazy Mountain 100

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. Oh well.

I picked up a can of bear spray from a local friend and drove to the finish line in a hay field in the middle of nowhere 80 miles northeast of Bozeman. I picked up my race swag, listened to a short race briefing, and slept uncomfortably in the cab of the truck. (I brought a tarp but the field was a little buggy and a storm passed through in the night so I didn't really actually want to use it.) In the morning I caught a shuttle bus, and had just enough time to poop before the race started, but only because I deliberately sat in the first row of the bus so that I'd be the first off. Having the buses leave ten minutes earlier in the future wouldn't hurt anybody. 

The race started on a gentle grade up a dirt road. I ran with Scott and Derek for most of the first 15 miles or so, but as expected (especially since they kept remarking how weird it was that they were starting further back in the pack than usual) I couldn't keep up with them after that. An early storm rolled in about an hour after the start, so it got cold enough to put on my rain jacket, but it didn't actually rain. The race has six climbs, and the first felt gradual and was almost all under tree cover. 

Derek and Scott early on

When the second climb began in earnest, my hamstring began to feel weak and slow. Not a sharp pain like a new tear or strain, but a consistent weak feeling when swinging my right leg forward that was really slowing me down and frustrating me. I spent a while blaming everyone conceivably responsible for my hamstring and/or my not getting a great amount of sleep in the days before the race and/or the FDIC ending remote work and my having to move back to DC next year. Eventually, I laid down in the grass and stretched my hamstring. It felt a tiny bit better, but then when I started walking again, I realized something had stung or bit my head when I was laying down. It hurt, and following the rule that my brain can only focus on one source of pain at a time, my hamstring didn't bother me so much any more, so I kept climbing successfully. The view at the top of the climb was outstanding, and the trail stayed above treeline for a while.

Happy about the views

The third and fourth big climbs were an out and back over another stunning alpine pass. It started raining on me on the descent, which was nice in that I didn't have to worry about lightning since I was going in the right direction to avoid it anyway. The way down to Halfmoon aid station at mile 43 (and back up) was fairly rocky. A nice group of friends waiting for their runner helped crew me at the aid station (amazing tomato soup), and I climbed back up over climb four, which I completed just as it got dark. 

Rain coming

I passed through Cow Camp aid station the second time at mile 55. It was impressively stocked for an aid station that's entirely packed in on horseback, and the volunteers were enthusiastic. After crossing the creek, the trail was quite muddy which slowed me down significantly until the climbing began in earnest again. I topped out on climb five in the dark. I'm sure it's another excellent alpine pass, but of course I couldn't tell in the dark. 

At one of the next two aid stations I changed shoes and socks--my feet were painfully pruned by this point as they'd been wet all day--it felt like one of the wetter races I've run. After a big operation of cleaning, drying, and powdering my feet and changing shoes and socks, I asked an aid station volunteer how long it would be until I had to cross a creek again, and she said "about a quarter mile." But I think I was able to mostly stay dry. There was even a very weirdly built trail in the next few miles that crossed a creek something like 13 times in a short span, but I was able to find logs for most of the crossings. 

Second morning

The second day didn't have much for alpine scenery, but the final climb still felt huge. I was thinking it would be easier given the elevation profile, but it very much did not feel that way. It was an open grassy slope, and we traversed cross-country for a while. (A few more marker ribbons would have been helpful, despite having the GPX on my watch and phone. When I registered I was actually looking forward to a race that required a little bit of navigation, but in the end it just felt like it more markers would make more sense--someone already went to the trouble to flag it sparingly, and everyone knows that we're obviously  just following this ridge, there's no real question about that, so why not just mark it more?) 

Still more climbing to do

Along the grassy ridge

 

A little more climbing, a lot more horseflies, a long descent on a rocky dirt road, a few miles of flat dirt road, a mile or so of pavement, and I was done. Finish time of 32:26. It wasn't my best time, but I was right in the middle of the pack (66 of 122 finishers). My hamstring didn't cooperate 100%, but it worked. In a few previous 100s I thought I might be getting too old to handle the sleepless night. Turns out I just need to take caffeine, and then my brain won't go to mush.

 I hung out at the finish line the rest of the day, as did nearly all the runners, having a great time. There was an interesting mix of people: young dirtbag thru-hiker types, Native Americans, and a Wyomingite who carried a gun the whole race (I carried bear spray, but in retrospect I don't think grizz are common in the Crazies, so I might not bother if I did it again), vegans, and cattle ranchers.      

The one accidental bummer about the race is that I brought something on the bus to the start and gave it to someone to bring to the finish, but their runner DNFd, so I never saw them or my Nemo Fillo Elite pillow again (until I just now ordered a new on online.) For a race run by a cattle rancher, the vegan/vegetarian options were pretty good. (Bobo's Bites are excellent, just be sure and have the volunteers separate the cheese quesadillas from the chicken and cheese ones, because having runners just leaf through a random stack trying to look for only the not-lumpy ones is a crappy way to try and identify food you feel OK eating. As always, vegetarian ramen is one million times tastier than straight vegetable broth.) 

I used to tell anyone who asked that IMTUF or Bighorn were the most scenic 100-milers in the U.S. that you can get into without a lottery. Crazy is for sure on that list now as well.