Bear 100 report, I'll keep mine short because I'm sure Jon did the whole thing more than enough justice on his blog post. After marking the course and spending Friday morning with Paul and Cody at the Leatham aid station, I was feeling pretty close to the Bear. As much as I loved running that aid station and seeing everyone through, the one thought that kept going through my head was "You're going to keep going another 80? You, the person who looks half dead already?" But our boy Jon looked good when he cruised through, so I was sure we'd see him in good shape later. After seven hours at the aid station Paul and I broke camp and I drove up Logan Canyon to find Team Allen. I ended up a little later than expected and found Cody at Tony Grove. Jon was doing great, ahead of his "average" projection. We saw him through that station and Joe ended his pacing, letting Cody take over. Joe and I crewed through Franklin Basin, Logan River (Which won my nod for best aid, with the Christmas lights and campfire and dutch oven BBQ. I could have stayed there all night.) and Beaver Mountain Lodge. Both guys looked great through each of those aids. At Beaver Creek Joe and I had some time to kill, so we napped just a bit (really cold outside by that point) and then prepared for Jon to show. He was a little behind what we were hoping, so I was getting antsy to start running. When Cody led Jon in, Cody grabbed me and said "Dave, he's not doing as well. Keep talking to him." We took off at a walk on the trail heading north from Beaver Creek. Sure enough, Jon wasn't talking much, other than to promise it would be the slowest 15 of my life. No problem, as long as we got through. We walked most of the first two miles, which are an easy grade on a forest road. I encouraged Jon to do some little 20-30 second jogs, just to keep us moving and his head in it (and I really wanted to run). The moon was out and it was clear, so even hiking wasn't bad. Warmer than I thought once we got going as well, I ended up dropping pants and shirt at Ranger Dip. But I knew Jon was struggling, he kept talking about how exhausted he was overall and couldn't respond much, and mentioned he just wanted to curl up and go to sleep. Uh oh. After we finished that climb and got into the sagebrush field overlooking part of Bear Lake and back on the canyon a lamp showed up in the distance behind us. It was Leland, and we let him push us (before we knew who it was) then pull us (after he passed us). And, just like that, Jon clicked back in. We maintain a jog for awhile, which he'd been struggling to do, and then he started talking in a normal voice. I knew we were good at that point, and we hit the Ranger Dip aid soon. We moved through quickly, changing batteries and grabbing drinks. The hill out of the aid is super-steep so we hiked it slowly, letting Leland lead again. At the top we passed Leland almost right away and zipped down the initial stretch. My lamp sucks so I was running through the tress mostly by feel, and almost biffed it a few times. Jon and I hooked up again right before the huge descent into Bear Lake. He had the good advice to separate by 30 seconds or so, so we didn't kick dust up on each other. I let him lead, keeping an eye on his lamp up ahead. It was a really peaceful and spectacular view to look out on that glassy mountain lake lit up by the moon and stars, and (other than kind of a crappy trial to run on) was a neat experience. We battled down the hill faster than he and Cody had trained on it, then hit the gravel road two miles from the finish and kicked it in. My ankle was pretty sore from the downhill pounding, but I knew it wasn't anything like what Jon felt. We had a brisk pace going, we were chatting freely, and I knew Jon just wanted to finish and hit that sub-21. Well he did it, we met Cody and Joe on the highway before the end and ran in as a team.
| 