Crazy Craig's Climate Challenge

Taking Next Steps..

2007-02-01T11:43:00.000-05:00

Crazy Craig is getting ready to run again.

To keep a Global Warming focus on my running, I need other runners to join me in Boston on April 14 for the National Day of Climate Action. This will be an incredible national effort and Bill McKibben has taken the lead in spearheading this effort through his Step It Up campaign.

This past weekend ended a couple of months of relative inactivity. Saturday, basking in typical, atypical January Global Warming weather, I ran my 7 mile home-based route, Wellbourne to Willisville and back. Temps in the mid-50s. I'd spent the morning working in our gardens, planting heirloom and wild roses with Jean, my wife, in our Backyard Wildlife Habitat.

Sunday, I drove too many miles--arghh-- back towards NWF and joined about 80 other Reston Runners and friends for a much colder, somewhat wet 10 mile run through this Virginia community. But at a cost in CO2 of about a 70 mile R/T. At least I'm thinking about whether or not a trip like this is really necessary.

Fact was I needed the group motivation to get out and run. And afterwards, I included the weekly grocery shopping trip to Whole Foods so the combined purposes for the mileage felt a little better. Whole Foods has begun to take some decent steps on the corporate level to try to address their carbon footprint.

Despite thirty degree temperatures, I overheated right away and so when I got back to our starting point, which was also our mid-point, I shed a top and bottom layer and kept on running. Was able to negotiate the course at about a 8:10 pace and headed home thinking I'm on my way. To where?

Boston. For the fourth year in a row, I've qualified for the Boston Marathon and will be joining over 20,000 other runners in making the run from Hopkinton to downtown Boston. Now to figure out how to get some of those other marathon qualifiers to join me on Saturday.

Crazy Craig

New Year, New Challenges for Crazy Craig

2007-01-08T13:44:00.000-05:00

So, it's January 8 and the Washington DC suburbs are threatening to cool off to something like almost normal. Look at this photo! See what a few extra degrees over time can do to change the local landscape and its wildlife. Actually, this photo was taken last month near Tucson, AZ. Read more about that below.

Snow possibly in the forecast for tomorrow evening. The past weekend brought temps in the 70s and two monarch butterflies (these should have been hanging upside down in a Oyamel fir tree by now) were flitting around Maryland. And Crazy Craig stepped out NWF's back door last Thursday and ticked off his first blooming native wildflower of the year. Visit The Backyard Naturalist for more about that.

Tomorrow, NWF headquarters staff will be fortuneate enough to listen and respond to
Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth grass roots presentation, brought to us by NWF staff and The Climate Project. By the end of this week, over 1000 volunteers will have been trained to offer this eye-opening lecture to their communities. I'm hoping to go through the training in the next few months myself. What's it like to go through the training? Read this!

Resting up from the Big Race/JFK 50 Miler never was very relaxing. It was not running much at all, licking my wounds-- almost none-- and planning for next year. It was reading Dean Karnaze's Ultramarathon Man and relishing the reality of not really being THAT crazy. I especially liked the "nutritional log" he provides for the 199 mile race he ran.

Early December was a time to celebrate mutual 60th birthdays with a birding buddy, to pitch tents, enjoy campfires under starry southwestern skies and observe our way through much of southern Arizona's bird life. I was able to find 156 species over the 7 days of on the ground birding including Bendire's thrasher, pictured above. Wayne's goal had been to pick up about 50 species during the trip to hit 400 species in the US for the year. A neotropic cormorant at the Gilbert AZ Water Ranch was #400. After dropping me off at the Phoenix airport the next morning, Wayne added both Harris sparrow and streak-backed oriole to his list before I ever got off the ground and headed back east.

This past weekend was spent visiting family in coastal New Jersy, picking up a number of birds like northern gannets and brant for my 2007 list, celebrating my aunt's 90th birthday and running. In the warmer than they should have been hours around dawn yesterday, I ran the boardwalk from Sea Girt to Bradley Beach and back. Shark River Inlet was one highlight of this run; my return trip was halted by a bridge opening as the Big Mohawk and a host of private sportfishing boats headed into the Atlantic to look for stripers, mackeral and tautog. This was my first real run since November 18's 50 Miler.

When I sat down at my brother's house, I got out my laptop, pulled up a wifi connection and signed up for another couple of races-- marathons. I'll let you know something about where and when I'm running in my next entry.

The Best Gift You Can Give Your Children....

2006-12-21T15:07:00.000-05:00

Here's a great holiday opportunity from National Wildlife Federation's President and CEO. Another NWF supporter has established a matching fund to help us implement some innovative efforts to help restore grizzly bears in the lower 48 states.

Crazy Craig

During the holidays, we encounter wildlife in all “the old familiar places” as the popular song would have it…in department store displays…greeting cards…decorated homes and even a few rooftops. There are polar bears and Santa’s reindeers…penguins…songbirds and so many animals and birds that bring a smile to faces of young and old alike.

But there are many wildlife species that aren’t up-front on the holiday stage, but would benefit from some caring year-end giving by National Wildlife Federation supporters. I’m thinking particularly of grizzly bears and a few other species that need our help right now. If you are looking to add one more gift to your holiday list, then you couldn’t do any better than to add a grizzly to your list. You can be sure that it’s a gift that will pay big dividends for this monarch of the wilderness for many, many holidays to come.

Right now National Wildlife Federation’s wildlife biologist, Sterling Miller, and his colleagues in our Montana field office are working to restore the grizzly bear to the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness of Idaho and Montana – a land of mountains, forests and meadows ideally suited for the grizzly bear. The Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness is a huge, remote chunk of land – probably the largest unbroken expanse of wilderness left in the Lower 48. It’s a breath-taking landscape of snow-capped mountains, dense forests, clear-running streams and lush meadows, totaling almost four million acres in all. Studies show that the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness can sustain a population of more than 600 grizzly bears – about the same number found today in the entire Yellowstone ecosystem.

I have just received a special matching grant from a generous donor who wants to support the innovative plan that Sterling and his associates have developed for the grizzly’s recovery. Basically, it will allow National Wildlife Federation to install safeguards so the grizzlies will not becoming accustomed to foraging out of dumpsters…leading to their ultimate removal and death. Happily they’ll be forced to make their way to the wilderness where they will live and survive.

We have a deadline on this matching grant, so I urge you to “add a grizzly to your holiday giving list” so we can do the right thing for this magnificent species. Think how good you’ll feel knowing that you’ve done your part to protect this magnificent creature so they’ll be there in our children’s future. You might even say adding a grizzly to your list gets a double reward…the grizzly and our children! Please click on the secure link below to make your donation.

Donate Now to Save Grizzlies

Wildlife are an important part of our lives today and a critical element in our children’s future. By protecting wildlife and their habitat today, we will be securing our children’s future by stopping global warming, maintaining ecological integrity of our wild places and by reconnecting people to nature.

The greatest gift you can give to your children is a healthy planet. Thank you for your support and commitment to the nature of tomorrow. Thanks for caring and have a happy and safe holiday.

Multi-tasking the JFK 50 Miler

2006-12-21T15:00:00.000-05:00

As a runner, I find I have a higher level of satisfaction if I set some goals for myself. My weekly mileage goals keep me motivated and in shape for upcoming races. I also set goals for individual races. My goals for the JFK 50 Miler were two: cross the finish line and in doing so, set a PR or personal best time, for the distance.

Shouldn’t be too hard! If I finish, I have my PR because I’d never come close to running this far before. I had another running goal; to try to finish in nine and half hours. I didn’t meet that one. But I was very happy in crossing the finish line in ten hours and nineteen minutes. I’d finished in front of more than 500 other runners. I was in the top half of my "freshman" class in the JFK.
As a naturalist and runner, I also might set goals that are odd for a runner but fine for a naturalist. Trying to keep track of all bird species positively identified along the fifty mile route on November 18 was the "naturalist" goal I’d set.

To best achieve that goal, I had to remember every kind of bird I saw OR I could write down, with pencil and paper, each one. I decided my memory might begin to fail or fuzz after 30 or so miles. And I lose pencils or their points snap off. Paper in a runner’s pocket invariably becomes wet pulp due to sweat or gets gummed up with GU gel residue.

To circumvent these possible problems, I chose to master, minimally, a very small digital recorder I’d purchased. The little wonder weighs almost nothing and records, so say the instructions, up to 16 hours of babbling. Like all of my other electronics that I can’t quite figure out how to use-- my Palm Pilot, GPS, and cell phone, it offers a lot more than I had figured out how to use.

So here was the scenario. Scamper up and down 14 miles of Appalachian Trail, plod along 26 miles of canal towpath and then dodge cars and traffic cones over the final 8 miles of rural roads, all while watching for birds and movement in the foliage nearby and listening for the sounds of anything that was likely a bird-- not groaning fellow runners, my own grunts and gasps and other extraneous noises. Then, while conversing with other runners and crew and well-wishers, remove the recorder from shorts’ pocket, activate the recorder by releasing the hold button, press the record toggle and when finished with the entry, remember to again place the little machine back on hold and store in pocket (the GU free pocket) until I next needed to log in an observation.

By about mile 20, I’d earned the nickname "Bird Man" from a couple of running buddies. The list included at that point, I thought, about 14 kinds of birds. My major observation was that the river’s frantic mood-we’d gotten 3 inches or more just two days before the run-and the disturbance caused by over a thousand runners along the course had sent many of the birds that would normally occur here to quieter, cleaner habitats.

