2022 Advanced Racing Thread (Read 497 times)

Wow Oleg that sounds hard-core. You are a very strong minded person and that got you through.

Cal- Well Done!!  Ultras and Iron man's are a little beyond my comprehension but especially when in the heat like that.  Your story about scaring some hikers made me laugh!  I was trying to complete a workout the other day into a 25 MPH headwind and started swearing in my head only to realize it was out loud!  I quickly looked around and was relieved to see I was solo.  Are you done with ultra distances for a while?

Cal - yep, confirmed I will never run an ultra. That sounds horrible. Well done!

Steve - ha that was just more a little poke at Cal for saying he doesn't understand secondary goals! I need that secondary goal as "just work as hard as you can" doesn't seem to work with me. It's not about me patting myself on the back for getting the secondary goal. But with weather like this, the goal banding is much wider. I find it very hard in these hot weather races though to take it easy in the first few miles as it's going to feel way too easy, but you know you have to so you don't melt down in the last half.

Darkwave - that's funny you think that about board games and running: I actually think the exact opposite! Some things that make people on this board successful, like planning, metric analysis, etc. are what go well with board games.

Zebano - same thing with my family: one of my sisters liked games, I loved them, and one probably hasn't played a single board game since she was about 7 years old. Funny how genetics work!

Cal-That's a seriously impressive race,well done.

RP-Good of you to pace someone you don't know,how far will you be pacing them for?

Started running again this week and I've spent some time getting my plan ready for the summer.Looking forward to getting stuck in to it.

Thanks guys! As always, during a race, a thought about this forum came up a few times and you definitely don't want to get a reputation of a person who gives up often enough

Cal - That sounds like most every ultra story I've heard. Things start easy, then they get absurdly tough and somehow you rally. That heat sounds absolutely miserable IMO kudos on punching your ticket.

 

I'm curious what recovery will be like for you. I've done one ultra and it felt like months before I was running normally again.

I was actually prepared in some sense for this race - I ran Mt Diablo (3500ft elevation gain) 3 weeks in a row before the race. I knew I was prepared when I was passing some runners on downhills between miles 40 - 50 - last years my quads were dead and hurting at that point, but I was trying to nail downhills back then. Also, maybe Mt.Diablo run the week before the race was unnecessary and my legs, though, feeling OK, might not be able to recover as needed. As for recovery - I feel totally fine now, was thinking about running yesterday and today, but decided to give my body a little bit more rest - just in case - will see how it goes - have big plans for summer .

Cal - yep, confirmed I will never run an ultra. That sounds horrible. Well done!

I think there is something weird about a relationship between a runner and ultra distances. Obviously, this stuff works differently for everybody, we all are different individuals. I am not an ultra-runner in any sense of that word - I mostly run one 100K per year, you cannot be called a fan of ultra if you run only once per year and not even ran 100 miles once. And I started to run once only for one reason - to qualify for Western States lottery. But... There is something, at least for me, in running something like 100K (not road race) with elevation. Something that makes you stop hating the experience a few days after you hated it as a most horrible thing ever. Something like overcoming, an ability to fight a temptation to quit due to objective reasons - pain with each step, hurt in all parts of your body, super-tiredness. Getting to the end of it and then realizing it few days later... Honestly, it makes running next ultra more tolerable and sometimes even missing that experience - even as terrible as it was Hard to explain, really. I am glad I tried it - at least my opinion is viable based on real experience. Until you try it, you can't really have that viable opinion (but not 50K - 50K is not enough to get THAT experience, in all my cases the main "fun" stuff starts to show up after mile 35-40).

Cal States is different, to a point. If you get in I'll help you through it. The canyons are hot as fuck from what I've heard (111F and humid) so it is advices to lay down in the river crossings to cool off for a long time. It drops the core body temp. As for the temp on race day, it reminds me of Revel Las Vegas. Miserable. I'm not looking forward to my 50 miler this summer. It is always hot and has lots of climbing. I hate climbing. Even if I'm good at downhill running. So where there is a will there is a way and you know I won't tolerate bullshit attitude if I'm pacing you on race day at States.  I've actually volunteered myself to pace an unknown runner from the United Kingdom this year because I enjoy it.

