Peacock pt 2

Just finished my Peacock loop. Yes, they caught me in the middle of a weird face. I've got tons of photos, will upload more when I get a chance.


A Few Facts:

51 people started the race, 21 finished the 'trail marathon' of 30+ miles (one loop), 30 finished the 100k (both loops), only 3 DNFs (Didn't finish the first loop, Brent was one).

Kert St. John was probably the runner Susan and I saw way out ahead of the pack. Pretty sure he's not a regular with HURT but maybe I've just never noticed him at a race before (I'm usually pretty far back so it's definitely possible). He finished in 13:09, more than an hour ahead of second, then everybody started coming in. If this is his first HURT race I'm blown away by how talented he must be to fly past the home team like that, on their home turf, in such a difficult race.

I've posted a question about Brent and tried to look him up without luck so far. If I hear anything I'll post it.


Not So Factual Summary:

There were some things I learned from the race that really encourage me and I wanted to share some thoughts.

First off, for all of my concern coming into the race my conditioning wasn't an issue. I was definitely huffing and puffing up some of the hills and took more breaks than I wanted to, but overall I have no complaints. I ran a very conservative race, as I planned, and I STILL kept up with my pacing plan. Had I not trashed my feet on the long road of the first loop I would have felt confident doing another loop, physically I was feeling that well.

The pre-race speed work definitely paid off. When I could run I was running faster than usual (5-6 mph instead of 4-5) and even when I was walking I was pushing a decent pace (3+ mph). Even with the conservative race plan, taking generous walking breaks, I was maintaining my original pacing goals without pushing myself. One of my biggest fears pre-race was being able to run the route but not being fast enough to make the cut-offs, which was why I started the speed work. Even stopping to help Brent out, and walking most of the ten miles back from the long road, I was still under the cutoff for the first loop. Not too shabby.

And lastly, compared to a few other races this year, I felt really good the week after the race. I've had some residual soreness but nothing bad considering the how rough the race was. I'm sure if I'd done the full 100k I'd have been on crutches, but considering the lack of long runs the month leading up to the race I am amazed at how good I feel. Apparently, having run the entire trail series this year I built up enough of a base to pull off this race without killing myself.

Anyway, I'm incredibly happy with how well the race went. It was a blast and I can't wait to start training for another ultra.

Peacock 100k pt1

Saturday's Peacock 100k wasn't exactly the experience that I'd anticipated, but then, what race ever turns out exactly the way we expect? What makes these races so amazing and interesting are the little surprises. What makes for a successful race is how well we deal with these surprises. In some ways this was a really good race for me and the things that didn't go so well taught me some needed lessons.

The race started out with about 50 runners on an imaginary starting line at the base of the very impressive ridgeline we were about to run up in the predawn light of the Hawaiian west coast. The first mile and a half was walked by almost everyone, as we went from sea level up to 1700 feet in that distance.

Once we hit the more runnable section at the top I found myself near the back of the pack, my usual place. I'm not a particularly fast runner to begin with and HURT is full of amazingly talented ones. I fell in next to a woman I'd never met, though we quickly became running buddies over the next few miles. It probably helped that we were both running our first ultra, though we'd both been admonished for choosing this as our first.


Susan is a much more accomplished athlete than me, running the ironman (if I remember right), though she was less familiar with trails, so our experience balanced out to a mutually agreeable pace. Over my time this year on the HURT trail series there's been a couple of times that I matched paces at what I considered a 'slow' pace. A couple times I got impatient with the speed and pushed on, usually only to blow up later. So when I ran with Susan, feeling a little sluggish, I decided to stick it out with her anyway. This turned out to be a good decision, we were keeping up with my intended pacing in a way that was sustainable for the race.

About an six miles in we came across another runner who was hunched over on the side of the road. He waved us on, said he couldn't keep anything down but that he was ok. Susan, having a fine-tuned female intuition realized he was in worse shape than he was implying so we stopped to assist him.


