Marin Ultra Challenge 50k

The beginning.

We started before dark.  It was quite the crowd for only 50k and 50 mile runners starting at 6:00 AM.  I had been toying with moving up to the 50 mile distance a few times over the past couple weeks, but it didn’t make sense in the big picture, since I wanted to run a harder 50k this month. 

Starting up from Fort Baker, I started out on what’s been a consistently increasing uphill pace for endurance length runs.  The second half of this climb was crowded single track in the dark, so the pace was mostly fixed for about a mile.  Reaching the top, we ran down the coastal trail while sunlight was slowly growing.  I kept speed in check here, and also along the flat stretch through the valley to the second climb up Hill 88.  

The second hill (up Coastal, down Old Springs) was steady, but not my fastest effort here, since there was a lot more course to go.  I realized I was working harder than I thought as I started the descent, since my hamstrings were feeling sore.  Coming into Tennessee Valley, some wild turkeys were on the attack, chasing us while a park service worker watched from his truck with a smile on his face.  

Pirate’s cove was fun, as always—it was great being this far along this early in the morning.  I made my first water refill at Muir Beach, since it would start to warm up soon, and the next stretch of the course would be 7.4 miles.  I kept the same steady pace through this loop, along Redwood Creek (where the 50 milers split off to visit Stinson Beach and Muir Woods), up Miwok, and back along Dias Ridge.  By the time I finished this loop, it was hot, and I was sucking down water, now refilling my pack at every aid station.  I was also well ahead of my stretch goal in terms of pace.  

New trails were next, heading up Middle Green Gulch, which passed through a farm and into a hot climb where I had my first moment of feeling tired, although it only took a few minutes to walk myself out of it.  At the top, we switched to some single track I haven’t run that parallels Miwok.  A few of us got lost for a moment at a confusing intersection before heading back down to Tennessee Valley, but we managed to stay on course after deciding on the single track.  

Marincello, I could complain about this all day, so yeah, let’s do that.  It was hot, slow, steady, and about as long as usual.  It was much more fun in the dark back in December.  Reaching the top, I backed off the pace a bit and just enjoyed the run along the ridgelines and back down to Fort Baker, since I was still well ahead of my stretch goal.  I finished in 6:55:12, my second fastest 50k, and my fastest time in the headlands.  This really surprised me, given the amount of climbing on this course.  Keeping the steady pace throughout really paid off.  I stuck around to watch the 50 mile winner come in about an hour later, and it took about that long to reconnect with the world, since the heat had me beat down a bit.  

The end.

https://www.strava.com/activities/268232013

ITR Chabot 50k, 2015

I ran this a year ago as my first 50k.  It's close to home, an easier course (relatively speaking), and at a convenient time, so I ran it again to see how things stand at the 50k distance as compared to last year.  

I ran the first four hours at a faster pace, staying below 12 min/mile, but something caught up with me, and I dramatically slowed down for a few miles in the second loop when my left ankle started acting up.  I picked up the pace again for the last 4-5 miles along the lake shore, finishing in 6:25, a 50k PR.  

Not much more to say this time around, it was very much a long effort to build up to the MUC and Lake Sonoma as well a personal 50k time trial, and I've run here too many times to say much new about the course.  It was warm, peaceful, and a good mix of hills and flat sections, trail and pavement.  The guns were firing, the lake was toxic, good food/beer at the end, so all's good.

https://www.strava.com/activities/258130909

Golden Gate 30k

Rain falling lightly, then harder, then lighter again, as a small crowd stood under a very small shelter to stay dry.  Waves crashing against the surfing beach across the road, below the Headlands.  Green and wet hills under light fog in a warm breeze.  The tops of the hills would be windy today.  And the rain was forecast to last all morning.    

It’s weather like this that really brings trail running to life for me, and the Golden Gate 30k really shined in this regard.  I ran this to start building distance back up, but the wet muddy weather really made it the perfect training run.  The plan was to run it harder than any long races from last year, and to let myself blow up if needed, mainly to get the training effect in.  Fortunately, that didn’t happen.  

Driving, pouring rain.  Ankle deep mud.  Fog.  Wind gusts, some over 40mph.  And a clear glimpse of the bay every now and then.  The race would run through all variations of wet and muddy weather.  At one point, I expected hail, but that didn’t come.

The first climb out of Rodeo Beach went fast, and I zoned out for a while, not thinking about much.  The climb up fox was a fast hike that came and went without much thought.  The Pirate’s Cove trail brought me back around, since this is where everything went to muck at the North Face 50.  This run was much better, and I kept the pace up through it.

