Eastern States 100 Mile Trail Race Report

At Eastern States, you don’t run down the trail, the trail runs down you. – Anonymous.

A man’s got to know his limitations – Clint Eastwood, Dirty Harry.

5 days ago I sneaked under the 36 hour cut off to finish the Eastern States 100 miler.  Be that as it may, there’s a good chunk of myself that has not managed to make the finish line.  It is as if I had to abandon something behind, maybe that being my shadow, him not being able to handle the pain of 40 miles of cut offs, running, walking, wabbling and tripping on squishy blisters and an assortment of deep and superficial aches and pains.  My shadow being more in touch with himself and knowing what he is capable of in the end.  So, while he hitchhikes his way back to Jersey from the primeval woods of central Pennsylvania, I will describe the Eastern States experience in dispassionate terms of trail conditions, aid station support and weather; because it will be a while before I’ll want to grasp with what running and finishing this race has meant to me on a personal level.

THE COURSE

My Suunto Ambit 2 was upto snuff for once and did not die during the run, so I got a full recording of my meanderings (caveats – it underestimates distance by about 1.6 miles because it only recorded in 1 minute intervals and it is 20 minutes too long because that’s how long it took for me to recover enough to realize I should stop the recording).  I had it set to recording my location once every minute to save the battery and was jealous I could not have the same setting for myself.  Regardless, here’s the image of the course over the local terrain.  The take home message here is we go up the hills and then we go down those hills to go up new hills.  There were gentle hills (5% grade) and steep hills (45% grade), hills with good almost stable rocky footing and hills with mudslides, hills with switchbacks and hills that went straight up to heaven (which felt the opposite).  In an area where the top elevation maxed out 2,200 feet and lowest you ever go is about 600 feet, the only way to gain 22,200 feet of up is to go up those 1000 foot hills many times.  Which we did.  One moment stands out among others.  I happens out of mile 17.5 AS where we begin a steady climb and the day starts getting proper warm.  A reasonably fit looking dude stands holding on to a tree by the side of the trail and says out loud “This is so hard!”  Yes my man, it’s definitely not a picnic anyone is having out here.  Glad you said what the rest of us are thinking.  Points for honesty.

The RD Dave Walker humbly puts the total gain for the race at 20,000 feet.  In the day where way too many ultras claim to deliver the most soul-crushing experience, his underestimate of the course is commendable.  But, for the record, it’s 22K, just saying.

 

RUNNING OUT OF WATER WAS NOT AN OPTION

When we weren’t going up and down hills, we had the pleasure of traversing creeks.  Sometimes the trail would be the creek itself.  I have nothing against creeks in general, I love drinking clear creek water and love the sounds of gently bubbling streams.  But that Sunday I had to be somewhere within a certain time and whatever pace I was keeping up was taking a hit every time I had to navigate another crossing.  I have to be fair, the weather was fairly dry and most creeks could be crossed without getting your feet wet (except a couple at mile 85 or so).  But it was either slow down to keep your feet dry, or plow ahead and pay in more blisters shortly later.  I felt that blisters would ultimately slow me down the most (which they did) and tried to tread cautiously.

All this caution was rendered pretty moot when there came a nice gentle thunderstorm about 35 miles or so into my run.  If I wasn’t going to get wet from the bottom, by golly I was gonna get it from the top.  The rain was not cold and did not last longer than an hour.  The sun came out even before the rain stopped and the radiance of sun-lit droplet-laden ferns and rhododendrons refreshed the tedium of slowly passing miles for a while.

Unlike last year, we did not get a tornado at night nor was the temperature unbearably hot.  So, compared to what Eastern States could be, this year the weather was very forgiving.  I personally think that this is what explains the unusually high 59% finish rate this year.  Was it cool and crisp?  Let me just say that when I got out of our cabin at 4AM, whatever the actual temperature was, outside felt like a stale sauna and it did not get any nicer as the day went on.  August is August in central PA and I sweated my ass off the entirety of the race, drinking about 2 liters of full strength tailwind for every 6-8 mile stretch.  Were we luckier than runners in years past? Maybe.  Whatever it means to be lucky at Eastern States.

FOOTING

I don’t know where I got an impression that Eastern States, though technical, was overall, fairly runnable after some nasty stretches were dealt with early on.  I was lucky enough to sustain that belief long enough where I also started seeing the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, but let me tell you, it’s the other way around: there are nice runnable stretches here and there in the sea of sadistic pointless meanness.  Slate, big and small boulders, roots, mud, swampy grass, mudslides, loose gravel, primitive, eroded and uneven trail are what dominates this run.  The nice middle section between miles 30 and 40 is just there so you think you passed the worst of it and before you get sucked in for round 2.

some easy middle section miles

That is what is so difficult about this course.  The terrain is varied and primitive, the hills and streems keep on coming and the weather alternates from muggy to worse.   To complete this course you have to make finishing a priority over anything you’re feeling or else it will not make any sense.

