Baldwin Lee's blog

Well, I'm off to Vegas(vlv!)...my reward for completing Hundred in the Hood 103 mile trail race.

But before I go, here's my writeup for the race or at least a link to my blog where the report is:

Baldwin's On and Off Trail Misadventures

By the time I get back, you should be on Chapter four.

Enjoy!

Just wanted to say thanks to all the Club Fat Asser's who were either in the race or on the sidelines cheering us on.  It definitely helped push me into a personal best of 3:36:29! Now let's see if this translates to better trail race times....A report may be in the works, compared to my epic ultrarace stories, there's not much that happens in 3.5 hours. 

11:36am: Call my crew, Rob Ruff and discreetly inquire to his whereabouts as we are less than 25 minutes away from the start of Stormy (Squamish Test Of Running Mettle, Yeah!) 100 miler and he is nowhere to be found. 11:54am: All my bottles of gatorade, electrolyte water, flat Pepsi, hydration packs and everything that I'm going to need to get me through the next 27-30 hours of trails are sitting into a plastic milk crate in front of my car.

50K: Rhonda Schuller!

50 miler: Marla Weinheimer, Carolyn King, Cheryl Johnson and Philip Waters!

100 miler: Neil Ambrose, Randy Rankin and the Fools: Karl and John! 

Have a scorching hot time on the TRT! Better you than me....

Having volunteered my services as a pacer for Jess for the last quarter of V100, it had occurred to me that we'd be doing this section in the dark.

What hadn't occurred to me was that while I have run from Cleveland to Deep Cove in various sections I had only run them during the daytime. Given that Miwok 100k was my last bit of night trail running (May 3rd) and that V100 was coming up the next weekend, my training window was becoming exceedingly smaller.

Well, that was an interesting experience.

I learned a few things from the Host's perspective which I'll get into detail a little later.

6:54am: I get a call from Rob wondering where I am (as I'm doing 70km/h on the Mamquam FSR) Note to self: Make sure your family knows to call 911 instead of calling you in case of emergency and try to maintain some sense of self control when going to a BBQ the night before an event, especially if you're the event Host.

So it's 5:32am and I'm huddling in the handicapped stall at Rodeo Beach for warmth because the normal race start of 5:40am is being delayed because there is a humungous lineup of cars still trying to find parking so Miwok runners can check in. This is a little weird for me cause I thought the race limit was only 250. Unbeknownst to me, the RD had let and additional 100 runners off the waiting list on the condition that they would all carpool. Judging by the overflowed parking lots, this was not the case.

This was supposed to be my last training run before Miwok 100k. At least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

All I really wanted was a nice long run somewhere in the 10-11 hour range to properly prepare my body for all the stresses and discomforts of a 100k event. I figured since I was still in recovery mode from Diez Vista 50k last Saturday and that I had ran 16 miles of road the day after, my legs would be really dead.

Carlos did steal my thunder but yeah, I ran Diez Vista 50K on Saturday after a 3 year absence. The last time I ran this I made numerous mental mistakes and gutted out a 7:53 in 2005. This time I only made one mistake (new shoes) but I finished with a 6:36:12 (race results are up by the way), so a 77 minute PR!