One Day in Auburn 2019: only 6 hours, thankfully!

One month without blogging, you bet something went wrong in December, thanks for checking! ;-) I was way too busy to blog or brag about it anyway. Besides, I didn't exactly know what was going on in the first place.

You probably missed it, as I did dismiss that detail in my own race report, but I did slip once during my fast 10K at the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot on November 22nd. I did pay much attention to a pain in my butt the following few days, attributing it to some soreness and lack of proper stretching after the race (a classic mistake for me especially for such a social event). I did run for a few days afterwards and was even contemplating showing up at CIM (the California International Marathon) the following week but bailed out. It was about time that I took my annual 3-week rest and I had logged enough miles to deserve it (i.e. I was already way ahead of my 100K or 62.2 mile/week average).

In addition to the frustration of not running during these 3 weeks, I got stressed out not only by a lot of pre-holiday deadlines at work but also because that pain wasn't fading out, at all, despite being excessively focused on doing absolutely nothing physical during this time. I resumed training for a few days between Christmas and New Year Day, with a few very nice runs with the three boys, in town for a few days, and the pain was exactly the same. Annoying at every stride.

I went to see my massage therapist on January 4 and she identified a spot, super deep in my gluteus. She prescribed a lot of stretching of that muscle, the use of a tennis ball, as well as vibrations. And no running of course, dang!

What an odd way to start the season. I was registered for the first event of our Ultra & Trail Grand Prix which, new this year, was this 6-hour race on the mythical track of Placer High School in Auburn. Why mythical? Because that's where the finish of the Western Sates Endurance Run (100.2 miles) is!

While the even started on Saturday with a 24-hour and 12-hour, our 6-hour was scheduled for 5 to 11 am on Sunday. Given the circumstances, I didn't bother booking a hotel, in case I wasn't even starting. On Saturday afternoon, I went for a 8-mile run at the track to see if I could sustain a 7 min/mile pace. And bear the pain. Thankfully, the pain wasn't increasing with the distance, that was a good... start. It was actually rather constant, still present, but enough that I could somehow forget about it after a few miles of warming up. With that, I decided to at least give it a go. The nice thing with timed events is that you just need to start to be a finisher. Although that wasn't my main goal to log just one lap in 6 hours...

As a matter of fact, this was meant to be my last attempt at the M50-54 records on the track and I had my eye on the 50K which Thomas Reiss improved by a few seconds last year, just below 3:40. Since I had clocked one 50K per week during the 7 weeks heading to my 100K race in China, most of them below that mark, and still ran a Road 50K below 3:30 last year, that would really been doable any day last Fall.

I drove up on Sunday morning, way before dusk. At least, it played well for us that there was some timing issue at the start of the 24-hour the day before, enough for the Race Director to redo the start at 12:22 pm instead of 11 am. With that, we were set to start at 6:22, leaving me the luxury to leave the house at 3:20. Quite an early call but at least, no traffic at all and a super smooth ride on cruise control for 98% of the time!

I arrived at 5:40 which I admit was a bit aggressive. When Paulo was giving his briefing, 3 minutes before the start, I missed it as I was still scrambling getting prepared, oops! But at least, learning from last year's 12-hour, I was... covered! I had 3 top layers, and kept a pair of pants on for the start. Plus a hat. Right in the first lap --as I couldn't feel my hands, not that it was super cold at all, but that's me-- I thought "shoot, I forgot my gloves in the car, it would have been nice to have a crew to get them". I chuckled when I found my gloves in the pocket of the jacket I was wearing during these loops. Note to self: think more...

The pain in the gluteus was definitely present but, again, didn't change with the pace so I stuck to the 50K-record plan which required to run all 125 laps at an average of 1:44. I was at 7:05 at the end of the 4th lap, slightly too slow, but I felt it was ok to warm-up (since I didn't have time warm-up before the race). The second set of 4 laps came at 6:50, then the third at 6:40, slightly too fast now. Backed down to 6:45 for laps 13-16, then 6:52, 6:49, 6:52, 6:51, 6:56, 6;54, much better and closer to the machine you need to be in such races. Broke 7 (7:01) for laps 41-44 (~ mile 11), then 6:57, 7:05, 7:10, 7:09, 7:09, the machine was falling off track already. Lap 72 was the first lap above 2 minutes (2:02) and, my mind took over to acknowledge that, 2 hours in the race, the lack of training was, well, paying off if I may say.

As we also say, from there, it's all downhill but I decided that there was enough competition on the track to keep going as far as I could, short of going fast or faster. As a matter of fact, to allow for the accounting of 6-hour races in our Grand Prix, Nakia and I set a minima for scoring at 42.5K, a good incentive to keep moving beyond the marathon mark. I had 4 hours and already covered almost 18 miles; why not 8.5 miles in 4 hours?

Looking at the results afterwards, I'm actually very pleased that only 7 of my laps were above 3:00. How many other 2:xx-laps did I do? Read on...

