The Unknown

We ran in Charlie’s Unknown-?K race and it was just perfect: extremely neatly organized, challenging and at the same time a lot of fun. And I had a chance to see quite a few familiar faces there too.
There were only 30 runners divided into two 15-runner groups. Chaz calls it a supported group run, not a race.
I will not bore anyone here with all the details and detailed course description – just a couple of highlights.

I took off too fast – I should have put something slower or run without music for the first 3-5 miles – and Metallica’s Creeping Death is not the best pacer for the first miles of a race. But I had once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass iMichelle and Keira and I used it – even though they caught me at mile 10. They did not actually race as they are running a 100 miler right the next weekend. But when they do race I never see them on the trail, only at the finish line if I do not come there too late when they are gone already.
Mile 6: the run was so beautiful that I got caught in the moment on a rocky ridge trail and fell. I do fall from time to time but this time it was a notch worse than usual. I could still run ok, but I had scratches on my both palms, left elbow, and some scary deep and long bloody scratches on my left leg. And later on – around mile 15 – I fell on it once again, although the second fall was not that bad. Many thanks to Marisa who cleaned up the blood and dirt from the wound at the 1st Aid Station!
Mile 19 – right after the 2nd Aid Station – there was a stream crossing with some pretty unreliable wet small rolling stones. As I knew about it in advance, I planned to cross it in big white trash bags over my shoes. It almost work, but I still got wet a little bit as small stones punched wholes in the trash bags and let some water inside.
Finish – mile 33. I came there in 7 hours and 5 minutes or something like that. Just like at Mt. Disappointment and Ridgecrest I had some issues trying to find the finish line :) The food at the finish was prepared by a real gourmet chef, and was of a restaurant quality. I wish I was not so upbeat and could feel the taste more – I was just devouring it.
Overall the experience was completely wonderful. Looking forward to doing this thing next year as well!

Note: the Unknown course is 33-mile long (which is 53km) and has 6624 feet of total elevation gain.

More photos from the race:

The Unknown ?K

Greg published his recap from the race too. Greg also published his second recap with more photos.
Also check Lambert's web site with the detailed map of the course, its elevation profile and even more photos.

High Desert Recovery

We ran our standard 5K early in the morning today with Irina. And it felt even easier than usual. Less than 2 days after the race and I feel like I almost recovered already. Well at least physically, but not mentally yet. A part of me got stuck in the High Desert still running somewhere between the Wagon Wheel crossing and Pack Rats. A warning for all of those who did not do this Ridgecrest race before: beware, it is highly addictive!

By the way, I stole a couple of new watermarked pictures of Steph and me on the High Desert 50K course. They were all taken somewhere around the 1st aid station. Although the resolution is not very high, it is evident that I am high and need some professional help. I would call it High Desert overdose syndrome :)
P.S. Steph, you were right: I need to throw away my camera and buy a new one. All the photos I made turned out to be too dark for some reason - although none of them was made against the sun.

High Desert 50K at Ridgecrest

Executive Summary :)

Initially I planned on writing up a pretty quick recap from this race. But as it all happened just yesterday and I am still overwhelmed with it (and a part of me is still running on those trails unwilling to come back to the reality), the whole thing turned into something bigger than I expected. Here is a quick summary for those folks that value their personal time high enough not to go through the whole story:

High Desert 50K, December 2, 2007: Link
Place: 66 (out of 226) - Overall results
Bib: # 83
Distance: 31.1 miles / 50 km
Net Time: 5:27:49
Average Pace: 10:32 minutes/mile
Elevation Gain: about 2200 feet
Blisters: 0
Black toe nails: 0
Running Shoes: my old Asics Gel-Trail Attack II with 550 miles on them

1. The Road to Ridgecrest

Ridgecrest was supposed to become my second ultra. At least I hoped so despite all the odds. I developed a terrible cold just a week before the race. I guess these were those chilly streams in O’Neal Park, and running in wet shoes to blame for it. Feeling all sick and congested I started to contemplate whether it is reasonable at all to go to Ridgecrest feeling like that. And all of a sudden I am getting that sad email from Jess that Twin Peaks is cancelled this February. So I was thinking if I DNS Ridgecrest and will not have Twin Peaks – the two races I had been anticipating since my first ultra in August – it would leave me with just Leona Divide in April... Long story short, despite my cold I decided to go to Ridgecrest and see on the spot what it looks like, crossing my fingers and toes I will feel better.

