From: RDJT76A@prodigy.com (MR RICHARD J LIMACHER)
Date: Tue, 12 Aug 1997 16:39:24, -0500
To: ULTRA@caligari.Dartmouth.EDU
Subject: Legend of Pecos Phooey at WS100, Part 11

Welp, frendz, tingz uv bin happnin'!  Ah gotz mor peeble innerristid in dis
dan ivver a'four.  An' naw y'all kin lookit n' reedup pon alla disshere
lidgind stuff at ma frend Stand Jinnsun'z offeeceshall Wibb saight,
whuddivver dat iz, wuch y'all kin dahl up widda kumpeuttir, whuddivver dat
iz, attiz kumpeuttir adddriss, wuch iz aitch-tee-tee-pee: cupla dotz n'
slaish slaish ree-ill-tee-peereeidd-ess-gee-eye-peereeidd-kamm slaish
standjay slaish ell-pee-pee, whuddivver innda haill DAT all bee!  Whew!
Disshere iz a'gittin' complictakid!!!

[Editor's Note, in case translation should be necessary:  What our Western
States correspondent "Pecos" is saying here is that, as of just recently,
"The Legend of Pecos Phooey at the Western States 100" is currently
available in its entirety--and will so continue to be on an ongoing basis
until this sucker is finished!--at Stan Jensen's official web site.  You
can refer to this at any time (if, for example, you ever feel the urge to
do a little research into the fields of psychosis or paranormal behavior)
by directing your web browsers to the following address(es) and/or clicking
on the WS97 runner link which you should find on Stan's first page:

                  http://reality.sgi.com/stanj/reports/

                                  (or)

                  http://reality.sgi.com/stanj/LPP/

Thanks.  And, by the way, speaking as the thankless "editor" of this entire
monstrosity, I want you to realize that I have been laboring relentlessly
in an effort to TRANSLATE this entire fable, from beginning to end and from
Pecos's ridiculous pseudo-hillbilly chicken-scratching to semi-decipherable
written English, ever since this illiterate stump teller of tall tales
first submitted his cracker-barrel observations scrawled in crayon on the
back of a waxed-paper sandwich wrapper from the Olympic Sandwich Shop of
Squaw Valley, Calif.  It's been a true exercise in madness, as I'm sure
you'll appreciate.  But I have endeavored to retain the first paragraph of
each episode just to give you a flavor of the original ham n' cheese, uh,
no, the original chicken-scratching which IS STILL BEING SUBMITTED!]


                            ROBINSON FATS

Well, lookit this.  My good friend Stan Jensen (whom I've actually never
met) has mailed me a photograph that he took of me coming (i.e., crawling)
out of Robinson Flat.  My face is partially obliterated by my Gatorade cup
and the guy next to me is laughing his head off.

Gosh, and now I can't remember the joke!

But I see that neither one of us has blood on his legs (yet) or dirt all
over his shirt (we both must've just changed) or a huge glopping of mud on
top of his shoes and socks (most of the rivers at the bottoms of canyons
were yet to come).  Ah, but I also see that I'm the only one who appears to
have gained weight.

And this is something I've been meaning to preface my remarks with ever
since my preface, or pre-preface, or even pre-first to my first pre-
preface, but just never got "a round tuit."  (Did you ever get a round
"tuit"?  It's this little button-like thing with "tuit" on the front that
people occasionally give you to assure themselves that you can no longer
say you've "never gotten a round tuit."  And after you naively accept one
of these, you no longer have any excuse.)

I wanted to mention this whole "weighing" thing, which I used to think was
unique to Western States but now I believe other ultras have inaugurated as
well.  Very briefly it is this: "You lose too much weight during the course
of this race, buddy (or buddette), and you're out of the race!"  At the
WS100 a seven-percent loss of body weight will put you right out of the
competition--period.  It's the rule.  It's right there in the rule book.
Right on page 10.  A five-percent weight loss will put you in a chair--
until you eat and drink enough to get back to a three-percent loss.  A
three-percent loss "indicates that significant dehydration has occurred"
and you will be scrutinized closely by the medical staff, who may in fact
set you back down in that chair until you move up to the two-percent loss.