Periodically, I’d hear something that was bird-like but not instantly identifiable. This would cause me to plunge off the race route into the riverside forest or tangle of vines and dead wildflowers to seek my quarry. There, I would make explosive pishing sounds trying to attract the supposed bird closer for positive identification. It was during one of these pishing episodes at around mile 25 that fellow NWF team member Andrew Pinger caught up with me and reminded me that we should attempt to finish the race before darkness. I stayed with Andrew for the duration. Or better, he stayed back with me as I pished, huffed and groaned my way to the finish.

So what did I find? I ended up with 33 species. There were many birds that never showed and that I had very sure expectations of seeing-mallard ducks, cormorants, vultures and juncos for instance. On the other hand, I didn’t expect to find so many woodpeckers-I found 6 of the possible 7 species in our area. My birding highlight occurred along the Potomac River, while running alone, except for the two winter wrens serenading me, one on either side of the
tow path. Here’s my complete list:

Canada goose
Mourning dove
Rock pigeon
Barred owl
Red-bellied woodpecker
Yellow-bellied sapsucker
Downy woodpecker
Hairy woodpecker
Northern flicker
Pileated woodpecker
Blue jay
American crow
Tufted titmouse
Carolina chickadee
Brown creeper
Carolina wren
Winter wren
Golden-crowned kinglet
Ruby-crowned kinglet
American robin
Northern mockingbird
European starling
Cedar waxwing
Yellow-rumped warbler
Northern cardinal
White-throated sparrow
Song sparrow
Swamp sparrow
Red-winged blackbird
House finch
American goldfinch
House sparrow

Over the Line...

2006-11-22T12:09:00.000-05:00

The Crazy Craig Climate Challenge team wrapped up its conquest of the JFK 50 Mile course at about a half hour after dark last Saturday, November 18.

What a incredible run! Our NWF team covered 150 miles in a little over 29 hours. It was a great personal accomplishment for me and a wonderful effort on the part of our NWF team and everyone who supported us. I gave myself a little runner's pat on the back for finishing this run by immediately signing up for next spring's Boston Marathon.

Andrew Pinger crossed the finish line with me. From about mile 24, we had an ongoing, enjoyable, disjointed, absurd conversation about par for two people more than tired and sore. Pinger found me wandering in the Potomac River floodplain, staring at treetops and uttering raspy, loud whispering sounds. I was trying to augment my bird list for the course. Andrew got me somewhat back on track.

Team member Dave Strauss surged ahead of me at around the 3 mile mark when we began to traverse the fourteen mile long Appalachian Trail section. I never saw him again until I crossed the finish line at 5:20 PM. Seeing Dave at the finish was one of the greatest joys for me. No, I wasn't all that happy that he was so much faster, but Dave has a way of wandering off course, or slamming his toes into rocks and his shoulders into trees. This day, he was at the top of his running form.

The day was nearly perfect with temperatures well above freezing but never warm enough to become overheated. Easy enough with my 12:30 minute per mile pace.

People made the day from before sunrise to our finish after sundown. My wife Jean was with me in spirit all the way and supplied smiles, hugs, liquid and food throughout. Our Reston Runners colleagues gave us inspiration, enthusiasm and a lot to laugh at.

Dave, Jean and I started the day at a nearby Denny's which Dave insisted be called Lenny's. Breakfast included the most watery oatmeal ever known in the city of Hagerstown but our waitress had a good sense of humor and brought out the non-stop coffee, bacon and pancakes on time and tasty! A couple of other runners/breakfasters joined the verbal fray of good-natured insults and what might have been severely worrisome race updates-- that the start location had been changed; that the course had been modified to include two water crossings, etc.

We arrived at Boonesboro High School with plenty of time to line up for the Reston Runners team photo, throw jibes at our team mates, exchange last minute course strategies and then line up to use the rest room. Runners do not like to carry breakfast with them on the trail. For whatever reason, the bathroom line for men at the highschool moved at a glacial pace. Well, given global warming, that phrase doesn't really fit the slowness of movement. With a race start over a half mile away, there I remained, in line at 6:45 AM for a 7 AM start. But within minutes, Dave and I were out the door, running that extra half mile, striving and striding to get to the front of the line before the gun went off.

While running up main street in Boonesboro with the race about to start, I was dodging others who were less concerned about being at the front of the pack of 800 runners. I was trying to keep up with Dave-- no problem at this point before the race. I was operating my trusty little SONY digital recorder, making notes from the field, tallying overhead flights of starlings and rock pigeons, questioning whether I was hearing eastern meadowlarks or starlings imitating meadowlarks, and approaching the start.

At 7 AM, the gun went off and the crowd surged forward. Dave and I were only 50 yards behind the front runners, cruising over curbs and sidewalk and on our way! The two mile uphill along Rt 40 began.

Crazy Craig

Dave's Race Experience - The Final Eight Miles

2006-11-20T13:25:00.000-05:00

Simply put - this was the hardest part of the run. My body had run out of fuel and was working solely on determination. I often thought about walking the rest of the way or sitting on the side of the road and taking a long, very long break. However, I persevered through the rolling hills of Hagerstown. The last mile was a pick-me-up. As I was approaching the finish line, I could feel my pace picking up and getting excited from the crowd and the anticipation of finishing. As I crossed the finish line, Hannah (my youngest daughter) was there to greet me with my medal. Debbi, Rachel and my parents were also there to cheer me on and greet me at the end!

After I finished, I saw Anne Senft her husband Tom - they were filming the event to capture the Crazy Craig moment - as you can see from the last blog entry.

THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING THIS A SUCCESSFUL CRAZY CRAIG CLIMATE CHALLENGE. WE COULDN'T HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOUR SUPPORT!

VIDEO: At the finish line!

2006-11-19T22:30:00.000-05:00

Watch the video!

Dave's Race Experience - The C&O Canal

2006-11-19T12:21:00.000-05:00

The C&O Canal has to be one of the most beautiful trails in the country. The Potomac River on the left and the landscape of rolling hills, cliffs, houses, fields (all depending on where you are) on the right. However, after 4 plus hours and 26 miles - it does get a little old and boring. To me, this was the transition part of the race. From feeling strong and energetic coming off the mountains - to spending time on the C&O Canal with similar sceneries and the same physical motions, tested my mind and body. I was fortunate to run into Jeff Hutman along the way. He lives right on the C&O Canal and was prepared to meet up with us along the route. He was stocked with goodies - Gatorade, Clif Bars, peanuts and M&M's. He asked me if I wanted anything. I was full of food, but lacking in conversation so I asked him to tell me a story (one gets quite desperate for something other than the shuffling of the feet or the continuous sound of my own breathe). We spent a few minutes together and after a few pictures, I was back on my own. I finished the grueling, relentless C&O canal with 42 miles under my belt. This is where I really hit the wall...

Dave's Race Experience - Through the Mountains

2006-11-19T11:52:00.000-05:00

As the gun sounded there was lots of hollering and cheering from the over-caffienated, adreneline-rushed runners. We ran/walked for 2.3 miles on Old National Pike (formerly Rt. 40) until we reached the trail head at the top of the road. Craig and I tried to run together, but I got caught up in the excitement and ran ahead. Andrew was trailing along at a leisurely clip. That was the last I saw of my NWF buddies.

The next 14 miles were exhilarating. My body felt good, my pace was strong and the scenery was awesome. The first part of the mountains was along a paved path for 3-4 miles until we reached a water tower somewhere way high up. As you could imagine - lots of walking to get up the hills (when you run ultras - the recommendation is to walk the hills - great recommendation). After reaching the tower, we were back on single track trails. This is where it gets fun, but also a little dangerous. When you are running on the trail, you are constantly jockeying between, on or around the rocks to keep pace with the rest of the pack. Every few minutes you would hear someone screaming bloody murder - either from a twisted ankle or a bad fall. It reminded me of a good horror film. Other than several stubs to my toes, I was able to stay on my feet. That's a first for me. I am one to fall on a regular basis. There was one rest/food/water stop half way through the the mountains at mile 8ish. I met up with my crew, got some more GU's (fuel in the form of a gel) and went on my merry way. I finished the mountain part of the race with some soreness in my legs, but nothing that I couldn't handle (at this point).

Dave's Pre-race Experience

2006-11-19T00:23:00.000-05:00

It was 4:23 a.m. when the alarm decided it was time to begin what I would consider my longest day. Craig, Jean (Craig's wife) and I started our morning off with a full breakfast at Denny's. Not the best food, but who's going to be picky at 5:00 a.m. in the outskirts of Hagerstown, MD. We finished the watery oatmeal and coffee and headed to Boonsboro for the pre-race instructions and the long half mile walk to the starting line - at least it should have been a walk - however, Craig got caught in the bathroom line and we ended up doing a run, jog, walk to the start line. As we worked our way throught the pack - the gun sounded!

Final Hours Before Running 50 Miles

2006-11-17T10:58:00.000-05:00

It's Friday morning at about 11 AM, November 17 and by tomorrow at this time, NWF's Crazy Craig's Climate Challenge team should be about 20 miles into our 50 mile run.

The mild panic of what to bring to wear, what the weather will be and what to eat along the way has subsided and the pure energy of being at the starting line is just a few meals, a good number of car miles and some solid hours of sleep away.

Weather will be-- shouldn't say it-- perfect. Partly cloudy. Start at 34 degrees and finish at about 45 degrees with a peak of perhaps 53. Little wind.

Hal Higdon, who writes for Runner's World and who has influenced a lot of us through his training techniques wrote that "I've said about the marathon that it's 20 miles of hope and 6 miles of truth, and you learn what you are as a man or woman in the last 6 miles." Well Hal, where does that leave us in running 50 miles? Crazy?

We should hit the ground about 67,000 times with our feet in the course of our jaunt tomorrow. Unless we hop all the way.

