Jared Campbell's Blog

Showing up for Barkley 2012

Short Story :

• I am thrilled to have dragged myself to the finish line after 5 laps at the infamous Barkley Marathons.
• I met and ran with many incredible and inspirational people.
• This course is as hard as they say it is.
• On the final lap 5, due to some extreme foot pain (skin) and sleep deprivation I experienced an incredible distillation of my physical and mental self down to a few basic senses and thoughts, which was both an educational and beautiful experience.
• I became the 11th person to finish in a time of 56 hours.

Long Story :

Being completely honest I have long put the Barkley Marathons into a category of races that I had no desire to do.  Others in this category are Badwater and the long list of new ultras that are repetitive loop courses and/or mostly flat.  I was simply not interested.  Barkley seemed silly, miserable, pointless and when compared to the spectacular mountain and desert terrain I have easy access to living in Utah I simply said, why?  However, Barkley stood out like a black sheep among the others in the list.  It is far from being flat (with 59,000′ of up!) and it takes place in surprisingly rugged and, come to find out, very beautiful mountains.  Also, several folks I really look up (Blake Wood, Jim Nelson, and others) appear to have been captivated by it so I’ll admit, deep inside I’ve been interested.  About a year ago, in a conversation with my good buddy Ryan McD, we posed the silly question, “if you had to do either Barkley or Badwater, which would it be?”  Without hesitation I said Barkley, while Ryan confidently opted for Badwater.  Very interesting….

Read More…

Fred, Ryan, Chad, Jared, Krissy, Emily in Zion

It had been far too long since I’d been to Zion or done a run of any substantial length.  This Summer and Fall Mindy and I have spent nearly every spare moment planning and building our new home.  Built on passive solar design principles and employing an impressive 8kW PhotoVoltaic (PV) array to harvest all the energy required to run it, our house has blossomed into something we are both very happy with and proud of.  More details on this in the coming weeks as we wrap it up and move in…..

Fred, me, and Krissy on East Northgate Peak

After a Summer and Fall of being a rather unreliable partner I was thrilled to finally be breaking free to make a weekend trip happen.  I was bummed that Mindy couldn’t make it, but also excited about meeting up with friends Krissy Moehl, Chad Brackelsberg, Emily Mitzel, Ryan McDermott, and Fred Marmsater.  Krissy and I ran the traverse together from Lees Pass to the East entrance with an excellent side excursion to the East Northgate Peak.  The home project had taken precedence over training and consequently I was going into this in perhaps the lowest level of fitness I’d been in for quite some time.  I knew this was going to hurt!  Fortunately Krissy was very kind and patient with me and we found ourselves laughing and shuffling along the traverse with near perfect weather.  We crossed paths with Chad and Emily who were going in the opposite direction and we eventually all met up in Springdale for dinner.

Emily and Chad on Crawford Arch

Sunday I took the entire group out to Crawford Arch, one of the most incredible places in Zion.

What a great weekend.  The beauty of Zion and the important role of good friends was the theme for this trip.

A few pics here.  Hopefully I’ll get some of Fred’s soon.

Krissy’s write-up.

Mindy had an excellent run at the 2011 Bear 100, her second race of this length.  She appeared to get stronger and stronger until the finish line.  I joined her through the night and Vanessa (my sister) ran the final 7 miles where Mindy reportedly hit the turbo button.  She was so fast on this final leg that I missed her at the finish line!

She finished somewhere under 28 hrs.  Perhaps someday the Bear100 website will post ordered results?….?

This year’s Wasatch 100 was an interesting experiment as I was greatly under-prepared.  The few runs that I had done, however, were of high quality, so this would be a study in how “quality not quantity” training would work out on a tough 100 miler.  With no expectations I had an extremely fun and stress-free run from start to end.  Mindy joined me for the final 25 miles, which was a treat.  I managed to pull off a 21:50, which I was very happy with.

http://wasatch100.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112:2011-wasatch-100-finishers&catid=2:results&Itemid=5

The view from Knapsack Col, looking east at Mount Helen. Mile 20.

At 3:15AM on August 21st, 2011, Ty Draney and I finished a stellar ~75-80 mile adventure run from Green River Lakes to Big Sandy in the Wind River Mountains.  I am in awe, yet again, with the beauty of this spectacular range.  The original intended route is something I call  the Crestline Route.  This very rugged route involves a fair bit of off-trail travel, boulder hopping, snow travel, stream crossings, oh and seemingly never-ending rocky trails too!  A lightning/rain storm rolled in around 9PM and blasted us for an hour or two so causing us to make an impromptu bivy.  We deviated from the intended route for the last ~30 miles because we were running behind schedule and instead opted for the Fremont trail (also the Continental Divide Trail) back to Big Sandy.  Ty and I made a great team pulling each other through the highs and lows of this 21hr adventure.

Click here for more pictures

Ty’s write-up

The unbelievably pristine Wall Lake