Apparently he'd eaten something that really screwed up his stomach, he couldn't eat or drink anything without promptly throwing it back up. Susan pulled out her phone and managed to get enough signal to text back and forth with her husband (who was with some of the race directors at the starting point) for advice on getting Brent off the ridge, who reluctantly agreed that he need help. The directors told us that there wasn't any way to get to him until he made it to the first aid station at mile ten, four miles away. We told them we'd stick with him until we reached the station. He thanked us and we set out walking at a pace he could keep up. We made sure he kept drinking water and then waited with him through the inevitable breaks to throw it back up. It took about an hour and a half to make it four miles. At the aid station he collapsed in the shade of a truck and once the worker assured us they'd look after him Susan and I set off on our own.

The aid worker's parting words echoed in my head for the next few miles, 'You guys are only doing one lap, right?' You see, Susan only planned on doing one but I wanted to keep the option open to do a second, depending on how I felt after the first. I planned all my drops for two just for that case. I might not be up for it but if I was I wanted to be ready. We were so far behind the rest of the field though, it'd taken four and a half hours for the first ten miles. At that rate we were perilously close to the cutoffs. If we ran it perfectly there was still a chance though. We made good time to the next aid station around mile twenty and prepared ourselves for 'the long road'.

At that point, my confidence was pretty high that I would set out on a second loop. My legs still felt good, my feet were fine, and though we were closer to the cutoff than I'd planned we were still far enough under that I figured I could at least give it a shot.

Yeah, the long road totally disabused me of the notion. The long road is a bit of a misleading title, though it is in fact a long road it could more accurately be described as the long hill. It's four miles of various graded hill, all down to the aid station and then back up to continue the loop. Almost immediately my feet started killing me on the downhill.

I'd worn my new Cascadias for the race, I was pretty confident in my shoe-choosing abilities so that despite the fact that I hadn't taken them on a decent run yet I wore them for the race. Up until the long road I was totally confident in my choice of footwear. However, once we hit the long, very consistent and awkward decent my feet started sliding forward in the shoe. Now, this happens with any shoe but for the Cascadias it seemed more exaggerated. It might have been that little elastic bit I complained about in my review, not being firm enough to hold the foot tight, or it might have been too loose a fit for the hardcore course. Either way, by the time we made it to the bottom I had silver dollar sized blisters on the balls of my feet.

I'd put a pair of Minimus trails in my drop bag for the turnaround for just this scenario but the damage had already been done. Susan wasn't feeling too much better but it was less feet and more of leg issues for her. My legs felt pretty good after 3500 feet of elevation change but my feet were killing me.

Again, our mutual speed balanced out... to a walk. We made our way, very slowly, through the rest of the loop. At the top of the long hill the male leader passed us going the other direction, Susan and I were both blown away. He was FLYING down the hill, seven hours into the race and he had to have completed at least 45-50 miles to be at that point of the course. We made it to the next branch of the trail an hour later without seeing a second place runner.

We finished in a little over ten hours, 30.15 miles, just under the cutoff. A second loop was out of the question for me, which was a little disappointing. I mean, ideally we could have made it in under nine hours, a good cushion under the cutoff, and if I hadn't messed up my feet on the Long Hill I would definitely have at least tried another. On the other hand, my biggest goal had been to finish 30 miles as my 30th birthday was two days later, and I definitely completed that goal. I definitely had fun, definitely have some new stories to tell, and even though it wasn't 100k I can definitely live with a 50k for my first completed ultramarathon.


There will be a follow up with some of the lessons learned and more info about the race when the results are published. I'm also going to try and include a follow up on Brent and that amazing runner in first.

Tantalus Triple Trek

Tantalus Triple Trek Race Report, Sep 3 2011- only three weeks after Maunawili

They were especially sadistic when they came up with the course for the triple trek. It was arranged in a ten-mile figure eight. The first three miles were pretty much 100% uphill, steep and unrunnable. The middle section was nice, rolling hills covered in mud but runnable. Then there was a steep downhill portion. The section were the figure eight crossed itself was close to the beginning, which meant it was uphill and pretty gross. It was my second least favorite part of the course and it’s position meant that we did it twice a lap. The last section of the eight was an extremely steep downhill section that was absolutely covered in roots, after each root was a drop off of six inches to a foot (or more)... so it was essentially a giant, uneven, set of stairs that went down for a three quarters of a mile.

