Distance: 37 Miles (6,500 ft of elevation gain)
Time: 7 hours, 13 minutes
First half of Race (miles 0-18)
It’s still dark when I pull into the parking lot at 6 am. I’m here 45 minutes before the race starts, only a 30 minute drive from my home in Bear Valley. I’m pretty amped for this race in particular, the inaugural Arnold Rim Trail 37 miler. The combination of it being local and at the tail-end of a long running season makes me want to push my limits in regards to performance/effort. I’d say I’m usually reasonably conservative for race strategy in other events, but today I plan to fly close to the sun as they say.
I collect my bib number and ask the nice volunteer how many people are signed up for the 37 mile distance. She stumbles around for the sign-in sheet and after miscounting once, it’s dark and early for everyone, tells me there are 11 people signed up for this event. There’s also a half marathon and 11k distance option (6.8 miles) happening later in the day. Two kids who are on the local middle school cross country team that I help coach are running the 11k distance, so I’m hoping to see them this afternoon.
With the remaining half hour before go time, I head back to my truck and get all my belongings in order. I have a running vest filled with snacks, two 16 oz soft-flasks of electrolytes, trekking poles, and a little towel in a side pocket. That’s all you need for 37 miles right? There will be aid stations every 6 miles, so my plan is to refill my soft-flasks with water there. This will be slightly over my longest distance ever run, having completed a 35 miler at Lake Sonoma a little over 4 months ago.
The group of us gather around race director, Greg Lanctot, who gives a colorful overview of how this event came to be. After getting the course debrief, we are off. Right from the beginning, I’m running side-by-side with another runner at the front of the pack. I ask if he’s local. “Sure am. Murphys. Where are you coming from?”
I tell him Bear Valley and he immediately asks if my name is Justin Savaso. In return, I ask if his name is Rob. We know each other from Strava, a very popular Internet service used by endurance athlete to records workouts. It also features a social media side, in which you can see other athlete’s workouts.
Rob and I chat together the first three miles or so and then what follows is a seemingly never ending game of flip-flopping. I climb a little faster on the uphill’s but he descends much faster , so we are constantly passing and being passed by each other, depending on the terrain. I’m intentionally trying to take it easier on the downhills to save my legs from the pounding, but push on the uphill’s to make up some of that time. We both come into the first aid station at Cougar Rock together, 6 miles into the race, and he doesn’t stop to grab anything, and neither do I. We’re 58 minutes into the race now and I have to remind myself to eat some food, even though I’m not hungry at all. I force down a handful of homemade trail mix, composing of nuts and a bit of dried fruit.
We begin tackling a section of the Arnold Rim Trail named Cowboy Loop, which was cleared by the Arnold Rim Trail Volunteer Association in the days leading up to the race. I’m unfamiliar with this particular section and I get my first feelings of fatigue. My legs are starting to feel a little worn and I can feel a tiredness creeping in. We finally emerge out of that section and I check my watch, which reads 2 hours into the race. We are absolutely flying for having completed 12 hilly miles in two hours. I’m slightly ahead of Rob at this point, as we come into the second aid station of the race at Sheep Ranch Road, but spend two minutes there refilling some water and grabbing half a banana. In that time spent, Rob comes flying by, not stopping for a second, and grabs the lead from me.
I know we are about to hit the San Domingo Canyon section of trail, which includes a long descent and ascent full of switchbacks. Maybe I’m thinking too far ahead as I take a false step on a downhill and feel my ankle turn. Colors start lighting off in my brain and I start jumping on my now good ankle. I take a couple of ginger steps on the one that turned, and while it feels a little funny, there’s no sharp pain. I slow down and a little more gingerly than before, continue the descent downward.
As I approach the turn-around aid station at mile 18, I’m starting to worry about my legs. I feel a pain in the outer part of my left knee, something that came up for me in an event 3 months ago, related to a tight IT band from a large increase in miles at intensity. That’s really not a good sign as I know that means most likely the second half of the race will be painful running, which will take up mental and physical energy. I stop at a few points to massage my glute which can loosen the IT band and relieve the pain, which it does, but only for 10 seconds a time before it comes back. I tell myself to just make it to the aid station/turn-around point at, mile 18, and can troubleshoot there.
I finally get there and as I arrive at the aid station, Rob is just about on his way out. He’s got a new shirt on and looks relatively fresh himself, while I’m feeling deep waves of fatigue. I made it to the helipad at mile 18 in 3 hours flat, which is way faster than I was anticipating. That’s holding 10 minute miles, which may not sound too fast, but accounting for elevation gain and loss, would bring me to a roughly 8:45 Grade Adjusted Pace miles.
Miles 18-36
Immediately heading out of the aid station, I can tell I’m in trouble. My legs are shot and at some point in the next two miles, the pain stops specifically being on the outside of my left knee and morphs through the entirety of both legs. The defining characteristic is specifically on flats and downhills, it’s very painful to run them. I can still walk fine, even power walk well, but my legs seem to just be giving a firm no on any type of running motion. It’s frustrating to be walking on much of the flats and downhills, and to realize that winning the race is slipping out of reach. I have a pity party there for a few lonely miles.
