Except for a very few Kenyans working extremely hard, it's impossible to make a living out of running. So better be a second job, and a passion!
Sharing a few personal notes on my journey in endurance running and ultra running. To meet you on the web if not on the road. Happy trails to all, farther and faster!
I so used to run (short) ultras for breakfast a lot, I mean for training, early on Saturday or Sunday mornings. Including the real ultra races, I averaged 33 ultra runs a year for 11 years in a row, from my second year in that sport, in 2008 until I fissured one of my hamstring attach tendons in November 2018. Healing has been so much longer than both hoped and expected, I'm now only getting back in the groove after 3.5 years. In 2019, I had to ease off and logged only 15 ultra runs, then 12 in 2020. How do I keep track of all these stats? I still do Excel, not as old school as Camille Herron's handwritten log book, but sill odd in the age of GPS-fueled social platforms). And it's good to keep a running log because, although I felt terribly out of shape last year, I just realized I actually managed to have 35 ultra runs in 2021. And 16 so far.
Again, that includes some short ones. Although I go by the 26.2+ miles definition, Andy Wilkins-Jones has often questioned if 50K should even be considered as an ultra. At least in his golden years (multiple top 10 Western States finishes), maybe he'll become more inclusive with age... ;-)
I confess that, between that injury, the pandemic struggle and other sources of life unbalance, I lost the appetite, will or eagerness for waking up early on weekends in order to squeeze in long runs. But, for a change, that's what I managed to do this Saturday, phew! I made the deliberate decision to stop working on a client project at 10:30 pm on Friday, set my clock to 6:45 am in order to start my run with a stop at the 8:30 am Saturday club meeting of the Stevens Creek Striders, 4 miles from my house. At the Stevens Creek Reservoir which is on Stevens Creek (upstream through the Stevens Creek Canyon and downstream, toward Moffett and Shoreline).
This Club is where I got acquainted with trail running (2003), then ultra marathon (2006), before I joined the highly competitive team Adam Blum and his company, RhoMobile, sponsored within the Quicksilver Running Club of San Jose (2007). I stayed with the Striders for a few years during which I even served as Captain of the Last Chance aid station at Western States.
First, a price increase coming up next weekend. The event has been up since last December, time to signup!
Second, for those competing in the Grand Prix and not familiar with the fine prints: if one of your scores isn't for a Trail event (sub ultra trail), you'll lose one of your scores. This is the last opportunity of 2022 to get such a score in the Trail category (Excelsior's Star City Half could have been one but, with their move to later in October, it won't be part of the Grand Prix this year).
In any event, join us for this very accessible run in Cupertino's foothills and meet other members of our local trail running community!
At mile 3 of the group run, 7 miles for me, before I continued on Stevens Creek Canyon road:
The informal setting of a running club meeting:
On this last weekend of July, I was pleased to see a bit of water flowing through rocks at the bottom of the canyon. But the farther I was going up that road, the less flow I could hear until there was no more water at all in the bed of the creek.
May 28
2 months later...
In other news, I'm afraid we have just lost high-speed Internet access at the top of Black Mountain! Just kidding, this is old-time telephony, I wonder who all these cables were meant to provide phone signal at the park entrance at the end of Stevens Creek Canyon road.
Actually, teasing apart, I need to check if the public phone booth at the camp ground still works, who knows. Although it's more likely for that spot to be served by a line along Montebello Road instead.
I occasionally walked on the way up to Bella Vista trail but not too much, this is encouraging, both from a physical and mental standpoint. I did cross a few cyclists, on the road of course but, less common, on the trail itself, and saw quite a few deers. If we apply Machine Learning to this data, you could infer that deers get excited by a lot of Tour de France watching as well! :-)
As I turned on Bella Vista, up toward Black Mountain, I first saw a red ribbon on the side of the trail, potentially marking some erosion or ground slide. Shoot, how shocking to see a truck on its top, which flipped off this single (duh!) track!
At least you can say that they got lucky the truck fell into a ditch, not too deep, wide enough to allow the truck to stabilize flat and narrow enough that it stopped the vehicle from rolling more. 20 yards more and they were good for quite a scary series of lateral or back flops...
I've launched a FaceBook investigation. It doesn't seem the trucks is from the rangers, phew! Someone proposed the hypothesis of a contractor working on a communication or power maintenance job. In any event, huge navigation mistake, instead of getting on Montebello Road to drive to the submit.
To spice my run even more, a few hundreds yards later, I almost got hit by a bike. The guy hammered on the break but the back wheel blocked immediately. I didn't even have time to yell anything, I just jumped on the right edge of the trail and bended over the void of a steep slope. One of these closed encounters which could get one more trail closed to bikes...
With that, it was hot but a cloud layer brought some welcomed shade and relief. No campers at the campground, where I refilled both bottles. A few pictures at the top (mile 17) then it was time for the 12-mile downhill.
To add some mileage and elevation, I went on my favorite Waterwheel Trail, stopping for a few minutes at the refreshing, albeit weakening, spring.
