El Vaquero Loco 50K in the books!! What an epic course must be one of the most scenic courses anywhere! My neighbor Hugh and I headed up to Afton WY, Friday afternoon had us some good Pizza Hut dinner and went to the Race briefing. Long and short of it - I knew it was going to hurt. My training has been great in the under 10 miles.. stepping up to the 50k distance was going to hurt, but I needed to get it done. After a short night we made our way to the start at the cottonwood campground. The weather looked stellar and the course beautiful. First 4 miles are straight up to the first peak at just under 10,000 ft. then you get some downhill past some mountain lakes and then another climb up to the second peak. Once you hit the second peak you get almost 8 miles of down hill to the turnaround. You lose around 4000 ft going down to the turnaround so, since this is an out-n-back I kept thinking the whole time - I gotta come up this!! Arrgh. Hit the turn around in 3:45 felt pretty good, switched my shirt out and grabbed a couple swigs of Mtn Dew and headed back up. The eight mile climb back up to the peak was a bruiser. Although you cross like 6 streams and waterfalls so, I was able to soak my hat and cool down a few times. The sun was starting to beat down... Long story made short lost about an hr on that climb out of there...Hit the second peak and knew my goal of under 8 hrs wasn't going to happen and if I wanted to get under 9 I needed to move it. So, put the head down and caught up to another runner I knew and we cruised the rest of the way in together. Overall - I feel pretty happy considering I've only done a couple training runs in the double digits - Would do again for shizzle! Peace. 31 miles I had 9,300 vert. 
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