Coming into the Jackass Ginger aid station. Photo courtesy of Peter Daspit

The H.U.R.T. Trail 100 Mile.  Whew, where to begin.

In early August, 2009 I headed out to a Tiki Bar in Oakland with my buddies Nathan Yanko and Rick Gaston.  We were meeting up with the usual odd collection of local ultra runners (all of us odd) to celebrate finishes of summer 100’s and the Headlands Hundred the weekend prior.  Several of us at the bar were hoping to find out if our applications were accepted for the HURT 100, checking daily to see if the accepted runners list had been posted.   Mark Gilligan finally showed up after a drink or two, and in typical Mark fashion instantly brought the energy.  “I have good news and I have bad news” Mark yelled to everyone as he walked in, “the good news is that we got into HURT!”  We all yelled back excitedly and then Mark followed with the bad news.  “The bad news is that we actually have to run HURT!”

Fast forward to January 16, 2010.  It is shortly before 6 a.m. in Hawaii.  We are in Manoa Valley, ready to head up into the mountains that are ominously dark above us.  Some fast runners are at the front; Gary Robbins, Nathan Yanko, Dan Barger, Tracy Garneau, Darcy Africa, Bob Africa, as well as others that I did not recognize.  Up at the front Mark Gilligan continued to entertain us with jokes while several of us wished one another best of luck.  Finally at 6am the race kicked off and a line of headlamps began to illuminate their way up and out of the Nature Center in Manoa, with about 107 starters hopeful of their chances on the day.

Continue reading Running the HURT 100 – A Trail Like No Other

Heading into Avalon on Catalina Island

The Avalon Benefit 50 Mile on Catalina Island, one of the nation’s oldest 50 milers, bills itself as “one of the country’s most challenging and scenic 50-milers. No cars, no smog, just great terrain, incredible views, fascinating historical sites, a well-organized race, nice people, great food . . . and even an occasional buffalo sighting.”

After spending most of this winter churning out Yasso 800s, mile repeats, and tempo runs  to improve my marathon time at the California International Marathon (2hrs, 50 mins), the Avalon 50 sounded like the perfect antidote to my trail withdrawal.  My legs ached for softer surfaces, and life just didn’t seem quite as complete without that Thursday morning 4am buzzer, signaling another weekly Marin Headlands run with a fun, and ever-expanding group of trail-running champs (yes – the other regulars had all notched wins last season (Stinson Beach, JFK, Headlands 100, Muir Beach 50K, Rodeo Beach 50k + many more.)  Although I only had a month to train, I squeezed in a few trail-heavy 100+ mile weeks and felt fresh heading into race weekend.  Plus, even if I was to bonk miles in, the weekend was going to be fun since my dad had offered to join me and experience this ultra-running community I keep going on about.

Continue reading The Avalon Benefit 50 Mile – Big Smiles and Sore Quads on Catalina Island

Recovery

We finished up the HURT 100 this morning.  Results are being updated via the link here – HURT Results – 2010.  A huge congrats to Gary Robbins and Tracy Garneau for setting new course records for both the men’s and women’s times!.. amazing for how difficult the course is.  Nathan took 2nd with what looks like the 4th fastest time on the course ever (wow!).  I rallied hard and finished third for the men and fourth overall.  Larissa overcame a bad ankle sprain at around mile 37, got taped up, and headed back out for another 30 miles to get the 100k (crazy for how technical the course is).  The award ceremony is tomorrow night, it should be a blast.  I’ll add a full post in the coming days.  Thank you tremendously to all race volunteers and staff.

Sunrise from the Marin Headlands

Goodbye 2009.  You have been a great year.. a blur.  Looking back you were filled with memorable moments; 13 ultras, 2 marathons, incredible adventure runs.  At the start of 2009 I could not have imagined the friends I would meet, the distances I would complete, and views that I would see along the way.

At the start of 2009 I had one main goal, to try and win my age group (M 20-29) in the Pacific Coast Trail Runs “Ultra Division” and possibly even finish top-three in the overall standings.  Well the 2009 results were just posted (Here).  I did manage to finish first in my age division with a total of 73 points, and finished second in the overall standings with 53 points.  Who finished first overall?.. Nathan freakin Yanko with 54 points.  One freakin point.. what a punkass. (Ok, I cracked up laughing when I saw, waiting for the smack-talk to begin) 

2009 Race memories:

Continue reading 2009, What a year..!

View north from the summit of the South Peak of the Sandia Mountains

Being back in New Mexico this past weekend for the Christmas holiday was a great opportunity to get out on some of the local trails in the Albuquerque area.  On the Saturday after Christmas I stopped into Heart & Sole Running Store, a great local shop in Albuquerque, to see if anyone there could recommend any trails.  Robbie and the staff at Heart & Sole hooked me up with a map of the Sandia Mountains as well as recommendations on some good trails to check out depending on the snow depth in areas and the amount of climbing I was looking for.

