2017 Western States - Not as Tough as I Thought

No, no, I'm not talking about the race itself.  Sure, I had heard from ultrarunners I respect that I'd already run "tougher" 100 milers in Cascade Crest and Pine to Palm.  And those races are tough, no doubt.  But Western States, the supposed "easier 100" was in no way that.  I have never had a better training block.  My diet was as good as it's ever been, I followed the Jason Koop plan of intensity earlier in the year and then had my most consistent volume and vertical ever in the two months leading in to Statesmas.   I took into account my racing over the past five years, what I had learned over four years of pacing and crewing this race, analyzing the Ultrasignup and Ultrasplits data, and I just knew I was capable and ready for a finish around twenty-seven hours. I was ready.

"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." - Mike Tyson

And then the race started.  Fifteen miles of snow and ice bridges and mud that pulled the shoes off your feet.   It wasn't just me.  All 369 runners got punched right in the mouth.  Any buffer you had against your goals, whether that was a course record, silver buckle, staying ahead of the cutoffs, or my twenty-seven hour goal was simply gone by Red Star Ridge at mile 15.8.  So I found myself in a situation I really didn't imagine, fighting the cutoffs from the start.  But I didn't stress, just like I knew I was in shape for twenty-seven hours, I knew I was tough enough to get this done.  After all, I'd never DNF'd a race.  I've fought wrecked IT bands, trashed quads, a shut down stomach, heat, mud, smoke, and the mountains themselves.  And I'd always made it to the end before the cutoffs.

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The University of Kent's Samuele Marcora has published multiple studies that show a common theme - fatigue largely isn't a muscular issue, it's a mental one.  From a December 12, 2014, New Yorker article titled What is Fatigue

"Marcora believes that this limit is probably never truly reached—that fatigue is simply a balance between effort and motivation, and that the decision to stop is a conscious choice rather than a mechanical failure......Considerations like heat, hydration, and muscle conditioning, Marcora says, “are not unreal things, but their effect is mediated by perception of effort.” In other words, they don’t force you to slow down, as happens with the failing frog muscles in the petri dish; they cause you to want to slow down—a semantic difference, perhaps, but a significant one when it comes to testing the outer margins of human capability."

I'd say 100 mile mountain runs in 100+ degree heat qualify for "testing the outer margins of human capability," especially mine.  Thanks largely to the tough conditions in the high country, my goal of a 27 hour finish, one that would have me comfortably ahead of the cutoffs the entire race, was out the window before I hit the fifteen mile mark.  I was behind the average 30-hour finisher splits all day long.  By the time I got to my first pacer, drained from puking on the climb up to Devil's Thumb and another tough climb to Michigan Bluff, I was almost exclusively walking.  I just couldn't run much, I was spent.

With my final pacer.  PC Richard Walstra

But as almost always happens, that external push from Jim got me running a bit more. "Dude, you have to run this part."  I switched pacers at Foresthill and Wally used cajoling and constant pace reminders in an effort to keep me moving faster that I wanted to.  And then Jim picked me up again at the river telling me, "you're probably going to hate me for awhile." He knew he was going to have to push me.  He negotiated, bargained, pleaded, ridiculed, distracted, joked.  Whatever it took to keep me moving faster than I wanted to.  And of course I could.  Oh I was physically fatigued, but my muscles weren't shutting down. "You can puke, but you have to walk while you do it," said Jim at one point Sunday morning near mile 90.  So instead of sitting (again) on the side of the trail, walk I did.  And then I ran, and ran a little more.

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Tim Noakes first put forth the Central Governor theory back in the early-2000s.  From an iRunFar article written by Joe Uhan:

"Noakes’s model, the Central Governor Theory, proposes that it is the brain that dictates exercise intensity and duration in order to ensure its own survival.

The brain is inherently selfish: it only cares about itself. It will do anything necessary to ensure it gets a steady flow of oxygen and sugar, and a reliable mechanism for transport. That said, any physical effort that might jeopardize those values will be tightly regulated. If not, the conscious brain might team with the body to literally run itself to death by either destroying skeletal or cardiac muscle, or by starving the nerve tissue of sugar and oxygen."

I feel like I haven't yet shown in a 100 miler that I'm tough enough on my own to overcome my brain, my Central Governor.  So while I'm extremely proud of all of my race finishes, I want to test my own mental toughness, to prove to myself I can push through.  I'm not talking about putting my health at risk, just finding a way to keep moving, keep running when my brain is trying to convince me otherwise.

