It appears that I may again have a stress fracture in my right tibia. Back in November after a long training run that involved pavement I felt familiar pain in the leg. It was very minor but with each week it became a little more painful. Things improved and I decided to go ahead and run Across the Years 72-hour run, but the leg bothered me much of the time and kept me worried. I had other issues and was disappointed that I “only” ran 163 miles, for 15th place out of about 70 runners. I recovered well, but the leg is still a bother, similar pain to what was felt in 2012 after Across the Years that year. But it is less severe this time, not deep bone pain, but surface pain that just won’t get better and seems to inflame the surrounding tissue and muscles. So, time to go back to the ortho specialist. On the bright side I can walk, usually without any pain, so I’m hopeful that I can at least hike steep hills. But if I try running, now the pain comes fast, not quite limping pain, but get close. So it is time to do other things again and take a break from running. At my age it is now a delicate balance between tough training and remaining injury-free.
Mogollon Monster 100 runs below and on top of the Mogollon Rim in central Arizona. The Mogollon Rim rises out from the earth 2,000 some feet for a span of 200 miles across Arizona and into New Mexico. The race gets it name because it is a monster of a race, but also because of a legend that Big Foot roams the course.
Cascade Crest 100-mile Endurance Run is held in the Cascade Mountains near Snoqualmie Summit just an hour from Seattle Washington. This was my third visit and I’ve always had an enjoyable time running this beautiful forest course. The theme for the run is “Tall Trees, Tough Trails.” The trees are amazing, there are long climbs, but the trails aren’t too technical. The race directors do a superb job with the race, keeping it relatively small with a family feel.
Last year, this was my first 100-miler since busting my leg and I took it slow and easy but still finished well. This year I had set my sights on a personal best for the course however I knew that I really didn’t put in the training needed. This summer, I’ve just been enjoying running, not getting up each morning to train out of obligation. But with the multitude of very long runs I have accomplished since April, I knew I would be fine. (20 runs in the past five months more than 26 miles.)
This was the first time I had run Grand Mesa 100, a relatively new race. I arrived Friday afternoon and was impressed with Grand Mesa, a high plateau above 10,000 feet. I decided to camp near the start because of the early start time the next morning, 5:00 a.m. I greeted friends at the pre-race meeting and enjoyed a relaxing evening by Island Lake.
I managed to get a good night’s rest and it was nice to have only a five-minute drive to the start. We were away at 5 a.m. The course layout is very confusing and I hoped that I studied it enough to not take too many wrong turns. The first giant 11-mile loop was very nice. We climbed above 11,000 feet onto a narrow ridge that gave great views except for the hazy smoke down in the valleys. I finished the loop 15 minutes slower than I hoped, but I was still doing fine. There were only 29 100-mile runners and a bunch of 50-mile and 60K runners. I was running in the top 10.
Mike Place was the last runner accepted into Hard Rock 100 from the wait list just the day before the race. I had agreed to pace him for the last half of the race if he got in, so I quickly got ready and headed for Colorado. I arrived that night and with only a couple hours of sleep arrived in time to watch the start. I saw Mike at the 10-mile aid station and he didn’t look well. I commented to Matt Watts after he left, that I doubted he would make it to my pickup point. During the rest of the morning I tried to get some rest and it wasn’t until about 2 p.m. that I noticed in the results that Mike had dropped at 15 miles. It turned out to be scary, but he was OK. I decided to drive to Laramie in time to make the start for the Happy Jack 24-hour run.
This was my 7th finish at Bighorn. I was amazed how more competitive the field is now compared to my first time there in 2006. I started slow, felt really slow, but I was just about 5 minutes slower on the first huge climb compared to my best year in 2010.
Bryce 100 is a new 100-mile race held on the next major ridge line to the west of Bryce Canyon National Park. While the race is not held in the national park, along the way runners are able to view many similar rock formations and run a few miles through hoodoos. It runs above and below what are called the Sunset Cliffs that face to the west. Much of the course is above 9,000 feet, so altitude is a major factor both because of lower oxygen and cooler weather. The course is deceptively tough but the beauty is first-class.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.