Tamalpa Headlands 50K 2014: slower but barely fast enough?

It was only my 4th participation to this event so I can't say I have the same love story that I have with Ohlone and Skyline. Actually, it started on a bumpy road in 2007 when the event was serving as the USATF National 50K Trail Championships. Back then, I was still thinking that a 50K was merely a marathon with 8 more kilometers, how hard could it be. I had pleasure re-reading my 2007 race report and remembering my excitement about participating for the first time in a national event, only to find out that very few runners flew in from other states so we were competing among the usual suspects. It was my first encounter with Cliff Lentz who dominated our Masters division. Taking third after Steve Stowers who made the 100K Team USA the next year wasn't small feat. Yet, I wasn't so proud of my time of 4:23, it will take a few years before I appreciate that the course is actually quite challenging.

2008 was a strange edition. Only 77 entrants, championships cancelled at the last minute and most of us having slower times. Given the small field, my 4:40 was good enough for 3rd overall and 2nd Masters behind... Cliff of course!

Fast forward 5 years, my third participation was in 2013, on a new course, now starting from Muir Woods instead of Rodeo Beach. And a great experience with a Personal Best and Masters win for my last year in the M40-49 age group. And 4th overall behind Alex Varner who crushed the course record, Jon Olsen before he went to win the World 24-hour and Bob Shebest who had just won Tahoe Rim Trail 100. Good times.

This year, I was mostly looking a last good battle with Mark Richtman before he turns 60. Mark pushed my limits at Miwok where we finished a couple of minutes apart after racing for 100 kilometers on a hilly course. Mark has been on the Team USA for 100K a couple of decades ago and he can't wait to turn 60 to dominate this new age group. Unfortunately, he was just back from 5 weeks of hard work throughout Europe (Switzerland, France, Italy, Croatia) with another super athletic friend, on elliptical bikes. When he came back in the area last week he went for a run to find out that the lack of running had taken a toll on his quads so, despite being in an incredible shape, he decided to pull out and save his quads from a potential injury, rather than putting his hope to set a new Age Group course record at Western States next year. Ultra wisdom.

Another motivation would have been our Grand Prix team competition but, with the strong Tamalpa participation (18), another Excelsior show and Jeremy who didn't want to push as he is a few weeks from a 100-mile in Idaho, it was determined we didn't have a chance this Saturday.

Since I have many more points than I need to win my Age Group Grand Prix for the 8th straight year, the only remaining motivation was to have another good training run and take a shot at the AG Course Record. Which, according to Gary Wang's RealEndurance.com was 4:29:43 . How hard could that be after running 4:19 last year, right...?

Actually, that was from local Mark Ritchman of course, back in 2005 when he had just turned 50. And I believe this was on the previous course. Since then, Mark ran a 4:32:58 in 2011 which I assume was on the revised course. In any case, I didn't want to take any chance so 4:29:43 was what I set my mind as the time to beat this year.

On Friday, Eric Shrantz posted on his UltraRunnerPodcast.com that he was expecting a showdown between Lon Freeman and I. Although not racing a lot, Lon was dominating our local circuit when I starting running ultras, winning for instance the famous Miwok 100K in 2008, and also Quicksilver 50M or Ohlone 50K this year. While I was looking for running with Lon again, I thought Eric had really overlooked 6 youngsters and speedsters in the entrants list. Not to mention Mark, Karl Schnaitter again (see our Skyline 50K finish of 3 weeks ago) and Quicksilver teammate, Stephen Wassather. With so many runners much younger, some less than half my age, I was rather thinking that it would be a performance to already get in the top 10. By the way, that was not counting Yiou Wang from the Asics Aggies, who Gary Gellin was even giving for not only F1 but also M1 (overall winner).

With that, Race Director Tim Fitzpatrick let us go at 7:30 am, for a heck of a fast start. It was foggy with temperatures in the 60s, perfect conditions for running hard. I settled in 14th on the first single trail, close to Cliff, Karl, Stephen, Lon and Yiou and we climbed the steep Coastal Trail out of Muir Beach together, already loosing sight of the top 6 runners. Stephen and Karl led our way down to Pirate Cove, me happy to follow Yiou in the tricky trail going down the cove. Yiou's strength is the uphills and I would have passer her on a fire road, but, since I broke my shoulder, I'm much slower and more prudent on any technical downhill.

