Pure Endurance -- My 2nd SF One Day 24-Hour Race

I am convinced that the 24 hour race (and it's even gnarlier cousins the 48 and 72 hour races) is the purest form of running endurance challenge.

Generally held on small closed circuit courses, you lack the sense of going anywhere. Minimal scenery change. Progress is measured by a number, not a place, or even a time.  Such a race is guaranteed to be, at least some of the time, psychologically grueling.

Throw in inclement weather, and you can at least triple your pleasure.

photo by Toshikazu Hosaka

Before last year's PCTR San Franisco One Day, I dreamed at least twice about it beforehand.  Knowing what to expect this year, I must have had less unconscious anxiety, since I had no pre-race dreams.  Last year I worried that I wasn't training enough off hilly trails.  This year, I realized that running on completely flat surfaces was as impractical as relatively unenjoyable for someone who lives where I do.  So I stressed less.  This race was going to be a fun, challenging change of pace.

pre-start signing in, when still dry

I knew I probably went out too fast last year, hurting my overall performance (just under 118 miles).  This year I would be more controlled.  Indeed, I was able to do this from the start, making no move to fun with the front pack.  There was nothing close to heavy breathing, as I averaged about 9:30 per mile for the first hour.

Jean Pommier, running his first set time running event ever, the 12-hour race, lapped me twice that first hour.  He went on to pass me multiple times, and win that race.  his race report

There were puddles all over the course even before the first rainfall, complicating the path of each circuit since running with soaked feet that long is never advisable.  We enjoyed maybe 4 hours of pleasant dry weather, before the first rain the afternoon, while running several laps with Toshi and a couple with his fiancee Judy.  They were going to see Madame Butterfly in the city.

photogenic happy couple after Firetrails 2 weeks earlier

The rain didn't let up, so rows of chairs set up near the timing mat for a wedding were put back into a large truck.  The rain made things tougher-- I wanted it to be light while it was daytime. It helped that I still had the competitive race to spur me on.  I started gaining on the 3-5 runners ahead of me around mile (or was it lap?) 40, and by lap or mile 60 or so had assumed the lead.  (Need to finish these reports faster while this stuff is still fresh!)

Through the rest of the night the rain would start and stop, along with a wind, with gusts up to 30 mph or more.  I switched out of my black Sportiva jacket to a pseudo-water proof one (couldn't find my Gore Tex as I left home that morning, whoops).  That became soaked, I grew no less skinner and so colder.  Finally I asked for a garbage bag, which I popped over my head.  It was a bit restrictive, but did the trick.  The rain and wind would stop, I'd get warm, I'd take it off.  Off and on several times through the night.

sporting my mega-hip bag-jacket post-race

Around midnight, the increasing pain on the top of my left pinkie forced me to pit stop-- I needed to cover the blister before it wore down to the bone (my toes are exactly fat).  Maybe it took 10 minutes to tape it and switch my drenched socks, almost a lap.  Thanks for volunteer Mike for helping me out.

And yes, half my toenails are nasty anyways.

At home 2 hours post-race, my early trench foot was still both swollen yet shrivelled

Toshi ran back from downtown SF to Crissy Field to run with me my last laps.  Last year I was able to crank out a several laps at a decent pace, but unfortunately, this year the last hour or two I had lost the ability to run, so it wasn't much of a workout for him.  He wasn't really dressed for the rain and cold, so I felt bad for him, though being of tougher samurai blood than I, he said he felt fine.

On the last lap, I saw the cones on the far side of the course.  Since I knew I wasn't going to finish my last lap before time ran out, I thought I'd do the RDs a favor and pick them up and bring them in.

action photo by Toshi Hoshizaka

As wet, windy and cold as it was, Sarah called off the post-race awards ceremony, a big extended love-fest photo-op last year.  So no post-race socializing or picture taking, but I'm sure we were all relieved.   My prize schwag:

Mike Nutall, age 61 and 3rd place overall, quite impressive:

Winning is often less an expression of my talent and more a function of who doesn't show up.  Last year Suzanna Bon mega-chicked me.  This year, she skipped our local PCTR event to do a 24-hour race in Oklahoma for a 24-hour race the same weekend, and went almost 8 miles farther, gigo-chicking me (and everyone there).  Wow!

