2013 Silver State 50/50 Half Marathon

Couldn't let the Silver State 50/50 go by without taking a crack at it. This was my fifth year of running the half, and as usual, it was perfect weather.

Did the usual milling around, then walked en masse over to the start area. Quick briefing and we were off:

Also as usual, there was a drainage area that got everyone's feet wet within the first 200 yards of the start - but our fee dried out within a mile.

Pretty soon we were climbing:

Had some nice singletrack going up Evans Creek Canyon:

And before long we were climbing again.

And that was the next 8 miles or so - hairy climbs interspersed with nice singletrack and fire road sections.

After this next hill, we were greeted with the Peavine Pond aid station:

After which there was the last big climb:

At the top of which was Ridge View aid station, and the start of a long, rolling downhill singletrack section which eventually gave way to some great views of Reno/Sparks:

Put the camera away, kept my eyes on the trail and managed not to fall the whole rest of the way down. Was greeted at the finish with a logoed pint glass, and these treats:

Stopped my GPS and clock as I crossed the finish line, and was pleasantly surprised to see that I had finished in 2:46:11 - just under two minutes faster than last year's time. Got an email with results this morning (speedy turnover there, BTW) and it looks like they have my time as 2:50:11. I have a feeling that they just took the half marathon times off of the 50M start times, minus 2 hours. The half, however, didn't start right at 8:00 - more like 8:03 something, which would explain the discrepancy. Oh, well.

UPDATE - Wow, and now it looks like they've taken 10 minutes off the times - mine, at any rate, is now listed as 2:40:11.

Great day out there, at any rate.

This weekend, May 18-19, 2013

So - I was just over at Eclipse Pizza picking up my bib for the Silver State 50/50 tomorrow, and realized I hadn't done a "what's going on this weekend" post yet. A little late, but better than never...

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Silver State 50/50
One of the crown jewels of Northern Nevada ultrarunning, put on by the Silver State Striders. I've only ever run the half marathon, but someday am going to get it together and step up to the 50K or the 50 miler. What ever distance, it's a great course and a well-organized, class act. See pics from past years here.

Virginia City 5K
Still don't know too much about this one - a 5K in Virginia City benefiting Global Voice, a local volunteer group.



Some cool looking races in the info that was provided in the goodie bags from the 50/50, though - both coming up in August.

Saturday 8/10 is the Genoa Peak MAD-athon, a marathon or half in the hills above Genoa. That's put on by the people who did the Winter Trail Series down in Carson City, who know how to mark a tough course.

The next weekend, Sunday the 18th, is the Reno 10 Miler, from the Race178 team who do the Odyssey. Course isn't posted yet, but it can be run individually or as a 3 person relay. Check them out!

Mother's Day weekend 2013

Just one thing going on this weekend, on:

Sunday, May 12, 2013

The Thirteenth Annual Pinnochio's Moms on the Run
Benefiting local cancer patients, and run starting and finishing st Reno High and winding along the river and through old Reno neighborhoods. Wear pink.

On a personal note -

It was kind of quiet here on the blog for a while.

Sorry 'bout that.

Had a lot of stuff that I was struggling through. Strange nagging injury that I didn't handle well, some emotional stuff, etc. The upshot was that I wasn't really motivated to run, let alone blog about it, for most of last year.

Well, I hope I'm back. As the chart below shows, last month (April 2013) was my biggest mileage month for almost 2 years.

I say "I hope" because, just as I was starting to get back into a running rhythm and schedule, I developed a pain in my hip (unrelated to previously mentioned injury) that is worrying me. 

But on the plus side: when I view my running history of the past few years in chart form as above, I see that I have a bit of a break in the action approximately every July. Maybe all this tracking of miles can pay off and I can use that info to help me figure out how to remain more steady with things -

Weekend of 5/4-5, 2013

A couple of small 5K fun runs in the area this weekend:

Saturday, May 4, 2013

DFS Hawaiian Fun Run
Held up at UNR as a fund raiser for Dean's Future Scholars, "an academic outreach program with the goal of increasing the numbers of low-income, first generation students graduating from high school, gaining access to higher education, and entering a career in the field of education." Entry form is kind of hard to find at the link above.

Sunday, May 5, 2013

May-King Tracks 5K Fun Run
Riverview Park in Carson City is a great place for a run, and this 5K benefitting the Carson Area Wellness Assoc. would make a great excuse to get out on a Sunday morning.

Events for 4/27-28/13

Nothing Saturday this weekend, but a couple on...

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Spring Forward for Autism 5K
A benefit for the JustinHope Foudation, and run out of the Mackay Satdium up at UNR. 5K run and walk, 1K fun run, bounce house and face painting for the kids and BBQ lunch. Registration link.

Carson Capitals Grand Slam Run
5 and 10K options, starting and finishing at El Charro Avitia in Carson City. Lunch included?

Zombie Apocalypse 5K

Well, it sounded like fun...

In order to make sure I got myself out running last weekend, I signed up for the Zombie Apocalypse 5K at the North Valleys High School, to benefit their Couch to 5K running program. I thought - cool, a 5K obstacle course, dodging zombies along the way, how could that not be cool?

And really, most of it was. It was pretty well organized, and despite their almost selling out all 500 slots they had, the lines weren't too bad. The course was perfect - some dirt, some pavement, a surprising amount of hills. Obstacles were pretty good too, with some climbing ones, some crawling ones, and a weird tire-pulling one. Only had to wait at an obstacle a couple of times for people in front of me.

The zombies, though, was where it fell apart for me. The runners were briefed that we were not allowed to contact the zombies, an the website says that there is to be "no intentional physical contact between the runners and the zombies." In the heat of the moment, though, this seems to have gone out of the window for the high school kids who were dressed up as the "zombies." To the point, in fact, that I was knocked to the ground 5 times within the 9 "zombie zones" in the run.  Once off of the trail and head over heels into a sagebrush, and twice hard enough that my hat and glasses came flying off. (Mostly by the girls, in fact, they were more aggressive than the guys...) On a couple of occasions, I was basically tackled.

Now, the format of the run was that each runner had 3 flags on a belt, flag football style. If the runner made it to the end of the run with even one flag intact, they were eligible for prizes, but if all their flags were gone, they weren't. I'm not sure how the "zombies" were briefed on how hard to make things, but it seems to me that if you set most of the runners up to "fail" - be caught by the zombies and therefore be ineligible for prizes - it's not going to be fun for most of them.

I did manage to finish with one flag remaining, only because the zombies that knocked me down in the final zombie zone felt bad and let me keep it. By that point, though, I had a sour enough taste in my mouth from the whole thing that I didn't feel like waiting around for the prizes and just went home.

Results are out, as well as photos and a survey at this link:
http://zombie5krun.weebly.com/results.html