Adventures in Onionism

I ran the Paiute Meadows 50K in Susanville, CA last weekend. It's been a while since my last race (late February), so I was really looking forward to this. The RD asked for a few people to car camp at the start line the night before, and I happily obliged so I wouldn't have to wake up at 4am for the drive from Reno. To my pleasant surprise, I had a bizarre dream about my buddy taking me golfing and not wanting to pay for it, instead lying about being a sponsored pro, and digging the lie deeper and deeper when they asked him to play in the celebrity pro fundraiser tournament, etc. I woke up from the dream and had to pee, so I got out of the tent, and saw the northern lights. Beautiful The race started at 6:30 the next morning. There's not much to say about it, it's only a 50K. It was not too hard, with only 4,400 feet of climbing. You go back through the start after 14-15 miles (about halfway), which I did in 2:30. The climbing was definitely stacked in the second half, ...

OK, fine! I'll finally finish this race report.   I ran the Orcas Island 100 at the end of February. In the months since, I've been through a big snowstorm in Reno, been to Yucca Valley, and DC twice. Most importantly, I'm not sore or injured. I struggled through a two-mile run the day before, day after, and two days after the race, and got back up to 70 miles for the weeks since. I'd call the race a success. I signed up for it because I wanted an early season race with a lot of climbing. Orcas provided. There aren't many races in winter due to weather, but Orcas, on one of the San Juan islands in Washington, manages (if sometimes barely). The race is four times around the same 25-mile loop, each with four aid stations and four big climbs, for a total of 26,500 feet of climbing. The course is shaped like a neck pillow with a lobster claw attached to it. If that doesn't make any sense to you, that's how it felt running it. The trail is almost always under tre...