Around the time of Derek's 2nd effort he also asked me if I wouldn't mind introducing him to my friends at Oboz, an up and coming outdoor shoe company based "outside Bozeman" (ergo "Oboz"; very clever). My heart sank, because I knew that if the folks at Oboz had half a brain they'd hire him, and they certainly have well more than half a brain! So of course they hired him, and off Derek went. But Bozeman is a nice place to visit and relative to the upcoming Wasatch 100 -which I inexplicably entered last winter, and then actually got into - the timing was good, so I thought well, if there is any year that would be good to give the Bridger Ridge Run a go, this was the one.
Apparently the Bridger Ridge Run is one of the older established trail races in the US, celebrating its 30th anniversary last year. It was initiated by a character named Ed Anacker, who after riding his bike from Minnesota to Montana during the Depression kept his athletic prowess going - doing a lot of pretty ridiculous exploits - until he ran a very early rendition of California's Western States 100 and thought that Montana should have a comparable race. Hence begat the BRR (Here is a more complete history, if you are so inclined). Ed died a few years ago, but his legacy has been carried on by a race director who's clearly as colorful as his predecessor.
As with many silly endurance races, the BRR's popularity outstrips its capacity, so they need a process to cull the entrants. Most races simply use a lottery, but of course the quirkiness of the BRR enables it to do things its own way, and in order to actually get into the lottery you have to write a 50 word essay with the reason that you should be deemed worthy to partake in their esteemed event. Derek - having gotten 2nd in 2014 - wrote in his essay that his only goal was to improve his finish by one place. Given that saying anything in fifty words or less is pretty hard for me, I had to keep it tight: "My good running buddy abandoned me here in desolate SLC and as retribution I need to come up to your silly race and kick his ass!". Ash was also intrigued by a fun weekend and a rugged outing, and her essay was something to the effect of "My psychotic husband has told me about your silly race and keeps mumbling about retribution or some such and we only have one car so I guess I have to come up with him!" For better or worse, all three of us got in.
One problem that I faced was that I had a sore knee all winter and as spring sprang and I started running more it did not improve (what a surprise), so I went through the various phases of injuries (ouch, many months of ignoring, very sporadic and ineffective icing and ibuprofing, very limited stretching, some massage, a fair bit of physical therapy, and finally subsequent visits to a general practicioner doc, a sports specialty doc, and finally an orthopedic doc) until I realized I had a torn meniscus (cartilage around the knee). I made a futile request to get the surgery scheduled between my trips to AK and Peru, but the doc pointed out that taking long distance flights - which are known to create blood clots by themselves - and spending two weeks with open wounds on a river downstream of several towns in a developing country wasn't that wise, so I ended up having the surgery post-Peru and three weeks prior to the BRR, with basically almost no running all year prior to that. But at least the BRR features a punishing 9000 feet of descending! A good test of the surgeon's prowess and the beauty of not-very-invasive surgery.
The week before the race I asked Derek what shoes would be best for this course. He sent me this pic:
On the way up we stopped in Pocatello to loosen up the legs on Poky's great trails -that warrant much more exploration -with our friend Jake (who just moved there from NH), and arrived in Bozeman a few minutes late at the last of the three pre-race meetings just in time to hear the aforementioned character of a race director say "For the first time in 30 years, there are NO course markings!", which of course would come back to haunt him the next day! To add another element of intrigue to the race, it's a point to point, and they don't supply a shuttle; the race director asked how many people were driving up to the start and about 3 folks raised their hands, to which he said, "well, I guess there will be a few very full cars" and left it at that!
The race starts with the longest climb of the day, from about 7700' to about 9700 feet in a coupla miles, and from that high point you can see most of the route, which is a bit astounding: 20 miles of a rugged and rolling ridge looks like a LONG ways! But for better or worse, the smoke from wildfires near and far made the ridge just sort of disappear into the distance, so I just put my head down and started plugging along. That is, until a nearly got hit by a football-sized boulder that got rolled down past me by a herd of (actual!) mountain goats meandering around the trail.
Things went along well until a guy Derek had introduced me to at the start line suddenly appeared running towards me and said just two words: "wrong way". Ironically, at the first aid station the kind, well-meaning, and under-informed volunteers had put up a ribbon blocking the ridge trail and sent us down another trail that led essentially into never-never land. Derek had moved ahead of me on the first climb, and I knew that the savvy veteran would not have taken that wrong turn....but soon enough there Derek was following me back up to the ridge trail! The guy who was leading the race at that point took a bit longer to figure out the err of his ways and added something like 7 extra miles - and a cougar sighting - to his longer day.
The route is indeed worthy of - apparently -Trail Running magazine's "bucket list" of races to do. The trail is quite rugged with plenty of dancing along adjacent to multi-thousand foot plunges off the ridge (that would make for great skiing!), and the rock is sharp limestone that loves to trip grab shoes and slice and bang up those folks unfortunate enough to not recover (one broken leg and one broken collarbone), but much of it is surprisingly runnable. I chugged along right around 10th place feeling pretty good but kept in mind Derek's words to "keep something in the tank" for the final descent: 4100 feet down to the valley floor.
The last aid station was at the top of Baldy Peak, and I had just finally passed the 9th place guy who had been slowly coming back to me. He left the aid station a few seconds before me and I charged out after him and went literally a couple of hundred yards down the steepass descent before my left inner thigh exploded in a crippling cramp. I had just hammered down a couple of salt tablets and a fair bit of electrolyte drink, so I felt like I was watching a cartoon of myself waiting for the pepto-bismol-looking stuff to flow down my gullet and eventually into my groin. And suddenly....it did! The cramp eased as suddenly as it had emerged, and I blasted off again.
As I realized later, the final descent is legendary among the many BRR veterans: it's long ever-steepening, but at least it's rocky, loose, and technical. I tried to channel my inner Derek, who's as much of a Prancer as any trail runner ever, but I could still only muster about 10 minute pace downhill, as hard descending needs as much or more training as climbing, and my short summer of training hadn't really allowed enough of that. But I finally limped into the finish in 12th at 4 hours flat:
And Ash - taking advantage of her climbing strength and the technical descending - had a strong outing as well despite equally-limited "training":
A competitive field and a fun day in new terrain. If one is so inclined, here are a couple of videos that are going to apparently be made into a longer movie: here's one and here is another.
That said, I heard about friends this weekend who a) tried to run across the Sierras, b) ran up Gannet peak (highest in Wyoming), and c) did a big loop in the Wind River range, and were able to chit chat, save some money by not entering a race, probably saw virtually no one, and probably aren't as crippled as I am now by trying to give 'er too hard because I was racing. Ah well, lots of ways to get one's ya yas in the mountains.
Our weekend finished up by having Wasatch Community Garden's recently-departed Bill not only set up our new Tenkara fishing rods for us (he first had to gently tell us that we needed to take the plastic off our rod handles!) but also take us out to his secret haunts and impart to us the ways of the water. When you are in that area in the summer it's pretty clear that fishing is The Thing, so we might as well give it a go with a willing and patient instructor. We were absolute gumbies, but we did actually catch some fish, and it gave us the opportunity to soak our sore legs in the water!
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| Ash layin' it down.... |
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| I think she's....hooked.... |
