2021 Cayuga Trails 50

It's been more than six months since the 2021 Cayuga Trails ultramarathon and I'm finally getting around to writing something about the race. This recap will be to the best of my recollection, kind of like Proust triggering vivid memories with his madeleine and tea, but far less boring and long-winded.

The course was modified extensively in 2020 due to COVID-related permit restrictions. It retained a similar course for 2021, with the staging area at Robert Treman State Park but in a different spot than the original layout. The modified course still covered most of the same trails, but was made a little tougher by an off-trail section near lower Buttermilk Falls. The format was essential this: Start at Treman Park's Y Camp. Run a 10-mile loop around the park and back to Y Camp. Then run a 15-mile lollipop loop that leaves Treman, passes through the Lick Brook preserves, and loops around to lower Buttermilk Falls State Park and back to Y Camp. 50-milers do this circuit twice and 50k runners do one full circuit followed by a 10k mini loop. Those running the shorter Lucifer's Crossing race only do the 10k loop. An aid station is set up every 4-6 miles. 

I came into the race not feeling my best. Two weeks prior I ran 19 miles on the course with two fast friends—Rich Heffron and Adam Pacheck—who pushed the pace and left me hurting. I thought I'd be fine after a day or two, but I still felt sort of beat down

MFAMTL: Will Run For Gummy Worms

This was only my second time running a fixed time race and the first that wasn't on snowy trails. I jumped into the MFAMTL 6-Hour last minute as sort of a birthday present to myself. Who wouldn't want to spend their birthday weekend pulverizing their quads and then gorging on a giant burrito? 

MFAMTL is an acronym—with no logical pneumonic device that I know of—for Maybe the First Annual and Maybe the Last. My friend Michael Valone created the low-key event a few years ago, unsure if it would become a recurring race or just a one-off—hence the moniker. Turns out it was the former, and after three years of missing out I finally was able to make it up to Rochester's Durand Eastman park for the race. 

The format is simple. Run a one-ish mile trail loop as many times as you can in 6 hours. The first 3 hours you run clockwise, then you're told to turn around and run the same loop counterclockwise for another 3 hours. Only loops completed before the 6-hour time limit are counted; partial loops are worth nothing but extra calories burned. And you apparently earn good karma or fun

Ten Junk Miles Podcast - Meet the Nation

A few days ago I had the pleasure of talking to Scott Kummer over the phone to record episode #147 of the Ten Junk Miles podcast Meet the Nation series. These episodes are short, 20- to 30-minute interviews of listeners and fans of the show, where callers can discuss their history with the sport of running, favorite books, movies, and albums, and whatever other miscellany happens to come up in the conversation. 

I've been listening to this show regularly since 2016, particularly the Long Run episodes. In this format, Scott digs deep with all types of people in the U.S. ultrarunning community, most of whom are everyday runners rather than elite athletes. I've been drawn to these episodes mainly because Scott has a way of getting his guests to open up so it feels like the listeners actually get to know them. A few of my personal favorites are David Clark, multiple world record holder Camille Herron, Iditarod 350 runner Scott Hoberg, and a guy named Mark Scotch who told his story of donating a kidney to a complete stranger. 

I've also enjoyed listening to the other 146 Meet the Nation episodes and hearing stories from other podcast listeners. 

Anyway, click the link to check out my 28 minutes of fame and let me know what you think. 

Just the "Fun Run" at FL50s

“And I feel so much depends on the weather.” - Stone Temple Pilots, “Plush”

July 4th weekend can only mean one thing for Upstate New York trail runners—the Finger Lakes 50s and its notoriously nasty weather. The Finger Lakes Runners Club resurrected this race after a hiatus in the Year of the ‘Rona with Forest Frolic race directors Peter Dady and Mike Stone now at the helm. 

The race’s 16.5-mile loop is quite fast when the trails are dry. Problem is, they’re never dry. Some combination of gooey mud, slick mud, wet leaves, and flooded trails always seems to hinder the whole lot of us at this race, year after year. 

This time I opted in for the 25k "fun run" to avoid burnout after beating up my body at the Cayuga Trails 50-mile at the end of May and running the FLRC Ultra Challenge two weeks before the FL50s. That made it my first time running this race in a distance

The Hyner Trail Challenge : Socialism, Bigfoot Pens, and One Big S.O.B.

