Race length: 20.3 mi, 3,958 elevation gain
Race Location: Bothe-Napa State Park, Calistoga CA
Finish Time: 3 hours, 19 minutes
Place: 1st/27
Exactly one year ago, I was lining up at this course for my first-ever trail race. I was just coming off backpacking the PCT for 3 months and needed a sport/activity that got me outdoors while holding a 9-5 job. What a whirlwind this past year has been! I’ve learned so much about running, hiking, and moving over long distances. How do you fuel for a long day in the mountains? How much running distance and intensity can my body handle? How do you even train for an ultra-marathon? How do you pace yourself for such a long distance come race day?
I don’t have answers for all of these questions, but I now have data points. When I first started a year ago, I wasn’t even asking many of these questions. So much has been learned by reading, talking to others, and most importantly, having my own experiences. On the last day of the Lost Coast Trip, having bad knee pain from IT-band related issues due to a huge increase in miles at intensity. Not being able to run flats/downhills for longer than 2 minutes at a time at the Arnold Rim Trail race because I ignored the lactic acid building up in my legs during the first half of the run. Those are some of the moments where the discomfort was so strong that afterwards I was forced to reflect deeper and throw out what I thought I new (because it obviously wasn’t working!)
This post will be a little different, I won’t give a full play-by-play recap of the race. I did end up dropping a clean 40 minutes from when I ran this exact race 7 months ago which is exciting. I also ran what I felt was a smart race, letting some other runners go ahead in the beginning/middle, and then grabbing the lead with 2-3 miles left. It was an overall excellent day with some great people. A 7th grader I help coach on the middle school cross country team ran the half-marathon distance and finished 3rd(!). When I passed by the runner who eventually would finish in second place, he gave me a high five and told me to “go get it!”. The colorful race director, David Horning, gave his exuberant pre-race speech that included the usual line of jokes. The course was beautiful in the Fall, with the leaves changing colors and falling onto the trail.
Outside of a local turkey trot run, I don’t plan on racing again until April or May when I’ll do my first 50 mile distance at hopefully Lake Sonoma (if I get picked in the lottery). In the meantime, I’ll be doing some runs/days in the mountains with friends, and then when the snow comes for good, I plan to cross country ski and weight lift regularly, and run only 10-20 miles a week. I’ll then pick back-up with run volume again in February, building up to the 50 miler. At least that’s the plan- until next time! 🙂
