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Month: April 2013

Salt Flats 100

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.

North Coast 24-hour run – Cleveland, Ohio

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.

End-to-end run on the spine of Lake Mountain

This morning I accomplished a run I’ve wanted to do for some time, to run the spine of Lake Mountain north to south.   I started at about 3 a.m. in the Ranches in Eagle Mountain.  I parked my car in front of the house and was off, climbing up to the ridge. The first several miles are pretty easy, a nice ridge road on top, but above Reformation Canyon, the road ends and it turns into a bushwhack.  The best and fasted route is to just stick with the ridge tops, going up and down.  To the summit, the main ridge is on the Eagle mountain side.  There is a lower ridge on the Utah Lake side but well out of the way.

It was great fun going up and down the ridges.  Because of the fire, the ridge tops now are very runnable, no more thick scrub and spider webs.  You can make good time, but I took it easy, enjoying the night and doing plenty of sight-seeing.

Once I reached the true summit about about 7,750, going further, somehow I took a wrong turn.  I was puzzled that somehow I missed noticing the main road….well that is because I started running on the wrong ridge, that would have got me to the right place, but no road and much steeper down.  I figured things out, came down to the main road, ran up and found the right series of roads.  With all the towers up there it is pretty confusing which is the right road, but now I know.  I finally connected to the ridge road to take me all the way to Soldier’s pass, about 18 miles.

Dawn arrived and the light reflecting off of Utah Lake was pretty amazing.  Eventually the road descends into a short canyon on the south end.  There was a shooter there that made me nervous with his handgun, but he noticed me and I ran by.

Once I hit Redwood Road, about the 20-mile mark, I turned and started running home on the pavement.  I went about 8 more miles, and with just six more miles to go, I called home so I wouldn’t be late for the birthday activities.  It was a wonder fun.  Here is the video and photos:

 

Muley Twist Adventure Run – 43 miles

It has been a long 15 months of injury recovery from a terrible tibia stress fracture and other associated side-effects. Finally, after all that time, I feel injury-free, able to again go on long solo adventure runs, my favorite part of running. Two weeks ago I finished the Antelope Island 100 in 23:11, taking it easy because of a lingering hamstring problem. But finally, I can run up and down hills pain free.

At times, my adventure runs are the “spur of the moment” type things. If the weather looks good, and I have the time, I’ll quickly make plans, get the OK from my wife, and take off on my own to go run in some remote place. This time, I decided to return to one of my favorite places to run — the remote back country of Capitol Reef National Park in Utah. This is a unique park, no entrance fee, and very few people in the back country. I’ve been there five times before and was ready for a nice long run. I stayed the night in Torrey and hit the trail at dawn. This video tells the story.