This blog has been woe-fully neglected, so I figure I'll start doing the most important events of this summer.
The Tahoe Rim Trail 100 was an event I was the most anxious about of all the events this summer, and perhaps ever. When I'm on the trails I suffer more than when I'm on mile 390 of a 400 mile bike ride. Not sure why, maybe because running is a newer thing for me? I haven't properly trained as a runner? Not sure...
Anyway, Hank instigated this run as this would coincide with his B-day and he'd like to do a 50k. Then Sam and Hudgins signed up for the 100 miler... so I upped my registration from a 50k, to a 50m, to a 100m. And decided to start running a lot. Which was tough as I was riding a lot since finding c510, a cycling crew that rides fast, early, and makes training quite enjoyable.
After all the TRT training runs, I sort of felt ready, but I truly wasn't sure until I hit the start line.
The day before... picked up my "race socks"... these turned out well, but I think it's impossible to keep the Tahoe moon dust out of your shoes, so either you need different shoes with less breathable uppers and keep the dust out, or you need to change socks more often than I did... which was 0.
And a few days before the race I figured this would be a good time for new shoes... yup, so I picked up some Hoka Speed Goats and kept these in the drop bag. And never used em.
Got a nice goodbye from the Nickelsens...
And on our way up, we stopped by Spooner Lake which is basically at the finish for a quick soak and to check out the start/finish line. Later, we found out that this lake is full of leaches! Yikes!
At the pre-race meeting
And dropbag drops...
Back near Tahoe. This was Hank's B-day celebration after all, so they rented a place off Kingsbury. I slept on this deck for a few hours and prayed.
At the 5 am start. Hank and Aaron's race started at 6 am, so they graciously dropped us off and found parking far away.
Moon set
Sam, still feeling pretty good here. Probably like mile 5. He was slowing down and I was starting to wonder...
At mile 6 or so, Sam started limping due to his ankle. He switched shoes at the first drop bag which helped, but he kept on limping. I figured I'd be the one slowing us down, but I was ok with this role reversal.
The hike up from Diamond Peak was a royal pain. Straight up the ski runs... for what seemed like forever. I really wished I had poles at this point.
The view wasn't bad though.
Soon Hope caught up to us. He was kicking butt.
Not a bad place to be running. I kept reminding myself to be grateful every time I got to a view like this one... which helped me keep my mind off the pain. But I really wasn't hurting too bad. The pain was so mild the whole time, I really never felt too bad.
Stopped here for 5 seconds...
Oh... my eating strategy. This'll have to change. I wanted to eat real food until my stomach started asking for something else. The day was quite hot and I love watermelons, so I think that was all I had for the first 40+ miles. That resulted in that bright red poo you see down there (your welcome for not zooming in)... yeah, that was quite disturbing. All that jogging and jostling my tummy really never results in me having a solid poo during a long run. I do take some immodium, which seems to help, but never to the point that I have a solid poo... ok enough poo talk.
The second time we got to Diamond Peak, Sam was hurting. We decided to chill out here for a while tend to his feet. We both said, "I don't really get blisters, so I'm not too worried." Which was an amateur mistake. In these longer runs (over 100k), you need to tend to your blisters as soon as you start feeling them. And change socks every 20 or so miles if you can, I think that would have saved me. Oh, and a shout out to these volunteers tending to nasty feet at 3 am. Amazing volunteers from Reno!
Sunrise!
At this point, I knew that it'd be much quicker to walk back to the finish than drop out. So I talked to Sam, who was still miraculously trudging on, and I decided to run ahead. I actually felt pretty good for having run for 24+ hours, so I took off and started passing people, which was fun.
Hope and Hank were at the finish... one of 3 or 4 folks who were there, which meant a lot. This was quite an emotional race for me, as I was getting ready to leave the bay area and this being my first 100. Plus witnessing the pain that Sam was enduring was inspirational. Got my plastic cup, filled it with beer and got a burrito from the taco truck and waited for Sam.
Who came in an hour or so after me looking quite haggard. But he kicked butt.
We went back, took a nap, and returned for the ceremony. Here's Hudgins getting his buckle.
Sub 30 hr finishers get a silver buckle. The sub 24 hr folks get a gold one. I may have to return to get a gold one...
This tattoo was quite handy.
The crew!
The Kuwabaras were on our way up to Pahatsi where we'd spend the next week in Tahoe! And check out that sunset!
"I run because it always takes me where I want to go." - Dean Karnazas
Tuolumne. One of my favorite places in the universe.
We had two groups serendipitously coming together this weekend... as my trail running buddies had planned a Tuolumne to Mammoth trail run, and Hoeft got a group site (again). So we had quite the crew to party up yonder in the high country. Danielle threw out her back, so Metreses who were headed to go backpacking bailed on that plan and joined us.
Start out with a group pic of us on top of Lembert Dome! Camille! Over here! On day 3... aka. Sun.
I drove up Fri with Nikko as I was going to take the day off anyway and wanted to maximize my time in paradise
We drove straight to Tenaya Lake for a nice dip. We stopped at Rainbow Falls for lunch too! Double dip day!
Then we decided to climb Pothole dome... so Nikko could do the floss at the top.
Cathedral Peak! We'll be seeing you soon...
Nikko pondering life...
The rangers put on quite the show on Fri. Banjos, guitars, good singing and a fire... we only stopped for 5 min on our way to go say hi to Hope. The others slowly rolled in... and at 10 pm, Sam, Seth, Alex Hudgins and I drove down to Mammoth for our big adventure run the next day.
We were quite slow in the morning...
after coffee, quick brekky, and a poo stop, we were on our way
We were team "NoBo" as we were headed north to Tuolumne. We decided collectively to go through the Minarets in the beginning to add to the adventure. I think that side loop was our highlight.
Some runnable trails... some not. We were going a lot slower than expected...
Nice shot of Seth floating on the JMT
There were plenty of folks on the trail and a nice lady took a pic of us...
my lunch... from yesterday. I was stoked to have this. mmm....
Seth had tummy trouble (shocker! I know...) so there was plenty of waiting for him at water stops. And there were lots of water stops.
Banner and Ritter
Seeing the SoBo crew was always uplifiting and gave both crews an energy boost for the next 10 min. Aaron made a side tour to go tag a peak
Looking down the perfectly glacier polished Lyell Canyon.
Big ole' cow bone...
Lyell canyon... takes forever.
Sam was nice enough to wait for Seth... so Alex and I took off back to camp. Sam and Seth were only like an hour back, so it wasn't too bad. All in all, a great day running in the mountains...
Here's a fun vid of "stringbean" breaking the FKT on a trail in Ireland... I also like his quote: "A love of distance and pain is what really separates an ultrarunner from a distance runner." - although I'm not so sure he's right. Those marathons, 10ks, 30ks really hurt...