The Hyner Trail Challenge is aptly described as a northeast "classic" race. The event has been around since 2009 and annually draws one of the largest fields of any trail race in the region. Like all races, the Covid-19 pandemic threw a wrench in the works for 2021. UltraSignup lists 267 finishers in the 50k and—get this—811 in the 25k in the 2019 results, not including DNFs. Other recent years show similar numbers, with over 1,000 finishers in the 25k alone in 2015. The demand for this race is insane, as are the logistics of managing that many runners on such a challenging and remote course. The race is held every April, with registration for the following year opening on May 1. As you can guess, it sells out immediately, almost a full year in advance. 

The main attraction along the course is Hyner View—a point overlooking the Susquehanna River and the PA-120 bridge 1,300 feet below, along with the surrounding forested hills. The viewpoint itself is a rectangular stone structure built by CCC workers during the Great Depression. 50k and 25k runners reach this viewpoint around mile 4 as they crest the first big hill just after its steepest slope, all the while reaping the benefits of American socialism at its finest. 

That view of the Susquehanna was two years in the making. I registered for the 2020 race on May 1, 2019—the day registration opened. Even then I had to spend a few weeks in waitlist limbo before gaining entry. This was before we knew that Hayley was due with twins in March 2020. After learning the baby news, running Hyner in April of 2020 was most definitely a no go. Then Covid struck and the race date was push back before ultimately being cancelled altogether. When RD Craig Fleming announced

The FLRC 100k Ultra Challenge

Late last year when in-person races were still in flux due to COVID-19, the Finger Lakes Runners Club put together a unique virtual race series with a competitive element. The FLRC Challenge is a year-long event that involves running 10 specified race courses in the Ithaca area. Some of these are courses from in-person races and others are popular non-race routes, with distances ranging from one mile to the half marathon. Some cover asphalt, some are gravel rail trails, and others are on singletrack trails. There's flat, hilly, and everything in between. Anyone who completes all 10 is considered a finisher and earns a medal. Competition for each individual course is scored based on fastest overall time, fastest average, and most completions, with additional series-wide scoring aspects. There's a lot to it, and rather than explain it all myself you can get the rundown on the event Web site. 

One element of the FLRC Challenge is the ultra version. The total distance for all 10 courses is advertised as 65.3 miles—a little over 100k. The Ultra Challenge involves completing all 10 in a 24-hour period. You can run the routes in any order you want, but

Running Inside Out Podcast — Guest #100

I had a great time as a guest on episode 100 of my friend Chris O’Brien’s podcast Running Inside Out. On the episode we discuss ultramarathons around the northeast, the Ithaca and Rochester trail running scenes, the FLRC Ultra Challenge, training while managing kids, the Star Wars Holiday Special, and a whole lot more! Check out the episode Web page at Running Inside Out Podcast: 100: It Can Be Life Changing - with Pete Kresock or look for it directly on Apple Podcast, Spotify, etc. 

The Rochester-based Running Inside Out podcast has been around for a few years and mainly focuses on trail and road running around Upstate New York. I've struck up conversations and started friendships with strangers after hearing their stories on this podcast. I'm happy that Chris is bringing it back after a 10-month hiatus, and honored to be the first guest of its return and the one featured on episode 100. 

Thanks for listening! 

A Personal Best 50k Time Trial

Training has been going well for the past seven months. In the midst of the pandemic and my first year raising twins, things really started to click back in September. At the time most races had been cancelled, so I started running all the Ithaca area trail race courses and popular trail routes at race effort. The consistent, quality mileage carried over through the winter in the form of tempo runs and steady state runs on rail trails and roads. With no Beast of Burden to train for this winter, I kept the mileage lower than I did in previous years—50 to 65 miles per week for most weeks. In a few weeks it was lower due to inclement weather, being homebound with sick kids, or both. But the consistency was there, and it paid off. 

Once race director Adam Engst began opening courses for the recently launched FLRC Challenge virtual race, I gained extra motivation to run hard on the race's road courses while waiting for the sloppy, snowy trails to dry out. Tempo intervals and fartlek runs on the Challenge's Pseudo Skunk half marathon course, marathon-pace efforts on the 10-mile Black Diamond Trail course, and so on, kept the fitness gains coming all the way into April. When our local trails finally thawed and dried enough to run

Farewell, Beast of Burden

The New York ultrarunning scene lost two of its bigger races this week when the Beast of Burden Ultramarathon race directors posted a statement announcing their winter and summer events would be discontinued for the foreseeable future. 

