Ohlone 50K 2016: stepping down

It was my 9th Ohlone in 10 years. I missed the 2014 edition in order to attend Max's graduation at Yale. And I had quite a ride all these years, with 8 podium including 5 wins. Of course, in the light of the recent TIA, I wasn't supposed to push as much as the past years. But the big news of the day was that it wasn't to be hot this Sunday, and that was a bummer for me because I tend to do much better in dry heat, at least better than the rest of the field. At least I wasn't going to get a heat stroke today!

We had 9 members of our Quicksilver Ultra Racing team toeing the line this year. We could have had a few more if the race was taking morning registration, as a few runners couldn't make it to Silver State in Reno on Friday night due to the... snow on highway 80, ending up in its closure! 3rd week of May...

The omnipresent ultra volunteer, Stan Jensen, was officiating at the registration table with a lively group of volunteers.

And the 3 buses arrived just after 7:30 am, which left enough time for the passengers to visit the porta potties this year (3 from the Park it looked, and 4 from the race organization)!

There were quite new faces this morning and, although the race didn't fill this year, with only 160 entrants, Ultrasignup had about 20 entrants without any ultra listed. With that I had no idea how the race would play.

John Burton had mentioned to me the presence of his local buddy Mike Helms, a 2:31 marathoner who was indeed ahead of me in the clim to Rose Peak last year but couldn't handle the heat, turned back and dropped. He was here for a remission and was definitely happy with the cool weather this year!

I also met another Mike (black singlet), from Santa Cruz, for whom Ohlone was his first 50K

And ex Team Mount Diablo member, Troy Howard, was visiting from Golden, CO, where he moved 6 years ago (white top on the left).

Overcast start this year, but we'll rarely see the sun throughout the day either.

Right off the start, I settled in 8th in the first steep climb.

The charge was even led by teammate John Burton in an aggressive move. In this first climb, I started doubting that I would even make the top 10 as I felt compelled to walk some of the steep uphills very early on. While the top 4 quickly disappeared from our sight, we were 5 in a pursuit group, trading places. I reached the Mission Peak summit in 6th place and, drum or roll please, crashed in a bad fall as I was trying to navigate through dozens of hikers. In 10 years, I've never seen so many folks at 8:50 am when we go over this technical section and, to make the situation even worse, it was 2 continuous lines, one going up, one going down. On these slippery rocks, that was surely a recipe for disaster. Anyway, I tried to avoid one person and my right foot slipped outside of the trail, resulting in a plunge and down face in these rocks. I must have been going so slow anyway, it's a miracle I didn't hit a rock with my head, the shock was absorbed by my Ultimate Direction hand bottles first, then I got a big scrap on the left leg and shoulder. Luckily I had forgotten to take my blood thinner before leaving this morning, that might have help containing the blood. While my face was down in the dust, my arms under my body and one leg below the trail, I couldn't move but I remember one hiker pulling my shoulder to get me back up allowing me to resume the descent, albeit even more slowly. After that episode, I was in 9th, sprinting down the next fire road just behind John. Ashamed of having stepped down or rather stepped out of the trail, but happy that the damage looked superficial.

I made up some ground in the descent to the Sunol aid station and reached it in 5th place. Photo from Josam Mulinyawe, just before Sunol:

I was feeling good but couldn't manage to run all the following uphills as I used to. Too many excuses spinning in my head... Mike H caught up with me in that section and we did a quick stop at the Backpack Area aid station (mile 12.5) before climbing the wall through the Hawk Nest which we didn't leave without using some water from the faucet to cool our heads (more a tradition for me than a necessity today because it was still rather cool).

Another omnipresent ultra volunteer, Vladimir Gusiatnikov, was on the trail taking pictures and indicated that the front runners were 12 and 13 minutes ahead. Our pace was close to 10 min/mile so that meant 9 min/mile for them! With that I told Mike that he was too conservative this year and he should get ahead, which he did. Following 2 pictures courtesy of Vladimir:

We had now Remi Delille in sight so that gave him some extra motivation! I was now in 6th and tried to keep running the uphill as much as I could to contain the increasing gap.

