Bighorn 100 Mile

I certainly did not DNF the event due to lack of support of my HCTR buddies. On the Saturday before we left for Wyoming, Robert and Cathy Melendez stopped by to drop off a big ol' bowl of his mother's recipe guacamole as a good luck gesture. So cool!! Then on Monday night, Shan Rooney dropped by to bid us well. As we go outside to sip on our favorite beverages, Joe and Joyce Prusaitis drive up. Look who else is here, I say. Then Linda Rust drives up, I look at Shan and she is grinning from ear to ear about her little surprise party!! We have a fun little get-together. Joe, my husband Robert, and I are headed to Bighorn on Thursday and Shan, Joyce, and Linda are bound for Western States the following week. We are a collective 600 miles of anticipation sitting in the front yard watching the neighborhood road runners on their evening run. I was amazed at the number of email wishes I received as well from so many wonderful folks. I am hyped and ready to go.

The 11 a.m. start finally arrives. It was nice to be able to get up and have a leisurely breakfast, but I was getting pretty anxious and was ready to rock aI nd roll long before the pre-race meeting was done and we were headed to the start line. I started with race ready singlet and go-lite rain jacket tied around my waist. 1 water bottle, 1 spiz bottle. It was already warm, heat definitely turned out to be the hardest weather factor. No rain, never cold enough for any thing other than shorts on my legs. Even though I do not like to wear hats, head wear was a must in the exposed, sunny course. 

Robert and I planned to run this event together. I was originally going to be his pacer. After studying logistics, it seemed I would want to pace him for 70 miles, with a long drive to the aid station. So we decided I would go ahead and enter the race so I could get a mountain 100 under my belt as well. Even though our strengths and weaknesses are different, we thought we could pull it off. The biggest challenge was going to be Robert's rubber band tendon. It had become iffy if he was going to be able to run at all, but he decided to go for it, but on doctors advice, he decided to go as far as possible without having to take pain meds.

We start off down the road to the trail head. We are going out easy.A little to easy, I think, but we are ahead of the 1st 25 minute cut-off. We turn on to the trail.

Notes & random thoughts:

Climb across fields.

Dry fork 45 min. ahead

Porta potty

Pick up Randall. Run with him. He is convinced we are on a 28 hour pace.

Cow camp. Randall lounges as we leave

Bear Camp.

Spring water outlets.

It seems to be taking forever to get to Footbridge