My first year "doing" Western States.

2013 will go down, in my mind at least, as the first year I did Western States.  Not the first year I ran it. Hopefully, that will be next year, if I get in the lottery.  But that could also take years, like it has for poor Clare.  Anyway, this year I did it, as volunteer, crew, and pacer.  The hat trick of Western States non-running experience.  It is not kinda like, but exactly like, having an all-access pass to the Super Bowl of whatever sport you love and play.  It was an amazing way to experience the race, not to mention providing invaluable experience to anybody who hopes to run it.  It was a trip being there.

Quicksilver has had an aid station twenty or so miles into the race at Duncan Canyon for a really long time.  They ask members of the club to volunteer to staff it, and Jill and I thought it would be fun.  Fun for a bunch of reasons.  Get to know club peeps.  See all the runners.  Be in a spectacular part of California and see some rad trails.  And go to the Super Bowl of ultrarunning.  I was still a little reluctant to officially sign up, since I would be gone in Sweden so long and was pretty sure Elisa would not be into it (too much time in the car and standing around in the Sun).  Jill was all into it.  Since Duncan Canyon was so early in the race, we would be done early.  The cutoff is at noon, so we would be packed up by one.  Even if we hung out a bit, I could be back in the Bay Area in time for dinner.  I signed up, then I went to Sweden and ran the Stockholm freaking Marathon.  See last post.

My very last day in Sweden, I get a text (iMessage plug -- free anywhere, even away from native carrier if on wireless) from Greg (Quicksilver teammate, ex-captain, and guy that talked me into doing Silver State) asking me if I wanted to pace him the last twenty miles at Western States.  Hells-to-the-yeah!  I was amused that he waited until I had agreed to ask if I had paced before (not really, because Amanda's sub-2 half marathon is nothing like this) and if I had ever run on trails at night (yes, but only at the ITR night running workshop in the Headlands with Elisa).  Good enough.  I was hired.

I was in Sweden.  Western States was in less than two weeks.  By the time I got home, I had less than ten days to get ready.  Whatever that meant, but I had not run at all since the Stockholm Marathon two weeks prior.  I had the twenty (turned out to be fourteen) mile run to Southern Kitchen (which went well enough) the weekend in between.  I was worried about being able to keep up with Greg, even after eighty miles, if I was not all healed up and back in shape.  But if I could swing it, it would be awesome.  I was all about it.  Text (iMessage) Jill.  Um, yeah.  Since I am your ride to Western States, your commitment until noon Saturday just got extended a full day into Sunday.  I underestimated how into checking out Western States Jill was again.  She did not hesitate agreeing to stick around for the entire race (although she was already planning to try to convince Elisa to volunteer at the aid station or go in some capacity so she could have an earlier ride home).  OK, rad.  I was going to do it.

There was no way I was going to take any more time off, so the best I could do was work part of my usually-mostly-off Thursday and maybe go in early Friday to leave that evening.  Roll call at Duncan Canyon was at 0700, with first runner expected before 0830 (but it was going to be, and actually was HOT).  We ended up leaving about 1800 Friday.  I drove.  She got us a room.  We stopped for dinner.  arrived, checked in, and crashed for a bit by around 2300.  Up before 0500 for the long drive on sketchy roads to what we did not yet know was seriously the middle of friggin nowhere.

So get this.  Duncan Canyon is 23.8 miles from the race start at Squaw Valley in Lake Tahoe, and the first runner (on-foot, it should go with out saying) was expected in less than three and a half hours.  By car, it is 115 miles and can take over three hours.  Let that sink in.  23.8 on trails.  115 by car.  That gave me an idea how remote these trails must be if you had to drive around a mountain range to get from the Start to the first cutoff.

Jill and I stayed in Auburn, but Duncan Canyon was still over fifty miles away on some crazy road.  We left late enough to make it a little uncomfortable but ultimately were not late enough for it to be noticed.  We had plenty of time to hang out with Kat and Marc, while the former directed parking for inbound crews and volunteers.  But the drive.  It was really spectacular.  California is so beautiful, and the Sierras are amazing.  It seems the more remote you get, the more amazing it can be.  And we were really remote.  We would have enjoyed the drive a little more had we not spent so much of it thinking we were late, lost, or both.  It was really in the middle of nowhere, so any thought of being lost seemed serious.  Look it up on a map.  Right by French something reservoir 35 miles toward Tahoe from Foresthill outside of Auburn.  That course takes you through some awesome stuff.  We made it and unloaded a little bit of gear.  We were somehow late to the briefing, but got brought up-to-speed by Harris and some other Quicksilver pals.  There were a lot there.  Jim, Bea, Lisa, Marco, Dan (as volunteer and crew for Greg, he was also double-dipping), and more.

Jill again (like Miwok with Coastside) got what we now know is the unenviable task of runner-number-spotter.  For whatever reason, somebody is always in a panic to get the number.  Checking runners in and out, but also for the crews and our MC.  I was a handler.  Handlers lined up and took turns running the runners into the aid station while taking bottles for refilling (water or electrolytes?  ice?), pointing out the "exit", crew, food, and refill areas, and trying to call out a meeting place to return the bottles.  I was properly warned that it is always hard to recognize and locate your runner.  I cannot explain why it is so difficult, but it is.  No matter.  It was a really fun job.  You got to see all the stars come through.  I saw Rory Bosio in-person, and it totally lived up to the hype.  Tim, Hal, Gordie, and seriously everybody except for a few of the top names.  I did not "handle" Rory, but I did get the eventual second place finisher Rob Krar and a bunch of cool and amazing athletes.  I saw Janeth.  I actually had a pretty nice chat with Franz, in spite of him being in somewhat of a hurry on his way to an epic 22:17 finish.  Our CRC buddy Ron had to drop here because his IT issue threatened to leave him stranded between aid stations.  That broke my heart.  Quicksilver pals John, Bree, Chihping, my runner Greg, Nattu, Ian, Scott, and maybe one more.  It was cool to see all of them, pros and pals.

Middle of nowhere.  Ultrarunning Super Bowl.  Beautiful chunk of trail just off a road that seemed to exist just for this.  And I was doing it.  Filling bottles and cheering all the runners.  Running along with them maybe twenty meters or so escorting them through the aid station.  It was surreal.  The whole day ended up having moments like this, but this was the first.  I was not running Western States, but I was in it.  I would be a part of the experience for several of the runners.  It was a trip.  It still is a trip.

The guy with the horn sounds warning blasts, then the cutoff blast.  I jokingly booed him, which got a little chuckle.  We waited for sweepers, safety staff, and the runners that were about to be swept from the course.  Lunch was provided for the volunteers.  I finally had a proper sandwich, after snacking on aid station grub all morning.  It sucked seeing people miss the cutoff.  It really, really sucked seeing Ron have to drop.  It was, however, nice to have him to chat with while Jill slept on the ride back to Foresthill.  We gave him a ride there to meet up with Franz's crew.  Jill and I wished we had never checked out of the Auburn hotel room and ended up finding another one.  It was a little harder than we thought.  Our hotel was sold out.  Too bad because it was pretty alright for the price she paid, but we were able to find another one across the highway pretty cheap (but not as nice).  It did not matter much to us, as long as we had a place to nap and shower.  We did, then we had lunch and a bunch of coffee and a really nice, long chat about I cannot remember what but it was nice to just sit in the air conditioning and hang out.

After a while, it was time to meet up with Dan in Foresthill.  Foresthill is a neat little town like 16 miles outside of Auburn in the Sierra hills.  Once a year, on this particular day, it is also the main, sorta-halfway aid station.  The whole town is filled with crew, volunteers, and spectators.  The aid station takes over the school with medical check, pacer check-in, drop board, and easy crew access.  It was an amazing place to be just hanging out.  The ultrarunning vibe, always rad, was at its finest.  We ran into Jeremy, who was waiting for a runner from the East Coast he had never met but hooked up with on a special WS runner/pacer message board.  Jeremy found the runner's girlfriend (who was also his only crew), and we all hung out.  I checked in, got my pacer's bib with Greg's name and number on it, and signed the waiver.  I got a bib, and it was an all-access pass to trails and aid stations.  I immediately felt like a rockstar.  It was surreal.  I put it on, even though my shift would not come for hours.

The big thing is that this is where pacers jump in.  We somehow missed Greg coming through, but I ran into him on my way to check out the drop board.  Shortly thereafter we met some of Greg's family and his first pacer.  Dave would get him from Foresthill (mile 62) to Green Gate (79.8).  I would take him the last 20.4 to the Finish.  (The actual total mileage is listed as 100.2 miles.)  Greg put on his headlight, refilled his pockets with comfort and refueling stuff, maybe changed his shirt, and off he went with Dave.  Dan followed me and Jill back to Auburn, and we had dinner at Denny's.  Everything else was closed, since it was now well past ten.  We took our time at Denny's, went back to the room so Dan could shower, and headed back into the middle of friggin nowhere to Green Gate.

Green Gate is a couple of miles uphill from the Rucky Chucky river crossing.  This is not rock hopping.  This is crossing the American River up around your waist.  I look forward to doing it, but am glad I did not have to pace through it.  I stayed up at the top at the actual Green Gate aid station, so that I did not have to climb back up the hill.  Since I had not run much since Stockholm, my twenty or so was to be plenty.  And I wanted to be fresh for Greg.  I regret not checking out the river crossing somewhat, but also am fine with me experiencing it for the first time some other year (always a reason to come back) or hopefully soon as a runner.  And I really did not want to have to climb any unnecessary hills.  Oh, and I had not yet put on shoes and already hiked from the car in flip-flops.  It was a non-trivial walk already.  Jill and Dan were not waiting for me to put on shoes, so I stayed at Green Gate while they continued on to Rucky Chucky Far to meet Greg and Dave coming out of the water.

