The-508 Race Report - 1 Overall, a race of over 508 miles (818 km) with …
The-508 Race Report - 1 Overall, a race of over 508 miles (818 km) with about 39,000ft (11600 meter) of elevation gain. At new location back in California. Why did I sign up for it? Very simple I had a DNF in 2023 at the other location due to hypothermia. So, I do not like a race that I have not finished. Since I have no longer crew-support I thought it was great to sneak in this race in my race schedule. I participated in the Self-Supported racer group. Was surprised to see quite a few self-supporting racers and was happy about that. Its great people do self-supported racing even its much harder compared to using a support crew. One thing upfront … there have been overall 26 Relay Team and Solo racers and like RAAM we had only 50% finishers in the race. That’s amazing and shows how hard the race is. What was my goal this time? Only crossing finish line. So, I decided to stick with strategy to race only against myself and not worry about competition. A strategy that worked decently well the last month too. I did show up the race location 5 days before the race. It helped me test some of the loops starting miles to get a general feel for them. And I was able to adjust a bit to local climate. Did go through the different layouts of the loops a few times to come up with my personal race strategy. I assume at the end it paid off. One thing I learned doing self-supported racing only … plan a strategy and try to stick to it. OK some minor situation related adjustments maybe required as I learned also in the-508 race but it should not kill power too much.
