Hiatus

In case you've noticed, I've been on a writing hiatus since shortly before the WV Trilogy. I've also been on a running hiatus since the Canary in the Cave 25k+ (and that "+" was no insignificant decimal of a kilometer).

I'm so glad that I missed the registration for Chattanooga's StumpJump 50k. Running my first 50k in my beloved home state was an experience I'll never forget nor regret. The West Virginia Mountain Trail Runners put on some top-notch races, I've found out, and the West Virginia Trilogy was no exception. I only ran the 50k, obviously, but I decided to arrive on Thursday evening for registration and stay the entire weekend. My wife was running the half marathon on Sunday--her first half marathon!--so I had something to look forward to after running on Friday.

The trail was gorgeous! Man, what a beautiful and rich trail, but what a challenge, too! The course was the most challenging thing I've ever ran, 50k aside. Those mountains are no joke. I wish that I could remember everything clear enough to give a detailed race report, but it's been so long since the race that my memories are more of a nostalgic hodgepodge of emotions rather than a set of clear recollections. Also, the delay in getting back to this blog as made any would-be race report from me pretty much outdated and pointless. Besides, I don't even know how you're supposed to do a race report. My report is that the race was great. :) My time was a lot slower than I planned, but, after about the 23rd mile, I was just hoping I would even finish. It was certainly harder than I expected. I ran the 50k in 8:10:25.6 and placed 35th out of 62 runners. Keep in mind, though, that many of those runners were intentionally running slower so that they would have energy for the 50 mile race the next day, and I was giving it all I had. On a cool side note, the winner of the 50k, Clay Warner, is a resident of Beckley, WV, and he ran it in something like 5:15:xx, I think. Unreal.

Anyways, the race was awesome, and my wife also loved the half marathon. Her goal was to finish under 2:30:00, and her time was less than that. She said she thinks it was 2:24. I was going to go to the race results page to look up her and Clay's times, but my computer is giving me troubles. My Macbook has been faithful since I got it, lightly used, in 2007, but it's really showing its age these days. Too many papers and youtube in college has taken its toll on my dear ol' Lappy. Speaking of college, Emily also recently graduated from Montreat College with a Master of Science in Environmental Education. Yay Em! I'm so proud of you!

Between the 50k and now, I also ran in the VERY FIRST Canary in the Cave 25k+! A race on the very trails I've been running most of my trail running days? And with Ibex wool race beanies to boot! I couldn't pass it up. It was a crisp, beautiful, sunny November morning, and the Park Service and race volunteers had done a terrific job at clearing the trail after some bad storms tore down trees all over the Gorge. As far as I can remember, the race started in the park and went into the Town Loop and followed Fayetteville Trail to Kaymoor Top, did a large part of the Arrowhead Trail System, then went down Craig Branch Trail to Kaymoor Trail and then up Fayetteville Trail again and back to the park. I could be missing something in there, but that was the gist of the thing. I ran the course (I'm not sure of the exact distance--I think it was something a little greater than 17 miles) in 3:24:19.4 and finished 21st out of 61. Clay Warner was one of the RDs, so it was cool seeing him again, and some other familiar WVMTR faces were there. Dan Lehman saw me and said hi before the race, and I got to chat with Adam Casseday afterwards (Lehman and Casseday both were RDs for the Trilogy). What a great day. Clay even connected with me a couple weeks later to return my fleece that I had left at the finish line area.

After that, a little bit of Cathedral Cafe for the best latte I've ever had in my life, and it was home to rest. Since then, I haven't run; I've switched to some weight training to change things up for me and keep me sane (and warm during the winter). I hope it helps more than hurts me when spring rolls around.

As for my blogging negligence, the bit of writing I've done since last touching this thing has been toward a possible future novel that's been mulling around in my head since last summer. When it comes to fiction, I've done some short stories in high school and college, so this whole writing something that takes more than a few days to a week to finish is new to me. I'm also not very disciplined at the whole writing regularly thing, so it may take me a while. This blog will probably be on the back-burner  at least until spring when I start running again. Even then, it may not see as much faithfulness to its updates as I used to show.