White River 50 II - The Runner Strikes Back

There is something disturbing about the title of this post. If you haven't already guessed I've reached into nerd-lore and ripped the title off Irvin Kirshner's Sci Fi masterpiece "The Empire Strikes Back". George Lucas doesn't get the nod for this one mainly because he is a crappy director and rightfully handed control over to somebody vastly superior to himself.  In said film the bad guys get the upper hand and we end up having to wait for the third film to see the good guys victorious triumph over the evil empire. So to sum up, in the first movie the good guys win, the second movie the bad guys win, and the third movie ends with what is essentially a repeat of the first with the good guys blowing up some empire folks. So if that's the format my running is going to follow...next year White River is going to destroy me. Lets hope that I follow a different pattern...perhaps Loss, Win, Win. By win I do not mean to convey that I won the race...the victory belongs to Sage Canaday who crushed it in 6:16. (A cool 3 hours faster than me) By win I mean I had a great day and drastically improved my time. 

In any event, as can probably be deduced from the above paragraph this past weekend I ran the White River 50 miler for the second time. I use that term loosely mainly because the first time I ran it the course kicked my butt and I was relegated to what amounted to a death march for the last 22 miles. This year things went much better; I ended up running all the flats, downhills and probably 65-70% of the hills. The rest was done at what ultrarunners like to call "power hiking" because normal hiking just isn't cool enough for us.

I was out on course for 9 hours and 21 minutes, finishing over two hours faster than last year. I guess that's what happens when you train a lot harder and end up running a majority of the course. Final Garmin upload had the elevation gain between 10 and 11 thousand feet, though the race website claims it's "only" 9200. To do a play by play would essentially be a repeat of what I posted last year, with some marginally more light hearted observations about how I was feeling at any particular point in time. Suffice it to say I only had one real bad spot, which occurred on the climb up to Sun Top between miles 33 and 37, and didn't last nearly as long as my extremely horrible patch the year prior. After that the 13 miles to the finish hurt, but was almost all runnable.

Just like last year I ended up running this one with my buddy Danny. Unlike last year however however he managed to rope another of his buddies into the Ultra Scene and our new training partner Josh made his 50 mile debut with a solid finish in 9:34. Danny as expected came in first amongst us three in 9:14. I'm pretty happy though in that he only beat me by 7 minutes this year which is vastly different than the near two hours he waited for me to finish last year. So awesome run by all! Now on to this beast...

http://cascadecrest100.com/


T-Minus 18 days. Thankfully Josh and Danny will be helping pace me for the last 50 miles. I also have a bunch of other buddies (and my lovely wife) that will be assisting throughout the day, mostly by providing some much needed mental support...though I may ask them to bring some essentials to a few of the aid stations. Like a new pair of legs at about the 68 mile mark....

Who put these mountains here?

This past weekend I ran the White River 50 Miler, shuffling to the finish line in a near broken state. I knew this was going to be a tough one going in but was also aware that there wasn't anything I could do in training that would completely prepare me for what I would face out on the course. Before getting into the play by play here are a few statistics on the run:

Where - White River Area of Mount Rainier
When - July 30th 2011
Course - 50 Miles, 8750 Elevation Gain (Though a garmin would probably list it at around 12K)
Calories Burned - Between 5000-6000
Calories Consumed - Between 2200-2700
Time through first 27.3 miles - 5 hrs 20 minutes
Time from 22.7 to finish - 6 hrs 20 minutes

Who put these mountains here?

 

Basically...it's far

From the above statistics you can probably guess where the wheels really started to come off. (Hint: I was finishing up a big downhill at the time) I probably wanted to drop around a half a dozen times...all throughout the second half of the race. The first thought of dropping occurred at Buck Creek after some extensive calf cramping on the descent had forced me to sit idle on the side of the trail while I waited for my seized up calves to quiet down. Just prior to Fawn Ridge I had told myself that my stomach was too wrecked and my legs were too shredded to go further yet after arriving at the aid station I realized that not only was it well within my physical capacity to continue forward, I actually wanted to keep going. This was due to equal parts a stubborn refusal to submit, a desire to see what was around the next corner, and because I found that being out their on the trails was just too much fun. These lows and highs became more frequent as the raced progressed which in my opinion is actually part of the appeal of these types of tests.


