W100: Missing The Buffaloes

Date: March 24, 2018

Purpose: alleviate the frustration of not running the real Buffalo Run

Distance: 16 miles

Sometimes work can really get in the way of life. For the past months of February-March and for the next 2 months of April and May, I would be traveling from Utah to Virginia for a short-term work assignment. Knowing that the Buffalo Run 50K out on Antelope Island in the middle of the vast Great Salt Lake was coming, my work priorities and deadlines always prevented me from actually taking the time to sign up for it. I’d done this lonely race before and really wanted to do it again as an early season test of how my fitness was doing. The solidarity, aridity, remoteness, and salinity found on Antelope Island in the middle of the Great Salt Lake are all very conducive to off-road distance running.  Three days before the race, I finally got back from Richmond, VA long enough to make it a priority to try and get into this annual even. So I contacted the race pleading with him to let me do the race as a ghost runner. They weren’t having any of it - I was not allowed to run that race in any form or format!  I would miss the Buffaloes!

 So that morning of the race, I spitefully went out and ran a 16 miler along the Bonneville Shoreline Trail from Big Cottonwood Canyon mouth to nigh unto the Milcreek Canyon mouth.  As I worked along the east bench of the Mount Olympus Wilderness Area, I often gazed out at Antelope Island loomed in the distance. It was almost as if I could see in my mind’s eye the runners battling the elements during the real Buffalo Run at that very moment. How I wish I could have been with them. But in hindsight I was not ready to run 34 miles, as 16 miles along the shoreline was already difficult enough for me that day. I hadn’t built the cardio base to jump up to 34 miles at this point. All my training was primarily at 500’ above sea level in downtown Richmond, VA, not at 5000’ above sea level in the foothills around Salt Lake City, UT. In the end, it was probably a blessing in disguise that I missed the registration deadline for the Buffalo Run, and did a confidence-building condensed shoreline trail run instead.