Jackpot Ultra 24hr Feb 15, 2025

Here we are again, showgirls, Las Vegas, Elvis - I suspect a very long race is happening.  Yikes!  This is our 5th Jackpot in 10 years though there has been an extensive 6 year gap since the previous one.  

The weather is gorgeous, sun, blue sky and a high of 17c.  The car is parked right by the course, about midway round (note Kevin's arse).  This is perfection. 

After Elvis sends us off with some tunes, it feels like a big running family out on the course.  There are some incredibly good runners across all distances - spoiler 6 runners will pass 100 miles in the 24 hours.  Further spoiler - I was not one of them.  Shocking, I know.  It was a treat to watch these people relentlessly and apparently effortlessly putting in the miles.  They possess an ability I can only dream of.

This is my favourite tree on the course.  I love the desert scenery so much.  Coming from snow and ice  and -24 this is a glorious state of affairs out here today.

Not your traditional race food but I wanted something to look forward to, so we picked up a slice of this magnificent creation.  I had a perfect sized cooler for it and I can tell you it was the best idea ever.  Zero regrets.

The first 10 hours are pleasant, the race starts at 8am and it's light until about 6pm.  You just have to keep going around and going around.  Total distance per loop is 2.30973 miles. 

Start line - bridge - concrete up - level - running the downhill - across the spillway - loop around grass - car - back across the spillway - gravel path by lake - rejoin concrete - cut across new bridge - teeny steep uphill - finish line. 

For some reason the scoreboard is showing kms so I have live tracking up on my phone for miles.  I can't do numbers during a race.

It's all going okay but my unrealistic expectation of suddenly being able to run fast at these things is not coming through in reality.  I'm quite a ways down the leaderboard - which makes absolute sense given the other runners and I knew that - but it's still discouraging.  

I reach 50k at 9:45 hours in.  I’m very happy to hit ultra distance. 

Other than plentiful Vaseline and a shoe/sock change, I haven’t really thought about my feet.  To be fair I have never really figured this out.  I am getting a spectacular reminder of how blister prone I am.  This seems like madness looking back, especially upon my return to coherent thinking, as I am now in possession of 'Fixing Your Feet' the bible of foot care.  

There's a new bridge since last time, it's gorgeous.  It also means a bit of bumpy gravel trail is off the route.  I liked this course a lot, well until I hated everything about it and everyone on it obviously.  

Everything becomes very still as the sun begins to set.  The miles from 30 - 40 are quite challenging as I'm getting huge blisters on the balls of my feet and I'm just plain tired.  

Like, so far.

It's dark.  I look like I've gone mad.  I probably have.  Coke is life.  My attire has a bit of a Rock n Roll Marathon theme going on and that race is in fact, the following weekend.  

I stopped at 15.5 hours of the race (11:30 pm).  I'm not entirely mad about it, I think reaching 42 miles is decent for a return to Ultras (Kev did 55 and was ready to be done before I was).  I really need to fix my feet, the agony from blisters was just stupid.  I was unable to limp through another 8 very slow painful miles to reach 50 at that point.  I am therefore regressing to age 42, screw off 50.

Medals were collected and we returned back to the hotel where I lost my actual mind when I realized I had to walk from the car to the room.  Torture.

I was very blessed to do some laps with awesome people in this race, see a lot of puppies, and enjoy the outstanding sign making abilities of the people on the grass.  Seriously, I looked forward to those signs every lap.  A couple of examples are above.

In the end there was actual magic from training achieved, I recovered very fast physically from this ordeal experience.  I am reminded exactly of how long events feel and what I can do (and how important it is) to make every tiny improvement you can toward success.  

Medal backdrop not of our bullet riddled rental car, but one parked at Nelson ghost town, NV.  Calm down National.