The Hanover Collaboration

Essentially, do not include the following activities in the three months prior to the race: two weddings, one of which is yours, both on the other side of the country; buying a house; moving; multiple relative visits ranging from several days to several weeks long.

After stage 2 we went back to Eben’s house and Courtney gave me a massage. One of my orthotics was broken (a long time ago and I never bothered to get it fixed) which led to some remarkably assymetric wear from the waist down. Court did her best, but I don’t think even a TdF massuese could have gotten the knot out of my right IT-band.

So some people keep their courage in a suitcase, I’ve got a well. With a suitcase, you can pick it up and you know right away how much you’ve got left. With the well you think you’ve got a never-ending supply until one day the bucket comes back up muddy and the next day you’re scraping the bottom.

The adjective “fell” is one you might recognize from Tolkien as meaning cruel or sinister. In trail running it’s used to describe a course that is gratuitously difficult. For instance one might use it to describe a course with streambed sections, a sand hill and lots and lots of mud. But Eb assures me that the race director didn’t go out of his was to get all that mud, the sand hill was short with pretty firm footing and falling in the stream was always refreshing. Oh yeah, I should mention the “drop bags”. You had two drop bags that they took out on the course for you. You were supposed to have changes of shoes/clothes for after the streambed sections. That is so wimpy.

Nice work, Brayt!. Are you going to give up on the good ‘ole 15K classic and become a sprint specialist?