Adventures in Onionism

As I mentioned in my previous post, I ran the 2023 Black Canyon 100K/60K double in February. Aravaipa doesn't have a webpage posting results for other doublers, so I figured I'd do the math myself. I copied the Ultrasignup results into spreadsheets and compared them. To my surprise, only 9 people finished the double (compared to 682 100K finishers and 323 60K finishers). I didn't check if anyone attempted to double but DNF'd both or either. Here are the combined results in order of total finish time:   Ignore the 01jan1960 part--that's just an artifact of the programming. Ratio is the sum of the two Ultrasignup ranks (the winner's time divided by your time), and place is the sum of placements. I was 7th place out of 9. Nothing spectacularly interesting seems to have happened across the two days, other than the second place guy day one finishing fourth day two and thus third overall. Basically I'd say people were consistent. That goes to a point I was thinkin...

It's been almost two months now, but I stopped in Phoenix on my way home from DC in February and ran the Black Canyon double. The Black Canyon 100K has become a competitive early season race (it's a Western States Golden Ticket race). It's a net downhill course, and it seems like a relatively reliable way to get decent race weather in February, since it's at lower elevations not too far north of Phoenix. I flew to Phoenix after work on Friday the 17th. I am a cheapskate and airfare and race entry fees were already expensive enough, so I rented a Prius so I could crash in the back and not pay for a hotel room. Due to the battery configuration in a Prius, the rear seats fold down perfectly flat. This seems more common in SUVs, but SUVs are bad . For fellow hikers who don't want to kill pedestrians, here's a good discussion of other vehicles that may fit the fold-flat-seats bill. You can use Turo to rent the exact model of car you're looking for. Another perk ...

I'll get around to my Black Canyons 100K/60K Double race report eventually. Instead, here are some reviews. I'm going to go running and check out the flow on the Truckee River. Anybody want to packraft it with me? Books: Destiny of the Republic, Candice Millard: A- Millard writes popular history books about lesser-known aspects of popular figures--Teddy Roosevelt's post-presidency trip down the second-longest river in the Amazon, Winston Churchill's early life in the Boer War, or this: the brief presidency and assassination of James Garfield. Either Garfield was a badass anti-racism anti-corruption math-whiz devoted scholar surprise battle-winning Union general philosopher-king who had the Republican nomination forced upon him, or the book is a bit hagiographic. Either way, the book is an inspiring read/listen. A bit of post-listen googling seems to indicate he mostly was an awesome guy. The downside to the book is vivid description of the two months of Garfield's s...

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...

I started this blog post on my futon in Washington, DC coughing uncontrollably with a bad cold. (Remember colds?) That night was the first night of non-disgusting, non-bedsheet-soaking levels of sweatiness. Why was this happening to me? The prior Thursday night just before midnight I finished the Tor des Géants Tor 330 race: a 356 Kilometer (220 mile) race through the Italian Alps starting and ending in Courmayeur circumnavigating the Aosta Valley, with 80,000 feet of vertical gain. Why is it called Tor 330 when it's clearly 350+ Kilometers, even on the race's own maps? That is just one of dozens of quirks of the Italian-run race, some of which come off as truly obnoxious, some of which instead come off as magical. I finished in 109:49:19, in 102nd place overall (of over 1,000 starters) , and 4th American (of not very many). It's the hardest race I've ever run, and one of my best performances. What does "hard" mean? I only finished one loop at Barkley, and I...