I saw a few to several people that I knew come through.  Clare and Scott.  Pamakid John.  I saw Helen, who I knew was up there crewing and who I have seen literally every time I run anywhere near Auburn.  (This is no joke.  We met at Sly, and she was one of the few other runners in my first ultra which was a tiny Folsom 50K, the Mathis Memorial.  I then saw her at WTC, AR, and now at WS.)  I think she paced to Green Gate, but it may have been from or something else.  Anyway, I fully expected to see her and did, and that was pretty cool.  I waited for literally hours.  I tried to nap in the dirt.  I had coffee at the aid station.  I chatted with another waiting pacer who had never met his runner.  0200 came and went.  It was bonkers, but absolutely in the coolest way possible.

They all came up the hill a little after 0300.  I am not even sure I knew what time it was.  Greg went through his bags and reloaded on stuff.  Thank goodness I remembered to start my GPS.  I had my cell, but there was no reception to update and check Facebook as I waited.  Regardless, I was turning it over to Jill.  Strapped on and fired up the headlight, and off we went into the darkness.  Greg was injured and beat up by then.  Those details are for him to tell, or not.  I do not want to somehow make it sound worse or not as bad as it was to him, but I know he was hurting.  Besides, I think this report reads just as well just knowing only that.  He told me we were hiking it in.  That it would be close, but that we should have plenty of time.  If we did twenty twenty-minute miles, we would have some wiggle room.  That was totally doable, though far from a foregone conclusion with an injured runner on dark, technical trails with aid station stops needed.  Plus, we had beers on ice at ALT (CRC's aid station, but the beers were arranged separately by Greg at dropbag dropoff).

While Greg may have been hurt, he was still sharp.  He was eating and drinking and fairly coherent.  I asked him if he wanted me leading or following.  Leading.  Run anything?  Jog it out from time to time?  No.  Hike it in.  Twenty-minute miles.  So that was my job.  And keep talking, but give him some breaks.  Try to tell good stories, but even the longest, most boring story ever kills miles.  Make sure the miles and time keep passing.  Greg knew the course, and I did not.  But I could watch for ribbons just in case, and warn him to hop roots or duck branches.  I think I was good at it.  Greg was totally tolerable, and not cranky like he had been up running day and night.  He actually had been up running all day and night.  Running the Western States Trail in the dark as a pacer.  I am still in awe of the experience.

ALT, Auburn Lake Trails, the Coastside Running Club's aid station, was the first one we came to.  It was a little before dawn.  The sky was glowing blue, but the Sun was a ways from being up.  Thank goodness, since it was already muggy.  Greg had somehow arranged to have a couple of Coors Lights on ice there.  Cooler even than having ice cold beers there was how excited the high school aid station volunteers were to see us drink them in the middle of a hundred-mile race.  We totally did, and the setting made them taste even more delicious.  Even though this was the CRC aid station, I was still shocked (but totally thrilled) to see Norm there.  You are shocked to see anybody at dawn in the middle of nowhere, even if they belong there.  Norm and I met on HMBIM training runs run by Franz and Ron and ran AR50 together.  It was rad to see him.  See you at DCFT, Norm!

From there, it just got hotter and hotter and brighter and brighter.  Not only was the Sun coming up, but we were moving generally away from the mountains that were protecting us.  Still, it was uncomfortable not unbearable.  For me, that is.  Greg had ran through it literally all the day prior.  I honestly could hardly imagine anybody finishing this race at all, let alone hundreds.  As usual, second to the views, my next favorite part was the aid stations.  Not just for the snack, but for the rockstar treatment.  More than any other race I have done, the volunteers (even or perhaps especially if they have done Western States themselves) are in awe of you.  Volunteers who have run know how difficult what you are doing is and how amazing it must feel.  Those who have not are amazed by anyone who would try something so difficult.  And this is almost as true for the pacers.  I am always kind of embarrassed when the spectators cheered me and the aid station volunteers rushed to help me.  I remember Jill feeling the same way at AR.  But I sort of get it now.  When I told the fans or volunteers, "I am just the pacer for this guy." and pointed my thumb over my shoulder, there was always some form of, "Hey you have a really important job.  You have to bring him home."

Pacing must be one of the coolest things there is, and certainly is in ultrarunning.  Pacing is a very pure act.  Let me explain.  I now know pacing from both sides.  I have paced and been paced, and I can attest that pacing is considered a very selfless act.  It is like, whoa, you are going to run all those miles and not even get credited with a finisher's time.  No medal.  No swag.  Just running to help somebody out.  Everybody is like, aww, how nice of you.  But as a pacer, it is kind of an honor.  A runner can only have so many.  A limited number of people can experience the race in this capacity.  Not only that, it is a significant display of trust for somebody to turn part of his or her race over to you.  Finally, you must be perceived by your runner (and subsequently by others) as a pretty legit runner to be trusted with pacing duties.  So this creates this mutual appreciation between pacers, runners, spectators, and other volunteers.  Everybody thinks that everybody else is doing this kind, selfless thing, even though everybody is really getting something out of it.  That makes it a very unique and special experience.  Win, win, win.

We hiked it in.  We were moving at faster than twenty-minute pace, but with aid station stops we were nailing it.  I seem to remember hitting eighteen miles at darn near exactly six hours.  I was not in prime shape.  I was still a bit injured and out-of-shape from trying to rest the injury.  I mentioned to Greg jogging some of the downhills to help with some of the stiffness, and he was like "Are you kidding me?  I am dying here."  He marched ahead of me at one point.  I was not sure if he wanted to be there.  He mentioned me slacking a bit, and I knew that meant to jog ahead from time to time to make sure I was ahead if he was marching faster.  There were also times when he was moving so much more slowly than I, that I would turn around and he would be gone.  I would space out marching along trying to get to Auburn and realize I had not checked on him for a while and that I was way too far ahead.  Then I would just wait for half a minute or something.  Hah.  I remember trying to act like I was not waiting, for both of us.  For me, I did not want him to know that I had forgotten about him for a minute.  For him, I did not want him to feel slow or like he was holding me up.  If I had been spacing out for a bit, I would remember at times like this that it was time to kill some time with a story or some personal reflection that may (we hope) have some entertainment value.  When Greg started talking about being bummed about being so far behind his goal pace, I told him how limping and dragging over thirty miles in the mountains to finish Silver State 50M in a just-under-thirteen-hour death march was my proudest ultra moment to date.  He was grinding it out.  He was walking it in.  It had taken all night and was going to take all morning.  And he was grinding out.  I tried to tell him how gnarly that was.

Breakfast was served at Highway 49, but we passed.  There were a lot of people.  I was always first into the aid stations, as he preferred me walking ahead dragging him along.  Any spectators would always cheer me on, and I would point back to my runner.  It is all about the white bib, but that yellow pacer bib got me a lot of love.  No Hands Bridge looked really neat lit up at night.  That morning it was hot and exposed, but a thrill to cover a spot I had heard of so many times and be so close to the finish.  On the other side of No Hands is the last climb of the race, up to Robie Point and onto the streets of the Auburn neighborhoods.  That was so surreal.  We saw Tim Tweitmeyer between No Hands and Robie hiking out to collect the last of the runners.  According to Greg, who knows him and just about everybody we saw on the trail, he always hikes out to run the last runners in.  Then you get to the top, and now everybody was congratulating us.  Like, we are done.  And we made it.  We had slow, but we were going to make it with about a half hour to spare.  An hour or so earlier I had asked Greg what he wanted me to do for the finish.  Although we had been hiking for seven hours by the time we got to Auburn, he was going to run (or jog) around the track.  I was going to run in with him, on his outside shoulder (so he could have the shortest route, of course), and peel off right before the chute that runs the final hundred yards to the Finish with clocks and cameras clicking.

Running on the track was the craziest thing.  Like running on the track at Olympic Stadium in Stockholm.  Only this time it was to be part of somebody's epic finish at Western States.  Greg finished in 29:34, and I had hiked with him for over seven hours of it.  Almost one quarter of the race in time, and a fifth of the distance.  On those trails and on that track, I was in Western States.  Doing it, but not running it.  I was part of the experience for a lot of those people.  I handled runners, including the eventual second place finisher, and saw a lot of my favorite pros.  I got to hang out in Foresthill, snack and drink coffee in the dark at Green Gate, cross No Hands, and run on the track.  I saw Janeth, Chihping, and Franz, who had all finished.  I saw Janeth and her pacer Ace pass us in the final miles.  I got to chat with Jen, Franz's wife, about the whole experience.  I saw Chris and met his new girlfriend.  I had seen Kent a couple of times, including pacing his runner in on the streets of Auburn.  I saw Ken the night running clinic guy.  Again.  I had also seen him on the course of AR, and maybe WTC too.  And in my first full year of running ultra, I got to do Western States.  It is so nuts.  I cannot believe it.  And now this year I get to be in the lottery to run it myself next year.  And knowing so much more about the race.  The experience even convinced Jill that she wants to do it, in spite of the heat and the hundred miles.  It was an awesome experience.  If you are at all into ultra, I highly recommend volunteering, crewing, or both at Western States.  It really is like an all-access pass.

The 2013 Stockholm freaking Marathon.

I just ran the Stockholm freaking Marathon, complete with a field of over 20,000 runners stacked with pros, live television coverage, helicopters, streets lined with spectators, and this guy.  I did.  Loren B. Lewis of San Jose, California ran the 2013 Stockholm Marathon.  And finished.  Under four-hours (a common threshold for "legit").

Blah blah blah something about my Achilles.  You may have heard about it.  Read the last report, if you are interested.  It is not worthy of further mention, unless it is Tobias's band of the same name.  That Achilles rocks!

