July 03, 2020

#206: Quest to Booneville 2 -- Type 2 Fun, Brady Runs His First Ultra!!

1 hour 38 minutes

Way back in November I successfully convinced (tricked) five of my closest friends to sign up for their first ultramarathon. Matt Rackers, Sean Furlong, Brady Manriquez and Thad Burkamper were going to take on the 50k at the Booneville Backroads Ultra while Travis Steffen and I were gonna slog our way through 100k. We had a few awesome months of building up training, holding everyone accountable through an oftentimes hilarious and inspiring group chat. I even designed weekly challenges and kept a running scoreboard which was ultimately going to lead up to a grand prize and, of course, all of us triumphantly finishing a brutal run down backcountry roads in Central Iowa.

That was the plan....and you know what they say about plans....

COVID hit. The race got rescheduled. The wind got knocked out of our sails. All of a sudden a silly ultramarathon seemed pretty inconsequential and the training we were all slowly building up dropped off significantly.

Flash forward to end of April and we all decided we needed to honor the date and, although we may not do the exact distance, we should all push ourselves physically to do something hard. That was the parameters, something hard and 'endurancey'.

So some of us laced up the running shoes, strapped on the heavy rucksack, or fired up the ole Peloton trainer and set off to kick some butt! (Thad even completed 15 miles a week after dislocating his elbow when a climbing rope hanging from a tree in his yard just became....a rope, sending him plummeting to the ground below)

Super proud of all these guys for stepping up to a variety of difficult endurance challenges! Though it wasn't quite the ultra we were preparing for, it was still one heckuva fun weekend and I was blown away by all of their accomplishments!! Can't wait to actually physically hang out and take on some sort of race with these guys in the future!

Hope you all enjoy the show!!