Sunday, July 29, 2012

Mountain Repeats / Monsoon in the Face

Hill repeats are a large part of a runners training and are made to build speed and endurance. They generally involve running up a hill that's about 300 feet multiple times. This results in tired but improved runners. Ultra training ends up taking this to the next level. Today some of us went for some mountain repeats

The Santa Rita Mountains are about 60 minutes south of Tucson and are home to one awesome / brutal mountain, Mt Wrightson. The trail up Wrightson is 5 miles long and involves 4000 ft of elevation. Korey, Mike Duer, Dallas, Chris and I all met up in Madera Canyon at 6 am with the intent of doing multiple ascents of the mountain. I have run up this route once before for my first run with TTR, it was brutal and I wanted another shot... this was it.

We all started up the trail, Korey and Mike shot ahead and a long day of climbing began. I stayed with Dallas for about 3 miles but he pulled away too. The top of the mountain was socked in but they were nice white fluffy clouds so I was excited to run through them. I hit switchback city and powered my way up to the Baldy Saddle. I ran up along the ridge through the clouds and made my way to the summit. The others passed me on the way down. The view of the summit was really cool since I was above the clouds. I knew I wanted to do another climb so I only stayed about 2 minutes, ate some Accel Gel, drank some water and started back down. I was happy and feeling good and way ahead of my previous time. An uneventful run down brought me into Madera Canyon again after 3:10, a 30 minute improvement.

I refueled grabbing a turkey/avacado wrap and a coke, refilled my water and got some more Gu and started back up. Looking up at the summit the clouds were getting thicker, I knew I probably wouldn't make it to the top before some weather rolled in so I resigned to only making it back to the Baldy Saddle again. The first two miles were brutal and humid and I felt like crap. I pushed through and ended up really enjoying the second part of the climb. There were a few light rain showers but they only lasted for about 2 minutes each.

At the saddle I looked around and the clouds were starting to get dark. This confirmed my decision to turn around. I figured with about 4 miles back to the canyon I could hopefully get down before the rain started since I had made good down hill time before.....this was WAY wrong. I got down through the crazy switch backs (~1 mile) and it promptly started to rain  monsoon. This slowed me way down...the trail was pretty much turned into little rivers which annoyingly covered up all the rocks....I decided not to push speed and just walk it in....getting a sprained ankle would be bad....

The rain was cold....I trudged along....my foot started to hurt..... other than that I felt great.... plenty of energy.... Chris had passed me on his second time up and passed me again on the way down, he seemed pretty adept at running through the rain soaked trail. He stopped and lent me a goretex vest and walked with me for a bit then took off to get down off the mountain. The vest warmed me up and I walked/jogged the rest of the way in..... I got back to the parking lot thoroughly soaked 3:50 after I started up for the second ascent....this is really slow considering I skipped the final summit part.

This run kicked my butt.....but in a good way...overall I got more than 7 hours under foot, great training for Flag! Also the total elevation gain/loss was 7500/7500 which is just short of the total gain/loss at Flag! So I figure if I can do that in less than half the distance I will be ok! Overall a good day...well except for the Monsoon in the face.

There was a little bit of climbing today!



Thursday, July 19, 2012

Cuyamaca 3 Peaks.....Lots of Climbing...Slight Breakdown....100% Awesome


The Cuyamaca Three Peaks 50k is a small mountain Ultra located just outside of San Diego in Cuyamaca Rancho State Park. The course boasts over 6000 ft of climb and is just within range to get to by car. This makes it the perfect place to go for a race during the hot hot Arizona summer. I headed out Friday night and camped in my car about 2 miles from the start the night before the race. Some people might say that camping in your car is weird, but, it is cheap, it lets you stay close to the start line, and my Outback is exactly the right size if you put the back seat down…so it was great. Sunset the night before the race was beautiful and after the sun went down the stars were out in force. In the past I have almost always been nervous the night before a race. In this case I wasn’t. I knew I had trained hard but most importantly I had finished a 50 miler before so 50k just didn’t seem as daunting. I knew whatever the course threw at me I would be ready and be able to finish. Anyway I had talked my buddy Korey into running this race...Korey is a speed demon and we both knew he was going to do really well. I love it when I know other people at the race it makes it more fun....even if they are miles ahead of you!

I'm stoked lets go!

Stonewall Mountain 1 (0-6.5 Miles)
The race started out at a pretty good pace as the sun was rising. We looped out around the lake past a bunch of horse stables and toward the back side of Stonewall Peak. We started climbing the peak, everyone started to slow down a little bit as we climbed up. The girl in front of me told me to pass her whenever I was ready but I told her “I don’t want to do anything stupid this early”. This turned out to be a great choice as the current pace ended up being perfect. After climbing the peak there was a great run down a series of switchbacks to the first aid station at the Paso Picacho Camp Ground at about 7 miles. I grabbed some food and then took off back into the woods.
Middle Peak (6.5-13 Miles)
The next section started out pretty flat but pretty quickly started the climb up and around middle peak. One or two people passed me here but I felt like my pace was right. I also remembered that we still had over 20 miles to go so I decided to just keep it nice and steady. The climb up the peak was almost all single track mostly through some awesome tall grass. This section of the trail was beautiful and it was still nice and cool. After the climb the course turned down a fire road for a nice easy descent back toward aid station two which was located at the start. On the way down I saw my buddy Korey coming back up I yelled out to him that he was in second place and to keep it up. At the aid station I grabbed some more food and a little ginger ale to calm my stomach down. The volunteers helped me refill my water pack which was awesome because even though we were only 13 miles in I had already drained it. I had looked at the next section on the course map earlier in the week so I knew what was coming and I braced myself.
As you can see 13-19 is a bit of a climb