The first lap was pretty easy, we were all kind of bunched up on the single track trail but I managed to get in a with a group that was running pretty close to my pace. We walked almost all of the hills and ran the sections we could. The only time I really started passing people was on the steep downhill sections, I had a lot of confidence in my quick feet so I could run down them pretty well. Especially on the last stair-like section, I left the group behind. Unfortunately.

I'm learning, slowly, that when others know the trail better than you, do what they do. Don't take off on the rough downhill to gain some time when everybody else is walking it...

The second lap was kind of rough, the long, consistent climbs were tiring me out. My legs felt pretty good but it was just mentally and cardiovascularly frustrating to be constantly going up and then constantly going down. When I could run I felt pretty good but otherwise I was sucking. I dropped back and got passed by most of the people I’d run with in the first lap. Eventually I met up with a woman who was running slowly and just decided to keep her in sight. This worked out pretty well, I felt like I was running really slowly but we were making good progress. So, I figured out that the pace I felt I should be running was too fast, tiring me out so I’d stop or walk, then go again. Running at her pace I could maintain for a lot longer, making better progress. Eventually, on the same section as before I passed her again.

I made it to the aid station half an hour under the cut-off for the third lap, which had been my biggest fear (and goal) of the race. I’d been pretty worried coming into it, it was a tough course and any miscalculations would make it really hard to keep up with their ambitious cut-off time. I figured that if I could finish the first two fast enough than my race was pretty much over, I could take as long as I needed to finish the last lap.

I set out for my third lap and pretty much immediately regretted it. My knees were bugging me a little but I was having a really hard time catching my breath on the hills or keeping a decent pace. This was the yucky uphill stuff at the beginning, physically I was exhausted and mentally I was just... done. I don’t know if it was partly being sick (I’ve been coughing all week), or what, but it was everything I could do to just keep walking. I kept hoping I’d feel better, but nope.

So when I got to one of the cross roads I turned back toward the start line instead of continuing up the hill. On one hand I was really disappointed that I wasn’t going to finish my first ultra but on the other hard the only way I could have finished was to simply walk the entire last lap and mentally I just couldn’t do it. If I wasn’t going to finish half-way decently then why suffer through three-four hours of walking? Just to say I finished? What does finishing mean if you walked the last lap and it took four hours?

It sucks to not finish. I didn’t hang out after I made it back, didn’t feel like chatting it up with anybody. I just walked back to my car and went home to find some ice-packs.

Later on I checked the race results and was a little disappointed that they messed up my times. They had listed that I finished the first lap around 2:30 and dropped after finishing the second lap in 4:20, which was wrong. It looked like I hadn't made the cutoff and stopped, but I finished the two laps in a total of 5:30 by my watch (under the cutoff), then started but didn't finish the third lap (accounting for the extra hour). It doesn't really matter, I know how it happened and I doubt anybody is going to be looking my times but me, but still disappointing. Kick a guy when he's down ;)

Maunawili Out-N-Back Report

Maunawili Out-N-Back Race Report, August 13 2011-

First off, I was really excited about this race. The Maunawili trail, personally discovered when I got lost one time, has become a favorite of mine. I'd run it multiple times point-to-point and was excited to run the Out-N-Back. Unlike most of the HURT races I was actually pretty familiar with this course.

The concept of this race was pretty interesting. The oldest female and male runners were given ‘piggies’, stuffed animal pigs, and set out fifteen minutes before the next heat, if they got passed then they would pass the piggy on to the next front-runner. Then they sent out heats of runners broken down by sex and age. Being a relatively young, male runner, I was in the last set, which left about an hour and a half after the front-runners.

