300-Mile Summer Second Half

In three straight days last week, I (finally) finalized my summer race plans.  I sent in my volunteer service verification forms and $140 check to upgrade from the 50 to the 100 mile Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT) race.

 photo by Chihping Fu

All the next day I spent in San Pedro Valley County Park in Pacifica snipping away at thorny blackberry branches and other assorted overgrowth for everyone running the PCTR Pacifica Trail Runs four days later.  This fulfilled the volunteer trail work requirement for the Angeles Crest (AC) 100 mile race six weeks after TRT.  I took a lot of photos that day, so I'll probably work some of them into a short posting.

Then I finally decided to run Headlands Hundred again, though it's right in the middle of TRT and AC.  It's so beautiful....and conveniently close to home.  And I just have to run it again "clean"-- sans the gastrointestinal problems I suffered the last quarter.

So, I'm finally doing my three-fer of three 100-mile races, 3 weeks apart from each other.  I was going to accomplish this last year but the Station Fire caused the cancellation of Angeles Crest in mid-September.  I replaced AC with Hundred in the Hood in Oregon, but this was four weeks after last year's #2, Cascade Crest.   (The report for both of these still not published--ugh!)

It does help that I'm not doing an Ironman-distance triathlon a week before the first.

This will be tough, but it's actually comforting to know I'm not the only one stupid enough to do this.  Brian Myers of San Francisco is running the same three races as I, but might tack on Chimera three weeks after AC, or Rio del Lago, easier than Chimera, but only two weeks after AC.  I would have liked to do the same, but I need to give my wife a break, and there's a camping trip with friends mid-September to look forward to.

Brian and his wife Ysa, planning out his San Diego 100 Mile Run last month

I'm sure there are lots of runners out there pulling these serial 100 mile races off.

Of course, these pale in comparison to Monica Scholz's 3000+ mile odyssey.  Although she had to miss Mohican and Laramie due to a knee injury she "mysteriously" sustained in San Diego, she has already finished twelve hundred milers this year.  Even if she has to bail on several more, she will at the very least surpass her own world record of twenty-three 100-mile races in one calendar year she set in 2001.  Go Monica!