In 'Em To Win 'Em

On Sunday evening I got together with a bunch of friends here in Juneau to celebrate my UROY award. It was a nice gathering of about 50 people. I honestly didn't even know that I knew 50 people in Juneau. I felt a bit awkward to be the subject of such a large gathering, but it was fun to see so many of my friends, from different circles of the local community, together in one place. The type of gathering that I may have been terribly uncomfortable at if I wasn't the bridge between everyone there, such that I knew everyone there.

The question that I was asked the most that evening was, "so what races and running plans do you have for this year"? My easy answer to this question for the past month has been that I just want to have more fun running in the mountains than ever before and to focus on races that I've never run before. Now though I've begun to move toward a few more specific racing plans for this year.

I've known for a couple months now that I would be running Western States, but I have now begun to fill in some of the gaps both before and after June 26th. The biggest news in regards to this is that I'm going to go to Europe in August and run the Mt. Blanc race! Just found out today that I got accepted in the lottery. These races will most certainly be my two "focus races" of the year. I am not going to settle for just showing up and running either one of these without my most focused effort. I will be running to win both of them. I know this may sound a bit bold being that these may be the two most competitive 100 mile races in the world, but I know that I have a chance to win any 100 mile race that I line up for. Doesn't mean that my chances are even all that great in either one of these, but knowing that I do have a chance is really all I need to make that my intention in these races. I'm sure other goals/intentions for both of these races will present themselves as the time draws closer to race day, but for now I'm in them to win them!

Check out my sidebar if you're interested in seeing which other races I'm eyeing for 2010.

UROY

Thanks all for the words of congratulations. It feels good to be "officially" recognized for my performances this year. Although it also feels a little unfair. It felt like I had too much fun running this year to have been capable of having (at least by one publication's standard) the best year of any male ultra runner in North America. I guess therein lies the key to my success.

For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about check out this link.

Out Of Shape?

I took about three weeks after the North Face race to give my body the most rest it's had in about 15 months. I'm now back running most everyday and I'm really surprised how much of my fitness still remains. I was actually kind of hoping that I would feel more out of shape. I'm not going to race again until sometime in March and being out of shape right now would give my mind something to focus on for the next several weeks before I feel like I really need to specialize a bit for my next race. I guess for now I just need to take advantage of the season and get out on my cross country skis and snowshoes. Maybe sometime in February I'll start to think about some training specific to my next event. Or maybe I should just stick with my approach that I used for the second half of '09 and just run for fun and assume that it will apply to my racing. Problem is that my next race might be a 50k which kind of scares the hell out of me with how little fast running I've done in the past year.