Of Famous Authors and Fictional Characters

As Pedatella aptly predicted I will be heading to Missouri for the Ozark Trail 100 on Nov. 6th. The race takes place in the Mark Twain National Forest and is a point to point run on the Ozark Trail featuring 12-15000 feet of climbing. In its inaugural year Jeff Browning took the crown in 18:38. My goal is to run sub 20 and anything faster will be extra gravy. 100's are still the mystery race for me...and it is a mystery I want to solve with each one I run. My PR for the distance at Leadville 09 of 20:51 encourages me that there are faster times to come. In less than two weeks I get to put myself to the test, this time with no pacers...

My dad and I are roadtripping to the race and he will captain the bare bones crew. It will be awesome to see him at various spots along the trail. This will be my first pacerless 100 and I'm looking forward to the added challenge to run Meltzer-style. With about 11 hours from sunrise to sunset this race will add a longer bout of night running compared to other 100's.

Since Steamboat I've had some solid training. I put a 22 day streak under my belt with 20 of those days being in the double digits (I'm not much of a streaker and this is a new record for me!) with a long run of 42 at the Grand Canyon R2R2R a few weeks ago. BTW...the Grand Canyon trip was a ton of fun! It was great to run with and spend some quality time with Doug, Duncan, Scott and our adventure seeking wives. It was a special night after the run eating food, drinking sparkling water, listening to Kir play the guitar and lounging around the campfire...This run also hit me with the realization of how small the Ultra community is as I ran into Eric Lee and JZ from the Fort Collins Trail Running Crew....small world! Clark, next time you'll have to make it happen!

This past week I also got signed up for Western States! I have officially entered and paid my $370. I guess it costs more to race in California...it is by far the most coin I've put down for a race...time to train hard and get my money's worth! Running the Ozark Trail 100 will be another race to build experience at this humbling distance. Each time I think about Missouri or read about the Mark Twain Nat'l Forest I daydream about the fictional characters of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn running the trails....until then...