Sigh…
Oof. Meteorological fall got off to a rough start around here. On Tuesday morning I should have been singing and dancing around my house, putting up orange twinkle lights and strewing pumpkins everywhere. The decorations did go up, but I was really dragging. There were a few reasons, but the main one was, on Monday night I found out… My big race in March has been CANCELED. You might be thinking, didn’t you have a race in November that was canceled as well? Yes! I did. What in the world is going on? Have I been cursed??? To be more accurate, the race in November wasn’t canceled. It was listed on UltraSignup as a 50k but then reformatted to be an “adventure race” involving things like kayaks and bicycles (nope- not doing that). The race in March, Hungryland Ultra, was outright canceled. We got an email from the race director Monday night, sadly informing us that he had made the very tough decision to cancel the race. He said that it’s a very difficult race to put on, and that in recent years the lack of volunteers has made it especially tricky. When I did it last year, the aid stations in the middle of the course were unmanned overnight (but had plenty of water and ice for runners coming through). This didn’t bother me, but there were people running all night long. The RD said he couldn’t in good conscience jeopardize the safety of the runners again. Obviously for those of us already signed up, our money will be refunded. I’m SO SAD!!! But the next thing you might be thinking is, why don’t you just sign up for another race? Not so fast! Let me list the ways in which this race was perfect and unique: It’s close to where I live. There really aren’t a lot of trail ultras in South Florida, and this one was only an hour away from me so I could sleep in my own bed the night before and not have to drive far away and pay for a hotel. I loved the format. It was a 33 hour race, where you ran as many, or as few, 15 mile loops as you wanted. There were people who used the race to run their first 50k, people who ran over 100 miles, and all distances in between. I had an emotional attachment to it. Last year, the race was on my 60th birthday, and I ran 60 miles (my longest distance to date). It was such an incredible experience that I signed up again as soon as registration opened on April 1st. This time, the race would be the day before my birthday, but since I planned to run farther, I would still be running past midnight (if all went well) and into my actual birthday. As you can see, there is not going to be another race like this one. Obviously I’ve been scouring UltraSignup incessantly! There are plenty of Florida races, but they all have something wrong with them- wrong distance, wrong time, already sold out (I know they canceled Hungryland now so as to let people find other races, but some of the big ones are already sold out) OR the races have a weird format that I’m not interested in- a track ultra, or an urban ultra (where you’re running around city neighborhoods). I just want a trail ultra, on my birthday weekend, not too far away, where I can run whatever distance I want. Is that really too much to ask??? Ha. Don’t worry about me… I’ll just be sitting here, smelling my pumpkin clove candle while scheming and dreaming. I’ll figure something out. How is your September going so far?