IT band tightness.  A short stretch break. Concentrated uphill running.  And a long set of hike/run intervals up Marincello.  Up here things became interesting.

And by interesting, I mean ridiculous.  And by ridiculous I mean fun.  The rain was pouring so hard it became difficult to look very far ahead.  Puddles became splash fests.  But it was warm.

After the last aid station, I ran fast down the last part of the Coastal trail, and then quickly hiked up the last hill to the road section, where I planned to run fast back down.  Then the 40 mph wind blasts came, redefining ridiculous.  I couldn’t not laugh.  Somewhere here I decided to wrap it up at a fun pace instead of pushing all out to the end.  

This race was over fast, mentally.  I covered this ground at my faster pace to date.  I originally planned to run the 5 mile, but I’m glad I moved up in distance, since it really was the right time to move back up to endurance pace.  Since my last long race in December, there was a definite change in mental perception of the hills.  I’ve been running/hiking a lot of hill repeats with 800 feet of climbing over the last two months, so nothing here felt long in comparison.  My time was 3:38:40, 32/95, and my fastest run on almost every section of the course.

https://www.strava.com/activities/252342548

Coyote Hills 5k

This seems to be the spring of repeat races.*  I ran my first trail race on the 10k course here two years ago.  I returned this weekend to run a flat (relatively speaking) and fast race.  

I went out fast, but kept my own pace, keeping what felt like my max sustainable speed.  I slowed slightly on the uphills, just enough to avoid losing the ability to speed up again on flat sections and downhills.  I wasn’t until a quarter mile before the finish that I felt completely maxed out.  This prevented a sprint to the end, but indicated good pacing.  My last race at this distance required a short walk break and a large drop in speed at one mile.

I finished in 26:47, 23/458, and first in my age group.  And just below my goal pace of 7:45 min/mile, at 7:42.5.  Strava says it included PRs at half mile, mile, 1k, 2 mile, and 5k distances (this course was closer to 3.5 miles).  I’m curious what my flat course 5k time would be now, especially if I tapered, but there’s other things to do.  

* Unlike all of last year, I picked this winter/spring’s races for training reasons.  It occurred to me while writing this that only the final race, Lake Sonoma, is on a new course.    

https://www.strava.com/activities/245482620

Steep Ravine 10k

Up and Down to Cardiac Hll.  1400+ feet of climbing.  The first race of the year, and of this training cycle.

One goal for the year is to bring back short races where I can push the pace the whole time without paying for it later.  Months of long endurance runs near my limit left me really wanting to push the pace again in races, since I haven't done so all that much since 2013, when I focused mostly on the half marathon distance for a year.  And while my endurance went way up in 2014, speed went down.  I ran the marathon distance at this race last year, and I really like the straight and to the point up-and-down-repeat layout of the course.

 After the North Face 50, I pulled myself way back to all short runs; I don't think I've been out for more than 10 miles since then.  I added a lot of longer interval work, but focusing more on form, strength, cadence, and consistency, rather than speed as a goal in itself.  And I added regular strength training back in, finding and addressing some really weird strength and mobility assymetries that crept in over the second half of 2014.  Many of them I was completely unaware of until I spent a week focusing entirely on mobility work after TNF50.  I added long hill repeats, climbing up and running back down Redwood Peak, since it's close to 800 feet in less than a mile, about the same amount of climbing as most Marin hills, and, more importantly, close to home.  

But the Cardiac Hill climb is quite a weak point.  It tends to beat down leg strength/endurance, causing me to slow dramatically later in long races.  Adding this race was a way to get a climb of this size in by itself for training purposes, while on great trails.  

The Steep Ravine trail was closed, apparently a small landslide and a missing bridge have shut it down for a month.  Similarly Highway 1 has a section out for the month.  November/December's onslaught of rain in the middle of the drought is taking its toll on Mt. Tam.  The course changed to an out-and-back on the Dipsea, along with a short section on Old Mine.  

I started fast on the road coming out of Stinson Beach, and paced myself based on feel for the entire climb.  Anytime I felt like I was pushing the pace on a steep hill hard enough that I'd later lose the ability to keep my pace, I backed off for a bit to loosen things up.  One nice thing about running so many 50k's last year is that I've really gained a good sense of where that line is, although I do intentionally cross it for training effect in races, and pretty much always in the hill repeats I'm doing now.  

The other nice thing about short races is not even thinking about the aid stations.  It was there.  I didn't really make eye contact with anyone, see I had no intention of slowing or stopping, and it's a complex intersection, but I did manage to thank the volunteer who steered me down the correct trail when I started to overshoot it.  

