Adventures in Onionism

I ran my third Hardrock in July. Here's the report. Before   I flew from Fairbanks, Alaska to Durango, Colorado a week before the race. I got my rental car and drove to Silverton. The next day (July 4) I picked up my race gear that I mailed to my friends' house in Ouray. I ran the Telluride to Kroger's Pass section of trail. The climb went well, but on the way down my quads started to burn so I deliberately took it easy. I spent the evening with friends in Norwood, CO. I drove over to Lake City and did the Sherman climb the next day. My legs were unfortunately quite toasted from the Kroger's climb the day before, but of course I could still hike.  The next day the air quality was terrible. Did I mention there was a fire? The Gold Mountain Fire started under 1/4 from my friends' house in Ouray about a week prior. Thankfully that's on the east side of town and prevailing winds kept pushing it east away from town. Of course that means it took a lot of wilderness wi...

  Just a little bit hotter and a little bit worse! I finished my second Hardrock last week. It was a fun experience. I ran 1 hour 47 minutes slower than my 2017 time (in the same counter-clockwise direction) but it was a million degrees hotter, the course is two miles longer, and I took an additional 1.6-mile wrong turn. I placed essentially the same: 35th this time, 36th last time. I feel like I normally finish as the median runner, but when the going gets  very  tough, I do relatively better. I think the easiest explanation might just be that elevation wrecks some really good runners and I barely notice it up to 13,000 feet. Thanks, genetics. Or, when a race is high enough and steep enough that almost everyone is hiking, I'm a relatively fast hiker with better endurance. Regardless, it worked out reasonably well for me again. Training I've been telling myself since last October that I should hire a coach to write a training plan for me, or at least write a plan myself. ...

It's Tuesday, I'm back in Berkeley, and I just ran my first Hardrock last Friday/Saturday in 34:42. I wanted to record thoughts immediately after the experience, because it was hard , and now that it's been a few days, I'm already forgetting the pain. [I don't want kids, so you'll have to insert your own reference to childbearing here if you so desire.] Start The race started at 6AM. I slept reasonably well the night before in my truck just behind the school gym where the race starts--Silverton is very low key, so it's easy to dirtbag inside the city limits. I did, however, have a bit of GI non-normality, but it didn't seem like a big deal. I started in shorts, T-shirt, and a windshirt. As expected, the windshirt soon became too warm, likely because of the clouds that were obviously going to bring rain sooner rather than later. First Climb I started maybe 30-40 deep in the field, going faster than I'd ever climbed in training, but not feel...