When I got up and headed out for pre-race quiche, I could already see runners with their expo bags heading for the venue.  Café Fix opens at 9AM on Saturday.  Race was at noon.  Was I missing something?  Oh well.  I knew I could make it to the Olympic Stadium in well under thirty minutes.  So even allowing for subway traffic, which was considerable, and my routine of being at the Start area an hour early, I had plenty of time for breakfast.  I wished all carrying expo bags or wearing bibs good luck and a great race.  If you have not been here, you probably do not know that Swedes do not talk to strangers or even make eye contact with them.  If you are reading this, you know I seldom miss an opportunity to do both.  My "Good luck today.  Have a great race." usually got blank nods, but there were some smiles.  I like the smiles, but I do not require them.  Good luck today and have a great race.  Sorry, that is just me.  And I like it that way.  There will be no effort made to change it.  I had run the café out of salmon quiche and got the broccoli.  Only two cups of coffee, so I could minimize waiting in line for the porta potties.  Back to the room to gear up, let you all know on Facebook that I was going for a personal best at the marathon distance (rather than "touristing" the course and snapping photos), and off to the subway for even more good luck today have a great race.

I got to the venue about an hour ten minutes before start.  Perfect.  I chatted with other runners in line for the potties.  They had portable urinals, like two troughs three-dudes wide in a porta potty.  Awesome!  But Swedes are so modest and shy, usually only one dude would go in there at a time.  Hilarious!  Also ironic since they had no issue peeing on a wall or tree out in the open to avoid lines, as long as there was no other dudes standing next to them.  So, there were dudes peeing everywhere, just not in confined spaces.  Amusing.  My bladder management was perfect, so there was not much pee-anoia (my made-up term for paranoid pee anxiety).  I had an almost an hour to work on my tan and handstands on the soccer field waiting for my start time.  Tanning weather in Stockholm, in spite of rain with possible thunder showers a near certainty in the forecast later.

There were two start groups, noon and 12:10PM.  Groups A through D went off at noon, with E and F (I later learned F was first-time marathoners) went off at the later start.  I was in Group E.  I should have been in A or at least B.  When I registered, no more than hours after registration opened a full year ago, I had not yet run a race (let alone marathon).  My projected finish time was pretty realistic but not at all accurate.  It is out of respect to other runners (and not at all bragging, not intended anyway) that I say there is no way I could have predicted what my actual projected finish time would be on race day.  I considered informing them at expo that I planned on running a 3:30 and asking to be re-slotted.  But since I spent so much time considering touristing the course and was not in peak shape for that distance, I figured perhaps I was properly seeded afterall.  I certainly did not want to ask to be moved up only to then drift back to limp around and take pictures.  So I lined up in the middle of E.

I soon noticed that the first pacer for the second start was 4:15.  Uh oh.  Standing in that mob, I realized that I was going to have to make my way through all of Group E as well as the back of the first start group, once I finally caught up to them.  And with this being my first big city marathon, I was not quite prepared for how difficult that would actually be.  But I was fretting about it.  And it was tough.  Shuffling to the start line was no big deal, since the clock started for me only once my chip and I crossed the Start.  But after that, it was like trying to PR at the mall on the day after Thanksgiving.  I spent a lot of time and effort squeezing between, side-stepping, and dodging slower runners.  I checked my watch when I felt like I hit my stride, almost twenty-five minutes in.  I checked it again when I felt like I ran my pace for consecutive miles the first time, almost fifty-five minutes in.  At that point, I not-quite-intentionally picked up my pace, probably thrilled to be actually running to my ability for the first time in a month and knowing I had to make up for time lost in the mob.  It was tough holding myself to 8s, when 7s felt so amazing.  I did not realize yet how much effort was spent running for space, and ultimately I think that ended up being my race right there.  Oh well.

I learned big city marathons are difficult places to PR, even if properly slotted.  The crowds are tough, unless you are at the very front.  Good incentive to stay there.  But there is a lot to love about them, especially in this beautiful big city.  The crowds of spectators were terrific.  Popping up in recognizable parts of the city, like holy cow I know where I am and ran here, was terrific.  I saw my own fans on the second loop.  Chatted with some Marathon Maniacs from North Carolina on the first loop.  I started suffering about mile eighteen and blew up about mile twenty -- only a slight improvement over Surf City in spite of the more conservative pace.  I dropped a Roctane early on and regretted not going back for it.  I got really thirsty once.  IDIOT!  I need to learn to run without a handheld.  It seems dumb to run a "short" road race with one (as opposed to a trail ultra, where they are the norm even for studs like Jean), but then I need to figure out how to get my twenty ounces per hour from tiny paper cups.

Finishing in the Olympic Stadium (built for the 1912 Olympics) with the stands about half full of cheering spectators...MAJOR GOOSEBUMPS (and choked-back happy tears).  I ran around the track arms up in victory.  I spun around at the Finish, hands clapping above my head like the soccer players do applauding the fans and co-competitors, and shouted "Great job everybody.  Thank the volunteers for standing in the rain."  Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that it did indeed begin to rain for the last couple hours of my race, and I was soaked.  Totally saturated.  But yeah, made my way out of the stadium congratulating other runners and thanking volunteers for standing in the rain.  I am proud to be the notorious, smiling, chatty American.  By now, most seemed to appreciate it.

I am going to publish this now, but there is a lot more I could say.  But it is 11:45AM Stockholm time, and there is a BBQ at a park on a hill with my Stockholm pals at noon.  20C and tanning weather again. I love it here, and that was a great experience.  THE END.

Either I race too much, blog too little, or both.

I have been neglecting this space.  Not only am I behind by four race reports heading into the Stockholm Marathon, all four are big deal races.  There was Quicksilver 50M, my club's race on my birthday shared with me by many friends.  There was the epic, yet moderately irresponsible, Silver State 50M and Ohlone 50K double.  And Nanny Goat -- a two-day road trip complete with camping that is an "A" event to Elisa and a lot of my new running friends.  These are all worthy of fresh and detailed reports.  Well, sorry.

QUICKSILVER 50M

My club's race happened to be on my birthday, so I had an easier than usual time convincing friends to run it.  Sopheak and Amy did the 25K.  Elisa did the 50K.  Jill, Sophia, and Paul did the 50M.  Coach Erich paced me.  And a bunch of other club members ran too.  Chikara was there and won.  Stan came out to see me finish and hang with the crew.  The post-race BBQ was awesome.  My post-race appetite has about a six to twelve-hour delay, but by all accounts the food was out of this world.  Elisa loved the snow cones, and Sopheak apparently loved it all.  But how about the race itself?

This was my second fifty-miler, and I knew it was going to be much, much tougher than AR50.  Highs were forecasted to be close to 90.  And although it was tempting to try to come out fast and beat the heat, I knew from training on the course that the late climbs deserved respect.  So I chugged up a lot of the hills, even some of the more significant ones on New Almaden and the long grind up to Mine Hill from McAbee.  That turned out to be wise, since I needed just about all of that saved energy for the Hacienda portion of the course into Mockingbird (the 50K finish) and back out of the park to Sierra Azul.  It had heated up by then, and that part of the course is gnarly.

Erich was waiting for me at Mockingbird and paced me out to Sierra Azul and back.  I had warned him that it may not be much of an ultrarunning experience and more of a hike with aid stations, and I was right.  By the time we were heading back to the big finish from Sierra Azul, I was so tired as to even forget to run the flats and downhills.  Having him as a pacer really paid off then, because he would remind and encourage me to speed up when it was practical.

I finished in 9:44 and was even more proud of that than my 9:03 at AR50.  The BBQ after was super fun, even though I hardly ate.  I met Danni and Ryan, who I really had a chance to bond with at Nanny Goat.  It was an awesome day.  I had never shared a race with so many pals.  Happy birthday to me!

SILVER STATE 50M

The Quicksilver team only had two dudes running this race, and needed three to score team points. And they really needed that, since we did not score team points in the 50M and 100K distances at RA.  The emails trying to recruit another guy for SS were getting more frequent and urgent.  I was already signed up for Ohlone, but so was Toshi (one of the two, along with Greg, running SS).  So that was out as an excuse.  I badly wanted to prove myself to the fellas after RA, so I signed up.

Greg and I got into town late, checked into a room across the street from the start for a little rest, and were up bright and early for the start.  The race was in the mountains.  Not the hills, but the friggin mountains.  Starting well over 4,000' and climbing to almost 8,000'...twice.  Chris was there, also doing the double along with Toshi and me.  Chikara was there again (and won again).  He was wearing the exact same shoes as the ones in which he won Quicksilver, complete with a huge rip in the side of one.  There were actually quite a few familiar faces there, considering the race was in Reno and the day before Ohlone.  It turns out that the New Balance Excelsior team mobbed the race.  Anyway, off we went.

Now this race really deserves a full report, but I am going to have to rush through it to ever get it done.  So here it is.  The course was beautiful.  Very rugged and remote.  The altitude did not bother me nearly as much as I had feared.  My Achilles, which had started making a peep toward the very end of QS, immediately started to bother me.  It had not slowed me down there, so I had completely forgotten about it.  But here it was, and it slowed me down considerably.  Even the slightest pressure from my shoes was killing me, so I had taken them off coming into the aid station at mile 19.  I tried cutting my shoes open, which did not help much.  Jim, who saw me sitting at that aid station cutting open my shoes and asked me what was up, suggested lacing them tighter to keep them from rubbing. I tried that at the next aid station, but it made things worse.  So I immediately undid that.  Remember, it was Jim who gave me a hard time about RA.  I decided I could not quit, so I would do the honorable thing and miss the mile 33 cutoff.  That was a long walk away.  I met a guy at the mile 22 stop where I re-laced my shoes who was having bad stomach issues and also considering an early end to his race.  We walked and chatted until he took off running again.  I saw him heading out of the mile 33 aid station, but I also saw him come back.  I am pretty sure he did not finish.  The aid station before that I chatted with some nice volunteers and told them of my troubles.  They offered me a ride back if I quit, but seemed impressed and pleased by my intention to grind it out and miss the cutoff.