As Ridgecrest is an over-three-hour drive from OC, we booked a hotel there. The official race hotel – Heritage Inn – was already completely booked – and I had to pursue other options. The only other 3-star hotel at Ridgecrest was Econo Lodge with some spotty reviews and low rating on Travelocity. How bad can it be if it got those three stars, – I asked myself when booking it? Well, I should have trusted those reviews in the first place and consider some of the 2-star options! The receptionist was totally unfriendly, inflexible about delaying check out for a couple of hours as they did in other places (despite the fact that the hotel was mostly empty), the lobby and the room had a look and feel of a cheap motel… The only advantage of this place was that the room was spacious and clean.

Ridgecrest looked pretty huge when we approached it and saw the city lights spread all over considerable territory. But it turned out to be mostly one-street type of a city: all the shops, hotels and restaurants are located around the China Lake Blvd, while all the other streets seem to be residential. After we (that is my dear support team – Irina and Sonya – and myself) checked in we easily found the race HQ at St. Ann’s school, where we got my bib, a goodies bag with a very cool long-sleeve race shirt with a cool tarantula picture on it, and had a carbo-load dinner over there kindly organized for the runners by the St. Ann’s perish. After that we paid a visit to the local Starbucks (we are all Starbucks addicts including Sonya) and local K-Mart where Sonya got herself a new winter jacket.

Did I mention that it was dead cold at Ridgecrest – something around 30-35F – and pretty windy too? I was really wondering back then whether I was doing the right thing participating in the race. It’s definitely my coldest run so far :)

2. The Start

Next morning at 6am sharp Stephanie and Thomas picked me up at our hotel’s lobby. I was really happy I did not have to wake up my wife and daughter that early to drive me to the start. If I were Karnazes I would probably just run up there as it is only 6 miles from the hotel, but last time I checked I had a different last name, and 50K still was a big deal for me as it is – without adding an additional 10K to it :)

The start/finish area is located at the sports complex of the local college at the city’s south foothill boundary. The morning was less windy than the evening before, but very cold. After we took the-last-still-alive pre-race pictures, I put on my headphones and listened to Apocalyptica for a while to charge myself before the race. I could not take my iPod mini with me as its battery does not last any longer than 4 hours anymore.

The race started in the morning dusk at 7am. I was wearing shorts, two technical long-sleeve shirts and gloves. It was very cold but I was hoping it should get warmer after the sunrise. Most of the runners were wearing long-sleeve shirts, jackets and/or sweaters. A lot of folks were also having on long tights under (or instead of) their shorts. There was just one tall long-haired guy (no, it was not Greg) who did not have any shirt at all. I was getting extra cold just looking at him :)


3. The First Half of the Race

I caught up Stephanie within the first 5 minutes into the race, and ran with her for quite a while. She was wearing the same brick-red race shirt as I did, black shorts and Asics shoes – again just like me. I guess we looked like twins in our matching outfits, although when I said it aloud a couple of guys noticed the Steph is a much more good-looking twin of two of us :)

We were running at an average pace of about 10:50 minutes/mile. I felt very comfortable, almost like ready for the second 50K lap after we finish the first one. The view was as spectacular as it gets. We were running through the hills in a mostly-flat valley surrounded by distant mountains lit up by morning sun.

The air was crisp and clear: no smog, no fog, almost no clouds. We could see pretty distant mountains up to hundred miles away from us. I started to get a weird feeling that we were not running but flying though those hills: if I had seen anything like that before, it was always from an airplane window.