AID AND OTHER LOGISTICS

I want to say a huge thank you to all the volunteers to came out to support this race.  It always amazes me how willing people are to give up their weekend so that they can help a hoard of sweaty stinky mud-crusted runners make it from start to finish in one piece.  Thank you all!  I do want to make a note of two things that could maybe be improved on in future years.  First – the issue of hot food and bottom of the pack runners.  It is a common theme in ultra-running, that with the exception of a few races (probably put on by mid to bottom of the pack runners themselves), hot food pretty much runs out when slower runners get to the aid stations.  All the precious bacon was gone and a few places ran out of hot soup.  Now, I know the lay of the land, anticipated the possible shortages and packed my own food in the six dropbags I was allowed.  Had I not, would I finish this run on the steady diet of sweedish fish and skittles?  I doubt it.   Now I don’t want to sound spoiled, and things like bacon really are a treat, but if you’re going to offer it to the frontrunners, please remember the lowly powerhiker who will be on his or her feet long after the frontrunner has finished the race, showered and took a nap.  The second issue is foot care.  This is also probably what used to be a luxury that now people rely on more and more on 100 mile courses.  I know my stinky blisters are my problem, but a properly drained and taped blister makes a world of difference in pace and willingness to carry on.  Availability of foot care is of major importance.  If Eastern States wants to continue growing as a premier 100 miler, they should make sure that foot aid is more readily available on the course.  I had asked at multiple points if anyone was available to drain my blisters and best I got was some very helpful volunteer who lubed up bottoms of my feet and retaped me.  I am really greatful for sure, but a syringe would be welcome any time after mile 64.

Chicken soup + ensure + dry socks = happy miles :]

As far as other logistics, the course was marked superbly and deadwood was cleared;  aid stations had clear signs with respect to what to expect on the next stretch, distance and elevation wise.  And there was a pretty good IPA at the finish line, very welcome.

PACERS AND CREW

Glad I had them.  If you’re going to attempt this course and are not religiously opposed to aid, use any aid you can get.  The course layout is challenging in many ways, make sure you have mental backup if you can.

I had fun coming in to mile 17.5 AS and seeing so many of my friends who would soon disperse to help their runners, but, for now, were still in one place; Angie, Paul, Tiffany, Matt, Tess, Rene and Neil had me refilled and ready to rock out in no time.  The rest of the run Angie had filled my bottles, taped my sore feet and told me she was looking forward to seeing me a few miles down the trail; I have to say, so was I.

5 for 5 at Eastern States for this bunch – peer pressure is a bitch :]

There were five of us attempting the run, all Raritan Valley Trail Runner “graduates” – myself, Jayson Kolb (who would go on to win the whole thing, here’s his report), Heather Simon-Buonocore, who would get third female, Ron Russo and Matt Ivan who posted impressive finishes of 30:50 and 32:11 respectively.  All of us had pacers and, in my case I know I would not have finished had I not had them.  The easy going company of Gene from mile 43 to 63 whittled away night time hours, the optimism and energy of Dave helped me meet the second sunrise and drudge through some pretty terrible stretches on approach to mile 75 AS.  After posting his slowest 50K time ever pacing me to mile 92, Dave handed me off to Angie who picked up my desheveled ghost of a runner and took it in to the finish.

Angie the pit stop coordinator extraordinaire and Gene who is ready to pace me at a 100 for the second time

Next day – I’m not trying to be in the forefront of this pic, I just can’t get up to that tree. But at least I got a t-shirt. 

WRAP UP

I would be remiss if I did not leave at least some notes of personal nature as to what it meant for me to finish this run.  I had a knee scope in the spring of 2015 and a mini stroke around Christmas of last year.  I had my doubts about the level of fitness I’d be able to sustain considering these set backs.  I went into this race mildly (some would say grossly) undertrained and intended to push my way one aid station at a time, until I had not made a cutoff.  Somehow, one step at a time, I made all of them all the way to the finish line.

We don’t know how difficult any particular stretch may be, it may look daunting before the start, but the beauty attending it makes the challenging parts less tiresome, feeds your curiosity and gives you strength to reach the sections that follow.  You don’t need to run a mountain one hundred miler to appreciate the metaphor, but taking that journey does drive the message home.

 

 

 

 

 

Batona Trail 100 Mile Run

“Somewhere around the year 1730, in a small pine barrens settlement, there lived an immigrant Englishwoman Debra Leeds.  She was poor and her life was hard as she had to take care of her husband and 12 children. When she found out that she was pregnant with her 13th child she exclaimed “I hope it be a Devil!”… She got her wish and gave birth to a child with wings, hooves and horns.  She hid him in the attic and took care of him, but when she died, the creature flew off into the desolate pine barrens, where it still dwells, even to this day.”
– The Legend of The Jersey Devil

THE TRAIL

The Batona Trail is a ~53-mile long point to point trail that runs mostly through the pinelands of Wharton State Forest in South New Jersey. Although the area is sometimes called Pine Barrens, it is anything but barren. The place is home to a varied lush vegetation that make the woods light up in gregarious rich color come late October. There are many large and small lakes, cranberry marshes, ponds, streams and a few rivers navigable on kayaks or boats. You can find a typical assortment of birds and animals common to the East Coast forests and some that are only found here. The NJ Pine Barrens actually happen to be the largest wooded territory on the Atlantic seaboard between Boston and Richmond. To protect many unique features of this land, in 1978 it was designated a National Reserve.