Back on Montebello Road, I hammered it down, finally clocking a few sub-7 miles and not stopping for 10 miles. For a total of 29.5 miles at 8:28 min/mile. Elevation wise? Maybe something between Garmin's always optimistic guess of 4,293 ft, or Strava's more reasonable and plausible 3,760. In any event, a good last long training run before now tapering for Skyline 50K this Sunday then Headlands Hundred (hilly miles...) 6 days later. Even more time to work more... until I see some of you these next two weekends to play again on the trails!
Relive.cc flyover (this link or click on the following picture):
PS: and since I'm looking at my stats, lifetime ultra run #461.
As I start writing this post a week has passed, I keep feeling bad about being so behind in blogging compared to my original weekly pace which I kept from 2007 to 2018. Another victim of running injury as well as the pandemic. Of course, aiming at a same-day race report for a 12 hour is really challenging. I still had to drive back home after running from 9 am to 9 pm. I made it back just before 11 pm after waking up at 5 am, that wasn't leaving much time. Then I had to spend most of my Sunday to prepare for a remote workshop with a client in South Africa at 6 am on Monday. And a busy week, then a busy family weekend with the rare opportunity to have the three boys in town! And there you are, 2 weeks later!
All that doesn't leave much time to go into details, not that I expect too many people eagerly waiting for my report, with such a low participation and the lack of excitement of a 1-mile flat course. Not to mention that results have been published on the website and many pictures on Facebook or Instagram already. Clearly, there was much more excitement following Bad Water 135-mile from Monday to Wednesday, Hard Rock 100 on Friday-Saturday and Tahoe Rim Trail 100 this Saturday-Sunday. Just to name 3 key events from this peak of the ultra season.
The effort to get back to blogging regularly and timely pairs with the big effort of coming back from injury. Everything seems much harder, hopefully just an uphill ride back to a better plateau. To keep testing where I stand, I registered for the 12-hour one week before. This event wasn't part of our Grand Prix which I've been focusing again this year, running 4 of the 5 events in the first 6 months. It felt good not to have much pressure and just see what I could do again against the clock in a timed event for a change. My main goal was to see how long I could run at 9 min/mile, toward a bolder goal of logging 80 miles. This pace should feel sustainable by now and correspond to easy maths: 10 miles every 90 minutes, 20 miles every 3 hours, 40 miles for 6, etc.
I liked the fact that all events, 24, 12 and 6-hour, started at 9 am. That allowed to see a few familiar faces before the start, like George Rehmet, current President of the National RRCA (Road Running Clubs of America), and Todd Glieden stopped by. George was on the 6-hour and Todd on the 24-hour. Two other representatives from our Quicksilver Ultra Racing Team: Jim Magill, 75, on the 12 and Dan Aspromonte, 66, on the 24. With me, spreading over three age groups, albeit mature ones as we say, we'd welcome new and younger blood! ;-) Selfies by Todd and George respectively:
To my surprise for such an event, there were two youths toeing the line at the front, one teen and one much younger. As usual, they crushed it right off the bat so I settled behind, trying hard not to go faster than 8 min/mile. For some reason, the first half mile felt really easy, almost like we were flying at time. Oops, I realized what was going on after the 3rd turn getting us on the other side of the loop back toward the Presidio and Golden Gate: some serious wind coming from the Pacific! While it didn't feel too hard in the first loops, running against the wind quickly felt like a good half-mile steady climb. Quite an important change with regard to hitting my aggressive 80-mile goal, but I decided to forge ahead, actually logging many sub-9-minute miles. For one thing, I'm back to running many more training miles in the 7 to 7:30 minutes range, and a few sub 7 occasionally. Still far from the 6-minute mark but some progress nevertheless. Then I felt like my Garmin GPS was off. I had in mind 1.02 mile for the certified course lap but it felt like I was logging more on every lap. Of course, with others on the course, you can't optimize every turn, especially when some run in the opposite direction. Only after the race did I realize that the official distance was 1.0275, closer to 1.03. The difference of 1% represents only 5 seconds for a 9 min/mile pace, but they had up. Anyway, by the 10th lap, I was 3 minute below my 90-minute goal, assuming 1 mile/lap. So it was more like 4 minutes under plan. And that was in wind gusts reported to peak 35 mph throughout the day!
I still felt good and strong I'd say until 4 hours but, except for 2 bathroom stops at the somehow off course/remote porta-potty, I kept running under 9 min/mile pace until mile 38 and that got me to 40 laps in 6 hours. At this point, you may think, all good then, right? Well, not so fast (pun intended), I knew that this wasn't sustainable given all the circumstances, both physically and mentally. 80 miles was out of question, what was important was now to keep moving forward.
Still in reasonably high spirit in the early afternoon as I even attempted the famous Shiran Kochavi jump! ;-) (Photo credit, purchased, from Foggy Bay Photos). Let's be put on the record that this is an extremely rare event for me...
A highlight after this somber realization of goal miss was to see my son Greg at the corner near the start, who had stopped on his bike ride to Marin Headlands. It was 3:30 pm, 6.5 hours in the race. I waived back and passed him thinking that he will be there at the next lap and counting on him to prepare me a bowl of (instant hot water) mashed potatoes. But, 1 mile later, quite a disappointment not to see him... oops! In addition to a Vespa CV-25 pouch every 3 hours (plus 2 before the start), I had taken 3 GUs and a couple of mini can of Cokes for the first 40 miles, and was eager to get some solid food for a change but didn't want to stop for several minutes to prepare it myself.
