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Sedona Canyons 125 Race Report: Trail Redemption

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This was a race to warm a grizzled ultra vet’s heart! Outstanding company of friends and newfound fellow trail travelers. Amazing deserts, canyons, and mountains in a point to point journey. All sorts of cool flora and fauna.  Generous cutoffs without constant time pressure. Challenging but fair. Superb race organization and generally very good markings.  Weather that was predictably sunny and dry but not unbearably hot, and got a bit cooler as we moved higher on days 2 and 3. And 125 proved to be an unusual but pretty cool distance. So it all came together for a  great race experience, the stress meter running reasonably low though there were moments. All this was good for a return to a 100 mile finish line I hadn’t experienced in 8 long years. Finally that lucky 7th 100–damn it felt good!  Day before checking out a water station we'd pass the next day The particulars are that I finished in 62:11:17, 124nd out of 197 starters and 144 finishers. I was 12th out of 16 among the male
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Glass More than Half Full: A Bigfoot 200 Race Report

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Where to start when over four months have passed?   A lot of water under the bridge since the Bigfoot 200, Aug. 13-17, 2021.   But with some unexpected holiday and winter break downtime on my hands, I finally put together a report and some reflections on my first foray at the 200-mile distance at Bigfoot 200 in August 2021 in the gorgeous Cascades.   What a long, strange, amazing, fulfilling but also frustrating journey it was! To cut to the chase (spoiler alert), I was timed out at mile 127 on a 209-mile course as day three gave way to day four. There were 111 finishers and 88 including me who didn’t make it (a 55.7% finish rate).  So I had a little company.   Looking back, I see this as more than a glass half full in terms experience.  I hope it highlights for me where I have to improve and am still learning about the distance—even with a DNF, it was as far as I’ve ever gone by a good 20-plus miles.  I also learned that I love the challenge of the 200 format (multiple days of con
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