Paiute Meadows 50K

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, however, and the crowd really thinned out, so I inevitably slowed down a little, but not too much.

It turned into a warm day, but I finished in just under 6 hours, so it wasn't that hot for that long. I listened to some Sam Harris podcasts and a bunch of Robert Caro's The Power Broker, and just kept running. 

It's been a while since I've done a 50K, but it honestly felt fairly easy. My hamstring was tired, but not painful, and I didn't feel any worse for wear afterwards. In fact, once I got home from Susanville, it was only 3pm. I sat around for a few minutes, got bored, and thought "I should go running." I managed to wait until the next day, but I'm terrible at relaxing, so Margo and I did another 14 for a nice 74 on the week.

Looking forward to Scout Mountain 100 and Alaska's Brooks Range next month.

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