Our summer is over and the race season is just beginning.  Another October is upon us and I've already been completely taken over by the incredible weather and forgotten completely that it was 110 degrees just a month ago.  

What miserably hot summer?

It's perfect out.

And running has never been easier.

No water bottle.

No dry mouth.  

No getting back to your car after the run feeling destroyed and then five minutes later your body catches up and sweats through the cloth seats.  

No more strategically planning your week of training around the sunrise because once it comes up it's like the Chronicles of Riddick...it's overbearing and ever present in the rest of the run.  A monkey on your back waiting to pop you in the ear with those stupid symbols (that can't be spelled right....)  I can run in the heat and I know many that actually enjoy it.  Many go out at noon in August.  But that doesn't mean it's smart or fun.  In fact...I hate it.  It's bearable through mid-July but the last month plus is always rough for me.  

Now, you can run at any time of the day or night and it's perfect.  I ran this morning at 5am without a shirt on, just a headlamp, shoes, shorts and the Disco Biscuits.  It was incredible.  Running up hills I've always walked in the past, cruising along at a solid pace without the interruption of walking to get my core temperature down to under 201 degrees.  Running the the fall in Phoenix is a rejuvenation.  

To test the rejuvenation I'm running my first race since the Mesquite Canyon 50K way back in March.  March.  Seven months ago.

It seems odd that I haven't raced since then, but I skipped Zane Grey this year, didn't run a 100 all summer and was focused on the Monster up until a few weeks ago.  I ran a ton of marathon or longer training runs on the Mogollon Rim and a 85 mile jaunt on the Mogollon Monster course in May but nothing with competition.  

So this will be fun.  18 miles up in Cave Creek Regional Park at the Cave Creek Thriller 30K, the first of the Aravaipa Running DRT Trail Series here in the Phoenix area.  It has some trails I know, some I don't.  But it's 18 miles and it'll be a good test of my fitness after putting in a couple decent runs the last couple weeks and one strong week last week.  I'm still way short on training and being where I want to be in having a focused training plan but comfortable enough that I'm ready to head up north, run a few trails and hang with the fast guys.  We'll see how long it lasts.  Bret Sarnquist, Jay Danek, Tony Delogne, Jules Miller, Jeremy Schmuki and as usual in running and ultrarunning...a whole bunch of people that will come out of the group and crush a bunch of us.  It's not a Dark Horse in running, it's a Dark Herd.  So many unknowns that can pop up and put down a fast time. Which is part of the intrigue in running a race, especially one where it's around 50-100 runners.  Just enough to know who is going into this with you and not so many you have zero chance of competing for a respectable place.  

So I'll for the first time give it a shot up front of the pack and see where that takes me.  I'll shoot for a spot in file behind Jay Danek as I know he's in the fastest shape of his life and after 10 miles see where each of us are and go from there.  Eighteen miles is a perfect distance but I've never ran it without thinking I had another 13 to go.  But as my races typically go, 18-20 miles is usually where I have a low spot before rebounding for the last ten miles of a 50K.  Maybe for 18 I can hold a much faster pace and remain up front.  If not...

I'm sure my ego will survive it.

www.aravaiparunning.com  

November 2nd I'll be taking another trek down to the Canyon for a Bright Angel>North Rim>Bright Angel Double Crossing.  I haven't done it since last fall and aside from a trip this February for a 50K route off the Tanner trail I haven't seen the Canyon since.  So I'm totally oblivious again as to just how difficult and challenging this trip can be and always is.  Jay Danek is going for his first go of the Double Crossing and of course Honey Albrecht who always makes it when it involves the Grand Canyon.  It'll be my 5th double and probably Honey's twentieth or something.  It's great to have done it and a once a year trip.  Not sure I'd be up for multiple attempts in a calendar year.  It's a lot like Zane Grey.  Always sounds like a great idea until you hit about 30 miles and you're staring down 8 miles of switchbacks...

Either way...really looking forward to it and starting out at night Friday night we'll be up over 24 hours before we even start climbing back up.  And we'll catch the sunrise which is worth a thousand gels.

It's easy to be lost sometimes. Buried amidst a world of high speed activity, stress filled lifestyles and the ever climbing necessity of improvement, being lost is sometimes natural.  

We go from one thing to the next.  Thanksgiving to Christmas.  Spring Break to Summer Break.  Empty checking account to pay day.  Starving to bloated.  Happy to sad.  Every day brings a new day and with that new challenges, new changes, and new views of what needs to happen.  

For nearly two years it's been a non-stop whirlwind of change.  Married.  Honeymoon.  Rented a house.  Said rental went into foreclosure.  Auction owners tried to evict us.  I extorted them for payment to break our lease.  We get pregnant.  We buy new house.  Start a new website with John Vaupel & Jay Danek.  (www.trailrunningclub.com.) We have baby.  We prepare for Mogollon Monster 100.  We direct Mogollon Monster 100.  We still have baby.  Still have house.  Still working all the time.  And apparently I still have a blog.  

