From: RDJT76A@prodigy.com (MR RICHARD J LIMACHER) Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 00:03:20, -0500 To: ULTRA@LISTSERV.DARTMOUTH.EDU Subject: Legend of Pecos Phooey at WS100, Part 20 [Note from a lister recently: "Hey, excuse me, but what does this thing halve to do with ultra-runing? Why dont you just stick it up your websight somewhere and leve the rest of this space open for gooder runners to exerise there freedom of speach with?"] [Editor's note: Bear with us. This "thing" will be wiped off the Internet in less than six days. Mr. Phooey apologizes to all the better runners and spellers. He knows that why-ning and hey-zing are much more important to improving ultra performance than smiling and laughing.] [Author's note: Gosh, and I thought it was already on a website! Check out Stan Jensen's! Plus, I'm also told that the whole "thing" can be found among this list's archives.] [My note: No dig? No sheet? Delete!] California Loopy First, a note about "cramming." (Lotta "notes" here, huh? Hey, here's a thought: When Mozart attached a note to his music, who knew?) I'm guilty, I suppose, of writing things in a year later that weren't there during the 24th running of the Western States Endurance Run a year before. But we're all guilty of this, I think. It's the single most important lesson we learn in school: How to figure out everything that's ever been done when those that did it didn't know themselves what they were doing. And that, of course, reminds me of a very dear friend who just last week started back to school, and of another who just last weekend crammed all night to finish a report for her work. The point of all this is that: Hey, I only got till Saturday at 5:00 a.m. to finish this saga! I GOTTA CRAM!!! I'm also, however, a firm believer in the following contemporary wisdom: "Hey, if it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done." Hence, cramming is how we learn and leaving Foresthill before midnight is how we finish. [Actually, 15 minutes before. The absolute cut-off is 11:45.] But, at the time, of course, we (Steve and I) had absolutely no idea what we were doing. He'd never gone beyond the marathon before, and I'd never even known about Foresthill. Thus, we were singularly well prepared. We kidded ourselves, of course, into thinking we had LOTS of time. It was around 9-something, we were at 62 miles, and the 30-hour limit was TOMORROW at 11:00 a.m. In other words, we had 14 hours to cover 38 miles. A real piece of cake. Hoo-boy! What a delirious phool-hardy cowboy I'd become. I mean, there I was moving at roughly, say, glacial speed; moving downhill through the Haunted Forest over some of the worst terrain I'd ever seen in any black-and-white Roy Rogers episode--and I couldn't see it! It was pitch dark! Well, all right, I did have my Petzl headlamp with fresh battery and extra Maglight for a spare. [Note for all SERIOUS ultrarunners: You may not dig "this." But dig THIS: If you run at night, carry an extra light. 'Nuff said.] I focused my beam in front of me. I looked down. I concentrated on each and every footplant. Then, I totally freaked out. We'd come to a cliff. I think. A guy behind me dropped something. We listened. And we listened some more. Then, we never heard it hit bottom. You, my serious ultra friend, would freak out too! "Whew! Steve!" I hollered. "Did you hear that?" "No." My point exactly. We pressed on. "What'd you drop, buddy?" Steve asked the guy. "My flashlight." Uh-oh, I thought. "But I still have my Petzl!" Thank goodness, I thought. We pressed on. I was just reminded here, a whole year later, that "California Street" is apparently the name of the main drag in Foresthill we run on, or perhaps it's the street on which we turn to go down and re-enter the woods. Over a year before I was told (and told and told!) by my mentor Chuck that this section, from Foresthill on down to the American River, is called "The California Loops." Apparently, there was some controversy some years back about how the whole course was SHORT of the required hundred miles. So, they added a bunch of, what, loops? At this section to lengthen it? (And here's another thought: Gordy Ainsleigh, as a very young man, first ran a "short course" in under 24 hours. So here, years later, the guy's older than me--and I'm OLD!--and now he runs the longer "full course" and STILL beats 24 hours! Hmmm. What kinda 'rithmetic is this?) Anyway, Chuck had warned me over (and over and over) for a year that "you can HEAR the river, but you NEVER get there!" Hence, this argues for a looped type of course. We must've been going around (and round and round) in something like concentric figure 8's for hours and hours and hours. "Steve! Ya hear it?" "Huh?" "That's the river!" "Yeah?" "Yeah! We're almost there!" "Way cool." And on we'd run. And run. And run. We'd stop. We'd drink. He had this "camelback" thing on his back. He carried an extra bottle of fluid. We stopped once to refill the camel thing. The sucker was a pain in the ass. He practically had to strip naked in order to refill it. What an operation! We pressed on. And on. And on. And on... "Steve! Ya hear it?" "Huh?" "The river!" "Yeah?" "Yeah! We're almost there!" "Way cool." And on we'd run. Again. We never did get there, I don't think. To this day, we're still moseying. We're still "watch that rock"-ing and rolling downhill. Down, ever downward from Foresthill. (You wonder how the town got its name? We were in the forest. We were going down. The town was above and behind us. Thus the math and logic of that town's founding fathers.) But suddenly, without warning, as I was picking my way down the rocks and roots and stones, boulders and occasional cactus-like stuff; suddenly, without a word; very daintily, step-step-steppingly; whisp-whisp-whispily here comes, there goes, those... ...*short* blue shorts. ( | ) [Note: Yes, another one. Artist's rendering is actual size.] Omigosh! It's HER! She's PASSING me again!!! === Wow! Pew!!! ("Pew"?) Right! She never changed clothes at Foresthill! [Stay tuned. Same time. Same station. Back tomorrow with Part 21.] Rich Limacher The Ultra Nutty Troubadour RDJT76A@prodigy.com