Each time we hit the ground, we hit with about 600 lbs of force. Sure hope the shoes are up to this! That's 200, 400 tons of delivered foot pressure. I won't ponder if that is the best use for all of that energy

Such are final, trivial thoughts on this last day. Time for a big lunch. Boonesboro, here we come.

Crazy Craig

Community Support- Reston Runners

2006-11-15T14:53:00.000-05:00

Anna Bradford addresses over 150 runners and crew, all part of Reston Runners' great JFK 50 Miler training and support effort.

Dave, Andrew and I are the running portions of Crazy Craig's Climate Challenge but there are so many people behind our effort here at National Wildlife Federation and beyond that give us the inspiration, the motivation, skills, laughs and knowledge that will put us over the finish line late Saturday afternoon on November 18.

Outside of our own families-- personal and NWF-- there's a third family that is helping us out too, Reston Runners. All over the country, there are clubs that support people interested in getting outside and moving. The uncatalogued health benefits of what they offer their communities are really substantial. Whether you're a walker, a casual or competitive runner, a triathlete or a head-for-the-mountains-and-trails ultramarathoner, there's a club with a program for you.

Reston Runners, with over two thousand members in the northern Virginia area, has an incredible number of great activities that it offers to anyone interested. When Dave Strauss indicated that we'd be doing a 50 miler this fall (or was it when I suggested to Dave that we try something longer than a marathon so he'd have a chance of getting to the finish line before me?) I recalled hearing about a great training plan Reston Runners was offering.This was right after finishing a local 5k race Reston Runners had supported for a local nature center.

This Saturday, 70 Reston JFK Runners supported by almost 40 crew will be in Boonesboro for the start of the JFK 50 Miler. Reston Runners' record of support is so good that 95% of their runners finish.

I was placed on the Reston Freshmen team-- I haven't been a freshman for a long time. Andrew is a Reston Veteran-- he's done this race before. Dave is a Wildcard; no, he's on the Wildcard Team. Apt.

If you live close enough to Reston to join them in some of their walks and runs every week of the year, DO IT! You won't regret making the friends and getting into better shape than you were and who knows, maybe in a couple of years, you too will be running the JFK 50 Miler!

Crazy Craig

Training's End: Speed Work

2006-11-13T13:42:00.000-05:00

It's the last week before our big run and tapering continues. We're running very little, resting up, giving sore muscles and joints some recovery time and, well, for me, eating too well. All in all though, we are ready for Saturday's 7 AM start of the JFK 50 Miler in Boonesboro, Maryland. Please come out and join us at the finish line.

It is difficult not to run in these last weeks before a race; I have a stalwart runnning partner who needs to keep in shape even as I taper. And so we've devised a game called "laps around the Backyard Wildlife Habitat" to keep him in shape while keeping me laughing hysterically.

My running buddy is our dog, Fielder. A classic border collie, he often accompanies me on short runs of 6-7 miles. And cheers me on during longer routes. While running with me, he trots. He sniffs. He visits other dogs greeting us along our rural Virginia roads.

The game here though is catch the frisbee. He catches it and then expects me to catch him. This happens only if I tire and request a break. After 8 or 9 laps of 5k pace or better, he's willing to turn over the frisbee for another throw if I ask. As for me, I am panting.

Fielder is an athlete and is a member in training on the Beltway Bandits FlyBall team. You can see a close up of his smiling face if you click on "dogs in training."

Crazy Craig

Milestone: 500 Donors!

2006-11-08T19:56:00.000-05:00

Over 500 donors have joined my list, most recently the entire IT department. For a full list of folks who have donated, please click on "Who's On Crazy Craig's List" to the right.

Thanks to everyone who has donated. Please be sure to ask your friends and family to join my list!

Moonlight Run

2006-11-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

Sunday, November 5. Just two weeks from our goal of running the JFK 50 Miler.

Today was to be my last long run; fifteen miles. Dave, Andrew and I are tapering. In running parlance, that means we're cutting back on the length of our runs, on the frequency of our runs, and on the number of miles put in each week in getting ready.

I'd planned my route. Add 5 to my normal 10 miles by including an extension through the village of Unison to Poor House Road. Take a left. Run it to Furr Rd and then back along Willisville and Wellbourne Rds.

Running is a lot like life; although when you are preparing for running 50 miles it may get stuck in your head that this is larger than life. It's really no different.

I'll wait to start until I write just a few emails. I'll wait until the weather warms up to 40 degrees. I'll warm up with my short-run training buddy Fielder, our border collie, with a half dozen laps around the yard before going out on my own. I'll just clean out the pepper and tomato plants and.. oh! look a big carrot and two whole rows of beets remaining in the vegetable garden.

Unfocused.

It is 6:20 PM before I walk out the door, in 42 degree temperatures for the 15 mile run that is now a 10 miler. It is night. But it is bright.

The moon is full. Energized by a CLIF bar, a bottle of Gator Ade and a favorite meal of pasta and tuna that Jean is going to have waiting for me when I return, off I go.

With no winds and brilliant moonlight throwing shadows of the now leaf-bare trees, the ten miles went fast and smoothly. And those miles were magical.

Images:

Sway-backed horse silhouetted in front of a big oak tree near historic Wellbourne.

The baying/cheering/jeering of Middleburg Hunt's foxhounds as I rounded the bend in the road close to their home place.

The chittering of flying squirrels that responded to my not so accurate attempt to whistle up eastern screech owls near the great house above Catesby Farm.

A group of 6 deer, at first running parallel in the pasture to my right and then jumping stone walls, crossing so close I could smell them and then disappearing into a dark stream bottom woodland.

The smell of fresh horse manure and horse fog coming from the just-fed mares, colts and fillies at Beaverdam Farm.

The warm yellow light filtering through the trees from homes well set back from Willisville Rd.

The honking of the resident geese on farm ponds near and far, settling down for the night, settling flock squabbles and assuring young of the year.

Through the miles, the moon shadows of oaks and hickories, elms and red maples. No reds and oranges. Just black, white and moon glow.

Crazy Craig

Milestone: $20,000

2006-10-30T13:14:00.000-05:00

Over $20,000 has been raised by 450 people including employees, their friends and families, NWF members and partners.

Thanks again to everyone who has donated.

- Crazy Craig

P.S. Don't forget to ask your friends and family to join my list!

We support Craig, Dave and Andrew 100%!

2006-10-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Planned Giving has given from coast to coast!

Running To Get Ready

2006-10-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday was a fantastic day to stretch our legs and get out for a brief 6 hour run. We decided to run the Potomac Heritage 50K. The run started at Woodley Park. We worked our way through single track trails to the C&O Canal, traversed over the Key Bridge, ran along the Potomac Heritage Trail until we hit the BELTWAY - and then ran back!

This is Craig and Dave's last long run (long meaning more than 25 miles). However, Andrew will be running the Marine Corp Marathon this coming weekend. Be sure to wish him 'good luck'

Would you jog the extra mile for eco-friendly shoes?

2006-10-26T15:08:00.000-05:00

Just when you thought you'd forever be crossing finish lines wearing less than eco-friendly shoes, the big names are starting to go green, so these versions are widely available.

Alternative materials like "green rubber" go easy on the petroleum and PVC, which may release carcinogenic dioxins during production.

Some lines forgo the leather and are mostly vegan.

Fair trade supports foreign workers, ensuring they earn a living wage.

Wanna Try?

New Balance - the most socially responsible of the big shoe manufacturers, New Balance recently phased out PVC and has many vegan options.
Veja Sneakers - OK, so this site's in French… but these shoes are hot-to-trot. Fair trade sneaks made using organic cotton, available at Scout ($138).
Brooks Cascadia 2 - developed in part by vegan marathon champion Scott Jurek using "green rubber" that incorporates silicon rather than petroleum ($95).

Ideal Bite's Leftovers Tip - when you're done with them, give them a chance to be reincarnated as playground groundcover.

Source: Ideal Bite

Former NWF Chair Joins Crazy Craig's List

2006-10-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

Photo: Becky Scheibelhut

Taken earlier this week (Indiana)

Hi Crazy Craig,

I'm glad all you asked me for was a donation. Ha! That sounds like a long run to me but well worth the effort all of you are putting into it. I am honored to donate this for the cause. You will always remain a very special person in our life and we will always admire your love for NWF and wildlife. Thanks once again.

Love,
Jim and Becky Scheibelhut

Views and People on the Long Run...

2006-10-25T08:40:00.000-05:00

Here are a couple of views along the Potomac Heritage route.
The photocredits are those of Anstr Davidson. See below.

Much of what I love about running comes from the sensory richness of being out there; seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling the softness of dirt trails, the squishiness of mud, the shock of cement pavement, the fragrance of bloom, of fallen leaves, of the pastoral landscapes I often train in, the temperature changes of stream bottoms vs. ridge tops. The little sorenesses that appear, peak and disappear as the run goes on.
Equally anticipated is the who of running; the friends and colleagues and absolute strangers I run with. Those strangers are strangers only briefly; they often become future running partners, mentors, and advisors.

Anstr Davidson is a trail runner and one of the founders of the Virginia Happy Trails Running Club. The photos above were taken during the running of last year's Potomac heritage 50k but the course was just as beautiful this past weekend. The first photo is of runners jamming up to past through a large culvert, over rocks, above a stream and heading for the C&O Canal.

Both VHTRC and Reston Runners have helped us get to this point for running the JFK 50 Miler. For years, I've known of the Happy Trails people through other ultra marathon runners. In training for my 50 mile run, I've gotten to know some of these people that develop, monitor and promote trail running in our area.

