Where Have You Gone Mr Japod?

I has been 7 months since I last posted on this blog. Not because I forgot about it, but fully for the lack of any and all motivation to write. While gone from here, I've been very active elsewhere. Let's catch up on all that was missed...

I last wrote about my successful run at Laurel Highlands. That race was a great and tough experience for me and perfect training for rest of the year. It taught me bunch of lessons, from proper hydration, to keeping cool to pacing (all still work in progress).

Jahorina Ultra Trail - early on

Amy and I went to Bosnia and Croatia on our annual pilgrimage to visit the family. Being tough and stupid runners that we are, we attempted the newly created Jahorina Ultra Trail, and came up short of our goal. Since I've failed to produce a proper race report you can head on over to Amy's page and read all about the epic fail. Let's just say that there were barbed wires, mad bulls and crazy blisters involved. While we failed to reach the finish line at 125km mark, we still made it over 100km before deciding to call it quits to due to many factors. 30 hours in the wilderness of Bosnia is a certainly an experience we will never forget. We learned, that when going on vacation, perhaps we shouldn't pick the longest race option offered.

Ummm....which way is the trail? Jahorina

Upon returning back home, I still had close to 2 months left to get ready for my third attempt at the 100 mile distance. OC100 was a race that we should have done last year (2015) but foolishly went to TARC instead. I felt confident going into it. I had my trusty pacer/crew Amy. OC100 was everything a 100 miler should be. It was great, fun, horrible, painful and too long. Going into it I thought that loops wouldn't be too bad since they are 30 miles each. Alas, I was wrong. I was annoyed to be going back out, and annoyed knowing how long it would take to get around. There was crying involved as usual, and hitting the deepest levels of hell. Reaching the last "going home" 7 mile loop, I was done. I still had tons of time before the cutoff, so we decided to take it easy. And I mean super easy. Like a morning stroll in the park. Well, that is until the last mile, when I realized that I could go sub 31 hours. Idiotic, right? So I took off running like a mad man, finishing the last mile in 8 min pace and getting it in 30:59. Finally my 100 mile race was in the books. I do have to say it is insane how long it took me to get over the DNF at Eastern States. I need to write about that (should I?).

OC100 done

And that was it for the year. I got an opportunity to go to Utah in October to put on the Trail Fest with the TAUR crew, so I did not end up doing the races at Runner's World in Bethlehem. I did not get to do any races at the Trail Fest, but I had a spectacular time with my TAUR team. I got to visit the Bryce National Park, as well as run in Zion National Park. Certainly not something that can be easily forgotten. I got to see the beauty of south Utah, and got to see a bit to Salt Lake valley. As they say Utah is RAD, and I want to go back soon.

Utah running

Among the lack of racing in 2016, I got to travel to Colorado for work bunch of times, which introduced me to running at elevation. Boulder is absolutely stunning and it was a love at first sight. Mountains is where we want to be, and there will be a lot more of that in 2017 and beyond.

ColoRADo

This brings us up to 2017. I kicked it off with Phunt 25K. I decided to go with 25 rather than 50 as I have been doing some more speed work and I just wanted to see what I could do. I beat my time by over 17 minutes from 2016, but still felt that there was room for improvement. More work to be done.

Phunt 2017

2017 will bring a lot of new adventures and a lot of new challenges. I am heading down to Virginia in May to do MMT 100. After that who knows. My calendar is open and I am looking forward to filling it up with races that inspire me and ones that I really want to run.

Jahorina Mountain - Bosnia

I will try to post more often on this blog. I am thinking about what I could do. I will not be doing any race reports unless something extraordinary happens that is worth writing about it. I went into too many races pre-planning the blog entry, just to see it all go wrong. I will not do that any more.

I will be back soon.....

Go forth and run....

Crewing for 24 hour races is hard

 Some more pics from the year:

Camping in Maine

Opaliti Vrh - Bosnia

Peak of Scah - Croatia

Boulder, CO

Zion NP

OC 100