Yet the Monster has come and gone.  And the void that remains leaves me lost in what to do next.  Immediately I volunteer to motivate and train our hotel staff to run the P.F. Chang's Half Marathon, something I'm passionate about but realistically didn't have time for.  When I should be putting a hold on my ambitions to focus on traditional household husband things like siding, lawn care, organizing shelving, etc. I'm out signing myself up for more time consuming projects.  Yet I can't help myself.  I don't have ADD but I cannot just sit around.  As great as that can feel sometimes.  

I need to be involved in something.  

I need goals.  

I need ambitions.  

To fill a part of that void I signed up for two races the day after the Monster finished.  The Cave Creek Thriller 30K and the Zane Grey 50M a ways off in April 2013.  I haven't run hardly a lick since my son Dean was born but now with the race behind us (for now) I should have more time...  My training "program" the last three months consisted of a 30 mile training run on the Mogollon Monster 100 course on a Saturday.  

Rest for 6 days.  

Repeat on a different section the following week.  I would run 20-30 mile long runs every weekend for 8 of the 10 weekends of August/September in preparing for this race in both training runs and course marking.  Some went well...others were miserable death marches.  

Yet somehow, towards the end of the summer, leading right up to the race I started to feel stronger. Not strong, but stronger.  Last Tuesday I covered 16 miles on the Highline Trail for course marking for the race and on the return trip I pushed the pace, hammered the hills and came back into Washington Park feeling great.  I drove up to the top of the Rim and ran another two miles along the General Crook Trail marking it along the way and somewhere on the way back, as the sun was coming down, still slightly poking through the tall Ponderosa's I felt like I was cruising down the trail on a bike.  Nearly 7,500 feet up, it felt like sea level and I was off.  It was  short distance but a big boost to my confidence.  Running hasn't felt that "easy" in a long time.  

So the race is over.  Planning for next year is ongoing and constant. Ideas flood into my mind in an ever rotating display of improvements and projects.  Never submitting to mediocrity, my aspirations always at least reach for something greater.  That will never change but leaves me pulled in another direction, a constant tidal pull bringing me back out to sea every few hours, every few days.  As welcome a distraction as unwelcome.  Focus on one thing, one specific goal has become very challenging with so many aspects of the race I'd like to change while also focusing on work, family, and training (not in that order necessarily...)

With the race over though it does allows me to focus on running again.  My son is three months old now, bigger and stronger and stroller ready.  We can train together and focus on the Zane Grey 50M in April and get back to running with Jay Danek.  I've missed our reckless descents down Bell Pass at breakneck speeds and the much faster pace Jay trains at than I would running solo.  His big ambitions, goals and training regimin rub off on me and I need to get back to that.

I have big plans for Zane Grey, my favorite race to hate in all of running.  Yet ultimately...my favorite race.  My brother distinctly remembers my putrid attitude following my horrible experience back in 2011 where I suffered through a death march the final 17 miles.  All of which were self imposed through my own stupidity, poor planning and newly found arrogance.

This time around though, I'm smarter, I'll be stronger, and I feel like that's my home turf now.  I've run the Highline so much now in preparation for the Mogollon Monster I know so many of the in's and out's of the trail. I know it's a whore of a trail.  An unrelenting beast waiting to eat up the first runner that succumbs to the heat, elevation, exposure, manzanita, or those few rocks out there.  The last time I was arrogant.  I had been running 50K's like they were 5k's.  The 50M was a near regular event for me, at least once a month.  I had run a wickedly hard and vicious Superstition Wilderness 50M the month before and felt that Zane Grey was just a stop at the ice cream shop in comparison (incidently, during that delusional Superstitions run the first seeds of the idea for the Mogollon Monster we laid).  

I made a cardinal Ultrarunning sin.  I did not respect the distance.  

Zane Grey is one of the toughest 50 milers in the country.  I don't care which one you compare it to.  There may be "harder" ones but there is no debate that this is towards the top of the list.  Nobody leaves the Highline saying, "That was easy."  Nobody.  Most leave in a near crippled state saying, "I'm never coming back."  

Which any Zane Grey veteran likely say's in their head, "See you next year."

I'm not overlooking the distance this year.  I'm focusing on this race and this race only.  I'm not going to go out and do all these fat ass random runs through the desert.  My off course adventures that end up eating up every ounce of my energy.  I'm training for speed, stregnth and endurance.  I'm not just looking for an improvement over 2011.  I want to knock several hours off it.

I want to go sub 10 hours.  

At Zane Grey.  

I know.  Ridiculous right?  

Anyone just ultrastalking me can look at my past results and will be wondering, "How in the world are YOU going to run sub 10 hours at Zane Grey??!"  

It's 2:24 better than I ever have run there.  Ever.  I have zero statistical data to back up that kind of time.  My fastest "official" 50K on there is 4:54.  I barely ran 10 hours on a flat,loop course.  

