4.5 Days to Leadville

It's getting close. I'm a little nervous. More nervous about my health going into the race than anything right now.
I played my little visualization game and put myself into the race for about an hour a couple days ago. It's all too easy to see myself in pain again. I hope I can overcome.

I'm currently in Crested Butte. I'm supposed to be resting and acclimating. Instead I climbed Mt. Gothic today (12,589 feet). It's a mountain that has always loomed over my campsite here and I've always wanted to climb it, so today I did. It was partly an accident-- "I'll just go up to that next ridge"... "I'll just see what it looks like on that saddle." Next thing I knew I was on the summit push. I didn't actually summit because I shouldn't have gone as far as I did (not enough water, no food, no rain gear, no fleece), but I hit a false summit, maybe 200 feet below the summit and across a knife ridge. I'm pretty tired and I can definitely feel the altitude, but I promise to rest the next couple days and hopefully this will help me acclimate faster and not hurt on Saturday.

Good news for all of you who couldn't come to Leadville for the race. Our good friend (and Coffee Illuminati member) Matt is going to update this blog throughout the race. My crew chief, Jason, will call Matt whenever I go through an aid station and Matt will blog what time I made it, my condition, and whatever other miscellaneous details arise. Thanks to Matt for doing this. Hopefully it will be a restless night for him.

Leadville 100 starts Saturday August 16 at 4am (that's 5am in Tulsa) and the finish line cutoff time is Sunday the 17th at 10am. There is a cutoff time for each aid station during the race, so the pressure is on the whole time.

So check in whenever you get a chance on Saturday and Sunday to see how I'm doing.