Menan Butte Challenge, Finally Back At It

Me running near Macchu Picchu near the end of a Humanitarian trip to Peru- Photo Zach Allen

Well it is about time I write something here, the electronic cobwebs were getting pretty thick, not to mention the digital dust bunnies! Yesterday marked my first trail race of the year, the Run Around The Rim which used to be called the Menan Butte Challenge. It has been a couple of months since I wrote anything here, but I have been posting some over on The White Room. Honestly the ski mountaineering race season took a pretty heavy toll on me this year and it has taken a while to come back. Actually I am not sure if I have fully recovered even now.

I have been spending a fair bit of time running trying to switch from skimo fitness to trail racing fitness, which has proved to be fairly difficult. All of the high intensity training on skis left my tendons pretty soft since there wasn't any "pounding". As I have spent more time on the trails it shows that although my cardio motor is ready to rock, the legs are not quite ready. I have had to deal with several minor issues that border-lined on injury.

Picture form the start of last year's race the first climb is a doozy! Photo Tanae Nelson

I was very tentative going into the Menan Race this year. The course favors my strengths as a trail runner and I have always had pretty good results. I showed up for the race a little early and was delighted to see many familiar faces. I even had the chance to warm-up with Chris Lundberg from Jackson, who is always a strong competitor. He mentioned that he was also a bit nervous about how the race would go as he had just gotten back from running Boston a few days prior! In the last minute briefing before the start the race director added a bit more pressure by introducing me and talking about some of the running I had been doing over the last couple of years.

Chris was rocking a beard again this year, but last year's was more intimidating- Photo Tanae Nelson

I was surprised to have a very lean college aged runner holding on during the entire first ascent. Normally I can get away from the crowd on the way up the Butte, but this guy was stride for stride until nearly the top. Just after the crest I couldn't hear him anymore and so I put the hammer down trying to gain some ground. It worked since I ran pretty much the rest of the race all alone. On a small out and back I saw Chris and Eric (the lean guy) duking it out on the descent to the turn around, but at that point I had a pretty solid lead. I still pushed hard trying to reel in any runners ahead of me on the shorter course, I did pass a couple on the last descent to the finish line. I crossed the finish line in 42:09 for what was thought to be a 12k, although it felt a bit shorter.

I am very content with how things went in the race, it felt really good to push my body to a hard effort. I hung around for the awards and things then as runners packed up and headed out, I grabbed my Ultraspire Surge and headed back up the Butte to get the long run miles in for the week. Since I had raced hard for 6 of the miles I felt pretty content with an additional 14 on the butte, especially since I totaled out just shy of 6000' of ascent for the day (1500' in the race and 4482 after). Final Results Here

Gear for the race:

La Sportiva Crosslite 2.0

Green Layer La Sportiva Race long sleeve

Patagonia Long Haulers

First Endurance EFS (with half a scoop of First Endurance Prerace).

After the race I dropped to a green layer t-shirt and grabbed the UltraSpire Surge, I fueled with 1 EFS liquid shot and plain water.

Hopefully this race was enough of a confidence booster that I can break out of the slump that I have been in for the last month or so, that coupled with some big plans for this summer should give me the motivation to train hard and keep this blog updated with some quality content. If there is anything trail or skimo related that you would like to hear about leave a comment below. I am thinking of doing some gear/nutrition reviews as well as some training info in the near future.

Bonus pic- Running along Lake Barcis in Italy as a way to "shake out" between the World Cup Races-Self Portrait

February Flying By

Family Backcountry Tour

Another month has pretty much flown by, I am not updating as much as regularly as I had hoped for this year. Something to work on for sure. This post is going to be somewhat of a hodge-podge because there are a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of weeks that I need to report on.

First something that is coming up this weekend. One of my favorite events of the year is coming up this Sunday, the Matt Barrett Memorial Telemark Festival and Randonee Race. I am not much of a Teleskier but I thoroughly enjoy a good ski mountaineering race beat down. The race this year will have a long course option that hasn't existed in the past. The course will roughly have 3000' of climbing and 3000' of descent. It will travel over groomed, untracked, off-piste and will have a brutal boot pack to really make your lungs scream. Please tell anyone you think that might be interested, we need good attendance so we can continue to have this event in the future. For those a little less adventurous there will be a short course option about 1200' less climbing/descent on mostly groomed runs. Cost is $25 and race starts promptly at 8:00.

Red Hot 50k

A couple of weeks ago I made the trek down to Moab, Utah for my first race of the year. As I rode down with my good frien Ryan Mcdermott, I realized with each passing mile that it wasn't going to be the race that I had hoped for. I wanted to go down south to get a nice warm run on dirt. Well there was snow all the way to Moab, and the thermometer in the car never topped higher than 35 and that was in Salt Lake when we left. We has dinner that night at Eddie Mcstiffs with Karl and Cheryl Meltzer, Matt Hart, Jared Campbell and Mindy Knoles. We got to enjoy each others company for quite a while because our waiter forgot to put our order in the system and he didn't even offer a discount even though we waited over 2 hours for our food.

