O'Neill

Yesterday a couple of brave SCTH members – Chaz, Greg, Keira, and Kirk – decided to challenge mountain lions running through Coto de Caza and Caspers at night.

The run was supposed to be around 30 miles long and start from Charlie’s home in Ladera. I totally love night runs with a flash light and was anticipating this one for a while. But when I woke up on Saturday I had a cold and sore throat. Bummer! I still ran up to Charlie’s place, which is slightly over a mile from my home, and after that ran through O’Neill park with the rest of the gang for about an hour.

I have not been to O’Neill for a while – due to all the rains we had this year the streams widened. We had to cross a bunch of them and sure enough we got wet.
I ended up with 14 miles.

Here is Greg’s recap of their night run:
http://achtungrunner.blogspot.com/2008/05/lights-out.html

Running brain-dead at PCT50

PCT50 Trail Run: www.pct50.com
Distance: 50 miles / 80.5 km
Gun time: 11:59:42
Bib number: 99
Date: May 10, 2008

Getting there

PCT50 race took place just 3 weeks after my first 50 miler at Leona Divide.
After getting about 2.5 hours of sleep that night I woke up at 2AM and I carpooled to the race start with Marisa. I expected to catch another hour or two of sleep in the car but that plan never materialized. We talked with Marisa all the way to the Boulder Oaks campground.

When we arrived there at 4:55, it was still dark. We parked at a curb and got out of the car to pick up our packets. The next thing I remember I was in the dust by the car in the push-up position. There was a hole on the side of the road where we parked at, and I got into it. I fell now at then during the trail races, but this time I overdid myself – I managed to fall and scratch my knee and palm to blood an hour before the race began :)

And off we went

It was chilly at the start – 37F as far as I remember – who would know that the temperature will climb up to mid eighties just several hours later! It was great to see a lot of familiar faces at the start: Kevin, Jerry, Robo, Robert S, iMichielle, Keira, Jenn, Eric K, Eric Lumba, Charlie, Pam, Greg, Chris, Gabor and others.

We started off at 6AM. The first stretch – probably 0.5 mile – was pretty flat. After that we hit PCT and began our 6-mile long climb to the first aid station. The mountains around us were spectacular! At some point we saw a small river in the valley below. The river looked like a glacier in the rays of the morning sun.

Some of the rock formations looked like a bunch of huge 100ft-high tree trunks bound together. We did not have a lot of chances though to enjoy the view. I could not take my eyes of the trail even for a moment without a risk of falling on my face again. The trail was fairly technical with a lot of rocks on it.

It warmed up and I took off my gloves and long-sleeve shirt at the first aid station. I saw Pam and Greg there. Before I reached the second aid station (another long climb) I tripped and ran several yards bend down to the ground wondering if I ever manage to restore my balance or not. Eventually I fell and scratched my arm and knee. The nipple of my hand bottle was full of dirt too. So I had some rest there, washed and disinfected my scratches.

Todd’s Cabin

On my way to Todd’s Cabin I met Ben Stegner, who happened to be from our running club as well, and we spent the next hour talking about running, kids, work and other stuff.

Todd’s Cabin is the most unique and extreme aid station I ever saw. You need to turn from the trail and run downhill some 100 or 200 vertical feet to reach it. Oh, and to get back to the trail you need to run all the way up.

At Todd’s Cabin we caught up Chris, who is responsible from bringing Ben into the trail running. Chris is an 11-times Ironman finisher and a very strong runner too. When they run with Ben, they use code names instead of the real ones – John and Jennifer. They tried to explain me the reason. It had something to do with secret services and X-files. But my brain was already malfunctioning by then and I did not get the point.

I managed to keep up with these guys almost all the way to Penny Pines.

Penny Pines

The trail heading to Penny Pines goes high above the desert with a bunch of most awesome viewpoints. I guess this particular part of PCT is also called Desert View Trail.

This is when we saw the first of the head runners going back already. I recall Kevin, Jerry, Michelle and Keira, as well as several less familiar faces.

Penny Pines is the 4th and 5th aid station at the same time. You get there and run another 2+ miles to the turn-around point, and then run back to the same aid station again. I met Erik K there. He looked strong but announced he is about to DNF as he was peeing blood. Definitely a very wise decision, but we all felt sorry for Eric anyways.

