~30.5 mi @ ~15.8 min/mi

"Thank you, Mary! Today is not the day!"

At the 2018 Vermont 100 Endurance Run I drop after traveling ~30 miles in ~8 hours. The course is lovely, mostly dirt roads. The people are nice and the scenery is amazing. The hills are impressive: the GPS says that I get ~4500 feet of elevation gain, like doing 30 repeats on the Mormon Temple Hill near home.

At an hour ahead of the cutoff pace it might have been worth continuing. On the other hand, stopping before exhaustion makes for a much easier recovery and allows me to get home a day early.

Most importantly, dropping at noon on Saturday spares my dear wonderful friend, Dr Mary Ewell, the necessity to stay up another night crewing for me, driving from aid station to aid station only to glimpse me for a few moments before I take leave — all with a high probability of my missing the time limit and having to withdraw after another 20-40 miles. Just not worth it. Maybe next year!

It's a great joy to see so many running buddies at Vermont. Caroline Williams and Stephanie Fonda both finish — brava! J-Bird, who did the ultra-gnarly Catoctin 50k last weekend, crews for Stephanie and paces her for the final 30 miles. Kudos!

(trackfile) - ^z - 2018-08-11