Between the 1st and 2nd aid stations we caught up a runner who twisted her ankle just 6 miles into the race. She could barely walk and told us she was planning to DNF at the next aid station. As I was on the peak of my race excitement I felt especially sorry for her. Unfortunately I did not ask her name and do not remember her bib number – so I cannot say if she managed to continue or had to drop out from the race. There were only 4 DNFs out 351 runners, which is incredibly low!

4. The Second Half of the Race

Almost every time I am running a race I tend to perform well and burn out during the first half of it and really struggle painfully crawling to the finish line during the second half. This time I decided to really keep myself under control and run the first 15 miles conservatively. I constantly felt that urge to run faster but succeeded in ignoring it for the first half of the race reminding myself of my crippled OC Marathon and Mt. Disappointment experience :)

Around mile 14 when we hit another long uphill and everyone switched to walking, it became more difficult to trick Steph into running with me. At first it was enough to run uphill in front of her and get my camera out. Once she saw that camera she always was starting to run fast towards me either to look nice on my photos or to really beat me up for fooling around. However at some point this thing stopped working and I had to continue the rest of the way on my own – as it turned out later just a little bit ahead of Steph.

Half into the race I still felt full of energy. Although I had a couple of big up-hills to go, there was nothing you could call a “climb” in front of me. Once I imagined that it was little different than just an ordinary half marathon going forward, my fun flying-over-the-hills run ended. I got kinda competitive and started to count runners I was passing by, which kept me both entertained and motivated. By the time I crossed the finish line I counted 64 of those. I was ready to subtract from my sum anyone who would pass by me but it somehow never happened.

One of the most challenging of the runners I was chasing there turned out to be … Shelli! I was running after her on a long ascent for good 15 minutes before I managed to catch up. She looked very strong as if she were running just a 10K trot or something like that.

At some point I managed to catch that tall long-haired guy who was running without a shirt. He was #56 on my list as far as I remember. He is a much faster runner than I am but got injured and it slowed him down.

Somewhere 20 miles into the race we noticed huge puffs of black smoke in the valley. It looked like a big intense chemical fire that was put out and started again, then put out again, and so on. It was pretty far from us – at least 30 miles – but we could clearly see it. The only logical explanation I could come up with was Martian invasion – I recall similar puffs of black smoke in Wells’ War of the Worlds. But in reality it turned out to be just a bunch of tests of the local firefighters that were trying different fire retardants over different types of fuel.

5. Aid Stations

The course was extremely well marked with blue-yellow ribbons and huge white arrows. There were absolutely no crossroads or side trails where it would not be evident straight away where to go next.

The aid stations where located almost every 3 miles – there where 9 of those along the 50k course. I guess I could easily survive it not carrying any water with me at all (I had one 20oz hand bottle with Gatorade) – just like most of the folks do during road marathons.

All the aid stations where perfectly packed with drinks, food and extremely friendly volunteers. Are not volunteers always friendly during those trail races, by the way? – I bet they are, but I was so knocked out by heat and crazy climbs at Mt. Disappointment that I did not have a chance to notice that :-)

This was also the first time when I could easily eat solid food during a race. I had a bunch of salty potatoes on most of the aid stations. Plus I was using those Clif Shot Bloks too. Usually I have a problem even with gels and after mile 15 into a race (or even a long training run) I cannot eat anything anymore…

Three last aid stations had a lot of Christmas decorations and ornaments all over the bushes. One of them had a sign “Sorry, No Beer!” Another station had a couple of beer bottles on the table, but I am not completely sure they where actually serving it to runners :)

6. The Finish

The finish line was a bit confusing. You can see it and almost touch it as the sports complex is in front of you. You pull yourself together, run as fast as you can thinking it is the finish line, but then you get diverted around a stadium. All right, now you recognize the road and know exactly where the finish line is, but you are diverted again and need to run around a huge parking lot with all the cars to get to it.

