Weekend Roundup

I seldom use this blog purely as a diary, though I have occasionally used it to share, and sometimes even boast about things that have happened in my daily life, or to relate things that are going on with people close to me. Here are a few things that I did this weekend, that taken together, fall into all of those categories.

mOUnTaiNBACK Triumph: I ran the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK 50 Mile Relay and Ultramarathon on Saturday. I've run the mOUnTaiNBACK each of the last seven years. For the last three years, a friend of mine has put together the Draft Challenge Relay, a "race within a race" at Tussey. For the "DCR", he gets together as many local runners as he can, chooses the team size for the year (this year it was 5 person teams), picks the fastest in the group as captains, then holds a "Draft Night" where the captains pick their teams from among the remaining talent. The object is for the teams to be as even as possible. On race day, they go against each other not only for mOUnTaiNBACK glory, but to have bragging rights among the DCR participants. The race for the DCR crown is usually pretty close, but there are always a couple of outliers. In past years, I've known the thrill of near victory. This year, I got to taste the gut-churning fear of near total ignominy. This year, there were nine DCR teams. My team finished nowhere near the lead bunch. We came in 8th in the DCR, and it was a fierce battle through most of the race to come back from dead last. Our captain was one of the fastest guys on the course, and his team won the DCR last year. This year, partly because of that, his team was a little more handicapped in the draft. It was great fun, and everyone on my team outperformed their own expectations. We had to. I got the baton on my second leg, the grueling, 5.3 mile, mostly uphill run that is Leg 10 of the 12 leg course. My team was in last place by nearly two minutes. It took me nearly 4 miles to catch the runner ahead of me, an accomplished female triathlete. She and I traded back and forth all the way up a 2/3-mile, 10% grade hill. When I crested the hill, I just hoped she wasn't a better downhill runner than I was for the 3/4-mile sprint to the transition zone. She wasn't. I grabbed a minute lead for my team. On Leg 11, our gal, who is a very good hill runner, was aiming just to limit the damage that the other team's runner, their team captain, would do. She did very well, but at the final hand-off, the other team was ahead by nearly 4 minutes. But our team captain ran the last leg and closed that difference and then some. We secured next-to-last by about 4 minutes. After an afternoon of back-and-forth battles, it felt like we'd won the whole thing. (In fact, our team came in 23rd in the nearly 100 team field.)

What I Missed While Running the mOUnTaiNBACK: I missed Sarah Palin. No, I wasn't pining for her (although I used a vision of her to help get me up Leg 10). I probably would have missed her anyway, even if I hadn't been running the race. She made a surprise visit to the Pumpkin Festival at Way's Fruit Farm on the outskirts of town. Her entourage was heading from a campaign stop in the hard-bitten industrial city of Johnstown, about 80 miles away, to the airport in State College, and they stopped in at the Festival. There are photos aplenty and a video at the Centre Daily Times web site. Palin looked great. Most people in the photos seem amazed and pleased to be meeting her. Most of the guys have their jaws in their laps. And the gals are happy and proud. Keep pumpin' hands at the Pumpkin Fests, Sarah!

Beer: mOUnTaiNBACK weekend involves a good deal of beer drinking. My teammate Tara and I each packed a growler for after the run. (I got to drink first: After I gasped through Leg 10, I handed off to her so she could groan through Leg 11). I had an Otto's pilsener, a hoppy one that fooled a local beer connoisseur into thinking it was a pale ale. (Otto's pale ales are for serious hops addicts only. I think they're a bit overdone.) But after the race, there were a couple of IPAs in my cooler and I don't know how they found their way in there. So I sat down this evening for a taste comparison. One was Dale's Pale Ale, made in Lyons, Colorado, I get the impression it's a backpacker's beer. It comes in a can, which makes it ideal for the "Pack It In, Pack It Out" crowd. It's a very smooth brew, a little more malty than your average pale ale. It's very hoppy with a nice flowery bouquet, but not as bitter as some other hoppy IPAs. Very enjoyable, probably the best beer I've ever had from a can. Too bad I can't get it easily around here. Second up was Tröegs. Tröegs is not as malty as Dale's. It has complex taste. It has a sweet, flowery hoppiness, but it's not fruity. The edge is a light crispness that stops well short of excessive bitterness. It's not a showy, brute force IPA, and that's the way I like them. Finally I drank my last Southern Tier IPA. My assessment of a couple of weeks ago still stands. It's still my favorite. But since I don't have any more, I'll go to the fridge and get another Tröegs.