No Western States for Me

Damn, I didn't get in Western States. When I put my name in, I didn't really want to get in for 2011 but as the lottery grew closed I found myself getting excited. On Saturday, I actually grabbed a beer and watched some of the lottery, before the web site crashed (or was it my home network?). Unfortunately, it was not to be. Neither me or Chris McPeake got picked. We had a "pacing" pact going but it looks like there will be no trip to California this June.

That left me in a depressing spot with no exciting 100 miler in my running horizon. There's always Sulphur Springs, I guess, but to be 100% frank, I find the course less than exciting. I can manage 50 miles on it but the thought of going around 8 times quite frankly freaks me right out. So I put my name in the Massanutten 100 lottery, which is mid-May somewhere down in Virginia. Hilly, but if I'm going to give WS a run for its money, I have to get better at climbing.

The gist of this post is: I have to do something. As you can see from my lack of postings, I'm in a running funk. The Sedona marathon in February is just not doing it for me. Quite frankly, I don't give shit about ever beating my marathon PR. If I happen to be in Sedona on that date, sure, I'll go out and run it but as a motivator it's just not happening for me.

So I might have to resort to Plan B: Susitna 100. There's also plan C, Beast of Burden which a number of people I know are running but all things being equal I would prefer going back to Alaska. There's a little more than 2 months before both of them. If I don't get injured, Derrick thinks he can get me in 100-miles-shape in time for the race. See, I think I'm getting excited already...

I think what triggered this 100 miler fever is my first experience as a pacer at the Creemore Horizontal 100 miler 10 days ago. After freezing my ass off working most of the night at an aid station begging people to let me pace them, a friend of mine decided he could do with some company at around 3:30am. He's a faster runner than me but by that time I had no problem keeping up. We had a good time chatting about all the finer aspects of bonking, until he finished the race at around 9:30. This experience made me wonder about the sanity of volunteers, especially non-runners. How can people be so nice? Anyway, I did have a blast chatting with the other volunteers and having quick chats with slowing imploding runners. I'm going to do this again, for sure.

Last Saturday, I ran the Santa Shuffle with a couple of my runner's from my "Learn to Run" clinic at the Running Room. It was a fun little race and it was nice to see of they improved since to the beginning of the clinic. That clinic has a lot of attrition (some don't even make it to the first clinic), but it's very satisfying to see some of them become runners. Today is my last clinic and I won't be teaching the next one. I need my weekends if I'm going to race long in February and I need to get back to my regular schedule.

That's my news for the last month.