It was 7:29 AM at the Mitchell Canyon Visitor Center at Mt Diablo State Park. The temperature was around 60 degrees and the sun was still hidden behind the mountain. I gave Marcus a quick squeeze goodbye as the 50Kers did a slow shuffle into formation at the start line. I was just barely beginning to mentally prepare myself when the race director called out, “Who’s doing this as their first 50K?”
I waved, and he started motioning me forward.
“Go! Yeah, you, come on, GO!”
I sputtered for half a second and then start running. I got maybe 50 feet before almost missing the first turn, then backing up a few feet and starting the first hill of the day.
I don’t know if it’s a tradition to give the ultra-virgin a head start, but I got one and therefore, was in first place for at least 20 seconds. Which would have been a little more fun if I’d had a chance to take a deep breath, start my watch, and shake out my legs once more, but instead I felt like a fox trying to not trip while a pack of hounds was counting down behind me.
The anxiety made its way to my stomach and the first hints of nausea were setting in by the time the front packers passed me. I latched onto the group that came through behind them, determined to not end up in the back. I was keeping up but my heart was racing and I felt like I might have a fever. It must have just been the anxiety, but it made those first few miles kind of miserable. I knew (hoped) it would all pass once I calmed down and got into the flow of the journey, but during that half hour or so, all I wanted to do was pull over on the side and throw up.
The nausea eventually passed, and after that the first miles are a bit of a blur. There seemed to be a pretty even amount of up and down, although both featured lots of loose rock and dirt and several trails that didn’t seem like they’d seen foot traffic in months. There was enough that was runnable that my fears of not reaching the 3.5 hour cutoff at mile 11.6 were swayed. “That’s 18 minute pace! That’s like a slow walk,” I reminded myself several times. I ran into the aid station around mile 5, filled my bottle with electrolyte mix and then took off again. The problem with that was that we’d run down pretty far to get into the aid station, and now we had to actually climb the entire mountain. The first few miles weren’t terrible, mostly switchbacks, but the climbs got steeper. And steeper. I was keeping up with another guy for a while and we talked about other races (North Face is over rated, Hardrock is awesome but it’s impossible to get in), but eventually I needed a break and he kept going. It was around this time that I started to feel doubts creeping in. That cutoff was starting to loom closer and closer. The hills were really cool, though, and allowed me to perpetuate my Lord of the Rings adventure fantasy, but they seemed to never end. I finally came up onto a fire road and got a little downhill running in to make up time, which made me feel a little better about the 29 minute mile I’d just put in.
By the time I came out into the parking lot at the top of the mountain (which seemed just a little wrong), I had 23 minutes before the cutoff. I booked it up the stairs of the beacon, grabbed the railing, breathed in the view for half a second, then took off and started running pretty hard.
Or it felt hard, anyway, but my watch wouldn’t budge from a 12 minute. I knew I had about 2 miles but I’d started my watch late after the surprise head start, so I wasn’t sure how far it actually was. As the reality of being forced to do the 28K instead was sinking in, a runner flew by me, yelling “Gotta make the cutoff!” I guess I’d just needed a little competition because I immediately sped up and stayed within 10 feet or so, watching where he put his feet. Eventually we came out into a campsite and raced by families enjoying the late morning sunshine.
That beautiful blue tent was suddenly in view, and as I ran in a girl with a cowbell in front yelled “Yeah! Girl power!” Which of course put a massive smile on my face. It was 10:55, five minutes ahead of the cutoff. The distance was a little less than I’d thought but if I hadn’t been pushed by the other runner it would have been a much narrower gap and a much more stressful time getting in and out. As it was, I had enough time to refill my reservoir with ice water and soak my head, both of which I was very happy about. I had been getting pretty low on fluids and had started to drink less, so I had half a bottle of Gu Brew before filling it again and taking off.
The next 6-mile stretch was mostly downhill and flat, so I made good time. We ran down the other side of the mountain, now out in open fields instead of forest. The views of the rolling hills made me feel more at home; I’d done most of my long runs at a park in Vacaville with a very similar landscape. About 3 miles in, the leaders started to pass me going to other way. The first man sounded almost despairing when he said “This is a hard first 50K,” as he passed. I wasn’t sure how to reply to that…yeah, yeah it really is, guy who is 6 miles ahead of me already. There was a man and a woman slowly getting closer behind me, and I was irrationally worried that they were actually the sweeps (although it wouldn’t have made sense to send the sweeps out that way anyway, since it was an out and back) and that if they caught up to me, I would have to drop at the next aid station. I don’t know if this very strong fear was because I was low on calories or maybe just the heat getting to me, but it certainly helped push me along. There was another hill around mile 17, and I think this is where I started to realize how very slow I was getting on the climbs. It really wasn’t that big of a hill, maybe 500 feet, but it felt gross.
