Brazos Bend 100 - USATF Championship
Why Brazos Bend 100? After Bigfoot 200 I wanted to do a faster race where I’d be able to, ya know, actually run! Rob Goyen’s BB100 is one of the fastest around, and this year it doubled as the 100-mile Trail National Championship. As a bonus to USATF , I thought I’d have a pretty good shot of hitting at least the ‘B’ Standard qualifying time (16:10) for Desert Solstice Invitational next year, a 24-hour race around a track (I know...weird). While I do love mountains and mountain races, I’m a relatively weak climber so I’m hoping these flat races may be more up my alley. The ‘A’ Standard for Desert Solstice is 14:00, and I thought maybe I’d have an outside shot at it, although in hindsight seems maybe a tad aggressive. BB100 is 6 equal loops of 16.7 miles, and my plan was to start off at 8:00/mile, see how that felt, then let the pace bleed slower as it got hotter and more miserable. After the gun I found myself in 10th, and I was tripping over my feet just to try and