This is not the way I would have planned it:

And some of that was walking/hiking, not running.  (Blame Strava.)

Hinson was going to be one of my A races this year, but it just didn’t work out.  Too much travel and general business to get in the mileage needed to go big in a 24.  That “30” down there in late August was the 2014 World Rogaine Championships, and according to route analysis done after I put in the manual Strava entry, it was closer to 50 miles. (Strava doesn’t let you change a manual entry once entered.  :-/)   So there’s that.  24 hours on my feet, but mostly hiking and bushwhacking.  And that 20 miler a couple weeks back?   Nothing to write home about.  Not a confidence boosting run, to say the least!

Going back further I did run just over 80 miles at BMM24 in mid May.  I was never into that run, and decided to take a nap.  A long nap.  And I didn’t care or not whether I woke up to run more, or if I was truly done.  I ended up sleeping 5 hours, which felt great, and got up and ran several more loops.  One of the few times I’ve actually been seen running in the later stages of a 24.  🙂

I only had one other big race this year, the ATT Marathon in March, where I was shooting for a 3:15 and a BQ.  I sorta kinda fell apart (and walked a bit! — maybe 30 seconds) the last couple miles, and finished with a 3:17.  Which was an 11 minute PR (though I’d never trained to run a marathon fast before), but just short of my goals.  Turns out even if I had BQ’d with 3:15:00, I would have needed a 3:13:58 this year.  

After ATT, I needed a break from structured training, so decided to go coach-less (sorry Lucho).  Lucho helped me survive at Leadville last year, and worked me hard to get the fast marathon done in the spring.   I’ve talked to him a bit off and on, as I’ve got this crazy notion to shoot for Leadman in 2016 or 2017, but my biking would need to come a long long ways to have a shot at finishing the 100 bike in 12 hours.

Anyway, all of that leads me to Hinson 2014.  If, and that’s a BIG IF, I had trained, I would have gone for 4 marathons.  Yep, 104.8.  Any chance of that happening now?  Doubtful.  But I’m going to pull out my alter ego, Richard Parker, and see what happens.  (Not one of the infamous Richard Parkers of the 1800’s, none of which survived!, but the Richard Parker in Life of Pi, who most definitely survived.)   But having something to reach for should be much better than having no goal at all like I did at BMM24 — no real goal just made it too easy to crawl into my tent for five hours!

Of course the little doubter on my shoulder will come in and try to convince me that 90 is great, or 75 is good enough, or 50 is fine because it just isn’t my day.  But:

“If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”  Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Of course, I can follow that up with:

“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”  — William Blake

Or maybe it is:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Or perhaps what’s most apropos for Hinson:

“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”

See you at the lake!