William and I made the trek up to North Alabama for Mountain Mist 50k.\u00a0\u00a0 I love that race, it was the first Ultra I ever ran, and\u00a0it’s pretty much all gnarly, rocky, steep\u00a0single track, which is right up my alley.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We lived\u00a0in Huntsville\u00a0for 10 years, and I spent many hours running up on Monte Sano mountain when we lived there.\u00a0 Though at the time, I was running roads and not trails. \u00a0 I’ve completed Mt. Mist 6 times now, on my way to 10, to earn a 10 time finishers jacket.\u00a0 That will be the first event of any kind that I’ve done that many times.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In any case, I ALMOST did not even go up to run.\u00a0 On Monday, I called my friends in Huntsville and told them I wasn’t coming.\u00a0 I was so out of shape, I really didn’t know if I would be able to finish, and saw no need to just go up there and suffer.\u00a0 By Wednesday, I was rethinking it.\u00a0 I called again, and let them know that I would be there Friday evening, ready to run (or try to) on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Turns out, I had a great time.\u00a0 While I am very overweight, and have not done much of any running since last July.\u00a0 Since Badwater last year, I have done two 13 mile runs, and a few 10 milers.\u00a0 Other than that, it’s been 1 or 2, 3 miles runs most weeks, and not every week at that.\u00a0 My weight is as high as it’s ever been in my life.\u00a0 So trying to cover 31 miles of rocky, mountainous single track trail,\u00a0with fairly strict cutoffs\u00a0was not going to be easy, and maybe impossible.\u00a0 The race is advertised saying ‘ THIS IS NOT A HIKE’ and I know this course is not for walkers, it’s a trail RUNNING course.\u00a0\u00a0 Being aware of my lack of fitness going in, my Hunstville friends and crew smartly decided to use two vehicles and be setup in two teams, one team for William (their William, not my son William) and girlfriend, who likely would be very fast, and me, who would not be very fast.\u00a0 I knew that my job was to be conservative, use the knowledge of my body, effort and caloric\/fluid needs to maintain a fast enough pace, without putting myself into too difficult a situation by pushing the pace.\u00a0 I would not have time to overextend myself, crash and burn, and recover.\u00a0\u00a0 Had I done that, I would not have finished.<\/p>\n
My goal was just to enjoy the day, and put another finish in the bank.\u00a0 I actually had a great time, never was in any distress or pain, and just cruised very easily.\u00a0 I was somewhat nervous the first half, as I really didn’t know what to expect of my out of shape legs and cardio system, but\u00a0everything held up ok.\u00a0 By the half way mark, I was feeling pretty good about things, and able to really enjoy it.\u00a0 Vince met me at every aid station, and I really enjoyed stopping and chatting with him for several minutes each time.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 One guy on the course, that I kept passing, asked me how I kept passing him, when he never remembered passing me.\u00a0 Turns out I was hanging out in the aid stations talking to Vince, and he’d go by, then I’d catch and pass him.\u00a0 I ended up running the last 1.5 miles with this guy, who was also from Florida, and finishing HIS sixth MMist also.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The day was classic Mountain Mist, heavy fog in the morning, with very limited visibility and cold.\u00a0 William Ansick, my young 21 year old friend from Huntsville did awesome.\u00a0\u00a0 Tami and I are friends with his parents, and we’ve known William since he was a little bitty boy.\u00a0 He was at my first Mountian Mist run with his family helping me at the aid stations, and has been to several of my triathlons as a spectator.\u00a0 In addition, he’s been part of the crew on all three of my Badwater runs.\u00a0 After High School, he took up the triathlon sport, and is now also\u00a0ultrarunning.\u00a0 This was his third, and fastest MMist, and the cool thing, his time 5:19, is also MY Personal Best on the Mountain Mist course.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I’m sure next year he’ll blow that away and it’s been pretty neat to see him go from little boy, to coming to watch me race, to crewing Badwater, \u00a0to now becoming a quite accomplished young ultrarunner.\u00a0 Congratulations to him.<\/p>\n
For me, I’m very motivated now to hit the trails again, do some running, start eating right again and get myself back into a fit, running state.\u00a0 It is going to take a while, but I’ll get there.<\/p>\n
William(my william) and I had a good trip up, and back.\u00a0 He had fun climbing and playing on the playground while I was running, though I know he tried the patience of everyone.\u00a0 On the way back, we made a detour to Florida’s highest point, details of that to follow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
William and I made the trek up to North Alabama for Mountain Mist 50k.\u00a0\u00a0 I love that race, it was the first Ultra I ever ran, and\u00a0it’s pretty much all gnarly, rocky, steep\u00a0single track, which is right up my alley.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We lived\u00a0in Huntsville\u00a0for 10 years, and I spent many hours running up on Monte Sano […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/irun100s.com\/daveharper\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}