If you read these blogs you're probably aware that my fiancé owns her own pet care business. Sam has this one client who lives not too far from us who owns two dogs. A small, tan colored, eight-year-old, super fluffy toy poodle and a Bernese mountain dog poodle mix (a Berna-doodle) who, although still a puppy, is massive in size, very energetic, and has earned the nickname "Muppet Monster" due to her appearance and personality. When the two of them engage in a tug-of-war match, Muppet Monster always wins single handedly, as you'd expect. She's much bigger and stronger and therefore ends up dragging the Nora, the toy poodle, all over the place and winning the match with very little effort. Right now I have a tug-of-war going on in my head. Unfortunately it's not a match between Muppet Monster and Nora, it's more like two Noras playing tug-of-war with each other. The match has been going on for a long time now and neither one can pull the rope in either direction. I'm usually pretty good at making decisions. It's not often that I think really hard about something and I still don't know what to do. But at this moment, I'm completely stuck on whether or not I want to do the Broken Arrow 52K race or skip it this year. And the race is tomorrow morning...
What is the Broken Arrow 52K, you might ask? Well, it's actually more like a 46K. You'd think shaving six kilometers off would make it easier, but I'm not so sure. This is a beast of an ultramarathon. The course circumnavigates the Palisades Tahoe ski resort near the north shore of Lake Tahoe. Several mountain peaks are climbed and descended. Runners climb as high as 9,000 feet of altitude and run past ski lifts and through valleys. The race is composed of two loops around the ski resort, which cumulatively adds up to a little over 10,000 feet of climbing packed into just over twenty-eight miles. That's pretty intense. I would say that although Broken Arrow is among the toughest races I've ever ran, it's also one of the prettiest. The views of Lake Tahoe and the surrounding mountains are astounding. The race is also very well executed and organized, and the swag is pretty dope. When I ran this race in October 2021 it was definitely a weekend to remember. If you want to read the fully story on that, check out the blog post titled "Brain Full Of Mush". I enjoyed it so much that I decided to run it again this year. The 2021 race was pushed to October, but it is typically held in June. I was looking forward to running in June because it meant there would be a good chance there would still be snow in the mountains and on some parts of the course. Up until three days ago I was all in. I was concerned that the race would be slow going because of my lack of training, my busy life outside of running, and the fact that I had just done a fifty-miler a few weeks ago, but I still wanted to race anyway. The way I saw it, what's the worst that could happen? But a few days back, the more I thought about it, the more I thought about skipping Broken Arrow for this year. The reason for this is pretty simple; I'm tired. I love the mountains, I love ultrarunning, I love being outdoors. That hasn't changed. But in the three weeks that have passed since running the Bishop High Sierra 50-miler, there's been a lot of non-running stuff happening. All good stuff, but it's been pretty damn busy in the Dumenjich-Brooks household. Over the last few weeks we've done a maternity photo session in the Santa Cruz Mountains, had both sides of our family in town for almost a week to visit, had a baby shower with fifteen people, and I went through a long but ultimately successful month end close at work right in the middle of having family in town and hosting the baby shower. And now, here comes Broken Arrow, aka twenty-eight miles of climbing 10,000 feet through the mountains of Lake Tahoe.
The decision plagued me for quite some time. When I typed the first paragraph of this post about two Noras playing tug-of-war in my head, that was this morning, when I still hadn't made a choice on what to do. After having breakfast and talking it over with Sam, I ultimately decided to skip the race tomorrow. Instead, Sam and I will drive to Pinecrest tomorrow morning and go for a hike in the mountains around Pinecrest Lake. To me, this will be nice because I can still enjoy the mountains, the high altitude, and the outdoors with the company of Sam and without the pressure of having to bust my ass. I can also sleep in a nice warm bed instead of in the back of my car, and I won't have to drive as far each way. If this race were happening in another month, I wouldn't think twice about it, but honestly, I'm exhausted from everything else that's been happening and I just want to rest. I'm not some crazy super human untouchable ultrarunning machine like some people think I am. I'm a human being and sometimes I just want to relax. I have nothing to prove to anyone, including myself. I remember being in a similar situation back on the summer 2019. I was supposed to meet my friends from the Los Angeles area in the Eastern Sierras to hike Mount Langley. The day before I was supposed to leave I was exhausted and just not feeling it. I didn't have the physical or mental energy to drive seven hours, sleep in my car, hike a 14,000 foot mountain, and drive back to the Bay Area. I ultimately ended up backing out. My friends understood and still had a great time anyways. It's okay to be tired and to want to relax sometimes. We all know the saying "life happens". Well, right now it's quite literally happening in Sam's abdomen. This means that the next ultramarathon I'm going to run, I'll be running as a father. That's pretty rad to think about. I'm not sure which one it will be or when it will be, but I have no plans to abandon my ultrarunning "career" when I become a dad. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to a long weekend of resting and spending time with Sam in the mountains in Pinecrest tomorrow.
