The Managed Bonk

My only race of 2020 was definitely a memorable one!  With this being an end-of-qualifying year for the US 24-hour team, the Desert Solstice Invitational was absolutely stacked with talent.  Among the 18 men starting, I was a legit back-of-the-packer!  Zach Bitter, Harvey Lewis, Oliver Leblond, Nick Coury, Ryan Montgomery, Bob Hearn...(I could keep gong, world and American record holders all over the place!).   It was easily the most competitive 24-hour race on the planet this year, and somehow, I got a late invitation off the ‘B’ list in November, as other faster people withdrew. In summary, this race went absolutely NOTHING like I expected.  I expected a bunch of elites to run 160-170 miles, and I expected to run 150-something myself.  The biggest surprise to me was how absolutely punishing and difficult this track format is.  Runner-up surprise was the impact of the afternoon heat/sun. Will break the race into segments below. 0-3 hours  I’d pla...

2019 Bigfoot 200. Race report:  What a weird, fun, painful, amazing experience.   206 miles and 42,000 ft of elevation gain, over ~58 continuous hours running ultra and beyond through the Cascade Mountains... I’ve been trying to get back into more competitive running this year, and wanted one big target race in late summer or fall, so I’d have something to work towards in 2019 as I got back into shape.  One at a time, I applied for 5 different, relatively popular northwestern / mountain-area 100-mile races.  Because of often remote locations and lack of infrastructure, the bigger trail ultras have to impose caps on field size (~100-400 runners, as opposed to popular road marathons in big cities that can accept 20,000+), so registration is often some variety of lottery process for the higher-demand ultras.  And one-by-one, I had to cross all 5 off my list (mostly lotto rejections).  The 6th race I considered was not a 100-miler, but the Destination Tra...