Here’s my picks.  It’s off the cuff and only done in a few minutes cuz’ I’m off to dig a ditch and do trailwork for the Wasatch 100.  1.   Anton looked good on the treadmill at the OR show, he’s had 6 weeks of healthy running and is probably hungry to bust one out. 2.  Wardian will run fast and this course is good for  him, it’s not too technical 3.  Koerner can put in his bid for runner of the year if he wins. 4.  Scott Jurek………he’s due to run a fast one. 5.  Greg Crowther.  Not sure on his fitness level, but likely he’ll be in this to win.  Anton will try and burn him off early. 6.  Phil Kochik….fast if  he doesn’t blow up. 7.  Jeff Browning.  He’s the mystery man, we ran this past weekend, slowly, but I think he’s ready to run around 7 hours. [...]

First, let’s take a look back at the Appalachian Trail Speed Hike. While I was negotiating the nasty rocks in Pennsylvania, I came upon the Whereskarl RV to refuel.  I can’t remember exactly where in PA, but it was somewhere in the long green tunnel. Billy Simpson was feeding another thru-hiker with some trail magic.  His name was Brian Doble.  He was hanging with Billy, chowing down and talking about the AT.  Brian started at Springer Mountain down in Georgia, I figured he was heading to Kathadin and just got lucky to score some feed from us, (we gave away lots of trail magic to thru-hikers).  I mentioned to Billy how it would be nice to have poles for a while as my chest was very sore from a crash I had earlier ( I crashed on my sternum and was unable to run at that point).  Brian handed me his super [...]