The North Face Korea 100k

PyeongChang, June 11, 2016

Quick wrap-up:

- I DNFed at the 3rd of 8 check points (35k in). Missed the cut off, but I was toast anyway. It took me 9:40ish to get that far.

- Everyone else I knew in the 100k (7 besides me) all DNFed. Mostly cut offs, but one guy just dropped because he'd had enough.

- Course was totally brutal, one of my friends described it as barely runnable and more like a trek or hike along the mountain range.

- Cutoff times were totally out-of-wack for this first-ever run event.

- It will be interesting to see the finishing percentage.

About the race:

This is part of the TNF 100k Asia series.  Trail running in Korea is still in it’s infancy in general, but there are some pockets where there are some quite experienced folks.  Hiking on pretty rugged trails is huge in Korea and road marathons are huge in Korea – I think that it’s just a matter of time before trail running really takes off here. Let’s put it this way, I’ve been running trails around Busan for 18 months now and while I see lots of hikers, I have bumped into maybe 10 other trail runners in that whole time, 6 or them were other Westerners.  This was the first time that a TNF 100k series was held in Korea.

Training:

My main reason for doing TNF was really as part of my larger training plan for running a 100 miler in September.  My plan was to taper some and do the 100k, but I also didn’t want to have the taper and post run recovery to have a huge impact on the overall schedule.  As they say though “  . . the best laid schemes of mice and men, often go astray . . . “

I simply had a horrible lead-up to this run, a real bad patch in my training. About 6 weeks before I came down with a cold/bronchitis that made it really hard to run.  I managed to do a very informal 30k (Busan 5 Mountain 30k) one of the only train runs in the area during my sickness, but I’m not sure that I got any real benefit or whether that is what converted my cold into bronchitis, who knows? But it sure wasn’t too good.  Then after recovering from that I made a real bonehead rookie mistake, I should have known better. . .  I tried to come roaring back and catch up a bit on my lost training and squeeze in some long runs in before the 100k.  I ended up giving myself the dreaded Plantar Fasciitis.  The cold certainly had an effect on training, the PF stopped me dead in my tracks.  To try to minimize the effect I took to riding a stationary bike in the gym of my apartment building.  What a boring torture.  Although I mostly listened to music I did glance at the TVs showing baseball “highlights”.  Funny thing, there are a handful of Korean guys playing in the US MBL and they show whatever the main starters do every day, even if they go 1 for 4 batting, they show every at-bat and every swing, even the strikes (Choi in LA, Kang in Pittsburgh, Kim in Baltimore, Lee in Seattle and Park in Minnesota come to mind).  It’s great that they get support though.

Prep:

The 4.5 hour drive north to the PyeongChang area was uneventful. A very easy highway drive the whole way.  You may have heard of the area since the 2018 winter Olympics will be held there.  The run hotel, conference hall for number pickup, pre-race dinner, briefing and starting line were all held in the Olympic village and near the ski jump tower. All of the pre-race stuff went smoothly and they even had a TNF motivational speaker from the US, Hardrocker and adventure runner Diane VanDeren, she was very good.

Welcome to PyeongChang.

Olympic Village with ski jump tower in the distance.

The actual run, if you could call it that:

So. . .  I toed the line with some questionable training and a foot with PF that I couldn’t really push off on that well and when I landed on it it sort of hurt.  I thought I could baby it trough, but I also knew it was going to be a rugged technical trail, so who knows.

The start, in the ski jump landing area.

At the start even the first few steps were not good, but then it sort of warmed up like PF does, but it never really stopped nagging me.  The first few miles were on roads though the small town and to the trailhead giving the runners time to self-seed and spread out. I was going very easy and was near the very back.  We hit the first trail and up we went.  I should also say it was quite warm and humid to start and most people were sweating even before leaving the road section, I was soaked.

Everyone around me as walking up and I was climbing ok, even managing to pass a few folks. Before long we were up and over the first peak and headed down towards the first checkpoint (PC1). I will say that going down was not a good thing for my foot. I ended up getting there a good 45 minutes ahead of the cutoff and thought that was pretty good.  I had a ton of gels with me and decided that I may want to eat something as well since I couldn’t get anything decent to eat before the race, just had some Digestive Biscuits and water, I had a few slices of apple.  Out of CP1 we were soon going up this very steep climb, for some reason Koreans (and Japanese for that matter) don’t do many switchbacks on their trails, so straight up over these rocky, log, or root based steps and always feel too high. They really suck whether going up or down.  Anyway, I guess due to the warmth and humidity and the activity, etc. before long I was barfing up that damn apple, unbelievably here I was only about 10 miles in and doing a bit of barfing already. My stomach wasn’t really run-queezy, just didn’t want what was in it I guess.

