Henry W Coe State Park

My friend and coworker Brian (and incidentally the guy who talked me in into giving ultra running a shot) invited me to join him and his friend Jay up at Coe. Brian has done several ultra events and at least one 100M that I’m aware of. Jay is training for the Tahoe Rim 100M and Brian is going to pace him. It was cool to spend a little time with guys who have actually been doing this for awhile.

Their goal for the day was to get some miles and some heat training in… they planned on doing 3 different loops of downright nasty hills for a total of 30 miles. After spending some time on those hills myself I can only say that I’m very impressed.

My goal for the day was to answer the question of whether it’s the downhills or the uphills that are killing me (see my Almaden Quicksilver entry), so I planned to do a couple laps on a single steep hill, starting with the downhill first.

I hooked up with Brian and Jay after their first lap (about 8 miles in). I think I earned my keep by bringing out the chocolate covered espresso beans, they seemed pretty excited about that, and Jay related some Western States lore about how these potent treats saved Dean Karnazes one night. We power hiked together up Lyman Wilson Ridge Trail, a gnarly 1.5 mile climb with a 19% grade. I was thinking that they seemed a little tired, but I wouldn’t truly understand this until later.

I was fresh, so the climb was an nice and easy warmup for me. At the top Brian and Jay continued on for their second loop and I popped a gel and started my descent. My approach to downhill running is to just go as fast as I can manage, which is pretty fast when it’s not too steep and my legs are feeling good. 19% is too steep, and I was surprised to see how quickly I got tired. I’ve been reading some tips online for how to run downhill efficiently, but nothing seemed to obviously help that much. By the time I got to the bottom I was running low on water and needed to go back to the parking lot to refill. While I was still going reasonably fast on the grade, I slowed to a pretty pathetic pace on the half-mile flat road.

After filling up with water and popping another gel (my secondary goal for today was to see how my stomach handled the three-gels-per-hour menu I plan to use at Skyline) I felt a little better and my run back to the base of Lyman Wilson Ridge Trail was a little faster. But on my second trip up the climb I understood why Brian and Jay had seemed a little tired. I was spent! I had anticipated running up most of this climb the second time, but I couldn’t manage it. But part of distance running is learning to keep going though the pain, so I power hiked it a second time, though with far less gusto than the first trip. When I got to the top I popped gel number four and started back down at about half the pace I had done the first time. The slog back to the car this time was, well, a slog. It was hard to keep going.

I was a little despondent after I had finished. This workout really handed it to me. If I get destroyed so easily on 8 miles, how will I make it through 31 at Skyline? All of the excuses I could make about today, it was hot, this was a really steep hill, I got a nasty abdominal cramp on the second downhill, all of those things could be part of my race and it would be stupid to discount them.

A couple of hours and two cups of coffee can do wonders for one’s perspective. I learned a lot today. First, I’m not nearly as strong a downhiller as I thought, and this weakness could jeopardize the rest of my performance at Skyline. Second, my body handles gels pretty reasonably, at least for an hour and a half of hard exertion. Third, I really need to remember to be sensible about my expectations. Why did I think I could run up a 19% grade? That’s just silly.

So, to sum it up, for better or worse I answered the question I wanted to answer today. Time to get some downhill miles in.