1 F Suzanna Bon             SONOMA CA           137.78      143 23:56:25 

Thanks to the RDs Sarah Spelt and Michael Popov, all the volunteers and fellow runners who braved it out there that weekend.  You make me feel more normal for still having fun!

race results

race website

last year's report

Chillin' Before Cool

I think I'm supposed to be looking over our tax packet before we send it to our tax guy, but thought I'd make a quick post. Amazing the errands and stuff around the house I can get done when I'm off AND I have a compelling reason not to go running all day. Today's reason not to run is my race tomorrow, and not the fact it's raining all day.

Finally replaced the broken seat (left) of my son's cheap-ass Lightning McQueen bicycle Santa got him from Target.

We're expecting either 1/2 or a full inch depending on how I interpret the ambiguous weather forecast. (Is the half inch expected overnight the same as, or in addition to, the half inch expected today?) Have decided to run my first race not with my Raptors, but instead with my Wildcat GTXs, as the course was probably already muddy enough to begin with. It'll be cold when we start, 36F, only getting up to 47F by my expected finish around 12:30. Gloves also packed.

Have to wake up by 4:15 tomorrow morning to drive out to Pleasanton and carpool with three of my Quicksilver teammates. Ugh. Luckily I had switched out of my 4 pm to 2 am shift I was originally scheduled to work yesterday (thanks, Steve!)

I got permission to run with the black Rho singlet for a couple trail races in the PAUSATF Ultra Grand Prix series. I can give them some points, and depending on how I do, I can get some partial entry fees refunded. Will have the singlet over a long sleeve shirt made by Greenlayer Sports, which has replaced Sugoi as the maker of the jerseys for the La Sportiva Mountain Running Team.

Different look-- green mixed in, so coincidentally matches the colors of my high school and my kids' future elementary school and probable high school.

This may be the last time I run Cool in a while. Bad timing with the beginning of T-ball season (I'm missing my son's first game), and around my wife's birthday (I'm on a strict deadline to get back so I can make dinner). I will have to run a respectable race (in this sort of thick field, will be lucky to place top 20) to restore family honor.....

Keeping My Feet Dry With the Wildcat GTX

In case you don't live out here, or haven't noticed in the news, it's been precipitating majorly here in California. Cold, relentless rain for days on end, fierce wind gusts, slippery sloppy mud all over the trails. Time to take a break from running, right?

Wrong! Time to party! After a morning shift earlier this week, it was time to let loose.


I put on a couple of layers on top, one of my shorter shorts (to the horror of my wife later-- but honestly I'd rather have less than more below when I'm getting soaked), and for the feet, my pair of Wildcat GTX. Just like the Wildcats that I wore last year at most of my longer races, but with waterproof and breathable Gore-Tex fabric. Not that I really mind getting my feet soaked on a short 2-hour run (versus wet feet for 40+ hours at last year's McNaughton 150), but it does make things less messy when I return home, or if my wife picks me up somewhere, and let's see, it makes my socks last longer.

Soon I was splashing through puddles with impunity, hopping rocks and logs over streams without fear (and with a few slips)-- all the while keeping my feet dry.

I was having so much fun, that I didn't notice it was already past 5:45 (it was dark to begin with, but it got REALLY dark). I could have taken the smoggy, rush-hour roads home, but, face it, that sucks. So I slowed the pace a little descending the narrow, steep, unmaintained single track closest to my house. This proved an excellent test of the FriXion® AT/ Impact Brake System™, as I misstepped several times, but was able to maintain upright, and not slide off the side of the trail. (This would've doubly sucked since one side drops off rather steeply into bunches of deleafed poison oak.)


