Packed For Steamboat - Run Rabbit Run 100

This is what I am in for this weekend.  Lots of climbing but I think if I just gear down and keep it steady it will be a lot of fun.

I am notorious for waiting to pack for trips until the last minute.  Okay, maybe not the absolute last minute, but more like the second or third to last minute before a trip.  Getting everything together for Run Rabbit Run this weekend was no exception.

Part of it is that packing for races has become a lot easier over the past several years.  When I packed for my first ultra ever, The San Juan Solstice in 2009, I packed more for it and had more stuff in my drop bags that I had packed for a seven day, fly in, bear hunt in northern Saskatchewan that I went on in 2005.  When I ran Leadville in 2010, I think the entire back of a Jeep Wrangler was filled with my stuff. This year, I handed Melissa and Annie three little duffel bags.  Guess I have simplified it some.

The logistics though for this race have been a fun challenge for me.  I am doing it without a crew and without pacers so that means I have to have drop bags. But then the questions of how many bags, what to put in them, etc, etc, comes up.  I settled on only three.  One at Long Lake which I will go through three times, one at Olympian Hall in town which I will hit, twice at miles 20 and 30, and then another one at Summit Lake which is the aid station for miles 56 and 81. 

Then I had to figure out the timing of it all.  How many of X in each bag based on when I might arrive, etc.  Where do I pack the warm clothes, headlamps, extra goodies and snacks and so on?  And again the question of quantity came into play, with how many packs of drink mix, gels, etc, based on hours to get to each aid station and to the next.  It has been fun and I am damned glad that I sat down two weeks ago and sort of hashed out that rudimentary pace chart to give me something to go by.

Anyway, packing is done. 

As far as everything else goes, I am really excited for this race.  I feel great, nothing is hurting, and I think I am going into this one way more rested than anything I have done the past few months.  I am not going into it with the thought of still being beat up from Leadville or anything like that.  Seriously, Leadville? That is so 3.5 weeks ago!  I talked to Melissa about it last night and I told her that in my mind Leadville is deeply rooted in the past and so far back now that at least in my mind it has no bearing on anything else.  Even if it was less than a month ago, it is still that far back to me.

Looking at the past three weeks though it has been really interesting.  The first week, well I didn't really do much of anything except walk around town, eat, drink and sleep.  The second week started on the bike and some runs and EVERYTHING still hurt. But all of that dissipated by the third week where all of my workouts were relatively short but had some ass kicking intensity thrown into them.  My longest run was the Sunday before last when I did the loop from the apartment, up Sunnyside Trail, to Hunter Creek and then down.  It took 3.5 hours and was a long day on trails.  That ended a 45 mile week of running too.

I am relaxed and definitely more confident than I have been in quite some time. I have no delusions or misconceptions that this race is going to be an easy one.  Not by a long shot, but my plan is to just go into this thing relaxed, keeps things conservative, but steady and just have a good time.

It is 100 miles... anything can happen.