Mokelumne River 50 Mile

 April, 2016.

I found out about these trails by registering for my EBMUD trail permit a few years ago, and I was always curious about exploring them.  When I later found out about this race, which seemed like a great reason to explore them, it sat on my “should run this” list for a while.  The finish times are higher and the cutoffs are tighter than most 50 milers, so I waited until I was at a place where I’d be able to finish it well.  

The race starts deceptively flattish in the Sierra foothills, following the Mokelumne River along the Comanche and Pardee reservoirs.  It also passes through a mine for a short bit.  It’s the first time a 50 miler wasn’t the key race for a “season” for me, and I pulled back the pace a lot, expecting a hot day.  After the second aid station, the course changes to trails than turn the concept of flat into a distant memory.  Most of the 10,000 feet of elevation gain is in the middle 19 miles, missing the 50k course.  It’s also the prettiest part of the course, running along the south side of Pardee Reservoir.

My favorite moment was crossing a ridge where the snowy Sierra peaks were visible in the distance.  There were also wildflowers everywhere.  And stairs.  And repeated steep climbs.  And the field for the 50 mile course is small enough and spread out enough here that you really get to enjoy the course on your own.  It was hard.  It was fun.

I reached the turnaround in about 5:45, well under my expected time, but as expected, that wouldn’t last.  The afternoon got hot.  Having learned about that the hard way, I paced down to keep my effort under control, hiking all the uphills at this point.  My GPS watch checked out for a while here, so I watched how I felt instead of my heart rate.  To keep things entertaining, helicopters were brought in to collect water out of the reservoir for…something.  Maybe a fire, but it was interesting to watch them work.  Heading out of the hills, I passed one runner who was resting on the side of the trail.  He’d drop at the next aid station.  In the next stretch, I passed another runner in the same boat, but much worse off from what he was telling me.  I had extra water, so I gave him some.  He’d later finish.  In the last stretch, I kind of lost all energy to keep moving; heat does that to me, and it’s the first time I’ve run a 50 mile race where it was this warm this late in the day.  I hiked a lot of this and had two people pass me a mile from the finish, but I was done.

I finished in 12:58:40.  Slower than my last 50 miler by six minutes, but the course was closer to 51 miles, so that’s good enough to call an improvement.  Especially with the hot conditions.  One more interesting number is the ultrasignup percentage, which was higher than the other 50 milers I’ve run.  And also higher than any 50k I’ve run.  From that standpoint, it’s probably the best ultra I’ve run, relative to the conditions/course.

Things that went well:

* Staying hydrated, eating sparingly, and managing the heat.  I went with almond butter packets to try something more natural, and they worked well. I needed far fewer than expected, they went a long way.  

* Starting out slow and staying there.  I really watched uphill effort to avoid the muscle fatigue that I often run into.  It never really happened, with one exception.

* Only easy running and mobility work in the three weeks leading up to the race, this probably also helped with avoiding muscle fatigue.

Things that didn’t:

* I accidentally downed a bottle of not-my-usual-electrolyte drink at a water drop, thinking it was water.  My stomach felt off for the next 10 miles.  It did slow me down, but not enough to stop.  Note to self: even when really thirsty, taste test the drink before drinking a whole bottle. 

* My left inner hamstring had a deep knot that acted up.  I’d had a lot of deep muscle tightness worked out over the prior month, but I was’t aware of this one.  The muscle started pulling on the back of my knee on downhills, keeping me off balance and moving slower.  This one would need serious massage therapist work.

*  Addressing mobility issues allowed for an improved running form throughout the race.  One downside is that the shoes that have been working best for ultras over the last year and a half now create a lot of blisters.  I didn't plan to change them for my next race, since it would be too soon, but I since have.

https://www.strava.com/activities/547648882

Crystal Springs 50k

January 2016.

This was a storm race.  I like to have one good bay area winter storm race each year.  But you can't really plan them, especially since I need to reserve the personal time at home a little early.  This one lined up well.

Mud.  Rain.  Hail.  Climbing over downed redwoods.  More mud.  More rain.  More downed trees.  A park crew cutting up the downed tree on the way back. In the rain.

This was a very different ultra, both physically and mentally.  I got physically tired, but never had any muscle pain.  All the hard training leading up to TNF50 helped here, as well as getting back into hard training during the holidays.  I probably took the first climb too fast.  But I had some stuff in my head to burn out.

On the mental side, I never really tuned out.  I had a lot on my mind going into this, and it's the first time I haven't managed to clear it all out during an ultra.

I finished in 6:30ish, whatever it was.  That's not why I ran this one.  I also had a lower standing than expected for this kind of time (my fastest on a course of this difficulty), but there were a lot of distance drop-downs to avoid the far loop (and probably a fair number of no shows) given the weather.

Three things up:

* Incline trainer time really helped with hip climbing endurance.
* Training through a race worked well here, sitting at a consistent ~40 miles a week at the time.
* I ran with compression shorts for the first time on a long race--this worked much better than anything else I've tried.  Not for any compression benefit to anything performance related but to manage skin irritation.