I was running in my brand new La Sportiva Fusion’s, they fit really comfortably so I figured they would be good for at least a couple miles before I switched into my good-ol standards, New balance Minimus Trail (which I stashed in my camel-back pack).

We started at the Pali lookout, which meant we’d run eleven miles mostly down-hill then hit the turn around and do eleven miles mostly uphill back. My daughter had a soccer game seven hours after the front-runner start time, and my goal was to finish in time to at least catch the end. Which sounds silly, seven hours to finish 22 miles? But it's a HURT run which easily can double a normal runner's mph.

The first half was pretty straight forward, about two and a half hours down. I was the last runner and wasn’t particularly surprised about it. I'm definitely one of the slowest runners in my age group and we started pretty far behind everybody else. We were so divided after the start, I figured I’d start to catch up to the slower runners in the second half.

I hit the aid station, refilled my camelback. The Fusions were surprisingly effective and my feet felt pretty good, so I kept them on. The aid station volunteers were awesome and had me turned around really quickly.

Unfortunately, as soon as I started the uphill portion my knees started absolutely throbbing. I was seriously tempted to turn around and go back to the aid station, but I hoped that when I got to a more runnable section it wouldn’t be so bad.

Yeah, no luck there. Between the knees and the heat I was suffering pretty bad. I managed to run a few short sections but nearly the entire way back I was walking. What took two and a half hours down took four hours to get back. I swapped into the Minimus' to see if that would help, it didn’t.

I finished last. I didn’t mind that so much, but they were taking down the tents and stuff when I got back, they thought everyone had finished already. Made me feel kind of low, but everybody who runs with HURT is simply awesome and they had me laughing in no time.

Missed the game and could barely walk for the next week. I shouldn't have been too surprised by the leg issues, I hadn't had time to really get prepared for this race so it ended up being the longest run I'd had in the last two years. The next longest being 14 miles, so I can live with it.

Run With A View Report

Written after Hurt Trail Series Race, Run With A View, May 2011-

Last Saturday I awoke at five a.m. to the sound of a torrential down pour. Seriously, horizontal rain pounding against the window. I booted up the HURT website, assuming that it was going to be cancelled (I was too tired to think about the fact that it was being put on by HURT). No race updates on the site. I drove all the way across the island, through the half-flooded roads, assuming that when I got there it would be cancelled (not to mention the forty minutes I spent lost, having taken down bad directions). It wasn't. Instead there was a group of about a hundred runners, laughing at the rain, already soaked, waiting for the race start.

If I have learned anything about HURT from the few races I’ve participated in, it’s to never, never underestimate the sadistic side of the HURT race directors. Oh, it’s only a six mile run... through multiple stream crossings, ankle-deep mud bogs, and as many hills as they can find. They are extremely talented at finding the most difficult conditions in the most beautiful places. Which is why their races are so ridiculously hard and yet so addicting.

The race started out with about a half-mile uphill run through the suburbs to the Jeep trail at the top of the development. As soon as the pavement ended the mud began. Trails, lots of mud, uphill, downhill, even more mud. At several points the downhills were so steep and slick we were sliding down them on our butts, it was safer.

During an especially steep and slippery hill a piece of advice from my recently acquired "Relentless Forward Progress", by Bryon Powell, popped into my head; how to use your glutes instead of your quads to climb a hill. So, I focused on proper foot placement and I quickly learned that not only was this much easier on my legs but I was much more sure-footed over the extremely slick terrain.

In fact, I was feeling so good about my progress that I got a little caught up in the moment and pushed a bit to pass a fellow racer who wasn’t doing quite as well on the climb. Here’s a piece of advice (maybe add it to the next edition of the book)... unless you are doing extremely well, or the other guy is doing extremely poorly, do NOT try to pass while going uphill. I passed the guy, reached the top, and despite only pushing myself a 'little bit' harder could barely get my feet moving again. The cost to gain ratio is not a good one.

About half way through the serious hills slowly faded and the course became much more runnable. There were still patches, uphill and downhill, that were too steep or too slick to run but it got better.

