Sage Burner 50K 2009

No, I didn't run this. And I didn't walk it either.
Gunnison. I like this town. I think the friendliest athletes come from there.
Paul G wanted to trade-up to the 50K, and I wanted to either walk the 25K or DNS, depending on how exactly my injuries felt raceday morning. So Paul got my 50K bib. I decided just one minute before the race that I would DNS, and ride my bike around instead.
My injuries are virtually painless, but the tissues are still weak. It'll take some weeks off to let them strengthen. The next race I care a lot about it the San Juan Solstice 50M four weeks away. Okay, I REALLY care about the Steamboat Marathon, but that's forbidden. That kind of speed will absolutely put me on an operating table. I plan to really take it easy on the injuries the next month.


Here we are raceday morning before heading to the start/finish area.


And they're off!


Tim Parr won the 50K


Mike Selig came in 2nd


Keri Nelson came in 1st female


My Denver Trail Runner camping friends Gayle, Julia, and Becca. This was Julia's first ultra and she did GREAT!


Anita Fromm on the left and... I don't know the woman on the right. I've seen her for years and I still don't know her name. My bad.


Under the Kelty sunshade with light rain coming down. These are not fair-weather women. No one complained about the rain at all.


OMG! Did Chris just fart?!

I got several miles of biking in and still got to meet the usual suspects.
It's great hanging out with people who don't care about the weather. Nothing stops us from drinking libations and acting silly until late into the evening. Yes, I said evening, not night or morning. We're athletes, okay. No 3am bedtimes. We're down and out by about 10pm.

On the way back, we all stopped at Mt. Princeton Hot Springs. Then we stopped at the Coyote Cantina for lunch. It was a rolling vacation. But yes, we finally all went our seperate ways eventually.