Day 4,428—Starting the Write-Up Now, and I Saw a Cat Where I Took This Picture—

 

Start time: 7:28 a.m.

Weather: Low 60s, wind 1.3 mi/h, Humidity 83%

   I don’t know exactly why I haven’t been more motivated to write about the Mohican 100. Maybe I am disappointed I didn’t place better? I didn’t do terribly, but it wasn’t my best run. There was no major snafu, but a lot of small things didn’t work out as well as expected. Overall, things went well, but I just couldn’t move any faster on the last leg, which cost me at least an hour, but that’s pretty consistent with my recent 100-mile performances. My finishing time of 26:31:34 is almost exactly where it was for the Thunder Kiss 100 and the Ozark Trail 100. The Thunder Kiss 100 was my most recent performance, and I thought in most ways this race was very comparable. However, that race finished a little over 1 mile under 100 miles, whereas this race finished a little over 2 miles over 100 miles, so considering my last two miles were some of my slowest because I was running around 20-minute miles, which cost me over 40 minutes and time, and that makes more sense to me because I think objectively the Thunder Kiss 100 had more difficult elevation. No race is created equal, so comparing performance can become a struggle. My overall place seems low compared to my recent races, but this one offers cash prizes and attracts a lot of runners from the Midwest running community because it is part of a series many runners complete. While 29/87 doesn’t seem that high, considering that 200 people signed up for this race, 29/200 seems pretty good.

    The last race I ran that had that many people sign up had to be the Badger Trail 100, so it is just a different race in so many ways. Writing about this now is convincing me that I did a pretty decent job and that I should be happy with my results. So many other runners talked with me about entering the lottery for Western State, which was a big reason they were doing this race. It makes me think maybe I should just enter the lottery. I don’t even know when it is, but seeing that it is a long shot that I will get in, what can it hurt? I wonder if I am making the commitment regardless of whether I change my mind if I enter the lottery. The race is so darn expensive, but I am a runner like everyone else. The big races do hold a lot of appeal for me, but it is just not enough to commit to any of them as part of a goal.

I got to talk a bit about my run today! Sorry, I am so distracted. My goal when I sat down was to start writing about the Mohican 100, which made me look up times and update my Excel sheet, where I keep my races. Today I wasn’t thinking about distance, except that I wanted to run more than I did yesterday and go to the store to buy something I would be excited to eat. I ran over 3 miles first and went by this restaurant called “My Place Café Bar Restaurant.” I have always been curious about it because it is close to my house, and I never see anyone in there. For the longest time, I was convinced it was a place that might sell equipment to other restaurants, but I looked it up today, and it advertises as a fine-dining place. I wondered why they picked this location. Maybe they were thinking they would attract the older retirement community to go there. They wrote on their website that they were interested in creating the “country club experience.” I am wondering what they meant by that. I worked at a country club, and it always felt like we were overcharging for the food, but people were paying for the experience, so why would any place say that? “Come here for the experience, the food is overpriced and mediocre!”

     But I don’t really know, just working in that environment for a while made me really disdain the rich because they were willing to pay ridiculous sums of money not for an item or service but for the opportunity to be exclusive and separate themselves from the lower classes. After going to the store, I decided to walk home.