Anstr Davidson is one person who has helped so many local runners go the distance and become inolved in ultra running. He recently spoke to the Reston Runners JFK 50 Miler training group, giving us invaluable running tips dosed with a good amount of humor. He has run the JFK about 23 times! And he was there last Sunday leading the pack as the PH 50K started. From the Happy Trails web site, a note on Anstr:

"Anstr is also a founding member of the VHTRC. He maintains the club's Web site and embezzles money as the treasurer. His running career is all behind him. He still does JFK every year because he forgets not to. Anstr lives in Arlington, Virginia where he slaves away at a very stressful retirement."

Good people like Anstr make running not only possible but give us models of what we can strive to be.

Milestone: 50% Employee Participation

2006-10-25T06:54:00.000-05:00

In less than a month, employee participation has more than doubled thanks, in part, to challenges from Jeremy, Marie, Jaime and Larry. Thanks again to everyone who has donated.

- Crazy Craig

P.S. Don't forget to ask your friends and family to join my list!

The Nature of a Short Ultra

2006-10-24T14:12:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday, the CCCC crew-- Dave, Andrew and I --were out again, meeting up with about 80 other runners in northwest Washington DC for the Potomac Heritage 50K run. Anything over the standard marathon distance is considered an ultra marathon, but this is a short ultra. The JFK, our November 18 race, is 50 MILES. A respectable distance.

We all checked in with the run coordinators at around eight AM and around fifteen minutes later, we were all on our way. I am referring to this PH 50K weekend activity as a run in order to clarify the point that runs are fun and casual; races are work. The JFK, too, is a run. Fun.

Hours later, all three of us returned to the starting point for great food, trail stories, a beer or two and some much deserved groaning and Vitamin I. I for ibuprofen, that is. Dave had really been in a hurry-- so unlike him-- and finished in about 5 hours and 40 minutes. Andrew and I were taking our time, sticking our heads in giant hollow trees, watching great blue herons, etc. and came in about an hour later.

The run course took us through a number of parks, habitats and neighborhoods. Two sharp images continue to run through my head concerning the nature of our run. While in Washington DC, as soon as we left the manicured landscapes of northwest DC and entered the open space of the city, except for the larger trees and a few shrubs, the landscape was populated with plants from somewhere else. Most astonishing were acres of the invasive porcelainberry vine. Kudzu, the poster child of invasive plant battlers everywhere, also carpeted what had once been forest and meadow but the grape-leaved vine with the stunning blue berries had it beat.

Over on the Virginia side of the Potomac, where we picked up the Potomac Heritage Trail, invasive plants dominated the first miles of the riverside woods heading out towards our turn around point. Beyond a certain point however, the landscape starts to change as the massive rock outcrops of the Potomac Gorge tower over the trail. This section of the river is one of the most impressive and diverse habitats in the entire region. Few know how accessible it is from the George Washington Parkway parking pulloffs. What had been Chinese knotweed, porcelainberry, perilla, Japanese honeysuckle and stilt grass gives way to our native flora... a ground cover of wild ginger, the withered stalks of false Soloman's seal and Indian cucumber-root and so much more and an understory of paw paw, spicebush and bladdernut.

If you finished this run, your reward was knowing you'd run the course. No fancy shirt. No awards for the top three finishers. No certificate or medallion.

I left with a much better idea of what my place, the Washington metropolitan area, offered in the way of ecological challenges-- trying to reclaim landscapes lost to vigorous invasive vines fueled perhaps by the high carbon dioxide levels of this changing climate we're producing. And I gave myself an award; four pods from an American bladdernut found somewhere along that rocky trail.

Try to find the four pods in the photo above. Like the chestnuts found weeks ago atop the Blue Ridge, I'll plant the seeds of this native shrub and have a living remembrance of this beautiful run, on a beautiful day with a couple of good running buddies.

Crazy Craig

It's a Long Hard Journey

2006-10-24T13:13:00.000-05:00

On October 14, 2006, Crazy Craig and his two partners in insanity sharpened their running skills and joined two thousand others in running the Under Armour Baltimore Marathon. This meant we all received some quick history and geography lessons about Baltimore including a great loop around Ft. McHenry, a nifty race finisher blue crab medallion and a real running shirt from the Under Armour people. Most race t-shirts are cotton and useless for running. This shirt was great; it will not find its way into my running shirt quilt or braided rug.

There were a lot of people running, each of us with a different story and on a different journey. The marathoners were joined along part of the course by additional thousands running the marathon relay and the half marathon races.

For Dave, Andrew and I, this was to be pretty speedy running. No stops for salted boiled potatoes, M&Ms, donuts or other trail run delectables. It was a GU and GatorAde diet for me along all 26.2 miles.

For some of the non-humans along the race course though, the journey was different and far more challenging. My bird list, kept in my head, mile by mile, was sparse. It is fall and little is singing and what was singing or squawking was overpowered by the sounds of human life in the city. This course covers much of Baltimore and so habitat diversity was on the thin side in most places.

The bird highlight might have been the double crested cormorant staggering out of the water on the north side of Ft. McHenry. The best habitat was the tidal marsh on what might have been the southwest corner of this National Park Service site but there was no time for further investigation. My bird list numbered only 9 species.

What gave me a lift however, somewhere around mile 23, was a monarch butterfly. It would never have been off the ground in the low 40 degree temperatures of our 8 AM start by 11 AM, the sun had warmed its overnight roost and it was again on its way to Michoacan, Mexico.

Monarch populations in the northeastern US this year were impressively high. Soon after our Sunday run, the reports of hundreds of thousands of migrating monarchs coalescing into a massive orange, balck and white maelstrom headed for the US Mexico border began to appear on the listserv overseen by our friends at Monarch Watch

That lone butterfly, one at the tail end of the migration that passed south for the winter, gave me a kick that pushed me over the finish line; it was better than energy gels or cheering crowds.

My journey that day was easy; the butterfly had thousands of miles yet to cover before it rested among the limbs of the oyamel fir trees high up in the mountains of western Mexico sometime in early December.

Challenge From Larry

2006-10-24T12:46:00.000-05:00

Dear NWF staff:

My appreciation and thanks go to Jaime Matyas, Jeremy Symons, Marie Uehling for their recent match commitments to Crazy Craig’s Challenge, and to all the NWF staff, friends, and family who have recently stepped up and joined Crazy Craig’s challenge to raise $50,000 in support of NWF’s crucial wildlife and global warming work. Their commitment has been personally inspiring.

On top of their match commitments, today I am adding my own match of $500. I welcome you to join me and the others who have already generously supported this campaign to help us reach our fundraising goal of $50,000 total and 100% employee participation. Please visit www.nwf.org/crazycraig.

This initiative shows the commitment of our staff to inspire Americans to conserve wildlife. Working together, we are helping to create a future of hope for wildlife and our children.
Thank you for your support.

Regards,

Larry Schweiger - President & CEO

JUST ADDED: 100% Participation Teams

2006-10-23T20:59:00.000-05:00

Click on "Who's on Crazy Craig's List" to see the teams that have 100% employee participation. If your team is 100% but is not listed, please send an email to crazycraig@nwf.org.

Thanks to everyone who has donated thus far!

We're 100% Behind You, Craig!

2006-10-19T21:39:00.000-05:00

Photo: Membership Marketing

Best Find of the Run! Chestnuts!!

2006-10-13T12:47:00.000-05:00

I get provoked, wired, elated, ecstatic and angered-- often-- while out in the woods. There's so much to see, good and bad. Usually, I'm a relatively composed individual. Even in the woods.

Last Sunday though, I was ecstatic. Running atop the Blue Ridge, dodging rocks and clusters of acorns, I suddenly shrieked out to Dave, always about ten yards or so in front of me, to make a full stop and turn around. I'd found something that had eluded me in my almost 60 years of woods watching.

When Dave arrived, I was standing over a number of large, bright green items that resembled day-glo, chartreuse pincushions. I was probably twitching with excitement. Those hedgehog look-alikes were American chestnut burs; within, they held American chestnuts.

Why the excitement? At the beginning of the twentieth century, the American chestnut was the dominant tree of millions of acres of eastern and midwestern North American forest. The nutritious nuts, falling in October and Novmeber each year by the billions, fed local people, hogs, black bears, wild turkey, deer and hundreds of other species. The wood was of superb quality and was naturally rot-resistant.

The trees reached heights of 110 ft or more with trunk diameters of over 17 feet. In 1905, American chestnuts in Brooklyn became in infected with a blight thought to have been introduced from nearby Japanese chestnuts, a related species. Over the next 20 years, almost all American chestnuts had died back to their root systems.

For the past 90 years, those ancient roots put up new sprouts that reach a height of 6 to 25 feet. The blight then overcomes the young trees and kills them back to their roots. Millions of these root sprouts remain but very few ever grow large enough to produce nuts.

I'd found two or three trees, slightly resistant to the blight, growing from root systems hundreds of years old. To produce nuts, two or more resistant trees need to be growing closely enough for cross pollination to occur. Rarely does a tree grow large enough to flower. Rarer even are two close enough and producing enough pollen for fruit to set. Up on the Blue Ridge, somewhere south of the Blackburn Trail Center, conditions were just right. This wasn't the first year; burs from 2005 and 2004 and perhaps even earlier were on the ground nearby.

The American chestnut split off genetically from its blight-resistant relative, the Chinese chestnut, some 10 to 15 million years ago. It is unlikely that a species with that kind of endurance would disappear due to some single human blunder. Realistically however, it might be another half dozen centuries before they regained their place in our woodlands.

Many researchers and organizations have been working for decades to find resistant trees, to breed resistance into the American chestnut from its Asian relatives and now re-introduce this incredible tree back to its former haunts. The American Chestnut Foundation works tirelessly to breed and distribute resistant trees and to continue the search for remaining living trees that are producing chestnuts.

