Thank you!!!

What a weekend.  What highs and what lows.  It was amazing to watch runners cross the finish line and be able to talk to them. My family, friends and even strangers stepped up and helped out soooo much, expecting nothing in return.  I came out feeling more connected to the important people in my life and the ultrarunning community than I ever imagined.

What an amazing group of people you guys are.  So effing amazing.  It is so cool to rub shoulders with people that attack life in the same way.  You set out to do the impossible, and in the process when things go wrong in the darkest hour or something out of your control gets in the way, you handle it with such dignity.  You guys have won over the hearts of my family and the volunteers and I have no doubt that we will be able to do amazing things with this race in the future now that they are 100% on board.  All of these minds behind the race are now firing on all cylinders thinking of ways to make it a success.

I am still in the process of taking down the course markings and it has been an eye opening experience for sure.  Gooseberry at night is a whole different world. There is no such thing as “running” the Goose at night.  You just try not to get lost.

As a gesture of saying thanks for having enough faith in us to join us in our first year of existence and as a gesture of saying “We’re sorry” for the sub-par performance on course markings, keeping up with the leaders, keeping aid stations well-stocked for the back of the packers, and not being able to deliver on several key items that I said that we’d have in place- I’d like to extend a 50% discount off of next year’s race to anyone that toed the 100 mile starting line on race day.  We would love to see you back here, and are confident that we will have the above mentioned glitches worked out.

Also, for anyone that DNF’d the 100, but went more than 50 miles, we have a 50 mile finisher’s medallion for you.  Please send me an email if you’d like to have us ship that out to you.

Drop bags- if you send a check for $10 to: Matt Gunn, 810 S. Peachtree Dr., Toquerville, UT, 84774 and include the address that you’d like your items shipped to. We’ll get those sent out to you- most likely sometime next week as we still have about 40 miles of trail to take down and clean up and a lot of organizing of supplies to do.

We’ve got some really cool course improvements that I’m excited to let you guys know about in the future.  Next year is going to be epic!!!

Pictures

Here are the first group of pictures from 3D Media Watch.  The link can also be found on the “Photos/Video” tab.

 

 

 

50 and 100 Results

2012 Zion 100 Race Results

Zion 50 Results

Please email me with any time discrepancies and we’ll get them taken care of.

Please excuse the delay.  Sorry about the DNF confusion that some of you encountered.  The reports we received via Ham radio said that you had pulled (maybe you were just thinking about it?) and we updated it accordingly on ultralive.net.  The problem is that once you’ve been entered into their system, there is no turning back, so we can only post results on a spreadsheet.  We will post a better document shortly, still have a lot of clean up to do at this point in order to stay in good standing with the BLM, State Trust Land, county, and towns of Virgin and Apple Valley.  Still pulling the all nighters at this point but at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel…  Last night I was up  on Gooseberry taking down trail markings all night and only got about half way, then straight from there to work…  That damn reflective tape does not come off of the rock easily.

Drop bag pick up

Drop bags can be picked up at Pah Tempe Hot Springs through this evening.  After that, send me an email if you are missing something and we’ll see what we can work out.

Official times will be posted by Monday at 5pm.  We are aware that some runners are appearing as DNF’s on ultralive.net that did finish.  We will have that taken care of in the results.  Thanks for you patience, we’re super busy with course and event clean up at the moment.

Facebook updates via ultralive.net

100 milers can sign up for Facebook wall postings of their splits for all their friends too see if they sign up with Ultralive.net.  This is only available for the 100 mile runners .  Here is the link to sign up: http://www.ultralive.net/my.php

Again, here are the links to follow the:

100 Milers: http://www.ultralive.net/zion100/

50 Milers: http://www.ultralive.net/zion50/

Twitter summary: http://www.ultralive.net

Thank you so much for making this service available to our runners, Ted!!!

Cedar Gnats

Bad news… One of our trail markers just reported back that the “cedar gnats” or  noseeums are out on Gooseberry today.  They weren’t there yesterday, must have hatched today.  I knew that we would be safe on Smith mesa because they don’t hatch until the first week of June up there and I assumed we’d be safe on Gooseberry since elevation is only slightly lower.  They’re out during the hottest time of the day normally and shouldn’t be in the lowlands, hopefully just limited to hot hours on Gooseberry.   We’ll have repellent at aid stations, but if you have a favorite brand, you’ll want it in your drop bag at aid station 5 or 6.   They tend to leave you alone if you keep moving, so maybe that will help your finishing time out a little bit…

Course preview

Here’s a great write up by Cory Reese on what to expect from this course…

http://www.fastcory.com/2012/05/zion-100-course-guide.html

Thanks so much, Cory.  You’ve been such a great resource throughout all of this.

