“I look at it like it should be a pretty fast race. Then you go run it and you’re like, “Oh, crap. That was a lot of elevation gain.” You’re just going up and down the entire time.”
-Max King’s pre race interview via iRunFar
Hey, isn’t that what they call foreshadowing?
Ok, maybe I was a little bit cocky coming into the Lake Sonoma 50 miler. My training was going splendidly. I had just set my 50K PR at a muddy race. I was healthy, uninjured, and ready to rock. Heck, I'd even made it onto UltraRunnerPodcast! It seemed my stars had aligned and I was eager to let it all hang out.
So how did I actually do? A tough fought and hard earned 10:28:25, only a half hour off of my "A" goal of a sub 10 hour finish. That’s a 12:35 pace over 50 miles and about 10,500 ft of climbing. Pretty fitting that the guy interviewed as the male “Average Joe” ended up at place #139/276….right in the middle! I swear I didn’t plan that :-P No chafed nipples, no bloody toenails, no epic barfing. Just a pair of crampy legs and a LOT of talking to myself. I am satisfied that I achieved my B goal (more like an A- goal!) and felt adequately trained, geared, and fit for this race. This was my first time flying completely solo: no crew, no pacer, not even anyone from the club running with me. Needless to say, it was mentally and physically taxing in a good way, and I’m pleased that it offered so many opportunities for reflection and self-improvement.
Pretty representative of the day: kinda blurry in my head, but I'm still grinning like an idiot!
To be honest, I kind of hoped running a 100K would make a 50 miler seem easier. It did...but that was only faint consolation at my low points on Saturday! Long races are TOUGH. It still floors me about how small, bad decisions can snowball and how even some good decisions can have unintended consequences down the line.
One of the biggest challenges of running ultras is the ability to make good decisions in the heat of the moment (sometimes literally) How much water do I carry? Should I push a little bit to hook onto this train? What can I put into my stomach that won’t make me feel like puking? When’s the last time I peed? At my lucid points I feel like the only grownup placed in charge of a petulant 7 year old. Maybe that gel finally gets you the energy to make a late race push. Or maybe it sets your stomach over the edge and you can wave goodbye to eating anything solid for a while. My hope is that the answers come with time. Until then, all I can do is have fun being a newbie!
Here’s how it went down… (Warning: trail celeb fanboying ahead!)
Saturday dawned cool and overcast. It was perfect! In the leadup to the race, I was concerned alternately about rain and heat, but it looked like we’d have neither.
I timed it just right, pulling into the parking lot next to Tropical John’s Tesla. After hitting the porta potty, I had just enough time to sling my drop bags onto the piles and then we were off! The first two miles felt a little like a road marathon and I kept having to tell myself to slow down. We hit the single track before too long and I finally settled in to what I thought was a reasonable 10-ish min/mile pace.
Pretty sure I just got buzzed here by Olive Oil Joe emerging from the bushes and blasting off down the hill. (Edit: (Yep, that was him!)
I fell in with Pete from San Diego and we had a lovely trail chat. You know, the kind with your eyes glued to the ground five feet ahead of you and your mouth chattering independently of your brain? It was lovely. Before I knew it, we were splashing across the stream and heading into the Warm Springs aid station.
The trail quality was great, eminently runnable, and the views were outstanding!
Hyperlapse at 6x
Even better, soon the stars came out and I got to see what the pain cave looked like for those in front. So cool. Those speeds still seem so otherworldly it may as well have been another race from the one I was running.
Alex Varner wonders who the heck is yelling at him
#robkrarsbeard
Trail selfie with Dom and Eric from URP
Tim Tollefson and Max King. Geez man, you're ripped enough...stop making us mortals look bad.
Stephanie Howe killing it!
At this point, I felt good. No, I felt great! The day was cool and the hills were manageable! “Come on, David, let’s party!” they whispered to me. I fell for it, hook line and sinker.
You can see that I made my move between miles 19-25. Not too bad, right? I flew into the turnaround at No Name Flat, guzzled my coconut water, and changed in record time. “If I can keep this up, I could go sub 10 easy!” I thought to myself. That probably should have been a warning sign. I ignored it.
What i couldn’t ignore at about the 50K mark, was the twinge in my quads. I had been trading places with a train of tough looking runners and I finally fell off. At this point, I could shuffle the downs and powerhike the ups. So I did. Miles 31-38 were a sloooooooow slide towards oblivion. My hydration was spot on (I was peeing!), I had been popping S Caps, and I had eaten sufficient calories. Since I had plenty of time to reflect, so I concluded I'd probably just trashed my quads on the downhills and hadn’t noticed it. Oops. Tim Tollefson would later call it “Death by a Thousand Papercuts” and man, I was bleeding by the end.
Miles 39-46 were brutal on my body and my ego. I was being passed left and right. At one point, I was literally clutching a tree by the side of the trail. Letting go caused my quads to instantly cramp. Not a good sign. I tried not to dwell on that awful, awful calculus (“Let’s see, if I do 15 minute miles then I’m out here for HOW LONG?) Put in the headphones, keep moving, things will get better.
And things did finally fall into place...at mile 47. This was after a handful of cookie bits, potato chips, and a Picky bar (which, taken together, sounds like the BEST ICE CREAM FLAVOR EVER) so perhaps I was undercaloried. I hiked out of the aid station and put on a grim face for the final 5K. I actually blasted the last mile at a sub 10 minute pace and sprinted past Tropical John at the end. I was angry at myself for still having legs at the end, but hey, that got me moving and kept me going. Not a bad day’s work! Big up to TJ for putting on a hell of a race.
Guess it got warm, because I was super salty at the finish.
And the after party at the Pezzi King winery was AMAZING
I struggle sometimes to express just how liberating ultras are. We toe the starting line carrying the weight of the world on our shoulders. Deadlines, responsibilities, disappointments. But when that gun goes off, we're granted a reprieve, whether it’s for 6 hours or for 14. Our focus narrows; all we have to worry about now is how to get from Point A to Point B. Sometimes that can be the simplest problem and sometimes the trickiest of them all. I love it!
See you on the trails,
David
Things I did right:
No dallying at the aid stations. Keep moving!
Good consumption of calories in gel/chew form
Properly geared up for the heat
Carrying the right amount of water
Training. Vert + strength training helped immensely
Things I did not do right:
Pushed too hard in the middle section
Needed more solid fuel (should have eaten that epic bar)
Notable Gear:
Ultraspire Omega pack
Hoka One One Stinson ATR
Injinji midweight trail socks
Pearl Izumi Sun Sleeves
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