Back at the Dale’s Kitchen

My run back to the Dale’s Kitchen was uneventful. I was tired, overheated and dehydrated. At the Dale’s Kitchen I met Kirk, Gabor and … someone else, but I do not remember whom (was it Paul?). I was neither lucid nor responsive. People had to ask me every question twice. One of the volunteers at aid station said that I was “brain-dead”. And it was not too far from the truth.

Gabor noticed my head is full of salt crystals. I did not eat any salt tablets – usually I suffice with PowerBar Gels – and ran out of electrolytes. They made me eat 3 tablets right at the aid station and 3 more tablets in 30 minutes after that.

Road to hell

As we left Dale’s Kitchen, I tried to keep up with Kirk and Gabor, but they lost me within the next mile after it. I was going for another mile at my own pace, but it did not take me long to realize that I am done. I could not stand this heat and this trail anymore. I could not stand running another hundred yards even downhill, and I was sick and tired of myself. I wanted to DNF immediately. The only problem with that was I still had almost 6 miles to go to the next aid station, while returning back to Dale’s Kitchen did not even occur to be an option for me.

I walked most of those 6 miles, even flat and downhill sections. It took me about 1:30 to get to Fred Canyon Road.

I felt like crap and had a bunch of flies circling around me, who either fully shared my opinion or took me for a corpse. The flies were very annoying. I could not just sit down on a boulder and have a rest without them landing on my face. I became angry, started to curse them aloud and smashed at least 3 of them on my cheeks and forehead.

But my own whining was a way worse than the flies! Why cannot I DNF right here? Why a hell the aid stations are so far apart on this bloody course? When will I get there already?

I had enough time to come up with the list of the reasons for my DNF and my performance issues. I already mentally wrote an explanation for my fellow club members in my blog and rehearsed how I am going to explain it to my wife and daughter that were waiting for me at the finish line.

To take my mind off it all, I switched from whatever music I was listening at the moment to an audio book I had with me: “Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind” (by Al Ries and Jack Trout). And the battle for my mind it was!

Last aid station

I entered the last aid station with the words: “Number 99 is down!”
- How do you feel?
- I am dead! I am quitting!

It was great to see Michelle M, Alexa and Sue who volunteered at that aid station. They sat me down, gave me some water. Someone tried to convince me I have only 6 more miles to go – mostly downhill – and plenty of time to cover them. But I already set my mind of quitting and did not want to listen another word about running any further.

One of volunteers asked me a bunch of questions about what I had to eat and drink for the last couple of hours. They gave me water, cold Coke, more water, salted potato, and Coke again.

People were trying to convince me to continue. Adam – Alexa’s boy-friend – even threatened me with a knife he used there to cut oranges. But I was pretty stubborn in my decision…

.. and then Michelle put a red bandana soaked in ice water around my neck. It was like magic – I started to feel life is coming back to me. So 7 more minutes and 2 ice-cold bandanas later I was running again.

The Finish

Thanks to Michelle, Alexa, Sue, and other volunteers who revived me at the last aid station, I did manage finish, and even break 12 hours (by mere 18 seconds though)! It took me an hour to I cover the last 6 miles and I even passed 8 runners doing that (that’s why ear buds are illegal at some races, especially when you max out the volume on Metallica and Anthrax).

I got my medal from John “El Cubano” Martinez, the RD of the PCT50, and got hugs from my wife and daughter. It felt so great to be finally done with this thing!

Besides shaking hands with everyone, there were two more things I wanted to do before leaving: try the famous Cuban roasted pork and watch Kirk to finish the race: I owed Kirk some stuff from my first aid kit. Kirk’s knee was covered with blood but he refused having it taken care of before the finish.

Kirk looked strong when he was running the last yards to the finish line. But after he crossed it, he could not stand, could not sit and could not talk for a while. A bunch of folks picked him up and dragged his body to a chair (there is no better way to say it). If I saw it before Leona, I doubt I would dare to run a 50M race this year. I was not sure back then if we should dial 911.

However now the picture of poor Kirk after finish feels more inspiring to me than anything else at PCT! I feel ashamed I wanted to DNF at the last aid station so badly! By the end of the race I seemed to be in a pretty good physical form compared to Kirk. And if Kirk did not DNF despite all his struggle, what freaking excuse did I have to do it? I did not have any problems with knees or feet (legs hurt, but nothing extraordinary), I did not have any significant blisters, I did not pee blood, I did not have any stomach issues, I did not even puke. Yup, I was short on electrolytes (my head was covered with salt), and was dehydrated too. But who freaking was not?

