The toughes marathon east of the rockies, is just that. It was everything they said it would be and then some. After DNFing after 82 miles at the Arkansas Traveller in October I needed some redemption from the mountains in Arkansas. So I decided to head down to Southwest Arkansas with Brian to run the Athens-BigFork trail marathon. With eight mountains to climb and decend they said, but that was just out to the turn around, you then had to come right back over them which made sixteen mountains to cover over 26.2 miles. That didn't really register until I started climbing back over the first mountain on the way back. About half way up I stopped and stood leaning against a tree looking up the mountain and back down thinking about some of the steep decents I had taken on the way out and how I was going to make it back.
After getting control over my breathing that was really my only problem at the time I kept hiking as steady as the grade and my legs would let me to go over seven more of these, some being harder, and finish feeling.... well just finish period. As I peaked that mountain and headed down the decent I felt like a new man as the cool air blew across my face and the race was on again.
At the beginning of the race they briefed us on two stream crossings, one was supposed to be knee deep and one just ankle deep, well there turned out to be about ten total on the full out and back marathon. I was nervous when we came across the first one at about 4.5 miles in but it was actually refreshing, all ten times I charged right on through and loved every minute of this race. I was happy with my time of 6:40 and will definitly be back to this one next year!