As Dave and I collected the last of the 12 chestnuts we took with us, we noticed a gray squirrel running across the Appalachian Trail ahead of us. In its mouth was a chestnut. How many generations of squirrels in our eastern forests have gone a fall season without eating what was the staple in the diet of millions of generations of their squirrel ancestors?

The chestnuts we found won't be roasted on an open fire. They'll rest for the next four months or so in our refrigerator, a necessary cold treatment to trigger germination come spring. They should sprout next April or May and then will be carefully nurtured in our Backyard Wildlife Habitat for a year or two before being placed out in friends' chestnut-friendly Virginia woodlands. It'll be a tiny step in bringing back this sorely missed friend of wildlife and people alike.

Changes: Seasons, Landscapes, Climate

2006-10-11T10:47:00.000-05:00

A storm front hovered over Virginia Saturday, October 7; it bathed most of the state with drenching rains and blew dry the landscape with some blustery winds that followed. This was great "site prep" for a Sunday running adventure that was going to be difficult anyway.

The weather brought the first significant leaf drop of fall and paved many of the already slippery rocks in slick coverings of magenta, carmine and chrome yellow. It activated the silt and clay in those parts of the trail prone to muddiness.

Northeasters are part of what arrives in fall. This early, weak one will be followed by others through winter. They most strongly manifest themselves in the often heavy snows, gale force winds and heavy beach erosion of February and March storms. Last year, nor'easters continued passing up the coast into early May. Were they yet another manifestation of the stronger and perhaps more frequent storms we are to expect from our changing climate?

Fall change at its best however is about changing leaves, birds and monarch butterflies in migration and much more. Together with our year 'round residents, all manner of birds were actively feeding along the Blue Ridge early that morning. Kinglets, both ruby-crowned and golden crowned, were especially active, hover-gleaning insect eggs and spiders still inactive in the early morning fog.

Change too was apparent and less kind in the broader landscape. There was some reason for optimism, but perhaps I just needed to find something good in evidence. Most landscape changes observed were obvious and upsetting but only perhaps to someone who has hiked them for 30 years. Most disturbing to me is that all of these changes I saw and those related to increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that we can anticipate, were brought about by our actions.

Running the ridges and intervening stream valleys on Sunday took us through ridge top forests that are now chestnut oak, red maple and black tupelo. Twenty years ago, large changes began when the introduced gypsy moth ravaged the more diverse oak forests and left behind an altered landscape and fewer food alternatives for the wildlife of the forest.

Perhaps twenty five years ago, the wooly adelgid, an introduced Asian pest insect, began to kill off our native hemlocks that cloaked most of our mountain stream valleys. This tree offered nesting and feeding habitat for blackburnian and Canada warblers and ruffed grouse. They cooled our trout streams. They perfumed the forest for acres around. The hemlocks and habitats they dominated are now gone or changed much for the worse-- in just a quarter century.

The continuing bad news of landscape change includes the loss of most of our flowering dogwoods, succumbing to the introduced dogwood anthracnose. They no longer provide some of the best food for our migrating thrushes and other birds.

The climate changes that we see, in storm strength, drought persistance, higher temperatures and both coastal and inland flooding, are new agents of stress that our habitats and especially the trees that give them their bones, can't tolerate. Maybe what we've seen in the recent past is in part due to climate change already taking its toll on our ecosystems.

We did find that one bright spot. Nuts!

Getting Off the AT: When White Rectangles Turn Blue

2006-10-10T12:50:00.000-05:00

Running or hiking the Appalachian Trail means carefully watching for:

* trees ready to knock you off your route
* rocks ready to bash your ankles and shins
* mud and tree roots grasping for your feet
* quick stops and face plants on the part of your companions partners
* algae and other rock coverings sure to provide no traction at all
* the regular appearance of white rectangles painted on surfaces along the trail
* rectangles of other colors

Why bother with those rectangles? If you miss a few, you aren't going to slip, twist your ankle or bust your shoulder on a tree trunk.

When your rectangle color changes from WHITE which means Appalachian Trail, to something like BLUE, you're off the AT. Observant runners like Dave and I not only watch for most of the items listed above, occasionally, we also check out the trees and mushrooms, have brief ongoing conversations with deer, grouse, fox,and passing dogs and conduct some fairly absurd conversations about the state of the world and the meaning of life.

Somewhere on the way to our turn-around point on the AT Sunday, WHITE rectangles changed to BLUE. We were oblivious. A quarter mile and 300 feet down the mountain, I said something like, "Dave, those rectangles are blue." Dave commented after thinking about my observation, "Huh. That means..??" I replied, "Not sure," and we continued caroming downhill. A half mile later, a sign saying "Ridge to River Trail" signaled to us that we were headed to the Shenandoah River in downtown Jefferson County, West Virginia. We'd been on the Ridge. With joy at our mistake, we realized that if we finished the run without further detours, we'd be getting in that extra mileage we wanted to make the run close to a twenty miler.

We finally stopped going downhill at the junction of Christ Church and Mission, right in the middle of an undeveloped development. Pretty place. Leaf colors changing. Far from the top of the Blue Ridge. We'd dropped 1000 ft in elevation from the top of the Blue Ridge before coming to rest at the junction which doesn't seem to exist on maps. After a few minutes rest and relaxation, we headed back up to the AT, relocated those welcome white triangles and, in time, found the Blackburn Trail Center.

Feeding and Watering the Runner.....

2006-10-10T11:14:00.000-05:00

19 Miles Along the Appalachian Trail, Continued

Long distance runners make sure they start off a run with a happy stomach, adequate hydration and as many stockpiled carbohydrates as possible. The night before our run, I shared a big bowl of pasta crowned by home-grown, home-made tomato basil sauce with my wife, Jean.

Run day started at 5 AM with a good cup of coffee, a big bowel of oatmeal, some rasins and then, just before starting and waiting for the sun to come up, a Clif Bar and half a bottle of Gator Ade. Dave has his favorites too-- coffee, cereal, a banana.

Once on the trail, a squeeze bottle filled with Gator Ade or some other sports drink keeps us hydrated. Andrew introduced both of us to 20 ounce slip over your hand bottles that are mindless to carry. Both Dave and I drank about 2 quarts of liquid on this run. We were able to refill our water bottles at the Blackburn Trail Center, our turn-around point. The Blackburn Center is operated by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club for the use of Appalachian Trail users and others.

GU packets squeezed into our mouths (perferably not all over our hands) every 45 minutes or so and washed down with sports drink helps to replace carbs and electrolytes lost to exertion.

With a long run and some pretty extreme exertion, you can eat just about anything that keeps you smiling, tastes reasonably good and helps to restore some of what nutritionally you're burning or physiologically breaking down. I shared a good amount of beef jerky with Dave at around mile 14 and engulfed a Clif Builder's Bar too. Both provided lots of protein, tasted really good and help in our recovery.

Lastly, the opportunist trail runner/feeder, like Andrew lunging after the grapes in an earlier blog entry, takes advantage of what is to be found along the running route and scavenges. Dave stopped briefly but passed up a last snack as he ran Rt 7 to the Gap and our parked cars.

Nineteen miles and 5 Empire State Buildings Later...

2006-10-10T10:51:00.000-05:00

Well, Directionless Dave and Crazy Craig did it. We ran from the Snicker’s Gap Hawk Watch to the Blackburn Center and back. And then some.

Sunday morning, October 8, with a start wisely delayed until it was light enough to see the Appalachian Trail, Dave Strauss and I cruised, grunted, skipped, slid, stumbled and yes, walked, for 19 miles atop the Blue Ridge on the West Virginia-Virginia state line. Why we did anything wisely, we don't know.

At the end, both of us wore huge smiles. This was a run that took away most of the concerns we had about completing the November 18 JFK 50 Miler.

Factoids:

- Our 4.5 hour run covered 19 miles and an elevational change of over 12,000 ft; that's equal to running up and down the Empire State Building FIVE TIMES

- Yes, even two days after this run, our legs are a little sore.

- Change was in the air -- the skies, the birds, other wildlife along the trail, and everywhere in the landscapes we passed through.

- Until the night before the run, Crazy Craig was sure that he’d be running south along the Appalachian Trail. Only a chance look at a friend’s map saved us from running 7.3 miles in the wrong direction.

- The description of this trail section from www.trails.com was just about perfect in its description of The Roller Coaster.

- Both Dave and Craig are topographically and directionally impaired; be sure to see a future blog entry about our incredibly fortuitous wrong turn that took us to the junction of Mission and Christ Church.

- Nuts! We found ‘em. Check out another blog to come about landscape changes and the ghosts of the Eastern Forest past.

- Trail running involves ingesting a lot of liquids and many, many calories.

Baltimore Marathon here we come!

Ride the Roller Coaster, Dave

2006-10-04T10:23:00.000-05:00

So Dave wants to do a little trail running this weekend?

No roads. Dirt. Rocks. Streams. Mud. Twenty miles maybe. Start at 6:30 AM. How about a Roller Coaster, Dave?

After our 23 miler a few weekends back on dirt roads around Crazy Craig's house, Dave's feet screamed NO MORE HARD SURFACES. Wuss. How about a little rock-stubbing, toe-ripping stretch for those gentle toelets, eh?

Always thinking of combining wildilfe watching with running as a perfect if potentially dangerous combo, I've come up with a challenge for us. We'll stay on the Appalachian Trail in Loudoun County, Virginia and if we survive our first 14+ miles, we'll take a final 6 miles north of Rt 7 on the AT.