I did a full stop at Goat Rock to refill my GU2O bottle and that cost me some precious seconds. However, the surprise was to now see the other Mike between Chris and Remi. When I passed him, Mike admitted that he had no idea the climbs would be so brutal and he had to ease up.

While I quickly lost sight of Mike H, I was able to maintain some visual contact with Remi up to summit and in the following 4 miles but at the cost of not stopping at Maggie's Half Acre aid station, nor at Stewart's Camp because he was moving fast. I caught up with him just after Stewart's Camp and, to my surprise, we then caught up with Mike H shortly before the Schlieper Rock aid station where Race Director Larry England was.

Mike went through the aid station first but Remi's agility in the hazardous switchbacks down Williams Gulch was amazing and he passed Mike while I managed to caught up and pass Mike in the last uphill to Rocky Ridge, not after stopping at the creek to damp my hat and put some fresh water on my leg muscles. I did push the pace while on Rocky Ridge and got a glimpse of Remi just before the final downhill to Del Valle. I love the spring of the last aid station, Stromer Spring, but I couldn't afford to lose any second so I flew by the cheery volunteers. I saw Remi again at the end of the intermediary plateau/climb and then for the last half mile to the finish as I was closing on him. But he did cross the finish line 10 or so seconds before me for 3rd place, which left me with 4th overall.

Still a big piece of wood for first M50-59, but first time stepping down the overall podium at this race, finally... Slightly disappointed to have walked so much despite the cool weather, yet quite happy to have improved the Age Group Course Record again by another 9 minutes this year at 4:56. Plus, grateful to be running at all, just 2 months after that stroke! Here are 2 cool pictures of my finish by teammate Keith Blom:

Mike H arrived later, followed by Ben, then John in 5:25 if I recall (results aren't published yet). On the women side, the big surprise was the win of teammate Nina Giraudo who almost broke 6 hours not just for her first Ohlone, but for her first ultra and 50K, mind you! She therefore got two big pieces of wood, the prestigious overall woman and the Zombie Runner Rookie award! By the way, I say surprise because Nina had asked me a few rookie questions on Saturday night and, among other tips, I advised her to run as much of the uphills as possible, and I didn't think she was going to actually do it!

Zack placed 3rd for our Men team, just a few minutes before Nina and it seems like all the runners made the cut-offs this year, so that was quite a good one, thanks in particular to the cool weather. That being said, I hope the heat will be back next year for my 10th run as I feel it is really part of that race. At a minimum it is fair to say that, with such meteorologic conditions in May, we are getting extremely late in our heat training this year...

On the men side, the race was won by local Scott Trummer, 24, of Livermore in a blazing time of 4:24, I believe the second fastest time on the new course behind Leor Pantilat's 4:16:28 of 2010.

Troy Howard finished second and first Masters in 4:42.

Big thanks to the many volunteers who have a particularly hard task with such a remote course though the Ohlone wilderness. Some stations are hard to access. Yet, some sections are in urban areas (Fremont, Mission Peak) and the course marking suffer from vandalism. Special kudos to trail marking General Joe Swenson from our Quicksilver team who spend a couple of days on the trail with a special group of volunteers for such an impeccable course marking. To top it, Joe ran his 13th Ohlone today! And a big thank you to my IBM colleague Larry for directing such a key race and ultra tradition of the Bay Area. Oh, I was going to forget to mention Diane, the BBQ Chef today!

See you all in a year then and don't forget to get some heat training before your summer ultras because that wasn't any today! ;-)

PS: I didn't mention that I didn't feel any specific fatigue from yesterday's trail work at Almaden Quicksilver with V-O-Cal, so that's not a pre-race counter indication (as a matter of fact I had done it in the past actually).