I was tired at mile 6. Six miles into a 62 mile (Later
reports would peg it at around 64-65 miles) race my legs felt heavy, my heart
beat hard and my mind was already trying to figure out how I was going to push
through the low points that were undoubtedly on the way.
The above paragraph may sound eerily familiar for several
folks who I shared the trails with at the Miwok 100k this past Saturday. For
those that may be reading this that don’t happen to run, or perhaps run more
sane distances on less ridiculous terrain you may be surprised to find that
people who run these races do feel tired fairly early on in these types of
events. Last Saturday was a bit of an extreme in that normally I don’t feel
that blown so early in a long event, but ultrarunning for me is less about
trying to figure out how to prevent pain and fatigue and more about how to
manage once it inevitably sets in. The gruesome details were requested by one
of my running buddies, of which I feel I’m compelled to oblige. So get ready
for a read…this is probably going to be my longest blog entry yet. Before getting to the play by play however
I’ll provide a little back story to the event that was about to give me a 350
pound virtual gut check.
Back in December I ran a 50 miler in the Marin Headlands put
on by the North Face that attracted a fairly large gathering of the less than
sane, which included some of the top talent throughout the known universe. My
previous exposure to the headlands had been mainly in some nice views from Fort
Mason, Chrissy Field or the occasional jaunt across the Golden Gate Bridge.
This seems crazy now in retrospect given the fact that I’ve probably been in
San Francisco on average 8-10 times a year for the past decade. Yes I have some
fairly legitimate excuses, the BART doesn’t run there, public transport would
take forever, I never rent a car, but in the end it really all boils down to me
being too lazy. This will be rectified in the future. (Along with my last visit
to Yosemite being 8 years ago….talk about a travesty) In any event, I was
astounded by the views on the 50 mile course and told myself that I needed to
experience more of them. I also knew that if I was going to bump up to the 100
mile distance that conquering (Surviving) a 100K would give me a psychological
edge that would be sorely needed in order to develop the mental callouses I
feel I need to suffer through any longer endeavors. What does a mental callous
look like? Maybe a cross between a kidney bean and a pachyderm….or cauliflower.
A doctor may view it on an MRI and interpret it as brain damage.
So I signed up for the Miwok, given that it fit into my race
calendar and also gave me a chance to enjoy the headlands again. The lottery
came and went and I was selected. A new course was created in response to some
trail closures, which added 2-4 thousand feet of elevation gain along with
perhaps a few extra miles. What is an extra 5k when you have already ran 100
you ask? Pure distilled pain….washed down with a cup of sadness, all packed
into a punch of awesome. Mix all of the above with some race day temps around
80 degrees (Perhaps approaching or exceeding 90 within the gullies) and a
second half that was pretty much completely exposed without a drop of shade and
you have a recipe for an epic day.
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| This elevation profile resembles an Anime characters hair. Spiky. |
I arrived in San Francisco on Friday morning, having
awakened at 4 am to catch my flight meant that I arrived quite early and had an
entire day to work from a Starbucks before a contingent of runners arrived that
I would be staying with in Stinson Beach, the location of the start and finish
of the race. My stomach was revolting from the Naked Juice and the Soy Latte’s
and I was getting nervous that I was perhaps going to attempt to run a race
again with Flu-Like symptoms. (Good old DNF at Orcas) Thankfully a vegetarian
wrap packed with black beans and rice from World Wraps calmed my ailing gut and
put me in a place where I didn’t feel like I was going to refund everything I
had consumed over the past day. Refunding is a horrible way to prepare for a
race…I should know…I’ve tried it before.
After working at the ‘bucks, having consumed a liter or so
of soy milk spiced with caffeine I made my way over to Stinson Beach, where I
met the rest of a Seattle contingent that was running the and we all unpacked
at our place of residence for the weekend, which happened to be a bed and
breakfast owned and operated by somebody who should be featured on the show
hoarders. The rooms were fine, and the fact that we were a stone’s throw away
from the start and the finish made just about anything tolerable, but we all
had to do a bit of a double take each time we walked through the “Courtyard” to
our rooms. Seriously…there were people staying in a tent on the rooftop of one
of the establishments, that had a TV and god knows what else hooked up in it.
Somebody funnier than I could base an entire routine around an overnight stay
at this place, I on the other hand will only spend a paragraph as I realize now
this is getting excessively long and I haven’t even really gotten to any of
those “Gory Details” yet.
