North Face

I don't do many race. I do attend many races to work, volunteer or crew and sometimes pace but a large number of CHUGS www.chicagoultrarunners.com were attending the North Face Endurance Challenge and I wanted to be there. The North Face EC offers 4 distances: 50 mile, 50k, half marathon and 10k all on trails. There are four regional races in NY, WA, DC and WI plus the series championship race in CA. The WI was in my backyard being held at Ottawa Lake in Wisconsin's Kettle Moraine. While ago I had hoped to do the 50k but as the year went by that became the half marathon and closer to race day I knew it would be a slow half marathon. This actually played into my schedule well because the week after I was going to Phoenix to crew and pace my friend Steve for a loop at the Javelina 100 so time on my feet on trails would be good.

Going into race morning i also had another objective: to beat my friend Mary Gorski. Mary is a many time 100 miler finisher and Badwater vet plus also talented at triathlon, mountain climbing, cross country skiing and all around lovely person. Oh I should add Mary was the sweeper for the half so I had to stay ahead of her and the cut off.

More to come................

New Course Record

Sammy won the 2009 Chicago Marathon in a new course record which was also the fastest time ever ran in north America. He beat Khalid's record by one second. That one second was worth $100,000 extra in prize money!!

My friend Kevin after volunteering as a course marshal headed to the finish line and snapped the great photo above of Sammy's finish (posted with permission)

Still can't believe I picked Sammy up from O'Hare only 3 days before his record run.

Driving an Olympic Gold Medalist !!!

Every year I volunteer as a Course Marshal Captain for the Chicago Marathon. I am doing that again this Sunday but I also offered to be an Elite Transportation driver for this year's race.

I was assigned to pick up two groups of runners from O'Hare, one group Wednesday evening and one group Thursday lunch time.

Wednesday was the Russian group including the 2008 female winner Lidiya Grigoryeva, another Russian athlete plus their agent, coach and family members. Well those pickup didn't go to plan as they where all on different flights much later that night. The only arrival was the coach so marathon HQ asked me to drive him into Chicago. He didn't speak a word of English and I know no Russia but he was a character for sure.

Thursday I was schedule to pick up some Kenyan runners. Sammy Wanjiru , Richard Limo and Patrick Ivuti. You might now these names. Patrick won Chicago marathon in 2007 - the heat year. Richard has a 2:06 marathon and has been a track world champ. Sammy has a marathon best of 2:05:10 and last year in Beijing he won the Olympic Gold medal in the marathon.

Sammy was first of the flight and while we was waiting for the others we got to chat. He was recognized by a guy waiting for his cousin from Mexico who is running Chicago and Sammy was happy to have photos taken. Richard was next through the gates but informed me Patrick was not on the flight (I've since read a NBC interview leading me to believe Patrick is now in Chicago). Richard ran Chicago last year and was really happy to be back in town. As we got closer to the hotel after the crawl drive along the Kennedy Richard was recognizing places. Sammy had never been here but was excited to be in Chicago despite a very long flight.

It was a pleasure driving both Sammy and Richard and hope they both have great races Sunday.

Not every day one gets to drive an Olympic champ.

Born To Run (pt II)

Author of this:












Will be on this Aug 18th http://www.thedailyshow.com/

24 hours on a mountain bike

No not me but my good friend Mr Chris Strout.

Number of years ago I told Chris about a race named 24-9 and asked him if he had thought off doing a 24 hour mountain bike race. He hadn't but then did. He asked me to crew that year but I was already crewing at Badwater (Badwater and 24-9 were same weekend that year) but the next two, 2008 and 2009 I was there crewing for Chris and cheering on his teammates, Brad and Todd from http://www.worldbicyclerelief.org/ sponsored by http://www.sirenbicycles.com/

You'll no doubt read about Chris' race via his blog http://cstrout.blogspot.com/2009/08/238-mile.html so I'll leave the details to him and his teammates but here are a few random photos in a random order.

Badwater 2009 PR

Another great year crewing at Badwater for my friend Kelvin Marshall. This was my third time at Badwater and second crewing Kelvin. I love this event and the Badwater family. http://www.badwater.com/

Kelvin ran a very smart race changing his plan due the high heat during the day and this enabled him to ran almost 3 hours faster than 2008 and become the fastest Aussie at Badwater ever in 37 hours and 36 mins. http://dbase.adventurecorps.com/results.php?bw_eid=49&bwr=Go







Before race start














At finish line










Some random race shoots that blogger will likely place where it feels like it








Runners check in




















Race morning














Badwater Basin






On the course






















After race, Kelvin ready to go again!!















Steve Hanes who crewed for Kelvin in 2008 and
was given a start (and finish( in 2009

Badwater 2009

This coming weekend I head to Death Valley to crew my friend Kelvin Marshall at the Badwater Ultra. Kelvin will be running 135 miles from Badwater basin to Mt Whitney portals which takes him and the 85+ other runners through Death Valley from 282 feet below sea level over 2 mountain passes with long climbs to finally finishing at 8360 feet. The temperature can easily be over 120 degrees and possibly very windy.

Kelvin ran Badwater last year finishing 1st of the 6am wave starters in just over 40 hours. This year he has an 8am start. Matt and Steve are back to crew along with me plus a new addition in Rita. Steve Hanes who crewed last year was invited to the big dance. Congrats Steve.

Kelvin is being sponsored in part by the awesome folks at http://www.drymaxsports.com/ who have supplied him with some fantastic signage for the crew car/van. This will be so different than last year LOL

Last year followed by this year

Here's a great TV video about Lisa Tamati fro New Zealand and her 2008 race. Nice job TVNZ and Lisa. She is back in 2009

http://www.lisatamati.co.nz/gallery/video/2

Lisa and Kelvin at the 2008 awards party