It's official...

I've gone and done it now.  I signed up.  For Pinhoti.  In 5 months I'll either be be starting (and with God's grace and strength finishing) a 100 mile footrace; or, I just bought two VERY expensive t-shirts, that I can't wear.

Over the weekend I made my wife watch a movie.  You could call it inspiring but that would be somehow not enough of a word.  It's called Unbreakable: the Western States 100.  It is the story of the first ever 100 mile endurance race, the man who first ran it, and a journey of four elite runners who faced off for the 2010 Western States race.

It was so inspiring that it even made my wife want to go out and run after we got done!  I promised I wouldn't ever tell her secret, but she even said she could see herself running a...

Ha!  You thought I was gonna say a certain distance race, didn't you?  Nope... newly married, not dumb.

Where was I?  Oh yeah... WS100.  Ok... so quick run down, in the 50's a trail race on horses was started out in California.  In 1971 and 72 a man named Gordy Ainsleigh finished the trail on his horse.  In '73 he went back again, only this time on a different horse.  But unfortunately his horse came up lame and he was pulled from the race.  

Ever have that problem?  Think you're betting on a winning horse and all of the sudden the rug gets pulled out from under you?

In 1974 Mr. Ainsleigh decided to try it on foot.  His own two feet, to be precise.  He finished in 23 hours 42 minutes.  He even beat some of the horses on the course that day!   


For more of the story, go to the WS100 page.


I just wanted to share some about the race that started all of this.


By started all of this, I mean both ultra-running and my love of running.  The WS100 became an official race in 1977 with like 19 entrants.  Now, more than 1,000 people who meet the qualifications sign up for the 400 lottery slots each year.  There are literally hundreds of ultra-marathons (greater than 26.2miles) in the US each year with several thousand runners attempting a new and longer distance they've never tried before.  All because a man ran faster than a few horses.


But I also mean my push to run 100.  Honestly, I'm not sure it's possible.  I'm not 100% sure it's possible that any human, let alone me, can do that.  I've seen it done, yet I still doubt.


I was sitting in my dorm room in Korea in 2002 reading a Runner's World magazine.  I had a lot of time on my hands back then, life was just going from the dining facility to work to the gym and back to my dorm.  Back in my dorm I was reading the RW trying to pick up tips to run better.  I wasn't in love with running at the timec I just wanted to figure out how to make it easier so I could keep doing it to stay fit for the Air Force.  That's when I found a story about the WS100 and thought, there's no way anyone could run 100 miles!  No way!  But it intrigued me to no end.  I made up my mind, I was going to do it!  That day I went for a run, made it to 6 miles for the first time in my life, and promptly felt like I was going to die!  My legs were so shaky that night I couldn't stand for more than a few minutes at a time.  


The next month I saw an article about an 81 year old man running IronMan Hawaii... but I'll share that story another time.


The movie showed 4 guys who were trying to win the race that day.  It showed the struggle, the motivations, the pain and the triumph as Goeff Roes eventually--in relative terms--won the race, setting a new course record of 15 hours 7 minutes.  He'd beaten the previous course record by almost 30 minutes!  If you pull out your calculators, that's an average pace of 9:04/mile!  That's barely a 4 hour marathon!!!!


One requirement to race the WS is to have completed one of the listed 100-milers.  Of which the Pinhoti is one.  I guess if I survive this November, I'll have that requirement taken care of; if not then I guess it won't matter ;-)