Sunday morning I headed out towards some trailheads in the southern tip of the Elena Gallegos recreation area at the base of the Sandias.   The weather was of course colder than what I am use to living in San Francisco, so I planned on staying on the lower elevation trails, focusing on mileage vs climbing.  Well.. I apparently started out on Embudito Trail (not what I had planned) as I started climbing shortly into the run.  With a quick check of the trail map my new goal evolved to making a run for the summit of South Peak assuming I could get through any deep snow.  I was pretty excited about the change of plans

I started out on Embudito Trail at roughly 6000′ in elevation and by roughly 20 minutes into the run the trail changed from dirt to packed snow.  The foliage also began to change once I reached about 7000’, transitioning from the high desert landscape abundant in the area, to more of a high Rockies forest.  I had an absolute blast making my way up the mountain, hard-packed snow under my feet, and surrounded by beautiful forest scenery.

Continue reading Sandia Mountains South Peak Summit Run – New Mexico

Chatting with my buddy Randy pre-race. Randy convinced me to run my first marathon, and now he was about to run and finish his first 50 miler

It was finally here.  The first race that I have run twice.  I was excited about the 2009 North Face Endurance Challenge 50 Mile as it was finally a chance to see what my first full year of running and training would result in for improvements on my times.

As quick background, two years ago I was like most people who would run (err.. jog) 3-4 miles once or twice a week.  I had never run even a 1/2 marathon, let alone had heard of “ultra running.”  Somehow in late 2007 I randomly stumbled into the San Francisco North Face store during a lunch break away from the office; it could have been any normal Thursday.  There was a table set up inside the North Face store and a lady was handing out race numbers for a 50 mile/50k race that coming Saturday.  We had a quick conversation, something to the effect of:

(TNF lady) “Are you here to pick up your bib?”

(me)  “Hahh, no.  There is a 50 mile race this weekend?  How many days are people out there for?”

(TNF lady) “Just one day, runners have 14 hours for the 50 mile”

(me) “Are you kidding?  I need to see who these people are!  Do you need volunteers?”

Thus it started.  I was a volunteer at the 2007 TNF50, in awe of “these people” that could run 50 miles.

Continue reading A Gauge of Progress – My 2009 North Face Endurance 50 Miler

I can get myself up a wall. But running 50 miles?

By Randy Katz

Over the last year, it’s  been difficult for me to get my buddy Brett Rivers into the rock climbing gym since he has been spending so much time on the trails.  He tried several times to get me to trade in my climbing shoes for trail running shoes, but I was pretty reluctant.  I didn’t understand how it was possible to run marathons in multiple weekends, or run 50, even 100 miles in a stretch.  I thought he was crazy.  The mental barriers were up, but with each story Brett told and each successive race recap of his I read, they slowly came down.  I’m not sure what finally put me over the edge, but sometime in June, I signed up for my first 50 mile race in the North Face Endurance Challenge – San Francisco.  At that time, I had never even run on trail.  Fast forward to Saturday, December 5 and I was standing at the start line at 5:15AM waiting to begin the journey I had comitted to that June day.

Once the race was underway, we began our slow transition from Fort Baker to our first climb of the day at Bobcat.  Larissa Polischuk and I were running together for about 5 minutes when I remembered Nathan Yanko’s advice to me.  Begin hitting the gel before anyone else.  I went to take my first pull of the day off of my gel bot and nailed myself so hard in the mouth that I gave myself a bloody lip.  I was cracking up and told myself that it would surely not be the worst pain I felt all day.  The climb up Bobcat was uneventful.  It was so dark that I could only look straight down to point my headlamp at my feet, for fear of taking a header.  I was moving at a pretty nice clip when I had visions of my first ultra – the Muir beach 50-K which we ran only 3 weeks earlier as a training run for this big day.  I went out so fast that by mile 22, I bonked hard.  I remember asking myself at that time how the hell I would feel running another 19 miles.  This time, I still had 48 miles left.  Slow down.

Darkness persisted through the 2^nd climb of the race, this time up Miwok, and it just started to get light as I descended down to Tennessee Valley.  Perfect timing.  At this point, I had made my first friend of the run, another guy running his first 50-miler, though I never did catch his name.  He tried to make a wrong turn to head up on Fox trail, but I told him to follow me to Coastal.  I turned my headlamp off and headed up coastal to Pirates Cove where we caught one of the most spectacular views of the coastline with waves crashing in one hundred feet below.

Running in the early morning darkness. Photo courtesy of Jim Vernon

Continue reading My First 50 Miler – The North Face Endurance Challenge, by Randy Katz

The 50 Mile Course

By Edie Harbaugh

Is it easier to run 50 miles the second time? Maybe. But it’s still hard to run 50 miles. On Saturday, December 5 I lined up with my boyfriend Greg at the start of the North Face Endurable Challenge 50 Mile, more confident than I’d felt the prior two years. In 2007 we’d run the 50K, and in 2008 we’d ran the 50 Mile. This year my goals were to improve my time to between twelve and thirteen hours, and to be gracious to the volunteers and other runners. I’d joined The Endurables running club in 2008, and running with such fast runners (winners of races!) had been both humbling (wow, they are MUCH faster than me) and eye-opening. Eye-opening in that “the fast people” were so gracious to volunteers and their fellow runners. No one ever teased me about being slower (or if they did, they were way out of earshot when they did), and Brett especially seems to view a faster runner on the course not as a rival but as a potential training partner to recruit.