When I decided to include this 6-hour event in the calendar, the main feedback I got was the concern about a field limited to 30-35. Well, we were only 16 starters so that quota wasn't too much of a concern after all. I realize that this is super early in the season (but we close the season sooner in 2018, early November, and will close by mid October in 2019). The 5 am start didn't help either for those if us having to drive from the Bay Area.

My age group had 4 entrants. Actually, one of them, Eddie Schmidt, was announced by Paulo as going after the same age group records than me. But, later, Eddie said that was definitely a mistake. It was actually Eddie's first timed event. Around 3 hours, I checked the livecast to see where I stood. It was incomplete but it showed me still in first place and, I think, 11 laps ahead of Eddie (I was on lap 96 and he was on 85). An hour or so later the gap looked like 18, yet I'd admit he kept me on my toes. Meanwhile, Eduardo Vasquez passed Blair Howard in the 5th hour I think (again, it was hard to keep track as the screen on the track was only displaying the split and lap # of every runner passing by, for a couple of seconds, no ranking.

In the last hour (picture above, credit Stephen Strauss), I discovered that I was 3 laps behind Blair and that provided me some extra boost to keep moving despite very uncomfortable leg pain as I had cramped for 3 hours already, yikes! Note that the last gasp of competitiveness spirit and focus didn't prevent me from stopping for precious picture opportunities with a couple of local ultra legends, respectively Tim (Twietmeyer, 25 sub-24hr Western States finishes including 5 wins!) and Crag (Thornley, the latest Western States Race Director). After all, we were using (as in wearing) their track! ;-)

I could have spent more time during my slow laps to take pictures of other participants; I only caught Jim who, at 72, went way above the scoring with minima (42.5K), covering 50K plus one lap (126 laps total)!

Overall, I managed to log 167 laps total (41.5 miles) 2 laps behind Blair and 7 laps behind Eduardo (174 laps, 43.25 miles). As I write this on Saturday afternoon, Paulo is still going through the tens of thousands of splits (5 races total) and it seems like the chip timing system did miss a few laps from Eddie, albeit not enough to reclaim the M50-59 first place (that would have been a weird situation afterwards). Great job, Eddie, you did push me! :-)

With that, I was a big bag of mixed feelings: very happy to have started after all, and still managed to cover 41.5 miles, my first ultra and long run since October! Pleased to have put some points in the bank as I'm going to miss a few races this Winter and Spring with a lot of travel around the globe until April at least. Also glad that, with all the soreness due to cramping for a few hours, I couldn't even feel the gluteus issue; a proof that all pains are relative! And then the fun of seeing others on the track, starting with my 3 teammates (Dan, Jim, Stephen), plus the super nice volunteers who make all this possible.Now, I didn't feel so good about covering only 41.5 miles in 6 hours but, again, given the circumstances...

I took most of this week off (of running, that is), except for a slow 5-mile on Wednesday to kick start our site group run series, a cool idea from Jorge, an IBM colleague!

And, then, this Saturday afternoon, a few laps at the track, but more on this in the next post.

Special thanks again to all the volunteers. I only stopped at the aid station twice to get my bottles refilled, didn't touch the food this year since I was running on my own fat (keto/OFM), Vespa and 5 GUs total, but I enjoyed an In and Out burger and fries after the race, albeit cold, while driving back. Special mention to Paulo and John who manually clocked my first 72 laps when I was still working on the record. That's dedication!

And thank you to Paulo again for putting such an event on this track, it's such a headache to 24-hour races, especially a USATF-sanctioned event and the required stress and paperwork needed for record setting. While no records were broken during our 6-hour, 8 were in the first 12 hours. Mark Ritchman improved the M60-65 25K track record and Janice O'Grady, 70, broke 7 F70-74 records if I heard right. Way to go!

New Year One Day: 6 hours and 1 second to close on 2016

Can you imagine a 61-second minute on your watch? Well, that's what was supposed to happen at 4 pm Pacific with the clock showing this weird date of 3:59:60 PM or 15:59:60 on New Year's Eve. That was to make up for some slowing down of our orbit around the Sun, quite an interesting phenomenon (read more about the leap second and other fascinating news of about time management around the world on TimeAndDate.com). Unfortunately, I was too busy running at 4 pm this Saturday and didn't have the opportunity to watch which online clocks did implement this leap second properly. Nor did I really take advantage of this extra second to increase my mileage, read on...

As I posted earlier this week, I still had this 100 km/week obsession all year and, between several health incidents and injuries, plus a great winter break at Tahoe this week, not to mention the extra day of this leap year, I was short of 51 miles in my log to meet this weekly average goal. I initially thought of entering the 12-hour version of this event put by Coastal Trail Runs but Agnès was really not that excited to live the same experience as December 31, 2011 again. We settled on the 6-hour then with a start at noon and a finish at 6 pm, allowing her to visit the Legion of Honor museum's exhibits with Max in the afternoon.

There had been some drizzling at the start of the 24-hour around 9 am but the weather was now supposed to be all clear, on the cool side with some Ocean breeze but perfect running conditions overall. Race Director, Wendell Doman, send us on the course right at noon.

