Biting the bullet …
Taking the bull by the horns …
Pick a metaphor, any metaphor. But I’ve gone and done it.
Saturday I went ahead and registered for the Bandera 100K, a 62 mile race on the rugged trails at Hill Country State Natural Area in Bandera, Texas. I’ve been planning to run this race for a quite a while now, but after the problems with my breathing and my back and chest after Grand Teton, I’d been holding off actually making the commitment until I felt more certain that I was up to the task. I figured if I wasn’t progressing the way I’d hoped that I could always just try to hammer the 50K.
But my training is right on schedule – did a 30 miler all by myself on Friday – my breathing and back/chest are doing great, and my friend Ozzie has even agreed to pace me during the nighttime hours of my race (which hopefully won’t be more than about 17 miles). So I realized I have no reason to keep procrastinating, and I went ahead and registered. Joe – the race director – had told me I could request my race number, but I decided not to do that. After the Trail Twister race, where I had #38 for my birthday and which did not go very well for me, I figured a random race number might be better.
As random chance would have it, I have been assigned #62 … the exact number of miles I have to run. Pretty cool race karma, I hope.
And then this morning, I went and did something even more momentous and foolhardy … I entered my name in the lottery for admission to the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 Mile Run.
I find out next week if I’m in, and if so, then I will be spending the weekend of May 16th running 100 miles back in the Virginia mountains where I grew up.
Which of course is why I want to run this race at all. It’s a tough one, but I can’t think of anything cooler than running my first 100 miler back on my home turf. There are all sorts of great trail races in Virginia, and yet I never ran trail until I moved to Texas. So achieving such a huge goal back in those mountains just has special meaning to me.
Of course, I may not get in at all … now it’s in the hands of fate.
Stay tuned …
