Monadnock Ultra

This December, Richard is growing his Monadnock Ultra in huge ways. Last year, he put on a 50k race at Crowder’s Mt. State Park. From the stories, it was a great success. This year, he is back and expanding it in to a 25, 50, and 100 mile races.

I bring this for two reasons.

First, I definitely want to give a shout out to his races. Richard does an awesome job organizing his races. His reputation is what brought me to the Riverman Brewing Company 50k. To find more information about his Monadnock race, use the following link.  Looks like he already has 16 for the 100, 18 each for 50 and 25 mile races. The website doesn’t say anything caps but I think that he has one for each event.

To continue my story, yesterday, he was telling us about his efforts for it. Specifically, he was telling us about the buckle for the Monadnock race. The 100 miler belt buckle is going to be massive. Something like 6 inches by 4 inches. In my mind, I think about those belts worn by professional wrestlers. They are massive. A runner could well need suspenders to keep the belt up.

But to my second reason for writing this, I felt like that he was pumping me up to run either the 50 or 100 miler. Now, in full disclosure, I have run these trails several times. I know that they are tough. Leaving from the Boulder access point, going up to Pinnacle by the Ridgeline trail, descending by the Crowders' Mt. Visitor center before climbing to the top of Crowders' Mt by the Backside trail before returning over Rocktop via roughly the same route back to the Boulder Access point is hard to do just once. I cannot see anyone wanting to do it twice. Let alone someone doing it 4 times. I don’t know for sure but this has to be something like 30,000 to 40,000 ft of climbing. However, the time limit for this race is just 30 hours. Honestly, he is not going to give away many belt buckles. I don’t think it is doable.

Making this race even harder, the race starts 10 AM. Unless, a runner can knock out the first loop in about 6ish hours, he or she is going to need a headlamp before he finishes it. Then, let’s add in the fact that it is December. The Charlotte area gets about 14ish hours of darkness each night so runners will be covering laps 2 and 3 in the dark and the December cold. I get scared crossing Rocktop in the daylight on a warm day. I don’t even want think about doing it twice in the dark in the winter.

Bring this to closure, when I finished the “The Stevest” race, I saw Dave. I asked why that he wasn’t out running. He told me that he knew his limits. I look at this Monadnock Ultra, and I realize it is beyond any type of challenge that I want to take on it. My training doesn't line up well for this type of challenge. I am okay with it. There are tons of races that are ridiculously hard. Runners sign up for them. They spend tons of money and time on the race only to DNF. It is just something that I am not interested. I don’t mind a hard race but I at least want to feel like that I have an opportunity to finish it. This one is just not for me, and I freely admit that I don't think that I am up to this task. There is no shame in admit it. We all have limits.   

Thoughts from the trail,

The Cool Down Runner