Coming back down Dipsea was fun, and there was some fun banter about all the stairs with a few people who were keeping a similar pace.  The stairs didn't bother me at all this time, and I could have taken them quite a bit faster if I wasn't in the crowd.  Despite the East Bay being fairly dry this month, the trails here were wet with a few muddy places, and all the wood stairs were wet, to many other runners vocal disdain.  I ran with the Hoka Challengers for the first time in a race, and they worked great here.  

On the non-stair portions of the downhill, I was really able to open up and keep a fast pace, not something I'm used to here, as I usually run this downhill after beating myself up over the first 28 miles of a 50k.  Coming into town, I sprinted the last half a block, but the last person I passed did the same and passed me right before finishing.  I came in at 1:16:25, 40/142, 10/17 AG, yada yada.  More importantly, I made my goals of my fastest climb to Cardiac Hill from Stinson Beach, as well as my fastest descent back down.  And a fun thing that's never happened: I PR'd every Strava segment on the course.  After tapering for all of one day.  There's still ways to go on improving my climbing on longer hills, but my current training seems to be working.  

This kicks off a series of most hilly trail races over the next few months that are focused on hills in the 800 ft range, with the goal of significantly cutting my 50 mile time at Lake Sonoma.  I'm starting back at a short distance and plan to run races of increasing distance to up the effort across the board.  The rest of the series will be a flat 5k for isolating speed, a hilly 30k, a mixed flat/hilly 50k, and a hilly 50k.  

https://www.strava.com/activities/242353852

The North Face Endurance Challenge SF 50 Mile

Some impressions from the North Face Endurance Challenge SF 50 Miler:

That was a hard race.  As my first 50 miler, the distance surprisingly didn’t bother me all that much; I kept a steady effort right to the end.  But two things caught me off guard and made this hard: the number of runners on the out-and-back sections, and the mud.  Lots and lots of gooey, squishy, shoe-sucking, slip’n’slide inducing, mud.  Many miles of it.  Maybe 20% of the course, or 40% of my time out there.  Trails I’ve been able to jog up and run down at full speed became slow, tiring negotiations in footing.

Around mile 33:

Hiking couple: How long is the race?

Me: 50 miles.

Hiking Couple: Jesus Christ!

Me: Nah, he’s not running today.  He’s smarter than that.  

SC is crazy fast.  He came down heather cutoff, chasing down DJ, shortly after I crossed paths with DL coming down--the latter of whom I thought was fast.

I ate much less food than I expected.  I just didn’t want it.  One and a half epic bars, half a kind bar, and about a slice of orange at each aid station, mainly to keep my stomach non-empty.  I upped the tailwind concentration to compensate, which worked great.  

I need better shoes for long muddly/techincal courses.  I have some that work great for short muddy runs, and others for long runs on drier days, which I was wearing, but nothing that was great for this course.  The mud was orders of magnitude worse than I expected too.

600 runners in the dark with headlights on open trails in hills is very surreal.  You see lines of headlamps flowing through the hills and large groups of glowing abstract shapes from all the retroreflective pieces on running gear.  

After finishing, I bailed faster than at any race, skipping the food/beer/etc.  I wanted to get back home to shower and rest more than anything.  I wasn’t even hungry, but I did force myself to snack on the drive home.

Recent running form practice made it far easier to maintain pace than at any 50k I’ve run.  It took conscious effort, but it made a huge difference.  

That was the slowest climb up Steep Ravine ever.  But I can’t think of a better place in Marin to hit a low point on effort.

Waterfalls!  It was the first time I’ve been running north of Pantoll Rd.

Only one unexpected muscle bothered me, the left tibialis anterior.  Everything else was expected and manageable, albeit annoying.  

It took half an hour of stretching to stand the next morning.  Then another half hour of stretching to walk.   

I can see why people move up even further in distance:  1) Night running was surprising fun and peaceful.  2) After mile 20, nothing really got any harder.  

Instead of counting miles, I was counting half marathons.  This dejected a few people I talked to, but I find it a lot easier to have fewer mental chunks of distance to think about.  

I finished in 14:09:26, way near the back, so I certainly got my value out of the day.  After the second pass through Muir Beach, where I fell back to only 10 minutes ahead of a cutoff after a very slow negotiation down Coastal/Heather Cutoff, I started mostly passing people on the last couple climbs.  I never hit a mentally hard moment, but saw a number of people in this last stretch who were really working hard to keep going.  The last couple miles were under my original target pace too (which was very conservative). Leaving in the shuttle, headlamps were still coming down the hill from the Alta aid station.