The woods are crisscrossed by innumerable dirt roads that let visitors explore the area with ease. These same paths have become a point of contention due to soil erosion caused by ever increasing motor bike, ATV and off-road truck traffic. There are currently plans to limit motorized traffic in the park, though they have met with opposition and the issue will take some time to decide.

Some of these dirt roads, as well as a lot of singletrack, make up the Batona (which stands for Back to Nature) trail. I first found out about this trail from Angie, who organizes the excellent low key Batona 50 running event. It had not occurred to me right away that I’d want to run the entire length of the trail, but, at some point, I thought that it would be fun not just to run it point to point, but actually out-and-back. And then, this summer, this idea turned from a random thought into a decision to make the Batona out-and-back my first 100 miler.

BATONA 100

There are as many ways to enjoy the trails as there are trails themselves, but, for me personally, a 100 mile trail run seemed like a rite of passage into the realm of true ultras. Two fat zeros following a 1, there’s something non-negotiable about this mileage. Throw in some mountains into the mix and you have one of those rare kinds of accomplishments that stand on their own and require no explanations. So I still have ways to go to reach that goal, and I’m trying to get there incrementally. My goal for Batona was to stay up on my feet for 24 hours or however long it would take me to cover those 100 some miles. Once I knew that I could do that, I’d be more comfortable tackling a 100 miler with significant elevation. So Batona was really a training run. My target run is 2016 Bighorn 100. My name is on the registrants list in fat bold letters.

By means of prep work for Batona I ran a random assortment of 50Ks through the summer and fall, finished my first 100K, broke my hands on a trail run which forced me to take an unexpected taper in the middle of training, ran an ill-advised (self-inflicted) strenuous sky run while recovering from the 100K and called it good enough. This is no way to train for a serious 100 with elevation and I will not follow the same regiment when my training for Bighorn starts next spring.

I set the date for the Batona run on Halloween, October 31. I would start at 3PM, get some miles in before it gets dark, run through the night and finish before the second sunset. Since it was Halloween and we’re talking the creepiest place in NJ, I invited my trail running peeps to come to the Pine Barrens and try to spot the Jersey Devil and maybe pace me a few miles in the process. I had the help of the mobile support unit manned by Angie and Paul from the minute I got to the starting trailhead to the moment I finally saw it again some 27 hours later.

I ran the first 30 miles on my own, seeing my crew every 10 miles or so. From the 16 hours that it took me to finish my 100K earlier in August, I knew what food would work for me and so I ate Paul’s crispy bacon and grilled cheese sandwiches like they were going out of style. I carried Tailwind in my bladder and drank mostly Coke at the aid stations. Around the turnaround (mile ~ 53) grilled cheese somehow became un-appealing and I turned to an assortment of canned chicken soups (and more bacon). I also ate a little over half a dozen fried eggs, also on the second part of the run. I had to take one salt-cap with 20 miles to go. That’s what worked for me, it kept my feet moving and my mind positive and I’m only dwelling on the food because it was the absolute second most important part to me being able to finish this run.

The first most important part was The Crew and Pacers. I cannot overstate how important it became for me to have someone on the trail with me beginning at mile 35 or so. Some aches and pains started to set in around that time and, had I been on my own, the temptation to walk for long stretches would have made any reasonable finish time impossible. But between miles 32 and 44 I had Gene, and then for some 10 miles Angela and Heather (aka Bumble Bee) ran along; then, a few short miles later which I did on my own, Angie paced me for another 12 miles, then Paul for 5, then Matt for 21 (with Tiffany joining for the last 9 miles of that stretch) and then Paul again for 10. Finally, with 1.5 miles to go, Angie went out to meet up with me from the trailhead and we ran it in like bats out hell for I was very much ready to get this thing over with.

my indominable crew: Angie and Paul

Gene, Heather (Bumble Bee) and Angela paced me through most of the night

Angela managed to decapitate a werewolf along the way, I was too busy chugging along to pay attention

Matt and Tiffany showed up in the late morning to take me through the grind of most of the second half miles

I very much credit my running to everyone who spent the time on the trail with me that weekend. My GPS recorded the run as 103.2 miles long which I covered in 27 hours and 2 minutes. There were roughly 1,800 feet of elevation gain; the elevation profile recording is rather noisy so I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this number; i can tell you it was flat. The mapping feature of the my Sunto Ambit 2 failed for some reason after 51.15 miles with about a mile or so to go to the northern trailhead at Ong’s hat. I kept charging the GPS at every stop so that I could record the entire run, so I am not sure why this failure happened. Regardless, the GPS continued recording the pace and distance afterwards, to the end of the run. A previous GPS recording of the Batona trail put the total one way distance at 53 miles. I suspect the total out-and-back is closer to 106 miles.