The race itself started cold 16 degrees. There was some confusion when the gun (yell) went off because we weren't sure if it was the real one or not. The pace from the start was brisk but manageable on the snow covered road. There were areas of the trail that had snow a little over knee deep which slowed the pace and increased the difficulty. When the 50k course joined up the the 33k course things dried out and the pace again picked up. At this point I had fallen off the lead pack was getting caught by some of the racers that were smarter from the start, including Ty Draney. We finally started climbing again which permitted me to start pulling away again as I am a much stronger climber than flat runner. When I hit the top of Golden Spike I was starting to slip into the cave, so I stopped filled my one hand bottle and then took off again. Shortly there after I got caught by Anita Ortiz, I tried my best to hang on to here but my legs couldn't do it and the extra effort put me deep in the cave. Ty Draney caught me again and proded me to go with him but I just didn't have it and watched him go. I hit two gels in a row and finished my water figuring the aid station should be pretty close. I then got some bad news, the aid station was two miles further away than planned because the jeeps couldn't get in as far as they thought, luckily there was still lots of snow in the vicinity so I started eating as much as I could. After about 15 minutes I started to come around and set my sites on hammering to the finish. I finished in 4:53:00 in 9th which is a 50k PR for me. I was glad I hadn't gone with Ty because he got off course and ended up finishing 11th about 7 minutes behind me. I convinced Matt Hart after the finish to go soak legs in the Colorado river (which had snow on the banks and ice floating down it. He manned up and soaked for about 5 minutes I could only manage about 2 minutes. Ryan had a rough race, finishing a couple of hours after me. Shortly after he finished we hopped in the car and drove to SLC, I then got in my car and drove to Pocatello. I got home around 1:00 am, the next morning I had to go to Pebble to ski patrol, which was pretty rough since I was probably undertrained for the race. It took a couple of days for my legs to come around but all in all I was pretty happy with where I was fitness wise, it also jumped started my training helping to spur motivation to train harder.

I am going to finish off this post with a bit of sad news. Last Sunday a good friend and amazing athlete Wray Landon was killed in an avalanche while skiing the South Teton. Big Wray was an outstanding guy that always managed to to work me over whenever we met up for a run or a race. He never boasted about his accomplishments even though he was phenomenol at nearly everything her did. Wray I'll miss you man! Steve Romeo did a great write up and report on Big Wray over at Tetonat.com (Click Here for the link)

Wray and I on the Podium after Menan Butte Challenge

Wray and I enjoying the beat-down together

Menan Butte Challenge

Yesterday I had the opportunity to race in the Menan Butte Challenge for the second time. I really enjoy this race because it starts off with a very steep climb up the north side of the Butte. Right from the start it gets you to redline. Last years race was a very exciting with Pat Bragassa, Wray Landon, and myself going back and forth for the lead, and with a little luck at the end I was able to win.

I have been anticipating this race for quite sometime, it was going to be the first race I would be a defending winner. I expected Pat to be at the race, as well as Tom Borschel (fellow Sportiva teammate and all around wicked fast runner) and many other fit and fast local athletes. Saturday morning came around and things were really falling in place for me, I felt rested, healthy, and ready to rock. Pat and Tom were both at the start and quite a few other fit looking folks.

When the race started I headed out at a solid clip, that I felt was sustainable for the entire climb, the pace was fast enough to quickly pull me into the lead. I hit the top of the crater (the top of the 1350' climb) in right around 8 minutes and glanced over my shoulder- nobody right on my tail. My lungs were burning but felt pretty good, my legs felt great so I opened up my pace until the bottom of the crater. From this point I really tried to keep my cadence high, just as a started up the far side of the crater I glanced back again- this time I could see Pat about 200 meters back, I turned it up a notch up the slickrock climb to try to put more ground between me and Pat. The course is a figure 8 so I made the turn back into the crater and started to pass alot of racers who were on their first trip into the crater. Having someone in front always helps me to turn the pace up and I quickly passed 8-9 racers on the short descent and the path through the center of the crater. I then turned up the climb that led to the maze, again I peaked back- this time I didn't see Pat, but I didn't let that fool me into slowing down. I picked my way through the maze as quickly as possible. It was much better marked this year than last which made it much easier to follow a quick path. I again found myself amongst other racers as I descended back down the front of the Butte towards the finish, all of which were very gracious to give the space I needed to keep moving quick. I finished the 5.5 mile course, 1350' gain/descent in 35:32. Pat finished 2nd about 1:30 back and Tom 3rd a few minutes behind Pat. Full results here.

It really was a great day for me, legs felt solid and fitness was were it needs to be. I had the chance to meet several very wonderful runners from SE Idaho and Wyoming, it was a super fun race and post-race. I am really grateful for all the work that Michael and the folks at Personal Best Performance did to make the race go so well. After the awards finished and people started to head out I climbed the Butted again and did 4 more figure 8's on the course. There I met two different scout troops, a couple of large groups of college kids and a few small families all hiking on the butte. I must have seemed crazy to them, just running around and around on top of this old lava dome, but at least they were friendly, sometimes cheering for me as I passed them for the 4th or 5th time. I put in a total of 23 miles w/ 4,500' of gain on saturday, the legs felt good, I am very happy with how the day turned out!