Good things

Recently, things have been going very well. Last week Katie and I got engaged. This is what I'm most excited about but being a running blog, I figured I'd announce that and move on to running aspects of the recent good times.

I was invited to compete in the elite field for the Ultra Run of Champions or UROC in September. It's 100 kilometers of hard racing and some of the best ultra runners in the country will be there. This is both exciting, and scary for me. But, I'll take it, and train hard and see what happens come September 29th. The race in itself is about 50% road 50% trail but all takes place in the mountains. So my training will be a healthy dose of trail and road running leading up to the race.

With the race set and signed up for, I've added some longer training runs into my normal daily mileage. In the later part of last week Brian and myself went down to run the Priest and Three Ridges. This trail is one that I especially love and it is a tough technical run. We headed down on Thursday and planned to run it Thursday camp that night and run it again on Friday. Thursday went as planned though Brian twisted his ankle on the way down the Priest and suffered through the Three Ridges loop.

..Somehow we both ended up with red hats. I had mine first. Brian's in the yellow shorts.

Yesterday was also the Catherine's Fatass 50k race. I had never done it before and heard it was good. Being a fatass, it was free and provided no race swag. Just a course with minimal-to-no markings whatsoever, and friends to run with. Just the way I like it. It's been over 100 degrees all week plus monsterous humidity and I figured yesterday would be no exception. ....It was a huge exception! It rained all day Friday, all night and Saturday morning and the temperature dropped drastically. At the start, I was actually cold! Once we started moving though that all changed. I think it only topped out at 70 MAYBE 75 all day and misted us as we ran with a light rain. It was perfect running weather.

As we started down the trail 4 of us split off the front and remained together most of the day. Keith, myself, Drew and another Patrick ran the first section comfortably, through the first 20 miles or so. I think we all hung together because Keith was the only one who knew for sure all the turns to make. On the yellow trail the rocks were so slick it was like trying to navigate icy rocks. I gashed my knee pretty good and hurt way more than I thought it should have.

As we made our way to the second to last aid station just before the purple trail and the largest climb of the race another guy, Dana caught up to us. The five of us made our way down the gravel road and made the sharp left onto the purple trail where it promptly turned upward. Keith, Patrick and Dana wanted to hike some of it and Drew and I wanted to run. We ran a good chunk of it but then lost Drew as the climb became steeper.

Coming into the last aid station I knew I only had 5 more miles and most of them were either flat or downhill so I picked it up a little bit and cruised into the finish line in 4:47 and change and first place. I'm not sure it actually counts as a win since it's a fatass race but it was fun to run with friends all day. Plus! The party at the finish ruled! They had some killer home made veggie burgers.

Good friends, good run, good food, good day.