Trailblazer 2018: 10K and so many more!

Can't believe a week has almost gone by since that race. I strive to post my race reports on race day but that was another long day away from the keyboard last Sunday as you may read below, a rather fair excuse. Then an hectic week got in the way, including two commuting days in San Francisco. On Wednesday, and Thursday, I didn't have much time either but, more importantly, I couldn't envision blogging upon receiving the news of the tragic death of one of our local ultra runners, Dennis Connor. Both a Stevens Creek Strider and Quicksilver club mate, Dennis was in Italy last weekend, for work, and went for a run in the mountains. He had a bad fall, was able to call 911 but it took them three days to find him and he hadn't made it that long. Dennis was such a loving and caring member of our ultra running community, this is so unfair. We loved his smile, his Kiwi accent, his perfect French, his service to all. I'm devastated to read his love, Michele, sharing her struggle on Facebook, but I'm also blown away by her courage and will to move forward as she already organized a few runs in Dennis' memory. Michele, you are so strong, such an inspiration, strongest prayers and thoughts to you!

A few souvenirs from our Last Chance aid station at Western States in June 2006:

After this heartbreaking story, and before I lose or bore you with too many details or kilometers, if you love the outdoors and the Bay Area in particular, I would like to invite you to make plans for attending the BayDay 2018 celebration this Saturday! (Sorry for the lack of notice, again, I meant to write this blog earlier this week...). Check this website to find dozens of cool activities to get connected to our amazing and renowned Bay: https://www.bayday.org/map-2018.html

I plan on running another 50K from home to the Palo Alto Baylands (and back, eventually), along with Agnès on her bike hopefully. All that before I board a plane to Singapore in the evening, for a change! I didn't fly these past 3 weeks, it's time to get to see the world again! ;-)

Back to our Trailblazer coverage from Shoreline in Mountain View, California...

As I was going to find out in the early morning, this year was all about change. Many changes as a matter of fact! Change not the sake of change (which I rarely like), but changes forced by big construction work at Microsoft's Silicon Valley campus.

I don't drive by the interchange between 85 North and 101 often, assuredly. When I got off the ramp, I noticed a handful of cranes on Microsoft's campus and thought "hmm, parking is going to be interesting..." Then I saw a first sign to keep going on Shoreline instead of turning right after the VTA terminal, then a second, third, and more. So many that I finally ended up at Shoreline Park, to the new start location.

Here are the changes I noticed overall:

1. New start location;
2. New course, including almost 1/2 mile of dirt path;
3. New race logo on t-shirts;
4. New t-shirt color (black which I find way fancier than the usual white indeed);
5. Another Mountain View local and famous new sponsor on top of Microsoft and Google: LinkedIn!

I had planned on running the original 5K course as a warm-up but the new course was so confusing, I only ran 2 miles.

It was already quite warm at 8 am, and my legs felt heavy, not a great sign. Now, that where context is important: I had taken Saturday off but that was barely any taper after running for 24 consecutive days an average of a half marathon every day, including a 50K every weekend since end of August.

With that healthy leg fatigue in store, I still did a step forward when Race Director, Aaron, called the sub 6 minute/mile runners. Two of us were brave enough to declare such bold intentions. I didn't know the other runner but his name was Matt Johanson. A handful of runners responded to Aaron's call for sub 7 min/miles. I was a bit concerned about not knowing the course so was hoping one of them would lead us. Thankfully we had a lead bike with us.

Right of the bat, Matt (red shorts) and a younger runner, Brooks Taylor (white top), took the lead, well under 6 min/mile pace, phew!

I was happy to stay a few yards behind, stabilizing my own pace around 6:10. I estimated that Matt and Brooks eventually settled for a 6 flat pace. Around mile 2, Brooks pulled ahead slightly but the gap stabilized in mile 4 where I pushed the pace down to 6:00 in order to pull away from a few other runners behind. In the 5th mile, Brooks was able to maintained his pace but Matt slowed down a little, allowing me to get closer. That being said, even at 6 min/mile, I couldn't accelerate. With one mile to go, we merged into the 5K traffic and it became really hard to keep track of the lead while slaloming to avoid slower runners. I have to admit that was the hardest mile for me and I let the gap with Matt increase as I couldn't see any other 10K behind. A top 3 finish was certainly good enough for me this year.