Our plan (analyzed to the nth degree) was simple. Walk the uphills, run the downhills and flats. The NFEC course is frontloaded with hills of the 8 “major” climbs, 5 of them were in the first 23 miles (Bobcat, Pirates Cove, Pan Toll and Matt Davis). If I could keep a good pace (but spare my legs), I hoped to cruise through the last parts of the course, picking off runners and making up time. This had worked well for us last year—we’d passed people starting at the Ridgecrest Blvd (mile 26) turnaround. I would eat a PowerBar GelBlast every 10 minutes and an S-Cap every half hour.

Continue reading Easier the 2nd Time? The North Face 50 by Edie Harbaugh

Several of us at the finish, ready to ice of in the ocean at Muir Beach

FUN.  What a fun day.  On November 14 a bunch of friends and I headed up to Muir Beach for Pacific Coast Trail Runs’ Muir Beach 50k.  There were several reasons I was excited for this race, but the two main ones were 1.) the course was on a lot of familiar trails that I run on nearly every week, however it linked up several of my favorite hard climbs in the headlands, and 2.) I had a lot of friends that would be out running one of the 4 distances to choose from.

Going into the race I just planned on running at a comfortable race pace so that I would hopefully have some legs at the end for picking up to the finish.  I had raced the Stinson Beach Trail Marathon the weekend before and ran hard so for Muir Beach I wanted to avoid quickly hammering my legs and being out of gas for some of the last climbs.  Will G. provided some good race beta during a Thursday morning run, saying that 3 hours was a good number to aim at for the first 33k.  Too far blow 3 hours and I would risk running out of energy by the end.

It was awesome to see a lot of familiar faces at the start.  All distances (50k, 33k, 17k, 11k) started together.  I knew that guys running the shorter distances were going to go out hard and there was absolutely no way that I was going to get caught up in that.  The fun thing about MB50k is that you begin climbing from the start, and with 7100′+ of climbing in the 50k there is plenty more once you complete the first climb.  From the start I settled into a comfortable pace, running with my high school French teacher Todd (Mr. O) who was entered in the 17k.  It was great catching up with Mr. O for a bit.  I continued on into Tennessee Valley, up Marincello Trail, working my way over to Alta and then SCA.

Shortly after hopping onto SCA I saw the familiar faces of Nathan Yanko, Devon Crosby-Helms, and Caitlin Smith, all of whom were out running together on a long training run.  Hmm.. I thought to myself, a typical day on trail in the headlands, but I’ll need to pick up the pace and catch up to them!  Sure enough I was able to and it was great running with some friends for a few minutes before I hopped over to the trail (Upper Fishermans?) that connects to Conzelman Road.  The aid station at Conzelman was the first that I stopped at to quickly top off my water bottle.  The guys said they thought I was in 2nd in the 50k which sounded right as I was certain that Will G. was ahead of me and was setting a strong pace.  I made my way down to Rodeo Beach, continuing on to the big climb up Coastal to Wolfback Ridge.

Continue reading The Muir Beach 50k, November 14, 2009

The Adventures of Chicken Purse took us to the Japanese Tea Gardens in Golden Gate Park the day after the race.

On November 7 Larissa, my Mom, and I headed up to Stinson Beach from San Francisco to run the Stinson Beach Trail Marathon put on by Envirosports.  I had run the 25k in 2008 as the marathon distance was canceled due to heavy rain.  The weather was perfect this year and I was excited to get back on to some of my favorite trails (Steep Ravine, Bootjack, Matt Davis).  I was also excited as my Mom was in town from New Mexico and was ready to tackle the 7 mile distance, one of the few runners in their 60’s doing so (I wont say your exact age Mom, but it is LOW 60’s) 

The fun aspect of the Stinson Beach Trail Marathon is that you literally start on the beach and then run up and over Mt. Tam before heading back up Tam from Muir Woods and eventually descend back down to the start/finish.  The trail is more technical than just saying “up and over Tam” but you get the idea.  The marathon distance has just over 4,000′ of climbing (as well as descending).

From the start I set out at a brisk personal pace, wanting to push myself as the distance was a little shorter than all but one of the races that I have run this year.  I was first through to Pantoll aid station (miles ~3 and ~11?) and shortly after the second time through Pantoll I was caught by the first 25k runner (the 25k started ~10 minutes after the marathon).  I’m not sure of his name but he was a younger guy from SoCal and was absolutely flying.  I let him pass and he said to kick up my pace and run with him for a bit.  My adrenaline took over and as soon as I took my second stride at the new pace… BAM.. I was laid out on the ground, chin in the dirt with scraped up knees and arms.  It was my hardest fall to date, luckily my Gel-Bot and SoftFlask broke my fall.  However, unlucky for the SoftFlask, it exploded, covering my right hand and arm in Gu.. awesome.

Continue reading The Stinson Beach Trail Marathon and the adventures of Chicken Purse