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, ...

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...

DK told me about a local 50K that I'd actually never done before, which is a rarity, so I was happy to sign up for it: PCTR's Armstrong Redwoods . They say it's got 8,500 feet of climbing, which feels a tad high, but it was definitely a very hilly race, which I enjoyed. The weather was rainy, which is pretty weird for California in May. The redwoods were cool, but there aren't that many giant ones, it's more of a small grouping like Muir Woods, so it's over in ten minutes and then you're in oak for the most of the day. There were several stream crossings, one of which surprised me by being waste deep, so that was fun too. I finished in 6 hours and 44 seconds, in fifth place, three seconds behind number four (it wasn't a big field). The course ended with a mile-long flat mile extra lollipop  section starting right from the start/finish area just to get closer to the necessary mileage, and I screwed up and started doing the loop part of the lollipop twic...