Start of race to Camp Sheppard - 3.7 miles (3.7)

We Started off in a mass start (all 300 of us) sans timing chips in the Buck Creek area near the Silver Springs Campground. The first half a mile was along a dirt road near the old air strip and served as a pleasant warm up before the course turned to almost exclusively single track with a little bit of double-track for the next 26 miles. Once the road section was over we followed a nice trail that headed out north along the white river towards the bridge to to the buck creek service road. From there we jumped on another quick section of trail that threw a few blow downs, some shotgun shells and beer cans at us before finally hopping over 410 and linking up with the white river trail to Camp Sheppard. This was a superb rolling section that lasted for about 2 miles before we blew past the aid station and started the ascent to Ranger Creek cabin. Luckily I still had plenty of fluids for the climb. I probably should have slowed down a bit on this section but I was having so much fun breezing through it that I just went with the pace. I could tell early on though that Danny was going to have a great day running...my day was still up in the air.

Camp Sheppard to Ranger Creek - 7.8 Miles (11.7)

If you haven't hiked the Palisades trail I highly recommend that you do so. You will have the pleasure of traveling on some of the most plush single track trail in the state while taking in views of waterfalls, the Mountain, other Mountains, creek crossings and of course you will be sheltered through most of it by the combination of newer and old growth forest. I kept up a good power Hike/Run Pace through this section but in the long run probably ran a bit too much. The EFS liquid shots that I was eating weren't tasting so good at this point. I was a little put off by this considering I still had about 40 miles to go over which I would need to consume about 2200 additional calories.  I ended up losing Danny at this point as he was definitely having a good day. That was cool though, we each needed to run our own race.

Ranger Creek to Corral Pass - 5.2 Miles (16.9)

Great Photo by Glenn Tachiyama

This section of the trail continued through some nice old growth and periodically yielded some pretty stunning views of the Mountain. The higher we climbed the more we saw of the snow capped monster. Due to the insane amount of snowfall this past winter there was still some snow pack at the higher elevations of the race. Volunteers had actually come out earlier in the week to carve steps in the snow and tied up some ropes in an effort to make it a bit safer for the runners. The snowy sections were fun but a bit challenging. I actually ended up running into a few of the front runners who were on their way back on this section. They all pretty much just floated down the trail. After one last little climb we popped up out of the woods and skirted along a ridge line out to Corral pass. This was an absolutely awe inspiring section as we had the Mountain on our right and the Norse wilderness on our left. Coming back here with the digital SLR is a high priority this summer as I can't really recall being in another place that looked quite so wild.  At some point I saw Barefoot Ted, another local running celebrity, coming back out of Corral pass. Once I got out to the aid station I took a minimal amount of time to refill my bottles and grab some food and then headed back out on the trail.

Corral Pass to Ranger creek - 5.2 Miles (22.1)

This was the same section as that above only with the Mountain on the left and the Norse wilderness on the right.  I made sure to say thanks to the Ultra Running Photographer Glenn Tachiyama as I made my way back. (He took some cool shots of everybody with the Mountain in the background...I'll be picking those up before I post this to my blog) More awesome views here but I could tell that I was already starting to lose control of my stomach.

Ranger Creek to Buck Creek - 5.1 Miles (27.2)

Arriving at Buck Creek

It was make or break time. I knew I wanted to be a bit more conservative than usual on the downhill and was also acutely aware of the tightness in my legs and my increasingly upset stomach. I ended up running about an 8.5 minute per mile pace through most of this portion in an effort to save the quads. Unfortunately I ended up tripping near the bottom, caught myself temporarily, but then had both calves immediately seize up which then caused a nice face first fall into the middle of the trail. Thankfully no one witnessed my graceful crash first hand. After chilling out on the side of the trail for a few minutes I was able to gingerly make my way down the trail, first at a walk, then a faster hike and finally a decent run. Doug was at the Aid station at buck creek and did his best to be encouraging. My stomach had degraded further, my calves were killing me and I could tell my Quads and Hamstrings were going to follow suit shortly...

Buck Creek to Fawn Ridge - 4.5 Miles (31.7)

Another trip around the air strip and then on to the sun top trail. I was able to run about 2/3 of this despite my shot legs. After about 1.5 miles the trail just took off up the ridge towards the sun top lookout. This was an extremely brutal section. It was just too steep and it felt like I was going to pass out in quite a few places. My stomach was getting worse but my legs seemed okay...except for my brutalized calves. Fawn ridge was a welcome site. Nice Tropical themed aid station, filled with inflatable flowers, luau music and more helpful volunteers. I ended up eating some more fruit here and popped an electrolyte cap in an attempt to get my cramping under control.

