On Saturday, I ran the Jemez 50 again.  The course had changed this year to be closer to town since Los Alamos is so dry that it’s already been put into stage 2 fire restrictions.  The weather was warm in the morning and I started in a T-shirt.

Joe P was there along with my friend Mike and his friend Grace.

You can see all the dust in the air and this is a paved road; it was ten times worse once we got on the trail.

The first 15 miles are climbs to the ski resort.  It was getting warm, but we made it in 3 hours and 25 minutes, only 5 minutes slower than my goal.

A fresh shirt felt great.

Over the next mile, the course goes up over the double black diamond ski run.  I started to bonk with the sun beating down on me.

I should have been bombing down the big hill on the other side, but I was really slow.  Mike made it in 15 minutes before me to the aid station.

I may look OK, but I wasn’t feeling good – my feet hurt to run and I was cooking in the sun.

Mike was way ahead of me by now and had time to pose for pictures.

By the time I saw Tracy again at mile 30, I was at a crawling pace.  The race always has a choice to switch to the 50k, but normally the choice is made at mile 20 – this year, the choice was here and it was an obvious one since the 50k finish was only 2 miles away.

I’m all smiles as I crossed the finish line.

Everyone seemed happy to see me and I was happier to see them.

I ran the 50 miler this year… Mike is off on a world adventure so I ran it alone.  The weather was great-  clear and 40 degrees at the 5am start.  I felt on top of the world until about mile 32 when my body remembered that I just ran a 100 a little over a month ago.  My quads got heavy and stomach rumbled but I wanted a PR.  I was shooting for 12 hours and ended up with a 12:22.  I ended up in 13th place out of the 69 starters.  Almost an hour faster than my fastest time at Cactus.

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Jemez 50 has been completed…. I beat my goal of 15 hours by 2 minutes.  You couldn’t have asked for a better race day.  I’ll post a full video later in the week, but there are a few pictures and my Strava feed below.

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This was the weather the day before the race in town – can’t imagine how deep it was on the mountain    

We had to climb this to get to the aid station

In the caldera

Tracy met me 4 different times on the course

First off, I’m selling my boat – only 252 hours on it – 22′ Cobalt – $11k.  Hit me up if any of my 5 readers know anyone that wants it (page all the way down for a picture)

I’ve been doing a lot of running lately to get ready for the Jemez race in New Mexico in a couple weeks.  That race kicked my butt last year.  This year I will be much more prepared for the 11k of climbing over the first 38 miles.  A few weeks ago, I ran the 30k Maze race…. nothing crazy fast, but I never walked during it.  Last weekend, I ran the trail marathon, Pandora’s Box of Rox on Saturday and the 30k Tangle on Sunday.   Sunday’s weather was great and even after running on Saturday we still finished in 4 hours.  Saturday was a train wreck.  At the race start, the temperature was only 75 degrees, but the humidity was maxed out.  The temperature reached 90 by the afternoon, but the humidity stayed the same.   I finished in 6:40, 65 minutes longer than my previous years time.  Funny thing was that I was still 41st out of 114

Couple of pictures from the Maze:

Couple of pictures from the Tangle:

Boat for sale:

I’ve written about the Leadville race in previous posts, but I just got around to completing the video.

More to come, but after running the best 40 miles of my life (I was 75 minutes ahead of my plan); my race fell apart.  Over the next 30 miles, my stomach started churning and 13 bathroom breaks later, I pulled myself from the race at 70 miles.  I’m unsure of what I ate, but something did not agree with me.  I still will put together a video since it was a great race with an unfortunate ending.

The race is tomorrow morning at 8am.  Looks to be a perfect day.

Please click the Tortoises and enter in 711 (my bib number).  You can scroll the frame to get the specifics.

http://www.hallucinationsports.com/event/show/281184258#/results::14737120898250

Who and what is the rabbit?  It’s a trail race in Steamboat Springs, CO.  This race should be the most difficult event I’ve ever done.  It runs in the mountains around Steamboat and follows about 8 miles of paved road, 68 miles of trails and the rest rough jeep roads. Total is 102.9 miles, 20,191 ft. ascent and 20,191 ft. descent.   I have 36 hours to do it.

I got to Steamboat yesterday and immediately started following the course up the ski hill.  Half way up, I got rained on as you can see from the pictures below.  I was only gone from Colorado for a week, but the leaves have really changed colors quickly.

The hill below is part of the beginning and ending climb.  There are no switchbacks in this part, it’s straight up and straight down.

On the way up the hill, I met another runner.  His name is Walt and he was also checking out the course.  We ended up meeting today and hiking another part of the course.  Coincidentally, the same trail I just left, The Continental Divide Trail, is part of the course and we hiked on it today.

More views of the colors from the course below