Summer 2012 Race Schedule

Putting in a little cross training with Andrew

Ive been thinking about lately about my summer trail racing schedule. My “A” races for this year include: Sun Mountain 50M (5/19/12) and Waldo 100K (9/18/12). I am slowly working my way up, year to year, for a 100 mile race. Depending on how this summer goes, I may plan for a 100 next summer or a few summers from now. My favorite outdoor activity is mountain biking so I feel pulled to try out some endurance mountain biking events, like TOE, 24hrs Around the Clock, or High Cascades 100. But what pulls me to trail running, as opposed to mountain biking, is the simplicity of running, (no expensive equipment or maintenance require, just shoes), and more access to wildernesses and trails, not to mention how my knees and bike are more suited to trail running at my younger age. I’ll always have biking for when my body starts to give out.

Alright back to my races of choice. I want to do Sun Mountain because it should be easy to get into, it should have good (dry) weather, it is in a beautiful place that I’ve never been, it’s a challenging but doable course and its put on by good people. I want to do Waldo because it’s a NW classic, former 100k championship course, almost all singletrack, great area of Oregon that I’ve spent little time in, but want to spend more, very challenging, but beautiful course and a fabulous RD and support.

I will probably throw in a 50k sometime in March, not really sure what that would be as I am just planning this now. However, the two main reasons that I trail run are to 1) see how far/hard my body can go 2) more importantly, explore new areas that I wouldn’t normally be able to get to or have time to get too (not much time for backpacking and hiking is too slow generally and mountain bikes aren’t allowed everywhere.) So with that said, I almost look forward to my upcoming long training runs, like in the Gorge, Mt. Hood, Central Cascades, etc) more than the actual races. The main reason I enter races is to really test how far I can go (helps to have aid stations, medical personnel, marked courses, etc) and partly to compete, to see how good I am at this. I tend to get more competitive as the race goes on. So I look forward to documenting lots of the cool places that training takes me and sharing all of it with you.

As I am still working my way back from a hamstring issue, I plan of doing a post of some of my training thoughts. Not really sure what the best plan is now, but as I talk with more runners, and go through some trial and error, I’ll keep you posted as much as possible.

Next post should be about Silver Falls State Park as Kerrie and I rented a cabin for the upcoming weekend. I hope to get a good 10 miler in but many of the trails have been closed due to storm damage.

UNT

Bryan