Tapered out...

I really wanted to do a decent run this weekend, but had to force myself to take it easy -- there would've been absolutely no benefit from doing so.  There's less than a week now until Vermont, so I probably should go through my dropbags from WS that have been sitting unopened in my room since the race.  I just finished my checklist, and split chart.  I'll have 5 drop bags -- Stage Rd, Camp 10 Bear (twice), Tracer Brook, West Winds, and Bill's.  I can probably get by with just one at Camp 10 Bear, but I'm going to have the others anyway.  I'm planning on packing tomorrow, which should go fairly smoothly if my list is accurate -- it's getting to the point where there's less and less thinking involved.  Well, I guess it's a lot easier to prepare for races I'm familiar with -- in my case, that'll be Vermont, Leadville, and AC.  Here's my split chart for a 22 hour pace -- the plan is to be ahead of it so that I can beat my time from 2005, which was 22:08.

On Friday, I went out to the Scout Adventure Race in OC -- a local event held at the Flying B every year.  Ed Shapiro, who I met several years ago is the RD, and he manages to always bring out a decent number of participants (70 teams this year I believe) -- many who are actually boy scouts and novice racers just getting into the sport, and a handful of pros.  I ended up helping setup the ropes sections -- one was a 50 yard tyrolean traverse (see photo below), and the other involved about a 150 ft of slack-lining.  I had help from Calvin (who was just up volunteering at WS the other week), and King Rich, who is a fixture in the AR scene who I met 2 years ago at the Coastal Challenge.  It was also nice to see some old faces I haven't seen in a while -- Bernice "Princesa" Pierson, Devlin Rambo, Alberto Flores, Barry Adsett, and Kristine Gillis.  Missing were Paul and Karen of Team SOLE -- they were out in Russia with Paul's son Jordan climbing Elbrus, which would be his 3rd summit in his quest to become the youngest to do all seven summits.

The race started at 3:30am, and was a Score-O format, which basically meant that racers had a choice as to which checkpoints they wanted to visit -- the idea is that the harder to find and farther checkpoints were worth more points.  I was going to stick around to help Calvin and Colin who were stationed up at Beek's Place, but didn't bring my bike gear, so went home after the meeting.  It was probably a good thing, since the last time I rode that section, I crashed pretty hard, and was unable to run properly for a while.