Am I going to do those damn recaps again in 2023? Indeed, I am!

I signed up for my first ever attempt at a 100 miler, the 2023 Bear 100, and this past week was week one of a 36 week plan. The time on feet and mileage all go up from here. I might do 20 hours and 100 miles or more in a week in July. Week one's numbers are a step up from my November and December running.

• 7 hours, 56 minutes

• 36.8 miles

• 4,268 ft D+

This weekend I did back-to-back 2 hour runs for the first time since last August. I did a long slow slog on the bike path yesterday and then a hilly loop at Horsetooth Open Space today. I saw nobody in the park away from the trailheads, only birds. On Spring Creek I ran through a large flock of chickadees and at the Towers crossed paths with a Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) which seemed to be doing stooping exercises. From on high it would tuck its winds and dive headlong toward the ground, pull out of the dive, coast back up, and then repeat. Larimer County encourages Golden Eagles to nest at Horsetooth by closing a stretch of the Spring Creek trail each spring. I would love to hear about some breeding success this year.

I planned to run less in 2022 and because of a random health issue I had to skip some big training weeks and did even less running than I had planned.

The numbers for 2022:

• 302 hours, 28 minutes running

• 1,423 miles

• 186,739 ft D+

• 6 heart clinic visits

I recovered in time to run and finish the Superior 50 and learned more ultra-marathon lessons. Photos from the season are on Flickr in an album named Running 2022.

I'm looking forward to a much bigger 2023 season. More about that soon.

Looking out the window at the landscape below remains the best part of flying. My family and I went to Boise, Idaho, last week and the views were extra good. I've driven from Fort Collins to Cody, Wyoming, and Idaho Falls, Idaho, for Thanksgiving in years past when I had more time than money, but I'm done with that. BOI-DEN-Fort Collins (last leg by car) takes 5 hours, maximum. Traversing Wyoming on the ground via I-80 (Wyoming alone, not counting the CO, UT, ID legs) in Winter takes 2d6 + 4 hours.

I was on the north side of a 737-900 leaving Boise at 7 a.m. Friday and got some superb early morning views of the Lost River (ID), Teton (WY), Wasatch (UT), Uintah (UT), Rawah (CO), and Never Summer (CO) ranges.

Planet Labs, my employer, suggests people take a Friday paid day off every month. I used mine in October to go on a little adventure that I'd been thinking about for a couple years: running from my house to the summit of Horsetooth Mountain and back again. I spent eight and a half hours on the trail, including many stops for photos, water, and food, covering 33 miles and 4100 feet of elevation gain. Horsetooth Reservoir, 7 miles long and half a mile wide, was my primary obstacle.

The first four miles were on the Spring Creek bike path and dirt in Pineridge Open Space. Beyond that was seven miles of road shoulder to go around the south end of Horsetooth Reservoir and reach the upper Horsetooth Open Space trailhead. I drive this road once or twice a week, but had never run it before. It's fairly busy, so I ran strictly on the left and kept a close eye on oncoming vehicles. Waving and mouthing "thanks" when drivers give me extra room is my standard practice.

From the Horsetooth parking lot, I had 10 miles of peaceful single track, mostly all to myself. I took it very easy, only using a little speed to reach the Lory State Park visitor's center at the north end of Horsetooth Reservoir before closing time, 4 p.m., to buy a Coke and refill water bottles.

I found the smuggler's route from the vistor center through to the north Horsetooth boat ramp, saving me from three additional miles of road shoulder, ran the road back along the reservoir's east shore to Maxwell Open Space, and then through Maxwell to Pineridge and back down the bike trail. Overall it was half road, half dirt.

To cap things off, I ordered Sichuan and Wuhan style noodles from Beijing Noodle (awesome place, closest restaurant to my house) using my phone's browser on the trail, and then carried the takeout boxes home on foot while drinking a beer from the store next to the noodle shop. It was such a satisfying day. I'll be thinking fondly about this adventure for a while.

Twitter's biggest problem now is its owner's narcissism and right-wing radicalization. Josh Marshall calls out Musk's scapegoating of minorities and other ugly shit:

We’re hardly four weeks into the Elon era on Twitter and he’s already cueing up a storyline in which he tried to placate the Blacks and the Jews and the gays but they betrayed him and set out to “kill Twitter.”

Musk isn't Tony Stark, he's the Donald Trump of batteries and rockets.

During a moment of sun on an otherwise gloomy Sunday, I ran into a flock of turkeys on Towers Trail.

Post-Superior running is going well. I'm getting some consistent easy miles, some long runs on the weekends, and am spending quality time with my yoga mat and foam roller. My plans for next year are still coming together. I'll write about that more after Thanksgiving.