And now to really speed things up.  I made that stupid cutoff, climbed the eight or so miles back to the summit and back down the mountain into Reno for the finish.  Almost thirteen hours.  31 miles of basically walking.  I have never been so proud of such a crappy result, and even got nice "way to grind it out" emails from Jim and Jean.  The team scored in both men and mixed, since Jim showed up and Greg recruited a couple others at the last minute.  That was a real ultra experience.  And a tough effort, even if I do say so myself.

OHLONE 50K

My Achilles was still hurting.  I made it all the way to the parking lot not knowing if I would start.  Well, I did.  And finished.  And saw Lisa Benham hiking along the way.  That was another tough course.  Climb after climb after climb.  Under 8 hours.  Another slow, but proud, result.

NANNY GOAT

My Achilles was still hurting.  Stockholm coming up.  I approached it as Elisa's race and decided to limp along mainly supporting her.  I walked 26 miles in flip-flops in twenty-four hours, in spite of only signing up for twelve.  Super fun event that I enjoyed mostly through and for others.

1st time pacing: Amanda's sub-2 half.

Jill and I met Chad through Sopheak at the Headlands training run we did back in February.  The week after that we saw him pacing at the Niles edition of the NorCal half.  He invited us to run the Pleasanton edition Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) as his freebie buddies.  Free half and complete the series for double bling?  Yes, please!

Only problem was that Quicksilver was the following weekend, and I was feeling a little nervous about racing on roads after Ruth Anderson.  My dear pal and improving runner Amanda was also running.  She had run her first half at Niles in like 2:02.  I saw her post about Pleasanton on Facebook, asked if she was gunning for sub-2, and offered to pace her.  She jumped all over it.

I was having a bit of a crisis.  I was not all that fired up about running the race.  It would have been fun trying to PR and inch closer to the ninety minute mark, but I did not want to beat myself up going into Quicksilver -- a PA USATF GP race.  With Ohlone and Stockholm not far behind Quicksilver, it would have been the worst time for an injury.

Pacing Amanda was the perfect solution.  Fired up for the race, because I had a goal to run for now (just not my own).  But guaranteed not to push it too hard.

Amanda and I got to be close at Cisco.  She was an admin when I was doing desktop phones.  She was just super sweet, and I generally like people.  Not much more to it than that.  We just genuinely like eachother.  She gave me a hug and seemed genuinely concerned on some particularly rotten days, and I will never forget that.  She took an interest in me and my happiness without any reason to do so.  She just genuinely cared long before I could figure out why.  I notice when people do that, and it can endear them to me forever.  Amanda is one of those, and she is in elite company when it comes to how dear she is to me because of it.

She has gotten into running and fitness through Team Mo of the Go Team Mo crew I had seen at races.  This Mo has inspired some people very dear to me (Amanda and also Obie) to take better care of themselves.  She seems super supportive and a great motivator.  Anyway, Amanda has been working with Team Mo.  Amanda seems like a hard worker and tough gal.  I can tell she cares about her running by the questions she asks me and things she posts on Facebook.  Helping her in any way would be a joy.  Helping her meet a running goal might just be more satisfying than my own PR, so I was way into it.

Pacing is hard.  I think I am pretty tuned into my body.  I think I can run with a pretty consistent effort.  Well, that may or may not be true.  But if it is, that does not translate to a consistent pace.  I really had to watch my GPS.  And to make it worse, holding the "live" pace where I wanted it did not seem to produce good split times.  I have come to rely on average pace and pay closer attention to whether it is trending up or down.  I also kept an eye on the event pacers in front of and behind me.  The last complication was being Amanda's personal pacer.  If I were simply pacing 2:00 or 1:55, I would have a set pace and be bound to it.  But as Amanda's personal pacer, I had to be responsive to her her bursts one way or the other.  I encouraged her to run a smart race, but I was reluctant to hold her back when she was cruising early.  She tricked me into thinking she had plenty of gas in the tank with two miles left.  I asked her if she just wanted to take off, and she indicated that our pace was fine.  Shortly thereafter, she started to drop back.  The 2:00 pacer (an excellent pacer I knew from Morgan Hill and met personally through Chad.  He has or will soon have run a marathon on every continent, if I am not mistaken.) was right on our heels for a while, but Amanda did it.  She finished in 1:58.  I was stoked.  She was stoked.  There was a lot of love being sent between her and I.  I ran pain-free and had a blast.  I got my double bling.  Thanks Chad!

One jacked up thing: Picking up my packet the morning of the race, they look up my name and call out my bib "333".  I was stoked!  But it was gone.  331, 332, 334....  They had to change my number.  Well, somebody had swiped it.  I got emailed his event proofs.  He has a result as bib 333.  Not sure how he got it, but that is jacked up.  I ended up with 805.  Still have never had a 9.  If my replacement bib would have had a 9, there would have been an even more epic tantrum.

My first race not racing: Miwok with CRC

I want to run this race.  It is on my bucket list of races for sure.  But by the time I knew about it, the lottery had happened.  Ron from CRC contacted me and their mailing list about volunteers for their aid station.  Since I could not run and was overdue to volunteer and maybe mostly to improve my chances in next year's race lottery, I signed up.  And convinced Jill too.  We were at Bridge View in the Marin Headlands with breathtaking views of the City.  It was a beautiful and uncharacteristically warm day -- great for volunteers but hot stuff for runners.  I worked a road crossing at the bottom of the hill with Margaret, instead of at the actual aid station.  I wore my Quicksilver tank and should have worn more sunscreen.  This was a brilliant idea.  Although it is not always possible, as a general rule for races that interest you, if you cannot run it, volunteer it.  Some highlights:

1.  A woman endurance cyclist asked me the question I answered the most from passers-by: What is the race and how far?  Miwok 100K, shortened to 60K.  The subpopulation one finds in the Marin Headlands, especially on a bike, is super fit.  I was surprised how few of the cyclists had heard of ultras.  She said I was the first ultrarunner she had ever had a conversation with or met.  That was hella cool.  That was how I spent most of my time waiting for the first runners.

2.  I saw everybody, including the first runners, pass through.  That was bitchen.  I knew so many of them!  QSURT teammates recognized the jersey, whether they actually knew me or not.  I got recognized from Way Too Cool by a runner.  I saw Franz and Ron from CRC.  Sophia stopped for a picture.  It was awesome.

3.  Everybody thanked me.  It frustrated me at first, since I felt so lucky to spend such an amazing day such a fulfilling way.  It was like are you kidding me?  You are running these hard trails in this heat.  I am standing here with a pirate flag wearing an eye patch.  THANK YOU!  Then I remembered how heartfelt my own thanks are when I am racing and realized that these thanks were just part of that same cycle and that I was screwing it up by thinking it was weird that I was being thanked, and then it was rad.

I took pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge and sent them back to Alabama.  I want them to see it here so bad.

Do not run to lose weight. Lose weight to run.

Or, my almost thirteen miles in a ten pound fat suit.

I was overdue for a humbling run.  They happen every so often.  The worst one was last year around Alviso loop.  It was supposed to be an easy nine miles -- easy because I think I was already in marathon shape at the time.  Yeah, because I had done track the night before and Wednesday morning yoga.  So that was relatively recently.  I exploded and ended up having to walk part of it.  Still not sure what the heck happened, but it was a total bonk on a super short run.  Today was nowhere near that bad, but certainly humbling.

Remember that post about being able to justify eating more and skipping workouts during the peaks of racing season and how to manage the extra net calories?  If not, you will not have to go back far to look for it.  This week has been good for that balance.  With two off weekends between RA and Quicksilver, I have had fewer excuses to train less and eat more, and my habits have been better.  But it has not kicked in yet, and I am carrying about an extra ten pounds.  Jeez.  I felt all of them.  In addition to feeling fat and slow, my joints really seemed to feel the extra hammering of the extra weight.  I know this is just a phase, and that if I am patient and consistent with my good choices it will be a short phase.  Nonetheless, this run was much harder (and less pleasant) than it should have been.  I am taking two lessons from that, and hope any of you hoping to run and lose weight pay extra attention to the second one.

The first one is easy.  If I eat more and workout less, I will gain weight.  I need to manage calories better during racing season.  I should just eat like normal, perhaps only slightly less just the day or two before and after races -- but that is it, not a week!  I will probably burn fewer calories.  There is no way around that with the rest periods that I will need.  But I can work my fitness to shorten my recovery, find other ways to burn calories while resting my legs, maybe take in fewer, and overall just manage calories better.

The second lesson is that I was very lucky and hindsight-wise to have lost the weight first, instead of running to lose weight.  Running and extra pounds is a terrible combination.  Now that I run, and with the experience of today's run in a ten pound fat suit, I am highly motivated to trim extra pounds.  They friggin suck to carry around!  And the extra hammering on the body of just a few pounds is disturbing.  OK, back on my training diet.  Steady on with the cross training.  And you out there: Do not run to lose weight.  Walk or elliptical.  Then lose weight to run.

I run less (but workout more) than you think.

Very typical exchange between me and another amateur athlete or an aspiring athlete:

Them: "So how many hours a week do you workout?"
Me: "Fifteen to twenty hours a week."
Them: "And that is all or pretty much all running?"
Me: "Heavens no.  Jeez."

I ran my way into running shape, or marathon shape.  That was when I was logging sixty and more miles every week, sometimes running twice a day.  But now that marathon distances and six-hour runs are fairly routine (OK, that was kinda weird to say/type, but it is truthful and accurate.  Wow.), my strategy has been to train more but run less to save the miles on the body.  I might actually train less too.  I used to do at least an hour on the elliptical almost everyday, almost always more, and in addition to running.  I have not been on the elliptical in weeks.  A lot of my peers run in the hundred-miles-per-week neighborhood.  I am currently sitting at about half of that, but racing more than once a month -- assuring regular thirty or fifty-mile supported training runs.  I spend considerable time on upper-body workouts (my vanity workouts), but the vast majority on cardio and core.  Fifteen to twenty hours per week is based on this:

8 hours running: Tuesday track; Thursday and Saturday and/or Sunday runs with Jill.  Track is an hour and usually three to five miles.  Jill and I run up to, but seldom over, twenty miles and three or so hours.  Since we are "in-season", and usually right up against either a taper or recover, these have been more like twelve or so miles and two hours -- but then that means a 50K or 50M or whatever race and all those miles and time.  Catching a bonus run on the weekend happens plenty often enough to round up to an average of eight hours per week here.

