It’s been two months since we hosted the Pure Zion event. So why am I only posting about it now?
One reason for the delay is that Pure Zion happened right smack in the middle of moving The Life to its new WordPress home. That created a pretty strong incentive not to post any new content until the transition was complete. The weeks passed.
Another delay was caused by the sheer awesomeness of the weekend. Reducing the experience to a blog post — mere photos and words — seemed overly, well, reductive. I’m very sure I couldn’t have posted anything that did the weekend justice at the time, so maybe the minor technical barrier of the WordPress transition was irrelevant.
Fortunately, two PZ participants who blog as well as they run — which is really saying something — stepped into the breach in the meantime and encapsulated the weekend better than I ever could. (Links: Daily Adventures and Crooked Trails.)
So what remains is to decide what Pure Zion 2009 will mean for Wilderness Running going forward. I think we finally have a rough outline, at least for the near term.
For 2010, the plan with regard to races and special events is this: we plan to offer sponsorship support to 2-3 established, conventional races and to host or co-host a similar number of special events in the same “un-race” vein as Pure Zion.
The first conventional race we are getting behind is Moab’s Red Hot in February. We will be providing WRC gift certificates as race prizes and will also offer a nice coupon to all Red Hot runners. We’re psyched to be associated with what should be a great day in the desert.
The first “un-race” we plan to host in 2010 is shaping up to be a return to Zion, probably in April. We will be tweaking a few details, but the same basic format will hold: very small group; cheap-to-free “entry fees”; minimal on-trail support; and, hopefully, a few pleasant surprises along the way. Assuming it is even a fraction of the fun as the first get-together, it should be good.
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