Am I a Bad Ass?

Tomorrow morning I’ll be participating in the first annual Bill’s Bad Ass 50k in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Although this is a fat ass race, meaning it’s an unofficial event, there is a huge list of registered participants and we all receive a free t-shirt for participating. What really makes this event bad ass is that it is run exclusively on the Perkins/Riding Run trail in the CVNP, which is a notoriously gnarly trail. The loop has some pretty steep hills, a couple creek crossing but more than anything else you can always count on this loop to be muddy. I ran this trail a few weeks ago and it was completely covered in leaves making it difficult to see tree roots, making it even more difficult a trail to traverse. This loop is run 80 miles into the Burning River 100 course and is notorious for making people quit. We will be running it 6 times…bad ass.


To top off an already bad ass weekend, I have a previous commitment to pace a pretty bad ass trail race in it’s own right on Sunday – The Buckeye 10k in Columbus. Run at the Highbanks Metropark it traverses some of the steepest trails here in Columbus and should be a pretty difficult challenge. My biggest challenge won’t be completing the 10k, it will be maintaining the pace I’m responsible for. It looks like I’ll be pacing the 8:00 per mile pace group, which is super tough to maintain on a hilly trail, let alone the day after a tough 50k. I would really prefer to pace a 9:00 or 10:00 pace group but it looks like there’s no one to pace the 8:00 group and I’m always up for a challenge.

I will try and conserve some energy on Saturday so I have enough left in the tank for Sunday, but we’ll have to wait and see how things play out.