Mindlessly doom scrolling is a danger of screens and social media.
As is mindlessly trawling through the internet and occasionally checking what marathons are nearby.
In 2022, as we emerged from the isolations of the Covid Pandemic (which in some ways has only gotten worse with conspiracy theories and junk-faux-science betraying vaccination and actual healthcare), I ran the Wild Wild West Marathon in Lone Pine, CA. It’s a tough event. Some people say it’s the seventh toughest in America. And by some people who knows what that even means… it’s like the guys on Hollywood Boulevard or in Times Square wearing polo shirts and carrying laminated badges declaring themselves to be an “Official Tour Guide.” According to who? And I could get a laminated 3×5 card saying I’m an “Official Ambassador of the Space Colony Rigel Seven.” Doesn’t make it true.
However, in this case, the difficulty of the Wild Wild West Marathon might be at least “truth adjacent.” The start line at Spainhower Park is at 3700 feet above sea level. Over the next 10-11 miles, runners ascend the mountainous trails to a maximum elevation of 6600 feet above sea level… or, ya know, 1.25 miles above the ocean. That’s obviously higher than Denver, Colorado. Math! The grueling course offers a 13 hour time limit (14 if you’re doing the 50K or… gulp… 50 miler.)
But it’s the views that make it worth it. Countless westerns have been shot here (albeit I’m sure there is a list somewhere… like HERE or HERE… and of course there’s also the entire Western Film History Museum in the town!
And after nearly giving up on solving my webserver eccentricities/persnicketiness, I think I found a workaround for burying one or two photos into the uploaded text… if you can see a snapshot or two below, the sacrificial offering made to Tim Berners-Lee must have been accepted:
IMAGE … IMAGE … IMAGE? No? Well, it was just me and a bunch of rocks.
Worst case, if my offering and efforts were deemed unworthy of internet uploads 2025, you CAN see my original pics from 2022 HERE.
For the visually impaired web blog, a few wordsmithed images for your amusement:
The start line was an inflatable blue arch. The marathon apparently had 26 runners per the pasta feed packet pickup the night before… but that was before I and a a few others picked up our bibs at 5:15 AM (including I overheard one person signing up on the spot!). So let’s say there are about 30 people milling about a few minutes before the 6 AM air horn. It’s still dark out and the race director warns us to use lamps to see the reflective ribbons in the opening miles… but not to worry, he’d lead us out on his motorbike. The air horn is blown and we take off, with me and a few others trying to keep pace with the motorbike to have some semblance of where we are going.
Motorbike, reflective ribbons, hell – non reflective neon ribbons once the sun was up — it didn’t matter because the course wasn’t particularly well marked or if it was the key made little sense to me. We were supposed to be following yellow/green ribbons (they were more lime than anything I suppose). But we also sometimes were following just red or orange ones. And after the last aid station at mile 23-ish, we were supposed to follow blue ribbons… which would double back on certain parts of the trail so if you did spot a ribbon you weren’t sure which direction to go.
That is IF you spotted a ribbon. In the opening miles I got lost twice. Thankfully I was with a few other folks (big shout out to Bryce and April who I guess celestial navigated us out of a few crevices and way-found a couple of boulders to climb up and out of the billabongs we found ourselves dead-ended into). Sometimes I tried to find my own way but seriously those ribbons were either placed in such a way that I didn’t see them… or if I did, I didn’t know which way to turn anyway. The secret I think was to go three minutes PAST the point of thinking I must have missed the ribbon because around minute 4 or 5 there would be one… except of course those two times earlier in the race and the one time as I tried to find the path to the finish line (I vetoed the other person who was confused who advocated going back UP the mountain… I did enough UP and I wanted to go down… and the park HAD to be down from where we were… I was just lucky we were on a fire road at that point rather than pathfinding through the bush).
So lost three times in total. Fell twice… but only once drawing blood at the 90 minute mark. What mile was that? Who knows? My Garmin watch never connected with the GPS signal so I only had a timer function working… and the mile markers were nonexistent. You could ask somebody along the way but it varied if they were doing the 50 miler, the 50K, the marathon, the half, etc. Everybody had a slightly different route depending on their ribbon color… or sometimes the exact same route depending on, um, inventory?
In the end, I ran slower than in 2022… I was battered and bruised and bloodied and tired. But the views were mostly nice… when I wasn’t looking down at the rocks and gravel trying to maintain my footing or looking up at the seemingly never-ending hill that we had to traipse up (I rarely had the strength or wherewithal to run up any hills — not only because of the toll the altitude and the incline was taking but also I really, really wanted to make sure I stayed upright and spotted any trail markings).
And despite all the snafus, the missteps, the rock scrambles, climbing over paddock gates, etc, etc, etc… I got a pretty good burger at the finish. That’s not nothing.