Snicker's Gap is the hole in the Blue Ridge that permits Rt 7 to pass west from the Washington DC suburbs to Winchester in the Shenandoah Valley. During the fall, an intrepid band of volunteer hawk watchers enjoy fall weather (or not) for months on end. From the earliest sharpies and kestrels through the clouds of South American-bound broad-winged hawks in mid to late September and late November's possible golden eagles and rough-winged hawks, Snicker's Gap is Virginia's Hawk Mountain. Want to visit? Bring a lawn chair and pull off Rt 7 on the south side of the gap. For a great description of this place from a birder's standpoint, click here.

If you want to go beyond the parking area Hawk Watch and scramble our trail, here's what we'll be doing, from a listing on Trails.com:

Appalachian Trail: Snickers Gap to Blackburn Trail Center

Preview: Hikers eager for, say, 4,800 feet of elevation change should try this one-way, 7.3-mile Appalachian Trail outing. Over half of it is on the aptly nicknamed Roller Coaster. It also provides seasonally diverse woodland landscapes and time on one of North Americas greatest hiking trails. Trees dominate the hike, helping anchor the mountain soil, shelter the areas bountiful wildlife, shade the trail, and make hikers appreciate the overlooks. Oaks and hickories are common, but youll also encounter maples, black tupelos, and pines. In the understory, dogwood blossoms-plus myriad wildflowers and migratory birds-brighten early spring; mountain-laurel leaves offset the pallor of winter, and poison ivy lurks year-round. The rocky trail can be slick when wet or icy, so be prudent when scheduling or doing the hike. Also, wear orange in the fall; the ATs no-hunting-allowed right-of-way is narrow. Try this hike in September, when the leaves are starting to turn and only migrating birds are in the air. Scenery: Mountain woodlands, steep slopes, boulder field, farmland views. Trail surface: Chiefly dirt and rocks (both loose and embedded); some grassy patches.

Someone will let you know if we make it back alive. With a wildlife list. And 10 toes each. Sorry you're missing this one, Andrew!

Crazy Craig

Night Time 20

2006-10-02T08:09:00.000-05:00

Last night I ran one of my favorite 20 mile routes (online at gmaps pedometer) that would take me north out of DC to the Capital Crescent Trail, through Bethesda, the C&O Canal, Georgetown, Rock Creek Park and then home.

Running at twilight meant that I had a good chance to see deer. My goal was to see 5 or 6 during my run, but it took me until mile 11.5 before I saw the first deer, a 4-point buck with two of his antlered buddies along the Med/DC line. Just after mile 13, 4 un-antlered deer at a boat launch sipped water from the edge of the C&O Canal. The deer scattered for refuge as I passed, and a mystery bird silently flew up from the canal to my left and for the briefest moment its expansive dark wings were silhouetted by a distant street light.

A ½ mile later what looked like a family of 4 deer (mom, dad, baby and 1 year-old) stood just off the path undisturbed as I trotted by.

At mile 14 the darkness of an unrecognizable shape slipped into the canal in front of me, and slowly swam away on top of the water. Peculiar things happen to your mind when you run significant distances. After two hours of inner solitude you may begin to see the outside world in diverse ways. Continued running without thinking allows your logical mind to slip into hibernation and it can then become a challenge to make sense of, and give answers to simple questions like, for example, “What the heck is that swimming in the canal?”

60 seconds of observation and speculation later, a loud tail slap on the water broke both the silence and my deliberation. The first of two beavers I observed on my run disappeared under the cloudy canal surface.

After the beaver encounter, 3 of the next 5 deer seemed wholly unprepared for my approach. Deer 12 and 13 immediately jumped off the path into the thick cover while deer 14, 15 and 16 chose the path of least resistance and ran away from me down the towpath. I continued to run with these 3 first-year deer keeping the pace 10-15 yard ahead of me for almost 150 yards. When they finally quit the towpath I passed and heard one give out a bleat, to let momma know where they were.

Before entering the wilderness of nighttime Georgetown, I saw another deer that brought my total to 17. A lone Great Blue Heron stood motionless, shin-deep in the canal and it watched me run by.

AP

JUST ADDED: Runner Bios!

2006-09-30T16:33:00.000-05:00

Which one of us has already completed four 50-milers (hint: he likes green hoodies)?

Who ended up in the "I need help because I'm pathetic tent" after a marathon on his birthday?

Who served in the Peace Corps and plans to run the Boston Marathon for at least ten consecutive years?

Find out by reading our bios: Craig, Dave and Andrew.

How did I get to JFK?

2006-09-29T11:41:00.000-05:00

I first learned of the JFK 50 Mile race in 2000 while on a headhunt for someone to speak to a group of young leaders about global warming. One afternoon at a book store downtown I picked up a book called God’s Last Offer: Negotiating for a Sustainable Future, by Ed Ayres who was the editorial director at the Worldwatch Institute. The short biography of Ayres mentioned how he was the only person to ever win both the New York City Marathon and the JFK 50 Mile Ultra-marathon. Wow! I had found my man.

I bought the book, read it and Mr. Ayres graciously accepted my invitation to help educate our students. Since then, Ayres has become a personal hero. He’s a guy whose life was devoted to the study and reporting of environmental sustainability issues and he could chew-up huge mileage in a pair of running shoes. Since my first interactions with him in 2000, I seem to have modeled my life after his – running these ridiculous ultra marathons starting in 2003 and then joining up with NWF.

A few years ago Ed retired from Worldwatch and moved to California, but his running seems to continue on track. I hope to see him in November because he is registered to run the JFK again this year.

AP

A Good Reason to Get Up Early and Run

2006-09-27T13:50:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, September 24, our planned long run was threatened by weather. A strong cold front pushing in from the west had dropped tornados and torn up towns throughout the midwest. In addition to some anticipated soreness during and after such a run, we'd likely encounter heavy rain, winds, and maybe thunder and lightning. Instead, we ran in high humidity as the front neared and by 7 AM and a quick break at around 4.5 miles, we were treated to a double rainbow and the beauty of the landscape around us.

By 1 PM that day, long after we were back from our run, the winds and clouds combined to give my wife Jean and me and visiting friends our best back porch hawk-watching since the day after 09/11, five years ago. Tree swallows, gone from our certified Backyard Habitat for over three weeks, returned as late passers-through from Canada or perhaps Maine and briefly joined 6 broad-winged hawks headed to Argentina.

Attack Duck at Former Mosby Hide Out

2006-09-26T10:55:00.000-05:00

This past Sunday's 23 mile training run looped Dave and me through history repeatedly; newly discovered native American encampments along Newlin Mill Rd; the village of Unison, a one time Quaker community now threatened by Loudoun County's rampaging development; three passes in front of the historic mansion of the Wellbourne estate.Wellbourne Inn—see photo-- and hundreds of acres that surround it-- is a beautiful, early 19th century estate owned continuously by the same family and now operated as a b&b. During the Civil War, John Mosby and his troops often checked into Wellbourne for supplies. The Dulany family's Swiss tutor apparently passed on supplies needed by the Gray Ghost and his Rangers. For just of hint of what life was like here 150 years ago, click here.

Passing by especially at dawn or dusk heightens my curiosity and it becomes easier in those hours when the sun isn’t illuminating every to starkly to think back to those war years and envision who may have been hiding behind the next stone wall or cluster of trees. My experiences to date here have been encounters with wild turkeys and deer. No Gray Ghost. No Rangers.
During the Civil War, the Dulany family likely had their guard up and may not have been appreciative of Yankees running back and forth in front of the estate. They probably would have dismissed us as crazy. But maybe we are.

I would caution you not to attempt to fraternize with the guard ducks that protect the entry to Wellbourne. I almost lost a finger!

If You Think A 50 Mile Run Is Crazy...

2006-09-26T06:31:00.000-05:00

Take a look at these other ultramarathons:

Badwater 135 - This is a 135 mile race in Death Valley - during the heat of the summer!
Western States 100 - A 100 mile race with over 38,000 feet of inclines and declines.
Massanutten Mountain 100 - This race is virtually run on rocks and boulders for most of the 100 miles!

Break a Leg, Craig!

2006-09-26T06:20:00.000-05:00

Photo: Anne Senft and her husband, Tom Malloy

"The greatest oak was once a little nut who held its ground."

~Author Unknown

Milestone: $5,000

2006-09-25T20:22:00.000-05:00

A special thanks to everyone who has donated thus far. In less than a week, you have already raised over $5,000 with 23% employee participation.

What a great start!

Out at Dawn for 23 Miles

2006-09-25T10:01:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning, September 24 dawned, eventually, BUT Determined Dave and Crazy Craig beat the sun and hit the roads of western Loudoun County, Virginia near Crazy Craig's lair.

After a send-off clarion from the local barred owls, we hit the gravel roads at about 0615 hours.

I'll blog much more about this run in subsequent entries but for starters, see if you can tell which one is Dave and which one is the oak tree.

Hint: Oaks often have squirrels living in them.

During this run, the dynamic duo traversed St. Louis, Unison, and Willisville. Can you find them on your Virginia map?

Fueling on the Run.....

2006-09-25T09:03:00.000-05:00

The team's shorter training runs of 5-10 miles around NWF Headquarters and often over lunch mean fueling and hydrating-- two key runner's concerns-- before heading out and if you can, grabbing some goodies along the trail. Don't try the mushrooms though.

Longer runs and races of 4-12 hours require carrying potent fuel like those sticky wonders known as gels and goos, beef jerky, drinkable foods like Ensure or Perpetuem, and even more important, having your crew or race volunteers offer you donuts, M&Ms, sandwiches, salted potatoes and lots of other real food at a support station.

On the right, Andrew demonstrates the unique "run, jump and snap" method of procuring fuel on the trail. He was able to consume 30 of large fox grapes, the wild ancestor of our Concord grapes, before disappearing into the wilds of Reston and soon experiencing significant stomach cramping.

Maybe GU isn't a bad way to keep energized!

