Adventures in Onionism

How'd it go in 2025, running-wise?  Volume   As of noon on December 31st, I have run 3,061 miles. That's the most I've ever run in a year, so I feel pretty good about that. I got less vert than I did last year, and have still never cracked 450,000 feet in a year. You can see data from most of the past decade below. (2018 was low thanks to a long summer hike and 2020 had the pandemic, injury, and a long hike.)    2025 Races At the end of 2024 I only planned out   the first half of 2025: my buildup to Hardrock. Not much else in life went according to plan, but the races did: March 8: Seneca Creek Greenway 50K  March 15: Elizabeth Furnace 50K  April 26: Lake Sonoma 50 Miler May 9-10: Hellbender 100 Miler July 11-12: Hardrock 100 Miler   I wasn't quite as fast at Hardrock as I was eight years ago, but I still had a good day.    In the second half of the year I ended up running two more races, where I slightly improved my times over previous ...

I tried to run five 100-milers in 2024. The last (UTMR) was cancelled due to landslides that even Swiss engineers couldn't fix quickly, so I ended up with four. February 23: Orcas Island 100 (29:53) June 7-8 Scout Mountain 100 (31:37) July 20: TRT 100 (31:45) August 30: UTMB Mont Blanc (39:26)   In addition, I ran Paiute Meadows 50K (May 11, 5:58) and did the 11-peak version of Desolate Peaks (August 17). I feel like the first half of the year was great--Orcas was early in the year to get me going, a nice social race, and a fun trip to the San Juan Islands and a visit to Seattle friends I hadn't seen in a while. The summer was good, with two hundreds and about two hundred miles in the Brooks Range in Alaska.    Then at UTMB, it was fun to experience the insane Tour de France-like fan crowds once, but I don't think I'll bother trying to get into it again. It was nice to hang out with Lucas' mom Jan in Chamonix, and travel around Switzerland by myself, but UTMR gettin...

2023 Races: I ran five ultras this year. That doesn't seem like all that many to me. Looking back at my Ultrasignup results, I've run a low of four (2014) and a high of eleven (2015) ultras since I got into the sport. (Aside from 2020 when everything was cancelled.) Black Canyon 100K, 60K Double Silver State 50K Western States 100 Crazy Mountain 100 Chicago Marathon Hidden Valley Hammer 10K I was pretty happy with the Black Canyon double in February. It meant my body was finally back to normal after Tor in 2022. (I'm not happy that there was absolutely no recognition by the race org of the double, despite promises to the contrary, so I'll just keep howling into the void about that--add it to my "Just serve soy sauce flavored ramen. It's vegetarian and tastes just as salty!" evergreen ultra complaint.) I was happy with Silver State 50K until the day after when my hamstring threw a fit. I think I can no longer run a race the day after a nine-hour drive. I wa...

Strava says I ran 1,934 miles in 2022. I wanted to step down a bit from my 2,650 miles in 2021, but not by that much. I got about the same vert that I usually get (300K) without really focusing on it. I was pretty happy with my running for most of the year. I set a marathon PR in December 2021 but as usual I did not really convert that into trail speed. I ran these races in 2022: January: Calico 50K February: Sean O'Brien 100K February: Yucca Valley 5K April: Cherry Blossom 10-miler  June: San Diego 100-miler July: Standhope 100-miler September: Tor des Geants 220-miler November: Mountain Masochist 50K (50-miler DNF) I did fine but not great at June and July 100's, and then I did quite well at Tor. It was an amazing experience, but it took a lot out of me. So much so that I didn't run for a solid month, and then when I tried to start up again a few weeks after that, I had to downgrade from the 50-mile to the 50K at Mountain Masochist in November. (I slept very poorly the ni...

 2021 is over, even if the pandemic isn't.  Strava says I ran 2654 miles and gained 315,000 feet of vertical over 573 hours. That's the most miles I've ever run, about 50 more than in 2019. Coming off an injury year and still in a pandemic, I'm very happy about that. And at the end, I was very happy to pull off a PR. More on that below. I ran 8 races: Canyons 100K (16:00) Capital Backyard (25 hours, 104.16 miles) Black Hills 100M (28:32) Kodiak 100K (17:40) Mogollon Monster 100M (31:42) Cuyamuca 100K (14:11) Euchre Bar Massacre (Missed cutoff after 5 Hills, like usual) California International Marathon (2:59:18, PR! ) I never wrote up reports on Cuyamuca or Euchre Bar. I started training seriously for CIM right after Mogollon Monster, so I wasn't even sure why I had signed up for Cuyamuca, but I was glad I did it. It was a really pretty drive there through some places I'd never been, it was easy camping in the car walking distance from the start, and it was a pr...

365 consecutive days of running at least two miles done, and 2,601 miles of running for the year. I set a goal to run every day this year. I just ran six more miles, putting me at 2,601 miles for the year, and 365 consecutive days or running at least two miles every day. I'm glad I completed the streak, but I will not be continuing. I used streak running as a means to increase my total mileage, which has long been a goal. I was successful in that goal, as I surpassed my previous highest mileage from 2015 of 2,485 running miles. The obvious caveat is that this is running miles, as I doubt I will ever cover more miles on foot that in I did hiking ~6,000 miles round trip hike on the CDT in 2007. It's less than half the yearly mileage, but in 2007 I walked from sun up to sun down for 178.5 days, while in 2019 I had a mortgage, held down a full-time job, and published a book and a couple papers, so I feel like I'm doing a decent job of getting after it given the constraints. ...

Strava says I ran 1,550 miles this year. At the end of December that feels low and mundane, but it was actually a good year. I didn't run much in January since I was still trying to interview for jobs (that ended working out fairly well). February was my best training month. March I completed one loop in miserable weather for a truly fun experience at the Barkley Marathons. April I ran Leona Divide 50 and May ran Silver State 50, both with extra side trips with Amy to see parts of California we might not see again for a while. June was another Double Dipsea with friends and a 80-mile fun run from Tomales Point to the Golden Gate Bridge. Before the bonk, Leona Divide Silver State 50 (everyone gets a medal, that's nothing special)   Tomales Point, 75 miles to go. Almost done Alive with Pleasure Shortly after Dipsea I flew to Missoula, MT and walked out of my friends' house into the Rattlesnake Wilderness and on to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. (I ...

Remember that " go camping for a month this summer without losing your job " thing? Here's how much I camped in 2015. "Camping" includes car camping in the truck, honest-to-goodness backpacking, or staying up all night long running. March: 2 (4MPH Challenge) April: 2 (Zion 100) May: 7 (MeOw, Ventana, American River, Emigrant) June: 2 (Solstice 24, Carson-Iceberg) July: 7 (El Dorado, Emigrant, Tushar 93K) August: 3 (Desolation, Sierra NF) September: 11 (Tahoe 200, IMTUF, Bear) October: 2 (Florida) December: 4 (Nevada) 40 days by my count. Not too shabby. Also, Strava says I ran 2,485 miles (with 330K feet of climbing) over 251 runs. That's definitely the most running I've done, but not the most miles on foot (2007 CDT yo-yo). So pretty good. I'm not sure how I feel about the Barkley waitlist, but I might as well do a shit-ton of super steep training, so I'm back on the horse. I should probably also make some goals about research,...