Lon and Cliff were slightly behind and I decided to keep pushing and keep up with the younger folks and ran all the steep uphill out of the cove (you need to know the trail to really appreciate... ;-). On the way down to Tennessee Valley, I hammered down to catch-up with Stephen and Karl, flying by Yiou who was struggling going faster yet returned my encouragement. One guy looking like Anton Krupcika joined us at the end of the fire road, climbed up to Wolf Ridge with us but left us in the dust in the technical trail going through the bunkers, before going down to Rodeo Beach.

Stephen and I climbed Miwok Trail together, with Karl quietly staying a hundred yards behind. At his point (mile 8.5) I couldn't see much of Lon or Cliff, not even Yiou which surprised me. I didn't stop at the Tennessee Valley aid station wither and kept pushing the pace on Miwok with Stephen shortly behind, then Karl.

Karl caught me first at the end of the Miwok Trail, around mile 17, about the same distance where he passed me at Skyline earlier this month. We could keep sight of him all the way up to Pantoll on the legendary Dipsea trail, up to the infamous Cardiac aid station (not the aid station, but the Cardiac hill! ;-). This time, I had to make a stop at the aid station to refill my GU2O bottle, it will be the only stop I'll make for the whole race, thanks to taking Vespa and carrying the 3 GUs I took that Saturday. I was slightly tired after the climb and pushing to not lose Karl and took an extra S!Caps as I could sense some cramping coming. I decided to ease-up on the way down to Stinson Beach, and could see Karl less than 2 minutes ahead at the top of Matt Davis Trail but lost sight of him in the switchbacks, especially as I was really careful hoping over all the roots and steps in this section. I used to love this technical section but, now, it feels much longer and painful. Here is a picture at the Matt Davis trail junction, photo credit Pam Wendell (she graciously posted 285 pictures in a FaceBook album):

Stephen caught me at the end of the trail and we reached the aid station together, him doing a quick stop, me just flying back (sorry Andy Ward for not acknowledging much your encouragements and Kevin Rumon for taking you by surprise as you were away from the table! ;-).

I had my first steps of walking at the bottom of the Dipsea Trail, mostly to catch my breath while taking my 2nd Gu and one more S!Caps but I told Stephen we had to keep moving, albeit shuffling the stairs up. We couldn't see Karl anymore in the distance that meant we had lost at least 2 minutes on him. On the other end, I couldn't see anyone behind either which was good because I didn't feel like pushing much anyway. I even lost sight of Stephen in Steep Ravine in which I walked way too much to my taste. I took a third Gu to give me an extra boost for the final mile up to Pantoll and that helped me getting moving again as soon as I reached Old Mine Trail.

I reached the Cardiac aid station after 4 hours and 2 minutes of running. I first asked Alex about his course record and he replied it was safe. Then I asked a volunteer how many miles to the finish, she said 3.8 miles. I had 27 miles on my Garmin, that meant basically 4 miles under 7 min/mile, time to move. I was happy to see my GPS average pace going in the mid 6 min/mile range and kept pushing as much as I could. Many of theses miles are very runnable, so that helped. But then I reached the final 25 or so switchbacks of Heather Cutoff Trail and I was getting really concerned to see the time flying and the pace now back over 7 min/mile with all the needed stops at every switchback turn. And, after a final sprint in the flat meadow, really relieved to cut the finish line in... 4:27:36, good for an new age group course record indeed, and just good enough for top 10, phew!

Now, back to the title: while this time was good enough to meet my main goals, let's talk about the team competition. With most of their members helping out with the event and two of their 3 lead listed runners, Mark Richtman and James Nielsen, not running, Tamalpa didn't do so well yesterday. Excelsior took advantage of the situation for winning the team competition again with Karl, Cliff (4:45) and Jason Reed (4:54). Jeremy surprised me by finishing in 5:15, way ahead of his goal. What I didn't realize before playing with all the data in Excel is that we ended losing to Excelsior by a mere 3 minutes and 20 second difference. I would have known, I would have pushed more in Steep Ravine, just for the sake of being done with the season. Anyway, like some people say, it is what it is... Kudos to Stephen for a very strong 4:23 for his first run on this course!

One big surprise upon finishing was to see Yiou who was there, eating a piece of pizza. I couldn't believe she had passed me so that meant she had dropped. Indeed, shortly after passed her on the way down to Tennessee Valley, she slipped in the downhill and torn a muscle in her quad. She has so much potential on the marathon, it was a bummer but certainly a good decision to not push further.

