So now we’re back in Huaraz for our last night. It’s Ieva’s and my 10th wedding anniversary tonight, and we’re going out for a really nice evening. Our friend Bill Lockwood actually arranged to buy us an incredibly nice dinner here, even though he’s in the US. Bill was also the inspiration for us to take this wonderful trip in the first place. Thanks so much Bill! We’ll be hoisting a fine beverage in your honor this evening!

Tomorrow we start the journey back home. I’m really looking forward to putting some of our stories and pictures online when I get back. So far this has been the terse, flavorless, newswire-style version. This has been a fantastic trip.

See everyone soon.

We descended again, staying roped the whole way, and staying just ahead of the snow that blew in for the next 24 hours. No regrets whatsoever. We’re glad to have gotten some more technical snow experience, and we’re really glad to be back in one piece.

The rock climbing in the valley was pretty good — a lot of granite slab climbing that was reminiscent of Yosemite valley. We had a failed attempt to set up a zip line from one end of the steep narrow valley to the other, but that’s another story.

One huge highlight was getting to meet some of the special forces from the Peruvian military. They were there on a training exercise for 20 candidates for their equivalent of the Navy SEALs. Get this: as part of the exercise, they climb Vallunaraju with their combat gear, and spend the night up there. That’s some serious toughness and suffering. We made friends with one of their officers, Oscar, who is their doctor, and an incredibly nice guy. He let us get a bunch of pictures in and around the huge trucks that they brought up there. They’re giant old Spanish bohemoths that are about 27 years old. I’ll post the pictures when I get back.

We had a blast hanging out with the New York folks. We had a big birthday bash for Chris when we got back to Huaraz, which included a bunch of dancing at the local discoteca, La Tomba. They all left Peru yesterday after 5 weeks here. I’m sure we’ll meet up for more adventures back in the states.

We’re off tomorrow morning for our last mountain excursion, Yanapaccha. This one’s a little more technical than the rest of them (which weren’t really technical at all). It’s also more off the beaten path, so hopefully we’ll get a little more opportunity for doing our own exploring and route finding. Up until now, we’ve had enough to deal with, learning about altitude, basic snow/crevasse travel, and logistics. Hopefully we can have a little fun on this one and throw in a little technical climbing too.

We should be back on the 2nd, which is our tenth wedding anniversary, in time for a night on the town to celebrate. Yahoo!

We opted not to try Tocllaraju during that visit to the valley, since I was feeling pretty sub-par, both in terms of health and acclimitization. Nothing serious, but enough to keep us from wanting to bump it up a notch out of concern for safety.

Since this is our 10th anniversary, we opted to go all out, and hired a cook, Elias, for this particular trip to basecamp. He stayed with us in basecamp, and prepared all of our meals. Let me say that this was one of the best decisions that we made so far! Elias’s cooking was out of this world, and it was such a luxury to have all of your meals prepared and cleaned for you, without having to worry about getting sick because of the food or water (the cooks are very careful). We had a cook tent and dining tent (which we actually just used as a gear tent so that we could hang out with Elias). We got to try a lot of Peruvian dishes, as well as some good old standbys that taste out of this world after a hard day or two.

Speaking of luxury, we hired five burros to carry all of the loads up to basecamp and back for us. Actually, practically everyone does this, but it sure felt luxurious! Climbing in Peru is quite a switch from what we’re used to.

We found out that the 18th was Elias’s birthday, so we turned the cooking tent into la discoteca using a bunch of headlamps on blink mode, and an iPod and speakers supplied by some other Americans. Party!

Basecamp is beautiful, with all of the white mountains surrounding the moraine and meadow. There were probably 50 people there at any one time, but it didn’t feel crowded. Just about everyone that we met was friendly and incredibly helpful, since we’re mountaineering novices.

We fit in a couple days of rock climbing on a granite cliff above basecamp, and on some sweet boulders down in the valley floor. The rock in this valley is amazing, and amazingly similar to Yosemite in some locations. We saw someone on what must be a new route on a pretty impressive overhung wall on the way out.

Still no chance to offload pictures, I’ll post them along with some more details as soon as I can.

We don’t know what our plans are next, but we’ll probably head out to another peak after a day or so of replenishing and reorganizing.