THE ESSENCE OF TRAIL RUNNING

There are so many instances where our success is predicated on the subjective and shifting concepts of what is important and expedient. So, what I love about trails is the absolute lack of that conceit and vanity. A trail is as long and technical on a Monday as it is on a Tuesday, unless it snows or rains, but again, there’s no artifice in the physicality of the trail – it always presents itself exactly as it is. If you trip on a trail, it is not because the trail tripped you, the trail never has a beef with you or anyone; even when I get hurt on a trail, I can’t get mad at the trail. The trail is equally challenging to you or anyone else, whatever your limitations may be; the trail is an equalizer – everyone has to put in the same training to conquer it. The trail does not listen to pleas, nor plays favorites, you either run it or not. This sort of primitive egalitarianism appeal to me and that is one of the reasons why I run trails.

Because there’s no fooling the trail, you don’t have to put on a face to run it. You come at it as you are. So often we have to assume a particular role in our lives to ensure material success that we lose the knowledge of our real selves. The trail, in a way, lets you have that again. The only thing that matters is how much you want to run that trail.

What is true of trails in general is probably more so of longer trails. The contrast between artificial and real is more pronounced and the completion of a longer trail yields greater emotional rewards. That is my neophyte take from training for and running a single 100 miler, I wonder what I’ll think some time down the road 🙂

SPOTTING DEVILS

Along Batona Trail we spotted some deer, rabbits, squirrels, ducks, quail, egret, turkeys and some hikers. We did not see the Jersey Devil. The real devil that I expected to see was one who would tell me to quit for any number of reasons a devil may come up with to rationalize stopping a run that your training and support has fully enabled you to complete. So when Matt asked me if I could see the finish line with 20 miles to go, and when Paul asked me if I saw it with 10 miles to go, my answer in both cases was “no”, I just could not relax and imagine the finish before I had put in the actual work to get to that trailhead. So at the end, the real devil never showed up either; there were some scary moments involving cramps and nausea, but a few sips of tailwind and a salt-cap kept me plodding along.

some serious downhills on this section 🙂

FKT

By the way, let me pat myself on the back and mention that, to my knowledge, this is the only attempt at completing the Batona trail out-and-back in one go. Which means I get the FKT. (My friend Mike Daiugeaun holds the lightning-fast FKT for the point to point 53 mile Batona run at 7:18:24 on a brisk January day a couple of years ago). Considering the relative snail pace at which I ran the out-and-back, the FKT should not stand long, but then again, who knew that the longest trail in the largest forest between Boston and Richmond would be un-challenged by an ultrarunner for so long 🙂

T-RAINING DAY (running Whiteface Sky Marathon, Wakely Dam 55K and Escarpment Trail Run rain or shine. mostly rain.)

I have not been able to wash the mud from under my toenails since June.  The five weeks of uninterrupted mud-fest began at Sky Marathon at Whiteface and has come to a merciful end at the Escarpment run in the Catskills.  And what fun!  Here’s the week by week recap.

Sky Marathon at Whiteface

Wilmington, NY http://rednewtracing.com

Essentials:  19.3 miles // 10K gain // not-so-technical terrain is challenging in bad weather.

Recovery Beer: Whiteface Stout, Adirondack Steak and Seafood Brewing Co.  Got the matching glass too.

This first year race is a part of the US Skyrunner Series.  To qualify as a sky marathon a course has to be at least 17 miles long and have at least 10K feet of vertical (just a tidbit I learned on the run).   The inaugural race was won very impressively by Tom Owens in 3:31:40.  The course consists of two ridiculously steep trips up and down Whiteface Mountain ski slopes with a nice rolling 6 mile loop through the forested foothills sandwiched in between.

A group of our local trail runners singled out this marathon as a great opportunity to get some hill training on the way to whatever target race each of us had later on in the season.  Although the group included some savvy veterans, little did we know what we would be getting into with this run.

To stretch our legs and take advantage of good weather, we decided to hike up Algonquin and Wright Peaks the day before the run.  Carry in – carry out.  The cans were way lighter on the way out.

It poured all night before the race and it rained on the race day also.  I’ve never been on top of Whiteface; apparently the sights from the top are breathtaking.  I wouldn’t know about the views – the last few hundred feet of ascent were happening in a mix of rain, driving wind and fog that made for crummy visibility.   The pouring water made the ascents a slippery mess and turned the neckbreakingly steep descents into gurgling waterfalls of rocks and mud.  I was ready to call it quits after the first loop, once I got down the god damned mud slide.  The sight of the leaders sprinting up the mountain for their last loop as I was gingerly finishing my first one did not add anything to my confidence.  Sky marathon runner I am not.