The race was won by Ivan Medina, 28, in 3:47:35 for his first 50K. Gallen Burrel was second in 3:52 and Sam Robinson took third in 4:04. Here are Sam and Ivan (#3):

Sam chatting with Gary and Holly:

A few men in blue after the effort:

Jim was all fired up telling about the top 3 M60-69 finishing within a minute! (Well, that's before Mark Richtman joins their age group in a few months...)

A huge thank you first for Tim and Diana Fitzpatrick for directing this top class even now in its 28th edition (ultra volunteer Stan Jensen was proudly wearing a "1996 Point Reyes 50K" t-shirt, letting Jeremy and I know that the Headlands 50K had been created to replace that event, due to a permit loss). Second, the hosting Tamalpa Running Club with many members manning the aid stations and keeping us safe at road intersections: thank you to you all, volunteers! Special thanks to Tamalpa member Jed Tukman for bringing to the finish line his delicious thin crust pizzas, straight from the oven:

Between the great finisher goodies (Brooks t-shirt, impressive medal, Barking Frogs buff, EO and Flora Udo's Oil samples, cool tote bag) plus great prizes for age group winners (North Face hood, Bungalo Munch muesli and bowl, Victory Design Coyote 1 organizer) it felt like Christmas in August!

Thank you to all these sponsors who support our ultra sport and community!

Sorry for not having more pictures from the course itself, short of having a crew today or carrying my camera, but you can find many in the previous posts highlighted at the beginning of this post.

My legs were sore this morning but I don't regret having gone for a 10K recovery run at 7:30 min/mile pace, this will allow me to resume training quickly this week. My next goal is a flat 24-hour event in a month, so I'm going to stay away from hills for a few weeks.

PS: for those interested, here is a sneak preview of the results before they are posted on UltraSignup (click on the picture to zoom).

Ahh, back on track, the good track discipline!

A short post, written from a plane for a change, 31,000 feet above the Great Lakes, in the friendly skies... Well, almost friendly, as I'm stuck in a middle seat, again...

While the Europeans battle on the track in their European Championships in Zurich, with the Russians dominating, it was also quite a track week for me. After the 70-laps-in-2-hours of last Sunday, I finally managed to hit the track with Bob and Mike on Thursday morning for our "usual" track work out of 5:45 am which I had missed for at least 4 months with my busy travel and ultra racing schedules. It was really refreshing to meet Bob again a few months after our running focuses and priorities totally diverged earlier this year. Bob is on a mission to break 5 minutes on the mile and 2:15 on 800 meters. In the meantime, I need to regain speed to even break 6 minutes on the mile, ouch! On the other end, Mike, a triathlete, is preparing for Pine to Palm 100 in September, so he wasn't going to push too much.

I was amazed at how much speed Bob gained these past months despite his own busy work and travel schedules and a few running issues. I was pressed by time with a conf call at 6:30 am so, after 3 miles to warm-up, we only did 6 400m repeats. I would never have pushed as much if it wasn't for trying hard to stay in Bob's aerodynamic drafting. We usually alternate the lead at each repeat but, this time, I was just happy for Bob to set the pace. Without pushing, Bob was consistently clocking laps between 73 and 75 seconds, while I was finishing a few seconds behind, barely breaking 75 seconds for my 6th and final lap. Not only the breathing was tough, but I could feel in my legs a few muscles that I had not felt for months. It really takes another type of running and stride to go faster on a track! I feel like having to learn all about running again, this is weird. But I'm really happy to have Bob as a partner to work on my speed again. By the way, we exceptionally met at Fremont High School as there has been some ground work at the Mountain View High School all Summer. Should be over by now, with back to school happening tomorrow!

2 days later, this Saturday, I went back to the track again, at Cupertino High School.

It was hot when I started my work out at noon, about 90F. I didn't have a clear plan in mind so, after the first 2 laps at 1'38", I decided I'll try to run as many laps as I could under 1:40. By lap 40, I was still on target but I started feeling a blister forming under my left foot, dang! I very rarely get blisters, I can probably count them on my fingers for the 36,400 miles I have in my log, but that was the day. I was feeling too good otherwise for stopping and kept on pushing despite the increasing burning sensation. It was actually bearable until I stopped running but the blister was so large that walking was really painful afterwards, so I walked the mile back home limping, so much that a lady walking her dog asked if I was ok and proposed to drive me home, sweet (although I passed on the offer). Ouch, a large double bloody one...!