The course, after 4 changes, was 50.8 miles.  Muir wood was cut out after a bridge washed out.  A second Bunker/Rodeo Valley loop was added at the start to compensate. Old Mine was added in place of part of Coastal.  The ridge trail past Willow Camp was shifted up to the road.  Dipsea was replaced with Steep Ravine, which I didn’t find out until reaching the bridge where they split.    

Finishing a 50 mile race has been a long standing goal, since I ran my first 5k.  It took almost three years, and ended up being a long slow haul, but taking my time, both in the timing of the race and in my pace, was worth it.  The only real pain was taking my shoes off at the end.

http://www.strava.com/activities/226945081

Mt Tam 50k

November, 2014

This was very much a training run for the North Face Endurance Challenge for me, and many people who ran this also ran the NFEC three weeks later.  But in itself it’s a gorgeous course.  Once again, I crossed paths with DL, who would go on to win.  

I upped the pace a bit for this 50k, compared to the last couple.  I kept it up climbing Steep Ravine, dropping down Ben Johnson, climbing back up the Lost trail, following along Pantoll Road, and dropping down the Dipsea to Muir Woods Rd.  Climbing Miwok up to Dias Ridge slowed me down a bit.  After passing through the Muir Beach aid station, we made the long climb up Heather Cutoff and Coastal.  This took more out of me than expected, and I slowed a fair amount on the last loop through Muir Woods.  

The final climb really slowed me down; about 20 people passed me on this climb and the subsequent run down Dipsea to Stinson Beach.  When there’s less than 100 runners, that’s fairly significant.  After the fact, I realized I’d never had a climb of that size at the end of a 50k.  I finished in 7:49:10, at 84/90.    

Parting thoughts: 

* This race was entirely strength bound; picking up the pace early cost me later.  It’s seriously time to fix that.  

* Lots of Strava PR’s on various segments, except that last loop.

* The faster pace was more than comfortable for about 20 miles.

http://www.strava.com/activities/219662392

Rocky Ridge Half Marathon

October 2014

A half marathon with ~4000 ft of climbing.  I’m in.  I was debating it, since I had a goal to race less to allow for more effective training, and it was between two 50ks that are 4 weeks apart.  But there was too much good about it: Las Trampas, crazy climbing, and compulsively finishing Brazen’s ultra half series.  

It turned into a long, slow, hot, steep day.  The trails were gorgeous, especially the first half, and the second half had some of the best views in the east bay.  Somewhere in the last climb of the first loop I slowed dramatically on a very steep portion, and the long steep climb into the second half went the same way.  But it’s finished.  In well over three hours.  This would be a good one to come back to--it's close, hard, and has all my weak points in it.  DL and JB ran this too--we've been crossing paths at races a lot lately.

http://www.strava.com/activities/203262024

Written Dec. 2014--catching up on all of this fall.

Oregon Coast 50k

October, 2014

There was a line in the sand.  I don’t think I’ve seen an actual starting line marked in the ground at a trail race before.  But we were starting on the beach.  It was raining, the wind was blowing; it would be a headwind on the beach for the first six miles.  And we started.  

The run on the beach was magical, in a way.  Something about the mix of rain, wind, surf, running through drainage streams across the beach, and seeing the large group of people running down the beach made this really unique.  I love running in “bad” weather—far more so than in anything sunny, warm, or dry.

I kept an easy pace—this would be a 50k, and my right calf was still tight from a bee sting on a run in Redwood Regional park the week before.  This would leave my strength off balance for the day.  But I was here to get out of my element and see a part of the west coast I’ve never seen, so I took this is stride and set out to enjoy the course.  

We climbed up onto a gravel trail that passed a number of resorts.  PL and MC were out and cheering, watching from right outside the room we had booked; I don’t think I’ve ever had a course pass this close to where we’re staying—only 10 feet from our door.  Along this whole stretch, many people cheered from patios and porches on the coast.  

I stopped at the first aid station, which would be the eventual finish, and changed to drier shoes.  The course passed a couple miles through Yachats, and then made a decent climb through gorgeous, peaceful coastal forest.  The rain backed off and turned to mist/fog interspersed with sunny moments, all under trees.  Along the top, there was mud, where I I was way out of my element, since I’ve only had a few rainy runs in the bay area over the last couple years, given the drought we’ve had.  The course opened up to a great view near the Cape Perpetua lookout, and then it made a fast downhill to the second aid station.

After a short flat stretch through forest just off the coast, the course started a long climb up the Cummins Creek Trail.  I mixed in uphill running and fast hiking here.  After backing way down on pace and finally hitting a consistent 50k effort at my last 50k, I wanted to bring back uphill running at this distance.  There was a small aid station at the top, which was great, since I was drinking a lot of water on this course.  The long uphill effort was rewarded with a long downhill run on forest-covered single track.  

