Over the past day and a half, my buddy Mike has been running the Big Horn 100.  This race is one of the few qualifiers for the Hard Rock 100 which means its tough and has a lot of climbing.  Mike’s entire family came out for the race.  The plan was for us to see Mike once along the course and then I’d meet him at the halfway point.  Below is Mike with his nephew, Noah, right before the start.

At 11am, 300 runners took off up a dirt road which turned into a single track trail that ascended a ridge 3,500ft above at 8,100ft.

We met Mike at the 13 mile aid station.  He looked good and was ahead of his goal time.

The race had internet tracking at several locations and Mike fell a little behind his time at the 30 mile mark.  We were speculating that it was due to weather.

Mike and I left the turn around point aid station around 3:30am.  He told me how hard the climbs were, but the really painful spot was his legs…. it was going to be a long day since our total drop was supposed to be over 11,000ft.

Everything is better in day light and this far north, the sun comes up around 5:30am.

The terrain was beautiful – rolling hills that paralleled a river.

The course took us to the bottom of the river down to an altitude of 4,500ft.

Unfortunately, going down meant that we had to go up; and with temperatures near all time record highs, climbing out of the canyon was incredibly tough and hot.  The picture below shows the canyon that we climbed out of.

The trail kept going up and up.  We finally made it back to the aid station where Mike’s family would be waiting (mile 83).

The trail was slightly downhill until one giant climb at the end back up to 8,100ft.

From there, it was all down hill.  In some places very steep.  Good news is we made great time, bad news is that it crushed out quads and feet.

At the end, Mike finished in 33 hours and climbed over 18,000ft.