3.25 hours yoga with Delanie: Monday 5:30PM and Wednesday 6:30AM at Cisco, one hour each; 8:00 to 9:15AM Saturday at the studio on Lincoln.  I obviously miss the Saturday class for a Saturday race.  Other than that, I basically never miss yoga.

2 hours rowing: 10K three times per week at forty minutes each.  I usually row on Mondays and Fridays.  I row after yoga.  Sometimes I row twice on Wednesdays.  I still do not think I have rowed four times in one week.

3 hours vanity stuff: Pretty much everyday that I am in the SJQ gym (for yoga, sometimes after track, Wednesday and Friday evenings), I do twenty to thirty or so minutes of weights (upper-body) and stretching.  I move quickly and purposely in the gym, doing rounds of a set of push something, then a set of pull something, then stretch.  I can usually get in at least five rounds.  I also do push-ups and pull-ups around the house, usually in the mornings (but Thursdays and weekends too).

That is over 16 hours and pretty much guaranteed.

Bonus time: It happens.  I find extra workouts for fun.  Seriously.  Like training runs with Franz and Coastside Running Club or free guest night yoga at Planet Granite with Annie and Dave.  I might kill some time on the elliptical or stationary bike.  Crazy, right?

So yeah.  That is how I workout fifteen to twenty hours per week.  I work my friggin tail off, so it definitely is not for everybody.  If you want to try it, you will probably have to give up television to get those extra hours.  Good luck!

Kobe, go away so you can stop messing up California.

I love the showtime Lakers.  I am plenty old enough to remember Magic and Kareem and the epic battles with the Celtics, Sixers, and Pistons.  I am a born and raised NoCal and really enjoy hating on the Dodgers and LA Kings.  SoCal is stupid, but I still always made an exception for the Lakers when I was a kid.  Back then, come playoff time, the Warriors were no longer on television, so the Lakers were the team in this household that time of year.  Yesterday, the Warriors went up 3-1 over Denver, and the Lakers got swept in the first round against the Spurs.  Without David Lee, this will not be the Warriors' year.  Still, look for them in the playoffs for years to come, but do not expect for the Lakers to be down for long.

Ever since the incident in Colorado, I have been a Kobe hater.  Being a Kobe hater has made me a Laker hater.  I have a lot of Laker fan pals, like Kevin my bro in Huntington and Maggie at the gym.  I actually like rooting for teams my friends root for, since I like it when they are stoked.  I can even be happy for Josh and Thao, when the Cowboys win (but barely).  The Lakers would be a great team for be to be able to get behind, at least a little and at least every once in a while.  But that thing in Colorado, the alleged rape or sexual assault, ruined it for me.  And if you defend Kobe, you should stop.

My own analysis of the publicly-known fats of the case is that Kobe is a slimeball and maybe even a sexual predator.  But since I am asking you to judge here, I will stick to the facts.  Kobe cheated on his wife.  Kobe was flippant in trying to talk his way out of a very serious, disgusting, and violent act.  Kobe was probably the best basketball player on the planet and revered worldwide.  It seems like pretty much everybody has excused one and two because of three, and this drives me crazy -- especially when the fans are women.  And it is not just Kobe, either.  I hate Ben Roethlisberger too.  The view in this country that you can be an ass to women if you are a good enough athlete is disgusting.  That we hold certain gifted people to different standards is weird enough if you really think about it.  But when it comes to basic human decency, there should not be exceptions.

I am really bothered by what Kobe may have done to that woman in Colorado.  He was legally cleared, however, so I certainly must consider that all that may have been fun and consensual at the time.  But he is still an ass for embarrassing his wife and seeming so selfish and casual about the whole thing.  If he did nothing wrong, why was he so quick to through Shaq under the bus and suggest throwing money at it to make it go away?  And that he is so famous, what makes it excusable to so many people, is what makes it more frustrating to reasonable people.  I like Charles Barkley but all that mess about him not being a role model is ridiculous.  If you are famous for being a good athlete, kids are going to look up to you.  It is not a choice the athlete makes.  If he (or she) does not want to be imitated by children, he should pick another profession.  If the athlete takes the huge sums of money to play whatever game, the athlete accepts this responsibility and needs to not be a disgusting pig in a hotel room.  Being famous makes it less OK to be an ass, not more OK.  This is not enforced in the World, but it should be.

So I hate Kobe.  And he needs to go away, so I can go back to liking the Lakers.

Quicksilver course tour/Big Sur solidarity run.

For a variety of reasons (pre-Big Sur dinner with the Parks, Jill's horse show thing), Sunday run worked out better than Saturday after yoga this week.  Totally a good thing, since I would have otherwise been obsessed with watching others run Big Sur online.  It was Jill and my weekend training run, plus we invited Robert and Coach Erich from SVTC.  Robert is running the Quicksilver 50M, so Jill and I were giving him a course preview.  We were going to do the red section, so he would know how the race started.  But he opted for green, when he found out that that was the section with most of the old mining ruins.  Fine with me.  Same distance, although I have always thought green was tougher.  Erich just came along because he was available and is interested on running more on trails -- to train for XTERRA events and his first fifty-miler.  It was pretty cool to have my track coach (If I am not mistaken, Coach Erich is a pro triathlete.  If not pro, certainly well sponsored.) show up for a trail workout led by me.  He showed up without any water bottles.  I asked.  He said he was not going to do the full 18 or whatever we had planned.  He turn back the first time we passed Randol, so he still did 12 or so with a few gnarly-enough climbs without any water.  Crazy.

So Erich is hella fit and super fast.  He ran up front with me.  We chatted.  Even though we switched routes to green, we started up Virl Norton and Hacienda to Capehorn to where it starts.  He continued chatting effortlessly as we started up the first climb, and I immediately began to struggle to form complete sentences.  He was merciful and did not mock my stuttered, incomplete speech.  He asked is I knew Chikara.  I was like, uh I actually sorta do.  Erich, who lives .66 miles from Mockingbird (according to his jog there this morning tracked by Garmin), had seen Chikara training at Quicksilver yesterday and given him some candybars.  Chikara has a notoriously filthy diet.  Erich runs with Chikara for Excelsior.  I explained that I run against him with Quicksilver and told my Chikara stories, admitting that I was a bit of a fanboy.  Coach said Chikara and I were his go-to guys when it cambe to picking brains for ultras.  I almost died.  That was the second biggest compliment of the weekend, and the first one was very unexpected and totally unbeatable.

Bob (I never knew whether to call him Robert or Bob.  He is Robert on Facebook, but Sopheak calls him Bob.) and Jill were never far behind us.  Jill was not fully recovered from RA (and actually cut out two miles and some elevation to take it easy), and Bob is an Ironman with several ultras under his belt.  So there was not too much waiting at the intersections, especially since I used the breaks to disguise how hard I was being pushed by Erich the first time up Mine Hill.

It got hot almost immediately.  I told Bob when we got to the bottom on the McAbee side that the race, and our run, really began at this point.  We were roughly at the halfway point of our run, and not far from that on the 50M course.  From McAbee, you dig up over four miles back to the top of Mine Hill, after having already crossed over it from Mockingbird and run down (knowing full well you have to turn around and run back up).  Bob took it like a champ.  We went through the ruins at English Camp, and he got a huge kick out of that.  Then we went down the trail English Camp to Hacienda, where we dug back up and over to the parking lot and Start/Finish of our run.  (Did I mention that) It was hot, and some of those Hacienda climbs are brutal -- short, but steep and just downright cruel at that point of the day.  We just caught Jill, who was about to leave but was able to join us for lunch.  She beat us back to the parking lot by about a half hour, since she took a slightly shorter but easier route.  She earned it at RA for sure.

It was a really nice run.  The wildflowers are hanging in there, and the park was packed!  We were always on wide trails.  Since we did not have to dodge bodies on any singletrack, it was nice to see all the people outside enjoying the park.  I got a bit of a sunburn on my face, in spite of having sunscreen on.  By the time I was done, I had heard from Elisa.  She was feeling better and able to start and finish her Big Sur run.  I was invited to her and Annie's pre-race Big Sur dinner, and she was not feeling well then at all.  That little firecracker rallied and did it.  She waited for Annie at the aid stations and finished wishing she had been able to run the full marathon and really "gone all out".  So sexy!  But yeah glad she felt better, and they enjoyed the beautiful run.  I was and am wiped out.  That combination of Sun and miles and climbing...Zzzzz...

Race envy sucks. Big Sur tomorrow, but not for me.

Today (by the time anybody sees this) is the Big Sur Marathon, which must be one of the most beautiful in the World and is as likely to be one of the most popular.  I know several people running it, among them my #1 favorite amateur athlete and her sister -- Annie is in town to run Big Sur with her wedding-party-of-one big sister Elisa.  Annie decided to do this in lieu of a bachelorette party.  But by the time that she had this adorable idea, the full marathon distance had already sold out.  I was not kidding about it being probably one of the most popular marathons, and this was based on having heard that it is among the fastest to sell out.  So they are doing the 21-miler.  For some reason, Big Sur has a bunch of random distances, like 9, 10.6, and 21 miles, in addition to the full marathon and 5K.  The half is its own race in like November.  Weird, right?  Why not use that permit space for the popular full distance?  There must be a practical reason, most likely maximizing profits or stipulations of the permit.  But that is the way it is, and the Park sisters are running twenty-one miles.

