Oh man, What a race. This is by far the toughest race I have ever ran. I would rather go back and run Lost Soul then do this one again, o.k. maybe I will do this one first but Lost Soul was allot easier. There was approx. 26,680 feet of elevation change and what felt like no flat area's. Now let me tell you how it went for me.
I flew down on Thursday night with my wife, Tasha, and a friend of ours Hugh. It was a good flight and when we got to San Fran it was a nice drive out to the city of Concord. We checked in a agreed to meet early for breakfast a day of sight seeing in San Fran. So Friday we ate breakfast and then headed to the BART train for our trip into SF and to enjoy the new sights and sounds. The city was fantastic, lots of stuff to see and do and never a dull moment. The down side was it was 28 degrees that day and far warmer then I was use to. I drank lots to stay hydrated but by the end of the day I was not feeling well and just wanted to find some shade. So we had dinner at a place called Tommy's Joynt which was a few blocks out of the way but so worth it, it had great food and low prices. Then it was back onto the BART for the trip back out to Concord.
Once we were back at the hotel things went down hill for me and spent the next few hours vomiting and trying to get over the effects of heat stroke. Finally around 9:30pm I managed to crawl into bed and not have any urge to vomit anymore. Tasha was helping me out and even packed my salomon pack for racing the next day, just in case I felt better and tried racing in the morning.
When the wake up call came at 5am I was feeling better but definitely not 100%, but I thought I would at least go to the start line and see how I felt before starting.
Once I was there I was not feeling to bad so I figured I would start the race and if things went bad I could always pull out at one of the aid stations. So I headed to the start line and waited for it to begin. This was a tough race and reminded me of a mountain marathon that I ran in Spain a few years ago, the first was almost everyone started walking right at the start. The hills started within the first km and never seamed to stop for the next 50 miles. For the first 6 miles I was feeling o.k. and spent allot of time walking the hills, which was not a bad thing. At the 6 mile aid station I saw Tasha and we started the next leg of the race up to the top of Diablo and back to this aid station for a total of 4 miles. The trip up to the top was not as bad as I thought it would be and enjoyed some amazing views from the top. The decent was on a mix of trails and fire roads which made for a quick trip down and more stunning views. Tasha and I stayed together until we made it back to the next aid station which was at the 10 mile mark. I left the buffet (aid station) a few minutes after Tasha and slowly watched her pull away from me and did not see her again until the out and back section. From the 10 mile to the 24.5 mile aid points things did not go well for me and thought about pulling out a few times, but each time told myself just go to the next aid station. When I got to the 24.5 mile station it was the start of a 12.4 mile out and back section that I was not looking forward to, however it turned out to be a great part of the race for me. I started to feel better as this section had lots of shade. There was a lot of hills in this section and saw everyone who came down from Calgary, Hugh was first then Lesley, and then Tasha. At the turn around aid station the worker was telling us that the leader would be finishing in about half an hour, so I have ran about 31 miles and the leader was around the 47-48 mile point. All I could think about was how slow I was running but also happy that I was still running. The return trip was good as things were continuing to improve for me and my pace coming back was about the same as going out and there was more climbing on the way back.
I have now covered 37 miles and was looking at 3 sections of the race until I would be finished. The first was a 3.5 mile up hill slog, it was not as tough as I was expecting but felt allot longer then what it was. I was now at an aid station and spent some time there trying to regroup and get some fuel into me. I was still picking up the pace and was looking forward to finishing. I had about a mile and a half to the summit of Mt. Diablo and about half way up I ran into Tasha. She was now about 20 minutes ahead of me and I was closing the gap. I didn't stay around the summit aid station and just headed off down the trail, only 8 miles to go. Things were going real well and my pace was great until I missed a turn at the 44 mile mark and it took me about 15-20 minutes to get back on the right trail. I tried to stay positive and saw a light in front of me so I pushed on trying to catch that person. When I finally caught up to the runner it was a girl that was crawling on all 4's like a crab working her way down the trail. It was steep but I thought this was a little extreme, I mean this is a trail race with huge elevation changes. I passed another runner and then the next person I cam across was Tasha.
It was good to finally run with her again and talk about the course and the whole experience of being on one of the toughest courses we have ever ran. Tasha had some real bad blisters from all the elevation changes and had to walk most of the way back but I didn't care. I was happy to run with my wife and spend a great evening with her on a beautiful California night.
We finally made it to the finish with only 20 minutes to spare but I didn't really care about the time as with all the issues I had the day before I was just happy to have finished. One thing Tasha and I did decided was to come back and this time prepare better and show this course what we are made of.
On Sunday Hugh, Tasha and I dropped Leslie off at the BART station and then headed off to San Fran to spend a few more hours looking around around. We decided to look around China town and have lunch before heading off to the airport.
You know the saying "the world is a small place" well once again this proved true for me at the airport. I was at the gate waiting for boarding to start when I heard someone call my name. I looked around and saw the manager of my department waiting for the same flight.
Lastly I will be back to show Mt. Diablo that I can do better and going back to San Francisco will also be nice.
No comments:
Post a Comment