Green Hour in New York

2006-09-24T16:58:00.000-05:00

Dave ran the six mile loop in Central Park. It is a wonderful park with over 26,000 trees, covering 152 species within the deciduous and coniferous classes of trees. And for those with children - 21 different playgrounds!

Rocks and Rollers

2006-09-22T11:07:00.000-05:00

September 20 marked Dave and Craig’s first digitally-imaged Green Hour training run. And the acronym for that is? Eight miles through Lake Fairfax Park in northern Virginia felt and looked just like a 16 mile run I’d done two weeks ago outside of Montpelier, Vermont. Cool. Breezy. A few trees beginning to color. Decidedly un-Virginia from a climate perspective. Just about perfect for running. Except for the day in day out natural hazards of trail running.

Our JFK 50 Miler route takes us over 14 miles of the Appalachian Trail between Maryland’s Rt. 40 east of Boonesboro to the Potomac River downstream of Harper’s Ferry. What does that part of our journey look like? ROCKS! Ouch! A level 1 ankle buster.

Just to compound what abuse our ankles are taking add rollers --see that top photo? --to the rocks. It’s fall and our woods here at NWF headquarters and the woods atop South Mountain along the Appalachian Trail are filled with oaks. This year, as happens every 3-4 years, the oaks have produced a reproductive bonanza, swamping the acorn eaters, from weevils to squirrels, wild turkeys, black bears and white-tailed deer, with so many large, oval vegetable ball-bearings that they’ll all eat well and many of these treacherous orbs—for runners—will sprout into young oak seedlings by this time next year. A level 2 ankle buster.

Come November 18 atop the mountain, the rocks will be there as well the acorns. Add to this recipe a fine coating of fallen leaves, extra slippery from morning dew or more diabolically, a frost or ice layer and you’ve got a perfect storm, level 5 ankle buster.

You gotta love it!

Kick Dave's A55!

2006-09-21T12:49:00.000-05:00

Craig,

Erik Giberti here (former NWF employee) make sure you beat Strauss!

Seriously though, you're doing a great thing, 50 miles is absolutely amazing!

- Erik

Jeremy and Marie's Challenges...Matched!

2006-09-21T12:26:00.000-05:00

That's right! Jeremy Symons' $500 and Marie Uehling's $1000 have already been matched and surpassed by their co-workers' donations. Who will issue the next challenge?

Thanks again to Marie, Jeremy and the 60+ other employees who have already donated!

A Herd of Humans

2006-09-21T09:24:00.000-05:00

Dave and I decided to go for a scenic run on the trails of Lake Fairfax, and we had the misfortune of running into a herd of humans!

They were very loud and showed their teeth as they ran by us. We tried to hide, but the encounter was inevitable. Fortunately, we escaped unharmed.

Top Ten List

2006-09-21T09:01:00.000-05:00

...of what it takes to train and run the JFK 50 Miler:

10. 5 Pairs of Running Shoes
9. 80 Clif Bars
8. 80 Power Gels
7. 25 Power Bars
6. 48 Bottles of Gatorade
5. Gallons and Gallons of Water
4. 1,200 Miles of Training
3. A Box of Band Aids
2. Entry Fee to the JFK 50 Mile Race

and number ONE is:

The great support from the National Wildlife Federation staff, family and friends!!!

Go Crazy Craig!

2006-09-21T07:37:00.000-05:00

Hey Crazy Craig,

I was so inspired that I even dusted off the old treadmill last evening! Don't know how you can do a 50-miler, but God bless you!

Your fan,
Paula Del Giudice

How Far is 50 Miles?

2006-09-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

Here's some perspective as to how far 50 miles will get you. I have broken it down by field office and picked a spot 50 miles away.

So if you live in:

Ann Arbor - Imagine running to East Lansing
Austin - You would end up just shy of Killeen
Montpelier - 50 miles would get you halfway to Concord
Seattle - You would end up at the foothills of Mt Rainer
Boulder - A quick trip to Greeley
DC - 50 miles would get you antique shopping in Leesburg
Missoula - To somewhere 50 miles away from Missoula
Anchorage - To the east side of the Chugach State Park (now that would be a tough 50 miler)
Reston - To the docks of Annapolis

That is how far we will be going on November 18th, 2006.

Photo: Mt. Rainier (Corbis)

Go Get 'Em!

2006-09-20T21:50:00.000-05:00

Photo: Land Tawney

"There can be no greater issue than
that of conservation in this country."
-Theodore Roosevelt

Inspired...

2006-09-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

Craig,

I'm impressed! I'm training for my first marathon (the Marine Corps) on October 29th. I can't imagine trying to do 50 miles.

Good luck,
Derek Brockbank

Jeremy Symons Makes First Donation!

2006-09-20T20:25:00.000-05:00

Thank you Jeremy for your
"groundbreaking" donation of $500!

Who's On Crazy Craig's List?

2006-09-20T19:46:00.000-05:00

Note: This list is not updated daily. If you have donated and your name does not appear on this list after 7 days, please contact crazycraig@nwf.org. Thank you

TEAMS
Cause Marketing
Constituent Operations
Development
Finance
General Counsel
Human Resources
Intranet
IT
Membership Marketing
Office of the Executive Vice President
Office of the President
Planned Giving

General Gift from Education

INDIVIDUALS
Anonymous (several)
Joshua and Dylan Anderson
Victoria Ansong
Alene Archer
Tammy Barbara, Merkle Domain
Patti Beattie
Michael Beauch
Gerald Bishop
Brian Biggs
Stephanie Blozy
Carol Boggis
Lisa Boyd
Barbara J. Bramble
Day Breitag
Harrison Bridget
Danielle Brigida
Derek Brockbank
Carla Brown
Jan Brown
Stacy Brown
Marion Bundens
Timothy Burgess, Merkle-Domain
Jo Burgess-Gorham
Mary Burnette
Susan A. Busada
Timothy Calabrese
Christine Campbell
James Carpenter
Gillian Caruso
Dan Chu
Alric Clay
Patricia Clemons
Lori Collins
David Conrad
Patricia Cook
Robyn Cook-Hubner
Patsy Cornwell
F.G. Courtney
Carolyn Curry-Wheat
Mary Dalheim
Nancy Davis
Susan S. Delgado
Paula J Del Giudice
Karen L Denzler
Tezeta Desta
Brandy Dickerson
Desiree Dimauro
Bill Dion
Roger DiSilvestro
Kerry Doran
Christine Dorsey
Daniel Dougherty
Tom Dougherty
Michele Drumm
Diane Dudley
Catherine Duplessis
Debbie Elliott
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Melissa Fales
Patricia Fetter
Montgomery Fischer
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Catherine Fox
Greg Fox, Merkle-Domain
Renay Galati
Sarah Gannonnagle
Janice Gates
Erik Giberti
Dan Gifford
Carmen Giles
Patty Glick
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Dulce Gomez-Zormelo
Luisa Grant
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Greg Griffith
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Carol Hadlock
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Julie Hart
Chris Harvey
Janelle Haskell
Richard Hebert
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Laura Hickey
Jennifer Hickman
Kim Hirose
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Loan Hoang
Kate Hofmann
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Don Hoppe
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Caroline Itoh
Eileen J.
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Kristin Johnson
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Veronica Johnson
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Karen Kress
Roland E Kuniholm
Dustina Lage, NWF alum
Patrick Lavin
Mary Ann Lawler
Karmen Lee
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Dawn Leo
Martha Levensaler
Cynthia Lewin
Marc Lieberman
Ryan Lim
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Sandra A Littleton
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Jaime Matyas
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James Murphy
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Nataki Osborne
Eric S. Palola
Paulette Pao
Cam Papadopoulos
Amy Partilla
Roxanne N. Paul
Michelle Payne
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Andrew Pinger
Michael Pinger
Robert Pinger
Joseph Popaden and Lori Brown
Georgina Price
Nicole Price
Patrick Raitt
Debra Raley
Michele Reyzer
Cecilia Riek
Cheryl Riley
Jenny Rogers
Pat Rooney
Steve Rudman, Merkle-Domain
Denise Ryan
Toyota Sam
Randy Sargent
Amy Savitsky
Jessica Savitsky
Jessica Savitsky
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Robert Senft
Kelly Senser
Thuy Senser
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Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc.
Mark A Wexler
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Michael Williams
Jill Wilson
Ron Windingstad
Diane V. Wood
Janet Zavrel
Kathleen Zimmerman

Please Join My List!

2006-09-20T19:00:00.000-05:00

Hello and welcome to my blog!

My name is Craig Tufts and I'm the Chief Naturalist at the National Wildlife Federation (NWF). I'm running a 50-mile race (crazy, isn't it?) on November 18th to raise awareness and funding for NWF's critical wildlife work including its initiative to confront global warming. My campaign is called Crazy Craig's Climate Challenge and I could use your support!

For more information or to make a donation, please click here.

Thank you in advance for your help!

Craig's Bio

2006-09-18T16:12:00.000-05:00

I've worked for National Wildlife Federation since July of 1976. Before coming to NWF, I obtained both my BS and MS degrees from Cornell University and served in the US Peace Corps as a wildlife biologist and naturalist on the Colombian Caribbean coast from 1971 to 1973.

Within months after being hired as NWF's assistant naturalist, my supervisor left NWF and I became NWF's Naturalist and began directing the Backyard Wildlife Habitat Program(tm). At the time, there were just under 400 certified habitats. Craig and his staff also oversaw NWF's volunteer program and the two education centers NWF then had in the northern Virginia area.