Anyhoo, once down, I took an extended breather at the bottom aid station and regrouped.  I decided that I am not hurt or cold and the day is still young and that I should continue and hopefully, at some point, I will be pulled of course for not making a cut off.  At least then I’d have an excuse.  So I dried up my ear-buds, wrapped myself in my rain jacket best I could, turned on my shuffle and headed out the door.  Which I am very happy that I did.  Because little by little I whittled away at the course and a few hours later, I was rolling down the hill (at one spot literally, tumbling head first and down like a sack of potatoes) for the last time, hearing the welcome cheers of my friends who either finished ahead of me or just came to hang out and cheer the rest of us on.  Despite my early meltdown I ended up finishing somewhere in the middle of the pack.  Good times!

When the going gets tough, the tough put on garbage bags and keep running

Panther and Burroughs 50K

Slide Mountain Wilderness, Catskills, NY

Essentials: 29-31 miles // 8.5K gain // terrain: sure, you can run it (if you’re Tom Owens)

Recovery Beer: Gale’s Prize Old Ale 2008 Vintage.  If I was gonna suffer, I had better had some quality brew to come back to.  Plus, this madera-like beer tastes decent warm.

Angie and I left home at the break of dawn and drove to the trailhead located on local route 42.  From there we hiked a little over 5 miles to a lean-to campsite just past Table Mountain, bagging Peekamoose Mountain in the go.

This was a busy Independence Day weekend and even though we got the campsite first, we pitched our tent a little further out from the lean-to.  The base location was excellent because we found a natural spring a few hundred feet away from the tent!  I don’t need to go into why it’s awesome to have cold clean water on a July camping trip.

The next morning we started down Table Mountain.  It rained most of the day so our progress was a little slower than we would have liked.  The sun did come out around 4 in the afternoon and we were rewarded with some great sunset views on the back half of the hike.

The route can be broken into several clearly defined segments which make the whole more palatable.  Down Table Mountain to Oliverea Road, about 3 miles along thatroad, an out and back to Great Ledge and Panther Mountain (3,720 feet), descent to Woodland Valley Road (roughly a half-way point, better fuel up here), a steady ascent up Burroughs Range summits punctuated by some fairly gnarly scrambles (Wittenberg (3,790 feet), Cornell (3,870 feet), and finally, to the highest point in the Catskills, Slide Mountain (4,200 feet)).  The way down from Slide Mountain is a very refreshing and quite runable little stretch, very welcome at this point.  Once you’ve comeall the way down, you just have to go back up some 1,000 feet to get back to camp.  Our trek ended at 29 miles; the GPS died a little earlier.  In the interest of making it back to camp before it was way too late, we made a decision to skip an out and back section to Terrace Mountain that would have added another two miles for a full 50K.  Either way, 13 some hours of navigating wet boulders, rocks and pebbles was plenty enough for us.  Bottom line is, if you’re looking for a full day run/hike on the rugged Catskills trails, this is a good one.

Mont-St-Anne, Quebec

Recovery Beer: Monark IIPA.  Very easy drinking IIPA, neither did I do much to recover from 🙂

A break from ultras, but not from running up ski slopes.  Mont St Anne is a sky resort half an hour drive North-East out of Quebec City.  It gives you 2K of gain to play with; can do summit routes as long as 2 miles and as short as just over 1.

Wakely Dam 55K

Northville Placid Trail, from Wakely Dam to Piseco Lake, NY http://www.wakelydamultra.com

Essentials: 32.6 miles // 3.5K feet of gain* // terrain: runable entire way when dry**

Recovery Beer: Saranac Legacy IPA.  After 32 miles of drinking sweat, bug spray and stream water this crisp IPA was perfect.

* – my GPS paused twice (operator error) so I am going by what’s the consensus on the webs

** – It thundered the night before and continued to rain well into the day of the run.  A good half of the course turned into one extended mud-pit.  I would expect no less from my trail-running season this year.  Mud was from ankle to knee deep, mixed with roots, rocks, swamp grass, in places traversed by just as treacherous slippery log walkways.   Mile for mile, when conditions are right, Wakely Dam has got to be the undisputed heavy weight champ of mud. 

Wakely Dam Ultra is point to point trail race that meanders through the woods, lakes and hills of lower Adirondacks not once encountering as much as a road crossing.  Over the 15 years of its existence, the race has attracted a very loyal following of adventurers who come to lose themselves in the woods, listen to the loons and overcome the challenge of 32 challenging miles supported by nothing other than what they carry in their backpacks.

For most runners the race morning starts at 3:30AM, which gives time to pack up the tent and head over to Piseco Airport to grab a cup of coffee and get on the bus which takes the runners to the starting point at Wakely Dam.  The sun rises as the bus seems to take forever to make the trip.  The runners either chat or catch up on sleep.  About a hundred of them gather up at the dam to take the photo and then it’s off to Aid Station # 1, 32.6 miles away.