My track workout buddy Bob had run the 5K and gave me encouragement at the last turn before the finish. I crossed the line in 38:18, certainly not my best at this race. (Photo credit: Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail)

That was 20 seconds behind Matt who himself finished 10 seconds behind Brooks. Not the fastest edition by far but I'd say the original course was faster (flatter and 100% asphalt). All results here: https://onyourmarkevents.com/2018-09-30-trailblazer-run-10k-results/

I gave high five to Agnès who completed her 5K shortly after my finish but I was exhausted by my own push. Physically but also mentally as I had run these 10K thinking of what I was going to do next that day...

Indeed, racing 10K hard was hardly my targeted challenge last Sunday. No, my goal was to run another 50K. Not 40K more than the first 10K loop, but a whole 50K. Why? Because I ran a 50K every weekend since my race in the Alps at the end of August. And I didn't want to merge a 10K race with a 50K training run. So, after a few minutes to catch my breath, I ran a second 10K on the course, even managing to lap a few runners at mile 4.

Upon coming back to the finish at 10 am, I heard the announcer giving awards to the top 5K finishers. I thought she would do the 10K awards next but, between the generous draw, the 1-mile kid race, and all the age group awards, it was going to take 55 minutes for my name to be called, for the very nice Masters award. I couldn't wait to get back on my third lap but, ironically, I was the last awardee to be called on the podium.

Agnès also got a trophy in her own age group, that was worth the wait to pick it up for her!

After this long break, it was actually very hard to resume running and my pace slowed down to 7:25. Thankfully, I was able to pick up the pace in the subsequent laps, actually running the last miles under 7 min/mile. 3:45:25 total for these additional 5 laps, not counting 4 pit stops to refill my GU2O and water bottles, some solid training in the heat. Here is a 3D fly over of these additional 5 laps (click on the image or this link):

These 63K (with the warm-up) completed my third 100-mile week in a row, phew!

This was my 13th participation (2002, 3, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18), not quite half the 25 editions, but getting closer; next year should do, insh'allah!

With that, hoping to see some familiar faces on the Shoreline trail again this Saturday morning, to celebrate BayDay!

PS: The M50-59 podium, without me to avoid double-dipping with the Masters award.

Trailblazer 10K 2017: levitate, and push!

Levitate? What a strange title for a running race... Well, on Wednesday, I received a pair of Brooks' latest shoes, the Levitate, and they are something!

So pleasing to the eyes and the touch that I was compelled to test them out right away with a fast 15K on Wednesday and another 15K on Thursday. The Relive flyover even showed my pace peaking at 4:47 min/mile, this is surreal, only levitation could get me to run that on a tempo run, on a flat course! Or some approximation from Garmin, most rationally...

While the model was announced earlier this month, and the web site taking pre orders, the shoes will get on the market in a couple of weeks and Brooks hopes the response will have the same enthusiastic feedback received through 18 months of hard work and field testing.

The main reason this is an innovative and outstanding shoe is that Brooks worked for 2.5 years with the chemist company, BASF (oops, not Bayer as I told some people this morning), to come up with a revolutionary new compound for the midsole, the DNA AMP, a key component for a shoe now returning up to 72% of the pounding energy! (Read the press release for more details.)

Anyway, I'll say more about these shoes in another post, so let's get back to the title and the main cause of this event, the Stevens Creek Trail. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, this is a very 'Stevens Creek-oriented weekend, with the 50K race organized by ex running club, the Stevens Creek Striders of Cupertino, with a course going through the Stevens Creek park, on the Stevens Creek Canyon trail, and, of course, along the Stevens Creek, albeit not quite down to the Stevens Creek reservoir (in 2009, I wrote about 12 of these Stevens Creek fixtures in our area). Further down, the trail resumes in Mountain View then ends in Shoreline Park where the Stevens Creek reaches the water of South Bay.

This fun, yet very professional event is organized by the Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail, and is all about building awareness for that trail, including the headache of connecting the lower section on the Bay side, to the upper section in the hills so, on day, we can do Bay to Skyline then Skyline to the Sea, all on a trail! Yes, we, ultra runners, would love that...!

In the meantime, this is a fund raising event, thanks to all the runners and walkers participating, and also the generous sponsors supporting the organization.

Here is Aaron Grossman, the mastermind of this event, playing so many roles from Race Director, MC and, not the least responsibility, Executive Director of the Friends of the Stevens Creek. And leader who gathers so many volunteers to help out setting up and managing these races, as well as all year around to maintain and develop this wonderful trail.