Race morning we awoke at around 4 AM, grabbed our drop bags,
put on our running gear, I personally took a Vaseline bath in an attempt to
decrease any chance of chaffing and walked across the street to the starting
area. I immediately lost the rest of my group in the sea of ultrarunning crazy
that had coalesced at the state park. I chatted with a few folks, picked up my
number, lined up with at the start and before I realized what was going on we
were off like a shot out of a red rider bee-bee gun into the cool Marin
morning. The supermoon’s slightly smaller brother was setting as we made our
way up the first time, dumping more and more orange on the pacific ocean as we
watched with a certain wariness…that thing was cool with a soft glow, a burning
globe that us Seattleites don’t see very often was set to make what would be
referred to by one (me) as a butt blistering appearance.
The climbs in Miwok are brutal steep but I figured I needed
to set the tone for the race and really take a bite out of that first one. I
did my fun run 400 steps, walk 50 all the way up the 16-20% grade and then
settled into the fun rolling cambered section along the coastal trail. We ran
through some meadows, some forested areas; there was blessed shade that at the
moment wasn’t even really required because quite frankly it hadn’t gotten that
hot yet. I surprisingly ran into a Portland runner, Steve that I seem to see at
all of my events. We decided to run together down to the first turnaround,
chatting away the miles and commenting about how easy the leader, Dave Mackey
looked motoring up a hill that we had yet to fully descend. (He was probably
already 3-4 miles ahead of us at this point and we weren’t even a quarter of
the way through the race) At the turnaround, and all the aid stations for that
matter, I kept my spirits up, joked around with the volunteers, thanked
everybody who had come out and then put my head down and kept going. I lost
track of Steve at the turnaround thanks to a call from Nature and wouldn’t see
him again until after mile 50. How’s that for crazy?
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| Terrible...terrible Stomach knot |
So it was that we traversed the same basic route back to
Stinson beach. As stated above, I was already tired at this point but enjoyed
taking in the awesome views from the Coastal trail. The camber wreaked havoc on
my hip flexors but hey, running is supposed to hurt. The descent was awesome.
We basically hauled down the Matt Davis trail through the woods to the Stinson
Fire Department aid station at mile 26.2. I came in under 5 hours, which meant
in spite of my stomach and energy issues I was still on pace to come in around
12 hours. Sadly this pace would not last because up next…
We climbed up to Cardiac via the Dipsea trail. Yeah….that
trail. The one with lots of steps. At least it is in the trees though. At this
point my run 90% walk 10% hill routine was shot. I think I ran very few uphill’s
from this point to the end of the race. That’s pretty normal though when you
are being tasked with running up hills with a 15-20% grade. I was hot at this
point…but not overheating so the climb wasn’t too bad. I managed to pass a few
runners, hauled down the fire road back into the trees and then took Redwood creek to the Muir Beach
aid station. I had almost completely lost my stomach at this point so I
attempted to force myself to throw up. Oddly enough I was unsuccessful so I slowed
down a bit heading through the hot sections and actually managed to get things
relatively under control by the time I hit the aid station. A fellow Seattle
runner noted that I looked pretty pale at this point…though I figured that was
most likely a remnant of the extremely low patch I was just now getting out of.
There were loads of people here both volunteers and spectators that managed to
buoy my spirits even though I was starting to fall into a deep, dark, pain
ridden cave. I wanted to quit here…but decided I could at least keep going to
mile 38.8 at Tennessee Valley.
The climb out of Muir beach is just…brutal. It’s not the
most difficult climb on the course but it is completely exposed and relentless.
The lack of tree’s during the latter half of the course means that you can see
FOREVER. Unfortunately this means that when you get to the top of a hill…you
see runners going up to the top of another hill…and another hill beyond that. I
was in full on death march mode now, though admittedly the death march was
still around 15-18 minute pace up a giant hill. Not too bad really. I upped my
salt intake at this point to an S!Cap every 40 minutes and fell into a routine
where I would shoot myself in the face with water every 10-15 minutes. I was
losing control of my heart rate on the ascents and as such was just incapable
of breaking out into a run until on the flats or the down hills.
This routine repeated itself for the better part of the next
20 miles. Tennessee valley provided a bit of a shot in the arm…and a sponge in
some ice water which did wonders for my heart rate. The nice volunteers also
filled my bottles with ice water…of which half ended up in my face and on my
head as I climbed out of Tennessee valley (Another walk fest) until the trail
flattened out and descended down to the Rodeo Valley aid station. The
volunteers had set up all sorts of inspiring signs leading into the aid. Pretty
much all of us who rolled into the station requested the same thing…lots of Ice
water on our heads…and lots of ice water in our hydration systems. As a bonus
one of the folks gave me a Popsicle…which resulted in many “oooh’s” and “aaah’s”
from the runners as we ate our cold sweet treats.
I didn’t linger long though…doing so can lead to disaster.
