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Perspective on Races, from Rich

Just looking at the statistics would lead one to think the times are horrible. But when you take weather and course conditions into consideration along with degree of difficulty it changes everything. And there's the fact that I am known as being directionally challenged. At the Wapack Trail one year I got very lost, in fact so lost that I was planning on hunkering down under a low pine tree for the night because I had given up on finding the trail. Wapack is very remote and I hadn't seen nor heard anyone for hours. By luck, just before giving up for good, I picked up the trail and came across a hiker and found that I was going in the wrong direction! Then at the Vermont 100, under miserable conditions, steady rain mixed with torrential downpours my pacer dropped out at 78 miles at about 11:30 on a Saturday night. I went slip sliding along for about 6 hours till daybreak and was so dejected, to this day I don't know why I didn't drop out. At 96.1 miles I took a wrong turn and ended up doing an extra 2 to 3 miles but managed to get in under the cutoff by 21 minutes. It was the only time in 8 finishes that I didn't get in under 29 hours. Hope this adds some insight. Maybe you can see why I was proud of my PR at The Monster with a time of 5:57:17*, the only time in 10 finishes that I broke 6 hours.

 

*8/31/1997