This summer I drafted up my 100 Goals (some have since been accomplished and now need to be updated) and now also have planned my 2009 Race Schedule.   In the meantime, I was ruminating on a list of races & events that are on my radar and I hopefully will get the chance to participate in over the next 5-10 years.  Thought I would share them below.

FUTURE RACES HITLIST:

  • A holdover from last year:  The Grand Cayman Pirates Week 5k Sea Swim- Earl and I had planned on doing this past fall with Brent, Jenny and Wendy, however we ended up traipsing around the American countryside for a month instead.
  • A heavyweight:  The Comrades Marathon – a 55 mile South African ultramarathon race.  It is mostly on pavement, held on a grueling course boasting the “Big Five” hills, all with a 12 hour limit.  Qualifying times for this look pretty speedy.  The course runs in opposite directions on opposite years- “uphill” on odd years and “downhill” on even years.  In order for full bragging rights, must be run uphill.
  • Leadville Trail 100- 100 mile race with 15,600 feet gain/loss, run as an out-and-back on trails outside of Leadville, Colorado.  I’d say the biggest barrier to me doing this race would be elevation training.  Perhaps some running weekends up in Tahoe could help with this.
  • My old hometown race- the NYC Marathon.  The past five years when I lived in NYC everyone would ask me when I was going to run the NYC marathon.  It was never on my radar.  Why race around a town that I already schlepped around all day every day?  I’d rather travel to races and do marathons in different cities- have an excuse to explore new places.  Now that I’m in SF, it would be fun to go back to NYC in a couple years and do the marathon.  I believe if you enter the lottery and get denied three years in a row, you are guaranteed entry for your fourth year.
  • Ice Age Trail 50 – 50 mile race through the glacial planes of Wisconsin.  Perhaps its affiliations with the Ice Age are leading me to romanticize this (cold? wet? boring?) race, but in my head it just sounds so neat.  The route goes through the Kettle Moraine Forest, where glaciers passed through 13,000 years ago.  It just sounds so cool to be running over the same trails that woolly mammoths used to lumber along.  Perhaps this appeals because I get a kick out of likening myself to a wooly mammoth (more accurately- a snuffleupagus).  :) Also would be convenient to do because it is relatively close to Earl’s family, so could coincide with a visit to the farm.
  • Dipsea, Double Dipsea, or Quad Dipsea.  7.4, 13.7, and 28.4 miles, respectively.  All held on the Dipsea Trail which runs from Mill Valley to Stinson Beach.  Has almost 700 steps in it, which would give me an excuse to go train some more on the Vulcan Stairs.  Did you know the Dipsea is the oldest trail race in America?  It was first held in 1905!  This race is intriguing and close to home, so it makes the hitlist.
  • Costa Rica Coastal Challenge – Rick advocated this one to me.  He has a few friends running it this year and raved about it.  It’s a 6-day race covering approximately 250k, at about 18-60k per day.  You sleep in tents over the course of the race.   Per their website, “the course is set along Costa Rica’s tropical Pacific coastline but weaves at times into the Talamancas, a coastal mountain range in the Southwest corner of the country. You’ll finish near the border of Panama in a serene fishing village that until recently was only accessible by boat.”  The terrain is a mix of “jungle and rainforest trails, mountain trail and single track across ridgelines, highlands and coastal ranges; beaches, rocky outcroppings and reefs, river and estuary crossings, and ends in Corcovado National Park, one of the premier rainforest experiences in the world as well as a Unesco World Heritage site.”  Would be great to coincide this trip with some crazy surfing vacation.
  • A New Years Eve race of any kind
  • A Polar Plunge of any kind
  • A few more Alleycat races.  Will need to pick up a commuting fixed gear for this, as Sara and I were almost laughed out of NYC when we showed up to Cranksgiving with the NYBMA on our tri bikes two years ago!! But we had a BLAST going around the city picking up food to donate at various grocery stores.  Would love to do something like this again- although will have to do a few things first: get non-tri bike, find alleycats in SF, and learn the city better (the key do doing well at those alleycat things is to learn your way around and knowing traffic patterns).
  • Badwater- IMO- “one race to rule them all.”  Maybe I got star-struck when Earl and I watched Running on the Sun, but this 135-mile course through Death Valley, CA seems like the ultimate challenge.  Unfortunately it seems as though zillions of others also see this as the ultimate goal, so it appears there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get into this race.  A few things I have heard you can do to increase your chances: – got to a Lisa Smith Batchen ultrarunning camp, volunteering or crewing at Badwater, running qualifying races.  If all else fails, you can run Badwater “solo” ie- not during the race itself.  Apparently there was a guy, Marshal Ulrich, who did this on his own with NO CREW while pushing a buggy filled with 35 gallons of water.  Oh my.  Badwater is on my radar in about the 5 year mark.
  • Bike Across America- not a race, but more of an “event”-  I am being harassed to partake in this silliness with my old college friend Brad.  It’s somewhat amusing because the only athletic things I’ve ever seen him do are drink beer and vigorously cheer on the “J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS.”  But, Brad and I go back to our freshman year (he was my college boyfriend’s “Big Brother” in their fraternity).  So, if he’s seriously doing this, which he claims to be, then alas, I shall be signing up along with him!
  • Along the same lines, I have another oddball friend dragging me into something I would never expect him to do- my friend Arnoldo, who was the stock boy in a shoestore I used to work at, is apparently biking around South America sometime in the not-too-distant future.  So if he ends up doing that I promised him I would come along for a few legs of that journey.
  • Finally, my friend Terri and I have plans to do the Appalachian Trail one of these upcoming summers.

So… lots of adventure on the horizon!  :)   Seems like enough to keep me busy for a few years.