Anyways, they say that ultrarunning is 70% psychological and 30% physical. (Not sure about percentages, do not quote me on that.) If I could handle psychological component of it as well as our I-will-never-quit-iron-man Kirk, I would be a much better runner, and a much better person too!

More photos from the race:

PCT50 '2008

Very belated recap from El Moro

On I did my last long run before the PCT50 race at El Moro. I met there Pete and two of his friends from his triathlete club – Lisa and Julie – both IronMan finishers.

We did a short but nevertheless hilly loop of just 9 miles. We ran down to Laguna Canyon, crossed Laguna Canyon Road and climbed the infamous Stairs trail in Aliso Canyon, and then just ran all the way back.

When climbing the Stairs, I had a lot of flashbacks from those long climbs at Leona and Mt.Dis, climbs that go on and on and on, and all you want is to get to the end and look in the eyes of that sadistic RD that included that stretch of the trail into the race course.

It is like in that Russian anecdote:
Imagine Russian farmers market. People sell grains, vegetables, chickens, cattle and stuff. And there is a big very gloomy man making his way through the crowd and dragging a huge bear on a chain after him. People stop him asking if he sells bear or something. – No, I just want to find that man, who sold this bear to me last year as a hamster.

A lot of those courses remind me that hamster (when you register for a race and check the course profile from home) that all of a sudden turns out to be a huge bear when you eventually get there.

Here are some more photos from our run:

El Moro: May 4, 2008

P.S. I am still working on my recap from PCT50 race and will paste it here shortly.

Rattler in the heat

We were planning on running Los Pinos today, but I had to opt out as we had friends from another state staying over with us for a couple of days and I could not sneak out this morning. After they left I went for a shorter run at around 10AM.

Not sure about the temperature – something in 90s. As I was making my way through the hills that trim Ladera from the east, I felt pretty close to what BBQ chicken should feel on a grill. There was no wind on those hills and the heat was coming both from sun above and from heated fire road under my feet. I doubt I would survive Los Pinos if I joined Kirk, Marisa and Chris today.

I met a pretty sizable rattlesnake at the Ladera Ranch reservoir. Someone met this snake before I did, and it did not end any good for the snake. I will not beat around the bush: I hate snakes and feel much better when they are dead or caged. So I did not feel especially sorry about this guy…

I had time for only 7.5 miles today. I enjoyed the scenery but running itself was painful in the heat. Bottom line: I should find time to run in the heat more often. Otherwise the only time I run in conditions like this is a race, and it quickly wears me out…

Leona Divide 50

www.leonadivide.com

Distance: 50 miles / 80.5 km
Gun time: 10 hours 45 min
Bib number: 29

I got about 3 hours of sleep, woke up at 2am – I had really been worrying I would just ignore my four alarm clocks and miss the race – and left home at 3am.

I reached the start area at 5:20am and saw a bunch of familiar faces there before the race. The SoCal ultra-running community seems to be pretty tight: after just a couple of races I recognized at least 25 people – well, quite a few of were from our SoCal Trail Headz club (formerly known as OC Trail Runners) – but a lot of folks were the runners I remember from Unknown, Orange Curtain, Ridgecrest and Mt.Disappointment.

We ran first 13 miles on fire road and I was feeling great. But after we hit the single-track trail with those endless ups and downs I started to struggle. It was a mental thing – I guess I just freaked out about the fact that it is 50 miles and my legs were soar already, and I was out-of-breath on the up-hills. By mile 17 negative self-talk reached the point when I started to question why a hell I am doing ultras at all and whether I should just DNF. Luckily I ran next 15 miles after that with Pete from Bakersfield – conversing with him took my mind off all the negativity.

Aid station #6/8 was a lot of fun: they organized Hawaiian beach party there – men were wearing bras made of coconut halves, which looked pretty much the same as Charlie’s and Greg’s bra-style camelbacks, by the way :)

After the turn-around point at mile 35.5 I felt completely broken. My feet, legs, knees were in pain. My stomach went south. I felt pretty miserable and could only walk.

After the long downhill to the aid station #5/9 I felt better again as we had just slightly more than 7 miles to the finish. I power-walked most of the ascent to aid station #4/10 and even started passing other runners.