By the way, we did get to go bouldering and mountain biking before leaving for Ishinca Valley. Both were outstanding. The mountain biking here is phenomenal, and getting shown thousands of vertical feet of singletrack by a local was an absolute treat. More pictures and info on the riding when I get a chance, maybe after we get back.

We just made it in to Huaraz, the small mountain town that will be our home base, and it´s actually been an incredibly easy pleasant trip so far. Despite 24 hours of straight travel, and not speaking a lick of Spanish, all the transportation changes weren´t bad at all.

One of the highlights was the bus ride into the mountains. We got the front-row seats against the windshield on the second level of the double decker bus (exposed!). We followed the coastline for about 4 hours, then crept up to 10,000ft through the mountains to get to Huaraz after another 4 hours. The hotel that we´re staying at is beautiful, and the beer and food are delicious. No stomach problems yet, other than what I brought with me from last week. We´ll probably go bouldering today, mountain biking tomorrow, and then head up to Ishinca (sp?) valley for the basecamp of our first climbing leg of the trip. We´ll stay there for about a week.

While we haven´t run into anyone that we know directly yet, of course we´ve already run into people that we have tons in common with already — one of the nice things about the relatively small climbing world. The people we had breakfast with yesterday are all from New York. A couple of them live in Keene Valley, and one of them grew up and lives in Wappingers Falls (a few miles from Hopewell Junction, where I grew up). They´ll probably head up to Ishinca valley the same time as we will, so we´ll have good company.

More updates to follow!

Here are the best pictures from yet another perfect day bouldering with Doug and Zach.

Basically, we had an awesome time. We did Skull Queen on Washington Column, had a great time, and had amazing luck with the weather. We got to see and meet lots of great old and new friends (one of my favorite parts about climbing in the valley, actually). We got to work on a new project and get new motivation for training when we get home. We fit in some super high-quality bouldering in Bishop, and I got to go see my sister in Fort Worth, TX on the way home.

That was about as good as we could have done with only 10 days! Here is the gallery of the best pictures and commentary from the trip.

We were not disappointed. Diana’s friend Jean joined us on the team, making it five of us to split the 24 hours, which makes things much easier. Jean’s partner Kristen and friend Joyce came along too. Wow, what a group. These people are the bomb. We had an absolute blast the whole time. Basically, it seemed like a lot of partying and having as much fun as possible, interspersed with some rough mountain biking.

The course pretty tough for us! Really technical, but Jay, Diana, and Jean all had good advice and coaching for us that really helped out. I feel like I learned a ton in the process. No major injuries on our team, which was a big plus (although I did take some chunks out of my arm and got some road rash trying to make up for lost training time the week before).

We’ve got to figure some other event that we can do with this group. It was way too much fun not to put together something else with them. Here are some of the better pictures from the weekend.

This whole thing started about two years ago, when I started doing long (30+ mile) day hikes with my friend Ray. We did the JFK 50 together. That led to the Laurel Highlands Ultra (70 miles) six months later. On Ieva’s and my last big road trip, I kept up my long runs. Finally, in December, I decided that I might as well give a 100-miler a shot, since I had such a good base, and had done so well during the last race.

You can read about a lot of the training in my previous posts in the running category. Basically, I felt fairly ready for this race, but I was acutely aware of the fact that there was a lot more that I could have done to prepare. In the end it came down to time — I was already spending 20 hours per week getting cardiovascular exercise, and neither my marriage nor my business would withstand much more. I did what I could, and hoped that it would be enough to get me to the finish line. If I happened to have a stellar day, and did everything right, maybe I’d get a good finish time, too. I figured that sub-24-hours would be great, but I’d be happy with 30 and an official finish.

The weather conditions turned out to be perfect. 70 degrees and partly cloudy, which is truly a blessing in Ohio in mid-June. The race took place practically on the summer solstice, so that would minimize the night running as well, which can be a little demoralizing.

I was fairly nervous for this race, which is pretty unusual for me. I haven’t gotten this uptight about something in a really long time. I think that I had so much effort invested already, and so many friends and family knew about it, that I felt quite a bit of pressure to pull it off. It would have been very difficult to go home empty-handed after such a long training cycle. I don’t know if I would have had another in me, since I’ve really been wanting to spend more time climbing.

I made a lot of mistakes in the first half of the race:

• I went out too fast for the first 25 miles (everyone did).
• I couldn’t carry enough food and water between aid stations. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be seeing my crew that often during the first half of the race, and I didn’t have a pack or big pockets. I only had one small hand bottle, which wasn’t quite enough.
• I didn’t take in enough salt until mile 50. This was just plain not knowing the difference.

