So, let's start at the beginning:
Friday: It's still raining when I wake up, trying to catch up on some much needed sleep after 15 hours of driving through 1 province and three states, apparently California has experienced 3 continuous weeks of rain, and it briefly lightens up when I go to pick up my race package six hours later. When asked if I had trained enough, I replied, "If I can endure a 15 hour drive from Vancouver to Sacramento, I think I can handle 13 hours on a trail." (Famous last words, I know.) At the pre-race dinner, had a trail briefing from RD Greg Soderlund who warned that AR50 was going to be similar to that of Way to Cool 50k. For the 4 of us in the room that didn't do Cool, what did that mean? Well the Cool 50k had a lot of mud which hampered many a runner. Greg advised us that the first half of the course was on a bike path and for the most part was unobstructed from physical debris. But much like the Vancouver seawall in Stanley Park, the path was not shielded from the wind, but I wasn't worried as I had devoted a majority of my training to running similar routes with extreme weather conditions. From Beals Point (mile 27) the course switched to a gravel/fire road for 2 miles then became single-track trail or more accurately one gigantic mudslide. You basically had two choices, you could go into the mud and get dirty or bushwack through poison oak trying to find a drier path. The dinner wrapped up with guest speaker Dean Karnazes and his David Letterman spot. To be quite honest, having previously had the pleasure of listening to Jesper Olsen talk about his World run of 26,000 Km, listening to somebody talk about running 300 miles nonstop just isn't the same thing. Although it was somewhat funny to note that after running AR50, Dean had to go to Barnes/Noble in Roseville for his book signing. (I'm not sure if he actually ran from the finish line to Roseville, but what a great entrance!) Finally there was a raffle for draw prizes and unfortunately my streak of winning ended here, maybe I only win at BC events, hmmmmm.
Got back to the hotel and readied my drop bags, laid out my clothes, set dual alarms and took some cough medicine as a cold bug I thought I had gotten rid of was coming back at the worst possible time-eight hours before race day.
Saturday: 4:00Am, first alarm goes off. 4:30am 2nd alarm goes off. I'm finally out of bed and take my pre-race meal PB and raisin bread, drink a bottle of GU20 and click on the TV to relax before heading out. 5:30am: Okay, was just a little too relaxed as I drifted off again and was now rushing to make the start line. Went right when I should've went left and got lost. It's now 5:54am and somehow made it to the start with only a minimal amount of cussing. Dropped my bags off and made one last trip to the porta potty, all that desperation and anxiety sure has its advantages. 5:58am, had a volunteer take my picture at Guy West Bridge, a scale model of the Golden Gate Bridge. 5:59am, lined up in the back of the pack as per my race plan, thought of everything I had gone through to get to this point, took a deep breath and...
If it isn't one injury, it's another. First, plantar fasciitis (where the meat on the bottom of your foot comes off the bone) then patella-femoral syndrome (a knee that clicks and pops and hurts whether you run on it or not.) Both are nasties that take a long time to heal...and as soon as I figured I'd licked the former, I get the latter. Anyway, it's not been a great competitive year for me, so I find myself just happy to get out and run from time to time and volunteering more. 
Following my last outing (New Years Day CFA-50) I figured I might be shelved forever or worse, tossed into a bag for a local charity to pick up. Luckily, I was simply laundered and shelved. I felt like a benched athlete. Hey… it wasn’t my fault the Fat Ass 50 hadn’t gone as planned, don’t take it out on me buddy. Then, things started to look up. 10 short days later I was pulled off the shelf and tossed into a big bag. This wasn’t a small gym bag it was a big rolling tote bag. We were going on a road trip! Yahoo, where we going, where we going??