Passing through the last aid station, we crossed back over the first hill.  The downhill was steeper than I’m used to this late in a race, and my quads certainly felt it.  After running back through town, the finish was back on the coast, where we had sun, an awesome view, pizza, music, and beer.  PL and MC made it out to the finish, and we met a number of great people, staying quite a while.  And I won a bottle of wine in the raffle.  Finish time was 7:23:24, slower than I expected, to no surprise.  But this was an awesome run on a great part of the coast, and definitely my favorite 50k. 

Coastal 50k

September, 2014

Once I saw the course map for this, about a year ago, I knew I had to run it.  So I signed up for it forever ago, sometime in late 2013.  In part to force myself to get my distance up to 50k so I could run it.  I did that, finishing three other 50ks in the spring before taking a couple month racing break.

The race started with a long bus ride from Rodeo Beach up to Stinson Beach.  I like arriving early to races at Stinson, usually to get a coffee and take a walk on the beach, but there wasn’t time for that this time.  And then we started.

At the three 50ks I’ve run until now, I kind of lost all effort around mile 18-20 and slowed down a lot.  The big goal for today was consistency—I wanted to find a consistent effort that would let me run stronger at the end of the race than at the start.  And without major muscle pain.  I used two limiters: First, nothing should feel like I’m pushing muscle effort outside my comfort zone.  Second, heart rate should max out around 160ish, and absolutely stay below 170 (I max out at 193).  

To avoid the psychological rush to run up the start of the Dipsea trail, I started in the back, and kept a steady fast hiking pace all the way up Dipsea and Steep Ravine.  By the time we reached the top, we were surrounded by fog, which held throughout the day.  After running a few miles on trails that were new to me, I passed through the Cardiac aid station and started a steady downhill run on Coastal View/Heather Cutoff.  I love running these two trails at speed, so it took a lot of willpower to hold back the pace here, especially with all the recent speed training I’ve done.  Otherwise, this part just flew by, unlike running/hiking the trail in the uphill direction.  

I passed through the Muir Beach aid station, where I’ve never actually stopped before, and headed out on Pirates Cove.  Around here I started to really zone out, since I had really set into consistent pace by this point.  After turning inland, I power hiked for what seemed like forever up the Coastal Trail, eventually turning down Miwok for a fun run into Tenessee Valley, the halfway point.

Marincello.  I hate this trail.  I just don’t like it.  I’d rather run through West Oakland.  At night.  By myself.  It’s long, steady, and very consistent.  As much as I wanted to run to get it overwith, I just kept speed hiking it.  But at the top are some of my favorite trails in the headlands; they pass through small fog-rain microclimate tree stands, there’s always wind, the fog moves fast over the ridge, and there’s great views.  The course turned downhill along Bobcat to the Rodeo Valley aid station.  There was a quarter mile stretch where my left IT band tightened up, so I stopped at the next fence to stretch it out, letting a few people pass.

And then the course went back up the hill on the Rodeo Valley trail.  In the windy gap (I don’t know if it has a name), which is one of my favorite places to pass through in the bay area, we turned to run down to the Golden Gate Bridge.  I’ve never run down here, but we ended up at an aid station right next to where my August Golden Gate swim ended.  I ate about 10 orange slices.  More than I’ve ever had at once in a race.  Heading back out the last uphill, I speed hiked for a while and then started running, since it was the last climb.  Coming down the Coastal Trail, I started pushing the pace, and passed a couple people who had passed me earlier, during the IT band nonsense.  

Getting to the last aid station, I only had a quick drink and snack and kept going, starting to really push the pace.  In the final stretch I came close to passing someone, but as we had gotten very close to the finish, I let him take the spot in front of me.  On these long races, I’m not big on passing people within yards of the finish.  

I finished in 7:18:21, feeling decent, at 73/100.  I could have run faster at many times, but I’m not convinced it would have made my overall run any faster.  Keeping the consistent effort led to a much more enjoyable race, and gives me a better idea of how to move forward with 50ks.  After the last one, I was kind of lost on ideas of where to go, which led to the summer racing break.  The race wasn’t a PR, but it was almost 42 minutes under my best time at a comparable course (in the 6000 to 7000 feet range).  After finishing, I went straight into a lot of stretching, enjoyed the warm finish line food, chatted a bit, and headed out for a family event.  

http://www.strava.com/activities/197249464

Next up: a brutal half marathon.

(I'm posting this months later, after originally writing it shortly after the race.)