August Update

Well friends, I know I’ve been a little quiet lately.  That is usually a good sign or bad sign.  I’m happy to report that in my case, it is indeed a good sign.  I took a relatively short period of downtime following the IAU Trail Champs in Wales and felt ready to get back at it.  The last 4 weeks have been great - both high volume and high quality training.  If you haven’t heard, the IAU Road 100k Champs scheduled for South Africa in October has been cancelled.  Even so, because I was so mentally prepared to shift into road 100k training this month, I have basically maintained course while I’ve tried to decide what my revised fall racing plans will look like. I’ve almost got the plan figured out now, but I’m not quite ready to put the schedule in writing yet.  I’ll let you know when it’s official.

So yeah, the last 4 weeks of training have been great.  I’ve worked my mileage up over 100mpw in singles with back-to-back long runs on the weekends, and I’ve also mixed in some good speed workouts.  I’ve stuck to the roads mostly because the limited trail choices in Cincinnati aren’t that great in the summer, and if you’re training for a road ultra, you kinda need to train on the roads.  So I may not be worried about a flat, road ultra anymore, but I still find it to be a nice change of pace (literally and figuratively) from the trail running.  The weather has been unseasonably cool and dry in Cincinnati the last month, so that has really helped me feel unusually good for August.  Let’s hope I can keep this training momentum going through September.

I don’t normally like to chase miles simply for the sake of hitting some arbitrary number, but I’ll admit to doing that this month.  I’ve got a big goal, and it will get me to a major milestone in my running career.  This is really helping to keep the motivation high while my race goals are a bit ambiguous.  I’ll be sure to share how it all turns out at the end of August.

But first...I’m running the Hood to Coast Relay this weekend!  I tried my best to get out of running this event this year, but I just couldn’t do it.  This will be my fourth time running the 197 miles from Mt Hood to Seaside, OR with 11 other teammates...each of us running 3 legs roughly 10km a piece.  I’ll be running on a mixed corporate team from GE again this year.  I didn’t think I wanted to bother with the travel and interruptions in training to run HTC this year, but perfect timing has work sending me to the Pacific Northwest anyway, so I decided I was destined to run.  I’ve always been intrigued by the first leg of the relay which drops 2000ft in less than 6 miles.  It’s not classified as the hardest relay leg, so I normally get assigned to run another leg where I might be more useful to the team.  Now, I don’t have tons of leg speed anymore, but I figured my experiences over the last couple years make me uniquely qualified to run well downhill, so I might as well jump on the opportunity to run this part of the course.  I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the last month, and what I’ll be doing for a few more weeks.  Don’t look for me to race anything serious until October, but I’ll let you know when my racing plans are finalized.  In the meantime, follow me on twitter (@rundavid1) if you want to live vicariously through my experiences at Hood to Coast and elsewhere.  Happy trails...whether they be dirt or paved!

IAU Trail World Championship Race Report

Our team hotel in Llandudno.

I’m not exactly sure how you can be disappointed in a race that you go in to not having a clue what to expect, but that’s precisely the place I find myself right now.  I’ve thought about it now for two weeks before writing this race report to be sure I had time to fully digest the experience and not jump to any premature conclusions. But I haven’t really come to any other conclusions in that time.  I raced below my ability, and I also ran a boring race.

The International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) Trail World Championship race was held in North Wales on July 6.  I finished in 7th place with a time of 6:04:04.  The course was 48 miles long and my Suunto Ambit recorded 7600ft of climb and equal descent.  The weather was surprisingly nice for Wales over the few short days I was there.  It was sunny and warm during the race, but it wasn’t humid and there was a nice breeze.

I flew across the pond on a redeye after work on July 3rd.  Arriving in Manchester on the 4th of July, I took a train to the race headquarters in Llandudno, a small resort town right on the coast.  After dropping my bags off in my room, I headed across the street to check into the race.  This is where, for the first time, I saw a proper course map and elevation profile.  But the numbers on elevation change were still suspect because the amount of climb and descent were different even though the race started and finished at the same place. Right, that doesn’t make sense.

So this is what I mean when I say I had no clue what to expect.  I arrived in Wales two days before the race having not seen a detailed course map, and I wasn’t even convinced it was correct even when I did have a map in hand.  I also had no idea who I’d be racing against.  The only name I recognized was Ricky Lightfoot from the UK, and only because he runs for Salomon.  But I had no basis for comparison to figure out where I should be relative to him in the race.  Really all I had to key off of was the last IAU Trail Champs that were held 2 years ago and teammate Ben Nephew finished 15 minutes off the leader.  That turned out to be a poor data point to key off of due to considerable course differences.