But I guess not as bad as when these Pacifica apartments go off the cliff. No traction system can save these, I'm afraid. Do they actually think they can reverse massive erosion of a seaside cliff?

Back to the run-- Cool! (In fact, I went back for another sunset run the next day.) Thanks Sportiva for the shoes, and the rain gods for a deeper base for the Tahoe slopes and to stave off a California drought this summer!

Rainbow Run

Coincidentally in honor of Rajeev Patel, the Poetic Runner, whose birthday was today, a little poem about my run this afternoon:

I trusted the sun,

on my post-morning-nap run. 

Cold rain betrayed! 

but guess I got laid

by-- whoa! 

a beautiful full rainbow.

        ***

I got up after sleeping all morning after working my last of three overnight shifts in the ED. The sun was out, between balmy clouds. Hell with the forecast-- it looked like the rain had yielded a sunny afternoon. After my kids soon went down for their nap, I decided to hit more of the mud from the rain we've finally had this month.

Heading out to some nearby trails, I somehow decide that today was the long overdue day I would ignore a particular sign, and cross the gate. As if beckoning me, I found it ajar.

The rain clouds I saw to the west over the Bay during my first ascent were already moving in. I hesitated-- maybe I should just do my usual legal loop in case it started really pouring hard. Perhaps the elation of finishing my overnight shifts made me more daring. Once on the trail, I began to remember my first and last run on this trail, half a decade prior, shortly after moving back to the Bay Area.

If the trail were named the San Leandro to Fremont Trail (it's not-- I'm intentionally trying not to be too specific), I had made the mistake my first time on it of actually thinking the trail continued uninterrupted from San Leandro to Fremont. My memory of the trail was fleeting and incomplete, as if it were a half forgotten dream, and the rekindled excitement of running into the unknown drew me forward even as the sky grew dark and the wind picked up-- which wouldn't have bothered me so much had I donned more than one layer and some gloves.   Through sloppy mud I climbed out of a creek trough, then up onto a ridge, pushing to pace if only to keep warm.

Five years earlier I had encountered a herd of cattle heading out on the trail, who, being cattle, didn't think to move to the side, but kept retreating along it. I was thus forced to keep chasing them, the herd's size increasing like a snowball down a hill, while a few alpha heifers (or were they dehorned bulls?), occasionally turned around to moo angrily at me, a possible threat to their calves. Two and a half miles past the forbidden gate, the trail dead-ended in an impassable fence.  I was forced to turn around.  

The irate cattle, all hovering around, took this as a sign of capitulation on my part, and they finally figured out that because there were up to a hundred of them and only one of me, they could win.  They started coming after me I guess to teach me a lesson.  Or trample me to death. Thoughts of a news story about skinny Asian ER doc's trampled body found on an off-limits trail flashed before me.  As they continued their angry pursuit.  I was actually forced to veer off trail to escape their onslaught.

So, five years later, I felt compelled to make it again to that fence and barbed and locked gate.  Espcially since no cows were out today.  But the rain and wind were picking up.  I turtle-retracted my hands into my sleeves in an effort to warm them up.

Almost to the ridge, I saw the fence. But after making the finally ascent before reaching it, a flash of color caught my eye-- as a hole for the sun popped from the other side, the shimmering of a rainbow apppeared in the verdant canyon to the left below.  I stopped to stare, and could trace both ends-- a full rainbow.

I realized that this beat most of the rainbows I'd seen in my life.  Not to mention the added drama of inclement weather and unfamiliar surroundings, and that I was above this one looking down ...  (I looked on Google images for a rainbow photo to use here, but they all fell way short of what I enjoyed.)

At the gate, I found it had changed. No barbed wire-- instead an easily opened latch to the trail continuing beyond.  Inviting me further.  However, an hour from home, more chilly rain coming, and my kids waking up soon anyways, I decided to save the new trail for another day.

On the way back I saw the rainbow above to the right, but it was less complete, had faded and lacked the dramatic backdrop.  I had to climb up to that forbidden ridge underdressed in a cold rain to enjoy its full splendor and....get laid.