I managed to complete 72 laps this time in 1:59:20, all in line 2, that is slightly more than 18 miles. A great workout, once more, the fartherst I ever gone on a track, but still quite far from the 16 miles at 6 min/mile pace I used to hold for 16 miles until January. Still, this is encouraging progress in the right direction and I'm looking forward to more of this track discipline over the coming weeks to prepare for the Fall races.

Only 71 flat miles this week, but quite a few good quality and fast ones. Happy to taper again for a few days before another challenging 50K race this coming Saturday, the Tamalpa Headlands. An event with a few speedsters from the East Bay and the expected domination of the hosting club, Tamalpa, and Excelsior also sending a fast contingent again. This tapering will also give my feet a break and time to recover from the blister. See some of you next Saturday on the hilly trails again, and have a great week, all!

Local running ramblings and rumbling

No, regarding the ramblings in the title of this post, I didn't go "abo" (as in Aboriginals) this week... And if you are intrigued by the expression, you'll have to get a copy of the August 2014 issue of UltraRunning Magazine and check on page 74. An interesting tip from Dean Karnazes, which I need to try one of these days.

No, by ramblings, I mean a few random running and training-related topics for this week, following my great run at Skyline 50K last Sunday. And some ire against a serious issue regarding our local park management.

Thanks to Vespa and no cramping at Skyline, I was back to training on Monday and Tuesday, keeping regaining some of the speed I lost back in February with my tibialis issue, followed by all the hilly miles of the Spring races. Quite a great season so far, I already passed the 500-point threshold in the PAUSATF MUT Grand Prix, the highest score I ever got despite winning my age group the past 7 years. It certainly helps getting the youngest of your age group! ;-) But the season is not over, I (and we...) need to keep working...

I took Wednesday off to focus on a work project but ran 11.5 miles at Alviso on Thursday and 15 kilometers on Friday. With all my travels in June and July, it had been 3 months since I ran at Alviso, it felt great to see my fellow visiting pelicans again! After all these flat miles, I ran to the top of Black Mountain on Saturday, twice actually as I also ran the Bella Vista loop, going 900 feet down Black Mountain on the other side. A solid 28-mile hilly run at 8:24 min/mile. I even met Agnès at the top of the mountain who was hiking with my nephew Cosme and our friends Caro and Hervé, the three of them visiting from France (photo credits: Hervé).

On the way down to Cupertino, I enjoyed running the Waterwheel loop and stopping by the small creek to get a fresh shower. A much welcomed stop as it was quite hot this Saturday and a large group of cyclists camping at the Black Mountain campground had drained all the water up there, I couldn't even fill my bottle. More about Waterwheel in a few paragraphs.

This Sunday, I went to the Cupertino High School track for some tempo run. I used to do up to 16 miles at 6 min/miles these past years but, not having done track workouts since January, I did lose quite of this speed (mind some of my fellow runners, I have hard time running a long series of 1:30 laps right now, I'm slower...). The longest I had done was 68 laps in 2012 and 60 laps the week before Skyline. This time I went farther, albeit not faster, for 70 laps in lane 2 so slightly more than 17.5 miles at 6:45 min/mile average. Quite a good tempo work out, getting in the right direction, it feels good to be back to the track discipline.

Overall, a good 86-mile training week right after and not counting the 31 miles of Skyline, no time to rest much with the next 50K in 2 weeks (Tamalpa Headlands) and more races in September, October and November.

And now on for the rumbling... I was just informed by a friend on Facebook of a project that the Board of Directors of our Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District (MROSD), the organism managing several of our local parks, is negotiating with the Ridge winery a swap of land to allow them to extend their vineyards on quite a few acres of the Montebello Open Space Preserve. I did find more about this project in a meeting notice from 2012 so it seems we are late to the discussion. Although it sounds like a 1:1 swap from acreage standpoint, and that public access to Waterwheel Creek Trail will not be affected except seasonally during the harvesting for instance, I fear about the fragile creek which is already endangered by the drought. I look forward to hear more about that from the Board and will let you know if we need more support to fight against this project. One thing is for sure is that I strongly disagree with this statement of the project: "The properties proposed for exchange have been appraised and are of equal value; therefore no funds
will change hands between the parties." Knowing that Ridge Vineyards are owned by the large Japanese pharmaceutical firm Otsuka Holdings Co., and that the land they have en eye on will be transformed into vineyards as opposed to the acres they have today which have no agricultural potential, I find these statement quite offensive for the tax payers that we are... The least they could admit is that this swap will create a lot of wealth and share some of it so we can use the money toward more land preservation! And here is my frustration and disapproval...