Aaron sent us right at 8:30, for the 10K race, the 5K race starting 15 minutes later. It's good to have these different start times so we don't get confused by who is running which race, or the different paces. I didn't recognize any of the fast runners from previous years but, right off the bat, I had to settle for second as we were already in the 5:20-5:30 min/mile range. Right in the heels of the leader, I covered the first mile in 5:37 and really wondered how long this would last. Our second mile was around 5:45 and it was even hard to keep up. By mile 3, I had fallen 10 seconds behind and was impressed how that runner kept going steadily at 5:45 min/mile with apparent ease and little breathing. And he looked like he could be a Masters as well...

To make the things worse, I was thinking that he all the adrenaline of following the lead bike (for knowing how it feels), while I started seriously doubting after mile 3 that I will ever catch-up. I lost a bit of stamina in mile 4 (5:56) with a wake-up call in mile 5 when I realized that I had slowed down to 6 min/mile. I was able to get back to digging a big deeper and run the 6th mile in 5:52, sprinting to the finish to take 2nd overall in 36:07. (Next 2 pictures in the final mile on the levee, courtesy of Satpal Dalal.)

The overall winner was Alan Alarcon, 38, in 35:02 and third place was Adam Cutbill, 27, in 38:47. Here is Adam, proud recipient of the Microsoft Fitbit Charge.

I got a nice glass plaque trophy for first Master, make me look younger, yeah! ;-)

Coming into the race, I didn't feel like I was going to break 35' but, not breaking 36' did disappoint me since I didn't have the reasons I had these past years. I didn't even finish at UTMB 3 weeks ago, only covering the first 100K...! The graph is definitely trending up... :-/

With that, I'm looking forward to the next editions then, to see if that's just the age, finally... There will also be the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot test in 2 months.

Speaking of next year, the race is in jeopardy, at least on that course, as the main sponsor and host, Microsoft, will vacate this campus by then. Aaron is definitely hoping that the other sponsor, Google, takes over and we can start from their campus at least. Like we were running the Human Race from the Silicon Graphics headquarters back then in 2004, or was it the Googleplex already? I can't remember, I wasn't blogging yet, only started 10 years and 550 posts ago... ;-)

By the way, here is the fly-over for our 10K race, by Relive.cc. If you've never seen this feature before, check it out (click on this link, or the image below)!

And good stats on Garmin Connect, like the 190 steps per minute cadence, 1.46 m average stride, 5:49 min/mile average pace. Oh, and that peak at 4:46 min/mile again...! Must be when I was thinking of the Berlin Marathon studs...

The 5K Men race was won by Andy Crawford. I recently became a colleague of his as he was recently elected to the Chair position of our Pacific Association USATF LDR (Long Distance Running) committee, and I'm taking over the Chair role of the MUT (Mountain Ultra Trail) subcommittee, releasing Bill Dodson from this responsibility. Proud of bringing new blood and energy to this institution I owe so much of my ultra motivation to, over the past 12 years! All of you, runners, please consider joining our Pacific Association, contact me if interested!

While Andy, after switching back to his Brooks training shoes, went for a 2-mile cool down, I ran the 10K loop in reverse in 41 minutes, including a few stops to take pictures of the birds. 14 miles total including a 2-mile warm-up at 8 am.

I was back just in time to see the overall winners award ceremony. Here are the race winners, 5K and 10K men and women:

Below is the tireless Bill Dodson who, at 82, easily ran his M80+ age category, and bare foot this year again! Bill had a cross-country competition yesterday and he still runs ultras, still continuing after breaking all the American M80-84 age group records for long distances!

My camera battery died before I could take pictures of the entertaining and 1-mile long kids race.

With the long award ceremony and generous raffle, I had some time to get to know the 3rd place in our 10K who also ran the 26K loop of the super steep Broken Arrow race in Squaw Valley earlier this year, Adam Cutbill.

Overall, a great edition again, albeit maybe less people than we had 10 years ago.

Big thanks to all the volunteers, from the many cheerful high schoolers on the course or at the water and Hobee's coffee cake tables, to the members of the Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail.

Among the sponsors was a cool company, LimeBike, offering self-service bikes without racks: if you find such a bike on the sidewalk, you just unlock it with your phone and it's yours to use at $1 per 30 minutes. They have equipped South San Francisco already, as well as other cities like Dallas, Raleigh, Seattle, or South Lake Tahoe. Cool concept!