On Friday, I did get to run a bit of the course.  It had a couple fairly significant climbs by my standards, but it also featured a considerable amount of pristine fire road.  The single track sections were quite nice, there just wasn't enough of it to satisfy most people.  The race was set up as a 15km loop run 5 times with a 1km section of paved road to start and finish.  The climbs would be tough for me, but I thought the fire road would actually work in my favor.

There would be two aid stations on the course, but no one was really sure what would be available to the race as a whole.  For IAU world championship races, there are very specific rules for providing aid to the competitors.  Each team has a table from which they can serve the individual needs of their team members. Then there is a “common” table that everyone in the race can use.  In my past IAU experience though, there’s no guarantee what will be available on the common table and I can’t recommend relying completely on the race-provided aid station like you could at almost any ultra in the US.  This isn’t a big deal, except that the US team only had one crew member.  While very grateful to the help this spouse provided, there is no way he could cover both aid stations, so our team had no one supporting the second aid station.  We sent drop bags out, but that’s not always a perfect solution.

I went in running blind, but I still had expectations to be in contention.

My plan was tried and true; go out conservative, work into a rhythm, pick up the pieces as other fell apart, and finish strong.  I stuck to the plan and a mile into the race, I was the last man on the US team of 6 guys.  Once we made it up the first big climb and hit a fire road, I settled into my happy place and focused on relaxing the first lap.  After the first 15 km loop, I was in 31st place and 7:30 off the leaders, although I didn’t know exactly how far back I was at the time.

During the second loop I focused on running controlled and picking off the low hanging fruit, but tried not to get too excited.  It was starting to warm up quickly due to the relatively late 9 AM start, but I wasn’t overheating. I was still eating and drinking well at this point.  By the end of the second loop at 31km, I had moved all the way up to 17th place.  I also had passed US teammates Brian Rusiecki and Ben Nephew to move up into 2nd place for the team.

On the third loop, I started pushing a little especially when I was on the downhill jeep roads.  I felt like I was running quite fast, but I was weakening a little on climbs.  The heat started to bother me a little, and I lost the desire to eat.  I didn’t feel like I was absorbing calories in my stomach, so I switched over to plain water, but I still wasn’t eating gels like I should have been.  I also wasn’t taking salt tabs regularly, which I think was a big mistake.  I was taking coke at the aid stations when I could find it, but it just wasn’t enough.  I still had a good split on the 3rd lap and had moved up into 12th, passing teammate Justin Ricks to move into the lead for the US.

As I started the climb at the beginning of my 4th loop, I realized my climbing legs were gone.  I had been running the climbs all day thus far, but I was forced to switch to the power hike.  I was able to move well, but it’s just not as fast as running.  My hamstrings also began to cramp on this loop.  I shouldn’t have been cramping at this point in the race given my conservative start.  It was probably the accumulation of the climbing, now around 6000ft total, which I am not accustomed to, and a deficiency of electrolytes due to the fact that I was drinking plain water and not taking enough S!Caps. The cramps really put a dent in my killer instinct when I should have been hot on the trail of those in front of me because I never knew when the next one was going to strike.  The one bright spot from this loop was when I caught the defending IAU Trail Champion, Erik Clavery.  He went out hard and paid for it, but there wasn’t as much carnage as I had hoped.

I was in 8th place as I started the final loop.  I was still struggling on the climbs, cramping when I tried to push the pace, and I didn’t feel like I was making progress on anyone in front of me.  I realized how far off the leaders I was a little late in the race and knew I had no chance to catch them.  All of these things sapped my desire to race and I basically mentally wimped out on the final lap.  With 8km to go, I desperately needed calories and asked for the bottle of Coke that I stashed in my drop bag.  It was nowhere to be found — lost or stolen.  The common aid station table was also out of Coke.  I grabbed some Pringles as a salty consolation prize, but left mad and dejected.  

I slowly made my way to the 76km aid station where I felt so low on energy that I stopped for Coke even though I only had 1km left to the finish.  I knew an Australian was close behind, but I felt like I had to have some calories.  He was 19 seconds back at the timing mat, but only a few seconds behind by the time I had downed several cups of hot Coke.  Everyone was yelling at me to just finish, so I finally took off.  The final kilometer included several hundred feet of descent on a paved road.  Luckily, my quads had held up well and I was able to run downhill without any issues.  The Australian was hanging tough, but since I had basically given up on the last lap, my legs had recovered and I was determined not to let anyone pass me now.  It’s impossible to figure out precisely how fast we were running, but we were flying.  My road speed served me well and I was able to hold the challenger off by 6 seconds.

