Pico Duarte FKT

Last September or October... I don't really remember I climb Pico Duarte with a bunch of friends from school.  I wasn't in the best shape at the time but I do remember thinking that I just wanted to rip off some miles on the mountain and get after it.  The nature of the trip did allow this, but it was a lot of fun anyhow.
This brings us to a few months ago when I decided to give it another go and this time see how fast I could do it.  The mountain is the tallest in the Caribbean and is somewhere over 10,000 feet tall.  The trail from La Cienaga starts out at about 3,600 hundred feet, but the downside/upside is that you still manage somewhere between 9,000 - 10,000 feet of elevation gain along the 46 kilometers.
My first date to do this was cancelled because of some wildfires near the park, bummer.  That meant we randomly chose today and today it happened.  My expected partners in this attempt changed a few times, but it ended up being a friend from school, Daniel Gutierrez.  Daniel and I left for La Cienaga yesterday shortly after school got out.  We made the journey via motos and arrived just in time to meet our guide and for him to offer us dinner at his house.  Having a guide is used as an economic stimulus, it provides jobs for locals and in turn they maintain the trails and get you access to said trails.  For a group like us the guide was merely a formality and somewhat of a safety net, as he (Radamel) was heading up the mountain after us and if we wrecked ourselves we would have had a free ride down on his mule.  Our cost for having a guide was somewhere around $60 total, this cost is what it is because you have to pay for 3 days whether you use them or not.  If your Spanish is good unlike mine, you can manage better deals with some of the guides depending on what you want to do and how long you plan on taking.
Now for the climbing part... We got up at 4:30 am today and got ready for a strenuous affair.  We were on the trail shortly after 5 which was great because the whether was cool, the downside to it was that I forgot my headlamp and had to lead the way using the light from Daniel's.  After about an hour the headlamp was turned off and we had decent light to guide us, the sunrise was beautiful and all was going well.  I say that, but my knee hurt really bad (oddly enough that pain just disappeared). After a couple hours of climbing Daniel was clearing hurting and he gave me the go ahead to push my pace.  This allowed me to get in my groove and be at a couple of the stopping points way ahead of schedule.  At about 3 hours in I stopped to refill my handheld with some water although it was still about half way full of coke/water.  I borrowed a camelback from a friend that I managed to never refill throughout the day and the tortilla/pb/raisin wraps, almond slices and raisin mix, and fig newtons managed to be almost the perfect food for the day.  After refilling I busted it the 5k to the top and managed to be there at right around 4 hours and 10 minutes.  The downside to this was that my groin started cramping, and my thighs were chaffing something fierce on the way up (note to self, generously apply body glide and bring more quick sugar to keep the cramps away).
The way down the mountain I planned on absolutely killing it, but I forgot about how terrible the rocks are; they are freaking everywhere and are waiting to end your day.  I also forgot how horrible a nice little 2,000 ascent was, who goes up hill that far after you have already summited.  I managed to fight the cramps, and the chaffing went away by the time I was a good way down the mountain.  I would have liked to open up the legs more on the downhills not cluttered by rocks, but I feared the groin cramp attacking me.  The last few miles are rather runnable also, and I tried my darndest, but it was rough and I in the end I made it back to the trail-head in just over 7:36.  I am happy about this and I think it sets a reasonable FKT that I hope somebody comes and drops a couple hours from.  Daniel made it back in somewhere just over 8:26 which is now the second fastest time the mountain has seen.
Garmin Link

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/307679822

Roughly the route.

 Sunrise

More sunrise 

 Enjoying the journey

 It took me a bit to take the pic

 Life on top!