The Monterey Peninsula is, as far as I can tell, one of the most spectacular chunks of planet on Earth.  The California coast is breathtaking, and this is one of the nicest pieces of it.  Running 26.2 miles on a point-to-point course must be the coolest!  I would not know, since I have not run it yet and did not get in this year.  I saw the Big Sur booth at the SJRNR expo and tried to register, and that is when I found out it was hella popular and had already been sold out since like forever.  So I will have to wait until at least next year to cross Big Sur off of my marathon to-do list.  Another thing I am discovering as a very new runner is race envy: that selfish feeling of being left out when "everybody else" is running a race you want to be running.  I had it for CIM, Lake Sonoma, Boston, and almost certainly others.  The latest edition is Big Sur.  While everybody is waking up early and hanging out with the badass sweethearts and getting medals and tech shirts and free carbs and electrolytes, you are paralyzed by the jealousy with which you watch your more fortunate comrades on Facebook and results pages.  They are competing (or at least completing), while you sit and watch from the sidelines.  You keep forgetting to be excited for your friends in the event, because you are so pissed you are not in the event.  That is race envy.

Good thing I have my own run tomorrow.  Jill and I are doing another course tour of Quicksilver with Robert from SVTC.  Robert is also running the 50M at Quicksilver in a few weeks.  Coach Erich said he would join us too, since he will be running more trail in the XTERRA tri season and has some interest in ultras.  He lives in Almaden, so he can jog over.  We will do the red section (first 25K) of the Quicksilver and back to Mockingbird for about seventeen or eighteen miles.  If not for that, I would sit at home and pout and watch results online or something like that.  Either way, I will be anxiously awaiting a text report from Elisa about how her and Annie do on their run.  Annie confessed to not having trained much, but those girls seem to be able to run well cold.  I know from experience and firsthand account that Elisa can, and have heard sister has the same trait.  They may not be super fast, but they are relentless.  The slower pace will help with taking in the views and hopefully getting some pictures.

My next bout with race envy will be next weekend at Miwok.  That will be my first experience as an aid station volunteer.  I am not sure how volunteering will be for race envy.  It seems like a great way to cope with it, but it could also be painfully close to the action.  Since Miwok is a lottery, and volunteering gets one an extra entry, there is a proactive element to volunteering for maybe avoiding Miwok race envy next year.  It will also be tempting to just take off and start running around the course like a jerk.  That is a hard area for me not to be running anyway.  After that, I have Quicksilver and Ohlone on back-to-back weekends.  Then I can go back to being justifiably self-absorbed, which seems to be a sweet spot for an ultrarunner.

12 or so miles of pain-free gratitude.

Injuries scare the heck out of me.  For one thing, the thought of not being able to run for an extended period of time terrifies me.  For another, I do not really have an injury history.  (Knock on wood.  For reals.)  I have no idea what is a big deal and what is not.  My recent knee thing felt serious -- like it definitely could have held the potential for further, long-term injury.  So I almost feel guilty to report that it had been totally fine since Sunday evening or so.  I felt it a couple of times, oddly enough usually while laying down, in the day or so after RA.  People kept telling me to expect it to hurt going down stairs.  Well, I have stairs in my house and always take them at work and was not feeling the tiniest bit of discomfort.  It was like, Dangit I wimped out on 100K for nothing!  Totally false.  It was because I stopped and rested a bit that things were back to normal so quickly.  Still though, I sorta felt guilty for not being in more pain for a few more days.  Weird, but it makes sense to me, so I am fine.

Still, since the very beginning it only actually hurt while running.  I was aware of it at other times, but I only felt that catch while running.  So until I tried to run, I could not be sure.  I went on my first run since RA yesterday with Jeremy.  We did what I call "red lite" at Quicksilver Almaden.  The 50M course at the park consists of Red, Green, and Blue sections (on the map): red is the first half of the 50K, green is the second half of the 50K, and blue is the last twenty miles of the 50M.  Red lite is red, without the first climb up Virl Norton -- thus, "red lite".  Red lite is still a pretty challenging twelve miles and a terrific run.  The hills are already turning brown, so it was a good time to say goodbye to the Spring wildflowers.  Jeremy is fast, especially uphill.  And he and I are very competitive, especially with eachother.  So even though I kept telling myself and Jeremy that I would be taking it easy to test out the outer left knee, I knew that it was going to be tough to hold back even with a conscious effort.

I behaved myself in so much as I kept telling myself to take it easy.  I do this thing where I roll my shoulders back and try to stand up straighter to slow myself down.  I am not sure at all if it works, but it is what I do.  I was doing that a lot.  Jeremy was right on my heels, letting me take the lead since I knew where I was going.  He had not been running consistently for a while, and not with me for even longer.  He said he was worried about keeping up.  I knew there was no chance I could lose him in anything under fifteen miles or so, so I knew he would not have any trouble.  Last time I saw and ran with Jeremy was late January, when I was hella peaking for Surf City.  To this day, I am not sure I have ever felt faster.  Jill and I ran into him on Los Gatos Creek Trail at the Lexington end of Vasona.  I took off and he followed me.  We were flying, probably close to 7:00 pace for a couple of miles (both of us already several miles into our runs).  Jeremy was right there behind me, and I wondered if I could ever make him go away.  Then...he started chatting with me.  Probably about his Dodgers.  He was calm and peaceful as could be.  Uh oh.  I knew I was dust.  He realized I would be terrible company, since I had no air for words, and he took off for Campbell Park.  He beat me there by a couple of minutes.  Even if he had been away from running for a while, or even since then, no way waiting up for him was going to be an issue.

We cruised along, with the first half of the run being the totally kickass New Almaden Trail -- six miles of single track wildflower green goodness.  Clicking along at 10:00 pace, which I consider darn solid on this trail, we both still had plenty of air and patience to chit chat.  Me made the turn up Mine Hill at Guadalupe, then back mostly Randol to Capehorn then down Hacienda.  Jeremy stayed with me pretty much from the intersection of Randol and Prospect #3 to the parking lot, because his endurance was starting to catch up with him.  We were entering my sweet spot, but he usually only runs about ten miles on his own (and always without carrying water, as he was not today).  So although he was running away up Mine Hill and Randol, by the time we got to the picnic table that marks the final stretch for me, he was content to hang with me.  (Most people think I can run pretty ridiculously fast uphill.  OK.  Imagine Jeremy running away from me and disappearing into the woods within the first hundred yards.  I know how you folks behind me on the hills feel now.)  He actually could not keep up with me for the descent down Hacienda, because his quads were blown out to the point of not being able to run downhill.  I may never be faster than Jeremy (who is an ex-pro D League soccer player, so obviously a gifted athlete), but at least I can give him a good workout these days.

Much more importantly, however, is that my knee held up like a champ.  Not a single complaint from it all day.  I may have felt "it" (haha...or IT...runners get it) a few times along the way, but never that "catch".  I am still going to take it easy.  I am still not going to try and PR at NorCal Half next weekend -- and have found the perfect way to insure that.  But I am no longer concerned about my start at Quicksilver 50M in just over a couple of weeks.  I swear I was not wussing out at RA.  That could have been serious.  That WAS serious.  I just got lucky again.  I can still claim no history of injuries.  I can still claim ignorance of what is really serious, but just may have a good sense of what it is now.  Racing competitively can really test you.  You have to be tough enough to finish when you can, and still smart enough to know to stop when you must.  That truly must be as much art as science.  I am working on it.  So far so good.  I have been very fortunate.  And for twelve miles yesterday, I felt gratitude that my body has put up with what it has.  Twelve miles of gratitude for this very durable body that is mine due as much to good luck (genetics) as hard work.  I know so many people who do not run or are not active simply because they cannot.  It is an emotional thing for me, and I run for them always.  Hang in there, body.  Especially outer left knee.

What do I do with all these calories?

At the beginning of 2013, I joined the Quicksilver Running Club and their Ultra Racing Team and convinced Jill to do the same.  The Quicksilver team is very competitive in the USA Track and Field Pacific Association Ultra Running Grand Prix, and I figured I would run as many of those races as I could:

http://www.pausatf.org/data/2013/mutsched13.html

This is a pretty aggressive schedule, especially for a newb like me.  April and May have some big distances packed pretty tightly together.  There certainly is a chance that my Ruth Anderson experience was due at least in part to the fact that I had run my first fifty-miler only a couple of weeks prior.  That thought makes running Ohlone the weekend after Quicksilver even more intimidating, but no point worrying about that now.  I just need to be smart and careful.  Anyway...

Obviously, this is my first year running like this.  Obviously, this is my first season racing competitively.  I say obviously because not many posts ago I explained that I just started doing races and ultras last Summer.  Well, so far, the most difficult thing about the tightly packed schedule is what to do with all these calories between races.  It may become avoiding injury, but so far it is not feeling fat and out-of-shape while tapering/recovering between races.  I worked my tail off getting into marathon shape and beyond.  But what happens when the recovery from one race, like AR50, runs right into the taper of the next, like RA?  Or what the heck am I going to do the one week between Quicksilver 50M and Ohlone 50K?

The week before and after races I skip a workout or two and easily justify ingesting more and denser calories.  Right now, that is covering pretty much all of April and May.  I can see it happening already in August.  I could easily see it happening some more in the Fall.  Thus the question, what do I do with all these extra calories?

So far, I am happy to report that my weight is hanging in there in that sweet spot from 158 to 163.  We can debate whether or not I should edge closer to 150, as I think maybe I should, but not now.  Nonetheless, there is still considerable anxiety about all the skipped workouts, even if they are to recover, and the extra calories -- fewer out and at the same time more in.  Today, in addition to it being a million dollar day in South San Jose (and assuredly Quicksilver Park), I just want to run for fun and because Jeremy can join us (and I want to show him New Almaden Trail and the park).  Considering the last post, however, today may make a better day off.  Then again, even though I may burn three or even five thousand calories during a big race, there is no replacing Jill and my weekly runs for mental and physical fitness.