In any event, it's serious sh*t.  No!  No, you DON'T want to "sh*t."
That'll just cause more loss!  No no.  What you DO want to do is follow the
sage advice of Chuck.  Chuck, who has long served as my "coach" and mentor
and true instructor of all kinds of such language relating to this sh*t.

Chuck specifically told me:  "Just make SURE when they make you get on that
#!@!#%!'n scale on that !!#^#@!'n Friday that you have #!%*!*!'n NUTHIN' in
your #!^#%!*!'n stomach.  You wanna be just as #!^#%!*!'n LIGHT as you can
#!^#%!*!'n possibly be.  Then, once you get off of that scale, EAT LIKE A !!#%^#*!##!*#!!!!#!^#%!*'ER!!!!!!!!!"

Hmmm.  There's language for you.  Uh, I mean wisdom.  And the wisdom is
simply this:  You KNOW you're gonna lose a certain amount of weight during
a 100-mile run.  So, don't screw around.  Plan a little in advance.  Be
"light" on Friday morning when they weigh you, and then get "heavy."  Then,
during the race the next day, you have some "margin" to play with.  Then if
you lose a lot of weight (which you will) it still won't pull you down
below seven percent of what you started with--because more than likely what
you ACTUALLY started with was about seven percent MORE than what you
actually weigh!

That is, of course, if you eat right.  Starting at about Friday noon.

Well, boy did I EAT!  I stepped off that scale; they wrote my weight (179#)
on the wrist bracelet; "permanently attached" my wrist bracelet to my wrist
(it fell off immediately that night in the shower); sent me on "down the
line" for blood pressure (something-over-something), pulse (I had one), and
other vital signs ("Pisces," "road construction," and "of the cross"); said
I was "done" (not too crispy); and then said "good luck tomorrow!"
(Thanks.)  So then I stepped out of line and over to the "free lunch" (yes,
there is such a thing) table where a couple of local vendors were showing
us the latest in trail and/or survival type food.  You just rip open the
package, pour in your boiling water, and stir.  And THEN...

You EAT!

"Can I have some of that?"

"Yes sir, you betcha, by golly."

"And some of THAT too?"

"Yes sir, you betcha, by golly."

"And how 'bout some of this over here as well?"

"Yes sir, you bet.  We're here to please."

"Oh.  And how about some MORE of this back over here...please?"

"Yes sir, you betcha, by golly."

"You got anything to drink?"

"No sir.  By golly.  This is only the free lunch table.  They never did ask
us to bring beverages."

"Oh, puh-leaze!"

"Well, sir, we've got some boiling water.  Would that be OK?"

"No thanks."

I then swallowed hard and went back into Plump Jack's for the rest of the
"Expo."  They, uh, had PowerBars in there, as I discovered.  So I ate about
fifty of 'em.

Then, of course, I went back to the "official" Olympic Sandwich Shop for
about three more "official Olympic ham n' cheeses" and THEN I went out for
supper.  I found a Sizzler Steakhouse in Truckee.  And, hey, allow me to
recommend to you the Sizzler Steakhouse in Truckee, California!  Wow!  Five
trips to the "unlimited salad bar" and two entrees later...and I emerged
one STUFFED Pillsbury Dough Boy!

So, next day, when I FINALLY climbed and climbed and climbed and climbed
all the way UP to Robinson "FLAT" and they put me on that scale...

"My God!" the volunteer said.  "You've GAINED TEN POUNDS!!"

"Sure!" I winked.

"How can THIS be?"

"Hydration," I said.  "I've been keeping up with my fluids."

"Well, Lordy.  I guess!" she said.

Hence, I suppose, the photo of me coming out of Robinson Flat with the
Gatorade to my puss and the guy next to me laughing his own putz off.
(Turns out--I looked up his bib number--the guy's from Germany.  Gosh.  So
how did HE understand my joke?)

Germany.  That reminds me of something else...

No no!  It's not time yet to tell you (again) what THAT reminds me of.

But the fact that there was this "other guy" does, in fact, remind me of
something else.  SomeONE else, actually.  It reminds me of Tony.