So with some first-time lottery luck, a few months back I got in to the Angeles Crest 100, solo division.  No crew. No pacer.  Just me and my Central Governor, battling it out.  I'm looking forward to the fight.

Work With What You Have

It's been almost six months since I last wrote a blog post with my Firetrails 50M race report.  That's not because I haven't run any races at all.  In fact I did run another about six weeks after Firetrails, the Give n' Gobble 10K on Thanksgiving while visiting my parents in Oregon for Thanksgiving.  I had recovered pretty well and had plans to work on some "speed" (it's all relative for my slow ass) for 8-10 weeks before getting back to ultra-specific training, and I figured running a 10K as hard as I could would give me a good baseline from which to put together some interval and tempo workouts.  I had no idea how to pace this thing, so before road tripping north I did twenty minutes of "comfortably hard" running on a relatively flat road, and managed a couple of miles in the 8:50s.  So slow!  But at least now I knew where to start on race day.  I ran a mile and half to warm up, and then took off at the start right in that range, 8:53 for the first mile.  I felt pretty good so picked it up a bit, and then ran as hard as I could for the final mile (7:50 split!) and finished in 52:11, satisfied with the hard effort. A mile cool down and then back to my parent's house to begin Turkey Day festivities.


But later that day my calves were so trashed that I could barely walk, and that continued for a few more days.  I guess pushing the pace on pavement for 6 miles after only having done so for two miles in one training run wasn't such a great idea after all.  I took two days off and tried to run on the third day, and my right achilles was super sore.  I ran no more than every-other-day through December, never uphill (only hiking) and no further than eight miles at a time, as the achilles continued to bother me.  I was doing eccentric heel drop exercises, light stretching, and working the calves with a stick and my Roll Recovery R8, but progress was so frustratingly slow.  February and early March  training continued to struggle, with weeks of 27, 6, 14, 19, and 11 miles, but the achilles was slowly improving each week.  I did decide to bail on Way Too Cool 50K, missing it for the first time in four years, as I had no business trying to struggle through that for 6-7 (or more) hours.

With The Canyons 100K looming in just nine weeks I knew if I was going to have any chance to get it done as my 2017 Western States qualifier that I was going to have to get focused.  In terms of training and fitness, I was way behind where I was at this time last year heading into Quicksilver 100K around the same time.  The good news is that the Canyons qualifying time is 20 hours, so I have four more hours to work with than the 16 hour qualifying cutoff from Quicksilver last year.  With around 14,000' of gain (and loss) over 63 miles, it also doesn't look to have many (any?) flat sections:

The Canyons 100K Elevation Profile

I've run Michigan Bluff to the river while pacing Western States, and the part I haven't done is from Michigan down and up through El Dorado Canyon and then down Devil's Thumb and back up (miles 6.5 - 25 of the race) - so I know there isn't a ton of flat trail.  The good news is that I'm a better hiker than I am a runner normally, and with my training such as it's been that's unfortunately more true right now than ever.

Nine weeks, with a need to hit three specific areas - time on feet, power hiking, and toughening the quads to handle the downhills.  So I put together a plan that I hope will get me there.

Other than the down week being a little lighter than planned (just wasn't feeling great, and the point of a down week is to recover and absorb the training) I've been able to stick to it pretty well so far.  This week and next will be the peak weeks with 9-10 hours each before heading into a two week taper, with one final hard downhill workout scheduled for 10-11 days out from race day.

I'm trying to do some little things as well to get me ready - increased rolling/massage, some strength work, working almost exclusively at my standing desk, and I even got my bike fixed up and have ridden it twice for the first time in years.  And with the possibility of a warm day out there (avg of 71 but high of 92) I started sauna sessions today.

Will it be enough?  I guess I'll find out on May 7th, but I'm gaining confidence that I can get it done even if it becomes a long slow slog until after midnight to get that States qualifier.  But with the achilles injury and compressed training cycle, I'm just forced to work with what I have as I keep chasing this Western States dream.