Although I had little idea what to expect, I still hoped to be closer to the front when I crossed the finish line. Having the benefit of hindsight, I don’t think I had the ability to win, but top 5 would have been a realistic goal. I believe I could have run 10 minutes faster and finished in 3rd on a great day.  I have felt for the last 2 weeks that I ran a boring race.  My conservative start made me feel like I was never in contention.  In a championship style race, where everyone running is really good, going out that slow may not be the best plan of attack.  On the other hand, if I had run even splits for my 4th and 5th loops — a realistic plan had I not cramped and been low on calories — I would have moved all the way up into third.  That would have completely changed my feelings about the race.  But for many reasons it just wasn’t my best race.  Some of those mistakes were my own and I will learn from them, but some of the issues were out of my control.

I am glad that I chose to run the race and enjoyed my short time in Wales.  I'm happy that I was able to lead the US team to a respectable 4th place finish.  I also still believe that I made the right call when I chose not to run Western States.  It was really good to get some international trail experience, and honestly, it was good to get my butt kicked.  It will serve to keep the motivation high as I train for races in the future.

Speaking of future races...my plans through November are a bit up in the air.  We just heard back today that the IAU 100k road championship race is still happening in Cape Town, South Africa sometime in October, but the fact that they still don't have concrete date is a bit worrisome.  I am waiting to learn the final decision regarding that race because it will completely dictate my training and racing schedule for the next few months. I'll let you know when I have more details.

Check out Ben Nephew's full write-up on iRunFar.com to hear more about the US team performance.
Full results here.

The US team on the beach in front of our hotel.

Overlooking Llandudno from a nearby hillside.

Sheep!

The scenery in Wales was green and gorgeous.  This was near the race start/finish.

Ben Nephew checking out the well-manicured fire road on our Friday shakeout.

More scenery near the start.

Sunset on the coast in North Wales.

Rock/Creek Chattanooga Mountains Stage Race

If there's one word that describes my weekend down in Chattanooga it is – fun. I am very competitive and I take racing seriously. Sometimes I come dangerously close to forgetting to have fun. This weekend, I did not. The trails were fun. The city was fun. The people were fun. Of course, winning was still fun. But the whole experience was genuinely fun. The weather was even...wait for it...fun.

The first stage begins.  (Photo by Jeff Bartlett)

On a gorgeous Friday morning I drove up to Raccoon Mountain for the 8AM start of the first day's 18-mile stage. The course circumnavigated a TVA reservoir dug out of the top of the mountain, but was relatively flat and fast making it perfect for my Salomon Sense Ultras. I began conservatively and socialized a bit until around halfway before I took control of the lead. My goal was to be just under the course record for the stage without using any more energy than possible. This was actually quite a challenge because I hadn’t seen the trail before the race and it turned out to be undulating, rocky, and full of rhythm-destroying turns. Luckily, I came in less than a minute under Dan Mueller's course record time from 2011. Dan was racing again this year and was only 90 seconds back, but I done what I needed to do on the first day.

Friday afternoon and evening was fun as well because I had the opportunity to make the 2 hour drive  over to Huntsville, AL and see my family. I played in the kiddie pool with my 2-year-old niece and then celebrated Father's Day with a home cooked meal. In addition to my parents and brother's family, my 92-year-old grandmother was there along with an aunt and uncle who just happened to be in town. I couldn't stick around for long, but it was great time while it lasted. I was back at my Chattanooga hotel by 9:30 PM and headed to bed to rest up for day 2.

The second stage was billed as a 22-mile course on Lookout Mountain in north Georgia. I heard it was supposed to be the wet day, so I laced up my Salomon XT 5 Softground that feature extra grip. It turns out the Lookout Mountain course was the most consistently runnable trail we had all weekend. There were a few wet spots, but only just enough to make it fun. I ran conservatively again at the start and only took the lead on a big climb just before halfway. On the descent home, I tried to make it a little exciting by slipping and falling hard on large, wet rock that might as well have been a patch of ice. I landed square on the side of my left calf, but as it was a very smooth rock, little damage was done. The creek crossing near the end was awesome and just the perfect ending to another beautiful day on the trails. Again, I ran just under Dan's record for the current course from 2011 and increased my overall lead.  (Ultrasignup.com shows a faster time was run by both the male and female winners in 2007, so I'm fairly certain that was a different course).

