Getting caught up…or at least trying

Well, I still need to finish my HURT race report (are you getting sick of hearing that yet?), but wanted to fill y’all in on some recent happenings in the meantime.

I didn’t apply to Western States this year, so will need to start over again in 09 for my attempt at the Last Great Race.  I’m also pretty far down on the Hardrock queue, so that’s also out this year.  Good for me, since I didn’t want to deal with the snow anyway.

I put this year’s race calendar up here.  Some races are tentative, so it will likely change.  I’ve also created a page that I’m going to use to announce our group training runs — you can find that here.  I’m trying to figure out how to create a different RSS feed for this page so you don’t have to keep checking for updates — I’ll modify this post whenever I do, so you should pick it up if you’re already subscribed to my main blog.

New events for me this year that I’m looking forward to are: Coyote, Miwok, Bighorn, and Mt Dis.  Also, it sounds like Leona will have a good turnout, so that should be fun.  San Diego has moved up several months to June — bad thing about that is it’s now in the middle of summer, so imagine it’s gonna be hot, plus it’s only 2 weeks before Bighorn, not to mention they’re using last year’s course (I prefer the old one).

My training is coming along ok…could be better, but am anticipating getting more hours in as the weather returns to SoCal normality — FINALLY!  I’ve been spending some trail time with Carmela, who prefers the Bailey Canyon loop I introduced her to last year, over the OC trails she used to run before that.  Hmmm…I wonder why.

The other week, we bumped into Jay Anderson at the trailhead, who is the OC100K RD.  We went up to Wilson just after the storms, so there was quite a bit of snow, making some sections unpassable.  I’ve never seen that much snow up there — much more than after the heavy rains from 3 years ago.  We couldn’t take the singletrack leading up to the parking lot from Mt Harvard, so we ran up the fireroad instead to find the gate closed, which didn’t stop me from figuring out the combo again, but only to find the water spigot frozen over anyway.

I also found out that Hiker Bob Annas died a few days before I left for HURT — I was so bummed.  Bob was a fixture around our local trails, who I bumped into on several occasions during my training runs.  I would frequently stop to chat with him — always curious as to what 100 miler I was preparing for.    We’ll miss you Bob.  Also, we found out that the same weekend Jay, Carmela, and I went up to the top of Wilson, a young hiker fell to her death off the Sturtevant Trail.  Sad.

Saturday was my house-warming party — it was awesome!  We had over 30 people come by for some beer and pizza during the afternoon, then as the night rolled in, we fired up the pit and tiki torches.  Next time, I gotta remember to buy some marshmellow and smores.  It was great to see Gary Hilliard, who managed to thoroughly embarrass me in front of everyone by presenting me with my Socal Ultra Runners Grans Prix Series awards I couldn’t pick up at the official party that was held the same weekend I was running HURT — somehow I managed to get 2nd in my age group.  Can’t complain, especially when 1st place went to Dean Dobberteen.  It was also nice to see Cate and Robert Baird, who we’ll all be seeing more and more around our local ultra community.  Both Cate and Gary looked fantastic!

This weekend is the OC100K, which happened to reach capacity, and also attracted quite a few non-local runners.  I’ll be there with Catra in the morning, then return later on to volunteer for most of the day.  I’m looking forward to seeing my friends Stacey and Ronda from Oregon who I haven’t seen since AC last year — I’m sure they’ll be tearing up the asphalt.

Finally, in case any of you were wondering, your hunch about Catra and I are correct, so you’ll likely see us together down here fairly often.