And there is the food.  My diet is usually pretty solid.  My weakness has gone from ice cream to frozen yogurt and is properly in moderation.  Mostly.  Loading or replacing race fuel is just too compelling of an excuse to miss, and I seldom do.  It has been used to justify lots of extra frozen yogurt and french fries and desserts.  I guess the punchline is really that I am still in the sweet spot bodyweight wise.  But no.  The punchline is really that I should still be eating clean and practicing good habits.  So all this justified workout skipping and dessert not-skipping is not healthy.  Some is.  Totally.  And some celebratory meals are too, and fit conveniently with the loading or replacing race fuel methodology.  As such, some of the anxiety is warranted.

I wonder what the elites do?  I should ask my teammates, and my superfreaky friends like Coach Coady.  I have access to really cool coaches through Silicon Valley Triathlon Club.  I will ask them too.  I am guessing that I should just eat like normal, only slightly more if doing back-to-backs.  Wow.  What a boring post.  Sometimes when I think aloud (I really prefer outloud, but it apparently is not a word.), it can be pretty entertaining.  This is not one of those times.  My apologies, but this had been bothering me a lot lately.  It might bring me some good suggestions, so it will be worth it to me -- at your expense.

Ruth Anderson 50K/50M/100K -- sorta my first DNF.

This past Saturday was Ruth Anderson 50K/50M/100K, a classic and old school San Francisco ultramarathon now run by Rajeev.  RA has a very unique format.  You can choose your distance on the course, but you must complete the distance you are on or DNF (Did Not Finish) the entire race.  So once you hit 50K, you must declare yourself a finisher (and take your result in the 50K) or a participant in the next distance.  Once you decide to continue, you must get to 50M or DNF.  At 50M, you have another chance to declare yourself a finisher or you can decide to be an entrant in the 100K.  If you stop between 50M and 100K, you DNF.  I was coming off a much better than expected result at the American River 50 Mile Endurance Run two weeks prior.  RA was a relatively flat, loop course around Lake Merced, so it seemed the perfect time and place to make my first attempt at 100K.  I still think so, even in light of recent events described here.

RA is loop event, kinda like New Years One Day.  At NYOD, you had six, twelve, or twenty-four hours to complete as many laps at Crissy Field as possible.  The laps are barely over a mile, and at the end of your time you are credited with the sum of the distance of the number of laps you completed.  RA is also laps.  The RA laps are almost four and a half miles each around Lake Merced, bordering San Francisco State University and around Harding Park Golf Course.  Unlike NYOD, at RA you must cover a prescribed distance.  The only cutoff is eleven hours to complete fifty miles, if you wish to attempt 100K.  Rajeev is a charming and funny dude who puts on a good race.  He loves being around his people, and ultrarunners are his people.

Jill and I stayed at Elisa's (one l Elisa, not two l Ellisa from the previous post) apartment Friday night, and I stayed up to watch the fireworks at AT&T Park after the Giants game from Elisa's couch.  Elisa was away in Asilomar near Monterrey at a symphony retreat.  Jill and I woke up at 4:45AM, made final race preparations, and drove the three or so miles from Elisa's apartment to Lake Merced.  We could have walked or run it, but there was plenty of that to come that morning and afternoon.  Jill was attempting 50M for her first time.  I was gunning for 100K.  We got good parking, picked up and pinned our bibs, and set out in the not-so-cold to mingle with the ultra crowd -- always a good time.  Rajeev led us away from the parking lot at about 6:10 to walk to the official Start and give final instructions, particularly about the course and format.  He was charming as could be and made a few introductions of noteworthy participants -- folks that had run a long time ago or a connection to the race.  At 6:30, off we went.

Jill and I started off with a couple of Quicksilver runners, including Jim, Lisa, and Chihping.  Jim has run over a hundred ultras and ended up doing 100K.  Lisa is super cool and was chatting it up with Jill. Chihping has a skill that I want.  He can run and take pictures at the same time.  My goal was to finish under ten hours, since a single-digit finishing time obviously looks so much cooler on the Internet and would be sure to impress Elisa.  Elisa was already impressed that I got up and started the race, even though she does these things herself.  She appreciates the effort required to do these things, and considers the total effort if one spends time training hard.  So she did not need the ten hours.  Nonetheless, lately I must admit using impressing her as motivation on the course -- not necessarily to finish but to be fast.  This is not called hella foot vanity for nothing.  Anyway, I wanted to finish under ten hours, and that meant keeping my pace between nine and ten minute miles.  That was based on rounding 100K to sixty miles at ten minutes each for ten hours.  For survival's sake, it had to be over nine minutes.  (I actually did the math just now.  100K in ten hours is 9:36 pace, so I needed to be a lot more aggressive than I thought.  As we will soon see, it did not matter much, but it is funny to me that I was not more careful about calculating my pace.  Rounding 100K to sixty miles was off by :24 per mile for ten hours.  That is a lot and could have really made it tough to catch up, especially since I had not figured this out yet at what should have been the halfway point.  Hopefully another lesson learned, but I should keep the story going.)

As far as pace and effort, I was cruising for almost a marathon.  The loop format can be mind-numbing, and the urban scenery was not all that great -- even with the golf course, lake, and my alma mater (SFSU MA 2008).  Pavement sucks to run on, but there was a dirt shoulder most of the time that I usually stayed on.  There were a lot of distractions.  Other runners and bikes and strollers.  Cars on the road adjacent to the path.  Boats and rowing teams on the lake.  And the friggin gun range.  A lot of distractions, which is usually no worse than a not-bad thing when running an ultra.  If you are thinking about choking the guy who keeps getting in your way with his stroller or the nerve-rattling shotgun fire, you are not thinking about how bored you are or how bad your quads hurt.  This is a good thing, as long as you remember to fuel and hydrate.

Perhaps the most critical difference between a lap/loop course and an actual course in a park is the car.  On a course, somewhere after the halfway point, I realize that I am running to my car.  All I have to do is get back to the car.  I say it to people I pass along the way.  All we have to do is get back to the car.  Then I can be done and mess with my cell phone.  It is the best motivator.  This works against me and everybody else (in a similar manner, perhaps not the car and iPhone, but something like it) in a loop format event.  You pass the car way, way too often.  And everytime, you pass its temptations, like quitting.  I decided to wait until I had a marathon split to post before stopping at my chair (where Jill and I had stored our comfort bags near the Finish) to update Facebook with a live race status.  Another stupid motivator, but seriously whatever works for you do it.  So that was mine right then.

With about a half lap left to go for that marathon split closest to the chair, my knee started acting up.  It was not a nagging pain slowly getting worse, but a sharp pain to my outer left knee that was happening more and more frequently.  And unlike a nagging pain, it seemed like it could snap, crackle, or pop at some point if I continued to bound off of it.  I hoped it was an anomaly at first, then tried to walk it off, and pretty quickly realized that my race was over.  I was lucky that I was close to, but before, the 50K cutoff.  Had this happened a couple of laps later, I would have been committed to 50M.  I could have finished, but that would have been a lot of walking -- for a long time.  Maybe the 50M result would have been better for the Quicksilver team.  But I walked the last lap to 50K having my meltdown (like when I blew up trying to qualify for Boston at Surf City in February) and tapped out.  100K fail.  Just like Surf City's BQ failure, I was beating the heck out of myself emotionally.  I was hella bummed and disappointed and pissed.  I took my phone with me on that last lap -- the lap from the marathon split to the 50K finish -- and expressed my disappointment on Facebook via race status update (limping badly and about to quit).  Feedback there and texts direct from Hector and Marne, and Kate's responses to my texts to her, helped me rally.

By the time I was in my chair pouting in the Sun after my 50K tap, Joe reminded me via Facebook that I had a teammate and bff still on the course trying to finish her fist fifty-miler.  That threw me into crew mode and salvaged the rest of my day.  By the time I saw Jill, she was down to her final three or four laps.  The leaderboard for 50M was pretty bare.  She definitely had a shot to place overall and win the women's race.  I got her some Advil, did not mention the leaderboard, and cheered her along her final few passes through the Finish.  I kept peeps posted on Facebook, and she friggin won the darn thing and was fifth overall.

I had a few hours to wait for Jill, plus Jill and I waited around a while to root others (especially Quicksilver folks) to their goals.  The ultra crowd is one of the coolest.  I call them badass sweethearts, and that is exactly who they are.  Always nice, but tough as nails.  You cannot surround yourself with better people.  Sure, there are jerks in every crowd, but they are almost impossible to find in this one.  At the end of the day, Jean was second in the 100K, Jill won the 50M, and Amy won the 50K.  Go QSURT!  My 100K DNF hurt the team, but hopefully my crappy, injured 50K time will somehow help.  I got to chat with Chikara Omine -- one of my many ultra heroes who was out to root for his friends, particularly his New Balance Excelsior teammates.  He is running the Quicksilver 50M, so I will see him again soon.  (I love that in this sport we can regularly compete along side the elites and pros.)  I spent a lot of time with Kat (also from Quicksilver) and a guy I met on the course, Gavin.  Me and Tony (Endorphin Dude) had a nice chat.  He PRd his 50K by like two hours.  I think he finished in around six and a half and is currently on his way to run the Great Wall Marathon.  I spent a little with Jean, Marco (QS), and Rajeev.  I got razzed for quitting by Jim (who had big bloody wounds on his elbow from a fall and had run Lake Sonoma the weekend before), and a lot of encouragement from others.  It was a bright sunny day.  It was cold, but not too cold and not too windy.  It was pretty fantastic.  The whole day was, in spite of the result of my race.

I realized that this sport is hard.  If you never experience personal failure in ultrarunning, you are taking it far too easy on yourself.  And if you are taking it that easy on yourself, you are not doing ultras properly -- pushing yourself to and past your limits.  I realized that a lot of the people out there had experienced it maybe dozens of times, and that I was being a big baby.  I threw my handheld at a fence on that last lap.  Cute.  Endurance sports mean enduring these failures too and responding like a badass sweetheart.  Maybe rest more.  Maybe train differently.  Quit pouting for sure.  Quicksilver 50M is coming up on my birthday (5/11).  It is going to be hard -- much more difficult than American River 50M.  I cannot friggin wait.  Bring on the dirt!

