Adventures in Onionism

I finally got revenge against the Mogollon Monster.  I tried running the race in 2014, but it was cancelled mid-race due to rain. If you prefer I suppose you could call it a thunderstorm, but I'll stick with "rain." You can see my report from that year here . The race is under new management, and both the management and the aid station tents seem much sturdier, so I was confident the race would go off without a hitch. Gf and the dogs and I drove to Pine, AZ the day before the race. We were mostly on HWY 60, which I don't think I'd seen before, and was gorgeous though, duh, really hot. Saguaros everywhere. I bought a hat. As is my wont, we camped near the start on any old dirt road pullout we could find. There was a little more traffic than ideal because hunting season just started (elk archery, I think). Plus we couldn't get very far off the pavement because damn, when a Prius says it has 5 inches of clearance, it's 5 inches tops . We made it through the s...

Lottery season is upon us. I've gone through different mental phases in the past 9 months or so since I knew I'd be moving to DC. At first, I decided I would survive mentally by becoming fast again. Once upon a time (2004 or so) I was sort of fast, and I ran a 3:00:23 marathon, and those 23 seconds annoy me, especially since I could have broken 3 had I not enjoyed myself too much from mile 24 to 25. I had ~15 minutes for the last 2.2, but the first mile of that was probably my slowest mile of the entire day, and I couldn't make it up in the last 1.2. To get fast again, I would have to run more road, do track workouts, and I probably couldn't bring George along, since he wants to stop and pee all the time. Somehow, I thought this was what I'd want to do in DC, because if trails suck or are nonexistent, then I have to run road, and if I run road, then I might as well do it fast to get it over with. After thinking that for a few months, I started thinking that ma...

I went to Arizona to run the Mogollon Monster 100. It's supposed to a be a very tough, scenic, 107+ mile long race, and despite only being in its third year, it's already on the short list of Hardrock Qualifiers.  I flew to Phoenix on Friday after not sleeping well Thursday night, and drove to Pine, AZ for packet pickup. I was hungry, but didn't really eat much, and got a rough night's sleep in my rental car on a forest service road near the start. The race started at 6AM Saturday. It started raining just a few minutes after the start, but only lasted for a few minutes. I fell in with some cool people; a guy who just ran the Tahoe 200, and a dude from SF who runs winter sled races in Alaska; I think he's scheduled to do a 1000 miler this winter. So I had enjoyable company, but I wasn't feeling that great--I hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, my neck was sore from sleeping funny and had to be bent down a little, I walked into a tree and hit my head, and I had mo...