You start thinking about how nice it would be to sit down, your legs start seizing
up, your resolve wanes and the prospect of running another 20+ miles just seems
ludicrous. Well ludicrous it may be…but I made my decision, set my warp drive
to ludicrous speed and made my way down to Rodeo Beach!
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| "It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere." |
More salt…more calories, less stomach issues surprisingly
enough as we climbed out of another valley and headed back to…another freaking
valley. That’s right…we were climbing up and over more hills to get to another
valley which would then result in another climb…to another beach…which leads to
another climb! Three climbs to the finish…no problem. I settled into another
routine…eyes forward, climb, douse with water, take salt pills, move forward,
eat gel, move forward, rinse and repeat. The stairs at the top of the Coastal
Climb were particularly fun. I greeted them with another healthy bout of
laughter.
I ran through Tennessee Valley in about 10 hours and 30
minutes. Not a bad time for a 100K but not really on track for a sub 12 hour
finish. I recalibrated and figured sub 13 was out as well. By this point it was
probably around 80 degrees and the lack of shade for the last 5 hours was
causing some serious hurt. I muscled on through though; ditching my now powerless
GPS watch in favor of my working track watch ate what seemed like my weight in
potato chips (But was probably one 2-3) and then headed out on the road towards
the Muir Beach aid station. I stuck with my mantra…just get to the next aid
station.
More climbing up the Coastal trail followed with spectacular
views of the pacific. At this point I was pretty comfortable with my pain, had
no trouble hiking hard up the hills and seemed to have somewhat recovered from
some of my low points in the previous 50 miles. I was taking an S!Cap every 30
minutes now and had pretty much gotten back to the point where my stomach could
handle whatever sugar I threw at it. I ended up catching up to Adam, one of the
members of the Seattle contingent, who was having some pretty bad energy issues
on the climb out of the valley. We chatted for a bit before I decided I needed
to take advantage of the energy I had and made a push to the top of the 2nd
to last climb. Glenn Tachiyama greeted me near the top, snapping of some great
pictures and sending me good vibes as I made my way down to the Muir Beach aid
station one last time. It was great seeing him out there…familiar faces always
help boost energy levels.
Muir Beach was awesome yet again. The volunteers did a great
job prepping me for the climb up Cardiac, filling my bottles yet again with ice
water, dumping cold water on my head, giving me access to whatever food they
had. Ultrarunning is just a fantastic sport. Pretty much everybody is out there
just trying to help everybody else out and that essence was captured
beautifully in all of the aid station volunteers.
Running out of Muir Beach I ran into Adam again who still
seemed to be having some energy issues. I was fairly certain that he would make
it at this point though so I gave him some words of encouragement and managed
to catch up to Steve about a quarter mile up the dirt road. He and I traded
some words of encouragement, walked for a minute or so and then broke into a
trot. The end was in sight and I was going to try to push the pace as much as
possible while the going was flat. At some point I ended up passing some folks,
then stopped for a short walking break, then dropped Steve, then passed some
runners again…and so it went all the way to the cardiac climb…where everything
almost fell apart halfway up the hill.
And by fall apart I mean the pass out kind. I had eaten a gel about halfway between Muir Beach and the climb…approximately 15 minutes prior to hitting the first steep section. I put my head down, motored on and kept to the shade whenever possible. Much of the water in my hand helds ended up on my head as I was in serious danger of overheating. I ate some more salt pills and thought things were going well until a fit of light headedness threatened to knock me down (and perhaps out). In my state of stupor I was having a difficult time determining what I could do to fix my rapidly deteriorating state. I didn’t quite feel like eating but knew that a big part of this was a lack of calories. Thankfully I had some honey stinger chomps in one of my pockets as I don’t think could’ve handled another gel. I proceeded to tear into them, eating the whole bag in about 5 minutes and felt better almost immediately. I decided not to push it though, so I kept my snail’s pace up to the top of Cardiac. With all the ascents completed I immediately felt as urge of energy and broke into something akin to a run which almost immediately resulted in some familiar crampy twinges in my lower extremities. I hammered another salt pill (My 3rd or 4th in an hour) and tested out the descent. My legs felt fine so I decided to bomb it as hard as I could. Oddly enough I felt fantastic, speeding along, cruising down the Dipsea trail 60+ miles into an epic run. Writing that now seems ridiculous…ridiculously awesome. I turned a corner and ran into some course marshals and hooted and hollered my way to the home stretch. People cheered, I smiled and yelled and before I knew it I was across the line in 13:39:55. One of the race organizers put a finisher medal around my neck and I moved into the party area, chatting with another fellow runner Greg with whom I traded many a conversation with while we yo yo’d back and forth during the race.
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| I feel like I lost a fight to this guy and 300 of his best friends |
