Scott’s Blog

After a long and well needed hiatus I am back. I want to thank all of those who sent emails wondering what happened to the blog and expressed their hopes that I would continue blogging. Your encouragement and interest is much appreciated.

I needed to take a break to focus on my personal life. I never intended to take as long of a break as I did, but a long inward journey pulled me away from expressing myself here.

Sometimes life takes us on a journey that we never anticipated, down paths that we would rather not take. You know those paths — seldom traveled and barely maintained, the ones that go careening down a mountain with treacherous drop offs, and then on relentless uphill climbs. Sometimes life ends up leading the way, tugging us along. The past seven months have been one of those journeys for me.

Seems like no matter how much a person has been through, difficult times are still difficult. I even had to swallow my own medicine as many people reminded me of things I said in various interviews. This quote: “Like in life, sometimes the most difficult times bring the most clarity…” was one of the bigger “pills” for me to swallow. And it was true. As with races and training runs, summits of those long climbs come into view and at the end of the journey we arrive with greater clarity and ultimately a deeper understanding of who we are.

In addition to this inward journey I had some great journeys both on and off the race course. One thing I never gave up during the blog hiatus was racing, and I’ll be filling you in on these experiences with upcoming entries that will include race reports, what I learned while traveling and racing, upcoming events, and training tips.

So thanks for staying tuned, and keep climbing those mountains!

Well, the evening was a blast. Ten area athletes were presented to a near sell-out crowd over drinks and dinner. Votes were cast, stories were told. Being the ultrarunner in a crowd of top-notch professional and collegiate athletes, I have to say I was surprised at the amount of genuine respect I received, rather than the somewhat typical shock about the extremeness of what I do. I don’t think Bobby Engram is going to give up his job to join me out there, but I felt the other athletes understood our sport more than the general public might. They put a lot of commitment into being their best, just as we do.

Read the P-I article about the evening here.

I didn’t take top honors for the evening. I have one fan out there protesting. Read Jim Moore’s P-I story here.

Late last week UltraRunning Magazine announced their 2007 North American Ultrarunners of the Year. It was a great year of performances on the ultramarathoning scene. I feel honored to have received recognition as male Ultrarunner of the Year as well as male Performance of the Year for my course record run at Hardrock Hundred.

Congrats to Nikki Kimball for being named as female Ultrarunner of the Year and Krissy Moehl for receiving female Performance of the Year also for her course record run at Hardrock. Congratulations as well to all the other athletes receiving recognition for their great performances throughout the season.

View the complete press release here.

For those of you who haven’t yet heard or have been procrastinating your purchase of a 2008 wall calendar, Glenn Tachiyama launched a great project a few years ago. In an effort to raise awareness and funds for our Washington Trails Association (WTA), which plays a pivotal role in trail building, preservation, and maintenance, Glenn launched the calendar project, in which all proceeds from sales are directly donated to WTA. This is an organization I do a lot of trail work with which does amazing work throughout the state of Washington. Read the rest of this entry »

The Seattle P-I has named me as one of their “Sports Star Award Winners.” A great honor for me and for ultramarathoning, the P-I takes nominations of ten athletes, recognizing their accomplishments at the end of each year. Local runners have been telling me for years that they’ve been nominating me, so there’s some excitement in Seattle’s running community this week.

Read the feature article here, or if you live in Seattle, check out today’s sports section.

The 73rd annual Sports Star of the Year awards banquet is next Tuesday, January 22 at the Westin Seattle. I’ll be introduced with the other award winners along with a video and interview. The program will conclude with the announcement of THE male and female Sports Star of the Year as chosen by the audience that evening. Tickets are $75 and can be ordered by calling 206.448.8066.

Thank you to the P-I and the Seattle community for recognizing me and congratulations to the other award winners. Looking forward to next Tuesday.

The Final Sprint just posted an interview I provided them with recently. We discussed my 2007 season, what’s coming up in 2008, mental aspects of ultrarunning, pain, and giving back to the sport.

The 2008 US Olympic Team Trials for the men’s marathon will be remembered for record performances and one of the most competitive fields in decades. It captured the hearts and minds of distance running fans and energized the spirit of distance running. Along with the triumphs on November 3, a day of celebration, tragedy struck with the death of Ryan Shay. My heartfelt condolences go out to Ryan’s family and all those whose lives were touched by this incredible athlete and human being.

My friend, Ian Torrence, got to briefly know Ryan and trained with his wife, Alicia, while he lived in Flagstaff. He recently notified me of the Ryan Shay Memorial Fund set up by the Center for High Altitude Training at Northern Arizona University. Read the rest of this entry »

My good friend, Don Mukai, has often told me, “Stumble seven times, get up eight times.” This is the Japanese proverb, 七転び八起き, nanakorobi yaoki. Perseverance over defeat.

Life is full of challenges, hard times, lessons. To me, these are our gifts. If we honor these times, we grow. We become stronger.

We all stumble. We all make mistakes. These can be made into our best moments. Read the rest of this entry »

2007 has turned out to be a year with many incredible performances in distance running, a sport which is making leaps forward with continually growing enthusiasm. This is partially due to the resurgence in performances of recent years. If you are a distance running fan, this is a great time for our country. There are many men and women inspiring some of us mortals to get out there, train harder, and live better.

Running USA, a non-profit association “dedicated to serve and facilitate the growth of all aspects and entities of running and its health and fitness benefits,” has been a much needed backbone to the development of the sport since 1999. Every year they recognize great performances. This year there were many! Of which, I’m grateful to receive an honorable mention in “The 10 Best Moments for Distance Running in 2007″ for my Spartathlon victory. (Last year I was honored with a #8 ranking for my win in the same event.) Read the rest of this entry »

I have always felt one of the beauties of running is the lack of required gear. Feel inspired, step outside, go. Unless we’re running barefoot and naked, which some of us nuts are, we require only simple clothing and shoes. I’ve commented some in previous posts about shoes I’ve raced with, but I’m frequently asked what shoes I wear for training. I’ll comment again on both. Here’s the scoop.

Most of us don’t have the exact same biomechanics side to side, which is also true for me. I am a strong supinater on one side and a neutral pronater on the other. I alternate a bit from a neutral cushion shoe to a mild stability shoe when training on the roads. For optimal performance on the trails I feel it’s important to run with a lower profile shoe without as much consideration to pronation and supination, unless severe, as the foot and ankle are continually adjusting to the varied terrain. Read the rest of this entry »