4 days…

Wanted to share a cool idea that we’ve come up with for trail marking that I haven’t seen being used out there yet.  We’ll call them “trailies”.  This is a take off of the words that the idea originated from- “throwies” and “glowies“.

I just learned about “throwies”about a week and a half ago and started on the idea late, so we won’t be able to have too many of them (about 100) on the course.  Thus far, the idea is going so well that it seems possible and quite economical to do all night time markings using “trailies” in the future.  We’ll have the standard fare of reflective tape and glow sticks this year since the materials have already been purchased and distributed to trail markers and we want to try it out first.  The lights and batteries I ordered got here 5 days ago and my test subjects have been lit constantly for 5 days now and are still burning pretty bright.

Cost breakdown of a throwie: 5mm LED light= $0.16, CR2032 battery= $0.20, Clothespin= $0.04, and 3″ of electrical tape= $0.01.  That puts the total at around 40 cents per marker, half of which can be re-used for next year.  Seems very reasonable to mark an entire course well with LED lights spaced at 50-100 yds, significantly reducing the # of runners going off course.

Add a 17″ outdoor balloon and rent a helium tank and you’ve got some “glowies”.  We’ll have a different color of glowies marking each aid station through the night, hopefully you’ll be able to see them from afar as you’re trekking through the desert towards your destination.  If there’s wind we won’t be able to float them up very high, but on a calm night they’ll be floating over 100 ft. in the air.  Apple Valley might get some UFO sightings Friday night

The light in this balloon has been going for 5 days now.  The 17″ balloon (about $0.25 each) stopped floating after about 15 hours, plenty of time to get through the night!  (FYI- If you buy a pre-made “glowie” you’ll pay about $2 each and they only glow for 3-4 hrs.  and get a smaller, poor quality balloon that only floats for about that long).

Here are the ingredients we picked up at the local health food store to make a big batch of vegan broth for the aid stations.  Abe and I have been busy making electrolyte snow cones and we’ve got some awesome boiled red potatoes marinated in Italian dressing that we’ll be serving at the aid stations.

Many nights spent organizing once the kids are in bed.  Our garage and storage unit are filled to the max!

Ultralive.net !!!

Aahhh to the Yeeeaahhh.  Ultralive.net is going to be covering the Zion 100 and 50 milers!  Much better than the Google doc. that we would have been using!

Here is the link to follow the 100 milers: http://ultralive.net/zion100

Here is the link to follow the 50 milers: http://www.ultralive.net/zion50

50 Finishers medals (Thumbs up), Shirts (Thumbs down), and Buckles (Two thumbs way up)

Here’s a look at the 50 mile finishers’ medals.  Sandstone cut from a local quarry.  Overall winners’ (1st, 2nd, and 3rd- Male and Female, both distances) plaques were made with the same materials.

Not too excited about the T-shirts.  I like the look O.K . but they’re terrible to run in.  The big “Z” in the middle of your chest is not breathable and causes a big sweat patch there.  I thought that I had ordered the mesh style performance shirts and had envisioned little holes that allowed the logo portion to breathe.  Should have gone with the other shirt design but oh well.  Overzealous rookie RD mistake…  Feel free to donate to a volunteer if you’re not stoked on the shirt.  We’ve had a recent influx in volunteers(good) so it looks like we’re going to come up short with shirts for them (bad).

But I couldn’t be happier about the belt buckles.  They are going to blow your mind as they look even better in person and each one is truly an individual work of art and made out of materials gathered from the race course.  In a little over a week anybody that can survive 100 miles will be sporting one of these bad-boys!

The ten day forecast is out and it looks like it’s going to be a hot one (85-89 degrees, depending on the website.)  Be prepared for the worst and pray for something better

For those running the 100, Friday afternoon is going to be the toughest.  Cover up and take advantage of any opportunity that you have to get wet.  The trails at the lower elevations between mile 31 and 45 are often rough and hard to get into a rhythm on.

50 milers will be out there in the exposed desert during the heat of the day as well, but have smoother/faster trail surfaces to run on during this time.