BEAR . . . the monkey is off my back . . .

WOW!

I am not sure mother nature could have worked things out any more perfectly for some pretty top notch scenery: fall colors at their peak, a full moon for the night hours, and the weather was downright perfect.  Definite awesomeness . . .

Heading into this race, I pretty much had one goal -- finishing . . . I avoided all the normal temptations to create pace charts, figure out who else was there, do some speed/tempo work, and trained less than normal heading into the couple of months preceding race day . . . since the Black Hills in June I hadn't run more than 80 miles during any given week (hit 80 twice) and only had a couple of runs -- including El Vaquero -- that hit or went beyond the 30 mile mark . . . and as race excuses went, the week or two preceding had found me dealing with a cough and sore throat . . . hell, I only decided about a month ago to run this race for certain.

Anyhow, I went into the starting line way mellow and felt genuinely relaxed (kinda unusual for me when it comes to 100s since I tend to get myself too wound up and all gooey-eyed about the distance and the race, which is kinda silly for a middle of the pack runner anyhow).  My relatively calm mood was probably helped by the fact that I missed the pre-race meeting and such because I worked late thursday night finishing up parent-teacher conferences at school . . . and boom the gun went off . . . oh, wait there was no gun . . . I think it was a more typical Bear 100 start, "You guys might want to start running now."

I had a lot of fun on the climb up to the first aid station at about mile 10 hanging out with a number of familiar faces from the Salt Lake area and just kinda enjoyed being in the mountains while my legs/body warmed up . . . shortly after the summit is when the basic story of the first 52 miles (Tony Grove Campground) started to get written as some decent running/hiking got mixed in with a lot of time dashing off towards the bathroom at pretty much any aid station, forest service campground, and/or trailhead toilet I could find along the way . . . I don't know if it was how the bug that had been traveling around inside me decided to manifest itself for the race or if it was something I ate but despite the toilet issues I thoroughly enjoyed the first half of the race and found myself at Tony Grove campground mentally fresh and pretty much smiling.  The next 10 miles of running from Tony Grove to where I met my pacer Ed at mile 62 were equally awesome as the scenery continued to be lights out beautiful and I finally found myself able to simply run (despite being pretty conservative and not being too aware of pace, I actually think my time at Franklin -- mile 62 -- wouldn't be an entirely crazy way to shoot for a sub-24 on a different kind of day) . . . anyhow it was nice to meet up with Ed since I had spent most of the miles between 25 and 62 pretty much solo . . .

The night was pretty typical of a race gone rough: I had a hard time getting much of a pace going and seemed to cycle from bad to worse for most of the last 25 miles.  I set a personal record by only throwing up twice (well at least only 2 cycles) mixed in with a little bit of dry heaving and was able to keep eating from time to time although strangely enough drinking water wasn't working as well.  Despite the fact that my time for the night section might suggest otherwise, I was able to run a decent amount of the flats and most of the gradual downhills -- steeper sections were proving too much for my legs -- but I did find that whenever the pace started to pick up my stomach would get pretty sour and/or I would become dizzy . . . in fact I had a couple of dizzy spells that were a bit overwhelming and even took to sitting down from time to time when things became too swimmy.  Anyhow the night was good-ole fashioned plug along running-hiking with existence being simplified to the next step forward and the mantra became make forward progress whenever possible.  Yeah, in that sick twisted way memory fuzzes everything and despite my rational side reminding me otherwise, I kinda liked the darkness of the night both figuratively and descriptively.

But the highlight of the race came at about mile 98 when looking out at Bear Lake I took in the world around me and simply perceived as much of the pain and beauty as possible.