Usually it gets easier if you have a GPS and know how far you might be from the finish. But it did not work for me this time – my Garmin switched off about 10 times during the race and lost about 3 miles of the course overall…

On the last stretch of the course – right before I found out I need to go around the darn parking lot – I met Irina and Sonya. Irina was happy seeing me as one piece and much earlier than expected. Sonya did not even recognize her dad at first – probably did not really come as one piece after all :)

I was not sure about my time but I knew I broke 5:30!
As it turned out afterwards my final time was 5:27:49.
Oh, did I mention that it is my PR? I was destined to PR in Ridgecrest. It was the second 50K in my life. And as my previous 50K time was a snail-like 7:55, it was not that difficult to improve it – especially at Ridgecrest.

Shelli and Steph both broke 6 hours too and finished in 05:37:16 and 05:52:53 respectively. Evidently Steph picked up too and set a new PR as well.

The race was won by Jorge Pacheco who came in 3:31:41, and there were 6 other guys after him that did the race under 4 hours.

Another great thing about the finish line was … that hot shower at the college gym. It was the first race in my life I drove away from dry and clean :)

7. The Aftermath

In terms of the aftermath this race is pretty unique too. I was running in my new Injinji socks (thanks for the great advise, Jess!). Plus I covered my feet with Bodyglide in every spot I have or used to have blisters. Whether it is the former or the latter the result is incredible. The first race I got neither black toe nails nor blisters.

In a word I had a bunch of first-ever race experiences including this longest race recap ever - and I should say you are totally nuts if you had enough patience to get up to this paragraph :)

Another thing is that I can walk today – even down stars. I am pretty sure I was running as fast as can during the second half of the race. Does it mean I am getting used to this thing and I will not be crippled for over a week after each race as I used to?

How painful an average after-race recovery should really be in order not to feel like a slacker after a race?

8. My Goals

I had three goals for this race: the secret one, which was 5h; the real one = 5:30h (I managed to beat this one); and a conservative one just in case something goes wrong = 6:30h.

Another “bonus goal” I had was to run all the up-hills and completely refrain from walking. Apart for a couple of minutes when I was sipping Gatorade from my hand bottle, I was running all the time. This is certainly not a big deal as there were no steep climbs, but still feels like an achievement.


As a conclusion I would like to add a quote I proudly stole from Sarah’s blog the other day:

"The tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach." -- Benjamin E. Mays

More pictures from the race:

High Desert 50K, 2-Dec-07

Good Times: photos from Mt.Disappointment 50K

A billion-dollar view from Mt. Wilson:
This is what Mt. Wilson looked like when I arrived there at 5:25AM

Long line to men's restroom (at the same time there was no line at all to the lady's one):

The parking lot is filling up:

Waiting for the race to start. I am the one on the very right. You can see my race cheat-sheet on my left arm:

Gary's most famous "Listen UP people!":

Gabor Kozinc and Gary's "last word" before the race:This is how it all started:Barefoot Ted McDonald (I could only say "Wow!" when I first met him at Clear Creek):Barefoot Ted's famous feet:

I never enjoy a race more than during long descends:

Eric is leading the pack:

This is Eric again and he's really enjoying the trail:

This is me. Despite low resolution you can clearly read "are we there yet?" in my eyes:

Steph is enjoying it more than I do:Genuine poison oak from our trail's whereabouts:

These photos were illegitimately stolen from Andy Kumeda’s and Badwaterbenjones' online photo albums... I am so taking my camera next time :-)

Mt. Disappointment 50K Trail Ultra Marathon

August 11, 2007: Link
Place: 79 (out of 145) - Overall results
Bib: # 131
Distance: 31.5 miles / 50.7 km
Net Time: 7:55:23
Average Pace: 15:05 minutes / mile
Elevation Gain: 5600 feet
Blisters: 5+
Black toe nails: 2
Running Shoes: North Face Arnuva 50 Boa

Mountain Disappointment race was nothing like any of those I tried before. It was definitely a way more difficult than any of my previous races. But the strange thing about it is that it is the only race when I did not promise to myself not ever do it again and quit distance running as soon as I get to the finish line. This is exactly how I felt during my half-marathons and marathons in the past – although that feeling goes away as soon as I reach the finish line. Strange thing I did not feel like that during this race. Whatever the conditions were I was actually enjoying most of the race and in any case did not curse this one while I was running.

