I ran Jackpot 100 again, held at Cornerstone Park near Las Vegas, in Henderson, Nevada. This race is a loop-format race on a 2.38-mile course through the park. Various races are held concurrently, 48-hour, 24-hour, 100-mile, 12-hour, six-hour, and marathon. I chose to run the 100-miler. Last year I finished in 6^th, with a time of 20:51, my best 100-mile time of the year. I looked forward to another possible fast race.

But this year a terrible rain storm was forecast and the rain would pour for hours. I came prepared with rain gear and mentally prepared myself for potentially miserable race conditions. My goal was to finish in the top-five and hopefully run faster than my time last year. But I didn’t have firm, high expectations. Two weeks ago I finished Rocky Raccoon 100 and I had been sick with a sinus infection ever since, with very little training.

Rocky Raccoon 100, held at Huntsville State Park north of Houston, Texas has been the scene of both triumph and tragedy for me.  It was the race where I claimed my first 100-mile finish in 2005, and I’ve also posted some of my fasted 100-miler times there.  But in 2012, my last time running there, I did a very painful and slow run there on a badly injured leg.  I looked forward to returning for the first time in five years to try to claim my 6^th finish there.

Running at Across the Years in Arizona is now an annual running tradition for me. I’ve run 1018.93 total miles there and this would be my eighth year. This fixed-time race is held in Glendale, Arizona at Camelback Ranch, the spring training facility for the Los Angeles Dodgers. At ATY, there are four different races, running concurrently, 24-hours, 48-hours, and 72-hours and an incredible six-day race. The objective is to run as many miles as you can during your time period. You can rest all you want, but the clock is always ticking.

The 1.05-mile course is a nice loop through the baseball ranch, running past many baseball fields and a pond. The surface is a combination of pavement and dirt. The support for the race is top-notch and each year gets better with the attention to detail.

I again ran Kodiak 100 which is in the San Bernardino Mountains at Big Bear Lake, California.  I ran the 100 last year and enjoyed it enough to return.  This is an easier mountain 100 and has about the same difficulty for me as Tahoe Rim 100.  But make no mistakes, there are a couple very tough sections of this race involving some long, difficult climbs.  The finishing rate is only about 65% which is pretty low, but typical for newer races that attract newer ultrarunners.

The course makes a complete loop around Big Bear Lake but you rarely see the lake because generally you run up in mountains over the ridge away from the lake.  The course involves about 17,500 feet of climbing.  What keeps its difficulty down are many miles of dirt roads and a few miles of pavement.  There are also plenty of miles of fun single track, most up on the Skyline trail.  I believe the course is a bit long.  My GPS measured the course at 102.6 miles. This year they reversed the course direction from last year, clockwise, presenting a nice inviting change.  I couldn’t use my counter-clockwise split times from last year. It would be a new experience.  I believe I enjoyed the clockwise direction of this year a bit more.