WMRC Western States 100 Mile Taper Run

Reminder: We are on for a group trail run in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve Wednesday morning 5:15 AM. Meet at the very top parking lot of Squaw Peak Drive past the main trail head of Piestewa Peak. Plan on a little over one hour at a SLOW pace. Why slow, because this will be a taper run for those that are participating, running, crewing and pacing at the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run Saturday. If the slow pace isn’t intriguing enough to get you out early how about the fact it will be 106 degrees that afternoon. Runner of the Week: Congratulations Jeff Jones who ran the San Juan Solstice 50 Mile trail run in Lake City, Colorado. Very high drop out rate this year. Battling the cold, snow, altitude and climbs he had a real good time of 13:31:00. Good for 3rd place in has age group. I wonder if he received any swag?ROW runner up: is Randy Ohlinger who finished the Coeur d' Alene full ironman in Idaho in 13 hours 27 minutes. As noted above, this weekend is the WS 100. Good luck to Mark Cosmas and Chris Harrison. Cosmas will be crewed and paced by the stellar team of Higgy and Klown. Don’t let those names fool you, they take their jobs serious (between beers). This will be Cosmas’ 2nd time running WS. In 2007 he finished 39th with a time of 21:53:44. This will be Harrison’s first Western States.

WS 100 is run from Squaw Valley, California to Auburn California starting 5:00 AM Saturday. The main goal is to finish within 24 hours to get the silver buckle. After 30 hours you are SOL.

The 2009 race is incredibly competitive with a bunch of the best national and international Ultra Runners competing.

WS 100 has one of the best if not the best Webcasts. So follow the leaders including Mark (#169) and Chris’(#242) progress here: WS 100 Webcast

New this year you can follow up to 5 specific runners progress by getting an e-mail notification that they went through an aid station, finished or god help them DNF. Sign up for this service here: WS email tracking

Lastly, the WMRC Blog has been set up to Post with Text Messaging and Photos with portable web/phone devices. Check back frequently or subscribe for a RSS feed as we will post updates and photos instantaneously (Within seconds!) from the event.

Thanks Laura Plugfelder for updating the WMRC Blog Banner!!

Wedesday Morning Run Reminder 6/17/09

Reminder: We are on for a group trail run in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve tomorrow morning 5:14 AM. 6-minute rule shall apply. Don’t cry if you miss the train. Meet at the very top parking lot of Squaw Peak Drive north of Glendale Avenue (Drive until you hit the end). Plan on a little over one hour at a moderate pace.

Thanks Jamil for reminding everyone on Paul’s and Perry’s 50 mile run at the inaugural Blue Canyon Trail Race in Santa Barbara. (I wonder if they ran near Michael Jackson’s Neverland Ranch. Never mind, stupid question.) Racing season is in full throttle. Good luck to Jeff Jones who is running the San Juan Solstice 50 mile race this weekend in Lake City, Colorado. Jeff has been preparing for the altitude by spending time in Taos New Mexico. Jeff Jones gets runner of the week because he sent photos in. Congratulations Jeff. Cosmas and Harrison are putting the finishing touches on their Western States 100 training. Race day is only 11 days away. Stay tuned for information on how to follow along.

Hardrock 100 training is also progressing. Honey, Kirk, Andrew and Pacers Liz and Aaron all spent 8 hours running up, down and around Humphries the past weekend. They had so much fun they will do it again this weekend. No info on Jamil's training other than he has been up in Silverton for weeks. Lucky Duck! (send us a photo to get our feet wet) I'm sure Jody has been getting ready and I'm sure Cosmas hasn't (just kidding) Race date: July 10-12.

Blue Canyon Trail Race

I thought I would give a shout out to Perry Edinger and Paul Bonnett (See bright orange shorts above) for running the inaugural Blue Canyon Trail Race near Santa Barbara, California. The race was on June 6th and they took 2nd and 3rd in the 50 mile. The race looks to have a lot of climbing (they claim 13,872 feet of elevation gain?), so hopefully they will give us a report soon.

50 Mile Results

WMRC Run Reminder for 6/10

Reminder: We are on for a group trail run in the Phoenix Mountains Preserve tomorrow morning 5:15 AM. Plan on a little over one hour at a moderate pace. Meet at the usual place, very top lot of Squaw Peak Drive north of Glendale Ave. We are in the midst of incredible running weather for this time of year. Don’t let it go to waste. The runners of the week are: Andrew Heard with he finish last weekend of the Squaw Peak 50 mile trail run above Provo Utah. Final results aren’t posted yet but Andrew finished with a time of 10:02:00. (See Andrew's race report posted below) Debbie Leftwich completed the Keetle Moraine 100 mile run in Wisconsin. Debbie finished first in the Senior Masters age group with a time of 26:20:45. Great job you two.
Family Runners of the Week: Congrats to the Cosmas Family, Mark, Katie, Blue and the Bun in the Oven for their climb up Humphries. They all look good at 12,000 feet.