Creek crossing with less than a mile to go. (Photo by Mark McKnight)

Saturday night I headed back up on Lookout Mtn to a house rented by a crew of my ultra crazies from the Huntsville area. We had an absolute blast while enjoying tasty treats like fresh fruit, grilled salmon, delicious desserts and of course, beer. I think only in ultra running could you assemble such a random selection of personalities and backgrounds and somehow make it work. Unfortunately, I just haven't found a community quite like this in Cincinnati, so it was especially enjoyable hang out with these friends again.

The start of the last stage. (Bartlett)

The final day was a little more “business formal” as opposed to “business casual.” I had been saving a little, and it was time to test myself along the 20-mile route. As such, I took the lead quite early as Dan humorously pretended to commentate my obvious change in strategy. The Signal Mountain stage overlaps a couple of the biggest climbs on the familiar StumpJump 50k course then veers off on trails that were new to me. The weather was slightly less perfect on Sunday morning, but nothing you could complain about for June in Tennessee. I led by a minute at halfway when the trail really started to get interesting. It was a section of very technical trail that ran for miles, but my favorite S-LAB XT 5 shoes handled the rocks well. At one point I began to think that I had saved too much on the previous stages because I simply couldn't run fast enough to get tired...it was just too dangerous. There was a brief break from the rocks during a short road section where we visited an assisted living facility (yes, we were actually routed through the front drive and the old folks on the porch waved at us) before we transitioned over to another section of very technical trail. The final mile or so finally allowed me to pour it on, and I ran a legitimate sub-6:30 mile as recorded by my Suunto Ambit. I cruised into the finish nearly 10 minutes ahead of the old record for the stage.

Is that a grimace or a smile?  (Bartlett)

As for my 3 day total, I was 12 minutes under the old record with a final time of 6:47:15. Full results can be found here on ultrasignup.  In the end, I got a great weekend of high quality training and racing that should serve me well as I travel to Wales July 6th for the IAU World Trail Championships.

So kids, here's what we learned this weekend. Rock/Creek puts on great events. This would not be possible without a boatload of extremely generous volunteers from the area who are passionate about the sport. The trails in Chattanooga are probably some of the best in the Southeast. And I'm pretty sure you folks out in Colorado who think your trails are the bees knees would find these courses to be as challenging as they are beautiful. And of course, trail running is just. plain. fun.  Don’t forget it!

Finally, I must thank the race director Randy Whorton and also Salomon for making this possible by sponsoring the Rock/Creek Trail Series.

With race director Randy Whorton.

My favorites.  S-LAB XT 5.  (Bartlett)

All smiles.  That was fun.

Check out the Rock/Creek blog for links to TONS of high quality pictures.

Racing Plans

So this is just a quick blog post to let you know about my race plans over the next month or so.

First though, a brief update on my activities since Ice Age (race report).  So after the race, I took a full two weeks really, really easy.  Like some of the lowest mileage I've run in the last 7 years.  I don't usually take days completely off, but I do need a couple of rest periods throughout the year to let the body completely recover, and that's what I was going for there.  I really felt like I recovered from Ice Age quickly...maybe even faster than I recovered from the road marathon I did in April.  But, I took the two weeks easy regardless and made sure I got my batteries recharged.

My first day back to real training, I ran 4 hours on the trails with a group of folks at an informal group training run on the Stone Steps 50k course here in Cincinnati.  I kept it really relaxed and enjoyed the company of others for a change.  I only covered 25 miles, but I spent a lot more time on my feet than I would have had I just run by myself.  The Memorial Day holiday allowed me to get in 3 trail long runs the following week making for a fairly aggressive ramp back into big mileage training.  That brings me to last week where I had a really nice 5x1200m track workout and another long trail run.

Now I'm focusing on getting the legs recovered for the Chattanooga Mountain Stage Race this weekend!  This is will be my first stage race, and I'm really looking forward to the experience.  Rock/Creek puts on top notch events, and Chattanooga is just a cool little city, so I'm really excited to be heading down there for a few days.  That basic setup is 18 miles Friday morning, 22 miles Saturday, and then 20 miles Sunday.  I haven't run the course, but it sounds like the trails vary quite a bit from fast and rolling, to steep and technical.  The heat may be my biggest concern though.  I'm just not very experienced racing long in the summer.

