Race length: 25.2 mi, 6,461 ft elevation ascent
Race Location: Almaden Quicksilver Park, San Jose CA
Finish Time: 4 hours, 43 minutes
Place: 1st overall/7 participants in marathon distance
Friday, 8/26/22
I check my email on Friday night at 8 P.M. and find out the race I was planning on doing this weekend, a 5 miler at Pinecrest, has been cancelled due to poor air quality. I quickly rack my brain to formulate a Plan B and see on UltraSignUp that there is a race happening tomorrow morning in the San Jose area. I think it over for a few minutes and decide to go for it, registering online for the trail marathon distance (26.2 mi). I hastily pack my things as the UTMB 100 mile race live stream plays on my computer. It’s the most renowned ultra running race in the world and the men’s race is 65 miles deep, with Jim Walmsley and Killian Jornet going toe-to-toe. Walmsley is trying to become the first American male to even win and has moved to the area of the race location, the Alps, for the past half year to train. The runners still have another 40 miles to go and the winner will be decided in the wee hours of the night.
It’s a 3 hour drive to the start of the race and I knock out 2 of the hours in the dark of the night, eventually pulling-off somewhere in the Livermore area. It’s 11:30 P.M. as I park my truck which has a well equipped sleeping set-up in the bed. I climb into the back, hoping to get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep before my alarm wakes me up at 5:45a.m. The air is mercifully cool as I step out of my truck, having it made past the Valley of Stockton/Tracy and have moved closer to the Coast.
Saturday, 8/27
To somewhat of my surprise, I sleep great albeit if it was only 6 hours. I get in the driver’s seat of my car and make the final 45 minute drive to the course, Quicksilver Park in San Jose.
When I arrive to the parking lot of the event, I park next to a Tesla that has a dent in the back and a woman stretching right outside the driver’s side. She’s very smiley and we strike up a conversation. Her name is Mary and she tells me she is signed up for the 50k (31 miles) today and is using this race as training for her first 100 miler which is happening in a month in Oregon. I respond with my own backstory of how this race was very last minute for me but I’ve been hungry to do an event, as I haven’t raced in the past 3 months despite putting in good training. Little do I know at that moment that Mary and I will spend much of the race running together.
We get a debriefing of the course from the race organizer, a man named Frank. Frank has a large chest in a shirt that looks too small, and he is constantly asking the crowd to stop talking as he gives directions for the various distances. My head is spinning as he gives specific directions for all of the different distance options, which are: 5k, 8 mi, 10k, 13.1 mi, 30k, 26.2 mi, and 50k. It seems like an insane amount of distances for an event that doesn’t seem THAT big- there are maybe 75 total runners here.
The race starts with a gnarly climb and I can hear runners gasping for air as they try to run up a very steep and long hill. I waste little time in busting out my foldable running poles and start hammering them in the ground as I move into a power hike. Using poles is probably the least cool looking thing in the sport, but it’s something I have embraced over the last few months. Leveraging my poles, I find myself hiking faster than some people who are jogging up the hill. My breathing is a little labored, but I’m not gasping and the effort feels something like a 7/10, which is about where I want to be climbing these big hills at the beginning of the race.
Chaos begins to ensue around mile 2 when, according to Frank’s pre-race instructions, we should have turned by now. There have been no colored ribbons up until this point and it’s starting to feel like something has gone wrong. Me and a group of runners at the front of the pack keep heading forward and soon enough we reach a parking lot and are greeted by Frank, who is not doing well.
“God damnit. Someone took down all the ribbon markers for the race.” After cursing whoever did this, he starts giving directions on the new route we should follow. I can’t follow what he is saying and before he’s fully finished, I turn and begin to head back to the start of the race. I figure this is going to be something of a run your own race and I can least utilize my GPS watch and the two aid stations to try to log the 26 mile distance of the marathon.
As I make it back to the start, I check my distance which reads that I’ve ran 9 miles so far. I see my friend from the morning, Mary, and we exchange a few words about the race route. She seems to have a reasonable idea of where to go and is running right around my pace. Sure enough, she points us towards a turn that I surely would have missed. We begin a long climb on the first single-trek trail of the race so far, as it has been wide dirt roads up until this point. She jogs 100% of the uphills while I split it something like 75% hike and 25% run on the uphills. Even with this difference in approach, we continue to stay at the same pace.
