Looking at my schedule, I'd like to fit in a 50 miler if possible and anything over marathon distance if not in early January (Well, any time after Christmas and through the weekend of January 18.) Any suggestions? So far I've only found a 33 miler in New Mexico.

http://www.tejastrails.com/Bandera.html http://www.coachweber.com/ultramarathoncalendar.htm Looks like there's more going on in February than January.

Thanks for the links! Hadn't seen either of those yet. Looks like there are a few options. Ideally, it would be in a state that I haven't run a marathon or longer race in yet, and the reason that I want to run one in early January is so that I can make a vacation out of it and my wife can join me before law school classes start up again. Definitely a few on there worth looking into.

I've done the Bandera 100K several times and, although it kicks my behind, find myself drawn back there time and time again. The RD is a good friend (I'm pacing him at Hardrock next week) and he knows how to assemble volunteers to make a runner's day go smoothly (as far as it can, given said runner's preparation). Bandera is an excellent choice. Of course, there's also H.U.R.T. 100mi/k in Hawaii... ...and Avalon 50 mile on Catalina Island on Jan 17th...

1 night to go to Running from an Angel...

It was a good time. Roads in Nevada are much softer than roads in New England. I'll have more to say, but haven't had a chance to get it down yet. Gonna work on that tonight/tomorrow. Finished 6th overall in 7:47:26.81. It was an out and back, and the winner was 6.5 miles ahead of me when he passed me! He ran the thing in 5:57:39.46, which is smoking fast! Got a lot of pictures; I carried my cell phone with me and made it a point to snap some interesting views and tried to get a photo of everyone near the midway point when we passed each other.

Great race! I can only dream of running that fast. Way to go.

Thanks! Just got my first professional massage to do some repair work on my legs, and the guy didn't have much to do. He couldn't believe how little damage my muscles seemed to have, and was impressed that I was able to use the foam roller last night. The only issue I had was some minor tightness in my back, everything else was where it was supposed to be. So I got that going for me... Hopefully this means I can run without too much difficulty with the crew I coach on Thursday evening.

Blaine - awesome race. Now where is that damn race report?!

I finished it, finally! I wrote most of it this morning but had to come in to work and realized when I got here than about 1/3 of it didn't get saved for some reason. (Apparently the preview button in wordpress doesn't save your draft.) So, I had about an hour and a half to rewrite (which was much faster as I had a general idea of what to say) and then just had to finish it up and polish it a little. Lots of words, lots of splits, lots of pictures: http://news.runtowin.com/2009/01/09/running-from-an-angel-50-miler.html There are also links to my training schedule, how I prepared the week before the race, and exactly what I ate during the race at the top & bottom of the race report. I still need to write about my recovery from the race, but I'm going to wait until after I go snowshoeing this weekend to write about that. I also am waiting on some photos that a friend took that I hear are rather humorous.