Sunday, December 04, 2022

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/


Thursday, October 13, 2022

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:
================================================================

Jean Pommier's report here

Monday, July 25, 2022

Rebuilding..

November every year is my time to plan my racing calendar, its a ritual I have kept up since I got into running in 2004.

These events are my anchor for the year, big part of my lives revolves around them, it fuels life and helps with other aspects of life, I love training, a daily, weekly and monthly routine builds up for a fruitful time rest of the day.  For 2022 I mostly had 4 races which I was looking forward too.

1. Mt Charleston Marathon: Attempt to get a BQ
2. Scout Mt 100: Redemption from 2021 DNF
3. BigSeki : A Big loop of fast-packing covering Kings and Sequoia NP
4. BigFoot 200M Race: A 200M footrace in Cascades, pacific northwest.

I was pretty charged up to say the least, I started off training for a BQ M in Jan on the 1st run itself, I injured my hamstrings and I was off running mostly for next 2 months, March 1st week I made the decision to drop out of Charleston M since I didn't see myself running fast enough and more importantly, I thought I would jeopardise my others 3 events. I changed my focus to finish the unfinished at Scout mountain 100M, Training for a 100M hilly run and fast marathon are quite different, during 100M training one can getaway with slow long runs unlike marathons.

I started my training in March and got a nice 10 weeks Training block with Miwok and Quicksilver 100k as my big training weeks, finally started tapering 3 weeks prior. Scout 100 was much different than last year , it was 20 degrees cooler and I got chance to work on some of mistakes I made last year. I managed a good finish, things worked out as planned for most part and finished in 32:32Hrs.

Next inline was BigSEKI loop in July, but during our visit to Grand Tetons and Yellowstone NP we got infected with COVID, which drained me quite a bit, I found running much hard and I lost all motivation to train as well, which was much bigger concern. BigSEKI was looming and I wasn't recovered yet, so had to decide on cancelling it by Jun end. my 2nd event was dropped out.

I was still hopeful of bouncing back to BigFoot and kept it open for 2 more weeks of long runs on Jul 2nd and 9th, but those weekend runs seemed pretty hard on my, it would take much longer to recover and I didn't have motivation to train again! I made the decision to differ Bigfoot by Jul 9th. There went my 3rd event of the year. I was pretty unmotivated and dull, I had lost my anchors, but I kept showing up for my runs and gave myself time to recoup.

Eventually Jul 26th weekend long run I did bounce back, I felt back to same old self and started enjoying my runs, my moods were much better, I started planning for some adventure runs instead of long Ultras. Life seemed good!.

These past 6 weeks phase of my life was mostly rebuilding myself out of COVID, mostly digging myself out of a dull period.  getting that joy back of outdoors feel rejuvenated. I am in gratitude to get to back to this Endorphin Rush, I missed it badly. Ultra mindset of just hanging in-there in low phase and keep chugging along helps to climb out to brighter phase.

Next I am looking forward to a adventure run and works towards it...