2012 Hog's Hunt 50K (My First Ultra Marathon!)

Running the Hog's Hunt 50K (31 miles for those of you who hate the metric system) was nothing short of enlightening. I think this may be the closest to "zen running" I have ever been. It wasn't exactly easy. Those last 3 miles were pretty tough and I tripped several times, but I was floored by how beautiful it was just to run in bare nature. I've done very little trail running up until this point, but I can easily see myself falling in love with it. I've long heard of the unique sub-culture that exists among trail runners. I saw that first hand at this race. There were about 100 runners in total doing the 50k. About 15 of them were friends from the running club I'm in. I think runners tend to be really nice people in general, but trail runners are on a whole other level of nice. I loved how home-grown and organic the event felt. There weren't a bunch of corporate logos adorning my bib. Instead, my bib was a white sheet of paper with a red "35" painted on it. There wasn't a loud band at every mile or raucous spectators at every turn, but there is something definitely special about this race. I finished my first ultra distance marathon in 6:39:52, but who really cares. It's about "zen running".

2012 Texas Independence Relay

This was our fifth year running the relay and like every year we welcomed a few new faces to the team. Due to planning issues with the Gonzales Chamber of Commerce, the first several legs of the TIR were changed. This meant we all started in Bastrop, which turned out to be a great thing. The first several legs ran us through Buescher State Park, which despite being severely damaged by the recent wildfires, was still awesome to run through. The event was also held nearly a month later than usual, so it was much hotter than we were accustom to. Nevertheless, the team ran incredibly finishing in 30 hours and 9 minutes.