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...
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