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Showing posts from August, 2019

The Definitive BigFoot 200 DNF

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The 2019 BigFoot200 Available DNFs: this wasn't the finish I'd planned for, but the one I got. Photo by Hillary Ann Vanity has a lower boiling point than common sense. Having DNF'd the 40-miler in 2018, I figured "what's it like to go big, I mean really big?" The Fates took note, elbowing each other as they crowed "Hold my beer, bitches!" It wasn't always like this When I got home in 2018 I promptly called Tom Nielsen, old friend, coach, and ultra-beast. I booked him and we got to work. I had a lot of work to do. My last 100-miler was 1998, last 67-miler in 2017, last 50-miler in 2015. A thin base, timed out at best.  At one late point I noticed that I looked fit from the neck up and waist down—the flyover section was Dad Bod. Oh fucking well. To spare you, Gentle Reader, the trudging statistical drizzle that is the geeking heart and soul of this sport, the Executive Recap is "close, but no cigar." The Race, and w

As You Are, I Once Was

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As you are, I once was. As I am, you shall be. This is about "old times." Wait around long enough and you can play along too. Recently I located the results of my first ultra— Baldy Peaks 50k, September  1989 . Looking at the finisher list, I saw   I saw “David Harrah, 63.” I remembered him well. Now I’m as old as he was.  He was always at the races. Painfully slow, with the tiniest feet imaginable. But there. This article is expanded from the interview for the SoCal Ultra Series quarterly newsletter late 1999. ==== David Harrah had an active boyhood, a shortened WWII Army stint (Graves Registration, Southern France and Normandy), then undergraduate school. In 1950 he was the lead man of 5 on Mt Yerupaja, the 2nd highest Peruvian peak. They were attempting the first summit.  Mount Yerupaja is fearsome, as described by Summitpost: “Yerupaja is Peru's second highest peak and the highest point in the massive Amazon River watershed. Yerupaja crowns the stu