 

Oh and there was someone who missed their WSER qualifier by 43 seconds. sucks for them.

You can actually say I ran Western States course in all entirety - I went to Training Camp in May 2015. Ran it in 3 days - so, I know what the course is about. Plus, I ran The Canyons 100K in 2019 - which is a course of 15.5 miles (15.5 x 4) to and from Foresthill over the WSER course. I know that many miles down from Foresthill are extremely runnable. But it is still 100 miles. And my goal many years ago when I started was to get Silver buckle - means running under 24 hours - means, running the whole distance at 14:30 avg pace. Considering that I just ran 100K at 15 minutes pace, that task looks really really challenging.

I ran with that guy, who missed the 16 hours limit by 43 seconds, for quite awhile during the race. We talked, he is originally from Germany. It's another funny thing when you run ultras - you look at a person and he looks ok, that guy looked totally fine to me - but he could barely move - though he was faster at mile 25 and I asked him to go ahead as I was struggling with uphills. But then I caught him at mile 32, we ran together till around mile 36-37 and then I, who was feeling terrible and was barely moving, started to develop a distance between him and myself and I have never seen him again. And as I said - he looked absolutely fine - that the stuff you cannot notice from outside. I also passed some younger woman and she was funny and joking and said she had a terrible day and can barely walk. Also, it's interesting to note, that this year was a year with least number of finishers since this race became Western States qualifier - 114 finished, 57 !!! (funny - exactly 50% of number of finishers) and 44 runners didn't start.

Cal Canyons 100k course changed last year due to covid 19. It's all uphill now. Also, while most of States is downhill from the school to the river there is a LOT of climbing left. Strava says about 5,000 ft of elevation gain over 39 miles. As a comparison, Way Too Cool was 30 miles and 4,000 ft of climbing in the same area after the river. Combined with the heat during the second part of the day it becomes a really hard race. SeattleMax told me a lot of the Sub 24 cutoff times are from runners who went out way too fast and faded bad. I think mentally the hardest part is from Quarry Road to the finish because it's flat jogging, or hiking, in my experience.

I know they changed the Canyons course - I do not really care - I ran the old Canyons course in 2019 which runs over classic WSER course, just different directions - it was quite challenging - especially the last 15.5 miles back to Forresthill - almost all of it uphill. And the weather was not bad back in April 2019. Weather is a huge factor in such events, but there were still some years with a decent weather.

Sure, pacing strategy is important, weather is important, training is important - what else is not important in 100 miles race? Everything is important!

SeattleMax is a great guy, but, imho, he had very little chance to run under 24 hours - he is quite resilient but generally pretty slow (though, he beat me back in 2018? at Miwok ). I actually was surprised how good he ran 2015 WSER.

Weather isn’t important.  It’s going to be hot unless you land a year of fire or lots of snow. So train for heat and humidity.

Oh... I am sorry, I am sorry - totally forgot to ask you - how many ultras did you run?

Is it really a running race if you aren't take a boat at some point? Also Cal: I experienced such misery at Boston with how terrible I felt, and that was for 6 miles. I have no desire to ever feel that for 20 miles as that one 40 minute stretch made me almost quit running for good.

This is one of those forecasts where you think it's a joke, i.e. the weather is pretty much what you expected every single day around your race, both before and after. Don't you just love these? Just a nice huge spike on the weekend, and then back to cooler weather after, including the dew point (the green line below)

I've thrown out all goals. I'll just react to how my body is doing.

My half has two waves. I feel terrible for the people starting in wave 2 that are running 2+ hour half marathons. They are at serious risk of heat exhaustion given they'll still be running after 10 am.