Last Saturday was the Pocatello 50 Mile Trail Run up in the mountains. My ham radio club has been preparing for this race for several months and we were ready! The picture above is Jim holding our banner in front of the tent we had set up at the City Creek Aid Station.

Our task was to provide communications back to the start/finish line. The race organizers had laptop computers setup to record the runner numbers and times. They would give that to us every half hour or so and we would transmit the data over the radio. In addition, we would be able to pass along any messages to the race organizers, particularly anything related to health and welfare. But, as with everything set up at the last minute, the folks at the aid station set up the laptop computer incorrectly and were unable to capture the race data for us to transmit. Jim and I had a very uneventful morning. Jim took a number of great pictures and hopefully I’ll have a copy of them before he leaves on Saturday to go back to Springfield, Missouri.

The winner of the race, Dakota Jones, is from Colorado and he just blazed through the course at an average rate of 6.3 miles per hour. Absolutely incredible. The weather cooperated this year. Temperatures were in the low 50’s, mostly cloudy, with little wind. We did get a rain shower for about 20 minutes in the late afternoon. We left the house at 5:15 a.m. and were back home at about 9 p.m., tired and happy. This was a great race and very fun afternoon.

Jim and I tried to enter the 5 meter race … but that category wasn’t open this year. Maybe next year? TTFN!