 This is all I have ever seen on top of Duarte

 Daniel finishing

Ozark Trail 100

One day this summer I got really excited about running Western States, I thought the course looked beautiful and that it would be an epic adventure. One thing I didn’t know was that I needed a qualifier. The Ozark Trail seemed like a good one, although it might have been smarter to opt for any number of the easier/closer ones. Regardless, on November 5th I toed the line with 83 other runners hoping to make it the 100+ miles to the finish.
On the Thursday before the race my friend Joel and I headed down to the middle of nowhere for an adventure in the wilderness. The ride was long and rainy, which was a bit concerning knowing that I would be out the elements for hours upon hours. Fortunately the next day it cleared up and Joel and I went out and did some cave exploring as well as some hiking. A very fun day to have before a fun/brutal day.
The night before the race I got about 4 hours of sleep and woke up around 12:30am, the positive thing about this was that it gave me much more time to over prepare. After a long bus ride and a while sitting around a fire the 83 of us sang the national anthem and were on our way into the dark Mark Twain national forest.
The first few miles were easy going and rather fun as I settled in about 30 runners back, I remember looking back some 5 miles into the race and seeing a snake of headlamps coming down a large hill. By the time we made it to the first aid station I had ended up with a group of the younger runners, you know the 35 and under crowd. The sun had come up by this point and the aid station was more like a pit stop than anything else. Throughout the first half or so of the race I was able to maintain a sluggish pace which is probably the only reason I even finished. I bounced back and forth between about a dozen other runners, enjoying conversations with people from all over including Cath Todd the stud Australian from Dubai that won the womens side of the race ad Dale Holdaway who got second at the Hallucination 100 this year and won it in 2009. At about mile 15 my legs started to become fatigued but by mile 30 they somehow felt better than ever. This would continue to be the theme for a while, legs full of pain, brand new legs, legs full of poison, legs full of vigor. I was told by Brad Bishop, resident race expert that miles 51-68 were very runnable so I hoped my legs would cycle to feeling good by then and boy did they ever. Once I made it out of mile 51 I picked up my pace and ran probably the fastest 25 miles of my day up to mile 76. For some reason I felt the need to push it hard from 68 - 76 and while doing this I kind of wrecked myself. When I arrived at the aid station everything was slightly shaky, so I took a seat and chowed down for a bit. While at the aid station Pete Kostelnick made it up there, I was really happy for this because when I had passed him earlier had been trying to take a nap in the woods. Unfortunately while I was sitting at the aid station recovering my knee was tightening up. When Pete and I headed out together my knee decided it was done running. From here on out it was power hiking and everytime I thought I would try and run agan, my knee quickly told me no. I did make it to the finish although I would have liked to do it in a little more style but for my first 100 I was proud to be one of the 42 that finished the race and okay that I missed the top 10 by 1 place. Maybe I will head back down next year, I think I can knock off a good 3 or 4 hours and be well under the 24 hour mark.
Big shout out to Joel Maslin who single handedly crewed for me and made the experience much better. I passed out hard as soon as I got in the car and I don't know how I would have made it home in the shape I was in if he wasn't there.

Lake Perry Rocks! 50k

I’m not 100% sure why I signed up for this race, I think I was under the impression it would be some easy miles and I could use it as my last long training run for the Ozark Trail 100. Not much happened the way I thought and it wasn’t much of a training run when I found myself pushing it hard. I showed up race morning without many expectations, people had told me it was relatively flat so I thought I would average 9 minute miles and be ok, besides that I expected to have fun.
The race started off going a couple hundred yards down a gravel hill. At the start 3 guys took off sprinting, 1 50k runner and 2 half distance runners, I figured I wouldn’t see any of them again and was happy with that. I made it down the road and into the woods rather fast myself and was seemingly content to hold onto second or let people that would be picking up the pace behind me take off. After a couple miles I had reeled in Phil Sheridan who was the 50k runner in front of me and found myself in uncharted first place territory. Basically the rest of the race I was confused and anticipating someone passing me. I made it through the first loop rather fast and had I been running the half I would have been in third, something I would have been more than happy with. Going into the second lap I was feeling okay, but not great. the flat course ended up being almost as hilly as the Psummer Psycho, although the hills were much more gradual, but this began to catch up with the fast pace I had put out the first lap. At the first aid station I popped some salt pills because I felt some cramping might be coming, fortunately they made any feeling of it disappear. The nice volunteers even remarked upon my happy demeanor, but after leaving this aid station my mood took a hit. My legs began to get rather sluggish and I was beginning to walk most of the hills, soon most of the hills became all of the hills and I was sure I was going to get passed. I actually was hoping I would get passed so I could quit worrying about it. The final 5 miles or so were rather slow, but I found out I had built a nice lead and only a cataclysmic meltdown would cause me to lose the lead. The race was fun, the course was really nice, an overall good experience. My legs left a little more beat up than I was hoping they would but that was okay, I managed to win my first 50k!
Oh yeah... Thanks to Mark Carter! I borrowed his car to drive out to the race.