Enough negative thoughts for tonight, hope to learn more in the next few days about this, and let's run happy in the meantime. Have a great week!

Skyline 50K 2014: all chicked rise!

I'm on jury duty this week so I thought I'd use some court verbiage in my blog for a change, I'll explain the title later in this post.

As you could read from my previous post, I was in Columbus, OH last week. I was supposed to fly out from Port Columbus, the local international airport, at 8 pm but was able to get to the airport earlier and got on a stand by flight at 1:30 pm, which could have gotten me to SFO around 6 pm instead of midnight. I always try to get at least one good night of sleep 2 days before an ultra so that would have been nice. Unfortunately, some bad weather over Chicago got in the way and started derailing our plans, the Friday afternoon consulting commuters. It takes 47 minutes to fly the direct route between CMH and ORD but it took us twice that much to go around the weather, flying over St Louis instead (see the green line below).

By some miracle, and some loyalty to United Airlines, I managed to get on the 7 pm flight out of ORD and, from the 6.5 hours I had before my flight in Columbus, I ended up in SFO 1.5 hours earlier than the original schedule, all the rest was wasted in waits from stand by flights to stand by flights. Anyway, I got 8 hours of sleep, much more than the previous nights, at least...

I was excited to run Skyline 50K again this year. It was going to be my 8th consecutive run out of 33 editions of this event, one of the oldest 50K races in the US if not the oldest (see Sarah's great post about the long history and unique character of Skyline 50K). All the previous years I've been running against the clock on this hilly but quite runnable course. 3:48 in 2007, 4:17 in 2008 when I injured my quads in the Alps a week before then came up with the stupid idea of strangling it for 20 miles, then 3:54 in 2009, 3:43 (2010, my PR so far), 3:46 (2011), 4:07 (2012, taking it easy as I was still recovering from my broken shoulder) and 3:57 last year. Adding all these times, I am at 27h34 for 7 runs and I started thinking of a new goal of averaging less than 4 hours for as many years as possible, like the 1,000 miles in 10 days buckle at Western States (10 finishes under 24 hours). That's the beauty in ultra, you can always set your own challenges and goals, ultra running has no limit, by definition and design...! ;-)

This race has seen quite a few impressive young and promising runners so the age group course records are hard to set, but it's getting easier in the older groups. In our M50-59 group, Kevin Rumon from Tamalpa had set it to 4:13:24 in 2012, and I thought that one was at reach although I don't really need the extra points to win this year's Grand Prix again (a big shout out to Gary Wang for keeping all the race stats online on his RealEndurace.com website!, note to forget our Grand Prix standings for the past decades). But the real goal for today was to win the team competition and get the only point which is missing us to tie with Excelsior in the men competition.

Race Director, Adam Ray, allowed for quite a few runners to get an earlier start at 6 am. With the thick fog, it was still quite dark but thankfully, the first 2 miles are on a paved road.

The official start was at 7 am and off we were, with the bright yellow tops of the Excelsior team taking the first spots. I settled in 10th and heard John and Jeremy talking about a gal who ran a 2:38 marathon. Sure enough, she was just in front of me, I was already chicked, right off the bat, yikes! But I decided not to panic (!), that we had still 30 miles to go and things may change. Stephen, from our team was in 3rd, behind the lead guy with a white top and another Excelsior in yellow. I was running with another Excelsior, Karl Schnaitter. Karl is 18 years younger and getting stronger race after race, I was anxious to see how he and his teammates were going to fare on this course. And I was hoping John and Jeremy were just behind, covering our third base...

At mile 6, after going through the Grass Valley aid station, we were flying down Jackson Grade and I managed to unchick myself, phew. Well, just for a minute as Yiou passed Karl and I again on the next uphill on Stone Ridge. We didn't stop at Bort Meadow aid station and I could see Stephen and Yiou but not the lead guy anymore. I passed Karl, then another Excelsior, Tim Comay, and managed to keep Yiou and Stephen in sight up to the turnaround at Skyline Gate, at mile 14.4. I was now in 4th.

