Moab Red Hot 50k+

After a quick, relatively last-minute trip to Portland last week, I flew back to Boise on Friday morning, hopped in the car, drove to Tremonton where I met up with Mike and Dan, then jumped in the car with them to complete the remaining 6 hour journey to Moab. Somehow, I'd tweaked my lower back pretty severely early Thursday morning (the day before) almost immediately after getting out of bed (still not quite sure what I did or how I did it) and it was continuing to give me jolts of pain any time I would bend over or twist. Even that night, as we prepared for bed the night before the race, I still had pain moving and when I had tried to even jog a bit in the parking lot of our hotel, I found it excruciating. My race day didn't look too promising. But somehow, someway, I got up the next morning and decided to start even thinking at that point that I may only make it five minutes down the road before deciding to turn back and call it off. Well, again, somehow, someway, I was able to not only run (albeit quite gingerly at times), but my race actually ended up being one of my more consistently paced and evenly run races I've had (perhaps because I was purposely not pushing it as much as I could have with a healthy back?). I ended up running every last step of uphill throughout the course save for a couple of snowy sections and a couple of the steep, more technical rock steps and felt good through to the end. My knees took a beating. Again. And I was losing all kinds of time on the downhills toward the end in my attempt to cushion my back, and my knees, and then my hip that began hurting probably due to my slightly different running posture as a result of my maladies. But all in all, it went well I'd say on a much slower and slightly shorter course than last year. But good times in good weather with a great bunch of people. The usual stuff that makes a great trip possible.