Well, I finished the Wasatch Front 100 Mile Endurance Run. This race has got to be one of the toughest things I have ever done physically. Here’s a synopsis of my race. The race started at 5am Saturday morning. 223 runners took ff in the dark down the trail. I felt really good. I actually slept the night before, a whole 5 hours. I figured the runners would thin out after a couple miles, but I got caught up in a conga line and couldn’t get around anyone for a while. Probably a good thing since I have a tendency to go out too fast anyway. I had a pace chart made up with my splits from last year (up to 61 miles, where I dropped) and times for 24 thru 32 hours. At each aid station, I could check the chart and see how I was doing. The day started cool and never warmed up a lot. Probably into the upper 70’s at the highest. Very pleasant for running. My goal was to stay close to my times from last year and then see what happened after mile 61. As the day wore on I found that I was gradually falling farther behind last year’s times. Then between Lamb’s Canyon (53.1 miles) and Upper Big Water (61.7 miles) I made up 50 minutes. Now I was on pace with last year’s time. Last year I dropped at this point due to the cold. This year, I was prepared for it. I left the Upper Big Water aid station (61 miles) and started power walking the climb to Desolation Lake (9000’). By now it was dark but no big deal, running trails at night is fun and challenging. Got past the Desolation Lake aid station and Scott’s Pass Aid (10,000’) and started the descent into the Brighton Ski area aid station. This is the point at which the wheels started to come off. While at Brighton I noticed that it felt like an asthma attack was coming on. I took a couple hits off my inhaler, but that made absolutely no difference at all. It still felt like I was breathing thru a couple of drinking straws. I spent an hour at Brighton trying to see if this would go away, but it didn’t. So my pacer and I left and started making the climb to Point Supreme (10,450’), the highest point on the course. It was tough. I had to stop every couple of minutes just to catch my breath because of my asthma. For the remainder of the race, it was like this, if there was a climb involved, I would have to stop every so often to catch my breath. I could still run downhill’s and flat portions. I was so glad when the course started to really drop in elevation after about 87 miles. I could really tell that the air was thicker and that made running much easier. My pacer and I managed to run the last 5 miles almost continuously until I finally crossed the finish line 34 hours, 23 minutes and 11 seconds after starting. This is my third 100 mile race this year and I think this one took the most out of me. Physically, my legs and the rest of me are actually not as sore as I have been after other races. This I attribute to some strong training and other races leading up to this one. My lungs are still not right so I’m making an appointment to see a Dr. My asthma has never reared its ugly head in a race and came completely out of the blue. It could have been the altitude or the extremely dusty trails. I don’t know what it was, but it wasn’t any fun. At any rate, I did finish the race, but it wasn’t pretty. Here’s some trivia about my race: Distance – 100 miles Total elevation gained – 26, 882’ Total elevation lost – 26, 131’ My time – 34:23:11 Winning time – 20:18 Average altitude – Something above 8000’ Highest point – 10,450’ | 