Mr Trail Safety Speaks!

Dead. More or less, whatever! Someone’s gonna die out there on race day, in the heat. The race needs to move back to October. Period. And Kenny will never budge. In Before Times The race was in October. You got your summer heat training. Days of endless high noon all fucking day. When Race Day came, it was delightfully mild. The sun races across the sky. And it got chilly at night. But various fires and other cryptic factors moved the race date from October, to September, now to early fucking August. And course changes like running for miles on blistering blacktop don't help. Here's how we got here:  I magine AC100 Without Baden-Powell   Let's review, from a professional medical viewpoint The single biggest change the race could make in terms of safety is to move the race date back to the late September, dare I say October time frame. So do the math: 300 runners x exposure to heat stroke level temperatures = highly likely outcome. I’d argue that the fire danger is only frac...

Wet/Wiped. LG in the chair, not looking forward to the last kick up the "hurtical" KD Trail. Jorge Pacheco won the Mt Disappointment 50k in 5 hrs. It took me 10hrs. Based on the entry fee, he paid twice as much per hour than I did for all that fun, not to mention heat, dust and dreams.  This course would be a fine introduction for those who've been led to believe in "California Carpet Trails". Had they been there yesterday, they've wished that they'd stayed home where it didn't get above 80º, and see their brows unfurrowed by inconvenient clouds blocking out the neutrino storms that are just par for this course. For the veterans out there, this race course was the mutant love-child of the bygone Lost Boys 50 and Bishop Mule Run 50k. The West Fork of the San Gabriel is examined thoroughly from high and low—crossing it at least 4 times, with lengthy run ups and outs to sun-blasted slopes where water is a seasonal memory far in the pas...

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 ...

This post deals with training issues, gear issues, and comes from a guy who doesn't run that much anymore. So, now's a really good time to delete, because I'm going to ask some pointed questions about a lot of things. There has been a lot of soul-searching and what-ifs, along with 'whistling past the graveyard' post-Western States 100 on the business of near-fatalities caused by dehydration, and spectacular blister pyrotechnics. I did WS in 93, and spent a good 90min plus at Michigan Bluff. On the way up, I had a pounding in my kidneys, my ears were ringing, my quads had locked up, and people were passing me as fast as they could, completely ignoring my doubled-over ass. I was dehydrating, in deep shit. I got past it, but it added a good 3hrs to my race... AND IT DIDN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN. Why? Because that day I rolled out with a rehydration scenario I hadn't trained with. I didn't know it cold. OVERTURE I remember a Facebook post made, or at least answere...

Jim O'Brien setting the course record in 1989. This iconic photo was taken by Stan Wagon, then editor of UltraRunning Magazine. We once asked Jim O'Brien if he'd ever bonked on an Angeles Crest training run. He said "on every section". GEAR FETISHES The current gear-item to have right now is a bladder-pack. Originally designed by and for guys-n-gals who were running long distances in very hot places like Arizona, Utah and so on, where there was no water for big miles. Look at what Jim is carrying. Nothing except for 2 small bottles. Doesn't that tell you something? He's a racer, not a freight-hauler. [Just a thought for all the racers out there humping along in their multi-pounded vests with the petri-dish bladders...] Training is one thing. Race day is another. People get used to carrying all that stuff. I remember Jimmy saying on each stage "carry only what you need". I know that on my first AC, my fannypack was 20lb of junk—and I wasn't c...

Casino Bingo and I, the humble Draw Poker, had commenced and completed a "training run" this past Saturday up the Angeles Crest. "Training" and "run" are elastic concepts. It pays to be flexible. It's like hearing "Chariots of Fire" played on a whoopie cushion. We started at Vincent Gap and took it to 3 Pts. It was 28.88888 miles of self-imposed multi-level hurt. We were there to check up and make sure all the rocks hadn't been removed or smoothed over to non-standard specs. This was the first really hot weekend we've had. I forgot to stash a cooler with ice-cold Cokes around the halfway point. This was a point of longing and regret. More pressing than dehydration was a yawning and serious shortage that caused considerable worry. No Trail Betties. None. None anyway, until we got to Cooper Canyon. SOMEBODY was asleep at the wheel, and heads will roll. But we had been promised that Lisa Loeb would serenade us in black-rimmed gl...