Fawn Ridge to Sun Top - 5.3 Miles (37.0)

This is a pictorial representation of how I felt

This was probably the second worst part of the race for me. There were a couple of descents that I was able to run...until my quads started cramping. I was reduced to a fast hike downhill in some sections but by and large was still able to move forward. At this point I was still able to eat a bit and started feeling a bit better. (It was short lived) After descending from the false summit we crossed the Sun Top road and hit the last half a mile to the sun top lookout. I was expecting this to be worse than it was. I actually managed to pass a few people on this section...my uphill legs were a bit better than my downhill legs. Towards the top I saw Glenn Tachiyama ready to snap a picture so I made sure to run a bit of that section with what I think was a smile on my face and made sure to give him a big thanks again. He does an excellent job catching some amazing moments during these races. Finally got to the US themed Aid station, lots of American flags and some cool oldies playing on the stereo. At this point I decided I was going to change into the shoes I had left in my drop bag and try to stuff as much food in my stomach as possible hoping that my decreased heart rate on the downhill would let me stomach digest things a bit better. I was able to change my shoes but couldn't actually tie them and had to ask an aid station volunteer to do that for me. I have to say without the volunteers I would've been left in a puddle of cramping agony at this point. Oh and the view of the Mountain at this point was breathtaking...too bad the imminent descent had my quaking in fear...


Sun top to Skookum Flats - 6.4 miles (43.4)

Even LOLCatz get cramps

This was by far the worst part of the race. Relentless 6.5 mile downhill section on the fire road. I broke it up into run/hike sections due to my spotty stomach and increasingly terrible legs. I couldn't run for much more than a half a mile without suffering from some combination of Hip, Calf, Quad or Hamstring cramps or nausea. (Sometimes all at once) I kept reminding myself that this was one of the reasons why I signed up.
After what seemed like forever I got to the skookum flats section where my beautiful wife was waiting for me with some words of encouragement and a short kiss or two. I may have dropped at this point if she hadn't been there to give me a big shot in the arm. I tried to eat some more fruit, took some tums and another electrolyte cap, said by to Brandi and let her know that I would see her in about 1.5-2 hours as I ran/walked/hiked/shuffled and cramped my way through the skookum flats leg.

Skookum to Finish - 6.6 Miles (50.0)

Still Smiling with 6.6 miles to go

This trail is awesome on fresh legs, on legs that had 43.5 miles on them it was a nightmare. It is extremely technical, with numerous sections where you need to pick your way through roots, rocks and all other manners of obstacles which just serve to increase the chance of tripping and eating dirt. I figure I was able to run (Shuffle) about 1/3 of the trail and power hiked the rest. That being said it was still ridiculously slow going and by the time I popped out towards the finish I had passed 3-4 people but had been passed by probably 5-10. It didn't matter...at this point I was just racing myself. Screw you body...I was going to win this thing. And by win I mean win the battle against my body...the race had been won by Uli Steidl about 4.5 hours earlier!

Finish Line

11 hours 40 minutes later

Much like everybody else I'm sure I had an amazing feeling at the finish. I shuffled/ran as best I could despite the cramping muscles. Brandi was there to cheer me in along with my buddy Danny, his wife Jenny and their three boys. All the other finishers, spectators and volunteers also joined in and I can honestly say it was the best race experience of my life. The whole day was full of highs, lows and everything in between and I will look back fondly on every joyful, painful, god forsaken moment.  Danny came over to congratulate me and I finally introduced him to my wife Brandi. We traded "congratulations" talked a bit about the race and then I made my way over to the medical tent. After about 20 minutes of laying in a cot I felt good enough to walk around again and proceeded to drink about 60 oz of water over the next hour or two. It should be noted that I was not the only one in the medical tent as there were several other finishers that looked to be in a bit worse shape than I. We all had fun reminiscing about our experiences out on the trail and all seemed pretty stoked to try it all again.

Recovery and Beyond?