Next, I have just 3 weeks to get recovered for my next race...in Wales!  I'll by flying across the pond on the 4th of July to race with the US team at the IAU World Trail Championships on July 6.  I don't know a bunch about this race or the competition but I do know that it's 75km long.  I don't think it has a ton of climbing or is very technical, but I know better to rule out anything since I haven't seen the course yet.  Running for the US, we have: Jason Bryant, Dave James, Ben Nephew, Justin Ricks, Brian Rusiecki and myself on the men’s side. For the women, it'll be Stefanie Bernosky, Tracy Hoeg, Stephanie Howe, Amy Rusiecki, and Michele Yates.

So those two races are definitely my focus in the near term.  The week following the Wales race, I'll be heading to San Francisco for a corporate track meet, but that is more of a fun event in my mind and I'll probably just be running a 5k and 10k.

We now have confirmation that the IAU 100k World Championship race will be October 26th in South Africa.  That will be my big focus race for the fall.  I'm not quite sure what I'm doing in August and September, but it will be focused on preparing for the 100k.  I will likely be looking for a flat and fast 50k-50 miler in September as a tune-up for the 100k, so if you have any ideas, let me know.

That all I have for now.  I'll check back in after the stage race.

Ice Age Race Report

I wanted the course record.  I needed the win.  It was never about Western States.

Honestly.  I've already turned down my spot into WS100.  Heck, I was so ambivalent about the Western States slot that my wife didn't even know Ice Age was part of the Montrail Ultra Cup and the top 2 finishers would be granted an automatic entry.  Here's the text message I got from her when she saw all the social media traffic about the auto entry:

Eleventh at WS100 and 3rd at JFK last year...both races I missed my chance to make the starting line again in Squaw Valley by one place.  Heartbreaking, right?  Why wouldn't I accept?

I'll get to that, but I have to tell the whole story first.

It just so happens that the Ice Age course record holder currently lives in Cincinnati.  His name is Andy Jones and I see him regularly as he still trains with a competitive group. (Not to be confused with Andy Jones-Wilkins (AJW) who is also well known in ultra circles.)  Andy Jones is a Canadian-born ultra runner who was very fast back in the late 80s and throughout the 90s.  He's run a 2:17 marathon, is 3rd on the North America all-time performance list for 100k with a time of 6:33:57, and he still holds the North American record for the road 100 mile at 12:05.  Suffice it to say, the dude had wheels.

When Andy saw the success I was having at races like JFK, he mentioned Ice Age.  He explained that he still had the course record, but it had been around a long time and he felt this new wave of ultra talent was bound to be on the verge of breaking his mark.  He suggested that I give it a shot.

What's more is the fact that I consider JFK, American River, and Ice Age to be the Triple Crown of fast, flat US 50 milers.  I've done JFK of course, and I wanted to race American River, but my work schedule prevented me from running it this year.  Ice Age fit into the schedule nicely, so I entered the event simply to run the race.  Western States was little more than an afterthought.

I wanted the course record.

After attempting my first 100 miler and dabbling in a couple more mountainous ultras in 2012, I had a quiet year without any headline wins.  Max King trounced me at JFK, taking my record down just a year after I set it.  I thought I ran well last year, I just felt like I couldn't compete at the very top level of mountain ultras when I had no mountains to train on.  Admittedly, my confidence was a little shaken.  I decided that I should return to my strengths and run races that I could properly train for in 2013.  I had a good start resetting my Mountain Mist CR in January, but that didn't mean much on the national level.  Ice Age was my first real opportunity to prove to myself against a national class field of fast 50 mile types that I still had it.

I needed the win.

The race started fast.  Really it was just the first mile, but still, I had no interest in getting caught up in the early shenanigans.  The leaders settled in relatively quickly about 30 seconds ahead of me, and I stalked them for the first loop of rolling, grassy jeep roads.  I don't think they were more than a minute up at the 9 mile aid station.  Josh Brimhall and Zach Bitter were starting to pull away together while Eric Senseman, Matt Flaherty, Scott Breeden, and Brian Condon trailed in a tight group.

I was now warmed up and starting to get into rhythm.  I slowly started to reel in the pack of 4 in front of me. I was very careful though, and didn't catch the group until around mile 14.  At the time we were in a section of tight single track so I was just content to sit at the back.  A short time later we popped out of the forest and were cruising on some super smooth single track.  This is my natural strength and I started stretching the string just a little here.  Keeping myself under control, but ever so slightly trying to pull everyone else out of their comfort zone.  Zach and Josh were still out of sight in the lead, but now our chase group was beginning to splinter a bit.  By the 22 mile turnaround I was solidly in third and closing on the leaders.  Most importantly, I was just running my race, according to my schedule.

