Squaw Peak 50 Race Report

This was only intended to be a pre-West Highland Way training race for me, but I got far more than I bargained for.  The Squaw Peak 50 is in the mountains just south of Salt Lake City, and the hills there, are, well, mountains.  And then there's the brutal heat, which even a few days of running in Wisconsin humidity hadn't prepared me for.

What a lot of the course looked like.  Photo from the race's Ultrasignup page.

To be fair, I was also having an unusually bad day.  Something (altitude, most likely?) was wrong with my stomach right from the start and by mile 4 I was ready to throw up.  I tried not to, though, because I thought it would be too embarrassing having everyone around me assume that I was sick already because I had so badly misjudged my pace!  At this point I could tell it was going to be a long day...

The race starts off on a paved bike path for 2 miles, then turns onto a singletrack trail up a hill.  It's cold, since the race starts at 5 am, but it's great weather for running. We keep climbing up and get an amazing view of the lake and mountains at sunrise.  More climbing up on singletrack and a rocky road, which winds around to a pass near mile 15.  It's cold up here--Fake Tony (this guy had such a perfect Anton Krupicka imitation look going that since I never got his name, I went with Fake Tony, although he seemed like a much nicer person than his namesake) says I'm lucky to be wearing gloves, but even then my hands are so cold that I can't move my fingers enough to put some Gu I picked up from my drop bag into my pack.  A nice guy named Barry helps me.  A few minutes later I realize it was a wasted effort because I'm too sick to be able to eat any of the Gu anyway.

After mile 15 it's a long downhill, but my stomach hurts too much to run very fast.  The sun comes out and it's immediately way too hot.  I realize I forgot to put on sunscreen, which is bad news at 7,000 feet with red hair.  To balance this out, though, I get lucky on the navigation front:  there are some sudden turns off the rocky main track onto singletrack that I would have missed if I hadn't been able to follow Barry, who, fortunately for me, has done the race before.

Everything feels awful and I consider dropping out at the mile 20 aid station.  This is only a training run after all, and I don't want to overdo it and be too tired to race the WHW.  But I can't drop at 20 because I figure I need to get in at least 40 miles today or it will be too short of a pre-WHW long run.  I decide to slow down to 100-mile pace and treat this as practice for keeping the pace up when I haven't been able to eat much.  I get plenty of practice at that because in the end only a few pieces of fruit, a cookie, and two Gu stay down for the rest of the race.  I even throw up my Tums, which is a new low for me.

Again I wonder if I should drop out.  Maybe I could stop at the mile 33 aid station and add on a few more slow, easy miles on my own?  But the last uphill section ends at mile 40 and then it's all downhill to the finish, so if I'm going to run more than 33 miles anyway, I might as well do the race.  Only 7 miles more of uphill, how bad can it be?

Bad.  Very bad.  Before the race, the race director had talked about how this was one of the hardest 50s in the country.  I didn't doubt that it was at least somewhat hilly and hot, but I figured he was just saying what runners always like to say, that their local race is the hardest/longest/most technical____.  Well, this guy may have had a point.  In addition to the other hard bits of the race, the climbs out of mile 33 are brutally steep and entirely in the hot sun.  The second of the two climbs is straight up a giant hill with no switchbacks.  It takes me 1 hour and 15 minutes to do a mile here and that is fast enough to be passing people.  Even going more slowly than planned, this is definitely not just training anymore.

I have music with me but I'm in too bad of a mood to listen to it.  Everyone else seems to be suffering too--a guy in a white tank top and I trade looks of pain every time we leapfrog each other.  It takes absolutely forever to get to the top of the pass.  I see Divesh at the aid station just on the other side of the pass, and he looks about as happy as I feel.  There's an unpleasantly steep and rocky descent for 6 miles down the other side of the mountain.  I try to convince myself it's good training for the descent into Kinlochleven, which is undoubtedly true, but it's not what my mind wants to hear right now.  Finally, near the end of the descent, I get to see a familiar face when Clark, who we had met the night before at the pre-race dinner, passes me.  The rockiness eventually eases up into smoother, less steep trail.  There's a bit of confusing route-finding at the bottom of the hill but, like clockwork, Barry shows up to point me at the right trail. 

