Distance: 20 mi (4,000 ft of elevation gain)
Finishing Time: 2 hours, 52 minutes
Place: 1st/ 26
Pre-Race
It’s the evening before the race and I’m in the CVS parking lot in Angels Camp, CA awaiting the results of a Covid strip test. Negative. I still hesitate slightly before making the 1.5 hour drive to my buddy John’s house in Modesto. My throat has been bothering me for the past 24 hours and I’ve completely lost my voice. I rationalize my decision to plan on running the 20 mile race in Napa tomorrow morning by thinking I don’t need a voice to run a race.
John carries on the conversation in the car as I occasionally grunt and whisper out a sentence or two. We arrive to our Airbnb in Santa Rosa late, around 9pm. It’s a good spot, a suite attached to the main house, and there’s even a bottle of wine awaiting our arrival on the table. John pours himself a glass and looks at me.
“No,” I whisper hoarsely. “I don’t even know if I’m racing tomorrow. I’m giving it a 50% chance, I feel much worse now than I did early today. Are you still going to run if I don’t?”
John shrugs nonchalantly. He told me in the car he hasn’t run over three miles since doing the Modesto Marathon six months ago. His real passion is disc golf but I’m happy he has agreed to come on this trip, even if I feel terrible.
The next morning I wake up feeling better, throat still scratchy but no aches and my energy feels fine. I check my watch and it reads 7:15am.
“Yo, wake up,” I call out to John. “My alarm didn’t go off.”
“Are you running?” he calls out groggily from underneath the sheets.
“Ya, I’m going to give it a go.”
I had my alarm set for 6:40am in order to give us enough time to digest breakfast before the 9am start time of the race. That has gone out the window and by the time we pick up food and coffee from a local Starbucks, it’s 8am. Still, I eat nearly a whole yogurt parfait bowl, piece of pumpkin bread, and black coffee. It goes down fine and I hope I don’t feel nauseous during the race.
Race:
There are 25 people or so at the start line for the 20 miler and the race director, Dave Horning, gives his annual colorful pre-race speech. A countdown ensues and we are off. Immediately I’m at the very front and a female runner is on my shoulder for the first few minutes. At some point she falls back off the pace and I’m running by myself. I should have chatted with her while I had the chance, I think. It could end up being a lonely run.
As I crest the climb on the initial first loop, around 700ft of gain in 2.5 miles or so, I check in with how I’m feeling. No fever, body aches, or major headaches which was my main concern. However, my legs felt dead on that initial climb. Probably a combination of both being sick and “training through” this race, meaning I haven’t tapered and my last 10 days of training have been pretty standard.
On the downhill, I began to open up my stride and it feels much, much easier to just let gravity take me down as opposed to trying to work my way up. It’s such a perfect Fall day for running these smooth, non-technical trails. Temperatures are currently hovering in the mid-40’s and I’m glad I opted for just a t-shirt, as the combination of running and sun keeps me plenty warm.
I’m trying to aggressively fuel this race with my main nutrition being two 100g bottles of carbs, and then taking on a few chews to get me to around 250g of carbs over an estimated three hour duration. The great thing about this loop course is it makes resupplying very simple, with no crew needed. We run the main loop three times and I’ve dropped a cooler with my bottles and chews and can easily grab what I need as I run by.
As I’m about to start my third lap, fifteen miles deep into the race, I check my watch which reads 2 hours, 10 minutes. I’m on track for sub 3 hours which makes me really excited. The last time I ran this race was 12 months ago and I ran it in 3 hours, 19 minutes so sub 3 hours here would be amazing. However, I start to feel pretty bad these last 5 miles, just very tired legs and overall depletion. It’s the uphill that’s killing me today, and once I crest the climb, I feel myself relax and my stride seems to smooth itself out. For the last quarter mile of the race, a smooth downhill and flat section, I’m running about 5:50 mile pace and it feels smooth.
I cross the finish line and after being handed a medal and rubber chicken for my first place finish (yes, you read that correctly), I look for John and don’t see him. I’m momentarily bummed because I think that means he must have taken off after his half marathon for a quick round of disc golf and I don’t relish the idea of waiting here. However, I walk down to where we parked the car and he’s right there, changing shoes. He sees my grin and says “Finished already?”
“Ya. Thank God.” I tell him about being stoked on my time, but also that I felt awful on that last loop, even though it ended being the fastest of my three. He tells me about his experience in the 10 miler, which included getting stuck behind a long line of slower runners on the singletrack to start the race. It sounds fairly uneventful outside of that which is generally a good thing if you’re just jumping into a race, such as he did with this one.
Reflection:
This race is neat because I’ve run it multiple times and serves as an excellent data point for growth. The first time I ran it was 18 months ago, where I ran it in 3 hours, 58 minutes. Compare that with my finishing time from today, and I’ve dropped 1 hour and 6 minutes off my time. I also ran this race 6 months ago where I finished in 3 hours, 19 minutes, meaning today I dropped 27 minutes off that performance from last year.
One of my favorite aspects of the sport is how simple growth is. It’s a simple equation of miles, miles, miles. My vast improvement in the past 18 months is very simple- I’ve consistently put in 40, 50, 60 mile weeks, week after week, ran fast, ran slow, ran in the cold, ran in the heat. Simple isn’t always easy, it can seem rather boring to go on yet another 8 mile run w/ 1,400ft of gain at 10:00 min/mile pace, but it all adds. My body has simply adapted to what it has been asked to do over and over again- run faster for longer periods of time.
Looking ahead, I’ll be finishing off my season with San Joaquin River Trail 50k on Dec 2nd. I hope to kick this cold, which writing this 4 days after the race, has stubbornly stuck around. Until next time.