On the final 3-mile descent I maxed out volume of Metallica and Anthrax in my headsets and squeezed all the remaining juices I still had left in me. I really wanted to break 11 hours and was not sure how many miles I needed to run to the finish. I ended up sprinting downhill and crossed the finish line with a gun time of 10 h 45 min. This was one of the strongest finishes ever - I guess my pace for the last 200-300 yards was around 7min/mile.

After I finished I just felt sick... I did not drink much for the last 6 miles of the race and could not drink after it either. Neither could I eat. The hunger caught me two hours later and I had to stop at an In-n-Out drive-through on my way home were I devoured two double-double burgers with grilled onion and no cheese :)

Right now when I am closing my eyes I see this never-ending trail running under my feet. And I have to open my eyes each time: Damn! Is not it supposed to be over yet? Has not I finished this thing yet?

P.S. Somewhere close to the aid station #6 I met this little guy on the trail. I never saw anything like that before and thought it was a dead lizard someone had stepped on. I carefully removed him from the trail to make sure he would survive Leona Divide race. Do you know what it can be?


Here are some more photos from the race:

LD50M 2008

4620 miles, 111 days, 120 degrees and 3 men

Just read a pretty cool article about 3 guys who ran across Sahara Desert, having covered 4620 miles in 111 days: www.runnersworld.com/engle

It almost sounds like running Badwater or MDS everyday for almost 4 months in a row.


...At 5 a.m. the vehicles would rev up and the three runners would begin their journey. For the first 20 minutes, they would walk in an effort to shake off the rust. "By 5:30 we'd be running," Engle says. "Our support vehicle would go 10-K ahead, we'd catch up, have something to drink, then let it go another 10-K ahead. We repeated that process all day." Come noon the trio would take a break to eat lunch, stretch tightened muscles, and nap. "It'd often be 120 degrees in the sun," says Engle. "It was like sleeping in a sauna." From 2:30 until 9:30, the trek would continue. "Dinner was the worst," says Engle, who lost 35 pounds in the first 35 days. "Couscous and goat, couscous and goat, couscous and goat. If I ever see either again I might go into convulsions..."


www.runnersworld.com/engle

Blooming run in El Moro

El Moro… El Moro is blooming! As a matter of fact it is freaking beautiful! Bight yellow hills, bright orange poppies, etc.

We started at 5:30am: Jeff, Ryan, Marisa, Lisa, Pete, Chris and me. We did our usual 10-mile loop, and then went for a smaller second 7-mile loop in Laguna Canyon on my most favorite single-track trail. I did not initially plan to stay for the 2nd loop but I can never say no to Laguna Canyon even despite I know I will have to pay back for the beauty of this awesome downhill trail at the long uphill that follows it.

Running uphill with Ryan and Jeff is difficult. It is not even as they are pretty fast and I have hard time keeping up with them. Both of them – and Ryan in particular this morning – never stop cracking jokes. Like we noticed a big black bug on the trail, and the next thing you hear is that Ryan establishes a price fund of $10 and a pack of Hummer Gel for anyone who would eat the poor thing.

At some point we lost Jeff. I turned back and saw him standing in the middle of the trail behind us, bent to the ground not being able to stop laughing. Beware: this is Ryan’s secret weapon he uses to neutralize competitor runners trying to pass him by.

Marisa was being Marisa – there is no better way to put it. Just yesterday she completed Old Goad 50-miler, got her 2nd female finisher trophy at the finish, iced her legs a little and went for an additional 12-mile run right the same evening. And after running those 100K yesterday, she looked pretty fresh this morning!

A picture of ultra runners' ghosts at 5:25am:
Blooming El Moro:
Lisa storms another hill:
Orange poppies by the trail:
Jeff, Ryan and Lisa on the 2nd loop:
Ryan's signature photo of Jeff, me and Lisa:
Two miles to the cars, Park Rangers passed by on a truck. It got pretty hot and they asked if we were ok and did not need any water. How nice of them!
More photos:

El Moro: April 13, 2008

GoLite Sundragon review

I have been testing my new GoLite Sundragon shoes for a while.

The experiment with them seemed kinda risky at first:
1) First shoes I bought via Internet without trying them on
2) Sole with huge rubber spikes looks pretty unconventional

The thing is I met Robo at Unknown-K, who was running in those shoes and really recommended them. Just as Robo said I found them for only $30 on eBay + $11 shipping. This feels like quite a bargain considering their MSRP is $120, and I would not imagine buying shoes like that in any of specialized sports brick-&-mortar stores at a price below $90 even when on sale. So I decided to risk it.