Zach and Josh came into view on the return trip through the same field where I started to pass the chase pack.  I wanted to hold back and relax, but I was closing and could feel it.  I dropped a 6:30 mile and caught them at the 27 miles.  I sat on them for a minute and collected myself, but I had too much momentum and decided to push into the lead.  I felt Josh drop off the pace soon after, but Zach tried to keep in contact.  I knew I needed to back off into a more mangeable pace...I still had a long 22 miles in front of me.

At this point, I was on course record pace, but the relentless small climbs were taking their toll.  I ran a few miles of the course on Friday and knew it was going to be like this, but I hadn't seen the last 13 miles of the course, so I had no clue what I needed to prepare for.  I didn't know if I would be able to continue at CR pace. I could go after the CR, but it was risky, and I might blow up in the process.  I mentally made the switch.  I had to make sure I won.  I would have been very disappointed had I moved into the lead that early then fallen apart and given up the lead later in the race.

I dialed back the effort level a notch and started focusing on my nutrition.  I could tell I was still gradually pulling away from Zach so that was a good sign...as long as I could keep it up.  He passed me late in the race last year at Western States so I knew he could be dangerous.  I was able to pass him back before the finish at WS100, but I didn't want to try my luck again.

Why do you continue to run these stupid races?  This isn't fun. You don't have to do this to yourself.  I battled my own demons from miles 32 to 36.  I had been running too fast.  I had been neglecting my nutrition.  My quads were on the verge of cramping.  I had been listening to those scientists who say salt doesn't help cramps and had not been concerned about my salt intake.  Luckily, I had put a few S-Caps in my Salomon fuel belt as an afterthought.  That probably saved my race.  If my own experience wasn't enough, Meghan Arbogast and Jeff Browning set me straight at dinner that evening...we don't know why salt works, it just does.

The salt and a steady stream of Coke pulled me out of my funk eventually.  Another out-and-back section turned around at mile 40 and I found I had a 5 minute lead on Zach.  Brian Condon and Matt Flaherty were only 30 seconds behind Zach and looked quite good.  I was confident though that I had pulled through the hardest part of the race and I'd be able to hang on.  The last few miles were uneventful.  I knew the course record had slipped out of reach, but I was oddly content with the result.  I found one more 6:30 for the last cruiser mile and crossed the line in 5:56:46.

I haven't been more pleased with a race since I broke the CR at JFK in 2011.  I ran the 3rd fastest time in the history of the race.  Only Andy Jones and Dan Held have run faster.  Coincidentally, both of those guys also have run 6:33 for the road 100k (6:19 pace for 62 miles).  Guess I have a new goal this fall for the World 100k race in South Africa.

It was never about Western States.

The hardest part about turning down my entry is that everyone just assumes that I would accept.  There were so many comments and congratulations that ended in "See you in Squaw!" or something to that effect.  I didn't see AJW's iRunFar column until after the race, but it pretty much sums up what I think the popular opinion is regarding the Montrail Ultra Cup Series...the only reason to run a MUC race is to get into Western States.  But that's just not how I see it.  I treat the MUC like prize money.  Money rarely, if ever, has motivated me personally to run a race.  But money inevitably brings competition, and that's what I want. Same with MUC, it attracts a solid field.  Some folks trying to get into WS100, others just looking for someone quality to race against.

The problem is that the sport of ultra running is changing.  It is becoming more and more specialized.  People have long commented that the MUC races are unfair to 100 mile specialists like SpeedGoatKarl because he'd rarely be able to earn a spot in a fast 50 miler.  Fortunately, more 100 mile races have been added in the past couple years to help those types get into States.  But I have the opposite problem.

I can earn a WS entry in a fast 50 miler, but I can't do anything with it.  If I accepted my slot this year, I'd only have 6 weeks to recover from Ice Age, train for States, and then taper so I arrived well-rested.  If I was lucky, I might be able to crack the top 10 again, but I want more than that.  I want to be truly competitive.  This year I wouldn't be, so I'm not running it.  I believe that by making these tough decisions now, I will extend my career and be healthy enough to have more opportunities in the future. I just hope I can still earn my way in when that time comes.

See you in Squaw...just not this year.