Gosh it's been a roller-coaster year. The thrill of qualifying for Boston at the
end of last year, a disastrous race at Boston. The thrill of running a qualifying
time at the Dipsea, and then lowering my P.R. by 12 minutes at the Double Dipsea.
And then there was today - the Skyline 50K.
It was a beautiful day and I felt well-trained and well-rested. With a time last
year of 5:09, I was hoping for maybe a 5:07 and dreaming (not realistically) about
sub-5:00. What I got was 6:12. Shit happens.
Met Richard Pon and Jane Colman before the start, and set a 10-minute P.R. by finishing
in the bathroom 10 minutes before the start. I went out controlled, traded places
back and forth with Stan Jensen and many others (moving ahead on the uphills, and
dropping back on the flats), and got to all the aid stations through halfway at times
very close to last year's. After a while my legs started cramping a bit, and between
16 and 19 I lost a good (or bad) 10 minutes. But then, disaster. Coming out of the
aid station at 19.3, I suddenly had such pain in both knees that I literally could
not run. It just came on so suddenly I don't know what happened - this had never
happened to me before, not in a race, not in training. But there it was, and 12 miles
from the finish I had to deal with it. On a loop course, I'm sure this would have
been my first ever DNF, but I didn't really have that option here.
At first I thought I couldn't even walk, but I soon realized I could, so I just pressed
on. After trudging for a mile or two, my spirits lifted a little, and I commenced
race-walking. Even so it was very discouraging as one after another the field passed
me by, although in a race this long and this small (a couple hundred entrants), it's
amazing how spread out the field gets and how rarely you *do* get passed even when
walking. After another mile or two, I realized I could run *uphill*, though not on
the flats or downhill. Needless to say this was somewhat disconcerting to those who
passed me while I was walking a flat or downhill, only to be passed back on the uphill
as I ran by. But they all soon left me behind, except for one guy who was coming
up on me with about a mile to go. At that point I commenced *serious* race-walking
for all I was worth, trying just for the hell of it to hold him off. I did it, my
one victory of the day, although the fact that I broke into a run and unleashed a
ferocious finishing kick with 0.25M to go (I had a *lot* of cardio-vascular capacity
left!) may have helped. :-)
Hung out after the race with Richard and Stan and Don (waiting for Jane), got to
meet Eric Robinson and Mark Williams, and saw both Richard *and* Mark win pairs of
trail shoes in the random drawing. Decided to leave before Jane finished - sorry,
Jane.
Now for the analysis. First off, the good part. I actually got to stop at the aid
stations and sample the food for the first time in an ultra! Love those potato chips.
:-) Now, the bad part. What went wrong? Two theories: 1) This year I did *many* more
2-2 1/2 hours runs in the three months before the race, but only two runs of 3 hours
or more; last year I did fewer total long runs but four runs in excess of 3 hours.
This would come under the "specificity of training, Jeff Galloway is right about
really long training runs" heading. 2) I've been trying a new "floating
uphill" style of running lately. I used to land very flat-footed to get a real
strong push off on steep uphills, almost leaping from foot to foot. Lately I've been
literally running uphill on my toes, never letting the heel of my foot even touch
the ground. This really gets me up hills faster, but I have a feeling it puts more
stress on my knees. This being the longest run I've done using this style, this could
have been a problem.
If I've said it once, I've said it at least twice - if you're a runner, or a triathlete,
you'd better love the training, because anything can happen in a race. I will *not*
be recalling this race fondly in years to come - it was *not* fun. Shit happened,
big time. But I *will* recall a wonderful training run I did up Black Mountain with
Mary, Lauren, and Jane, and another one up Stevens Cyn/Table Mtn/Charcoal Rd. with
Lauren and Matt. *That* was fun.
Well, that about wraps up today's non-Olympic moment.
Steve "Just call me Lloyd Bumknee" Patt
in Cupertino, CA, home of some of the world's great training runs :-)