Karl was close behind for the next 3 miles and passed me by mile 19 before we returned to Big Bear. I felt like pushing the pace to be able to keep up with him which I was able to do for the next 8.5 miles, through the Bort Meadow and Honker Bay aid stations. It wasn't my pace, I would have gone slightly slower if it wasn't for the team competition, thinking that Stephen was still upfront neutralizing the lead runner. Approaching Honker Bay aid station, photo credit Erica Teicheira:

Unfortunately, I saw Stephen a few hundreds yards ahead of us as we exited Honker Bay and, now on the rolling trail along Lake Chabot, Karl was pushing the pace even harder. Karl passed Stephen as we had about 2 miles to go and I asked Stephen to stick with me, telling him that I didn't know what was going on behind us but that I thought every seconds were going to count. I kept pushing to get as close as possible to Karl and, eventually, we closed on Yiou. That gave me a kick and I decided to "attack" with one mile to go, passing both Karl and Yiou at the bottom of a short but steep hill. With that final sprint, I managed to finish second in 3:52, 9 minutes behind first place, Evan Sparling, who, unfortunately for us Quicksilver, was also running for Excelsior. The don't have Chikara Omine putting points this year but, jeez, a 2:26 marathoner, I'm really too old to match that! Here I am with Evan and Karl, for the Men podium:

Yiou, 29, took first overall and, in an outstanding performance, exploded the Female course record by 21 minutes (her time was 3:53:28, while the previous record was previously set by Danielle Widenmann in 2009 at 4:14:38, and she was 26). In a less dramatic performance, I did improve our AG CR by 21 minutes, this should stick for a few years.

Stephen finished a minute behind Karl so we were 10:14 minutes behind at this point with two runners each. There was quite some suspense while we were waiting for the rest of the teams to come in, the 3 best times counting for the points. And, 16 minutes behind Stephen was... Tim Comay from... Excelsior, followed by Jeremy, 8 minutes later. Bottom line: Excelsior: 11:46:33, Quicksilver: 12:04:54, still missing a point, yikes!

Our Club President, Greg Lanctot, had stopped by to witness and enjoy such an exciting and close finish. Thanks to Adam and his crew of volunteers, we had a great social gathering while the rest of the team and the runners were getting back to the barn. For Quicksilver: myself, Stephen, Jeremy, John, Tim, Stuart, Harris, Greg, Amy, Cecilia, David, Jim, Loren, Kat. Great way to rally and represent the club, all!

Overall, I was happy with my fueling strategy today, Vespa plus 3 GUs taken strategically before the key hills. All our run was in the fog or under the cloud, the sun making its appearance around 12:30 pm. I'm now at 31:26 hours for 8 Skyline races, a good margin under the 4-hour average (for what it is worth, that is nothing in particular... ;-). Ultra race #102 and 47th 50K race, getting closer the the 50x50K milestone!

By the way, back to the title, I really thought Yiou was going to chick us all, like Lisa did at the PCTR Summer Solstice in June. Not quite this time but it was close and I have a strong feeling that she will next time she joins us on the trails when not working on her Olympic Marathon trials.

Big thanks to Adam for perpetuating such an amazingly long lasting and friendly tradition in the Bay Area. Special mention to his kids who "had" to attend the post race party... Although I only stopped at one aid station to get some water, huge thanks to all the aid station volunteers for being out there and giving up their Sunday so we could enjoy this race and these great trails. That also includes all the park volunteers and Ham Radio folks who contributed to our safety again this year, many that I recognize year after year. And we had a few photographers on the course too, including the omnipresent volunteer, Noe Castanon (see my TRT race report):

Last but not least, and sorry that the picture didn't work out, big shout out to Steve Patt, the owner and software developer of Stevens Creek Software, for timing us with his handy timing system. The results were updated in real time and you can find them on line.

I look forward to many more of these Skyline runs, a summer treat on our local ultra running circuit. And, like if one treat wasn't enough for August, I'm in Tamalpa Headlands 50K in 3 weeks! Time to build back some speed after the longer races of the second quarter. Great seeing so many familiar faces today, looking forward to seeing many of you again on the trails!