We arrive at another aid station around mile 15 and the heat is becoming more of a factor. It’s 11:00 A.M. and the sun is beating mercilessly down, without a cloud in the sky. At the aid station, I take several cups full of ice and pour it down my shirt and into my hat. I restock with my second serving of electrolytes and eat half a banana, a bar, and take a few handfuls of what looks to be home-baked oat balls. Everything has been sitting well in my stomach so far, **knock on wood**, and I’m taking in 400-500 calories each hour.
As I’m 100 yards out from leaving the aid station, I feel for my phone in my running vest to look at my mileage. My hand presses against my chest, missing where the phone should be. Ah shit, did I drop it somewhere back on the course? Looking for it right now, in the middle of the race, sounds very stressful and laborsome. Before I embark on that journey, I have the wherewithal to retrace my steps. I take a minute to jog back to the aid station where I just came from, and sure enough my phone is sitting right there on the table. Crisis mostly adverted.
As I begin my final 6 mile loop, there is a group of 5 people who are horseback riding on the same trails we are running. They are stationary when I turn the corner and I run around the side of them. As I pass, I hear a lady say “Is that a new sport, running with poles? I’ve never seen anything like that before in my life.” Her tone is one of genuine curiosity and puzzlement, and it makes me smile. It is pretty funny- a running race in which you use hiking poles?
My smile quickly subsides as with only 4 miles left to the finish, I feel a tight pulsing sensation in my right hamstring. It sharpens and it’s a full blown leg cramp, not something I have experienced during a race before. I try to shake it out and stretch but that only seems to make it worse. This is really not good, I think. I was having a great race and only had 3 miles left…. will I have to walk the rest of the race in?
I walk on it for a few minutes, rummaging through my pack to try to get something salty to eat. I then try running gingerly and am shocked when nothing clenches in my leg. My last stop at an aid station is right around the corner, and they have electrolytes there which I pour into my soft flask. I also eat half a banana and hope the potassium from the banana and electrolytes gets me to the finish safely.
All systems are firing as I run the last few miles of the race and I think of how lucky I got to avoid the catastrophe of bad cramping. As I make the final turn into the finish, I glance down at my mileage recording for the race which reads 25.2, leaving me 1 mile short of the marathon distance (26.2 mi). As I make my way into the finish line, I immediately pass this information along to the race volunteer who is in-charge of the timing chips.
“Ah, don’t worry about it,” she tells me. “These trail races are never exact, you’re good.”
I’m a little uneasy because someone else competing in my distance could easily end up running further in the mass confusion of the course. I don’t think anyone has been close to me in the marathon distance, as the only other runner who been keeping pace is Mary, who is doing the 50k distance (31 miles). Speaking of her, she comes into the aid station/finish line where I am, still having another 5 miles to go. I’ve been standing around for 2 or 3 minutes after finishing the race and am still feeling decent. I sympathize with her as it sounds like semi-hell to go back out in the heat and do another 5 miles alone, which is what she still has, so I offer to run out and pace her for a few miles. She takes my offer, and so I leave my running vest and poles behind, and start to jog out with her. This time we make real conversation for the first time as we run, and I pick her brain about the 100 mile race she has coming up in a month. She gives me a bit of her background, which is as a road runner and she ran the Boston marathon last year. She said she switched to trail running as injuries started to add up and she suspects running on the road played a role.
We get to a turn-off and I tell her I’m going to head back to the start while she has a little further to go before turning back. She has told me that she is planning another 16 mile run tomorrow, which will be some of her final preparations for the 100 miler in a month. It’s a little ludicrous she’s running 16 miles tomorrow considering she ran a 31 miler race today, but hey running a 100 mile race may not be a completely sane proposition in the first place.
Aftermath:
A few days after the race, race participants received an email from Frank which stated that the course was vandalized by a “known” suspect who had a falling-out with the organization recently. Frank was nice enough to offer everyone a free race credit for the disorganization of the race on Saturday, which was clearly outside of his control. I did think it was noteworthy and a nice gesture by him to reach out to us.
