Davy Crockett’s Running Frontier

After finishing a solid race last weekend, North Coast 24 (107.7 miles) I went into the week wondering if I would recover in time to run a local race, Salt Flats 100.   I was signed up, but not really committed.  If I tried, It would be only five days recovery time between races.   With a couple days to go, I didn’t have anything major left to recover from, so I decided to go ahead and give it a try.   I still had doubts and decided to just treat it as a training run and see how it goes. continue reading…

North Coast 24-hour is one of the premier 24-hour events in the country.  It is held at a park in Cleveland, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie, on a 100% paved trail.   The winner of a fixed-time race is the person who runs the furthest. I had intended to run this race a year ago, but my busted leg caused me to defer my entry until this year.  The RD was kind enough to move it.  This race normally attracts some of the best fixed-time runners in country and is usually the National Championship, but this year it wasn’t, so competition was a little down but the toughness was up. continue reading…

To close out 2012, I again ran in Across the Years (ATY), a fixed-time race held in Glendale, Arizona.  For a fixed-time race, the objective is to run as many miles as you can within a given period of time.  The clock is always ticking.  You can take rests along the way, but the clock never stops.  At ATY, there are three different races, running concurrently, 24-hours, 48-hours, and 72-hours.   This year I again decided to enter the 48-hour race.   Two years ago I won the race, and last year came in second.

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Most trail ultramarathons, 50 miles or more, allow runners to use a “pacer” to run along with them for the last half of the race.  Pacing is true service.  There are no awards for pacing, just the satisfaction that you have in some way helped a runner accomplish something pretty spectacular.  “A race is just a race, but a friend who paces you is a friend for life.” - Joseph Franko

This year, I decided instead of running Wasatch 100, that I would pace someone. I linked up with Matt Van Horn who I had run with a couple times.  He would be trying to finish his first Wasatch 100.  I’ve finished Wasatch four times and each year had some very painful low-energy sections.  I really had no strong desire to run it again for awhile.  I could run those trails any time I wished, with much less pain.   At the pre-race meeting I was asked if I felt bad not running for myself this year.  In all honesty, I was not envious at all.   I looked forward to being a pacer.

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Would it be possible to finish a 100-miler with only about three weeks of training in the past six months?   That is a crazy question and I knew the answer was no.   After six months of long recovery from a serious stress fracture that almost broke my tibia in half, I had only been able to start doing some sort of careful running for three weeks.   My longest run was 15 miles.   I had spent many long weeks limping around and laying on the couch for hours. continue reading…

After running the Bear 100 for seven straight years, I decided that it was time to try a new race.  I was drawn back to my roots, and wanted to run the Virgil Crest 100 in Upstate New York where I lived for eleven years.  The Virgil Crest Ultras (100, 50, and 50K), in their fourth year, are held above the town of Virgil, New York, and runs through the Greek Peak ski resort, where I used to ski in the 80s.  This would be my third mountain 100-mile race in the past four weeks, Cascade Crest 100, Wasatch 100, and now Virgil Crest 100.

The course is a 50-mile out-and-back course with a tough mountain loop thrown in the middle, taking you up to the top of the ski mountain, not just once but twice during the loop. In all during the entire 100 miles, there were 20 significant climbs for nearly 20,000 feet of climbing along the entire way.  You knew you were at the top because each time there was a ski lift shack greeting you.   But most of the course runs through beautiful green forest, some of it almost dark enough for a flashlight during the day.  The trails are soft and fast (if dry) with only a few short technical spots.  continue reading…

The slogan that Wasatch 100 uses is “100 miles of heaven and hell.”  This year I got my money’s worth and visited both places multiple times but still made it to the finish.   This would be my fourth Wasatch 100, a tough mountain race in the Wasatch Mountains from Kaysville to Midway.  Locally, the race gets over-shadowed in the minds of recreational runners by the Ragnar relay called Wasatch Back.   It’s funny to try to explain to people the huge difference between the two.  No, there would be no simple 10K runs with friends on this race, I would be faced with running 100 miles by myself climbing more than 25,000 feet along the way.  This year I would do it without pacer or crew.  I joked that I was going to do it without drop bags and aid stations this year and some people thought I was serious.