Crewing and Spectating at Western States, and the Greatest Finish Ever

Crewing and pacing two college buddies in the 2012 and 2014 editions of the Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run has fed my obsession with this epic event, making it number one on the race bucket list.  While I'm hoping the third time is the charm this December in getting in via the lottery, I wanted to head up and be a part of the 2015 edition of the race in any way I could.  I'm all out of fraternity brothers that run 100 milers and didn't have any luck with my Bay Area network of finding a runner to help, so I was planning on either just spectating or trying to volunteer.  But about two weeks prior I threw up a post on the event Facebook page, and within an hour had a response from a UK runner that was coming to Squaw by himself, happy to have some help.  So there I was at the track in Auburn on the last Friday in June picking up my runner and heading up the mountain to Squaw.

But let's first jump to the end of the race.  From 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM and the thirty hour cutoff on Sunday has been called "The Golden Hour" and "The Greatest Hour in Ultrarunning".  And this year more than lived up to the billing.  I sat by the entrance to the Placer High School track for the last 90 minutes or so, watching the runners that had been out there through two sunrises and a full night enter the track with their pacers, crew, and families.  I found myself getting teary eyed more than once as people celebrated this amazing accomplishment on their run around two-thirds of the track to the finish.  As time wound down, legend Tim Twietmeyer came over to where a few of us were anxiously awaiting any final runners, and said that there were two runners still on the course that had a chance, with the second being 70-year old Gunhild Swanson.  Just before 10:58 AM a runner named John Corey hit the track with all of us exhorting "Go, go, go!"  About 30 seconds after him in came Gunhild, accompanied by winner Rob Krar who had gone up to Robie Point in his flip-flops to help run her in.  Those assembled were now screaming, "You gotta go, you gotta go!  Go!" Several of us ran across the infield to the finish to see John cross with 30 seconds to spare, and then Gunhild hit the finish line at 10:59:54 - SIX SECONDS TO SPARE!  The crowd exploded, strangers hugging, people crying and cheering.  Western States released a great video of it, and I captured it from my spot as well:

A moment that no one there will ever forget, to be sure.

And now back to the start for a quick recap of the prior 30+ hours......

Saturday morning saw 371 brave souls take off on the 100.2 mile journey.  I took off to Robinson Flat to meet my runner, arriving a few hours before he was scheduled to arrive to spectate and watch the race unfold.  I missed the top 10 or so men but saw the women's leaders and then about two-thirds of the field come through waiting for my runner, who struggled early with the heat and arrived just 45 minutes ahead of the cutoff.  We got him in and out of there fairly quickly, and I headed back down to Foresthill to watch the front of the race.

Foresthill is what I imagine the big European trail races to be like - people lined along both sides of the road cheering runners along, drinking beers, and ringing cowbells.  I ran into some fellow Pine-to-Palm 100 alums and posted up in a shady spot near them, and was able to see both the men's and women's leaders come through with leads they would hold all the way to Auburn.

Rob Krar on his way to Cal St. and keeping his M1 bib for 2016

After several hours at Foresthill it was off to Michigan Bluff to meet up with my runner again.  From the online tracking I could see that he was losing time to the cutoffs, so after resting for a bit in my mobile crew station, I headed down into the aid station.

Trying to stay off my feet

Michigan Bluff is another big Aid Station, and a key point as runners struggle up out of the canyon on a pretty rough climb.  As time ticked toward the cutoffs, crews and pacers anxiously awaited seeing their runners come down the fire road.

Awaiting runners at Michigan Bluff Aid Station

My runner finally came in at 9:30 PM, just 15 minutes ahead of the cutoff, and left with just 3 minutes to spare.  We decided I would start pacing him at Foresthill instead of Rucky Chucky, and I told him he had to pick things up a bit if he was going to make it.  I drove back to town and changed, filled my hydration pack, and tried to rest a bit before pacing 38 miles to the finish.  Unfortunately, as the 11:45 PM cutoff neared and with no runner in site, I knew I was all dressed up with nowhere to run.  I headed out toward Bath Road to meet him, and brought him in to the aid station about 13 minutes late, his race over at 62 miles.

The silver lining was that I was able to get back to the finish line in Auburn to catch several runners coming in sub-24.  Most notable for me was my friend Erika Lindland moving up from her 11th place finish two years ago to finishing 9th this year!  So excited for her, what a smart race she ran moving up the field and making up around 50 minutes on the women ahead of her from Foresthill to the finish.    I then took a nap in the car for a bit before heading back to the track to watch runners trickle in, all the way until that incredible final two minutes.