If he had trained me those checks wouldn't have bounced

It took a few days of rest but my legs feel pretty much back to normal. I haven't done much to really test them yet so I'll be interested to see how they respond to some hill climbing. I've managed to do a fair bit of walking and have even gone out on a short run. Unfortunately I came down with a bit of a cold (or perhaps the one I had before the race came back with a vengeance) and was laid up in bed for the last couple of days. I'm getting over it though and anticipate returning to a fairly full week of running starting on August 7th. As my buddy Ryan said, my ego wrote some checks my body couldn't cash and those bounced checks came back to haunt me with a bit of a cold and some lingering muscle pains. We then proceeded to run this top gun reference into the ground over a half an hour period. On the ultra running front I have to admit I fully understand that this sport isn't for everybody. It's definitely for me though and I can't wait till I'm recovered and get to run another. I've already signed up for the North Face Endurance Challenge in San Francisco on December 3rd so I can't afford to take much of a break. Lets see if I can get further before the cramping sets in...

Here are a few more miscellaneous pictures below.

Another great photo by Glenn Tachiyama. The sun was a bit of a nuisance here

The trails weren't closed like in Road Marathons

Drop bags...a runners lifeline











Get Ready! Here we go!

For the past four months I've been focused on one goal...finishing my first 50 mile race. By finishing I hope I don't mean limping or crawling in, I want to finish on my feet, uninjured with a decent time for a first time 50 mile runner. I thought it would be fun to offer up a summary of the past 4 months of training along with some thoughts on how things have gone, what I will likely change in my next round of training, and which training runs were my favorite of the bunch.

First some notes on the math, I'm going to be offering weekly and monthly totals. Adding up the weekly mileage won't really equate easily to the monthly totals because of the way in which the weeks fall month to month. I personally just think it's interesting to see weekly vs. monthly. Weekly is much more helpful in determining overall training volume but the monthly numbers are nice ego boosters.

April Training

Week of April 4th - 30.05
Week off April 11th - 38.47
Week of April 18th - 35.54
Week of April 25th - 17.42

April Total - 127.48 Miles
Elevation Gain - 11,0059 Feet

April was a tough month. I was coming back from an extended vacation in South America that lasted the entire month of March. As such I was basically attempting to ramp up my training volume from zero. I ended up with an injury shortly after an excursion up on the Tiger Mountain trail which caused the drastic drop off seen in the week of April 25th. More core training was necessary. Sadly...I wouldn't really learn that lesson until early June.

May Training

Week of May 2nd - 41.19
Week off May 9th - 47.46
Week of May 16th - 44.48
Week of May 23rd - 55.27
Week of May 30th - 48.07

May Total - 200.09 Miles
Elevation Total - 15,779 Feet

May was pretty awesome. I finally started to feel pretty decent week to week and noticed some remarkable pep in my legs when climbing. My favorite training run had to have been the memorial day weekend 30+ mile run around the Mt. Rainier area. In fact I felt it was so awesome that I wrote a blog entry on it earlier in the year.

June Training

Week of June 6th - 61.05
Week of June 13th - 44.91
Week of June 20th - 65.05
Week of June 27th - 50.79


June Total - 232.03 miles
Elevation Total - 21,953 Feet

June was another really solid month. I spent a bit more time in the rainier area, familiarizing myself with the white river route while taking in some pretty spectacular vistas. Snow continued to be a problem at the higher elevations but we have such extensive trail systems out here in the Pacific Northwest that it was still pretty easy to link together long runs without topping out on the buried ridge lines. I didn't really have a single training session that I would call my favorite this month, though the June 30th jaunt up to the Ranger Creek Cabin (and a little beyond) was pretty spectacular. Unfortunately I bonked pretty hard and had to cut the run short.

July Training

Week of July 4th - 70.27
Week of July 11th - 20.23
Week of July 18th - 32.0

July Total (So Far) - 152.5 Miles
Elevation Total - 12,500 Feet

July has been interesting so far. My training called for a pretty nice even taper but the chest cold that I came down with after my 70 mile week forced me to reduce my training volume a lot more than I would've liked. I had anticipated the week of the 11th coming in around the 45 mile mark with the week of the 18th being around 30-35. I'm pretty confident though despite my forced reduction and am feeling great heading into the final week before my race.

Another 63 miles forthcoming this week, 13 from some training and another 50 from a single race coming this Saturday, July 30th. That will push me over 200 miles for the third month in a row. Am I ready? I certainly think so. I probably should've done a bit better job ramping my mileage up to my max of 70 but I got there and didn't completely destroy myself doing it. As can be seen from the weekly totals I had a difficult time increasing week over week and ended up ping ponging a fair bit between low and high mileage weeks. Still...I was able to ramp up to 70 miles without my joints failing so I'm fairly confident that I'll be able to move up into that volume again in preparation for my October races.

