"I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do! That is character."– Theodore Roosevelt
*I called my friend Linda back and told her about the qualifying event that coming November. She told me that she had entered a marathon on that same date as the Helen Klein 50. I told her to cancel her run so we could do the 50 miler. I also mentioned to her that we could do a training run of about 50 K. the following week. After all, a 50 K. is 31 miles and that only leaves us with 19 miles more? It might be clear to many of you, the defense mechanisms that I used at this point. Anyway, I convinced her to do this training run with me and enter that qualifying 50 mile run in November.
To qualify for the Western States 100, I had to complete the 50 miler within 10 hours, and she had only 9 ½ hours, because she was a lot younger and prettier than I. Even if we made the qualifying time, there was no guarantee of getting selected for this Western states 100. 450 runners are selected in a drawing. One gets in, by being chosen in the lottery. Yes, we were in the company of a lot of “crazy” runners wanting to compete in this running madness.
To make a long story short, we both qualified and both were selected to do the run the following June 29, in 2002. Some of you might say it would take a lot of conditioning or training to get ready for that event. Yes, you are right.
So now I have another goal, a direction, meaning, a reason to focus and a training partner. This means I had to learn and research about proper conditioning. I had to prepare to run 100 miles in one day. The run starts at Squaw Valley, the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, and finishes in Auburn, California. I had to run day and night in temperatures that could range from 40 degrees Fahrenheit to over 100°F .during these 100 miles. Because you are running up and down the Sierra- Nevada Mountains, there was about 18,000 linear feet of gain and about 23,000 linear feet of loss during the hundred miles. In fact, within the first 4 miles there is a 2,550 feet of vertical climb.
To be continued:
0 comments:
Post a Comment