50 miles for lunch: working hard on my training volume!

Last week I missed the 3rd event of our Mountain, Ultra Trail running Grand Prix season, the FOURmidable 50K. I used to run almost every races, using some as strong training opportunities. But it takes a lot of time to do so and, for once, I decided to go for a solo training run, literally across the Bay, without involving any driving: from home in Cupertino, to Fremont, on the other side of the Dumbarton Bridge. Not the first time, and including the familiar Shoreline Trail which I ran so many times on when ILOG had offices in Mountain View.

On this run, I was particularly proud, or at least satisfied, for not stopping my watch for the first 20 miles (that includes getting lucky with the traffic lights to cross the three main arteries in Cupertino, Stevens Creek Boulevard, De Anza Boulevard and Fremont Avenue). As I had reached Hwy 84 in East Palo Alto, I felt a sharp pain on my right pinky toe, 20 miles away from home, dang! I stopped to reposition my sock and tie my shoe tighter and thought that I'd check on an Uber drive on the other side of the bridge, that I was too close not to get the cool experience of running across the Bay.

In my 25-year running history, there must have been less than a handful of me calling home to get a ride back. Agnès was in Europe and Max has moved to the East Coast, so that wasn't an option anyway this time. As I kept thinking of quitting, the run became harder and harder. While the foot/toe was holding up and the pain had passed, I had lost the motivation to keep the 8 min/mile average pace after turning around at the pump station at the end of the bridge.

I set my mind on at least crossing back and that led me to the 50K mark, at the entrance of the Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge.

After that, I kept checking on the cost of Uber every mile or so, now stopping my watch every time. And I was on for a big confirmation: the non-linear pricing of Uber! $28.98, $24.90, $24.94, $18.98, $18.92, $12.95 getting back to Sunnyvale, $10.93 once on Homestead in Cupertino (3 miles to go), and finally $8 with less than 2 miles to cover. I don't like spending money on my runs so that got me to... keep going and finish on foot, duh!

While Garmin and Strava gave this run an honorable mark of 7 hours and 13 minutes, the total elapsed time was a more embarrassing 8:53, so long for a confidence builder. In all disclosure, I've never logged so many miles in the first 6 weeks of the year, I may overdoing it as I'm working so hard at rebuilding muscles after the 4-year hamstring tendon injury. Hard to tell if that's the right approach in this experiment of n=1, we shall see in the coming weeks and months...

Still, I felt good about being able to complete this run again: assuredly, not everybody is able to so such long and self-supported training runs. Good test and challenge, both physically and mentally. And another experience or proof point to show that endurance requires a lot of work and training. If you ever wondered if it was just natural and easy... ;-) Lot of guessing too, lots of trials and, hopefully, not too many errors!

Speaking of trial, I pushed on protein-loading right after my run with an hyper loaded omelet: 6 eggs, 2 packs of uncured pancetta, 2 cups of shredded cheese, probably totaling 80 grams of protein, phew!

And, now, from the comfort of your couch, here is a Relive flyover of that run, from South to East Bay. A great opportunity to log a good number of flat miles and superb views of the Bay.

59,438 miles in, the ultra experiment goes on!