Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
The Rut 50K In 4 Minutes
|
 |
I was standing in the dark in the starting corral at the base of Big Sky Resort this past Sunday morning, with my friend Mitsu and the rest of the 100-plus people in Wave 4 of The Rut 50K, thinking, “How am I going to remember this race in a few years?” Then everybody started running, and so did I, and I forgot to start my watch for the first 300 feet or so.
Around the 1.5-mile mark, I decided I’d try to shoot one 10-second video every mile for the rest of the race, or about 30 videos throughout the course. That might seem like a lot, but The Rut 50K is 31 mountainous miles, with 10,500 feet of elevation gain, and I was pretty sure I’d be out there for 9ish hours trying to complete it. Five total minutes of video is a very small chunk of that.
I tried to keep the phone steady, and keep the lenses from getting steamed up with sweat while it sat in the pocket of my running vest, and I mostly succeeded, but when you’re trying to shoot video and also not fall on your ass/face/other parts of your body that are softer than rocks, the not falling part kind of takes precedence. And I only fell once. On my ass. On dirt, which is softer than rock, usually.
I compiled all the video clips into a quick tour of The Rut 50K course, with my Strava 3D flyover on the side, for this video: The Rut 50K In 4 Minutes. I wanted to capture a bit of what the race feels like: You make very slow progress sometimes (my watch said I “ran” a 45-minute mile at one point), you run downhill sometimes, and you breathe hard a lot (the race starts at 7,400 feet elevation and the high point is 11,167 feet). I hope it communicates what it's like being out there, for a middle-of-the-pack runner. As it was the first time I ran it in 2021, The Rut 50K is still a steep, punishing, rewarding romp.
--
If you enjoyed this piece, please consider supporting my work.
Semi-Rad
Writer, artist, filmmaker, columnist for Outside Magazine. My newsletter about creativity, adventure, and enthusiasm goes out to 15,000+ subscribers every week.
Friday Inspiration 526 My friend Ed, whose excellent Mountain & Prairie podcast you’re probably aware of if you’ve been following this newsletter for more than a few weeks, and who is also tapped into some Red Hot Chili Peppers content pipeline probably because of our shared love of Flea’s memoir, Acid for the Children, sent me this video this week, and it was a breath of fresh air. (video) If you missed yesterday’s post about screen time, I wrote a piece about getting some time back from my...
Having The Screen Time Of My Life From my aisle seat on our two-hour flight, I glanced over occasionally at the passenger across the aisle as she went from texting on her phone, to flipping down the tray table and watching a news commentary show on her ipad, to switching to playing a game on her ipad, then finally folding up the tray table and texting on her phone for the final descent, landing, and taxiing to the gate, never spending more than a few seconds without interacting with a screen....
Friday Inspiration 525 This film is about the Manhattan loft artist Jay Ells has lived in since 1967 (starting rent was $110 a month!), and he says some interesting stuff at the beginning (no hot water in the apartment for the first 35 years), but it gets even more fascinating later on. Also: That view. (video) At first I wasn’t going to include this, because I don’t know if it will resonate with anyone who doesn’t have nostalgia for the computers of the 1980s and early 1990s, but then I...