Speaking of a bun in the oven, Congrats to the Latvaaho family for the arrival of their second child born early Saturday. Baby McKenzie and Mom are doing great.

Heard 2009 Squaw Peak 50 race report

Race went well. Kirk...Your advice was right on the money. Start was very fast! I think there had to be 25-30 guys running a sub 7:00 pace down the path to get to the single-track before the bottleneck. I tried to place myself somewhere in the top 15. Heres a brief recap...

Early climbs went smoothly and I felt really good. I was running with some local team runners (from The Runner's Corner running store in Orem) that I met at the pre-race dinner and I was feeling great. The views from the top looking back down over Utah Lake were awesome. Weather was clear and not too cold even at higher elevation. There was luck involved here, because leaving on Sunday morning there was light rain in the valley and you couldn't even see the tops of the mountains through the dark rain (snow?) clouds. I ran pretty hard on the downhill from 15 to 23 wile chatting ice hockey and Stanley Cup Finals with a dude from Michigan (I hate the Red Wings). I think I probably paid a price for this descent later on after Windy Pass. I made pretty good time on the road section at 23, but was glad to get back on dirt roads several miles later.

Gradual climb starts to get less gradual as you go from 27 to 30 and I was slowing down. AS#7 at mile 30, which was manned by the Wasatch Speedgoats Meltzer & Mason, was a welcome sight. A funny thing happened after leaving AS#7. I was running through Sheep Canyon for about 1/2 mile, and either Meltzer or Mason's dog had followed me the whole time. I stopped several times to try to yell at it to go back, but every time I started running again it would follow after me. Eventually I could hear someone calling the dog and it reluctantly turned back. I'd like to say that as fast as I was moving, only Meltzer could've caught up to me, but I'd be lying. Did I mention that the dog was a small Chihuahua! :-)

Just before I got into Little Valley-33m (AS#8) a guy with a Badwater shirt on was running the trail the other direction and yelled that I was in 11th place (I wouldn't stay there). Going through the first 6+/- miles of this next section and running past the evident work of a family of diligent beavers, I was expecting a steady climb the whole way. In reality there were more runnable sections than I expected and several times I caught myself in power-walking mode when I shouldn't have been.....YET. Then as promised (and expected) the climb up Windy Pass hit me like a tons of bricks. 1000' in 1.25M.....that is one tough climb! Paced up this climb with Brian, one of the Runner's Corner dudes I mentioned earlier on. Close to the top we were passed by 3 or 4 other runners.

After crossing thru the "pass" there was a brief snowfield to traverse and then we dropped down into the Windy Pass AS#9 at 40.5. After downing 1/4 of a PBJ, a homemade choc-chip cookie, and grabbing my water bottles, I was off down the hill. The next 6 miles were mostly steep down, and for me, it was the toughest part of the course. If my quads were not already shot from the earlier descents, then slipping and sliding out of control along the several snow sections in the first few miles after AS#9 really messed with me. As I lost all focus through this section...I couldn't help but think....maybe I'm only cut out to run in the low desert!....not this altitude and snow crap. Feeling pathetically sorry for myself, I was forced to walk several of the steeper declines and was passed by roughly another 8-10 runners.

Then as if the running gods could punish me no more, the trail mercifully leveled out a little just before AS#10 (46.5). I made a quick stop to half-fill my bottles and take one last GU and S-Cap before hitting the pavement for the last 3+ miles. The gradual descent felt great and soon I was hammering out 7:xx miles again. I even caught the last dude to go by me, and would've reeled in a few more had the finish line not auspiciously interrupted.

Haven't seen any results posted yet, but my time was roughly 10:02, and I'd bet I was between 20-25th place. Scott Jaime won it in something like 8:05!

I posted data from my watch here.... http://AndrewHeard.bimjournals.com. I found the elevation change by mile interesting!

See ya' Wed.

Kettle Morraine 100 / Squaw Peak 50

Good luck to Debbie Leftwich and Aaron Mascarella who are running the Kettle Morraine 100 mile race Saturday in Wisconsin and Andrew Heard who is running the Squaw Peak 50 mile race in Utah also Saturday. Good luck you three!

You can follow the Kettle Morraine 100 live through a webcast here: http://www.runrace.net/findarace.php?id=09157WI1&tab=a5 the WMRC race central is open for business!!

Coincidence?

Great run this morning. Little smaller crowd than normal. Craig Coppola and Brad Lemon showed up at the end of the run. Both are looking good and fit. Interesting that they both stayed and chatted longer than normal when Sheriff Joe’s “Chain Gang” was working near the trail head. Coincidence??