Middle Peak (Again) then Cuyamaca Peak (13-19 Miles)
I’ll just be up front about the next section. It was hard, it was hot and it took a lot out of me. After aid station 2 we turned around and re-climbed middle peak up the fire road. The sun was finally out in force, so this area was hot, and my stomach was not co-operating. At the top there was a short descent and then we were all faced with the daunting last climb of the day to the top of Cuyamaca Peak.  The trail up the peak is pretty rugged and due to burns in the past is fairly exposed. Me and Jeff (who had been running with me since about mid way up middle peak) slowly made our way to the top. It seemed like this trail kept getting steeper. About half a mile from the peak the trail dumped out onto a road which just progressively got steeper.
We finally got into aid station three (19 miles) at the top of the peak. I was tired but this aid station was like a shot of adrenaline. The aid station was manned by women in bikinis and they had fresh strawberries, watermelon, and ice pops.  I’ll admit up front (and if you ever run an ultra with me you’ll find out) that I act like a complete idiot at aid stations. I’m always excited by the food and the cold drinks.  I also usually end up calling the aid station workers “My best friends ever” or “The coolest people in the world” or something like that. In this case since we were over half way through this was my first chance to drink Mountain Dew of the day (In general, I have a rule that I don’t drink caffeine during the first half of the race).

Life giving frozen goodness!

 I drank two cups of mountain dew, ate a mountain of strawberries some watermelon….some more food that I don’t remember…there was also a bucket of ice water and I may have dunked my head in it….it was wonderful….everyone laughed at how excited I was. Anyway after aid station goodness I headed out with another full water pack as the climb had depleted mine.
Down to Cold Spring (19-26 miles)
The next section of the course was almost entirely downhill….yes…..it was great. We all bombed down the hill for the first couple miles and everyone who I ended the climb with eventually spread out again. Three miles into the section it flattened out a little bit and I started to hit the wall. I slowed down and got passed by about four people. I worked through the wall but it was a little hard. At one point I was going down some single track that was overgrown and brushed a plant out of my way….it was totally covered in nettles….it was awful….I swore….but luckily about 5 minutes later I broke through the wall and started running again. I passed some park rangers on horses on the way down the trail, flashed the hang loose sign to some guy taking pictures and rolled into aid station 4 at like 26 miles.
I got a band aid for my nettle sting from the plant, ate more food, refilled my water pack (empty again), grabbed a couple more GU’s and headed out.
Cold Spring to Finish
The next couple miles were a slow uphill section. I decided to go for a 7 hour goal and I knew I had plenty of time so I decided to take the uphill section slow, knowing that the last 3 miles were downhill or flat and I’d be able to run. My thought was if I saved my energy I’d have enough energy left to run it in strong to the end. Anyway a good deal of walking up hill here. For such small hills they were really tough, I was physically and emotionally drained and just didn’t want to climb anymore. I’m not ashamed to say that I just lost it for just a minute or two. In past races when I have come close to breaking down like this there has always been someone around, but this time I was all by myself so I just let it out (I totally cried a little...so what). After a few minutes I gathered myself up and pushed forward as the hilly section was ending.  After I hit the top of the hills I finally started running again. I could see a couple people out in the distance and my competitive side kicked in. I knew they had passed me while I was hitting the wall and I really wanted to gain on them again. I eventually passed all four people who had passed me earlier and ran it in toward the end. One runner did pass me in this stretch, but he really was killing it so good for him! The trail looped back around the lack in reverse of the route at the start and in no time I popped out onto the road and ran it into the finish area closing out my race in 6 hours 52 minutes placing 27 out of 84. Korey had finished long ago (coming in fourth) but he and his wife held up at the finish line and cheered me in. Afterwards I drank like 3 bottles of water and ate a bunch of food to get my energy back. Overall I felt pretty good considering I had just knocked down a tough mountain 50k.


I’m really happy with how my race turned out, while I’d always like to be faster I kept a good smart pace and for the most part didn’t pass or get passed by many people….This usually means you aren’t doing anything stupid! I’ll remember a lot of things about this race, the awesome sunrise and the breeze blowing on me running through the tall grass. I’ll remember how happy I felt to be out running in the mountains and how liberating it was to push through the hard parts of this race. After the race I hung out for a bit with Korey and his wife, they are great people. That night I drove back as far as Yuma before getting a hotel and crashing. It was really a great weekend….I would totally run this race again.