The general terrain is gently rolling hills, mostly under the canopy, often within sight of numerous lakes, all looking sleepy in this rarely visited wilderness.  There are a number of stream crossings which are a welcome opportunity to refill the water bottle or wash off the mud that constantly gunks up the shoes.  There have been dry years at Wakely, I hear; I look forward to a year like that.  If you are lucky enough to run this race the most useful thing you’ll get in your goody bag is a few strips of fly paper.  A very handy thing indeed!

The trail is marked with blue trail markers adequately enough; there is a single turn around mile 4 that yours truly failed to notice costing him half a mile or so; other than that it is not that difficult to follow the trail.  There can be a lot of blow down after a more significant storm (like Sandy) in which case finding the trail can be a hustle.  However, by this year, most of that blow down has been either cleared or obvious detours appeared around the logs, making it easy to navigate along.  The course can be split into a 3 mile carriage road type first section, then some modestly hilly single track, then a longish section with a good deal of mud, then some more hills where the trail gets somewhat rockier (while you’re never far removed from your next mud pit), until you finally hit another good runable stretch somewhere along the back 5 miles, though you do have to cross a little bit of a swamp a mile or so before you finish.

Despite the mud, the flies and the lack of support, or maybe precisely because of these things, this enchantingly scenic 55K perfectly exemplifies the spirit of ultra running and I hope to continue to come back to this race for many years to come.

This elevation profile is plotted versus time because I did not want to connect segments where there is no GPS recording.  You bet I’ll get a better recording next year.  And I swear I can see some of the mud pits on this graph.

31-July-2017 update:  here’s a full recording of elevation vs. distance from this year’s race:

Escarpment Trail Run 30K

From Windham to Haines Falls, NY http://escarpmenttrail.com/

Essentials: 18miles // 4.6K // terrain: something about mountain goats

Recovery Beer: Troegs Perpetual IIPA.  Just one of my standby favorites.

Another no-nonsense well organized race with a loyal following.  Lots of excellent reports online, nothing new for me to add.  I only ran it just this year, will probably come back next year too.  A perfect mix of trail running and scrambles, just a great adventure run.

Lay of the land is easy to remember: trot up and down Windham, claw your way up Blackhead, don’t break your neck going down Dutcher’s Notch, hike up the three climbs to the top of Stopple Point, navigate the scrambles down to the finish, all the rest is pretty much runable.

Support-wise, there was plentiful Gatorade and water at the aid stations and an awesome assortment of fruit and other yummy goodies at the end.  You could also get a finisher’s tech shirt for $20, which I made sure to do.

What I do when I’m not running

There are worse things than not being able to run. Like you could be attacked by an angry chimp who rips your face off. Short of that, loosing your daily running mileage can be really sucky. The time off, however, (especially in the winter) can give you a chance to reflect on the past year and to make good and proper plans for the coming season and that’s what this post is about.
So – 2013. I had an absolute blast. Thanks to keeping a regular trail running schedule with RVTR I was able to recover from a knee injury sustained in late 2012 and proceeded to get some fun out of running. Got a 5K PR at Miles for Music in March, ran my first trail race at Chimney Rock, ran my first 50K at Bear Mnt in May, enjoyed every one of the pancake-flat 34.1 miles of the RVRR train-ing run in June, got second in AG at the USATF NJ XC series, placed top 10 at Mountain Madness 50K and got a marathon PR in Anchorage (which was bested at Philadelphia by another 5min, though I have to give a lot of credit to Matt for that record. I mean I have to give him all the credit – he ran it, with my bib). And the capper on this year was my Grand Canyon Rim To Rim To Rim adventure (Bright Angel Trail option – if given an option, always take the longer route). So what have I learned from all of this?
First, running in a group of like-minded runners makes all the difference. I wouldn’t have done any of the above, had I not had the company and comradery of my trail-running buddies. Second – to get anywhere worth mentioning you gotta push your limits. Embrace the pain. Get out of your comfort zone! Go the distance!! Ok, I’ll stop, but you get the point. Progress will come on the heels of efforts to accomplish more than you have done the previous week. And finally, and corollary to “no pain no gain” concept, is the “don’t be stupid” concept. What that means is everything in the world will break from overuse and your body is no different. So, if you want to achieve things that make an average joe shake his head in disbelief, you have to be deliberate in following a well thought-out training schedule. You’re not going to just wing it. Sooner or later, the lack of consistent training AND Recovery plan will catch up to you and you’ll be thinking of ways to fill in the time that you should be spending running, much like yours truly. Who is sitting here with a sore achilles that won’t even let me take a fast walk, let alone a jog.
So then, what do I plan to do next? Glad you asked. First, I plan to fully recover before doing any running. By fully recovering I mean I want to feel no pain; only then will I proceed to incorporate running into my training. I am lucky enough that biking doesnt seen to exacerbate my injury, so, as soon as the snow is off the roads, I will be up on my trusty hybrid getting miles in around my town. Second, after healing up I plan to take it slow. Start running literally from 1 mile and up, increase weekly distance gradually; I hope to be back to 40 miles a week by spring time and 50 miles/week by middle of the spring. Which is basically as much as I can usually manage to run, considering I have to work for a living; though I feel like running closer to 60 weekly miles would be helpful. But, whatever. I also plan to do track way more regularly. In my case it means just showing up for speed workouts. I sat them out last year with one injury after another, so maybe this current rest will fix me up enough that I can keep consistent speed training on my schedule in 2014.

