Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp Beer Mile

It had to happen sooner or later, I just ran my first beer mile!

Thanks to Geoff Roes for hosting this event at his Alaska Mountain Ultrarunning Camp and to Dakota Jones for participating and making me look good.


[Photo credit: Kelly MacDonald]

Pictured left to right are Tracey, Cam, Nina (in front), Dakota (in back), and Martin.

Note that three of us are drinking even more beer after running this race... at least we took a break to shower and change clothes.

Sun Mountain 50k

Oof. I've been bragging lately about how well my body has been tolerating running but that stopped today at the Rainshadow Running Sun Mountain 50k. I suppose I could have lessened the severity of my injury by stopping when it happened instead of carrying on... Yeah, I know.

But it was an otherwise great day! The trail conditions were freaking first rate and so was the temperature. Plus, adding a lake to jump into at the finish to the already top-notch Rainshadow after-party was awesome. And how often can you say you finished just one spot/five minutes behind Gary Robbins? If I'd only known I totally would have run five minutes faster. Not. #hindsight

Chirico Tenpeat

I attempted the Chirico Tenpeat once way back in 2014 and wasn't able to finish it that year. It's pretty tough. This year I did finish and to my surprise, it was in 2nd place!

Here is the glory shot.


[Photo credit to Ben Luedke.]

Yakima Skyline Rim 50k

Oh man, this course is legit. I've been wanting to run the Yakima Skyline Rim 50k for five(?) years but something would always come up be it a last-minute time conflict or an injury. Not this year. In fact, this year I felt pretty good! Bring it! Well, this event delivers. My (overly optimistic?) time goal going in was six hours. I didn't make it. I had no good idea what I was getting myself into.

Here I am before the start.



And here I am after the finish.

Badger Mountain Challenge 50 mile

Sometimes you sign up for a race and you end up being a pacer. Or, sometimes you decide to run a race with a friend and one of you has a bad day.

In 2016 I ended up running the last 30 miles of the Pine to Palm 100 with Paul Morrow. This got me through a very low point and I actually recovered and then ended up coaxing Paul to the finish when his tank was empty. A few months ago, after discovering that we are both going back to Pine to Palm, I suggested that we run the whole thing together. He agreed so the next sensible step was to find a "tune-up" race to see how compatible we were these days. The Badger Mountain Challange 50 mile was that race. Turns out today was a replay of the last 15 miles from Pine to Palm.

Chuckanut 50k

The Chuckanut 50k was my first ultra back in 2012. And as I milled around the start grid on this day talking to people I realized that was a pretty common experience. Kudos to Krissy Moehl for being such a force in the trail running community.

That first ultra was tough. I had spent the last few days trying to prepare myself mentally for the return trip down the Community Trail that finishes off this race. For someone that prefers going up and down to running on the flat, the closing stretch was starting to loom larger than life. Wry social media posts were not helping.

I know, I know, I can't believe it isn't raining for the #Chuckanut50k either!

A post shared by Martin Criminale (@itsnitram) on Mar 16, 2018 at 6:42pm PDT

Lord Hill 20-mile

Can I just say that it is awesome to run healthy? The more I talk to fellow runners, the more it seems that most of them are usually operating anywhere between 50-90%, RARELY are they at 100%. Today I was feeling like I was 90% percent and rising! Here's to some awesome summer goals.

The race I ran today was the Evergreen Trail Runs Lord Hill 20-mile. True to its name, this run incorporates a big hill (Lord Hill) that you need to climb once per 10-mile lap. And it's a legit climb, as in hiking. I ran this race for the first (and only other) time back in 2012. It was fun to be back. And good to see I was able to go seven minutes faster this time. :)

This race is known for mud. Lots and lots of mud. Lord Hill is usually a slip & slide going up and sometimes worse going down. It's the kind of race where you attempt to tiptoe around the puddles for a bit until you realize it's fruitless and eventually you just end up running straight through the water. This shot speaks volumes.

how to sync Instagram, Twitter and Facebook posts

There are about a million different ways to sync posts between various different social media platforms and no doubt there are several that are better than this one but I didn't really want to start using a new tool like Buffer, etc. and I was already using IFTTT so here is what I did and why.

Some history.

In the past, I used IFTTT the send my Instagram posts to Twitter and linked my Twitter account to my Facebook Profile. But I started noticing recently that the picture I would post to Instagram was not showing up on Facebook. Instead, you would get just the text of the post and an annoying link like this. :(

Pictures are much more engaging than text so this was not going to fly. Here is what I do now. And so far it's working great!

• I turned off the Twitter/Facebook connection in my Twitter settings.
• I turned off the IFTTT applet that posted my Instagram photos to Twitter.
• Now when I post to Instagram, I just toggle on sharing to Twitter and Facebook in the Instagram app.

What about when Instagram is not involved and I just want to share a Tweet on Facebook? For this I went back to IFTTT and use an applet that posts to Facebook when I use a specific hashtag (which I can specify), it even strips the hashtag from the Facebook post.

This works for me but any/all comments are welcome if you have a "better" way to sync these three social media platforms. And if you know how to add Google + let me know!

UPDATE 16-04-2019

Turns out Buffer really is the way to go. When I share an Instagram post to Facebook and Twitter, the image or movie is not displayed in Twitter and instead, you just get a link. But in this age of record short attention spans, if people can't see the image they won't click the link. If I share a picture or movie using Buffer and share it to Twitter/Instagram/Facebook, all three services display the picture. Yes!

As of this update, Buffer will unfortunately not share to G Suite Google + pages meaning if you have a Google + page that is using a custom domain like mydomain.com, Buffer can't share to it. You can only share to Google + if you use Gmail (myname@gmail.com). Hopefully, that gets resolved soon.

pacing Lucca at the Seattle Marathon

Five times! I have run all or part of the Seattle Marathon with Lucca five times. How cool.

Oregon Coast 50 km

Perfect weather. It was not what I was expecting. Friends have told me the Rainshadow Running Oregon Coast 50k is usually wet and windy, I was okay with this anomaly.