Another remarkable thing about Mt. Disappointment is that it is the first trail ultra marathon in my life.
Yahoo!!! I am officially an ultra-runner now :-)

I arrived at the start area at around 5:25, about an hour before the start when it was still dark. The road to the start took longer than I thought it should and I even started to wonder whether I had missed the right turnout from the Angles Crest Highway to the Mt. Wilson. When I parked, there have been already a hundred cars on the lot and a lot of people with headlights in the morning dusk.

I met a number of fellow runners from Southern California, whose blogs I have been reading – many of whom are members of OC Trailrunners club: Eric, Greg, Kevin, Steph, her friend Amanda, Suzy Degazon and a few others.

After Gary’s foreword he called up a dozen of names of the people that were to start the race – these were the Marines.

First 2.5 miles went very smoothly as they were all downhill. Then we had a small uphill part and a very big and steep downhill again. That was a pure 100% fun. I was running pretty fast making big (and sometimes quite scary too) leaps across (and sometimes high above) boulders and roots on the trail. The first aid station (Red Box #1) was quite unremarkable except for the volunteers that very totally excellent – I did not refill my backpack or a bottle once during the whole race. It was all done by volunteers on every station while I was enjoying cold orange and watermelon slices.

After Red Box station we made our way on a very mild and extremely picturesque downhill trail through the woods. It was not steep enough to fly above the trail but extremely breathtaking!

When jumping on the way to the Red Box station I got a lot of dirt in my shoes, something I did not pay proper amount of attention to due to my overall over-excitement. As the result I got a burning sensation in both foot soles by mile 9 and had to ask for help at the Clear Creek aid station. They did not have any duct tape there but one of the volunteers – god bless her kind hands – helped me to clean my feet and apply bandages to my developing blisters, which really helped.

I also met a guy at the Clear Creek, who was running the whole 50K race without any shoes – barefooted. He mentioned there is a bare-foot race sometime soon and he will participate in it. Well, best of luck to him! I can hardly imagine how this guy was running at all, as many parts of the trail were completely covered with sharp rocks!

One of the least enjoyable parts of the course was the Strawberry uphill part of the trail. First of all it was an uphill, second of all my blisters started to bug me again and third of all I did a mistake when I put down the list of the aid stations with the mileage to them. I was absolutely sure we are finishing our Strawberry loop and hitting Red Box #3 station at mile 18.9. Around 18.2 mile I passed by a runner on the trail and to make him feel better mentioned that the Red Box is just around the corner and we have less than half of a mile to go to it. Little did I know back then that the Red Box was located at mile 21.2 and, we still had 3 miles to go. As I said I was expecting to hit Red Box any minute – even despite the fact that it did not feel like Red Box area as we were still too high in the mountains. I was getting more and more impatient, angry and tired. My blisters were very sore and I almost fully ran out of water.

I slowed down and started to walk again. Even on some downhills I should have been running on. A bunch of runners passed me by, including Suzy who looked pretty strong and fast. When I eventually reached the Red Box I could barely stand, and volunteers asked whether I needed anything at all, I only asked for more duct tape.

I spent at least 10 minutes at the Red Box #3 station – changed bondages on my feet, ate more watermelon (I could have eaten it in unlimited quantities, especially when it is cold and it that hot outside) and had volunteers to refill my bottles.

