Running the Virgil Crest 50Mile felt like coming home. It’s hard to describe how I feel about completing this race again this year. It’s truly an amazing race. The aid stations, volunteers and race director are all incredible. The course will challenge any runner. It’s beautiful beyond a doubt. The first 36 miles were a slow painful and doubtful experience. The mud was everywhere. Up to my ankles for a lot of the day. I tried to lose myself in the beauty that abounds on this course but it was hard to look at anything but where to successfully put my next step without falling on my ass. Fall on my ass I did. Six times. Not painful falls. More like a little kid sliding down a soft, slippery mud hill. I had the normal thought I get on a difficult run of “why I am doing this again?” I felt from the get go I would be battling the cut off times all day. I had doubts of finishing the race early on. Everything changed for me at mile 36. I think the best way to explain it is acceptance. I decided right after a hot cup of soup and a nice chat with my awesome, supportive wife that I was going to run the remaining miles with a different attitude. I stopped worrying about cut offs. I stopped bitching to myself about mud and how much better I would be doing on firmer ground. I just stayed in the moment and I ran. A dominate thought in my mind was this is who I am. This is who I chose to be. For all the pain and discomfort that can come from the experience of an ultra marathon it doesn’t hold a candle to the quite moments alone climbing a monster hill when you really find out who you are. It’s in those moments my mind becomes clear and I feel an unexplainable closeness to God. I like to remind myself in those moments why I chose this wonderful way of life. I am a seeker. In those moments I am defined. I was overwhelmed with this feeling at Virgil Crest. I describe the feeling to my wife as God punching me in the stomach. I swear I can FEEL Him smile. I had that at mile 36 and it stayed with me the rest of the race right to the finish line.
I completed the Virgil Crest 50 faster than I did last year with a time of 15:47. I crossed the finish line in a dead sprint and I felt strong. I wished I was running the 100 miler. A wonderful thought to bring with me to the starting line of the Oil Creek 100 in eight days. The feeling I had at Virgil Crest has stayed. It feels almost like a state of half dreaming and awake. I am bursting out of my skin waiting to toe the line at Oil Creek. I know it will be challenging. I know I will have my down moments and like every ultra I have ever run something will go wrong. But I also know I am going back to the trails where my dream began. The place and the race I chose to challenge myself with an impossible run in the hopes of knowing God again while teaching my mind and body what it means to go beyond what I thought possible. I’m going back to Oil Creek and I am running 100 miles. When the moment comes, and I’ll know it when it comes, I am leaving everything on those trails. 
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