One of the cool things about blogging is that there aren't a lot of rules. I had some thoughts about racing at Superior that I wasn't able to weave into my previous post, so I'm just making a new post about technical aspects of the race. What I wore, what I carried, and what I ate.

I brought rain gear and extra clothing to Minnesota, and used it on Friday. But when the forecasts converged on dry and mild for Saturday, I left that gear out of my pack and drop bags. I sent a pair of shoes (Evo Speedgoats) and socks to the Cramer Road aid station at 27 miles and a spare headlamp to the Sawbill aid station at 40 miles. No other non-consumable items. I didn't use the spare Speedgoats. My feet were still feeling okay at 27 miles. In hindsight, it would have been better to have sent completely different shoes to Sawbill. A pair with a different fit, like my Nikes, would have been lovely to change into at 40 miles.

I wore the same clothing all day. Smartwool socks. A very light tech top from Patagonia. Venerable capilene boxer briefs from REI and slightly ratty, but lucky, Vuori Banks shorts. I trust these to be non-chaffing at home and they came through for me again. My Gnar Runners Boco tech trucker was on my head until sundown, after which I intermittently wore a capilene beanie. I wore my nylon windbreaker (Patagonia Houdini) for the last seven miles. With clear skies, the air cooled quickly, but never got very cold. I left my wool gloves in my pack. I wore almost everything I packed and didn't need anything more. I'm going to have to retire some of these items soon. Plastic clothing lasts a long time, but not forever.

I carried everything in my trusty Ultimate Directions Mountain Vest (4.0). It weighs almost nothing, is breathable, and fits well whether lightly or heavily loaded. I brought a small first aid kit, but didn't use it. Nor did I use my sunglasses or small stick of sunscreen. For hydration, I carried three 16-ounce soft bottles. One was mostly a spare. It was never very warm, and I never carried more than two full bottles at a time between aid stations.

I brought light hiking poles to Minnesota, the ones I used at the Never Summer 100k last year. They're very helpful on muddy trails and on technical descents in the dark. I left them in my room at the lodge on race day and didn't regret it. I would have used them in the last hour of the race if I'd been carrying them, but they wouldn't have improved my time or saved my feet.

Shoes... I do think that my Speedgoats weren't adequately broken in. The heel and toe areas were a bit stiff. I did appreciate the famous cushion and traction. They're a good choice for the Superior Hiking Trail. It's a super rugged trail, so you need some combination of cushion, armor, or dancer's feet. I ran for miles with a guy who was wearing the Speedgoat 5, which I have worn for up to 20 miles, but no further, and he loved them. I might see about switching over.

Fuel is the last technical detail to cover. I drank a lot of Tailwind solution. 400 calories worth at six of the 7 aid stations. I stashed pre-measured amounts in my drop bags to pick up along the way. I sucked down 4 packets of GU and ate three Stinger waffles and one bag of Stinger chews. I drank 8-10 ounces of Coke, one of my go-to calorie sources, at every aid station. I was able to eat plenty of solid food all day long. From pancakes and sausage in the morning, to mashed potatoes and chicken noodle soup in the evening. Mid-day I got tired of aid station food and that's when I went for the chews and gels. I did a much better job fueling than I did at last year's Never Summer, where I bonked badly in the last 10 miles.

What about crewing? I didn't have a planned crew. My friend David Bitner, a devoted Superior runner and pacer, met me at mile 27 to pump me up and help me get set for the second half. Outside of that, I found my own groups as I went. 50 miles, in my experience, is not so long that I need help. I would love to have some crew help on a 100 mile race and a pacer to help me flow quickly through aid stations.

That's all the technical notes for the race. I went into it with a B fitness level, extra pounds, a little uncertainty about my heart, but with experience at this race distance to lean on. I flunked my shoe choice, but did everything else right, enjoyed tons of support, and had a great time.

Last weekend I traveled to Minnesota's North Shore to run the Superior 50: 52 miles through the North Shore Highlands and Sawtooth Mountains on the Superior Hiking Trail. On the Thursday before the race I flew into Duluth and drove a rental car 90 miles up Highway 61 to a lodge at the Lutsen Mountains Resort, the finish line for the event. Friday I met David Bitner and his partner Marin at Tettegouche State Park for lunch and some easy hiking on the cliffs next to Lake Superior. Marin would be running the Moose Marathon (the last 26.2 miles of the 50 and 100 mile course) on Saturday and Bitner, a 100 mile finisher in 2019, would be pacing a 100 mile runner overnight. After a few hours with them, I drove north again to Grand Marais to wander around and find a pre-race dinner, and then back to the lodge to sleep before Saturday's early start.

The 50 mile race began at 5:15 a.m. in Finland, Minnesota. A school bus took me from the finish to the start, leaving the resort at 4:15. Friday's clouds and rain were gone and the 50 mile race kicked off in calm and cool conditions under a full moon.

