Anyway, the best part to me is the last minute. It was the minute that mattered the most!

Video Link Here

Chris:

First of all, congratulations as you still had a successful day and it sounds like you may have found your answer to the knee issue.  Secondly, there is no such thing as “FAILURE” in these situations only lessons learned for success on your next race.  Given the realm of athleticism that you are venturing into with ultra-distance running, you should view every race, no matter what the outcome as success, since it will teach you something for the next race.  These races, as you know are very long and the longer the race the more chances for the body to break down. So any lessons learned will help improve the success rate for future events.  A success rate that I would venture to guess is not as high as any old 10k you may enter.

In addition, within these races you will have success and failures and it will be necessary over the course of time to understand your body, like you did in this last race, to know when a failure means to call it a day and when a failure means “a bad patch” and just keep going as your body will work though it.

I guess the short of it is that success is relative in these types of events since they are very grueling and punishing on the body no matter what your conditioning.  Log your race, start the preparation for your next race, and review your log of this race prior to the next one and your lessons learned will come full circle.  You will have success in your next race.
-John 

Calling it quits was a very difficult thing to do. The worst part was that I had energy to keep going. I must be getting old because I never would have paid any attention to something like knee pain in the past!

My training run times showed me that it was going to require everything to be “perfect” in order for me to make 50+. Ultimately, only 6 people out of 75 runners actually went 50+ miles on that course Saturday night, so I had obviously set the bar for myself very high. I think making my first attempt a night run added significantly to the difficulty, but what else are you gonna do in the middle of August around here?

One good thing happened. I won a pair of Innov8 Trail shoes. I get to pick which style. This may be the answer to the problem because Sunday after the race, I determined the shoes I was wearing probably have 600+ miles on them, maybe even 800 miles…. I’m dumb dumb dumb. Those shoes should have been in the trash long ago.

Depending upon this knee thing, I am looking at one of these two races for my next attempt on fifty miles:

http://www.pctrailruns.com/SF_One_Day.htm

http://www.ultrarunner.net/hkmain.html

Chris

It should complement the two handhelds that I carry already very well. I wore it on a 12 mile hill run Wednesday morning. I got a little bit of chaffing on my lower back from the big bottle in the rear but I don’t think it will be a problem. It will allow me to carry 67 ounces of water, plus a 10 ounce bottle and a gel flask. I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to use the 10 ounce bottle. I am thinking of either mixing a really heavy concentration of cytomax in it, or just filling it with dry cytomax powder that I would then add to the water bottles.

Suggestions?

Click Here

Mountain lion expert, Rich DeSimone wants one of these:

Notice the mountain lion in the center…..

My coach wrote a training plan for me for the 12 Hours at Cool Night Run that will hopefully help me achieve six or more laps around the nine mile course. For the weekend of Western States (WS), he had me doing a 35 mile workout on Saturday and a 10 mile workout on Sunday. When I first saw it, I thought, “Those are going to be some lonely miles since I know where everyone else will be those days.” Then I thought, “How long will that 35 miler take me?” And suddenly I realized maybe those miles wouldn’t have to be so lonely after all.

I contacted my coach and asked if he thought pacing a “slower” WS runner through the night over the last 38 miles of the course was advisable… he gave the idea a thumbs up. So I went to ws100.com and looked at the list of people asking for a pacer. The very last one was a 55 year old guy from Montana named Rich DeSimone. His short bio said Western States will be his first 100 mile run, his time goal is to finish.

In life I have had some experience with Montanans. There is something about living half of every year below zero degrees that seems to have a profound psychological effect. Put another way: I have noticed that the average Montanan has a much higher pain threshold than the average Californian. I have also noticed that when you get a Montanan going at something physically difficult, they usually will be the last one in any group to give up. They start slow, but they go forever…. diesel engines. That’s what I’ve seen, anyway. It seemed like a reasonable gamble that I will be likely to get my mileage for the day if I offered to “pace” him from Foresthill to Auburn.

I sent Mr. DeSimone a brief email suggesting I might be an adequate pacer if his standards were low, and he jumped right on, willing to take me sight unseen… Because I already have plans to go out of town when he will be in town for the Western States Training Weekend over the Memorial Day weekend, we may not be able to meet each other until the moment we take off running together. In order to get an idea of who we each are, he sent me a link to a newspaper article that describes his work as a biologist for Montana Department of Fish and Game.

 Of course, I had already noticed he was a biologist for Montana Department of Fish and Game from the automatic signature at the end of his first email. “That would be the life,” I thought. “Getting paid to go fishing or whatever… I bet he goes hiking in the woods all day for work!”  I envisioned a guy wearing a big wool shirt, cutting open a massive trout to see what it had been eating, or laying on a ridge line counting elk through binoculars, you know, stuff like that.

Well, what I envisioned was just a little off the mark. What he actually does fits much more squarely with my preconceived stereotype for Montanans: He is the leader of a ten year study on mountain lions at the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Wildlife Genetics Laboratory at the University of Montana. Hmmmm….. That didn’t quite sound like cutting open fish or counting big horn sheep. So I read the article. You can read it here.

When it explained how he hasn’t put collars on all 121 of the mountain lions he has caught during the study, I started to have second thoughts. I’m going to spend 12 hours running on a mountain trail in the dark with a guy who has been close enough to touch 121 mountain lions?

Hmmm… I’m not sure I want to go running… in the dark… on a trail where there is already a monument to a person who was killed by a mountain lion… with a guy who feels that comfortable with mountain lions.

There’s something about the idea that suddenly seemed… ill-advised.

In order to get a better perspective of his expertise, I googled “Rich DeSimone Lions”. The search returned eleven pages worth of hits. About the time I was starting to realize that maybe running with him at night is actually a good idea, I mean, he’s still around to tell the story of 121 mountain lion contacts, I found a great article about what to do if you ever encounter a lion face to face. Check it out here.
 
And now I am really eager to run with him. We need a friend who works for Montana Fish and Game…. 

This is me mailing my entry for 12 Hours at Cool Night Run. It is a 12 hour run around the 9 mile Olmstead Loop equestrian trail in Cool. It starts at 7pm on Saturday, August 12th and ends at 7am on Sunday, August 13th. My goal of goals is 54 miles, which will be 6 laps. Each lap has 900′ of climbing though, so really, I will be happy with 40 miles or more.

Ha, it wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t even think of going nine miles, much less six times around a nine mile loop with 900′ on each lap!!!!!

Read this: 30 Miles with Saul
Steve’s prespective: From Sacramento to Santa Rosa
Watch this: Top of Cardiac Video
See the pics: Sauls pics
Scott McKinney and I collaborated to do the “30 miles with Saul” write-up at cyclefolsom.com. I believe you will find it inspirational in the last days before your next event.

BTW: Happy 39 to Chris.

I swear he told me his goal was to do the Western States 100 before he turned 50, but he claims I miss understood…

=- Curt