Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Silverton

Greetings from Silverton! My family and I arrived here on the 4th of July and we've spent the last few nights camping at Molas Lake, 10,600 ft above sea level. It is stunningly beautiful here and the excitement in the air is palpable as pre-race gitters dominate Main Street. We have had a few days to explore some of the local trails and to check out a few sections of the course and that has been fun. It will be an amazing couple days out there on Friday and Saturday.

After the pounding they took at WS, my feet seem to have healed up nicely and I think I am ready to withstand over thirty hours with wet feet. John Vonhof has given me some great advice about taping and socks so we'll see how that goes. In the end, I am just thrilled to be here part of this amazing event and am looking eagerly forward to a new challenge.

As far as the men's race is concerned there is a pretty strong field here. From my perspective I think Karl Meltzer and Scott Jaime are the guys to beat with Mark Hartell, Jared Campbell, Paul Sweeney, Troy Howard, and Ricky Denesik chasing them pretty hard. As for me, I plan to take it pretty easy to Grouse and then will try to pick it up from there. I think some of the long downhills in the last 40 miles of the race could allow me to close well but we'll have to see what kind of pounding the first 60 miles puts on my body before I count on that. One thing's for sure, this will be the first time in 23 100 mile races that it'll take me over 24 hours to finish. It'll be interesting to see how that feels.

10 comments:

Meghan said...

Good Luck AJW! I look forward to seeing how you do - I am sure it will be stellar!

Meghan

Burton said...

Have fun out there. That race scares the heck out of me.

Joe Kulak said...

God hardrock or go home!

Dave Mackey said...

Ahh Molas Pass.. when I camped there last I was an outward bound instructor and almost was busted for drinking beer when the my students were on solo!
Recommended peaks to run while you are in the Molas Pass area: Twilight peak, Engineer Peak, Snowdon. You can also get some KILLER runs down to the Animas river, run across the footbridge to the other side, and up one of several drainages heading into the So San Juans.
Oh yeah..I forgot you're tapering...oh well next year. Bets of luck in the race.d

HappyTrails said...

Awesome run Andy - only 3 weeks out from WS and go top 5 at one of the hardest there is! Fantastic race - great move in that last third of the course and looking forward to the report!
Steve

Bob - BlogMYruns.com said...

AJW u kicked some Rock Hard!! Congrats on a great FIRST HR, must have been that WS warm up race - lol

Recover Well!!

Gary Robbins said...

YOU ARE AN ANIMAL!!!
It was great getting to put a face to the name while down at Western, sorry we didn't get to chat a bit more and serious props for yet another top ten finish...I don't even know what to say about your 5th at Hardrock...you're my new man crush, haha!!
GR

Krissy said...

Congrats on an awesome run at Hardrock! What an amazing double :) Hope you are looking forward to some much deserved recovery.

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