So far so good!
My feet are extremely sensitive to inner stitches on shoes, and Sundragon shoes do not seem to have any at all.
The shoes are pretty light: 11.8oz is on the low end of the spectrum for trail running foot wear. Compare it to 13.5oz weight of Asics Trail Trabuco 10, for example.

The sizes of GoLite shoes are pretty strange. I usually buy running shoes of 10.5 size, but my Sundragon's are marked as 10-10.5. How comes? They have a PreciseFit system, which is just 2 sets of additional inlays you stick under your insoles. So the shoes I bought are 10.5, but the size can be reduced to 10.25 or 10. This is pretty cool, except that after I used the inlays, size 10 of these shoes feels still a little too big as if it were Asics' size 11.

But the main thing about these shoes is definitely the sole:
1) Long interlocking rubber claws provide the best traction on the trails I ever experienced – whether I run uphill or downhill
2) They used combination of soft and hard rubber, which ensures also good traction on wet concrete too
3) The claws adapt better to uneven surface of trail and help to stabilize your body: they somehow smooth surface unevenness

The shoes are still available for the same bargain price from Designer Athletics on eBay:
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?satitle=golite+sundragon
($30 + $11 shipping)

Tagged

I had been tagged by Olga Varlamova in this post.

Here are the rules:
1) Write your own six word memoir
2) Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want
3) Link to the person that tagged you in your post, and to the original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4) Tag at least five more blogs with links
5) Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I was puzzled for most of the weekend trying to come up with something original and funny, but meaningful at the same time.

I was puzzled for most of the weekend trying to come up with something original and funny, but meaningful at the same time. I did not manage to nail all three goals together and ended up with something that did not match my first two criteria. How original is it if the first half of it was stolen from a bumper sticker of iMichelle's car, and the second reminds memoir of Bad Ben? But how creative can you be if all you've got are just 6 words?

Anyways, here we go:
“Life is short, don't waste it!”



What I was trying to say is much better reflected in Kim's blog in here:

I will tag Jeff, Greg, Steph, Eric and Lambert.
Sorry, guys, but it is your turn now :)

The Death Star

SoCal Trail Headz (SCTH) had a big group run at the Black Star Canyon again on Saturday. This time I had enough time to run all the way to the point called Death Star. It is a little summit at the Main Divide with a huge white ball with antennas of some kind – not sure whether it is meteorological stuff or TV/radio antennas. As usual the summit was covered by a cloud blanket. As we passed the Death Star, we continued running along Main Divide for a while and pretty soon where passed by a couple of young runners from a local high school's track & field team, and few minutes after that by two more guys. The kids looked pretty fresh compared to us, and to our surprise did not carry any water bottles, despite they were running around 12 miles that day. However they had a kind of an aid station – a truck waiting for them. Probably this is the secret of running without any water.

The views were spectacular: emerald valleys and surrounded with vertical rocks and huge boulders. Back Star is becoming one of my favorite trails. And it is one of the most ideal places for group trail runs as we run all the way on fire roads which allows for running side-by-side having a little chat on the way.

This time we had two guests invited by Charlie – Shannon and Olivier, who also live in Ladera Ranch. Shannon had run her first marathon and was training for her first trail ultra – Old Goad, I guess. Not sure how many races Olivier completed before, but they both kicked out butts on the ascent. I had a difficult time trying to keep up with them, while Shannon ran up effortlessly with a very consistent pace.

Charlie and Greg, SCTH twins separated at birth, are showing off their matching grey man-bras. Charlie boasted he does not take his one off even when he goes to bed at night.

Here is the 6am group once we reached Main Divide: me, Shannon, Greg, iMichelle, Keira, Chaz, and Olivier. After so called 6am group left the Black Star trailhead (well, we left it at 6:15 or so), there were at least two more waves of SCTH runners – at 6:30 and 6:45. We met a few of them on our way back, but unfortunately still missed some including Marisa, who did not turn right on Main Divide and continued on Black Star Canyon Road in North direction towards Corona.

When I got back to the car, my Garmin was showing exactly 19 miles at an average pace of 10:01 min/mile. Greg averaged at 9 min/mile. If the weather allows I will strive to break 10 next time too – I was 2 seconds a mile too slow this time. The decent was pretty easy and fast, but deceitful at the same time – my legs ached on Saturday after run as if I just ran 50 miles.

More photos from our run:

SoCal Trail Headz at Black Star, April 5, 2008