And here’s my race schedule, I think it’s reasonable enough (I particularly look forward to (1) the RVTR takeover of Maine Pinelands ultra festival over the Labor Day weekend. yeay! (2) my first pacing experiences in Scotland and at Vermont 100K and (3) to Iron Mountain 50M race in Virginia in August). I hope to get some RVTR folks to come along to some or all of these races, I think they’re pretty awesome:

So here’s what I want to do:

1. Moab UT 50k (Feb 15) – training run
2. Terrapin VA 50k (Mar 22) – RACE
3. Bear Mnt NJ 50k (May 3) – training run
4. Pinelands ME 50M (May 25) – RACE (100M qualifier)
5. West Highland Way Race Scotland 100M (Jun 21) – pace! Go Lindsay!
6. Vermont 100 (Jul 19) – pace! Go Angie! 🙂
7. Escarpment NY (Jul 27) – fun run
8. Iron Mnt VA 50M (Aug 30) – RACE (100M BU qualifier)
9. MDI Marathon ME (Oct 19) – RACE
10. Stone Mill MD 50M (Nov 16) – fun run (100M BU of BU qualifier)
11. Ridgecrest CA 50k (Dec 7 est.) fun run

There will also be an assortment of ridiculous training runs (like the 22 mile Ramapo Dunderberg winter trail run) and uber hikes (20 mile Presidential Travarse in NH, May 10th, mark your calendars) in between the official races. One of these days we gotta put on an official race..

Cheers and Long live Moose and Squirrel.

How To Run A Marathon With Moose

I’ve now been to Alaska twice. First time my brother took me on a 1,500 mile scenic tour of the South-East corner of the state, a trip that included such stunts as piggyback rides on a one-man kayak across a category 2 creek and salmon fishing with a grizzly. This time I did not come home with any such crazy memories, but the trip was awesome in a different way and here’s what I got:

Moose’s Tooth Marathon
It’s run by the Anchorage running club; it’s not a huge event, only 384 runners doing the marathon this year. There was also a 5K and a half and a marathon relay going on at the same time so the trail was busy enough that it felt like a big race, in all about 4000 runners and walkers participating. The route quickly loops you out of downtown Anchorage and onto the trails. Granted, they were paved bike trails but trails non-the-less! For 23 miles of the route you get to run surrounded by some kind of greenery. I loved it.

What a view! Seriously, I did not even feel motivated to run, would have rather just chilled and took in the scenery:

There’s about half a mile of gravel on this course, the rest is smooth pavement. For big chunks of the route you have the option of stepping off the asphalt and onto a dirt path if that’s your thing. The course is mostly flat with a few modest hills (total elevation gain is 1,448 ft).

The race had no pacers and I didn’t have a GPS, but there were mile markers so I just kept asking volunteers to give me the time and spent my ample free time between the aid stations calculating my pace. Which started off at about 8, went up to 7:30 for a bit, went back to 8 and got way slower after I passed mile 21. My goal was to finish under 4 hours, with 3:45 being a realistic goal, so, once I saw that I was hovering at a 3:25 finish (had I kept up going at 7:30 pace) I didn’t sweat my race-end slowdown that much. In fact I didn’t sweat at all – like, I wasn’t tired. I could run with my mouth shut and make triple digit divisions in my head. It’s just that my legs were killing me and it was a weird feeling to be ready to go mentally, but be hamstrung by my un-cooperating hamstrings; and quads; and gluts. hehe.

My fearless crew

Anyways, if I ever change my mind and try to do another road marathon, I think I’ll want to run a few more longer training runs at a decent pace (22, 24 miles) to get my muscles used to running hard after 20 miles.

To cross the t-s on logistics: The aid stations had water and Gatorade and one or two of them had pretzels, but that was it. The course was marked well, plenty of facilities, lots of cheering volunteers and even a Taiko drum band at the 21 mile mark.

Oh, the Moose: it was totally awesome to see a moose family (a mama and a baby) right off the side of the trail; they were grazing on some Alder leaves and minding their business and so were the runners and it was pretty cool.

ok, where is my grilled cheese sandwich?

For the rest of this post, I think I’ll just shut up and post some pix:

carbo-loading

How did i take that pic?

getting ready to run 2K!

Anchorage museum – lots of cool stuff there

Denali painted by Lawrence in the Northern Romantic landscape tradition. Not to be confused with Triumphalists like Bierstadt. the things you learn…

they have a lot of flowers around town in the summer, they may be compensating for something

Hiking
After some uber-expert navigation of some mean dirt roads off of Hatcher Pass my brother’s pickup brought us to where we could hike in peace:

Archangel Creek

used to be a mine here

Trekking

More good food in town:

Taco King!

