50 MILE ZION TRAVERSE 25TH ULTRA!!! (with side trip to Angels Landing)

100 BY 100 Is Now Officially 25% Completed!

The Zion Traverse has been on the "bucket list" of most ultra runners that I know for awhile now.  And now I know why!  Holy cow, what a fun adventure run this was!  Taking more than 15 hours to complete, 4 of my ultra running friends and myself ran from the east end of Zion National Park to the west end on April 15, 2016 at 5:30 am.  I'll have everyone note now though, that it wouldn't have been completed without the aid station help of my wife Lori Lyle at mile 34 of this run.  Necessary food and drink were essentially needed at this point in the run, and we owe the completion to her.  Thank you so much Lori!  I love you!  (so do the other guys!)

It's hard to describe a run like this.  Zion is truly, God's Country.  (just look at the above picture!)  Awesome. Incredible.  Outstanding.  Hugely scenic.  Panoramic.  Intense, etc. etc., and HARD!  Oh yeah, we were all tired at the end.  After all, we did have 10,000 feet of elevation gain to run up.  Getting up at 3 am was the easiest part, running up the extreme grades were the hardest, but finishing was the best!  The weather picture the week leading up to the run did not look good.  A huge winter storm was moving in exactly on the day of the run, and most of the guys couldn't go any other day, so we knew we had to go on tax day, final.  Done deal.  All day long, we endured 40 mile per hour winds.  Temperature was in the low 40's, but felt like 30's for sure, we also had snow on the higher sections of the run (around 25 miles), lots of nice water crossings, and muddy trails at the end. The best thing is that we didn't get any rain.  That would've made for a cold and wet miserable long day.  Thank God for that.  But, as luck would have it though, we got up on Angels Landing and the wind died down for a couple minutes and the sun came out.  We all quickly snapped up pictures as fast as we could and got down to continue our run.  From then on, the sun left and the snow and wind continued on throughout the day and night.  We were extremely lucky to have that brief break on Angels Landing.  I know that God and my Mom were looking out for us all.

What is great about doing this run at Zion is that all the trails are very well marked and are easy to figure out.  Most of the water you need needs to be filtered out at certain streams along the way, so we were all tuned into that - when and where, etc.  We all carried the most amount of water and food we could carry and only had to filter water only one time.  It would've been a lot different if we hadn't had Lori to fill up our water at mile 34 OR had it been 80 degrees out!  Throughout the day we all ran at different speeds and 2 of the runners (Steve and Joey) finished 2 hours before me.  I finished with BJ and Robert at around 10 pm.  This was a little over my anticipated finishing time, however, in the end, it doesn't matter.  It was just a fantastic run with fantastic and very knowledgeable ultra running buds!  Thank you all for your friendship.  I feel lucky to know you all.

I am so happy the way this turned out and so appreciative of not only Lori, my running friends, but just the fact that we all can experience something like this together.  I feel very lucky to have the ability to run and to help out in a small way to Alzheimer's research.

Here are a few pics of this outstanding run.  I will always treasure this one!
100 by 100 is now 25% completed!  Thank you all for your continued support and for continue to read this blog!

$100.00 Donated 4/16/16

The Start!

The official end!

 The Finish!

Mr. Zion!