Thursday, December 15, 2011

I'm Back

Believe it or not, I am still alive. Seems like the last few months just flew by. Really I didn't have much to post about running-wise, but I guess that's no excuse. So, here's a quick update.

My son's football season went well. I found out that coaching football is much more stressful than playing football. I'm pretty sure us coaches agonized over the outcomes of the games much more than the kids did. At 6 and 7 years old, they tend not to overthink things and just go with the flow, which is good. In the end, we had a great season for a first year team. Finished the regular season at 4-3, which earned us the #4 seed in the playoffs. Ended up losing in the first round to the eventual champions. All four of our losses on the year were very close games that easily could have gone the other way....we were literally a few yards from winning at the end of a couple of those losses. Looking forward to next year!

On the running front, I wrapped up the 3rd annual Black Hills Trail Running Series in November. I had managed to win the men's open division the first year of the series and took 3rd last year, so I jokingly stated that my goal going into this year was to finish 2nd so I could have a complete collection of trophy rocks. Well, as it turned out, I finished 2nd, so the collection is now complete. Of course, I'll still be back next year.

Speaking of next year, my tentative race schedule is starting to take shape. I'm about 90% sure that I'll register for the Bighorn 100, which will be my 2nd 100 mile run and my first true mountain 100 (my first 100 being Lean Horse). I'm also fairly sure I'll run the brand new Quad Rock 50 in Fort Collins as a tune-up. Other than that, I haven't decided on anything, but will probably look for something later in the summer, maybe Elkhorn again.

Hard to think of all that running right now considering it's now been 5 days since I ran at all. This is not a voluntary break. I've got an infection in my submandibular gland (one of the ones under the jaw that produces saliva). This infection has made it nearly impossible for me to eat solid foods for the last 5 days, so I'm on a soup and pudding diet, which is getting pretty damn old. I'm on antibiotics and painkillers until I can see a specialist next week to determine if the gland needs to come out (it probably does, since this has happened in a less severe fashion before). I'm getting pretty restless though. I wasn't told not to run, but I've been playing it safe. It doesn't help that the weather right now is pretty spectacular for December in South Dakota and here I am sitting inside, sipping soup. Patience is not one of my virtues, and my patience is running out...

While I'm here, I suppose I better do some advertising for the Black Hills 100. Ryan and I are now the principle owners of the event (under the guise of our new company, Dakota Endurance). Jerry will still be helping out, but is gradually retiring from the race directing business (he has sold Deadwood-Mickelson and Run Crazy Horse to his co-director Emily and Ryan and I will be gradually taking over Lean Horse as well). For Black Hills, we are currently offering a post-Western States lottery discount for the 100M event. Through December 31st, registration for the 100M is $24 off ($175). Just go to Ultrasignup and register. Response has been good so far. I don't have the data, but I would venture to guess that our numbers are up from this point last year and we have some returnees, which is good (it means they didn't totally hate it last year).

That's it in a nutshell. I'll try to be more vigilant about posting, but I've said that before. Hopefully, I can get this damn gland thing taken care of and actually have something of interest to post on the running front.

Merry Christmas!!

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