After paying a little for those mistakes, I had the incredibly good fortune to run into Paul Schmidt, a very cool guy who has more ultramarathon experience than anyone I’d ever met (56 or so completed 100-milers). He had a bad achilles tendon, and was considering whether it was worth it for him to continue the race. When he heard about how my race was going, he offered to run the rest with me. He’d gain a partner, and I’d gain a ton of experience.

It felt like a bit of a gamble for me to drop my strategy and start following someone new, but to be honest, the thing that I wanted most out of this whole experience was to gain an education, so I figured this was the best thing that I could do. Off we went.

Paul was just a fountain of good advice. He’d tell me what I was doing wrong, and what to do to fix it. I’d obey despite any of my own instincts, and he was always right. It only took a few iterations like that for me to just resign myself to following whatever he said. Ieva laughed when I described the previous 20 miles: “Sensei speaks, I obey.” It was pretty funny, because I was just hanging on behind him, absorbing everything that I could.

Some of his advice sounds kind of obvious, but it’s hard to emphasize how true it is when you follow it to the extent that he’s talking about. I’m probably not going to run ultras quite the same way ever again as a result. Here are some of the more important ones:

• It takes a lot of salt to run an ultra. Paul’s rule of thumb was one Succeed! capsule for every 30 oz. of water. That’s only about one and a half hand bottles. He emphasized that whenever your stomach gets really upset, it’s probably lack of salt. I followed this for the second half of the race, and it helped immensely.
• It takes a lot of food, too. When you’re feeling even a little down on energy, you must throw food at the problem. Preferrably sugar or some other kind of carbs. I went with home fries and pizza for a lot of the second half, with the occasional ice cream sandwich. In the end, I needed to eat so frequently that I just kept a bag of food in my hand at all times. Water in one hand, food in the other.
• You have to run all the time if you don’t want to walk most of the time. Paul runs practically everything — up hills, down hills, flats. This was completely counter to a lot of what I’d read and trained for, and was one of the hardest points for me to accept. He’s right, though. You can run efficiently up hill if you need to, and it’s worth it to avoid breaking rhythm if you’re serious about making good time. Otherwise, you’ll just walk almost all of the second half of the race. It doesn’t really feel any worse to run than to walk, and you can tell yourself that you’ll get done sooner, too.

I actually liked running all night. I was prepared for it mentally, and it had a cool seriousness to it — you knew that you weren’t doing something run of the mill. We really started reeling people in during this section. He had said to me earlier that the race only begins after 100km (63 miles). I thought he meant in terms of effort. Then I realized that he also meant in terms of competition. That’s when you really start racing.

Can I take this opportunity to mention how much my crew rocked? My Mom, Dad, and Ieva stayed up the whole time and provided support, warm food, gear, foot rubs, you name it. They were the absolute best. It’s hard to emphasize what a selfless thing it is to crew for someone running a 100-miler. They say that “crew” stands for “cranky runner, endless waiting.” Thank you, guys.

You get a big mental boost when the sun finally comes up. I probably should have pushed harder and kept the pace up, but I was running alone at that point, I had no close time goals left, and honestly I just got lazy. I trudged and jogged the final 10 miles.

It took a while for it to sink in that I was finally done. It was hard to believe that I was finally allowed to stop running. After all, I’d started running, then watched the sun come up, then watched the sun go down, then watched it come back up again. I felt pretty good. I sat in a chair, had a big breakfast and a beer, and hung out with everyone for a few hours before heading back to the hotel for a nap. My time was 28 hours 39 minutes. I came in 20th in the championships out of 28, and 62nd overall out of 135.

When I got to the finish line, I whispered to Ieva, “you know, that was a really good experience, and I’m very glad that I did it, but I don’t think I’m going to do one of these ever again.” OK, maybe that was a bit hasty, but I’m definitely not going to do another 100-miler for a while. Ieva and I had a talk a month or so ago, and it didn’t take much for me to realize that it would be a lot more fun to work at pushing my climbing as far as I can with my wife as my partner, rather than going out and running by myself.

I’m really looking forward to applying a lot of what I’ve learned from this experience to big walls and long climbing days. Maybe someday after a lot of good climbing years with my wife, I can come back to 100-milers and work on my times.