28.5 mile week

Just finished my first week over 25 miles since September (and the only reason I hit 25 miles that week was because I decided to sign up for the Sierra Nevada Trail Marathon on a whim.) It felt good to be consistent and hit my mileage goal. I'm also still on pace to hit my goal of 100 miles this month, so life is good.

Yesterday morning we attended that lottery for the Western States 100, a 100 mile endurance run from Squaw Valley to Auburn that takes place every June. My husband, Jason, and our friend Mike both qualified for the race by running Quicksilver 50 miler in less than 11:00 miles. There were approximately 2500 entrants vying for 275 spots. Some of those entrants had their name in the hat multiple times so that increased the total number of slips in the draw to 3500. Any one who attended the drawing gets an additional entry into the lottery at the lottery drawing where they pull 5 more names. Well, we weren't so lucky this year and neither of them got in. This really is better for Jason since he has been working crazy hours and really hasn't had time for running, but I think they both could have pulled it off in June. Next year :) And we have AR50 as a quick, easy qualifier for them (not so easy for me).

The drawing for Way Too Cool takes place tomorrow and we will find out if we got in or not. Last year I was the unlucky one of our group who ended up as 54th on the waitlist. I inched up one spot or so a week and figured I wouldn't get it. I was at 28th or so two weeks before the race when I got an email confirmation that I was in. So I had two weeks to wrap my head around the idea that I would be running 31 miles. I'm hoping I get a few months to prepare for it this time. It would be a perfect race to pair with AR50 as it takes place a month before the 50 miler and would be a great last long run before starting to taper.

I had plans to get up early and run 12 miles today, from Cavitt to Rattlesnake bar. Unfortunately my comfy bed and cuddle husband won out and I decided to lay around for a couple hours. Then I ate left overs from Buca Di Beppo and needed to wait for that to settle before running. After several delays, I met Corinne at Rattlesnake, dropped off my car, and we headed to Cavitt. We had a nice slow run, even though we took a couple wrong turns and turned 12 miles into 13.5 or so. We raced the sun to the finish. I was starving so was glad Jason had set out some Venison back straps. I threw those in the pan to simmer with some onion, bell pepper, chili powder, beef bullion, tomatoes, and garlic and headed for a bath with a glass of Zin from Perry Creek winery that we got while wine tasting in Fair Play yesterday. Great finish to a nice weekend.