Wendell setup the course and chip timing mat so you could pick any direction, making it for quite a confusing tracking, not to mention the 3 different time formats (6, 12 and 24 hours), and the very nice option to start at different times to accommodate various plans on this special day (3 different potential starts for the 6-hour, and 3 for the 12-hour). With that, it was like having 7 different races on the same course and the same day!

With the aggressive goal of running close to 50 miles in 6 hours, there was no time to lose and I started aggressively, logging the 17 first laps between 7:06 and 7:24 then the next 9 under 8 minutes. As a matter of fact, I was blown away to be followed by a young 12-hour competitor who even passed me in the second lap despite running that one in 7:10. In a red top, it was Ralston Louie, 27, who left the course after the 10K mark (which we reached in 43 minutes!) and reappeared after 5 pm to finally cover 29 miles before midnight.

Because of the 4 sharp turns and many people on the course, from competitors to walkers, bikers, joggers and runners, not to mention dogs, I believe we run much more than the 1.065 USATF-certified distance. At least my GPS watches have always been a few percentage points over. In consequence, it's hard to keep track of the real pace.

I was still going strong when Carlos Castro, from Kermit Cuff's crew, took this great shot at the South-East corner, probably around my 25th mile.

I reached mile 34 (lap 32) just over 4 hours and my legs were getting really tired. As I was fearing cramps, I figured out I will give a try to the revolutionary HotShot product which I just bought in November. After 135 ultra races, I'm enough of an ultra veteran to know about the adage "never try anyting new in races" but that doesn't look like a product I'd use in training. Besides, I rarely cramp nowadays as long as I drink abundantly (20 oz of GU2O / 15 to 18 miles and 20 oz of water / 15-20 miles), and take 1 S!Caps every hour. Anyway, I went ahead and took that... shot. Oh my, it was so spicy, I almost threw up and could barely move forward for the next 2-3 minutes. I knew the secret of the inventor, a Nobel prize winner, was about a combination of spices, but I wasn't expected something to burn my esophagus and stomach, yikes! I'm going to contact HotShot to see if there is a way to smoothen the experience... (I highlighted the incident with an orange sign on Strava's pace chart above.)

It was the first time I was walking and I had to stop several times on the side of the course, holding my belly, so, jokingly, Ken Michal asked if I was finally taking a lunch break with a large piece of water melon in my hand... I took a few sips of water to dilute this spicy brevage and forced myself to resume running, clocking 10:36 for that lap.

Back to the race, I covered the first 20 laps anti-clockwise and, changing direction, could see Jorma Gates twice every loop now as he didn't change direction for the 6 hours. I had lapped Jorma twice in these 20 laps and we were now on a similar pace as I had slowed down.

After a wonderful last 2016 sunset captured by Agnès from Baker Beach, we ran the last 30 minutes in the dark and I had forgotten to bring a headlamp, which isn't much of an issue on this course except, with this confusing machine washing format, when trying to slalom against the traffic of other runners wearing headlamps. With that, I had less than 8 minutes left to cover my 45th lap and gave it all but came up about 12 seconds short, which was super disappointing as only full laps count. 44 laps were enough to win the race this time (Jorma took 2nd with 42), but, although Chikara's 49-lap course record is very solid (51.1 miles), I was hoping to get closer to 50 miles than the recorded 46.9.

Agnès came back to the finish before my last lap and captured this great nigh shot of the Golden Gate bridge.

She had hard time understanding why I was so disappointed about missing a lap by a few seconds when I had won the 6-hour race. At least I had prepared and warned her that I needed to go for a few extra laps in order to run the 51 miles I was missing in my 2016 running log in order to meet my 100 km/week objective as mentioned above. I jogged these laps then finally spent some time enjoying the royal buffet of the aid station which I didn't spend much time at during the race.

We then stopped by a Mel's diner on our way back to Cupertino for our family celebration of New Year's Eve. What a way to mark the passage to the new year, a combination of hard running and great family time! But what a personal investment from the Coastal Trail Runs organizing team and the aid station volunteers to give their own time to make this event happen on such a special day and night, huge kudos and thanks to them!

I also want to highlight the high quality and professionalism of this event which offers great goodies (running 1/2 zip top, bag, colorful finisher medal), chip timing, live tracking, fully stocked aid station with a lot of variety (options of soups, fruits, salted food, candies, cookies, pizza, ...), convenient parking and a very generous $1,600 in prize money overall for top finishers! Too bad the Park service didn't allow us to use the grass area along the course, especially for those having to set a tent on the rough parking area instead. And, as a suggestion for improvement, I'd say the chip timing mat area was on the narrow side and forming a bottleneck when passing or crossing runners, not to mention the competitors stopping in the middle of the mat to check the large and busy tracking display/monitor. Otherwise, it was a perfect event put up by a team with a lot of ultra running experience. And a very friendly and supportive atmosphere with a few familiar faces and many others, showing that ultra running keeps gaining ground. Kudos to the 26 competitors in the 24-hour, 22 in the 12-hour and 65 in the 6-hour, plus the handful of relay teams.

See you for many more laps and miles in 2017!