This is the section where I was running alone. I was just enough faster than the people behind me so that they didn’t catch up but was just enough slower than the guys ahead of me that I couldn’t catch up. There was probably a good forty minutes of the race that I ran without seeing another person. This was a little nerve-racking because before the race the directors had joked about people getting lost. “Follow the green tape out, the orange tape to get back. Pink tape is for the boar hunters and blue is bad, don’t go that way.” The problem was that there were pink and blue tapes everywhere, at every crossing, and the orange/green tape was far and few between. It would feel like ten minutes of running, nervous that I’d taken the wrong direction, before I would see a good marker, then the cycle would repeat. Every time I saw green or orange I would throw my fist in the air. Small victories.

The views were amazing, despite the low cloud coverage and the serious rain, it was obvious that were we running in some of the most beautiful areas of the island. Ridge top to ridge top around these gorgeous valleys. In some areas though there were large telephone or powerline poles that made me nervous. I hadn’t seen any lightning but with the sheer number and proximity of the clouds...

Eventually I reached the end of the loop and reached one of the most painful moments, running down the half mile of pavement back to the finish line. My shoes and socks were full of mud, and the angle of the road was really awkward to run ball-of-foot first.

I reached the finish line of the eight mile run in just over two hours, averaging fifteen minutes a mile. For the conditions though, I was pretty satisfied with that.

There was a nice gentleman who was graciously hosing off the participants at the finish. I walked over and spent five minutes scrubbing my legs and shoes, then walked back to my stuff. A moment later I realized that my legs were completely covered in mud again. It took a minute to figure out there was a river of mud flowing downfrom my still caked shorts and shirt. I had to go back to a much more thorough hosing off before I was close to clean enough to get in the car.

All in all, a great experience and reminder that HURT runners are all crazy.

(A portion of this was sent to Bryon Powell in thanks for his advice on running uphills, check out his book “Relentless Forward Progress”)

Gate River Run

This morning took part in the 31st Annual Gate River Run in Jacksonville, Florida. It's a 15k run (9.3 miles) that travels from the Stadium over two of the downtown bridges in a large loop.

This year there were 14,000 participants. Oh, yeah, did I mention that it's the largest 15k in the country? Can you imagine the downtown traffic trying to get there? I can personally verify that it's at least three times worse than you are imagining. We got to within three blocks of the arena an hour and fifteen minutes early, yet I got to the starting line a mere four or five minutes before the starting bell.

The run itself was pretty crazy. As you can see from the starting line-up there was some congestion on the course itself. For the first three miles it was more like trying to escape a sardine can than running. After that it thinned out slightly, allowing everyone to fall into a more natural pace.

I surprised myself by doing a pretty decent run. I'm not sure that I've ever run that far before, closest I've come was a 6.5 mile run I did about a week ago in preparation. The only point I really had a hard time with was the last mile and a half. Of course, I should mention that the last mile and a half was a long trip up and over the Hart Bridge (nicknamed the Green Monster for the purposes of the race). I had to pause on the way up for about thirty seconds to catch my breath, but other than that I ran the entire race (which was my biggest goal). Did I mention that there were forty mile an hour winds? It's like running uphill at an angle.

Then, when it seemed like the twists and turns of Jacksonville would never end, we were directed into the heart of the arena and the finish line.

I finished 5938^th with a time of 1:33:01. At the beginning of the morning I figured I could finish at around 1:15, but having run it now – I'm impressed I did it in 1:33. That's a little more than ten minutes a mile, averaged over 9 miles. Even as I sit here writing, feet propped up to relieve the pressure on blistered feet and sore joints, I still can't believe how much fun it was. I wish I'd gotten into running a long time ago, especially since this will be my one and only Gate River Run. Though I'm sure Hawaii has something similar, but I'll remember this one for a long time.

(No, they don't give out metals for 5938^th place. That's just for finishing.)

(Originally Posted 08 Mar 2008, Myspace)