After almost 8 long months, it’s time for me to the line up for another 100 miler. This was my 3rd or 4th backup option so I didn’t even sign up until about 10 days ago. For the past couple months, I had been targeting Wawayanda 100 up in NJ which is a hilly course (15k elevation gain) on single track trails. Needless to say, Pine Creek is just a tad different.
Demographics
The below stats were pulled from Ultrasignup so while not 100% accurate should at least approximate who’s running this weekend.
This is a fairly typical dispersion for most 100s with women only making up a quarter of the field and M40-49 the largest age group.
I use races as a general proxy for experience as counting ultras in the results is very tedious. This race has an interesting mix of newbies and grizzled veterans. Normally, I’ve seen about half of entrants in the 11-50 race buckets, while this is more evenly distributed.
Half the field has 5 or fewer years experience finishing ultras, which is what I’ve seen before. In line with the race stats above though, much higher percentage has been around for 8+ years. Only 1 runner has been doing ultras for over 20 years. So if you think you’re going to be running ultras for the rest of your life, you will end up being about the only one as the average career only lasts about 5 years.
Similar to prior graphs with a more even spread than normal. Keep an eye out for Keith Straw (90 finishes) and Michael Ortiz (60 finishes) who have almost as many 100 mile finishes as the rest of the field combined. Incredible.
These include finishes for all distances. Looks like a lot of new blood heading to Wellsboro.
Expectations
Um, finish?
So any time I race a flat course, my thoughts immediately turn to setting a new PR. It’s been almost 2 years since I ran 22 hours at NJ One Day. I think I’m in better shape now, but then again I thought that back in January when I failed to better that time. The weather is definitely in my favor for Pine Creek. Forecasts are for highs Saturday in the mid-60s, some rain during the day, and overnight lows in the high-50s. You know – just about perfect running conditions. Going against this is a sub-optimal final long run the weekend before last and a pretty meh conditioning test I took last weekend. Toss it all together and I have an opportunity for a really good time, but not a guarantee of one.
I guess that’s why we actual run the race.