First, the Title. Anyone who has ever emailed me in the last decade knows my email address has been TIMEbaron@........so, working in the TIME bit again just seemed like the journey was moving forward.
Why am I writing about this? For a few reasons I suppose. First, I enjoy writing. Over the last several months, I haven't taken the time to really write anything other than a quick blurb on Facebook or in my workout blog, so this seemed like a ideal reason to start putting down my thoughts again. Second, it will be a good way to put down this part of my journey into this unknown realm. So, as much as I'd like to share this experience with anyone who wants to read it, I also want to detail it so I might remember it in better detail in the years to come.
So, let's bring this up to date. In 2010, a friend, Kurt, asked me to think about doing the Stone Steps 50K towards the end of the year. As I would just be coming off an Ironman race, this didn't seem overly unreasonable. Besides, 33 miles was just a few miles more than a marathon, and much less time than an entire Ironman, so why not. So on October 24th, 2010, with the help of family, off I went with my new buddy Kurt. When I finally finished 6 hours and 3 minutes later, I still felt as if I still had something left in the tank; not that I didn't push a bit during this race, but I felt like I might be able to continue on. And thus was born the idea that I might be able to do a 100 mile race, so I looked around and discovered some of my friends on my Beginner Triathlete Blog Site had done the Umstead 100, and seemed to actually enjoy it. I looked at a few more possibilities, but came back to Umstead as my first choice because it was a 12.5 mile loop. This meant that if I had a crew, they could stay put and not have to follow me for 100 miles. Plus, it wasn't that far from my home. So logistically, it seemed to all make sense. But I had a problem. Umstead wanted it's racers to have done at least a 50 mile race first, and 50K is not 50 miles. Opps.
I needed to look for, train for and run a 50 mile race. Soon. The Nashville Ultra Marathon was what I found. It was to be ran on October 15th, 2011. Plenty of time to train, but Umstead wanted me to already have a 50 in before then to be able to sign up. UGH! I emailed the race director and told him my situation. He assured me that I would be qualified TO SIGN UP for the race if I was already entered into Nashville and had shown good training up to that point. All good! So training for the Nashville 50 continued. However, he also let me know that Umstead only had room for 250 runners, so even if I DID run Nashville, making the list of runners for Umstead was no guarentee, but nothing in life is for sure. Nothing Ventured....right?