The Superior Hiking Trail, or SHT, is wild, rugged, and challenging. I estimate that a quarter of the 50 mile course was fairly runnable. The rest was steep, or overgrown, or root-bound, or all of the above. You have to watch your feet, closely. On the other hand, I didn't need sunscreen, because we were traveling under the canopy of the boreal forest, with only small breaks at river and road crossings and rocky summits.

My plan was to take it easy in the first third of the course and, if I felt good, pick up the pace in the second third and try to sustain it through the final 17 miles. I settled into the tail end of the pack and stayed there until just before the Crosby-Manitou aid station (mile 12). During this part of the race I was briefly in a small train with Courtney Dauwalter (two time UTMB winner and winner of this year's Hardrock 100) and her mom, which was fun. They say never meet your heroes, but the Dauwalters were friendly and gracious. At the aid station I got a small cup of coffee, a big pancake and a sausage patty, and really began to enjoy the race.

I felt great at 17 miles. My heart was behaving properly. My legs felt good. The trail conditions, considering Friday's rain, and weather were much better than I'd expected. I found some good company and longer stretches of runnable trail at this point did my fastest running of the day all the way into the Sugarloaf aid station at mile 21. I kept going steadily, passing two packs of runners on the way to the Cramer Road aid station.

My favorite place on the trail was the Temperance River Gorge. The river's name is, according to Bitner, a pun: there is no sand bar where it reaches Lake Superior. I took a bunch of photos of swimming holes just past the race's Temperance aid station. Not much further downstream the gorge narrows and deepens dramatically. I didn't take any photos there, but you can easily find them online. It's a real wonder of nature.

In hindsight, I might have neglected to eat enough after Cramer Road. I was feeling sluggish on the 1,200 foot climb up from the Temperance River to Carlton Peak. My ambitions of finishing before the sun went down were starting to look unrealistic. The trail near the summit was steep and rocky, not unlike the approaches to Arthur's Rock or Horsetooth. I saw Columbines and raspberries (flowers and fruit long gone), which also reminded me of home.

Near the Sawbill-Britton aid station I began to catch up to slower 100 mile runners. Some of them were suffering. Some were perfectly executing their plans to beat all the aid station cut-off times and finish in just under 38 hours.

Around mile 40, my feet began to literally fall apart. I'm not sure whether my shoes (Speedgoat 4s with ~25 miles of wear) were inadequately broken in or I hadn't toughened up my feet enough in training. I only ran 20 miles once this year before Superior, whereas I ran 20, 25, and 30 miles before Quad Rock last year. My heels and toes blistered, and in trying to spare them on downhills, I absorbed more force in my quads than I otherwise would. The last 7 miles were a slow, painful slog, much of it well after dark. All the people I passed between miles 21 and 40 caught up to me and left me behind. Going uphill felt better than going downhill. But I finished! Good company helped. I ran the last 3 miles with a woman from Littleton, Colorado. We'd run some of the first few pre-dawn miles together and had some laughs about the rest of the day.

My official time: 15:36:21. This was an extremely well-run event and I can see why people keep coming back for more. Thank you, Superior volunteers and friendly runners. Thank you, Bitner and Marin, for lunch and crewing at the 27 mile mark. My biggest thanks are to my family, for putting up with my obsession and letting me off the hook for chores so I can sleep in during blocks of high training volume. I couldn't have finished without your support.

I just now found a link to the race director's recap in my inbox. It is here.

I did less running last week, but it was high quality running. Plenty of technical, hilly single track and strides. Sunday I went for an hour long bike ride with Ruth instead of running.

• 4 hours, 9 minutes (running)

• 19.0 miles

• 3,097 ft D+

Friday I stopped by the top of Arthur's Rock for a view over Horsetooth Reservoir and the plains. This Saturday I'll be getting views of Lake Superior.

I got some running-is-a-part-time-job kind of numbers this week.

• 14 hours, 32 minutes

• 60.4 miles

• 10,656 ft D+

I ran every day except Monday and hills every day but Thursday, when I did an easy run by the river.

Two weeks ago I wrote:

I want to get ~110 miles and 15,000 ft of climbing in over the next two weeks.

I pretty much did it. 103 miles and almost 18,000 ft of climbing. My training is finally coming together and none too soon, with my one race of the year less than two weeks away.

Today I went back to RMNP to beat the heat and had a great long run on the loop I did in June, but in the other direction and without snow. I weathered some afternoon rain and hail, for the first time on a long run, and at the end of the day dealt with a herd of elk at the trailhead where I had parked. I'm comfortable being close to mule deer, but adult elk are big and can mess you up! The smart thing to do is wait for them to move along, or go around, giving them a wide berth. In about two weeks, male elk will begin competing for mates and it will become more dangerous to be out in the meadows with them.