And the volunteers stationing at the end of the 10K loop could use their bikes!

Among the many runners wearing Brooks shoes, either for racing or training, there was this fan who happens to have Brooks as his first name, that's handy! ;-)

And a father-son all-in-Brooks 5K finish!

Yesterday I was cheering for Satpal at the Stevens Creek 50K, today it was the turn to cheer his daughter on the 5K, way to go (and his son was on the 10K already)!

We were blessed with a perfect weather, and wonderful views of the Bay especially with the numerous birds and the pelicans visiting again.

Fabulous opportunity to celebrate the wonders of the Bay Area and our Stevens Creek trail in particular, with special thanks to the Friends of the trail for their decades of support and lobbying to extend its toward the Cupertino hills. See you again next year! And remember, you now have access to a shoe which can make you levitate, so you can push even harder and faster! #RunHappy

Stevens Creek 50K, Aquinas climb, Trailblazer 10K: a very busy running weekend!

This year again, there was a lot of buzz going on regarding our local Stevens Creek Trail. First, the Stevens Creek Striders had their ultra race event on Saturday, including a 50K, 30K and half-marathon, going through the Stevens Creek Canyon. And, on Sunday, on the other end of the trail, the Trailblazer 10K and 5K races at Shoreline.

But, no, I didn't do the 50K/10K same-weekend double which I did back in 2013, I was just volunteering at the 50K on Saturday.

Under Jim's leadership, our Club (QuickSilver Running Club of San Jose) was manning the Saratoga Gap aid station yesterday. After an 11-mile stretch without an aid, the runners were quite happy to find us to refuel for the next 9-mile section.

I worked the timing with our Club President, Greg Lanctot. Here we are under Peter Hargreaves' supervision, Peter Hargreaves (photo credit: Tiffany Trevers who, in the afternoon, won the half marathon race).

In addition to writing down bib numbers and times on paper, we used the ex-Race Director, Steve Patt's PocketTimer app, which made it really easy and so much official. We officiated for more than 4 hours, just to say that the runners were quite spread out especially given the staggered starts. It must be quite another experience to time a cross-country event when you have dozens of runners crossing the finish line within less than a minute!

Anyway, great way to see the race from another angle, from the front to back runners, and taking time to catch-up with club mates.

After seeing these runners enjoying the trails, and since I was passing through Saratoga anyway on the way back/down, I decided to drive to Los Gatos to give a try to the Segment of the Month, a challenge organized by Jeff Clowers and advertised in the Quicksilver Trail Runners group on FaceBook. This time it was 3 miles straight up (see the Strava segment), a climb of about 1,300 feet. One of the key challenge of that segment was actually getting to the start: a super steep road on which you can't park. Thanks to Jim's insider tips, I did park on Lookout Road, then went on to climb the Sheldon Road up to the gate. It was 2:30 pm when I got to the start, with temperatures of about 85F and I was already sweating hard and thirsty before even starting. Long story short, I was gasping for air after 2 miles in the red zone and had to stop 3 times to walk a few steps to catch my breath. Not only was it hot, but I had many things going through my mind, most importantly questioning what I was doing here, instead of tapering before the next day's 10K... Not sure I was a the top, I continued on the rolling section until my GPS reached 3.6 miles to make sure I had at least covered the whole segment.

The descent was much easier of course and I made sure to enjoy the stunning views over the Bay Area. A noisy F-20 flew by quite low and I thought of the aerial views like the ones I was experiencing this afternoon, that these pilots get all the time! Back home, I was pleased to see that despite getting only the second all-time performance on this climb with 27:09, that is 1:57 behind Mike Helms, I still had the best performance of the month, yay! Oh wait, 2 hours later, that time was improved by super fast Chris Wehan by... 1 second! Yes, that is one second, how inconvenient that Strava truth was! Oh well, later in the evening, the group was chatting about even-faster Dave Roche attempting to break 21 minutes this Sunday!

Meanwhile, I ran the Trailblazer 10K for the 11th time this year. I have not been able to run every year but had a good consecutive series these past 7 years. Overall: 2002, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009-2015, so 11 out of 21 editions. And two wins 10 years or so ago, after the local Kenyans stopped showing up, and before Jose Pina, Sr, took control of the race! At 51, and after winning the grueling Ohlone 50K last week, winning a 10K was really not part of my goals today, I just wanted to see how fast I could still go after so much focus on ultra running these past months and years. Thankfully, my running buddy Bob got Jeremy and I back on the track for some speed work these past weeks, that helped regaining some leg speed.