When I took off from the Red Box I was feeling pretty strong again and even passed by several slower runners. But heat of the day started to get its toll on me. As I was going through the last section of the road with a very mild downhill before hitting Kenyon Devore steep uphill trail, I caught myself dreaming about Kenyon Devore more and more – as there I will not have to make myself run anymore and can legitimately walk all the way to the finish, while on the downhill I felt I did not have enough excuses to switch to walking.

I made a quick nature stop, and as I was coming back to the trail out of the bushes, I scared another runner almost to death – he evidently took me for a bear :-)

The last aid station #4 at the West Fork was a lot of fun. Gabor Kozinc was one of the volunteers there and did a great job cheering the runners up. At that point we all finished a standard marathon distance of 26.2 miles. 50K runners had their last 5.2 climb (which seemed pretty insurmountable for most of us) and 50-mile runners were just half way to the finish – many of them a bit behind the schedule – probably just 30-40 minutes ahead of the cut-off time. Gabor finished Badwater this year and told us some stories from the race. He also mentioned he often drinks beer on his 50- and 100-milers. As someone doubted people would ever do that he actually got a couple of bottles of Foster's from a portable fridge to our surprise.

The last uphill stretch was not as bad as I expected. I knew it is really the last part of the race and was walking most of it anyways. The good part was most of the Kenyon-Devore trail is under the trees and sun does not really get to you as much as on the open sections of Strawberry trail or Red Box fire road. A part of Kenyon-Devore trail turned out to be pretty scary as it is completely surrounded with poison oak bushes – one wrong move (or got forbid – tipping over) and you are right in it.

At mile 26.5 I caught up with a couple of runners. They tried to step aside and make way for me to pass by, but I just waved at them and said “No way, guys!” – and was right about it, they lost me in just half a mile after that.

Around mile 27.5 I discovered that I ran out of HEED in my backpack. I was totally surprised by that as I was less than two miles away from the West Fork aid station where Gabor had refilled it. I discovered I got a leak in my water bag only later at home…

Around mile 28 I met two more runners moving uphill pretty slowly. I joined them was trailing them for a while. Soon after that Kevin Nasman (another OCTR member from Aliso Viejo) joined us and pretty soon we passed by those two guys in front of us and were walking together. I guess I would not finish in under 8 hours if Kevin did not help me during the last 2-3 miles of the race. We are talking about what he does (he is a software engineer), what I do, about old good assembler times, and things like that. It all kept my mind away from the trail and race, and thus helped me a lot to run through (well, mostly walk through, to be honest) the last miles of the course.

After we saw antennas on Mt. Wilson, Kevin suggested running and I sprinted ahead. In fact, I was running pretty slowly but it felt fairly fast to me at that point.

Finishing on Mt. Wilson was fun too. I reached the area of the parking lot and did not know what to do. I could not see arrows or standard orange trail markers or anything else that would suggest where I should go next. I reached the building where I got my bib earlier that morning and saw a bunch of runners on the patio waving to me.

“Where should I go?” – shouted I. “Where is the finish line?”
“Turn right and go around the building,” – I heard back from the patio above me.

I did go around and again did not see any signs of finish line or any other runners heading to it.
I was getting desperate – I knew that if I am going to break 8 hours I will break it by just few minutes and I was loosing time and did not even know how far I was from the finish.

“Where is it?” – shouted I again impatiently.
“Go around! It is just around the corner!”

And here it was. The finish line was actually at the entrance to the building. I put myself together and managed to run the last few yards… and finished the race under 8 hours just as I was dreaming about during the last few miles of it!

Red Box #1 -- 00:58:44 -- Mile 5.7 (4640 ft)
Clear Creek #2 -- 02:00:32 -- Mile 10.8 (3650 ft)
Red Box #3 -- 04:52:53 -- Mile 21.2 (4640 ft)
West Fork #4 -- 05:57:34 -- Mile 25.9 (3050 ft)
Finish -- 07:55:23 -- Mile 31.5 (5650 ft)

Photos from the race: http://dchechuy.blogspot.com/2007/08/good-times.html