Holiday Binge

2

January 9, 2014 by trailcats

(by Harley)

So it’s been about a month since Holly and I ran our 100-mile run. And now Holly just ran a 50k fun run while I still milk the recovery. The Trail Cats show up again at the Mountain Mist 50k in Huntsville, AL in a couple weeks. Holly will post about that, until then, here’s what we’ve been up to:

1. Free lunch. I burned ~12,500 calories on the Bartram 100 mile run. Holly burned 9700 calories. Considering a couch marathon burns about 2000 calories a day, that’s about ~10,000 Monopoly calories to play with over the holidays. Mission accomplished, and then some (I’ve gained 3 lbs…none of it muscle or other useful soft tissue).

2. Bandera, TX. We make an annual holiday trek to visit our moms in Texas (Houston, San Antonio). The last three years we’ve added a stop in Bandera to visit Holly’s step-sister. Tiny Bandera also hosts the Tejas Trails Bandera trail run (100k/50k/25k). This is the second year we’ve ran parts of the course. Last year the winter heat shocked us, this year it was drizzly and cool. The trails had a few sticky mud spots, but were generally great.

Bandera Mud

Texas Hill Country for the Holidays

I lasted about 6 miles before a shin splint flared up (covering up discomfort of still tight Achilles—‘only one thing can hurt the most’). Neither of us was going to be a hero, so we ran/walked the remainder of the 10-mile loop and vowed to get back for the race…next year maybe?

Holly teasing the sharp sotol plants.

Harley found this on the trail after he started to fall behind Holly.

3. Yeti Sighting. There’s a slim overlap between trail runners and social butterflies that Holly has found with GUTS (slim…since aren’t most trail runners not social butterflies?). So when I tagged along with Holly for an soggy Yeti Spaghetti trail fun run knowing I wasn’t going longer than one of the four 6ish-mile laps, I admit I was there primarily to be a social butterfly for a change (= drink beer at 10am and have a last go with the stack of holiday sugar before feeling too much regret). Jason Green gets props as the Chief Yeti, and already pretty famous (click this button, or this button). Good times, Yetis.

4. GUTS. The Georgia Ultrarunning & Trailrunning Society starts the year by hosting the Fat Ass 50k timed fun run at Sweetwater Creek State Park near Atlanta. I was a game-time scratch with some lingering aches (I’m a baby), and Holly thought she’d only do 3 of the 6 potential laps. Of course she ran all 6, with a few laps of encouragement from Molly.

5. Chili. The real story of the Fat Ass was the chili contest. Franco (my only reason to log in to Friendfacebookster) was Chili Master. I helped out by plugging in extension cords and setting crock pots to low (but to be clear, I was not that great of a volunteer…probably wouldn’t want to ask me to help out with other stuff). With 20+ chili entries, Franco shrewdly overruled the planned popular vote and set up a dictatorship panel of judges.

Fat Ass Chili Contest

Brownie Cupcake Slider to chase your chili. Awesome work, Joy!

The voting was only slightly interesting…not a lot of data points to chart. The average score from all judges was 5.8, and 51% of the votes were either a 5 or a 6 out of 10! Each of the 7 judges had a similar standard deviation and average score…they basically liked all the chili, and determined the winner by choosing a few most/least favorites.

Distribution of voting: I expected more of a Poisson distribution than the nearly perfect bell curve.

In the end, the crock pots were empty, so everyone won, right? Nope. Here are the results and bragging rights:

Overall winners:
1. Kirsten Jones – White Chicken Chili
2. Kathy KJ Otis – Spicy Mean & Beans
3. Cathi Monk – Complete the FA Chicken Chili

There was a lot of controversy about what constitutes ‘chili’ vs. ‘soup.’ What’s the right meat, and why veggie? Can it have dairy in it? To be nice, we are giving veggie its own podium:
1. Faraz Bassari – Aztek Style
2. Bryan Barrett – 3 Bean Meatless
3. (tie): Holly Adams – Havana Moon Veggie & Kim Ruple – Vegetarian Veggie Chili

Roger loves my new shoe box.