The race this Saturday will be awesome. If I bonk, it will still be rad, if I nail it and can move consistently through to the end then that will be even better. Regardless...it will be a fantastic day on the trails. Hopefully I'll see some familiar faces out there but if not I always have the Mountain.

Oops...we ran an Ultra

So what happens when you take two runners, both known for being stubborn explorers with a knack for getting lost, put them in the Rainier area on a long weekend and ask them to run 20 miles? You get a 31 mile excursion. Unintended of course. Before recapping the run in it's entirety I would first like to point out some lessons learned from this little trip.

1) Following somebodies footsteps on a snow covered portion of an unfamiliar trail is a good way to get lost in the woods.

2) Pack more gels then you think you need if your route isn't set in stone. Gels help keep up your blood sugar, which in turn prevents you from turning into an exhausted zombie.

3) Phone batteries drain fast when your in an area with a weak cell signal. I probably would've realized this sooner if I had fully appreciated lesson two listed above.

4) Don't ever let Doug or I lead you on a run unless you want to go further than originally planned.

5) Don't be intimidated by bad weather...just get out there and go for a run...or a hike...or anything.

Snow can be fun

Woefully unprepared for 8+ hours in the woods we set off with good intentions, a nice 4-5 hour, 20 mile run around the white river area of Mount Rainier. The weather was pretty decent (For Seattle) and neither of us had any afternoon plans. We should have known what we were in for when we got lost within 2 miles of the start. Our attempt to locate the Sun Top trail was ultimately successful, however we ended up adding an unexciting loop through a campground during our search. We knew full well that we wouldn't really be able to get to Sun Top this time of year but decided that it would be fun to see how far up we could get before running into impassable snow. (Note...what we thought was impassable in the beginning of the run was in sharp contrast to what we felt was impassable during the latter stages of our adventure)
 

Stream crossings are more fun

Before long we were running through mountain streams, post holing in snow drifts and enjoying the many views afforded by the trail while making our way up the ridge line. At about 3700 feet we decided the snow on the trail was only going to get worse and made our way back down to the buck creek area. We managed to find our way back to the parking lot without getting lost in another campground though we did run into a fun couple that were out Geo caching and stopped to chat with them for a bit. They showed us some crazy pictures of the snow up at paradise.



After making a quick stop at aid station 1 (my car) we made our way out onto the Skookum flats trail.

Aid station number 1 was a big hit

 
Both Doug and I had mountain biked this trail several times in the past and were pretty stoked to see how quickly we could run it. Excellent conditions and a nice 8 mile warm up set the stage for a pretty quick jaunt down the rolling single-track. Approximately a mile in we ran into a WTA trail work party. Big thanks to those guys as it turns out they have their work cut out for them. About 2/3 of the way into the trail we ran into a ridiculous amount of dead fall. Not normal dead-fall...these were giant old growth trees that blanketed a fairly large portion of the trail. Doug and I ended up doing a fair bit of tree climbing, which though fun, drastically increased the amount of time it took for us to get to the end of the trail.

It was decision time after reaching the end of the skookum flats. Would we hit highway 410, with it's miserable pavement and slight uphill? Head to snoquera falls? Hit the white river trail and run through camp Sheppard? Or perhaps we would try to link the palisades trail up with the white river trail despite the fact that it would be most certainly buried in snow? Doug and are pretty notorious in our own minds for picking what could be described by some as the stupidest path so unsurprisingly we chose to run up above the snow line, follow a bunch of footprints that may or may not have been on the actual trail and eventually turned around about 3 hours after we had run out of gels and Doug had run out of water. 

There is a bridge under there somewhere

Note that at sun top we barely got over 3700 feet but we ended up topping out at over 5000 on this portion of the run. And yes...we ran into what we should have

Here are a few more pictures of the run. Wish I would've brought a better camera. Phone camera's are just awful for these types of pictures. Oh and here is a link to the garmin if anybody is interested:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88617512

Skookum falls from 410

Snoquera Falls from the Palisades trail

Doug heading up the staircase

One of the many views of the valley from the trail. Looking forward to running this on a clear day.