Now, when Jose wasn't to be found near the start line with one minute to go, I saw a window of opportunity. When Race Director, Aaron, called the sub 7-minute/mile runners and only 5 of us moved toward the start line, I told to myself, "maybe this year gain, let's see..." There was a 13-year-old in that group and I was doubtful he would hold 6 min/mile especially after hearing him talking to his buddy about 19 minutes for 5K and trying to break 42 minutes for 10K, the math didn't work. Yet, he took the lead right off the start, as well as a much taller runner. I was just behind them when we got on the bike path and our pace was 5:30 after 500 yards. At that corner, they slowed down so much that I almost hit them from behind and, going around to maintain the pace, I took the lead. I stabilized my pace around 5:40 for the next 2 miles. Still that was really not comfortable but I had to keep pushing to maintain and increase the lead. As I was approaching the mile 2 marker, which is just before a bump in the levee, I was moving to the left side, ready to plunge in the left turn, when an old and grumpy cyclist came to my side and pushed me on the right. I got that I was on the wrong side but had to let a big bad word out of my mouth when, on top of it, he slowed down in front of me just after passing me. I did pass him on the short climb out of the chicane, I was really mad. Anyway, he passed me again on the flat section, without saying a word fortunately, as I was myself trying to remain calm...

The rest of the race was fortunately eventless. I did slow down a bit in the last 3 miles, finishing in 36:29 for a 5:52 average pace. Not my fastest 10K, but good enough given the circumstances. And good enough for a win this year, short of more competition! Here are the top 4 finishers of this morning's 10K race, 2 of them being 50 plus! You are never too old to keep moving! ;-)

Speaking of which, here is one of my ultra racing buddies, Bill Dodson, who, at 80, was enjoying this short 5K course, bare foot, before running the Twin City marathon next week. Not that marathon is much distance for Bill, he set a new American Age Group record for 100K in April, then for 50 miles one week later in San Francisco!

Five minutes after I crossed the line, Agnes surprised me: she had biked from home and was disappointed to have just missed my finish. Bob took 4th in the 5K, which is good news after the knee surgery he went through earlier this year.

Learning from previous years, when we've waited for more than an hour to get the results and awards, albeit also enjoying the kids race in the meantime, I went back on the course to run it again, this time in a more comfortable 41:53 (6:44 min/mile). I even chatted for a few seconds with Don Murdoch, who taught me track workouts back in 2000, and passed a handful of runners finishing their 10K loop.

Here is the start of the cool kids' race:

Back to the title of this post, it was such a busy running weekend that the turn out of the event was much lower than usual: it is hard indeed to compete with the Rock 'n Roll half-marathon which was held this morning in San Jose. Same thing yesterday, the Stevens Creek ultras were far from filling-up. More generally, as much as this is such a great thing to get more people healthier, there may be an over-abundance of running events on the market. It has been only 10 years since I started running ultras and, in this period, the number of 100-milers in North America went from below 30 to a whopping 142! As a result, the competition is very uneven, you have to pick your battles. With that, I won the coveted newly released Microsoft Band, which I look forward to try and write a review about (now that I moved to a Macbook and iPhone, I hope it talks some Apple language...). After winning 2 XBoxes at this race, Microsoft has been good to me! ;-)


Anyway, that event isn't much about competition, but a fund raising opportunity to help prolong/extend the Stevens Creek Trail through Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Los Altos and Cupertino so we can hike, bike or run from the Bay to the hills (and, beyond, to the Ocean!). Since such a trail wasn't designed at the right time, when 85 was built especially, we are so grateful to have volunteers giving up hundreds of hours to advocate for a solution and address this urbanism flaw. It was great to spend some time with Ross Heitkamp, the webmaster of the Friends of the Stevens Creek Trail, who updated me on the trail outlook.

And I also met an IBM colleague, Linda, who volunteers in this association. There were many volunteers this morning, about 30 of which coming from Cupertino High School, a few who even knew me then. Linda (left), giving the start of the kids' race:

That was my 48th 10K race (I've run 54 50Ks, so 10Ks are only my second favorite format), and 15th race of the year (only 2 non-ultras). Next is the inaugural 68-mile Folsom Lake Ultra organized by Single Track Running in 2 weeks. Was great to see so many people on the Stevens Creek Trail today, keep up the great job of getting healthier and enjoying the outdoors!