My Track Record

Sorry it wasn't your day out there Greg! I won't be at all surprised though when you eventually return to Western States and conquer that course! In the mean time - hope your recovery and fried chicken eating go well! :)

Great effort! You are a fast and talented runner. Keep on running! I wish you well.

Both articles are great so I'm glad you came out of this with something more than trashed quads. Nevertheless, I'm so sorry it was such a grim experience. I tracked you (the site is really very good) and truly felt anguished when I saw you'd dropped.

A number of years ago I was a handler for a friend who was running what was then an annual 100 miler at Shea Stadium. Around the field, out the outfield fence to the parking lot, around the lot, and back. A hundred times. Not exactly Western States but dispiriting in its own way. At 75 miles, he wanted to quit. The race had started at 6:00 p.m., and I thought that 75 miles was a pretty decent night's run. But back in the Mets dugout, which is where we handlers sat, the old-timers told me not to let him drop out--he looked too good, he'd be sorry later, etc. Then one said, "Tell him to give it another three hours and assess from there." I liked these guys who thought in three-hour units.

I hope your recovery goes well and you're out soon doing training and racing you can enjoy more.

Greg,

Yup, AJW is Andy Jones-Wilkins. Erik ran hard and put up a great number but Hal was in a class by himself this year and deserved the win, big time. After he cleared Michigan Bluff at 1:48 PM (52 minutes ahead of me) I knew we were all racing for 2nd.

Thanks, AJW

PS -- What's my prize? Hal's Playlist?

Great effort Greg, even though it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. Given your description of how things were going, I completely understand and agree with your decision to stop.

Giving WS a go was very ambitious, given the acknowledged mismatches between the demands of the race (e.g., lots of downhill running) and your strengths. I'm curious if you feel WS is so ill-matched to your strengths that you'll never want to have another go at it, or if you feel that with different training (e.g., no Miwok) you could meet your original goal of running a time fast enough to compete for the win. Probably best not to address this question now, so close to the event, as I suspect I know what your answer would be.

Brinsley and I were following you all day on Saturday--the website was very nice. Brinsley was updating your position on the website literally every 5 minutes, despite my suggestion that the nature of the event made such fine-scale resolution pointless.

Enjoyed your RW post-mortem; as always, your honesty is both entertaining and admirable. Ignore the contrary comment on the RW site from "A 29 Hour Finisher"; I wish he/she had revealed where it's written that everyone has to enter an individual event like WS with the same motivations and goals.

Greg,

Sorry to hear this. Really sorry. I was pulling for you.

Sounds like we both had rough Saturdays. Only yours was on a much grander scale of discomfort.

Eh, me thinks you're going to bounce back, big time. I can't wait to see what happens next. I think you are doing some really great things for this sport called ultrarunning, setting performance standards higher and higher.

In the meantime, recover well and dream of happier runs.

Meghan

Greg,

I'm so sorry that WS didn't go as you had hoped. Uli and I were paying attention more to this race than in getting ready for mine (probably not the best thing for me) and we were sad when we found out you had dropped. I'm glad that it wasn't for a more "serious" reason, though (e.g., you're not in the hospital).

I have DNF-ed once and know that it's extremely difficult even when you know that, for good reason, you can't go on. This one DNF I have haunts me to no end, even though there was no way I physically could have continued. I hope that your DNF experience will motivate you in future training sessions and to make the best of and fully appreciate the days when you feel "on" on race day.

Looking forward to getting together for a long run again sometime this summer - once your quads have recovered. :)

Cheers!
Trisha

Keep eatin' that fried chicken and I'll catch up to you! I have to admit that I can only hope that someday I can put in hard training like you did, sacrifice time and comfort, spend alot of dough and suffer in the heat at WS so that I can say that I quit or finished! I can't believe the couple of self-righteous posts you got on the RW site. I hope you have a great summer and look forward to seeing you at the races soon!

Greg,

I enjoyed your blog, and like so many of your other fans, I was tracking you on race day. I hated to see you drop, but as you once said to me, "Nobody questions your toughness." OK, maybe 29 hour finisher, but certainly not the people who know you. I wish you a smooth recovery and many great races to come! Take care.

Dude:

I was watching for you at Foresthill but had to leave before you got in.

Not incidentally, are you planning to go to Winschoten? Or have you decided to enter Badwater as a "warm up"?

