RACE REPORT ~ Foothills 50k Frenzy!

RunKeeper stats

OK, I've sat down at least a dozen times to do a race report for the Foothills 50K Frenzy (which took place on Saturday, October 5, 2013) and somehow found myself not quite ready to do it yet. It's taken 10 days, but I'm ready now! It's funny, the delay is not because the experience was SO profound. In a way, it's because it's somewhat the opposite. I feel almost a sense of, "Meh, I trained, I did it. No big deal."  This, I do not understand, because by all of my counts the Frenzy was pretty epic!

Thirty-one miles. Eight and a half hours. Six Thousand feet of climbing (and descending)....  and it doesn't feel like a huge deal?!

MINDSET

The Foothills 50k Frenzy took place Sat, Oct 5. It's been a week, and I finally feel like I can start to put the experience into words. This event was both exactly and nothing like any event I have done before. On one level, it's very simple. Do the work, day in and day out, then show up and run. On another level, it was very profound to experience the culmination of months, even years, of training.

It's sometimes difficult to pin down a watershed moment. I can't quite recall precisely when or how I learned that there were folks who ran farther than a Marathon (26.2 miles, or 42.2 kilometers). Within a few weeks last summer, I heard about Dean Karnazes and his running exploits for the first time, and learned that my buddy Rich had signed up for a 50 kilometer (31 mile) run called the "Vaquero Loco" (aka "Crazy Cowboy")!  All I know is that instead of instantly thinking, "That's insane!" I thought, "I gotta try that!"

Welcome to my Blog 2.0

I started this blog in 2008 as a way to keep in touch with family and friends, primarily with updates about The Girl.  Then, I joined Facebook, and it all fell by the wayside....  Now, thanks to running, I have resurrected my blog! Thank you for accepting the invitation to view it. (I just have to actually post to it! haha)  One thing I have done to populate the blog for the last 5 years is copy my "notes" out of Facebook and put them in here.

Every blogger worth their salt has to have a catchy name. I came up with one by accident. This is the story: We have magnetic letters on the fridge. Our latest game is "Word of the Day" in which we spell out things that happened in the day, like "hawk" if we saw a hawk, or "pancake" if I made breakfast for dinner.  Well after my run, I spelled ULTRA.  Then I was randomly inspired to add "M O M" to it ... ULTRAMOM!  And thus, a name is born.