"...an escalator really would have been handy..."

well, here it is. the latest event from my brother's crazy life.

"The poc 50 is obviously a 50 miler, but with 2 other options, a 50k and a 20 miler. The race is broken down into 3 legs, and each of the distances starts at one of those legs, ie the 50 miler runs all 3, the 50k runs the last 2, etc. We awoke early after having acquired our ridiculously lame "arm sleeves" the night before in place of a cool t-shirt. I was ticked, but tried them on as I forgot my coat and it was chilly. The race started at 6 and steve and I were off near the front of the pack. We ran the best single-track of the course in the first 10 miles of the race behind some older chick in a pink skirt(who ended up beating us, curse her) till steve had a massive diarrhea episode and had to stop before the first aid station. We ended up getting separated and running apart till the end of leg 2 at mile 32. The first major climb of the course takes off straight up classic jared campbell terrain, ie schwack up a ridiculously steep mountain slope off trail. This took 45 minutes or so to climb up, before barreling down the opposite side of the mountain to the end of leg 1. I ran this section with hippy five fingers dreadlock dude from paradise utah who ended up getting blisters and his finishing status was unknown. Leg 2 started from pocatello proper up a creek system where an escalator really would have been handy. 

By this time most of the uphill was walking territory. Leg 2 I ran mostly alone and ended up catching some stragglers from the 50k who had started at 8 am. Some really great single-track took me to mile 32 and the end of leg 2 where steve caught me as I drank my steaming hot pedialyte that had been sitting in my drop bag cooking in the sun. I was quite beat at this point as by stomach seemed like it had been kicked by a horse and caused a miniature human earthquake inside. Steve was doing pretty good though tired. We set off on the last 20 miles up Scout Mountain next to Mindy Campbell, Jared's beloved wife, while steve talked to her about all of jared's accomplishments. We walked fora long time, shuffling when we could. We walked to the top of scout mountain which was basically a dirt road that never ended at about mile 34 or so, then began the long descent back down. Steve got ahead of me here as my stomach was again wanting to be on my outsides. We met back up at the final aid station and that dang mindy campbell passed us. We tried to run the last 4 miles downhill with one short climb, and passed skinny leg buddy with a backpack as we hit the final 1/4 mile which made me feel good. We crossed the finish line holding hands(not really) and i collapsed and steve went and talked times with the hardcores. 11:24 was our time, good for 23/24 place with only 3 females beating us which I felt good about. The winner was 8:34 or some ridiculous time. There were about 100 finishers of the 50 miler. 

the thing I learned about ultra races vs ultra friend runs is the lack of rest. on gannett/grand canyon, we would just sit down and hang out for 15 minutes if we were tired. not so in the races. if you do that, an old man or woman in a pink running skirt will pass you and kick dirt in your face and you will feel like a loser. you have to keep moving all the time, which was really hard. you end up running a faster time obviously but my stomach hurt till tuesday. I think my perfect run length is 17 miles. Thats when it is still fun and nothing hurt yet and you can notice the scenery."

studly, no?

thanks for keeping our family exciting spence.