If its worth doing, its worth overdoing...

I have an affinity to challenge myself.  I think most people do really; in fact, I think that without challenges in life it would be incredibly boring and tedious.  Most people like to challenge themselves with a reasonable goal, work hard for a period of time, and then succeed due to weeks of hard work and dedication. 

It would be nice if I were able to do this without finding myself in situations such as the one I'm facing this week.  Saturday, I'll be taking on the 2nd annual Wilson Creek Frozen 50K in the Owyhees of Southwest Idaho.  The race is put on by a couple of mildly psycho chicks named Emily and Davina who think its a good idea to run in the mountains in January.  I actually find them quite pleasant and friendly people, despite their obvious joy they gain from torturing poor unsuspecting runners with crazy trail conditions.  This is not the first time I've done this either... I managed to finish a marathon mountain bike race at Galena Lodge in 2009 on 3 weeks of training.  5 and 1/2 hours and 43 miles with 6000+ feet of elevation later I finished the Galena Mountain Bike Marathon for the second time.  I then laid in the freezing cold mountain creek and wondered what the heck I was thinking...


Muddy...

Last winter, the WCF50K went off right after a unusual winter warming period.  A week of rain pounded the mountain with precipitation, and 40 degree temperatures kept the trails from drying out at all.  The result, copious amounts of peanut butter textured mud that basically turned a pleasant 31 mile gallop into a sufferfest from the first climb.  I dragged my sorry butt through that race and immediately wanted to do another.  Well, as many of you know, I have a couple small kiddos that required my attention and 2012 went by without another single event being entered.  Sure I rode and ran more than the average joe, in fact, I just missed 2000 miles of distance as recorded by my Garmin
(I'm sure I actually hit 2000 miles but I didn't use the Garmin every time I rode my bike or ran a bit).

Finally, around the second week of December, I decided that I was going to sign up for the 50K again out at Wilson and see how I did.  I managed to take my weekly mileage up to the mid 30's pretty easily and hit 54 miles during a 6 day period after Christmas.  I've been training pretty hard, but nothing like last year.  The bright side, no nagging injuries from weeks of training.  The down side, we're looking at the complete opposite of last year's conditions for this year's race.  Very cold, snow covered, and maybe even some smog from an inversion to top it off.  Regardless, I'm very excited to test myself again on one of my favorite trails and with some of the best race directors around.  As I think about what I'm about to do, I am reminded of one of the things that I tell my 9th graders from time to time: "if it were easy, it wouldn't be worth doing."  On that note, "if its worth doing, its worth overdoing right?" (Tori Belleci from Mythbusters).  Here's to overdoing it.  Happy tapering all you Wilson Creek trail runners. 

"This is one of those 'What the Hell am I doing Moments?'" (Jamie Hyneman)

(Summit Checkpoint on Wilson Peak during the 2012 WCF50K)