Western States
A big congratulations to Tony K. (not to be confused with ANTON K.) who placed 26th at the Western States 100 mile last Saturday in 19:28. I had the honor of being one of his pacers, and really enjoyed the whole experience immensely. People have been asking me, "so when are we going to see you in a 100 miler?" The answer is...the next time someone asks me to pace.
In all seriousness, it was very educational for me to see how diligent Tony was about sticking to his fueling schedule, backing off when he needed to, pushing through when he could, and generally ignoring what others were doing (and the stupid comments his pacer insisted on making), and focusing on running his best race. I learned a lot, and while I don't plan to run 100 miles anytime soon, the lessons apply to other races.
I've had a lot of time on my feet the last week, doing fairly long runs with Brian on Thursday and Friday, pacing on Saturday, and then hitting about 15 miles of Marin County trails on both Monday and Tuesday. I plan to run the North Face Endurance Challenge 50 mile again in December, and got a chance to re-visit some parts of that course that while visiting my brother. It was very enjoyable to hang out with the bro, eat burritos, and run more trails.
Afton Trail Race
Tuesday's run in particular got a little out of hand in terms of how hard I ran, but hopefully I'll recover in time to run pretty well at Afton on Saturday. I'm taking a fairly low-key approach to this and will likely be running comfortably the first loop and the trying to drop the hammer as much as possible on the second loop. Based on my meager 50k experience, that seems to be the way to do it.
It promises to be a fun day on the trails with lots of familiar faces and a great course. I'm curious to see how those hills feel after all of the mountain running I've been doing recently. A few people have mentioned the possibility of a course record this year, and I will certainly try to go for it, though I'm not going to reduce my training significantly going in. I still will try to run as hard as I can on that day. The funny thing is that the current course record is held by the nearly eponymous Chris Lundberg, and though I have never run Afton before, I've already had people congratulate me on running so well there!
There appear to be plenty of strong runners in the field, on both the men's and women's side. For the guys, Patrick Russell is running, and seems to be coming back into shape, and Brian P. has the potential to run very fast as well (see his Trail Mix results), though he claims to be taking this more as a training race in his preparations for the Superior 100. And in trail racing, as I learned at Superior this year, anything can happen. That's why they run the race. Looking forward to seeing everyone out there.
Russell can tell you - the biggest obstacle at Afton will be making a wrong turn. He famously made one (and still ran a great time); to avoid his mistake: when you see an asphalt bike path don't go on it! - there's a hairpin turn back into the weeds there.
ReplyDeleteIt's going to be too humid for a record, I think. I'll be officiating - see ya at the 1 mile mark!
I'll try to stay on course for a change. The forecast does look pretty grim, but then again it's 4th of July weekend, so warm and humid is par for the course. If I am already overheated at the one mile mark you might as well put me out of my misery!
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