Foothills Fat Ass

Overview

Perky and Prince Charming came up with the idea of a New Year's Day Fat Ass Run and implemented it on 2012. They were so successful that they were cursed blessed to host it … forever (or through 2022, whichever came first). If you've ever watched Victor Wooten play Amazing Grace, you may have decided to give up on playing the bass. He's that good.

And so the Foothills Fat Ass was never to be hosted again, except, well although it's inconceivably intimidating to try to fill their shoes, I do have big feet¹, and "not too smart" would be my middle name, except it's three words. Additionally, I have plenty of free time, since I'm not wasting any by trying to learn how to play the bass. So…

I kept the tradition alive by hosting it this year. I also ran "sweep".

As Race Director

What Worked

Three and a half awesome volunteers: Jason Romero, Mark Werkmeister, Roleen Younis and my wife. They did all the hard work. Jason and Mark manned the aid station. Roleen womanned the 50k start/finish. My wife, Sophia, made the black-eyed pea salsa that is guaranteed to bring people good luck (not necessariy the people who ate it or even attended, but somewhere, somebody will have good luck in 2023, at least momentarily). She gets full marks for her cooking, but she was dragooned.

Much of the aid station food and beverages worked, and I've been keeping track, although via poory indexed email, so I'll elaborate later.

The starting time of 8am was perfect, except for the tardy couple.

The participants worked. They showed up and feigned happiness and cheer.

Using the Matthews house worked in that it was better than nothing.

What Didn't Work

Hiring an ambulance to stay just out of sight of the house, in case someone got injured playing air-hockey was overkill. I won't do that again.

Having two separate start times and locations short-changed the shorter distance participants.

Using the Matthews house forced the 50k participants to run on roads for about a third of the course. It also meant that there was no food or beverages awaiting the finishers of the shorter distances.

I may have been the only one to eat the pecan pie.

The open course for the 50k didn't work, since one of the 50k participants wound up not running the southern most loop.

Plans for Next Year

have begun.

We're investigating moving the start and finish area to a location closer to the foothills.

We'll come up with a better way of keeping people informed about the race. One possibility is using Facebook. That would be better than only updating the web page. There are other alternatives though.

If we have a better way of communicating with the participants, having an open unmarked course might work. Not marking the course has several advantages, including no setup or teardown time and not having to worry about people removing (or relocating) the markings.

We'll line up volunteers much earlier, and encourage the volunteers from 2023 to revert to being participants in 2024.

As Entrant

What Worked

I didn't get lost.

Although I stumbled many times, both my knees and both my hands never touched the ground.

The cactus spines didn't poke far enough into my shoes to pierce my feet.

Jolly Rancher hard candies.

What Didn't Work

Too much time chatting with the aid station volunteers cost me my seven hour goal.

Plans for Next Year

To finish under seven hours, duh!