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The Cascade Crest 100 is held in the Cascade Mountains of Washington state, on a loop course on high ridges and valleys near Snoqualmie Pass.  The race director, Charlie Crissman, bills this race as a throw-back, classic ultra that doesn’t seek fame or crowds, but just wants to share a remarkable trail running experience.  That is my kind of race and it lived up to its lack of hype. continue reading…

It was 3:30 a.m.  I was lying in a cot shivering, in the ski lodge of Diamond Fork ski area above Lake Tahoe.  A lady who had put blankets on me kept looking back at me with concerned looks.  The previous 11 hours had been brutal.  Because of an altitude-related stomach issue, I had only covered 30 miles during that time.  Now, at mile 80, serious thoughts of quitting and DNFing were swirling in my mind.  I was looking for the right excuse to stop, a reason that I could live with.  Why continue to suffer?  I had even survived the fright of running into a huge black bear with her cub earlier in the afternoon.  I had a string of 23 100-mile finishes without a DNF.  Was I ready to see that string broken?  I told myself yes and continued to shiver.

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The Great Salt Lake Desert covers more than 4,000 square miles and includes the Bonneville Salt Flats which are an expanse of hard, white salt crust on the western edge of the desert in Utah.  They are 12 miles long and 5 miles wide covering just over 46 square miles.  Near the center, the crust is 5 feet thick in places.  That is 147 million tons of mostly table salt!  It is the site of some astounding land speed records over of more than 600 mph. continue reading…

This year the fifth 100-mile trail race was introduced to Utah, the Antelope Island Buffalo Run 100.  Antelope Island is the largest island in the Great Salt Lake, 15 miles long, five miles wide. It is home to bison, bighorn sheep, pronghorn, mule deer, coyotes, bobcats, upland game birds, and waterfowl. John C. Fremont and Kit Carson visited Antelope Island in 1845. They killed several antelope on the island thus giving Antelope Island its name. In the 1890′s, John E Dooley owned land on Antelope Island and he introduced a herd of twelve bison.  Now hundreds roam the island.

The Buffalo Run, in its fifth year, is the largest trail race in Utah, with over 700 runners this year competing in distances of 25K, 50K, 50-miles, and 100-miles.

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Rocky Raccoon 100 is where it all began for me back in 2005. This was the scene of the crime where I finished my first 100-mile race in 26:53.  I returned for the 4^th time, this time seeking my 38^th 100-mile finish.  Last year I had a nearly perfect race, finishing in 21:07.

The Rocky Raccoon 100 runs in Huntsville Stake Park, north of Houston, Texas. The 20-mile course runs all over the park, making its way all the way around Lake Raven. We would have to run the course five times to reach 100 miles. The course had been changed in recent years to eliminate two out-and-backs, replacing them with more forest single-track. Most of the course runs through forest on a nice soft surface. See the course map.

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To close out my 2010 racing schedule, I decided to give a fixed-time 48-hour event a try. I entered Across the Years (ATY) 48-hour footrace held at Nardini Manor, in Buckeye, Arizona, west of Phoenix. For a fixed-time race, you try to cover as many miles as you can in that period of time. The clock is always ticking. Each year ATY attracts many of the elite in sport from around the world. Two years ago I ran the 24-hour version of the race and did pretty well, so this year I wanted to see how I could do in the 48-hour version.

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This year is the 150^th anniversary of the establishment of the Pony Express which captured the imagination of the country.  In 1860 the Pony Express greatly sped up cross-country mail delivery using courageous endurance riders who were “young, good horsemen, accustomed to outdoor life, able to endure severe hardship and fatigue, and fearless.”  One hundred fifty years later, 38 endurance runners retraced the hoof prints of history by participating in the 5^th annual Pony Express Trail 100-mile and 50-mile endurance runs.

The race runs on the historic Pony Express Trail, in the very remote stretches of western Utah.  It passes by five Pony Express station sites along the way marked by huge monuments.  Each runner is supported by a crew and staggered starts are used (slower and faster groups) to spread the runners out on the desert floor.  They all converge about 50 miles out, with views of expansive salt flats in the distance. 

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The Wasatch Front 100 is the premier ultramarathon locally.  It is in its 31^st year and is a labor of love for many of the founders of ultrarunning in Utah.  It is thrilling to just watch and observe their dedication and efforts to pull off an amazing event like this.  This was my 3^rd year running Wasatch 100.  I don’t run it every year, some years I have run other races in its place.  But it is great to run on the trails with so many local runners and others from out of state who have flown in to experience the majestic Wasatch mountains.

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For the 4^th time, I traveled to the Lake Tahoe area and ran in the Tahoe Rim Trail 100.  This race keeps drawing me back to it because of its beauty, challenge, and single track trails.  The course runs up along the ridges on the east portion of the lake above Incline Village.  This year they added a new challenging twist.  The course needed to be altered because of a permit problem, so we were able to run on new trails for the race, including a brutal climb straight up a ski resort run.

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