Greg,
at times the "you are only as good as your last race" cultural and behavioral model, which I am not an avid fan fan of, seems to prevail over knowledge and experience of the people we observe.

This said, to mean I would not judge anybody by one (the last) race alone but like any experience there's a lot to learn from every significant thing we do, the only possible and fair criticism that i could think of, beyond those you raise yourself to describe your performance or lack thereof in this significant experience, is based on my own subjective interpretation of the way you approached the race, including the decision to blog on a popular and prestigious publication.

This decision alone, in my view, transformed your race - intended in its purest competitive and participatory sense - into an "experiment" or as i audaciously defined it, a "blog-riment."
As I wrote previously, Science of Running meets Science of Writing.

How much did it "weigh" on you?

I wonder if you, and the rest of the blogging community who followed your experience, within the subjective parameters I described, would find it fair to say that by not finishing the race you did not complete the experiment.

And I guess this is a source of disappointment. From the merge of the literary with the athletic, you maybe let go just when it was starting to get very meaningful. When we start to understand how the human body, mind and spirit works under real intense pressure, made no less intense by the agreement to make an account of it.

I suppose if you had been "spiritually" overcome by the negative experience you could have chosen to do a literary DNF and not write about. Or maybe write just that: DNF. As they do for those anonymous runners or ultrarunners outhere who meet the same fate.

By far the most significant and self-critical detail you write is the comment you made "...because I have a Ph.D. in physiology" to which one could feel tempted to respond, then as now, "well, it didnt' help a whole lot, in light of your result, did it?"
"Dark and low moments" are anything but boring. They are the bread and butter of learning. Not necessarily to be shared.

So just as your honesty was greatly appreciated, unless it became really offensive, perhaps one should also appreciate the honesty of the 29hour finisher who aggravated (but again it did not seem offensive) your own DNF evaluation, in the race and in the experiment as far as I am concerned.

You are unquestionably talented runner and academic with a solid, unique place in the world, who has no less replicated his genetic code, in the most conventional of ways :-) Sometimes big accomplishments are more obvious than we can believe. Growing up a child is an ultra-event of epic proportions... and no less the second thought, after the way to beat hills, which came to mind.

There ain't no victory, nor defeat, that can change that. Neither good, nor bad. No experience without experiments. Rock on. Sincerely, Corrado

Thanks, everybody.

Jem: Yes, my current opinion is that WS is so ill-matched to my strengths that I'm unlikely to return. Perhaps that's a "sore loser" attitude, but, with so many ultras to choose from, why not focus on the ones where I'm likely to excel?

Jay: Yes, I'm hoping to go to Winschoten. The question yet to be resolved is whether my wife and I can afford the trip.

Corrado: I too saw the race as an experiment, but one that was completely independent of the blogging and conducted almost entirely for my own benefit. In my case, I wanted to see how I would handle the extra distance, time on my feet, and elevation change. Once I got my answer, the experiment was over. I'm sorry that I was unable to offer you a better exploration of the grim territory beyond exhaustion.

Greg, your witty and sharp comment made me genuinely smile :-) Just for the record please be advised I am not a sadist. I value Life greatly and I am not at all enthused by extreme daredevil-types and performers who run great risks solely for money or play.

Ironically, your alleged failure may do more for ultra-running, and Running in general, than a win or a place might have. Because if a real elite runner, a fast runner, passionate, scientific, versatile runner and multitasking human like yourself still has to cope with failure, well any beginner and first-timer can strive for some satisfaction and self-esteem achieving just a fraction of what you do. Lick your wounds, be proud and go and get them...

Greg,

Another great effort, and very wise DNF. I'd hate to see such a promising runner possibly permanently soured/injured by foolishly continuing. Personally, I can't possibly imagine anyone surviving the elevation gains and losses, UNLESS one specifically trains properly for all of that. Unfortunately "Horses for courses" is a truism and some people find the extremes of ups and downs impossible even with proper training.

Continued success on the courses that suit you better (and best).

Greg,

Thanks for the reply on the contest. I almost for got about it. FYI - You didn't disappoint me by any means. You ran WS as best as you could. Some of my friends had to drop at Devils Thumb due to various issues. It was an interesting and fun night for me to keep tabs of everyone thanks to my late work hours. Hal REALLY suprised me since there was no talk about him the whole time before the race.

Definately play to your strengths. I'll see you on the trails...passing me. :-)