Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Rattle Snake 50K




I originally thought I might run this race, but my knees and ankles said no. Then I thought this might be a great opertunity to get the 8 hours of volunteer work that I need for the Grindstone 100 race in Oct.


I called Dennis Hambrick,the promoter and asked him if he needed any help. He said he deperatly needed someone to run an aid station. Anybody that has ever run an ultra knows that getting up early on race morning is just part of the experience, but it was ruff getting up at 3:45 just to go volunteer. I got to the start 1/2 hour before the race and Dennis informed me that he needed me to run the last AS. I guess that is what you get for being the new guy. Since the last AS is the last one to close, who ever works it gets to be out there the longest, but that was ok with me. I needed to get 8 hours in anyway. He said it would probably be around 4 hours before the front runners would be there.


Since I had a little time to kill I went to McDonalds to get some brunch and to Wal-Mart to get a magizine and some munchies. I got to my AS and settled in. About 9:30 I started setting up. Since I had never set up an AS before (I have grazed at a few before) I tryed to set it up so that traffic would flow smoothly through the station.


At about 10:30 the first runner came through. It was a half hour brfore the next one, then they just trickled in after that. Everything really went smoothly. Everybody was so nice.


To sum it up. I had a blast. It was a great experience, seeing an ultra race from the outside. Dennis runs a first class race.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Getting Better

My knee seems to be getting better........finally. I don't know how long I should give it before I try to run on it. I don't want to take anymore time off than I have to, but I want to give it time to completely heal. I think I will try a vigorous bike ride this morning to see how the knee fills.

Tuesday, July 7, 2009

Just Chillin'

I had a lot of body parts hurting, so I thought I would take a few days off to let things heal. I haven't run or biked since last Thursday. I don't remember how long it has been since I took this much time off, but it has been kind of nice. It seems like I haven't run for a long time, but it has only been 5 days. Since I am not running I have some extra time, so I am getting some stuff done around the house. Everything is healing nicely except for my left knee. I think it might be getting worse, but I am going to take another day or 2 off. Then try running again. We will see.