Plans and kinks!

Looks like I’ll have some downtime for a month or two – I had some acute achilles pain in the WM100, and it seems it’s an actual injury to the tendon – an MRI will show more. It’s painless unless I do too much biking or uphill running so far, so I’m hopeful this is a very small injury and will resolve itself within a few weeks of patient recovery – but clearly, this is one of the things that one absolutely cannot mess around with. Especially since I’ve got plans. Great plans.

SBER100 is definitely out, probably Ohlone 50k, and possibly (but hopefully not) San Diego 100. The first real goal is to run Tahoe Rim Trail 100 with Jill. Her first trail 100 – very hard, very beautiful. The new course has some killer climbs, but Jill is good at those, I think she’ll do great.

Capitol Forest 100 is just a fun little ride for Jill, but will be my first bike 100! If there’s any doubt about my achilles (or knees for that matter) at that point, I’ll probably opt to chicken out, but hopefully I’ll be well recovered by then and have a ton of fun on some awesome singletrack. My friend Roger is the RD, and he’s Swiss, so you bet this will be the best organized race ever.

Then, there’s the first big one – Tor Des Geants – again. 200 miles, 80000 ft of climbing, and I just have the feeling we won’t be as lucky with the weather this time. Again my strategy will be to go for 100 miles on no sleep, then sleep as little as needed. Foolish, yes, but intense and fun.

After that, we’ll strap on our packs and prepare for Racing the Planet Nepal – with our friends Martina, Steve and Chuck! The RTP races always provide unique experiences (again this year they arranged for us to visit some normally “off-limits” areas) and though overall maybe not as difficult as a solid 100 miler they can have some formidably difficult aspects.

But the real big goal is the Iditarod Trail Invitational 350 in 2012. This is another level of difficulty altogether. While there’s much less climbing than at TDG, this race is much more extreme. Temperatures ranging from 20°F to -40°F are possible, trail finding is up to you (and not always trivial), overflow is possible, one has to be prepared for storms, breaking through ice, only six checkpoints with distances of up to 90 miles between aid – all the while pulling a 40lbs sled over a surface that in the best case is like wet sand … And if I can finish this race, the full 1000-mile option becomes available. Preparing for this race will be epic by itself …

But for now, back to recovering … recovering … damn this is boring … recovering … sigh … are we there yet? … recovering …