Three things down:
* I let my heart rate run higher than usual for a while.  Probably not the best thing overall.
* I could have probably drank more water, but I didn't really see a bad affect from it.
* I dunno.  It was a pretty great race for what I wanted out of it.  I guess maybe the fact that I hadn't run a local 50k in 10 months; they're fun.  And I might not again for quite a while--I've been trying to balance among athletic goals a bit more since Spring 2015, which means I'm no longer compulsively running local 50k's.

https://www.strava.com/activities/476965202

TNF 50 #2

Sunrise at the End of the Miwok Climb

50 Mile Run #3.  And my second running of the SF North Face Endurance Challenge 50 Mile.  Overall, a harder course this year, bringing in more technical trails through Muir Woods.  The first half went great.  About halfway through, at the Matt Davis descent, some upper leg muscles started to get tight and pulled uncomfortably on my knees, so I spent the rest of the race managing this.  And the second pass through Muir Beach I was hiking downhills instead of running them, but having much better climbs.  I had a few good conversations in the second half, since I wasn't pushing for time at that point.

The weather was perfect, it had rained, but not heavily, the prior two days, leaving the trails in good condition.  CM and DL were both also running.  I finished in 12:52:44, losing about two hours in the second half, but still a PR by over a half hour, because every 50 miler I've run has had something new go wrong in the second half.  It's kind of entertaining, since I expect it, but I never know what it will be.

Somewhere on an Uphill with Scenery

* Uphill training paid off well throughout the race, even taking some hills at my fastest times in the second half when I was moving overall slower.
* HR limiting worked really well, I never felt really tired, muscles tightness around my knees was the only real thing (besides some shoe issues that didn't affect my running much).
* The whole race was fun, even the parts that didn't go very well.  I never hit the really tired "when is this thing going to be over" moment that has previously come around miles 38-42.
* No water/nutrition problems at all.

* Whatever caused knee stability to go out on downhills via hamstring and hip adductor tightness. I'm still not sure what caused it, my best guess is the backloading of a lot of hill-specific workouts into the end of the year.  Maybe a longer taper was needed.  Maybe I needed to start this sooner.  Maybe both.  Food for thought for the next 50 mile.
* A couple annoying blisters in places I should have expected.  For future reference: pay attention to hotspots in the first couple runs while breaking in a new kind of shoe.  After they've long gone away in shorter runs, they can still crop up in an ultra.
* I had a lot of swelling two days after the race.  It went down after day 3.

Someone was excited, pulling last year's shirt out on her own.

https://www.strava.com/activities/445087207

Quarry Turkey 5k, Carrying a Toddler

I've been hiking hills while carrying MC a lot lately, in part to train for the late hills of the north face 50 mile, where everything tends to feels tired.  Carrying 25 lbs of toddler on a 20% grade feels about the same as the last couple hills in a 50 miler.  In doing so, we came up with an interesting idea: I'd carry her through a 5k, and PL, who only runs a few times a year, would try to beat us.

It was cold, but the turkey was out.  And it was a close contest--we were beat by about a 100 foot lead.  Maybe next year MC will do the kid's run.

Overlook Endurance Runs 50k

Aka Ann Trason’s race.  This one was fun.  Point-to-point, an area I’ve never run, and on iconic trails. It wasn’t an A race, but it was on my list to run for over a year.  Foresthill to Auburn, on a fair amount of the Western States course, and with great weather.  The two long downhills in the first section were a lot of fun, and a great place to test running improvements, since I haven’t run a strong ultra since March, nor have I run that long of a downhill stretch before.  And it was a new California landscape to explore, one I’m sure I’ll go back to.  The river crossing, near mile 19, was a comforting break from a harder effort race, with a well known volunteer seeing people off on their crossing.  Legs were tired and near done on the last long climb, a mix of running and fast walking.  Along the way, it was interesting seeing places I've heard about too many times.

6:15:06 finish, a 50k PR by 11 minutes, on a course with comparable elevation gain, but this time with almost no flat pavement to open up on (Chabot, with some paved trails, was the prior PR).  But other than getting physically tired at the end, it feels like 50k’s have really come together this year, and it’s now a matter of improving in them with more endurance strength on hills.  68/149 overall, and an hour under ultrasignup's predictive models.

First sun after a foggy start.

Foresthill Bridge

Things that went well:

* All the hard running/hiking in the Sierras in late summer/early fall is paying off well in terms of uphill running strength and uphill walking speed (faster than some people who were running).  Heart rate was rather low too, likely helped a lot by runs at altitude. 

* I consciously drank a lot more than I thought/felt I needed after the first couple hours, which was probably the right amount in the end.  Switching electrolyte drinks and mixing in water also worked really well.

* Mixing running/walking uphill based on terrain and heart rate mostly kept pace/effort in check, especially when people around me kept running uphill, many of whom I would see slow down later in the day.