5 of these are edible, 1 is poisonous, 3 – i am not sure

Kencaid Park:

it rained the whole week except this one day

some nice trails right in town

Wolverine Peak a few miles out of town, a nice 3200 ft climb to the 4200 ft summit:

i came to see some mountain sheep and behold, here they are

View off Wolverine Peak – more Peaks

Back in town:

i wasn’t the only piece of jersey trash in Anchorage

Shoe Review
Ok, just one more thing: these shoes – they were awesome, they kept my feet comfortable no matter what abusive trails I directed them onto. Sturdy, good amount of cushioning, good protection against the rocks, surprisingly good traction, even on wet surfaces, drain well, very light as far as rugged trail shoes go. Two big-toes up! I’m gonna give these babies a workout this fall.

La Sportiva Wildcat trail running shoes

Angela’s, Matt’s and Denis’ Excellent Adventure – SBM26M

Sometime this spring I had a brilliant idea to run the entire length of the Suffern Bear Mountain Trail in one day. SBM trail is a rocky and scenic 23.5 mile path that crosses the entire length of Harriman Park and I hiked just about every portion of it in years past. So the natural progression would be to tackle the entire thing at once. Having done fairly well at Bear Mountain 50K in May, I figured it would be a fun training run even if done in July heat. I ran the idea by Matt and he enthusiastically signed up. To make the run worthwhile and to avoid parking fees (yes), I tacked on another 1.5 mile at the end of the trail to get to free parking and another mile for a hairloop to a Gadorade drop-off spot. So at the end we’d be looking at a cool trail marathon. 8 AM the morning of the run, us runners met up in Suffern.

Look at us looking all chipper!

We proceeded to the trailhead which starts out directly from a sidewalk off Rt 59 in Suffern. To get on the trail you gotta climb a 5 foot tall boulder. If you have something else to do rather than read this post, I’ll just summarize it for you: the trail pretty much stays that way for the next 20 some miles.

But I’ll proceed. We hiked up our first ~ 500 ft hill looking over Suffern and Ramapo and dove into the woods along an old carriage road. Half a mile later somehow we lost the trail markers and also, thereabouts, we lost Kate. If you find Kate, let her know we made it out OK. We pushed ahead and after a few turns along a gasline and a powerline, we found our way back to SBM. Which at this point was not following a carriage road, but a field of football sized rocks which we made our best effort to navigate. It poured in the morning and it drizzled as we ran, so the rocks were slippery and our best pace on this terrain would be a powerhike. When the trail cleared up a bit, we ran the runnables, but those were few and far between. On the bright side we were crossing these infinite fields of ripe blueberries that you could just pick as you ran along. Which we did.

At about mile 7 we reached our first rest station: a bag of gadorade and a quart of, guess what? blueberries hidden behind a barn at Ramapo Equestrian Center parking lot. Following an incident involving a vicious German shepherd and yours truly, we refilled our camelbacks and got back on the trail.

Lots of kittens in this barn!

This dog was much friendlier than the other one, which didn’t even let me take his picture.

The next stop would be in 10 miles. We traversed rolling ridges, crossed dried out creeks, made our way along the granite outcrops of the Kakiat ridge. There are usually some great views to be had along the ridge, but it was rainy and all we saw was clouds all around. Still kinda neat.

shrooms!

I could give you a whole spiel on how this rock got on top of this mountain, but I’ll save it for another time..

salamanders crossing!

When we got to the second stop, right where the trail crosses the Palisades Parkway, I was starting to feel all those sharp rocks along the 17 miles we crossed in just under 5 hours. The stop was definitely welcome. I fished the cooler out of poison ivy infested thickets and we gobbled up some PB&J sandwiches and what not. Back on our feet.

This is where things got interesting. Just as we were getting weary of the same ol’ undulating terrain (200 feet down, 300 feet up, yadda yadda), we were presented with Pingyp Mountain. It is an awesome little hill, 1023 feet, but the gain is very sharp, we’re talking at one point scaling 250 feet in 0.15 mile. Needless to say our splits did not pick up at this point.

not runnable..

nice views of Pomona off Pingyp

Then Matt said: we gotta get the move on, so off we went again.

After Pingyp, we came across a few other rocky scrambles that definitely had our attention. That went on for the next 5 miles or so. As we got closer to Bear Mountain, the terrain moderated and we were able to put in a few running miles, that coming towards the end of what would end up being a 10 hour hike. Right around there we were also rewarded with some nice juicy raspberries.

Two moments stand out in my memory from this hike: a carpet of ferns of the freshest verdant hue overgrowing the trails and a deer standing right on the path, so close, you can see his whiskers.

 

Can you tell I was happy to see the trail-end markers? hehe

Bear Mountain Bridge with Anthony’s Nose in the background. A scramble for next time?

(Photos: courtesy of Angela)