the escarpment
3 am we woke up.
the escarpment. 3 am we woke up. talked about how windy it was during the night while we made coffee. met up with some homies at the start of the race, found more coffee (provided by hoka) and began the early hike up. i quickly realized that the coffee (provided by hoka) was a bad idea because it was a steep climb, and we were kinda getting slapped in the face by the wind, and i was overheating because i chose to wear 3 pairs of pants because it was really cold. it's kinda hard to sip a cup of coffee while you're basically climbing up a mountain. idk, im not from europe. anyways,
the top of the escarpment was nuts. one may call it "chaotic". hundreds of people crowding both sides of the trail, big speakers blasting terrible dubstep remixes of popular hits. it was awesome. the lead pack made it up in liké 30-40 minutes (nuts). the pattern kind of went like this: a small pack of runners come up, followed by 2 or 3 amateur photographers chasing them trying to take photos, some even tripping and falling over on the trail in front of a runner, then followed by a random guy who decided he would become the "trail police" and began yelling at everyone to "get off the trail". this is how it went for basically an hour while all the runners made it up top. keep in mind it was very cold, it was actually the third coldest weather in race history, so we all knew fast times were about to be ran. were talking sub 14 hours, so course records. so after you've seen your runners come up, and have had enough of the loud dubstep and the self proclaimed trail police yelling to get off the trail, you start to make your way down to the ski resort and your car. adam from tantrums was kind enough to let us shower off at the giant airbnb rented by tantrums, arcteryx, skratch, and wahoo. i called it the "tantrums, arcteryx, skratch, wahoo house" (thank you adam). after cleaning off the debris that flew all over us in the parking lot overnight, we headed to the next party, forest hill.