Over the years, the Backyard Wildlife Habitat program grew to over 20,000 certified habitats and Schoolyard Habitats were formalized in the early 1990s in partnership with Project WILD. I wrote a nationally distributed newspaper column in the mid-1980s. Those columns were used extensively by some NWF affiliates and later were compiled into a small book titled The Backyard Naturalist. In the mid-1980s, I appeared a number of times each year as the wildlife gardening expert on PBS' The Victory Garden. Other television opportunities arose in the 1990s with the Home and Garden channel, two Turner Broadcasting System specials on wildlife in NYC's Central Park and on global concerns over pollinators and two seasons of a PBS birdwatching show.

I've always enjoyed assisting staff, the public and our constituents with their wildlife gardening and natural history questions. I was on faculty at over 25 NWF Summits, leading bird walks, teaching about Backyard Habitats, wild edibles, butterflies and moths, dragonflies and environmentally-friendly lifestyles. For the past 20 years, I've reviewed all NWF Christmas card designs and catalog designs and eventually, our offerings.

My wife Jean, a former NWF employee, and I live outside of Middleburg and have a certified Backyard Wildlife Habitat site and a large organic vegetable garden. I have two sons, Ben, a musician, just married and age 30, and Dan, age 25, who manages the original Sterling Buffalo Wing Factory. I'm an avid native plant enthusiast and founding board member of the Virginia Native Plant Society. I'm an enthusiastic birder, often identifying birds by their song while running and serve on the conservation Committee of the Virginia Society of Ornithologists. Butterflies and bees are two other natural history interest areas. I've fished since age three and I keep a small power boat on Virginia's eastern shore for cobia, flounder, rockfish and croaker fishing -- and birding. I have a strong interest in the genealogy of the Tufts family and Jean and I have recently taken on habitat restoration of a family-owned 20 acre property outside of Kennebunk, Maine.

Running....

There was a time eons ago now when I tried out for my high school track team. A couple of buddies suggested that I could be a jock. That lasted about two weeks. I ran a 6:18 mile. I despised running around ovals when I could be out fishing for sharks and bluefish. I didn't really run again for 30 years. Now I run because I can and because I love cruising through the woods and the dirt roads near our home putting in the miles. I like the camaraderie of those I run with. I'll even admit I enjoy the competition-- mostly against myself but increasingly with those I've met in races throughout the Northeast.

When cycling to work at NWF was no longer an exercise option for me, I decided to start running a mile or two a day to stay in shape and clear my mind. In 1995, a former NWF employee suggested that I try to run a 10k (just over 6 miles) race. Four of us did and I was able to finish. I felt pretty good. I set a life goal that I would always be able to run a 10k distance on any given day.

In 1998, two other NWF employees thought I should join them and others training with the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to run a marathon to raise money for cancer research. A marathon is 26.2 miles--over 4 of those 10k races back to back. Seemed like one of those goals that stretches you but you never really expect to achieve. NWF staff and volunteers supported all three of us wonderfully in our fund-raising efforts to run the first San Diego Rock and Roll Marathon. We all finished. And two years later I married one of those people, Jean White, who encouraged me to try the marathon and ran it next to me. I finished my first marathon in June of 1998, in 4 hours and 53 minutes. I could check that off--been there, done that. I didn't need to do another one.

Running continued to be my exercise of choice. When NWF moved to our new Headquarters, the trails through Lake Fairfax Park, nearby Reston neighborhoods and the W&OD Trail gave me great opportunities to keep in shape for that 10k daily goal. And then as I do now, I track the plants, the birds and other wildlife that I see along the way. I began to run a longer race now and then. Another NWF person gave me an opportunity to run my second marathon. Her good friend in Colorado had been training for the Marine Corps Marathon but had pulled a muscle and couldn't run. Did I want to take on the identity of 26 year old Emily and give the MCM a try? With 6 weeks to train before race day? I did. "Emily" ran that race in 4 hours 3 minutes and came out with cramped legs and sore feet and, again, the marathon bug became dormant soon after.

There is a pattern here. Friends at NWF began to talk about running as a team in the 2003 Marine Corps Marathon to raise money for conservation work on the St. Lawrence River. Dave Strauss and I had been running together that year and we were talking BOSTON MARATHON for 2004. Together, those colleagues and a lot of training at longer distances got me to the starting line well-prepared. When that second MCM was over, I had run a 3 hour 29 minute marathon, felt terrific and had a Boston qualifying time as well.

I trained hard for my first Boston. Dave Strauss and I, often joined by Doug Inkley, covered a lot of ground near NWF's HQ. Dave and I also ran longer races to get ready-- 10 Milers, half marathons, and just three weeks before Boston, the HAT 50k trail run. Fifty kilometers is over 31 miles. We were ready. We were probably overtrained.

My first Boston Marathon race, in 2004, was blisteringly hot. That mid-April day in Boston, from the start in Hopkinton to the finish near the John Hancock building downtown, was never cooler than 80 degrees and the entire course averaged about 83 degrees. But I was able to finish. I did it-- heat, "heartbreak hill," and some very sore muscles that got increasingly ornery! Boston is not only the oldest US marathon, and one of the few for which you must qualify, it is generally considered one of the most difficult big marathons. When I completed the race that day, I set a new goal for myself: run the Boston Marathon for at least ten consecutive years. Since 2004, I've run Boston twice more, each time bettering the time I ran in that first hot one of 2004. With this year's race, my time qualified me for the 2007 Boston Marathon.

Someplace in the convoluted recesses of the gray matter we call our brain, there is the notion of trying something new and again pushing a little harder. There's the thrill of running over new roads, coursing through unknown forests and hearing new birds.

Dave Strauss returned to running regularly again earlier this year and suggested that we just think about doing something together bigger than a marathon. Bigger even than the 50k HAT race. How about the JFK 50 Miler?

About the time Dave mentioned this race-- the biggest 50 Mile race in the United States with over 1000 contestants-- a new NWF person, Andrew Pinger, mentioned that it was a good race and that he had done it twice. And he was willing to do it again to help out us newbies. So our team was launched.

Training is going very well. We've all joined Reston Runners, a great local running club that offers great support, training tips, a variety of runs and even race mentors who offer their knowledge of specific races. That marathon distance which once seemed so impossible and even recently was accomplished only at the end of a long training cycle has become a comfortable distance.

But 50 Miles is so different than 26 miles. The thought of completing a marathon and then going out and nearly running a second one is, well, awesome. And a little frightening. It's all relative though. I needed a very strong nudge just 10 years ago to attempt a 10k race. Then, a marathon seemed almost impossible. There are thresholds out there that I will never go beyond. Perhaps this 50 mile JFK race is my top but I know I'll continue to run until my legs just don't work well anymore. Perhaps I'm jinxing myself to think beyond this November 18th race but you know, I'll be 60 on November 22 and I'll be running Boston again next April. And I'll be running a marathon in the crater of Kileauea next summer. Always good to have a new goal! And always the best to have the support and friendship of those at NWF.

- Craig Tufts

Andrew's Bio

2006-09-18T16:04:00.000-05:00

In the late 1980’s, I joined the cross-country running team at James Storer Junior High School in Muncie, Indiana and dropped out after the 2nd practice. I liked the green hoodies they gave us to warm-up, but I hated all that running.

I didn’t run again until January of 2001 when I started running a 3-mile loop around my home every day. That March I signed-up for the Marine Corps Marathon and ran it in October. I was hooked.

When the 2003 Washington, DC Marathon was cancelled 4 days before the race, I had to channel my training to the next local race, which happened to be an ultra-marathon (any race longer than a marathon of 26.2 miles) in Lynchburg, VA. The 2003 Promiseland 50K was my baptism into the world of running insanity that consumed me for the following 2 years that included four 50-mile races, eleven 50-K races, one marathon, four stitches in a split knee and about a hundred thousand calories burned.

Around the time I dove off the running deep-end, I became increasingly unsatisfied with the direction of my professional life. Within a year I quit my job and ran away to work at a wilderness survival school based in the Pine Barrens of south Jersey.

During my sequestration in the woods I decided that when I rejoined society I would be wasting my time unless I took a job where I would protect the earth’s natural places and educate people to care for and value the beauty of the natural world. After a protracted quest I had the good fortune of landing softly at the ideal organization, the National Wildlife Federation.

Now as for this race, running and fighting global warming at the same time? Only Craig and Dave are unhinged enough to come up with something that crazy, but I am honored to join them in this fund and awareness-raising effort. Looks like I’m the one who will have to try keeping what little sanity we still have left.

- Andrew Pinger

Dave's Bio

2006-09-18T15:58:00.000-05:00

Run Dave Run - Those were the words echoed from my good buddy, John, in 1991 as we were leaving a 7-Eleven with a handful of burritos. Unfortunately, the cops got him, but I was able to escape. From there my running career blossomed.

I started off doing lots of 5 and 10K races for a number of years. I considered myself a social runner with no intent of actually taking it too seriously. In 1997 I got the bug to run a marathon. The ever popular Long Island Marathon? Why the Long Island Marathon - it happened to fall on my birthday. The marathon was long - 26.2 miles! I ran the first half very strong, but the second half was all about wind and hills and I barely finished. I ended up in the "I need help because I am pathetic" tent. The guy told me to never attempt running a marathon again. What a great birthday!

I quickly went back to being the social runner again for the next 7 years.

Then my friend, Craig Tufts, thought he would rub it into the young runners and try to qualify for the Boston Marathon. Us young ones would have none of that so we drew straws and I was the unlikely one to have to start training - just my luck! Long story short, I ended up running three marathons and an ultra in 2004. One of the marathons being the Boston - go young ones!

I quickly went back to being a social runner again for the next 2 years.

Then Craig said he was going to run a 50 Miler..and here we are. Except this time we are doing it for a great cause - National Wildlife Federation!

- David Strauss