Adventures in Onionism

Chicago Marathon When I was planning my races for the year, I thought that after my June and July 100s, I'd switch over to speed training, and try to set a PR at the Chicago Marathon in October. It was an excuse to visit my good friend in Chicago, it's a flat and fast course, and after Boston would be the only one of the World Majors that I've run.  I needed some time in late July and early August to recover from Crazy Mountain 100, so that took a couple weeks. Then I traveled to DC and back to Yucca Valley, and tried to do some mile repeats there, but I also just wanted to go run trails in Joshua Tree National Park as part of my project to run every maintained trail in the park. Then finally in September when Amy and I had a weekend with no travel where I could train, I didn't want to spend my birthday weekend running a flat or paved trail, so of course we went camping in the Sierra and I did a long mountain run instead. It wasn't optimal training to try and run a ...

...and I forgot to train. Euchre Bar Massacre happened again. After heading out to California for Castle Peak in August, and doing reasonably well, my training dropped off in September. I did have two 60+ mile weeks, but mostly was down around 40 per week. I rode the 60-mile WABA 50-States Ride (where you ride a bit of every state-named avenue in the District). That was an interesting way to see the city, and I had fun doing it with the group, but as far as the biking itself goes, it's mostly terrible. I did some pretty lame scouting of the Tuscarora trail, as I was sort of thinking about setting an unsupported FKT on it in the future, but I didn't really enjoy this section all that much.  I also went out to West Virginia and did a 40-mile loop in Dolly Sods Wilderness for my birthday. I'll never get around to blogging about it, but I highly recommend the Sods if you're in the DC area--the northern section is a high plateau  with scrubby windblown trees that brought b...

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 UCLA to present my research. I went to London to help run a research transparency and reproducibility workshop. GF and I went from there to Scotland after and the rental car was a lemon, it overheated, I blew the head gasket, and per Enterprise's instructions we left it by the side of the road in order to catch our train. It's as pretty as you've heard Summit of Ben Nevis Then back home I got hit by a car on my bike (an Uber with passengers, who fled the scene when I pulled out my phone to document and call the police!) I was not hurt but fuck Uber for not caring. This is a felony. This is a felony. This is a felony. Murder someone, don't pay tolls, whatever. I've got dealer tags!  Thankfully a change to the dealer tag law has already been passed and will kick in after just one more year, only 3,000 California traffic fatalities from now. This is the turd who could've killed me In October I ran the Eu...

After missing it last year with a cold, I was able to run my favorite race again this October: the Euchre Bar Massacre. I love it. I'm not supposed to share the exact route with you, but it's up and down the steep and deep canyon of the North Fork of the American River eight times, following written directions to a series of books hidden in the woods to act as checkpoints. Most of the downs are on trail, most of the ups are off trail. I love it. Even if it's 40-45 degrees and raining the entire day. I missed the cutoff at 1AM so I did not finish. I love it.  Photo by Sean Ranney

Last year I met a friend of a friend who does what he calls foot things . Basically, Barkley-like races--lots of off-trail travel, following written directions from checkpoint to checkpoint, collecting pages torn from books or other hidden doo-dads to prove you'd been there, usually as steeply as possible. Except this friend lives in Portland, not Tennessee, so some of the races aren't absurdly far away, and also, the races are just getting started, so if you know the right people, you can actually get in. I've mentioned them on the blog before, but I first ran Euchre Bar Massacre on the American River last October, and it was incredible, especially after the mid-race cancellation of the more official race I ran the previous month. In May I did the MeOw Marathons in Whiskeytown, and this weekend I did the inaugural Bone Tempest on Mt. Tamalpais. I sort of won, but there were only seven of us, so it's no big deal. It's not officially a race, either. No money change...

My pages from the books placed at EBM a few weeks ago. Such a fun run. I'm cleaning and packing to move across town. MUCH nicer place, smaller room but bigger house, no views but equally close to parks and off-leash places for George.