Today I ran the Wild Wild West Marathon, which is the oldest trail marathon in the US. I ended up coming in in second place (among the women, not sure what my place was overall).
It was a bit of an adventure even driving the 300 miles to the race as my car does not like driving away from the ocean, and she overheats about 75% of the times I attempt to drive to the Sierras. Usually I end up having to give up and turn around. At the moment there is an intense heat wave and there were temps in the 90s even at 10pm at night as I was driving through the desert. Luckily my car valiantly made it despite the heat, and she even let me use the air conditioning 
I got in to Lone Pine at about 11:30pm and found a spot on the side of the road to pull over and sleep for a few hours until the race packet pickup at 5am.
The race was completely stunning and wonderful, but tough. At the start I was running with a big group and we kept getting lost and having to backtrack. There were little bits of green ribbon tied to the sagebrush to guide us, but it was hard to find them and often they would disappear for a stretch and we would spiral out trying to find where the next one was. After the sun came up it was much easier to navigate. I got ahead of the group I had been running with but hadn’t caught up with anyone else yet, and I spent a very idyllic hour running alone through the golden sagebrush with Mt Whitney turning a brilliant pink in the sunrise. A bit later I caught up to a German man who has been running the race every year since 1996! He flies over from Germany just for the race every year. This year he had brought his niece and nephew to run it with him.
It got very hot in the afternoon; someone I ran with for a bit said his watch registered 100 degrees. I had a bit of trouble with my left leg, which is the one I injured running on the AT in August. I had an MRI done and have been resting it ever since and have only been on two runs in the past six weeks. The rest definitely helped, but it might need a little more time before any more big runs.