At the next aid station I collapsed against the front bumper of a truck and started slowly eating the half a PB&J I’d grabbed. It was a little stale but I was so, so happy to be sitting and eating that it tasted amazing. The man and woman behind me came in (not sweeps, just other runners you moron) and both exclaimed loudly that this was HARD. Made me feel better about struggling up that hill, but didn’t give me a ton of confidence for the rest of the course. I grabbed some more gels, a salt pill, refilled on Gu Bru (brew? Bru?) and started to leave before realizing that bag of Ritz Bitz looked freaking fabulous. 14 miles left. That wasn’t that much, I could do that in no time!
Sure, until I got back to that lovely downhill I’d run down before. Except the funny thing about downhills from the other direction is that they’re actually uphills. I’d known going down that coming back would not be fun, but I hadn’t realized that it would also be 10 degrees warmer (no real idea, felt like 30 degrees warmer but was probably 5) and the sun would be out in full force. The hill started brutally steep. I put my head down and tried to tell myself to not focus on the time, to just put one foot in front of the other. That worked for a bit and I made slow progress, huffing and puffing but still moving, until I looked at the time and saw that it was 2:20. I’d told Marcus I might be at the finish by 2:30 if my day went really well. Considering I was at mile 22, it was not going as well as I’d hoped. I think that point was where I started to fight off serious doubts about finishing by the 5:00 cut off. I was trying to run the paces I’d need through my head but the numbers were hard to grab onto and maybe I was feeling a little dizzy?
The Ritz Bitz helped a lot and I kept pushing, eventually passing a guy in front of me. (Yeah, he’d taken a break and was sitting down, but I still technically passed him.) I turned a corner as I was nearing top and saw the competition who’d pushed me to the cutoff, lounging in the first shady area in miles. “Feels great!” he called. We ended up hiking most of the way into the next aid station together (he told me he was doing another 50K the next day! He wasn’t the first either, another guy had told me the same thing. CRAZY.), until right at the top when I decided to run and he held back.
This is where the slow, stealthy ache in my left knee begin, but it felt like something that just a little stretching and some ice would take care of. I made it into the last aid station a little after 3:00, and sat down with ice on my knee and the comfort of knowing I had just under 2 hours until cutoff and only 5.5 miles left, mostly downhill. The volunteers were cheery and provided great moral support, ginger ale, and Cheetos. As I was asking about the rest of the course, one woman asked, “Are you sure you’ll be able to make it the rest of the way on that knee?” I kind of waved off the question and said something about hobbling down in an hour and a half if need be (so, so naïve).
I’m not sure how far it was from the aid station to the first downhill, but as soon as I hit it I realized that there was no freaking way I was going to be able to run down the mountain. The area around my kneecap felt like it was on fire. I’m pretty good at sucking it up and dealing with pain, but this was so bad that I was swearing under my breath with every step. The flats were much more manageable but it still hurt to run, and I realized that the smart decision was to turn around and hike back up to the aid station for a ride back down to the finish.
But that would have been the smart decision, and at mile 24.5 my brain wasn’t particularly rational. I knew the smart decision, and I knew that I wouldn’t make it. I hate backtracking, and I’d gone more than 75%. I wanted to finish, but more than that, I didn’t want to limp back into the aid station, feeling the pain of defeat and the sympathy of the volunteers. This is a moment I’ve reflected on a lot since it happened, because my reason for pushing on just seems so petty now. I allowed myself to potentially wreck my knee to save face. If this hadn’t been my first 50K, if people hadn’t made such a big deal out of it being my first, hadn’t ensured me that I could and would finish, I doubt I would have felt such a stupid drive to prove myself. I’m not in any way implying that the support and encouragement I received was a bad thing- just that I should know better.
I think another part of it was that so much of my training was actually spent recovering from injuries. I was so freaking sick of skipping runs or being stuck using an exercise machine because of various minor issues (wearing the wrong inserts in my shoes which caused lots of foot and ankle pain, pain in the tendons behind my knee (which actually turned out to be from biking with my seat too high), skipping a long run after badly rolling my foot three (three!) feet from the trailhead…). I had debated not doing this race at all, but I’d had a few stellar, pain free runs in the two weeks prior and I decided to go for it. Even though my weekly mileage had never gotten above 35, my longest training run, meant to be 24 miles, was 18, and my strength training regimen had petered out to almost nothing.
There were lots of reasons I shouldn’t have showed up at the start line, just like there were lots of reasons that I should have turned around when I realized how badly my knee hurt. Actually, it’s not unlike showing up very underprepared for grad school and not quitting after bombing my first exam. I’m stubborn, and I did NOT want to explain to my family that I couldn’t handle grad school.
