Thanks, Thanks, and More Thanks

There was a short write up about my race in today's Anchorage paper. Read it here.

It's been an amazing racing season for me. I still have a ways to go but I feel like I'm twice the endurance racer/mountain runner as I were at the start of the year. I had 4 races that I focused on this season and I won all 4 of them, setting 3 new course records! I've looked through several results of 50 mile races so far in 2007. As far as I've been able to tell my 6:09:19 this past weekend is currently in the top few of 50 mile trail times so far this year. I found 2 that were definitely faster and I'm sure there are more that I'm not coming across, but at any rate these last couple races far exceeded any expectations I had in mind. I am of course very excited about this and anxious for next season already. I will be very happy to branch out into some lower 48 races next year. There are some amazing endurance/mountain athletes and events in Alaska, but I'm excited for next year when I'll get to test my abilities against larger and more diverse fields of runners and bikers.

Enough about that though. Mostly I wanted to say thanks to friends, family, and fellow Internet geeks for all the tips and words of support throughout this year. As much as I prefer to do most of my training alone it's still really nice to know that I'm not entirely on my own as I'm trying my best to stumble (or maybe leap is a more apt term) forward in a hobby that now has me so completely consumed that I couldn't get out if I tried.

As this has become exclusively a journal of my training and racing I'll likely only post on occasion for the next several weeks (although I still haven't decided for sure on that Equinox Marathon next month) as I take a nice break from all of this. Sometime in October or November though I'll begin getting back into it pretty seriously in preparation for a season next year that I hope will make my accomplishments this past season seem trivial.

And by the way, I'm recovering great from this past race. I rode my bike to work today and have almost no muscle soreness. I'll probably even get out for a nice berry picking hike/run tomorrow or Wednesday. Maybe I'll even remember to take my camera and click some pics.