Figured I should post a recap from CCC100

I totally forgot to write a recap for it and it's been 2 weeks now so I don't really feel like writing out a huge super long report, but here's what happened:

Finished in 26:55. First 74 miles were really good, absolutely died after that and lost a ton of places and time, felt very lucky to finish.

My pace was really good for the first 74 and my effort levels were exactly where the should've been. However, I pulled my calf somewhere around 70 and it just started to get really bad at 74. Also, I had been getting sick (almost threw up the night before the race) and my body was failing to convert calories to energy. In other words, I could sit down in an aid station, eat 1000+ calories, and then just sit there for up to an hour to let it process, go out and run, and within 1 mile, feel like I was so hungry and weak that I was going to pass out. My first 74 miles took somewhere around 16:50 (on pace for a sub 23, about 4 hours faster than what I ran), but I took about 10 hours for the last 26, mostly because I wasted 3-4 hours lying down in aid stations trying to recover. I'm still not quite sure what happened... I don't think I went out too fast and I'd like to think I could've held onto that pace if I hadn't hurt my leg and messed up my energy levels so badly, so I think getting sick was a big part of it.

Overall, Cascade Crest was pretty miserable and the altered course this year (going over a mountain instead of through it via tunnel somewhere around mile 50) was not incredibly well done in my opinion. Right around mile 52, we had to run down a rock-covered ski slope that had lots of boulders and rocks covered by straw, which proved to be a tripping hazard for a TON of people and while I didn't fall going down it, it was totally unrunnable, which cost me a lot of time. Also, the whole "trail from hell" section was pretty obnoxious. It included roughly 6 miles of totally unrunnable and barely hikeable trail with tons of fallen trees, huge rocks, etc. I'm all for a challenging run, but the keyword there is "run". When a part of a course becomes unrunnable, it should NEVER be included in a "running" race. I do these things to run, not to traverse fallen trees and giant boulders, so as far as I'm concerned, this area of the race should either be fixed up or removed.

When I finished, I said I would never do this race again, but I just might. I almost certainly won't next year, but who knows, I might come back for a better time in the future.