Tony is another ultra-guy from Illinois, my home state (or, maybe it just
happened to be the state where my adoptive parents found me swaddling in
the basket--how do we EVER know for sure?).  Tony is actually the guy who,
probably more than a year-and-a-half ago, first showed me all the
literature from Western States.  He had said that he was entered in the
lottery, and then he suddenly turned to me (it was at a party, after all,
in his own backyard and I was on about the ninth or tenth of his own "free"
beers) and asked, "Hey, Rich!  Why don't you get in this lottery too?"

I forget what I told him.  (The exact words, I mean.)

But--long story made perhaps only slightly less long--next thing I knew I
was sending off for the paperwork, receiving it in my mailbox (regular, not
online), filling it all out, verifying all my "qualifying" races, writing
my check, and...uh,...kissing it all "good-bye."

And lo.  "The miracle":

"Greetings, Mr. Phooey.  Your application has been retrieved from the
trash.  You are now officially entered in the 1997 running of the WS100.
We expect you to show up prepared.  None of this last-minute stuff.  Get
your spuds off the couch RIGHT NOW!"

So, thank you very much, Mr. Tony McElligott.  And many the fleas of a
thousand camels infest someone ELSE's armpits.

Well, anyway--to make the short story perhaps only slightly less short--
there the two of us were, in California, on June 28th, running our "spuds"
off during the race that constitutes "THE prize" of the "Ed McMahon
Sweepstakes."  (Just kidding.  The "Ed McMahon Sweepstakes" has no winners
at all--at least none that I know of.)  And actually, there I was at
Robinson Flat AHEAD of Tony.  Whoa!  How can THIS be?  (He's younger!)

Well, I KNOW how this CAN be--and WAS--because the very first thing I ran
into at Robinson Flat was his wife! Well, maybe she was the second thing...
after the rock, that is, which was really the first thing I ran into.
Anyway, his beautiful wife is named Teri (not sure of the spelling,
however) and she was focusing the camcorder.  I go:

"Am I on 'Candid Camera'?"

She goes, "Huh?"

(I TOLD you they were younger!)

"Never mind!" I hollered.  "I'm just glad to see you!  Don't forget, you
promised me a ride back to the start!"

"I remember!" she called out.

But, I still wasn't sure.  It's a heck of a thing to be out there all by
your lonesome, journeying farther and farther away from your parked rental
car in the Squaw Valley lot, and knowing full well that by the time you
arrive at your destination you're not even going to be able to MOVE, let
alone walk back to your car.

"Don't forget!" I hollered again.  And I was sure that I wouldn't have to
stick around and say anything more, because I was also "sure" that I could
keep ahead of Tony (and therefore see his wife at every aid station) for
the rest of the race.  After all, I'd done it once before--at the Kettle
Moraine 100 which, after all, got me qualified to enter THIS lottery in the
first place. The Ed McMahon "Ultra Sweeps"!  Where I won the granddaddy
grand prize of all time.

Oh, how wrong I was!

But of course I didn't know ANYTHING at the time.  I just felt so cocky.
Here I was, ahead of Tony, arriving at the first major medical checkpoint
in great physical shape, on pace (I thought) and ahead of schedule and full
of food and fluid and piss and vinegar.

Remember what I wrote--before?

"Am I ahead of the cutoff?" I asked the next volunteer (the guy with the
program and the charts and graphs and the master list of everybody in North
America at the time).

"Yes sir, you betcha, by golly."

(HIM again?  No, not possible!  I must've been hallucinating.)

"The, uh, 24-hour cutoff, right?"

"No sir.  The 30-hour cutoff."

"WHA???????????????????????????????"

"Yes sir.  You are now thirty minutes ahead of the ultimate cutoff."

I finished changing my shirt, grabbed that Gatorade, and FLED!

And, well, maybe that's why this German guy is laughing in the photo.  He
must've thought I was hallucinating too.  (Or, maybe I thought HE was, and
I was just drinking to forget?)

P.S.  Later, after it was all over, I was surprised to learn from Teri
that:  "What were you doing, you Phool?  You were hanging around that
Robinson Flat aid station for almost half an hour!  I thought you'd never leave!"

Gosh.  I must've been hallucinating worse than I thought!


[Back in a (psychedelic) flash...with Part 12.]

Rich Limacher
RDJT76A@prodigy.com
THE ULTRA NUTTY TROUBADOUR