Hello Beast Runners, We are writing to inform you that, due to a variety of contributing reasons, we have made the...

Posted by The Beast of Burden 100 & 50 Miler Ultra Marathon on Sunday, March 28, 2021

Hello Beast Runners,

We are writing to inform you that, due to a variety of contributing reasons, we have made the difficult decision to put the Beast of Burden Race Series on permanent pause. With this decision, that means we are cancelling the 2021 Summer Beast of Burden Ultra Marathon, and will not be scheduling a race series in 2022, or the foreseeable future. For those that have registered for the 2021 Summer Beast of Burden Ultra Marathon, we will be sending out refunds for your race registration.

This is truly a bittersweet moment for us. As Race Directors for this series for the past decade, we have had the great pleasure of building on a great race series to bring it to where it is today; a unique event that seemed to have taken on that of both an endurance run, and a family reunion of our ever growing clan of runners and awesome volunteers.

Solo Trail Racing Through the Pandemic

After feeling worn out and miserable for most of the summer, I got back in the game with a non-race effort at the Hash House Hundred Fast-Ass 100k in late August. That left me wanting to get back into racing trail races and ultramarathons, but of course autumn in 2020 brought another slew of race cancellations courtesy of la 'rona. Throughout the summer I was expecting as much, and came up with a creative way to get in some quality mileage and satiate the trail racing bug.

The project involved attempting a PR on as many of the local trail race courses as I could. For some races, this meant running each of the different distances offered for the event, i.e. the 13k, 26k, and marathon on the Thom B course. Many of these races I'd run at less than 100% effort during the buildup to various ultras. Some, like the FL50s 25k and 50k distances, I'd never raced at all. With a few exceptions, I chose race courses 16 miles and shorter and within a half hour drive of Ithaca. I ran all of them on my own, unsupported or self-supported, following the courses from memory. 

Although the first three listed aren't race courses, I've included them because they're established and noteworthy routes. A few notable courses, like Forge the Gorge, the traditional Lucifer's Crossing course, the Monster Marathon at Treman, and my usual

Back to Racing!

It had been way too long.

America and the entire world are now a full year into the Covid-19 pandemic. Although I've missed in-person races and running events as much as anyone, most organizers that opted to cancel events out of precaution made the right call and I respect race directors' decisions to do what they think is best. Given all that's been going on, some races that did take place weren't events I was comfortable running. And of those I was comfortable with, some went off just fine at a time I was in no shape to run them (i.e. 2020 Cayuga Trails) due to the cumulative stress of trying to train while stay-at-home parenting twin babies. All the local sub-marathon races I may have considered running were cancelled, leaving me no organized in-person race since the Beast of Burden Winter 100 in early February 2020. 

Almost a year to the day since my last race of any kind, I made it up to Hammond Hill State Forest for the Finger Lakes Runners Club's Super Frosty Loomis Snowshoe Race. With a field limited to 40 runners across two distances, separate start times for each distance, mask and social distance requirements, and a bare minimum of volunteers and spectators, the club determined it

Pseudo Skunk Mini "Race" Report

Tuesday afternoon marked my debut at the 2021 FLRC Challenge and Pseudo Skunk 13.1. I carried my phone and used the RunGo App to follow the half marathon route along Ithaca's backroads and get familiar with the course. Snowy shoulders made it tricky to dodge traffic and move forward at the same time, but I tend to enjoy running Ithaca's backroads throughout the winter and have gotten used to it. Much obliged to race director Adam Engst for putting that Turkey Hill mini climb in the second mile (instead of mile 10 like in the actual HM race), but curse him for the grind up Ellis Hollow starting around mile 9. Notable scenery included that new looking, bright red phone booth in someone's front yard near the corner of Ellis Hollow and Hunt Hill, and a car parked in the middle of the damn road on Ellis Hollow where people drive 50+ mph around blind curves. The RunGo voice cues lagged by 10-15 seconds, but were 100% accurate and made it super easy to follow the route without thinking about it much.

I had such a blast running the Pseudo Skunk on Tuesday that I went back again on Wednesday for another go. I had a few hours to kill after work and before picking up the kids from daycare and couldn't think of anything better to do. With temps in the low 50s, most of the snow, ice, and slush had melted off the shoulder of the roads, so the running was much easier and more