Those last five miles were so much harder than the rest of the race. It didn’t take long for me to start cursing myself for not going back to the aid station, or to realize that the 5:00 cutoff was out of reach. I tried to still find joy in being on the mountain, to appreciate the strange and beautiful landscape, but I was an emotional wreck and my knee was screaming with every step. With two and half miles left, I stopped and sat in the middle of the trail and swung my left leg uphill, trying to elevate it. I pulled out my phone, hoping there was service. There was a bar of 3G, and I texted Marcus while crying a little bit and pausing often to wipe snot off my face. “The cutoff isn’t happening. Knee hurts. Hobbling down. 2.5 miles left.” I felt really bad for making him wait at the finish for so long with Chena and Mikey (our dogs), and I started to beat myself up for doing this crazy selfish thing and spending so much of my time and energy preparing for it.
As I was sitting there, a guy who had been behind me for a while finally passed by. He asked if I was cramping up, and I shook my head. “Just my knee.” He empathized, saying his calves were cramping and that this trail down was the worst way off the mountain. After he was out of sight, I checked my phone and saw a new text from Marcus.
“Cutoff or no, you’ve done good.”
I started to sob, but this also gave me the oomph that I needed to pick myself up and continue down the trail. He’d said exactly what I needed to hear.
The sweep eventually caught up with me, and we ended up walking last mile or so together. He pointed out that coming down the mountain with a messed up knee is seriously tough, which really helped my bruised ego. We chatted a bit about the San Diego 100, which he was doing the next weekend. (Hopefully it went really well!) With maybe a quarter mile to go, he suddenly screamed and jumped back, very narrowly missing a rattlesnake in the middle of the fire road! I took several large steps back, but the snake only had eyes for him. He slowly walked away, stepping off the road into the grass, trying not to aggravate it. I picked up a rock in case I needed to distract it, but he successfully crept past and we were able to move on, now extremely paranoid about every stick.
When we were about 50 feet out from the finish, I decided to muster up what I had left and run through the arch. The cowbells and cheering started as soon as I was in view (seeing me meant everyone could go home!). Even though I was almost 45 minutes past the cutoff, I was handed a medal and a coaster by two smiling girls and got a big hug from Greg, the RD, who had encouraged me to sign up for this in the first place when I’d met him his wife, Jennifer, volunteering at the Lake Sonoma 50 in April.
Then there was Marcus and the pups and a very comfy camp chair and apparently I’d even won second place in my age group and Greg came over and put a medal around my neck and people were congratulating me and several said that this was the hardest 50K in California and then I was taking my shoes off and eating some watermelon and life was a completely different state than it had been just an hour ago, crouched on the mountain and crying.
One week later, my left knee is mostly better- I’ve been wearing a knee brace but I can now walk down stairs with almost no pain sans brace. I think I damaged the cartilage under my knee cap, but nothing permanent or overly concerning. My toes were pretty numb for a few days after, and they feel kind of funny still as the nerves are coming back to life. I only ended up with one major blister on the inside of my heel, and it’s faded into callous. Not even my muscles are sore anymore.
I’m trying to plan my next race and training cycle but I have also thoroughly enjoyed this rest week. It was nice to let research and teaching completely take over my brain, without an impending race on the horizon. This is the first time in almost a year that I’m not signed up for anything. I’m going to go for my first run back tomorrow. I have no idea how long it will be or how fast I’ll go (slow, probably very, very slow). It’ll just be me and the dogs and no training plan or pace goals. Just like it used to be, before running and then trail running became an obsession.
This spring I jumped from training for a fast road half in February to a trail 25K in March to trail marathon training, which only became 50K training when the marathon got cancelled in early May. Going into my next 50K, I’m going to focus a lot more on a slow, steady build up, probably 16 weeks, with a solid strength training plan. I’m going to stick to my weekly yoga class. And I’m going to pay much closer attention to aches and pains instead of running through them in denial until they’re such a problem that I can barely run. Hopefully this will prevent future blow outs. In other aspects of the race, I do think I was well prepared. Listening to almost every Ultrarunner Podcast produced in the last year and obsessively reading every article definitely helped me know what to bring, eat, and drink, and the aid stations were so well stocked that I could have gotten away with bringing almost nothing.
For anyone reading this thinking, “Aw hell, I want to go through many hours of a quad-and-knee-busting emotional roller coaster on Mt. Diablo!” then definitely check this race out next year. Pacific Coast Trail Runs puts it on, and Greg and Jennifer, plus their team of grade-A volunteers and the wonderful other runners, made this an excellent first ultra. I know they’re working hard to improve it for next year, too.
Even though it was wickedly difficult, I can’t say I have a single regret. The pain of the last descent forced me to reckon with demons that have always plagued me, but have never been brought to light. I doubt that I’ll ever stop being stupid and stubborn, but I hope I can make the smart decision next time without holding it against myself. That stubbornness did earn me the title of ultrarunner, though, and I’m really freaking proud of that.
TLDR; I climbed some hills, hurt my knee, cried a lot. Stoked to go back for more.
These pictures were all from the PCTR Facebook page. I’m not sure who actually took them but it wasn’t me! Many thanks to whoever did.
Keepsakes and Crutches 