Things that didn’t:

* Muscle fatigue in the last couple miles, all uphill.  A pacing side effect, but also something I opted to take the risk on, since it was the end of the course.  I’m considering focusing on hill endurance for the next while, given an upcoming 50 miler and a consideration to increase distance next year.   

* There’s something tight in my left quad and outer hamstring that I wasn’t aware of, which became a limiter in the last five miles.  I’ve been focusing mobility/massage work on the right side for the last few months, since that hip is tighter.

* Mildly tight soleus muscles.  Ok, that's an ongoing thing, so there's not much to complain about, but I can't think of anything else. 

https://www.strava.com/activities/415917825

Granite Chief and PCT Trails from Squaw to Tinker's Knob and Anderson Peak

Finishing the South Shore Open Water Swim, I had the remainder of the day to explore more in the Tahoe area mountains, and I went out to complete the rest of the Squaw-to-Donner route.  Up the Granite Chief trail, then north on the PCT to Anderson Peak, where I had stopped when I covered the northern half.   It was very windy from Tinker Knob to Anderson Peak; I decided to jog/hike this easier-terrain stretch because there were some crazy gusts coming from the west, and well, there was also this very long drop just a few feet to the right.  Not the time to get caught off guard and go down.  I finished 18.5 miles, feeling much better than after my last few long mountain runs.  

Climbing the Granite Chief trail

Squaw Valley

Grant Chief trail looking east.

PCT, looking west.

Looking north toward the destination peaks, Mt Anderson, Tinker Knob, and Peak 8761.

Looking south from Tinker Knob

Peak 8761

Peak 8761.  Again.  It's just a cool spot.

Tinker Knob.

Anderson Peak from Tinker Knob.  Castle Peak in the distance.  It was crazy gusty up here.

Start of the American "River"

Looking east on the Painted Rock trail.

https://www.strava.com/activities/410501761/overview

Tahoe South Shore 2.4 Mile Swim

So the Half Ironman swim wasn't anywhere near as challenging as I expected, although I doubt many others who did it would agree.  I just trained really well for it and the conditions were easier than most open water swims I've done.  Three days later I swam a 4500 in the pool, the longest swim I've done since last year, to see how things felt, and then I went looking for a 2.4 mile open water swim to end the season.  And I found one--right back in Tahoe.  

As part of the Lake Tahoe Marathon weekend (which has a crazy variety of events that one could do),  the South Shore Open Water Swim had a variety of distances, including the 2.4 mile as the longest.  It was low key enough to be fun and without pressure, but hard enough to bring out a group of fairly strong swimmers (who had, on average, well over ironman participant paces).  

We started at around 8:30, swimming out from shore, and then turning north for a long leg into Nevada.  The lake was calm, clear, and the bottom was in sight.  It still strikes me how different Tahoe is, compared to swimming in the bay, where we can see just about nothing.  Watching the bottom as I swam north, it just disappeared, turning into a deep bright blue split with sunrise caustics.  I didn't notice it at first and was quite startled to see the depth just open up.

Turning back, we came back over shallower water, and the wind picked up, making the last five minutes or so quite choppy.  Later swimmers took on a lot more chop.  I finished in 1:21:06, near the faster end of what I expected.  The fastest swimmer was just over an hour, and I was 10/17 in this distance.  Mild calf cramping was the only thing off, but that's not surprising, since I wasn't really training for this distance.    

https://www.strava.com/activities/410501732/overview

Things that went well:

• I kept a consistent effort, and nothing got very tired.
• Concentrating on form on the way back was useful, it's easy to get tired and sloppy with this here.
• No cold shock.  The warm up and ongoing acclimation really help with this.

Things to improve:

• I could have pushed harder, I'd need more experience to understand pacing at this distance.
• Losing sight of the bottom caught me off guard psychologically, but it was awesome.
• Sighting coming back was sloppy.  Sunrise.

Interesting observations:

• The lake goes from shallow to deep quite dramatically.  And it's very deep.  Check out some of the bathymetry images online.
• The water, even though it's not at all warm, was a lot warmer than the beach sand at the start.
• There's all kinds of scattered random junk on the bottom of the lake.  Humans.

Also of note, this was the first timed open water timed swim I've done.  I went in just to cover the distance, but adding the competitive element, especially outside of a triathlon, certainly changed how I went about the swim.

Shirley Lake Climb to the Top of Squaw

After registering for the Lake Tahoe half ironman, I took off up a side trail in Squaw to climb to the top.  It's kind of hard to find and to follow, and not really at all runnable, but the Shirely Lake trail has some great views of the valley.  At times it's a trail, other times, it's just crossing a steep giant slab of granite, and at other times it takes some scrambling up through rocks.  It does kind of dead-end into a fire road that leads to the top of Squaw, where there's trails headed all over the place.  

Many of the peaks up here have volcanic caps that have had more erosion around the sides, including Squaw peak itself.  It's an interesting transition region from the volcanic peaks headed north toward Donner pass and the highly granite region just to the south. 

Taking the tram down--I was planing to race in a couple days.

https://www.strava.com/activities/395054074/overview