Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

Dead meat on a stick. My training died at 18 miles. A 3:55 finish   You may have heard about the 2026 LA Marathon offering DNF finisher medals at 18mi because heat.  I have 2 opinions.   1] Liability issues because undertrained entrants. 80º air temps = 95º asphalt. All those Elvis costumes, and maybe deep-sea diving bell entrants. 2] Fucking pussies   …BUT WAIT 3] “...But I feel like a marathoner!!” Which of course brought back many happy convos w several on a similar ultra topic.   4] where’s the 30k buckle???  

Sorry-oh! The  Spring Gel Awesome Sauce turd blew up big several weeks ago, and the howls are epic. Short weights and calorie counts? Fainting couches all across UltraLandia collapsed under the impact. Every ultra social-media franchise operator is elbowing to be the Great I Told You So, suddenly realizing that Lazy Stenography Has Consequences. All of them. A larger question is ‘re-examining your relationship to advertising and packaging’. Thirty years ago [1993] I was introduced to mixing CarboPlex/CarbPro into running bottles with Kern’s mango nectar or Gatorade to get the liquid calories. The caloric weight was bigger at a much smaller cost. Or into plain water if the gag-factor became a problem, with salt caps. I recall Hammer being touted then as well. Of course, some of the whining is podium-worthy. Others should be accompanied by the "Ashokan Farewell" , with the voice of Mary Chesnutt reading one of the mournful posts, as follows: "Dearest Darling: I write you...

Venezia IT, Mar 23 2023. Many miles and Km from any wedding. Ultra weddings are a world unto their own. Many are born in the sweaty fever of a finish line proposal, where the swain ambushes his maybe-unsuspecting maid with "will you marry me?" Gay couples do your own swaps, it's all the same. Since this is a new world, let's look at likely features! Bride and groom wearing GoPros ultra-celeb livestream voice-over play by play select guests by lottery, others wait-listed team sponsors blow up arch at the altar/finish line chip timed Speculation as to who paces who. I'm sure the competition will be fierce. competing and perhaps complimentary running-themed playlists. All sincere I'm sure, although "White Wedding" and "Let's Pretend We're Married" will appear. Surprise Insta-Bro who jumps up and yells "STAY HARD!!" Breathless fashion updates: “Bride is wearing a high performance cami top with a UD half-cup balconette hydrati...

I can see clearly now. Sooner or later, your ultra-romance ends. What started off so fresh has now crashed. All those races, buckles, t-shirts mock you. And maybe a hot hook-up too. You might even have had that finish line marriage proposal, where you said “yes, yes, a thousand times yes”, not realizing it was a fateful ambush in front of total strangers. Or a social-media stunt. It was a simpler time.  The day when a Running Vacation was the shit is also gone. You are hearing, or saying, that ultras suck too much out of whatever life you have, and you/they want to do other things. Its never a fun discussion. Or your health. My health ultra-path [or Journey®™] was: Sept 1989: First ultra, Baldy Peaks 50k. Man, I thought I was truly gonna get laid. Oct 1991. First 100. Man, I thought I was truly gonna get laid. April 1999: Chronic Fatigue-Adjacent. Whatever it was, I was knee-capped, and my first ultra golden age was over. It was a hard quasi-recovery. Buckling becomes remote. Who a...

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...

My BigFoot 40 Avatar and Spirit Animal. I finished BigFoot 40 in style—behind the wheel of a Buick Regal, driving three other woebegone 28mile DNFs like myself. It was a far cry from my race morning start that ended at Windy Ridge 27.79666 miles later.  My first shameless thought on dropping was "how the fuck do I get out of here?" Yeah, me love ultras long time, but I was a drowned rat looking for a lifeboat. Fortunately, I said this to Ryan Good who offered me his Buick Regal to drive to the finish. He was going to pace a friend for the last 15+miles and that saved him a long-ass stinky-butt drive to get his car.  Let it be noted for all the city types that driving in rural Washington involves hours, the roads are curvy, and prone to sinks, sags, waves, and potholes as occur in a dynamic geology and weather.  Prologue-Jamming The day started well enough, but once the preliminaries had been replaced by lava boulder fields my shit-summer training made itself kn...

The Ultrarunner's Low-Archy of Needs The UltraRunner's Low-Archy of Needs was first proposed in 1994 during the D&L Colloquiums which have been studying what motivates brain-dead trail runners. Further research and study [Bingo:1997] suggested that esoteric stimuli-respond cues played a large part in cortical devolution. Further insights on the nature of sonic dissonance/interpretations of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Girl From Ipanema [Fopak:1999] were seminal in the pursuit of relativity, and shit. Mapping this conceptual terrain had defied space, time and logic. It "must've gotten lost, somewhere down the line", but was recovered, not just waiting for the end of the world.

The line between an interesting experience and a life-changing situation is very subtle. Denial and wishful thinking are not useful training modalities.  Want to do that race? Take that trip? Totally undecided?  Allow the DNF Analytic Indicator/Predictor & Oracle help you analyze your situation, with all factors reduced to Three Main Elements.  It will tell you everything you want to hear.

Your race reality should be so clear. Hanta ho, truthseekers!   From The Endurance Suburb Of The World®™, the 24th AC100! All the putatively anointed pre-race favorites saw their races end prematurely. Jorge Pacheco and Keira Henniger were done by Chantry. I suspect Jorge's exit was accelerated by prancing around at Badwater 2 weeks earlier, when he should've been tapering. Don't know what happened to Keira, can't comment or speculate, which cripples another life on TV. Mine, not hers. From the top of Baden-Powell, I had less than 20min to myself before Jorge Pacheco hove into view. More on that in a bit. I'd spent a restless night camped out at the base, complete with phantom memories of pre-race nerves. Quarter moon, stars, utterly delicious. It wasn't even my race, but 20 years of direct connection to the AC100 beast has left a deep imprint. Jorge was first over the top around 0800. I had just settled in 15min prior, after a sleepless night down in ...

* The 23rd Psalm. Abridged and embroidered by Lady G, (with apologies to the King James Krewe)   The Forest Prince Is My Pacer, I shall not Bonk. He maketh me lie down in the Gu-spot, And I complaineth not. He maketh me do the wild thing, And I shall not falter. He anointeth my lips with SUCCEED! And I DNF-eth not. I scampereth naked down the Trails of Life, And I am not spanked (well, maybe later). I gather to my bosom the Jaybirds of the field, And verily, the Forest Prince is pleased. For he is the tall wood that crowneth the hill-top, And of righteous girth is his timber. And I shall dwell on this in rapture, For this, and the Rest of my Posts. ORN: Avoided the nettles today, maybe tomorrow.