2025: A year of bucket list adventures.

50th time around the Sun is year away.  2024 marks 22 years of running and 20 years of Ultrarunning. Over the years I have been adding events to my wishlist, without actually addressing them. I decided to change that in 2025 and make a year of Bucket list adventures. Here is my "plan" to do 12 events.

I went through my Bucket list and wanted to maintain a good balance of Skiing, Mountain Biking, Ultrarunning and Fast packing.

Update on Feb 28th, 2025.

Committed:

1. Ski trip to Colorado (Feb 20-25, Completed):

I have been wanting to plan a Ski trip with my brother Ajith and 2025 seems like a good year to knock of 3 resort Skiing in Colorado, we plan to take advantage of 3 resorts Epic pass allows (Keystone, Vail, Beaver Creek). Sanjay M joined for the trip as well.

2. Run Gorge 100K (Signed up):

Another spectacular course in Oregon.

3.  High Sierra Loops Trail (47 Mile run) (July end / Aug 2nd week?) :

4: Wasatch 100 miler (Got selected, will showup)

5: Fastpacking NZ Trails (Plan in progress):

One week of fast-packing few popular trails with Sanjay and Travel NZ with family. Still need to research on trails, considering following so far:

Heaphy Trackor Abel Tasman: Approximately 49 miles (78.4 kilometers).

Routeburn Track: Approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers).

Milford Track: Approximately 33.2 miles (53.5 kilometers).

Kepler Track: Approximately 37.3 miles (60 kilometers).

Rakiura Track: Approximately 20 miles (32 kilometers).

More details on great walks here:

https://www.newzealand.com/us/feature/great-walks-of-new-zealand/

6. Bike across Tioga Road:

Highway 120(Tioga Road) from crane flat to tioga pass, opens sometime in June, 1st day of the road opening is exclusive for bicyclists. would like to do that.

Deferred:

1. Run Keys 50 Mile race :

Running on the keys bridge is supposed to be scenic (albiet hot), I have a travel planned in May to Florida to visit family, I will include this race around the same time.

2. Skimo Shasta:

Shasta is one of the Iconic moutains in Nor Cal, extending theme of #1, would like pick enough skills to Skimo in April-Jun timeframe.

3. Run Bighorn 100mi:

4. A week of fast-packing Nolans 14 

Tentative:

1. Get started with Backcountry Skiing :

I started Skiing in '99 when my brother Ajith took me out in Detroit, I immediately loved the sport, though I didn't spend much time mastering resort Skiing inspite of staying so lose to Tahoe, until recently when I brought whole Skiing gear and started buying Ski season passes, which definitely improved my Resort Skiing Skills.

Another goal I have was to Skimo few interesting mountains in California. So Starting Jan plan to explore some Backcountry Skiing with my Skiing buddies Sanjay & Khanan.

2. A day mountain biking around National parks or do a scenic race

post WS lottery statistics (2023)

Triggered by recent article in UR magazine on how hard getting into WS and HR lotteries have become, I wanted to capture actual results after WS lottery.

Its interesting to see after 9 years all 5 have gotten,  unless lottery format is changed its just going to be pushed out even further in upcoming years. one suggestion a friend made was to have 2 years worth of qualifiers before one applies, that eliminates 50% of the entrants and improves odds for the rest.

Total WS entrants

Tickets         Entrants        odds(%)

1               3,560           1

2               1,578           2

4               731             3.96

8               525             7.76

16              374             14.9

32              232             27.6

64              127             47.64

128             37              72.56

256             5               92.43

Actual WS entrants:

Tickets Actual/Applied Years 

 1 Ticket 29/3560      1

 2 Tickets 29/1578a    2

 4 Tickets 22/731      3

 8 Tickets 38/525a     4

 16 Tickets 69/374a    5

 32 Tickets 64/232a    6

 64 Tickets 57/127     7

 128 Tickets 33/37     8

 256 Tickets 5/5       9

Details of HR lottery are here:

https://www.irunfar.com/2023-hardrock-100-lottery-results

WS statistics here:

https://www.wser.org/2022/12/02/2023-lottery-statistics/

Lottery results here:

https://lottery.wser.org/

35th Ruth Anderson Memorial Ultras

 Capturing 2 reports, one by race volunteer Shiran Kochavi and other by veteran runner Jean Pommier.

Shiran's report as posted on Facebook:

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The 2022 edition of the Ruth Anderson Ultras had some amazing moments. We had Uwe Hollerbach running a 5:23:20 50k (a Uwe Hollerbach all-time record), Marcia Martin making her 50k debut at the age of 70, and Keith Blom doing a 10:02 50 miler looking dashing in his straw hat. We had the Pamakids and the Excelsiors fighting it out for club wins in the MUT Grand Prix(GP), while the GP guru himself, Quicksilver’s Jean Pommier, completed his Jeanaissance with a 3:54:25 50k and the overall 50-59 AG win for the GP 2022 season. We had Steve Jaber, Anil Rao, and Rajeev Patel execute a perfect race day while looking boss (Steve), badass (Anil), and suaver than a tux-clad George Clooney swimming in butter (Rajeev). We had family members running to the finish line together, friends running together step by step for 12 hours, and a girl holding a sign saying “run, mommy run!” We had an [unconfirmed] sighting of a Charles Blackney smile.

We also witnessed some speedy performances, including CJ Albertson’s 2:38:44 50k world record (in which I assisted by ensuring perfect table positioning for his bottles/gus), Fermin Villagran’s US 50k national team qualifying 2:55:20 (in which I assisted by telling Frenando, his support, that he looked handsome in “that shirt”), Verity Breen’s 4:00:04 Australian 50k 55-59 AG record, only three minutes over the world record (I assisted Verity by clapping vigorously after the first lap and yelling “go Verity!” after the fifth) and Chikara Omine’s new 50M US AG40-44 record at 5:05:41, taking four minutes over a record that stood for 41 years (in which I assisted by not distracting his wife with my idle chatter). In this speedy clutter, it was easy to miss 68 year old Angie Woolman’s amazing 4:52:00 50k performance, which was barely a minute over the US 65-69 AG record.

Record breaking or not, each of the day’s performances had its own story with its unique arc and accompanying challenges. They were each heroic and in their own uniqe way and worthy of an irunfar story or at least a Facebook race report. Some were just faster than others.

[I was a race volunteer this year and my job as valet to the “elites” was not particularly demanding so had plenty of time to snap some pics/videos. Below is a sample. The total package can be found at the following link and in the Facebook race album to follow if I can figure out how to upload full quality photos on Facebook ].

Link to the complete race album:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/VfgS1gFQfz5DatdD9

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Jean Pommier's report here