A few minutes later, we end up at the last aid station and from there it's just 3.5 miles on paved road to the end.  I'm fully intending to walk here to limit the leg damage, but a friendly girl named Allison runs up and catches me and I realize it'll be a lot more fun to run with her than to walk on my own.  Plus faster to the finish = faster to a soak in the nice cold creek.  About a mile from the end, Allison drops back but Clark's friend (whose name I can't quite remember now), who had DNFed but was now out on the course to see Clark finish, shows up and kindly runs with me to the end. 

The end result?  I probably should have dropped out.  I'm pretty concerned about whether my legs are going to be fully recovered from this by June 22.  My time was 11:36, in comparison to my 8:55 50-mile split from the Fling a month ago, and I feel a lot worse after this than I did after the Fling.  The course was hard enough that even if I had been having a good day, I probably would have been over 11 hours.  So, I'd say it's definitely not a race to use a training run, but with the beautiful scenery and tough climbs, it would make a nice goal race.

Now I just need all your best recovery tips...

Climbing at Rib Mountain, Wausau

We were all set for a relaxing Sunday rest day until it occurred to us on Saturday evening that we could <gasp> go climbing on Sunday.  This is the sad state of our climbing:  we've gone from "it's a weekend, where are we climbing?" to "are we climbing this weekend?" to "oh yeah--I guess we could go climbing."  Anyway. Divesh had been to check out the bouldering at Rib Mountain a few weeks ago and we decided to head there for the day.  Access for climbing at Rib Mountain has only been recently restored after a four or five year hiatus, so I thought I'd get some photos and information for anyone interested in checking it out.

First impressions were not exactly favorable.  The rock turned out to be a very shiny, slippery quarterzite.  If you like climbing at Devil's Lake, you might enjoy the rock here, but if you have any decent taste whatsoever in rock type (only teasing, Paul and other DLers!) you may be unimpressed.  There were also several groups of unusually loud tourists which we never really seemed to get away from no matter how far from the main area we went.

But Rib Mountain did have some things going for it.  First, the rock isn't as bad everywhere as it is on the first boulders you get to.  The photo above is looking away from the car park and the boulders in the photo are the set you first get to, the ones which leave a little to be desired in rock quality.  If you go left and slightly down the hill, though, you get to a much nicer area with several good problems.  We tried and/or did a couple of short cracks and a traverse, and fell off various other things.  Most of the problems in this area of the crag were V4 or under, although there was a hard-looking problem involving two shallow seams that we didn't try.

Divesh wants me to point out that he's not actually standing on the ground here.

We were also lucky enough to run into a nice bunch of climbers from Madison.  They were as surprised to see us as we were to see them--it's not the kind of place you expect to see anyone else!

There was also more bouldering down the hillside to the right of the tower, like this prow that Divesh tried:

On the whole, it's an okay crag to try...once.  If, God forbid, you do need to find somewhere to boulder in central Wisconsin, I would personally go for the somewhat nearby Rattlesnake Mound over Rib Mountain:  better rock quality, nicer atmosphere (despite the name), and easier-to-find problems.

2013 Highland Fling Race Report

Hoka Highland Fling (Milngavie to Tyndrum, Scotland, along the West Highland Way)

The course:  An easy first 12 miles with non-technical trail and just a few rolling hills.  Then a big climb and descent, followed by many more rolling hills and one longer climb starting from mile 27ish.  Technical running from around mile 35 to 39, rolling hills that feel way too long around mile 41-45, a rollercoaster section of steep ups and downs in a forest, and a flat and easy 3 miles to the finish.

The numbers for my race:  53 miles, 9:33, 4th woman

My race was neatly divided into four different parts:

Part 1:  The Dark Miles

Not dark as in pre-dawn but dark as in grim.  It's not the best sign when the first few miles of a race feel bad.  It's even worse when it's the whole first 17 miles that feels bad.  I started the Fling nervous because I hadn't been feeling great for the past week.  True to expectations, when the race started, I immediately felt like I was working way too hard for my pace.  I let my heart rate go quite a bit higher than planned just because otherwise I was going to end up just jogging the easy first 12 miles and wasting loads of time.

