TwentySixPointWhat?

This race was a doozy. Coming off from another aggressive ultra season (LUS - I'm coming for you in 2017) my body had had enough but hey, give me the chance to run something over a 1/2 marathon and I'm in.  The challenge came in the requirement to complete the first 5 miles in under 45 minutes.  My younger self would have looked at this requirement and not blinked an eye. . my older self knew this was going to test me. It followed that I signed up for the Devil Dog Double - run the Semper Five in <45 -="" 5="" a="" able="" advantage="" afterward.="" always="" and="" around="" at="" bewilderment="" buffer="" director="" earned="" finish="" from="" half.="" half="" historic="" i="" it="" managed="" minute="" minutes="" my="" nbsp=

I've been terrible about keeping up this blog w/ race reports and training logs but it's my hope to get better. Yesterday was the 25th Bull Run Run 50; it was my second running of it. The race is put on by the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club (VHTRC) - this is there premiere event - it's a good one, too. I'm pretty sure you can find my race report from last year somewhere on this site, maybe I should go back and read it sometime. First of all, going into this run I didn't feel like I was actually going to run 50 miles. My world has been shaken up so much lately that writing Bull Run Run on my weekly to-do white board didn't seem like anything other than another assignment, a box to check off for the week. Friday I had hoped to have a relaxing day - you know, get shit done so that it was done for when I got home on Saturday night but the universe, aka, the JOB, had other plans. I got sucked into helping out on a deliverable that was FUBR w/ conflicting directi

I'm not gonna lie.. . I'm terribly under-trained for the 2017 running of the Bull Run Run. If all the races last year were a personal affront given the foul weather (rain, sleet, snow and thunder in 2016) the weather for 2017 events are swinging too far in the 'nice' category to make up for it. . . i.e., ~65 degrees at the finish of Holiday Lake 50k AND Terrapin 50k. So far the weather looks to be holding at 38/65 and clear. If I keep a solid pace I'll do just fine.  For both Holiday Lake and Terrapin I came in just about 30 minutes over my time from last year - if the same holds true for Bull Run Run I'm looking to finish in ~11:50.  I'd be okay with that.

Around August 2016 the Garmin Vivofit I'd worn everyday since around Thanksgiving 2014 up and died.  After a few weeks I replaced the battery but the watch didn't resuscitate. I found my old Timex Ironman for Iron Mountain and managed to break even more of the band during the run which is to say that since around September 2016 I've been without a watch for the most part because most of the time I have difficulty wearing the fancy dress watch my ex- bought for me one year for Christmas. I ran MMTR blind (without a watch) and after my Timex died at Holiday Lake 50k_++ 2017 I decided it was high time to invest in a quality watch (the hefty tax return that comes with being both a student and a home owner helped influence that decision). After conducting an informal poll on Facebook and reading comments on the VHTRC group discussion board I decide on the Suunto Ambit3 Peak Sapphire (it was $20 extra an I'm accident prone). I wore the watch for the first time this morning an