Report when I return on Tuesday.
“100 miles is not that far”
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Good luck to you Karl. Hopefully, someone will have twitter updates so we can follow the action. Safe traveling to get there as well.
Good luck, and don’t freeze; luckily you will only be out there for a short 16 hours?
Good luck! A mud run for the end of the season will make it a blast.
Good luck, Karl! In the mud, go with the Crosslites!
Scrape on! Wish I could be there to run it, too…
Steve
good luck brotha!
The Chimera course won’t be too muddy, but I guarantee it will be UGLY!
Charlie Nickell (www.therundown.net) will be all over the course Saturday reporting on Karl’s race. I will ask him to post twitter updates.
Karl is going to tear it up at his 100 mile Speedgoat party. Happy Birthday bro!
Michelle
Go hard or go home Karl!
Wishing you well Karl. Go get it and make a case for co-UROY!
Run well bro and have fun!!
kill it karl (hey that might make a good t-shirt)
There is no cell phone/internet access in the Saddleback mountains (Cleveland National Forest), so you guys will just have to wait to get the Chimera race results.
Go Karl GO!
http://www.thehigh.in/
My odds for the men:
1. Karl Meltzer.
2. Someone else a few hours back.
Good Luck Karl..another record?
The Chimera 100 was cancelled at mile 35 due to a severe rainstorm. It was so windy on the mountain that the aid station tents blew off the mountain. Of course Karl was in first place when he was forced to stop at the bottom of Silverado Canyon.
Wow! No way. That is disheartening. Well, at least the RD’s were smart enough to realize the safety of the runners.
The quote on the site’s front page is quite ironic then, isn’t it:
“Where others see obstacles, Ultrarunners see opportunities.”
I understand the RD’s concern, and sure, insurance has to be a consideration (especially in California), but damnit, unless there’s a fire or some sort of major obstacle, I don’t want to be stopped!
Eric, you would have wanted to be stopped, and take it from me, someone who is as tough in the weather as anyone else out there. It was a hurricane with snow. Think about it, then the two aid stations on the divide were ripped apart and thrown into the abyss by the might Chimera Beast. There were no aid stations left by late afternoon. They were about 1000′ below, and will probably bury themselves there.
RD Steve Harvey made the right decision, it was a no brainer!
@ Eric
I fully agree with Craig Redfearn and Karl.
I was running in the race too, and, though I think most who were told at Silverado, that the race was cancelled, was disappointed, the race director absolutely made the right call.
We had already run through some nasty hard rain, and intermittently strong winds throughout the day, and were going to have to go back up to the top of two peaks that would be 500-700 feet above predicted snow levels for that night, that is, “in the dark” possibly in fog (so headlamps might not have been as effective and helpful), with sections of the course already water filled, leaving only the edge of the ridge to tiptoe along in order to get by.
Yes, the website says, “Where others see obstacles, Ultrarunners see opportunities.” But, within reason.
I think had the race continued, the “opportunities” would have been mainly for real harm to come to many of us runners out there that would not have had the sense to quit when conditions turned from being “reasonably risky” to truly dangerous and stupid.
On another note, one of the things that surprised me most at this race were how many runners showed up to run in just a pair of shorts and a shirt, with shoes and socks of course.
There was no Chris McDougal or other “barefooters” there on this freakin’ day! I would have loved to see a barefooter on that rocky course in those cold weather conditions going at it!
But for people to show up to run in just shorts and a shirt and sometimes not even a hat, or a rainproof shell, it’s a good thing that the RD called the race because those folks, especially, would have been in a shxxload of danger in the second half of the race.
If Karl says it was too heinous to run safely, I’m inclined to believe the RD made the right decision. That must have been crazy out there!
It was really epic Karl is right. There were boulders falling down the mountainside onto the road, mud slides, sleet, hurricane gusts, water falls, debris from the city flying by in the air threatening to impale, unprepared runners in shorts everywhere dropping like flies and wandering around aimlessly, it looked like WWIII out there! I had my full XC ski gear on with gotex and three hefty garbage bags over top and I was still chilled! It was stupid silly fun! How on earth did the amazing aid station people help the dropped runners with no shelter? They are truly the heros in this one!!!