The section between CP1 and CP2 was really gorgeous, we were running along mountain ridges nice views, but unrelenting smallish steep ups and down with lots or rocks and some hand/foot boulder crawling. You just couldn’t get into a good pace and comfortable at all (suffice it to say my foot also didn’t like this either). But it finally smoothed out and went down some on soft dirt trails.  But about here I was distracted and kicked a small stob with my bad foot and ended up doing a nice roll.  Oddly enough my foot felt a little better right after that, although it might have been that my banged elbow was a distraction for a while. But then the darn CP2 was just never showing up and it was getting to be a long time on this section and eating up the buffer we had.  I also pulled over at some point for a few dry heaves and a bit of spiting which helped my stomach feel better.  Someone near me with a GPS said that it seemed longer than they had on the course info, But eventually we hit a dirt road and picked it up and made it in.  But I was now just ahead of the cutoff, WTF?  Filled my bladder pack and was outta there quickly.

The next section was a short 5 miles, had two little bumps but otherwise looked smooth.  We had 2 hours to do it so we should be able to make up some time.  Ha !!!  Turns out that this was more of the ridge and some more of the rugged technical crap that we just came off of, and those to little bumps were more switchback-less straight up steepness that we had been seeing. It took me forever to do this section, heat rising foot hurting, I simply wasn’t having a lot of fun.  Ok the views were terrific and there was a breeze that started, but. . . .

The ridge we were running along.

More of the ridge.

They said it was going to rain, but no dice, it would have been nice to have the rain at that point.  Somewhere I guess about a mile out of CP3 I cought up to two people sitting on some rocks halfway up one of the inclines, they said they were done.  The only problem was we were in the middle of nowhere, I also was the bearer of bad news and pointed out that we were just about to go down a bit, but that we were then going up that higher peak just in front of us.  They slowly got up and left, I sat on the rock they just vacated. I barfed again, then drank and ate a little before following them down, then up. I'd see them again at CP3.   Afterwards when I was looking at the detailed results, it turns out that 107 runners had done that 5 mile stretch and 91 of us took longer than the 2 hours allotted.  Trouble with me and those around me was we didn’t have a time buffer going into the section. So the cutoff at CP3 was gonna get us, and did.  But CP3 was a very remote stop with only drinks available, so perhaps the cutoff wasn’t going to be so strictly enforced.  Turns out it was not really enforced, and we all could have continued on.  We were told that the next section was all downhill on a dirt and concrete road for six miles.  Actually the though of doing that on my foot was simply not appealing, not gonna be a fun cruise for me.  So I joined the other 11 or 12 folks sitting there – day over – get the bus.

So that was it for me 9 hrs and 40ish minutes to do all of 35k, although later I did hear it was a little longer but that is really meaningless, I sat down, drank more water and actually took another Gel because they didn’t have any food there. The bottom of my foot and heel throbbing, and I should also say it had also radiated to my Achilles which actually concerned me a lot more.  I called my DW back in Busan to say that my day was over.  She really tried to get me to go on and at least do that 6 mile road to the next CP, but I could also hear the concern in her voice and she sounded a bit relieved when I said that it just wasn’t fun and I’d just assume wait for the sag wagon.

In the end the finishing rate as about 45%.  A tough course.

Some of the carnage at CP3, waiting for the sag wagon.

Epilogue:

A week after TNF I went to the doctor to get the foot checked out, confirmed PF and started a course of Extracorporeal Shockwave Therapy (ESWT), after all I have to get back on the horse in order to not waste too much time for that upcoming 100 miler. Along with the ESWT which has helped a lot, I’ve been resting the foot and doing more of the boring stationary bike at the gym.  I was able to hike up the local mountain a little and I actually ran a vary easy flat 5 miles yesterday.

I hope that I've seen the last of the bike, but. . .   I’m really very happy to report that last week two of the Korean guys in the MLB hit homers on the same day, while I couldn’t understand a word the Korean broadcasters were saying, were going absolutely bonkers with excitement I!!

Park Byung-ho, Minnesota Twins          Lee Dae-ho, Seattle Mariners

Sorry to hear that, Sandy. You would think TNF would have had a little better knowledge about the difficulty of the course and adjusted cut-offs accordingly.

Sorry Sandy, that sucks... was there any indication on the race website that the course would be so difficult? I'm curious since TNF sponsors enough races you'd think they would get it right.

tough race   actually sounds like kind of the race I prefer (rugged and pretty); well except the too short cutoff part 

running wounded is no fun, here's to a speedy recovery!