Check it out! I am a pretty average ultrarunner.

One of the things I get asked a lot* is how I got into running.

I have always had to make an effort to not be fat.  If I did not watch what I ate and workout, I would be overweight.  For most of my years since from high school on, I did that.  My hella foot vanity requires me to note that I was much more often fit than not in those years, but probably usually a little overweight.  That is totally normal and probably better than average in this country.  There were times though when I did not pay close attention to diet and exercise and got fat.  The most recent of those times ended in the Summer of 2011 at 234 pounds.  I saw my not-biological mother in Gulf Shores, Alabama in July of that year, and she came up with what became the SEC Weightloss Challenge.  We both needed to lose some weight, so she challenged us to each lose 20 (or 30?  No.  Maybe.) pounds in time for my visit to Tuscaloosa in November (for the Game of the Century between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the LSU Tigers).

I did.  I started walking around the Alviso wetlands, trying to time it such as to have to rush back to the car before they close the gate after sunset (but have enough time to stop and take pictures).  I set a goal of being able to walk the entire nine mile loop (Alviso Slough Trail from Alviso Marina County Park).  I would walk out to the first mile marker, then the second, then the third and always have to get back to my car.  About the time I reached mile marker three (I do not think I waited until four.), I decided I might as well go for it.  I made it all the way around the loop -- a nine mile walk.

People always assume I lost weight running.  That is false.  I lost a whole lot of weight walking -- maybe most of it.  But then I lost some more by running and doing the things like yoga and rowing to make me a better runner.  I also cut back and then out fast food.  I stopped drinking soda a long time ago.  You should stop too.  There is more about both of those things and other things food on Facebook.  For the record, I currently can generally be found somewhere between 158 and 163 pounds, depending on where I am with racing and training (taper/recover, ramping up/down) and obviously the food and workout choices I am making.

About the time I got up to the full loop in Alviso, I started going back to the gym -- maybe a bit sooner.  I had not been going consistently, since Cisco moved the gym from SJ6 to SJQ (and I was working part-time and as a grad student at SJSU).  I was soon doing an hour or so of cardio, followed by twenty or thirty minutes of weights with stretching between sets.  I did not goof around in the gym and packed in the sets and stretching.  I was pretty darn consistent, going four or five days per week.

At this point in the story, Kate was training for a half marathon.  Maybe not her first, but she was training hard and smart.  She was into it.  Andrea was training for the 408K.  I was inspired.  I used to preach and rant against running, especially racing.  I had heard that it was bad for you and wanted to believe it.  But Kate and Andrea got me thinking that I should at least be able to run these types of races and SJRNR, or at least your run-of-the-mill 10K, for social reasons and since I would soon be fit.

So you can say Kate and Andrea got me running.  I am not sure when this was, but I think it was sometime around my trip to Tuscaloosa (November 2011).  Now I want to say it was probably later than this, but it was right around this time.  It is important to note that I could walk nine miles comfortably (without getting too sore) before I ran my first mile.  My good fortune with injuries to date, in spite of my what is by all accounts rapid ascent in mileage and speed, was unintentionally built on the foundation of walk before you run.  My runner muscles were greatly helped by hours and hours and hundreds of miles around the Alviso wetlands at regular speed.  My joints and their support systems were given a head start on preparing for my upcoming assault on them.  I give this and the fact that I had also already lost a lot of the weight walking all of the credit for my relatively non-existent injury history.  Walk before you run.  I also began walking and running in minimal footwear.  That may or may not have helped.  I think it did and run minimal now.  I have put well over half of my near 2,000 miles on New Balance MT kicks.  I have fewer than 400 miles in more traditional running shoes.  I might do a post about shoes, but enough about that for now.

So, I am going to run.  I run a mile on the treadmill after one of my SJQ workouts.  It sucked, and I was ridiculously sore the next day.  Remember, I am already working out most days of the week and doing an hour or so of cardio each of those days.  And I just went on and on about the walking.  But I was so sore after that one mile on the treadmill, that I could barely walk the next day.  It was nuts.  I kept at it though, slowly adding the miles.  I remember being able to run four miles consistently.  I remember the out-and-back out the garage, onto the canal at Snell, to almost Coleman (and back home) of over seven and a half miles.  Of course, I remember running around the Alviso loop for the first time.  I was about to turn forty and considered running a marathon that year.

By now, it is Spring 2012.  I would not be ready to run a marathon in time for my May birthday, but I started eyeing Fall races.  I was hearing that I should do something else, because, as I know, running sucks and is bad for you.  Then, perhaps the most serendipitous moment of this story.  On a flight to Alabama to celebrate Clint's marriage to Rachel, I sat next to Todd and April.  Todd had done a few to several Ironmans, and April had run Boston a handful of times.  I want to say seven times.  They told me that the science behind running being bad for you was unjustly enhanced by it sucking.  Basically, that you hear about running being bad for you, because people want to justify not doing it (because it sucks).  They told me that running can be done well.  It could be done right and not necessarily mean injuries -- at least not ones that could not be managed.  There was just as much if not more science that running was good if done properly.  I should point out that I totally shattered Todd's rules about mileage and recovery.  You should not try to do what I have done.  If you pay attention to the miles and dates throughout this post, it is not normal.  I am not bragging or even being dramatic.  Todd suggested no more than four marathons per year.  I just finished my eleventh since September 2012.  This flight was Cinco de Mayo weekend 2012.  I was in 10K shape.  So if you try to do what I did and get injured, you cannot blame Todd.  But Todd and April said go ahead and run that marathon.  You can find a place past the suck where it kind of rules.  And they made being an endurance athlete, even an amateur one, seem really, really cool.  Todd gave me a lot of advice and references for nutrition.  We promised to keep in touch, and we have.  April credits me with turning her to trail running and ultras.  Typing that gives me goosebumps.  How I was able to return that favor so quickly is a powerful thing to me.  But, thanks to them, now I had some expert advice, and a credible blessing to carry on with marathon training.

So I get back from Tuscaloosa and register for the Half Moon Bay International Marathon (HMBIM) coming up that September.  I had bought my first pair of running shoes a couple of weeks prior.  I then got a pair from professionals at Running Revolution in Campbell.  I started training with Jeremy.  His sister, Amy, had recently run Boston.  This was key, because Jeremy is hella fast and runs along the Los Gatos Creek Trail and in the hills of Saratoga.  Running with Jeremy in general because he is fast, and in particular because he runs hills, helped make me the runner I am today.  Training for my first marathon is when I got hooked on running.  I met Franz, the training director for HMBIM and a grandslam ultrarunner, and was reading the Dean Karnazes books.  (I was actually reading one on the Todd and April flight.  I also eventually read Born to Run and Eat and Run.)  I got into it.  Hella into it.  I heard about Western States (the 100 mile endurance run that used to be a horserace).  I decided I want to do it one day.  It is Summer 2012.  I decided not only was I going to do a marathon.  I was going to be an ultrarunner.

Through Tony, a chum from Santa Teresa High School (and a darn good athlete to this day) with whom I had connected on Facebook and connected on many levels like outdoors and fitness, I met Ellisa (also, Facebook).  Ellisa was training for her first ultra, although I am not sure she knew which one yet.  She was running the 20M distance at Run on the Sly, a relatively popular 50K in August in that Pacific Coast Mecca area that is centered in Auburn, as a supported training run.  Ellisa and her husband live in Elk Grove, a suburb of Sacramento.  Ellisa heard about my new interest in ultrarunning and fueled it in a way I now know few can.  She is an evangelist for the sport for sure.  She does not approach it as a sport.  She just loves running (walking the steep uphills usually maybe) outside in dirt and enjoying the views --  from the rocks and debris on the trails to the wildflowers and birds above them.  But she gets it.  She still preaches the virtues of high speed nature sightseeing, especially as opposed to running in lower quality air staring at and dodging cars.  Most importantly, she convinced me that I should run Sly with her and her friends.

I signed up.  I stepped up my training.  I ran repeats of Mission Peak and met Sopheak of Silicon Valley Triathlon Club.  I followed Kate again and started doing yoga religiously.  I did the 20M distance at Run on the Sly, starting out and mostly sticking with Ellisa and her friend Anandi.  4:29.  I had my first ultra experience, with the bananas and Clif Bars and badass sweethearts in the parking lot before sunrise.  I finished strong, mostly because I stuck with the runner babes until the last six or so miles.  I was convinced I could do this ultra thing sooner rather than later.  Rather than pacing Ellisa at the next American River 50 Mile, I was going to run it myself.  I ran my first ultra, a 50K in Folsom on September 15, with Ellisa and Nick and some of my new friends from Sly.  6:14.  The following weekend, I ran the race that started it all: HMBIM.  4:19.

The day before yesterday, on April 20, 2013, I ran my eighth ultramarathon at Ruth Anderson 50K/50M/100K.  5:34.  It was my eleventh marathon.  Earlier this Spring, I ran Way Too Cool 50K and American River 50 Mile.  4:54 and 9:03.  Those are famous California ultramarathons that I read about only a year ago.  And that, sorta, kinda, more or less, is how I became a pretty average ultrarunner.  With thanks to Kate, Andrea, Todd, April, Jeremy, Franz, Ellisa, Sopheak, and so many others, like the trainers and staff at Cisco SJQ.

*But not as much as food, but I addressed that on Facebook before this blog happened.  For now, I am sticking to only original material here.  So I cannot copy and paste it on principle.  For now, you will have to go to Facebook for more thoughts on food.  I cannot imagine there being enough of you not friends with me there seeing this that could ever constitute an outcry for my thoughts on food here, nor the time and lack of new material to provide them again.