For some masochistic reason, I signed up to run the Bear Mountain 50 Miler. Again. I recently vaguely remembered on the verge of tears, slipping across a giant boulder, wanting to crawl, praying not to fall... The woman next to me swore, "If I don't fall, I'm going to write Saloman a thank you letter." Word to Saucony for not letting me fall, more than I ordinarily do.
The trails: technical, hilly, steep, so steep you're forced to climb instead of run up, stumble down instead of run down. Rocks. Mud. Water. Steepness.
But so beautiful when you get to the top. And there are a couple of spots where you can just absolutely run fast, let go, run free...it's beautiful there!
The weather will be good...hopefully no rain. When I ran two years ago, the heaps of rain we got in the weeks before (and night before) made the course more like a run-swim-run than an ultramarathon.
I'm going to be in all pink. There will be sunblock and gels and fantastically, Mary, one of my teammates in NBR, offered to pace me the last 10 miles! She's never run an ultra before, or at Bear Mountain, so she should have fun. The last ten miles include the brutal "Hill from Hell" as I call it, but she'll be fresh and full of energy, while my feet will resemble something shoved into a blender and I may only be able to use one-syllable words. But isn't that the beauty of the end of an ultra?
1 comment:
Good luck! One of my friends is running the 50K today. I, unfortunately, am studying for finals (and am not in ultra-shape), but I love those trails.
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