Thankfully, I've 3 boys and Max stopped by on his bike as well. Max crewed me for (way too) many hours at the 100-mile Nationals in February and, this time, I made an explicit wish for that bowl. Which Max had ready for me on the next lap. I ate the bowl while running, pushed by the wind, that gave me a boost, and like my struggles, both physically and mentally at once! It was 5 pm, 8 hours in, mile 52.
Back from his long ride, Greg checked on me, this time at 6:30 pm (9.5 hours in, mile 60), just in time to prepare a second bowl of mashed potatoes. A bit of a boost but, with 2.5 hours left, and now way off the 9 min/mile goal with 11 or 12-minute miles, I wasn't sure what I was still fighting for.
After the 6-hour runners had left the scene and 10 hours in the race, it seemed like the field had considerably shrank on the course, but for a few stud. Here is an update, 8 hours in:
Among them was Melissa Guillen, 38, who lapped me on my 62nd lap, looking really strong. I complimented her for her pace and form and asked her which lap she was on; she replied 63, encouraged me to keep up with her but I thanked him and told her she could have the win. With 90 minutes to go, I had lost the stamina. Yet, I kept moving and jogging except on lap 65 where I walked 300 yards along Jim on his own shuffling. When I grow up, I want to shuffle that consistently and that long! At 75, Jim would end up taking 3rd Men and 6th overall with 42 laps (41.1 miles). Respect!
The last hour --for us at least, the others had 13 to go!-- was filled with gorgeous views of the sunset over the Golden Gate Bridge and the City by the Bay (I missed the best shots before grabbing my phone for the last lap).
At that point I wasn't even pushing, just logging lap after lap to kill the time if I may say, albeit a very bad thought on a timed event. After eventually picking up the pace in the last 30 minutes, I closed lap 68 with 5 minutes to spare so not enough for an extra one. At 1.0275 mile per lap, not quite 70 miles but pretty close (69.87). And 70.96 miles on my GPS, a 1.5% variance.
A few minutes later, just before Race Director, Wendell, called the 12 hours, Melissa finished one more lap, her... 69th! Since she had lapped me a couple more times after my 62nd lap, she must have not been on her 63rd. Anyway it was cool to hear from her that I had motivated her to push the envelope, sane competition!
Now, one thing that I omitted to say is that one driving force keeping me moving through the afternoon and evening was the competition with Yaz Saito who remained a few laps behind me during the whole 12 hours. At 55, he finished with 64 laps (65.8 miles), there was some competition in the M50-59 age group! Speaking of age, if the event had been sanctioned, Shirley Fee would have set an impressive W80-84 American record with her 41.1 miles, especially in such windy conditions (there isn't even one W80+ record in the National database yet; and note that the database is in kilometers, not miles).
Short of more competition and meeting my aggressive goals of both distance and pace consistency, it felt good to take the overall win. Here is a podium picture with Yaz and Melissa.
Overall, it's a 12.5% miss on the most optimistic objective. Although not proud about it, I'd attribute at least 5% to the windy conditions. Still a few percentage points to regain on the conditioning side but going in the right direction of recovery and rebuilding. Finally, yet so much to work on, especially on the leg muscles but probably on the breathing too after 1 or 2 COVID episodes (February 2020 maybe and June 2022 assuredly) and certainly on the mental/mind side too.
Hydration wise, I'm super pleased with my consistent intake, almost back to the old days with one Ultimate Direction bottle of GU2O (aka GU Energy Brew) and one bottle of water every 15 miles, complemented with one S!Caps per hour. Nutrition wise, I might have pushed the OFM (Optimized Fat Metabolism) a bit on the high side by taking only 4 GUs, 2 cups of mashed potatoes, a few pieces of watermelon and 3 mini Cokes (cute cans!). About 1,000-1,200 calories intake for a 7,000 effort, thankfully the Vespa maths filled the rest of the equation! (2 pouches before the start then 1 every 3 hours.)
Special thanks to the small but efficient group of volunteers manning the aid station throughout the day and the night, and Wendell and Leng for consistently keeping track of our laps despite the wind gusts. This place is really exposed when the wind kicks in, loved how they tilted the tents to resist the wind. Here is a video of Wendell at the (windy) office (hint: nope, this isn't on a boat! ;-) ). Not a dull life!!
That was my 179th ultra race but only 4th 12-hour (other timed events: 1 6-hour and 8 24-hour). This is really a different type of ultra running, this sport has so many variations! Not counting the twists thrown at us by the weather elements... I look forward to keeping learning on these formats... time permitting!
The most boring Relive movie I ever produced (click on the image below, or this link)!
And, to conclude, a few more pictures from Foggy Bay Photos, just to prove that I wasn't jumping at every lap otherwise... ;-). Foggy Bay has been the appropriate name for most of the run this time!
A passionate runner, international IT executive focusing on Professional Services, French-American and living in California since 1998, married and father of three boys.