I begin to snap out of the funk, realizing I can run for about 1-2 minute sat a time and then switch to walking. So that’s what I do. I focus on getting to the next the final aid station at mile 30. When I do my spirts are lifted by the volunteers there, who are some very seasoned endurance athletes themselves. I spend a few minutes talking to Tim Hicks, the former principal at the middle school where I currently teach. Also, I talk a bit to Greg Novacek, who has completed a number of Ironman’s and shares several mutual acquaintances. After spending a lot of time in my head over these past 3 hours in particular, it’s a much needed relief to talk to some other folks for a few minutes.
As I finish the remaining 6 miles of the race, I try not to dwell too much on the reasons for the total conk in my legs over the second half of the race. There will be plenty of time for reflection once the race is over. It’d be a stretch to say I “enjoyed” these last 6 miles, but at least I stop feeling sorry for myself and finish to the best of my abilities, with a constant switching between running and hiking. I’m curious where the other runners are and how they are doing. Frankly, I’m very surprised no has overtaken me for second place. With about 2 miles left, I make it my goal to finish sub 7 hours 15 minutes, and sure enough I get to the finish line at the 7 hours, 13 minute mark.
Upon finishing, I join Rob, his wife, and a volunteer named Steve Lauterbach. Steve and I have exchanged some emails and even a phone call leading up to the race. Originally, this inaugural event was supposed to be last Spring, but due to unforeseen circumstances, was canceled and moved to this Fall. I eat a really good burger and drink two cold sparkling waters, mostly listening to the conversation around me. There’s a wealth of ultra-running experience here, as Rob has ran Western States multiple times, and even finished in the top 50 (!) in 2019. Steve has ran Quicksilver, and Tim Hicks has run Comrades in South Africa. Obviously, everyone has ran a lot more than those aforementioned races, but those are some pretty serious well-known and challenging ultras.
Final Word in Reflection:
The Good: The good is that my time from this 35.8 mile race (according to my Strava GPS) was significantly faster than my time from the 35 mile race at Lake Sonoma in May, four months earlier. My final time finishing time in this race was 7 hours, 13 minutes as opposed to 8 hours, 30 minutes at Lake Sonoma. That’s 1 hours and 17 minutes faster or a 15% increase in performance. It’s slightly imperfect as the courses are not exactly the same, but they are seemingly very similar. Using Strava data from other runners at the Lake Sonoma 55k (I personally didn’t use Strava at the time), it was the exact same distance as the Arnold Rim Trail Race (35.8 miles) with nearly the same elevation gain as the Arnold Rim Trail (approximately 6,800 ft).
The Not-So Good: The not great part of my race was the second half, in which I couldn’t run flats or downhills for longer than two minutes due to intense pain in my legs. It bodes the question, why did my legs experience so much fatigue? I have 3 hypothesis:
- I was unprepared for the specific nature of this course. As written above, this course shares many similarities with Lake Sonoma, which has been called “death by a million paper cuts”. This rather morbid description matches the Arnold Rim Trail well, as it was essentially never flat, meaning you are always going uphill or downhill. If your legs haven’t been trained to constantly shift from uphill to downhill (and vice-versa of course), they could get cooked. And I think it’s very possible my legs didn’t have that type of adaptation, as much of my training has been in the mountains of Bear Valley, where you have sustained climbs for 1,000+ft consecutively and then shift to downhill for similar distances.
- My nutrition. I was running at a fairly fast clip during the first half of the race, indicated by my Heart Rate data (average 160 BPM in first half of race) and split times. It’s possible I drained glycogen stores running at this intensity and during the race, and didn’t do anything to refill them. My nutrition strategy for this race was to “eat real food” and burn fat for fuel, meaning I took in zero fast acting carbohydrate during the race. Given the fact that my goal was to push performance, and not merely just finish, fast-acting carbohydrate may have helped with performance. There’s a ton to say here about nutrition, and I’ve had many further thoughts since the race, but I’ll leave it there for now.
- The simplest explanation is that I just went out too fast, and my legs/fitness were not prepared to maintain this aggressive pace for the course of 36 miles. This may have been compounded by my lack of stopping at aid stations in the first half of the race. The only thing that make me hesitate in bumping this to the top of the list is a recent successful 25 mile race in Almaden Hills, in which I held an 8:58 GAP over the course of 25 miles and my legs didn’t feel like crap at the end. Still, 36 miles is a lot different than 25 miles, and even though Grade Adjusted Pace factors ascent/descent, it’s possible the Arnold Rim Trail is just a harder course in comparison.
Lastly, I don’t think it was any one of these factors that solely bears 100% responsibility. It’s most likely some type of combination of these, and then other things I haven’t considered. That’s the fun of ultra running to me though- to get back to training, try new things out, and put together some more pieces of the puzzle.
