http://www.javelinajundred.com/
The
Javelina 100 is in Fountain Hills, AZ which is near Phoenix. I'd call it a
100 miler with a great sense of humor and family atmosphere. I would
highly recommend it as a first 100 miler effort, but it's not easy, mostly
because it can be very hot and there is no shade. But running during the
night with a full moon is great.
I really thought this would be a good year for the race, especially last
week when the daytime hight temperature was 59 degrees on Tuesday. As it
turned out it wasn't much cooler than other years-I think the website for
the event said it got to 84 degrees on Sat. The amusing thing was that I
told my crew/pacers and my friend Wally from MN to bring warm clothes for
running during the night. The warm clothes were hardly needed.
I've volunteered at this race a few times and ran the 100K two years ago
and have run a 50K race on the same loop, so know those loops pretty well.
The 100 mile version is the same loop 6 times, plus an added loop of 8.7
miles to make 101 miles. The loop is run in the reverse direction every
other time. There are two aid stations on the course, about 5 miles apart.
We started at 6:00 AM on Sat. Friday evening Linda, my crew for the first
part of the day and pacer for the first evening loop, sat me down and made
me get organized!! Not really, but we guesstimated about what my lap times
would be. I was very pleased that I was pretty well on target for the
first 4 laps.
Anyway, my time was 28:32. The race has a 30 hour cutoff, so I wasn't
last. I may have been the oldest woman to finish. There was a 69 year old
woman running and she was ahead of me for half the race. Unfortunately,
she got lost for two hours and that put her out of the race. Thankfully I
had 3 pacers, so no getting lost for me. My pacers were wonderful. Linda
Brewer did the first evening/night loop, then Joanne was on for the
second, and Beverly dragged me through what was loop number 6 and probably
the loop where I felt the worst, because we were running from 2:30 AM to
7: 30 AM. I had hoped to sneak a 15 minute nap before we went out, but I
had spent too much time with the blister fixing guys at the medical tent
to waste anymore time.
The only other minor crisis was that I forgot to put my transponder (chip)
on before I went out for the very last shorter loop. Discovered that when
I was out two miles and was not going back to pick it up. Beverly found it
and slapped it in on my ankle just before I crossed the finish line, so I
had an official time and all was well.