One nice part about this section was that I found a lot of friendly people to run with.  I had been running exactly the same pace as a guy named Colin for a while so we started running together and talking, and the miles passed quickly.  I was also impressed that at least half the population of Drymen appeared to have come out to cheer for the race and people were offering fruit to runners by the side of the road!

View from Conic Hill

Part 2:  Happy Times

As we were heading up Conic Hill around mile 17, things changed.  All of a sudden I felt completely fine and ready to run.  I have no idea what happened but whatever it was, I was okay with it!  I sped down into Balmaha as fast as I could and picked up a few gels and pickle juice from my drop bag.  The volunteers were amazing and would have everyone's drop bag ready for them by the time they were in the checkpoint area, so there was zero wasted time getting anything out of your bag.  This was in keeping with the organization of the race as a whole, which was probably the best I've ever experienced.  

Section between Balmaha (mile 19) and Rowardennan (mile 27)

I got a nice steady pace going over the next few miles but half expected things to go downhill again at any moment.  Happily, they didn't.  I felt strong and comfortable, was able to eat and drink plenty, and felt like I could keep up my pace indefinitely.

Looking at the course from the other side of Loch Lomond.  Miles 27 to 40ish do a rising and falling traverse along the hillside in the photo.

The technical section.  Photo by Nick Smith of climbers.net

The only minor problem was the heat--it wasn't particularly warm most of the time but when the sun was out and the wind died down, there was definitely suffering; I kept running out of water and was filling my bottle from streams or drinking extra at the checkpoints, and I splashed cold water from puddles on my face more than once (this seemed normal at the time...).  I was still feeling pretty good by the time I got to the last checkpoint, Beinglas, around mile 41.  I was in 4th place at this point but a spectator told me the first 3 women were all bunched up and that 1st place was only about 7 or 8 minutes ahead of me.  I was getting tired but figured I had no excuse not to up the effort a little at this point.  It sort of worked--for about two minutes.  But then...

Part 3:  The Meltdown  

...I was met with the bonk.  I had been eating a ton of Gu but apparently it hadn't been enough, and I was suddenly out of all fuel.  I couldn't do much more than stare vacantly into the distance and stagger along.  Bouts of jogging only lasted for 30 seconds at a time.  I had one Gu left that I had been trying to save for the last three miles but I took it anyway.  It wasn't enough, though, and the zombie walk continued for close to two miles.  Then, very luckily, I was saved by three people.  One was a racer who passed me and must have noticed that I wasn't looking so good; he asked if I was okay and offered me some jelly babies, which I don't actually like but which looked like the best food in the world at that moment.  I downed a bag of them in about 5 seconds.  Just after that I met a spectator (she was a member of one of the Edinburgh running clubs) and shamelessly begged for food and water from her.  She was very nice and gave me some kind of crunchy chocolate ball and filled my water bottle.  Total bliss.

Part 4:  Back to Normal...Sort Of

I started walking up the first of the rollercoaster hills and by the time I got to the top, I was feeling much better.  I started running again and was soon caught by Lucy, a relay runner who slowed down and ran with me for a bit and really cheered me up.  By the time Lucy went on ahead, I was feeling nearly as good as I had felt for the middle part of the race.

One of the nicest sections--big downhills on soft pine needles

I crossed what was roughly the 50-mile mark in 8:55 and knew I had only 3 miles of flat, easy ground left.  I struggled a bit still in this section--I spent a while sucking the remnants of Gu out of the empty packets I was carrying--but overall I was happy to be feeling reasonably good again.  The final two miles are actually one of my favorite sections of trail:  something about the look of the trail and the brush to the side of it reminds me of Spain.  The finish line was set up where the By The Way hostel is in Tyndrum and it was an impressive sight, with a massive finishing chute lined with flags of countries racers had come from.  All in all, not a bad day, though next time a bit more food and a bit more hill training would probably not go amiss...