The Agony and the Ecstasy

Lessons learned from running the High Desert 50k last weekend, illustrated version:

• It is seriously cold in the desert in the winter. Like, ice spontaneously forming in the hydration pack cold. The desert is not messing around.
  
  
• [Corollary to the previous point] Los Angeles does not condition one to endure temperature extremes.
  
  
• It is not necessarily a good idea to try to smile while running. It is never as flattering as one thinks it will be:
  
  
  
• Photo agencies are way too possessive of their proofs. (This lesson was actually learned after the race)
  
  
• The High Desert 50k has the worst finish route in all of racingdom. It starts and ends at a college gymnasium, and about a mile and a half from the end, one can see the gym and the parking lot (where one's car is parked!). However, one still has to slog a mile and a half around the back of the gym, skirting the football field and the basketball courts, dragging one's tired, swollen feet on a rocky dirt path. Uphill. At this point, one feels murderous.
  
  
• Finish line pictures cannot be trusted to convey the true murderousness of the subject:
  
  
  
• There are worse things than one's bra strap chafing under the hydration pack. For instance, one could have the brilliant idea to tape the oft-chafed area, and one could then suffer 31 miles of tape rubbing one's back entirely raw. For instance.
  
  
• As has been proven innumerable times before, the misery of post-race soreness is soon forgotten in the pursuit of the next big race. Catalina 50 miler, I'll see YOU in a month.