BUT...I know what I can do.  I know what I'm capable of.  I know I've never even gotten close to pushing boundaries on speed or training.  I've always skirted by with just enough training to keep it from being a full on death march. I ran Cascade Crest 100 last year topping out at a 52 mile week. I get by because I'm a strong hiker and I can run downhill.  I've always been weak on the flats and actual "running", as ironic as it sounds, and that is what has kept me plateaued, just off the cuff and from taking that leap to the next level. 

My problem has always been that I could hinge back on the "I don't really train excuse" for my less than stellar times at races.  It's always been a side joke with my running friends but ultimately it's just an excuse.  I'm capable, I can make the time, I just have to put the work in.  

So I will.

And when it comes down to the line, come April, on the Highline, I'll really see where that takes me.  

And if sub 10 hours doesn't happen at Zane Grey...well look for me at the finish line.  I'll still make it there.  It just might not be as pretty.  

The Monster has officially consumed me.  

Consumed everything around me.

Now just a little over three weeks away its down to the wire on planning this monstrosity.  What started as a pipe dream over some maps almost two years ago has nearly become the dream.

A one hundred mile wilderness run through some of Arizona's most beautiful terrain was the goal from the start.  I had a ton of help from local ultrarunner Jeff Jones on designing the course and creating one that is both challenging and logistically possible with the unique challenges that comes with a 2,000 ft. escarpment between aid stations.  I sparked the idea on the tail end of our Superstitions Wilderness 50 Mile adventure and Jeff took off with it like a kid in a candy store.  My original idea to create a hundred in Arizona where people would come, run and leave with a whole new idea of the state, showing that it was more than "just a desert."  It started Jeff off in a tirade of ideas that resulted in nearly 500 emails over the next year.

What we came up with amazes me with each long run spent on the course.  Weekend after weekend, I've driven the 100 miles from my house at 4am to arrive at the trailhead to run the course.  Mile after mile I fall more in love with the area, the terrain and every God forsaken rock that hits the bottom of my sole.  I've run some sections of the course a half dozen times this summer alone, others just a few times, but in all, I've traversed that Rim as much as anyone probably has at this point and now just a few weeks away...I can't wait to see what everyone has to say about it.

The challenging thing about directing a race is not fully grasping what it is that is "hard" for other people.  Every race bills itself as a certain adjective leaning one way or another.  "Hardest", "Toughest", "Fastest" something or other.  Even the Zane Grey 50M race this race shares part of the course with has for years been called, "Toughest 50 Miler" which for many has been a debatable, none wishing to debate fresh off a ZG finish.  This race, the Monster, will likely be one of the toughest endurance feats many of the entrants will have taken on at this point.  I know this because of what I have experienced on other courses, what others have when running this course and how revered the Zane Grey course is in general.  It's going to be hard.  Really hard.

But what is "hard?"  Hard to me is the Lean Horse 100.  Running a flat surface 50 miles, then turning around and running it back?!  That is a hell of a lot of running. Keys 100?  Indiana 100?  Javalina 100?  I've paced the last couple years at Javalina Jundred for 30+ miles and while it's probably the most FUN race atmosphere and an event I look forward to each year...I'm extremely hesitant to ever run it myself.  Because I feel it's extremely hard not having a major climb plopped somewhere in there or having to repeat the same thing over and over again.  Across the Years this past year I hit 50 miles and quit out of sheer boredom.  Terrible I know and something I'm probably going to go back and rectify but that day, running loops...I just couldn't get myself into a groove and really enjoy it.  It was one of the hardest 50 miles I've done and I didn't climb 12 feet...

So how will everyone feel about the Mogollon Monster 100?  I have compared a lot of hundreds trying to determine how it will be met once the first race is completed.  I've spent countless hours on the internet reading all 88+ other hundreds websites, maps, elevation profiles, crew access, past times, cutoffs, etc. There's only about a dozen races with more elevation gain or outright by the numbers is "harder."  Of course there are the Hardrocks, Wasatch races with the climbing but also taking into account the average elevation of each mile, terrain, technical nature, weather and all the other factors that makes a race difficult and challenging some are tougher than others for different reasons.  I feel this race has them all to put it in a class that will challenge even the most seasoned ultrarunner.  That wasn't the goal in designing the race any more was the extra 6 miles some kind of masochistic attempt at one upping anyone.  It's just the way it panned out that way.  

So after hundreds of hours of planning, hundreds and hundreds of miles on the course, and over eighteen months of constant planning we're almost there.  The buckles are in the mail, supplies filling my garage, volunteers committing and contingencies being finalized.  Planning a hundred mile race was a dream, an incredibly ambitious one I'm finding out, but one that I'm determined to see through successfully.  Runners are coming from all over the country, pacers and crews with them.  We'll all be in Pine, Arizona come Friday morning and I'll be there standing up among them for the briefing.  A moment I can't believe is almost here, a weekend of determination, stubborness and drive coupled with beautiful, surreal & majestic.  I can't wait to be on the other side of the finish line to see each of the runners  come through successfully.  To be able to shake their hands, congratulate them and hand them the infamous belt buckle that all non-runners feel is so insignificant.  

106 miles.

20,000 feet of climbing.

One hell of a challenge completed.  

You won't find a more rewarding experience anywhere.