A Warm, Sunny Day in January

After a harrowing ride the day before, resulting in a split top tube and a split... lip... I was not as fired up about my Sunday run as I wanted to be. A little after the fact, I figured out that I had hit six months sober without even realizing it, and since I had a big weekend on the calendar, I half thought about maybe doing it up big. Saturday was the 200K, and Sunday was a trail run where I was signed up for the 21K, but I had the option of upgrading to the 50. And as long as I was thinking about doing a 200K and a 50K, why not just do a long swim on Friday and round it out with greater than the distance of an ironman in all three sports all in one weekend. I did the swim (4400 yards) and the bike, but I'll spoil the surprise right now; I didn't do the full run.

The run was right in my own back yard, so I woke up late and took my time eating a big breakfast. Then I drove down to the Safeway (which has a Starbucks in it (Starbucks, please sponsor my blog) to pick up some last-minute essentials: coconut water, anti-chafe lube, and my coffee. I was cutting it a bit close on time, but I was only a few blocks from the start, right? What I hadn't thought about, however, was parking... and how I would have to park like everyone else. I suppose I could have parked at my house and walked down, but it was too late for that now and I didn't want to spill my coffee power walking down the hill. I found the registration table (as far from the start as you could get), and asked the guy what it would take to change distances. "I'm signed up for the 21K, but I'm still not sure which one I should do..." I told him.

"Aw, go for the 50K," he told me.

"Alright, let's do it!" I said. Then I thought better of it. "You know, I'm still not sure... what do I have to do to switch?"

"I have no idea, actually," he told me, even though he was working the table marked 'distance changes.' "Why don't you just run the 21K, and when you're done, you can decide if you want to keep going. If you do the 50, just tell them when you finish." Perfect!

I got my number on, the lube between my legs, and jogged to the start just in time to hear the starting siren and keep jogging. The trail went down to singletrack about 100 yards in and started climbing even before that. Because I was in the back, I (and everyone else) got stuck going the same pace as the slowest guy in the race. We hiked up the hill for about a mile, dashing around one person at a time whenever there was enough space on the trail. I knew that Sponsor was here, and I was hoping to catch up with her in order to have someone to keep me company and share the pretty views with. I was proud of how pretty Pacifica was, after all, and I never got a chance to share it with anybody.



Even at this slow pace, my legs were bursting with lactic acid, and I knew that I was fucked for the day. Right away I dropped the idea of doing the 50K, and just decided to enjoy the day and get through it however possible. It was the clearest sunny day I'd ever seen on these trails, and even though it was early in the morning, I was sweating in just a pair of spanky shorts and a tank top.

Up ahead, I had made my way up through the group to see that there was one guy who had let a giant gap open up in the trail in front of him. I was annoyed. Why didn't he get the fuck out of the way? Didn't he realize that there were people stuck behind him breathing down his neck? I got ruder and made my way up to him and finally around him. He looked like Gary Sinise on chemo. With Lieutenant Dan behind me, I now had to actually run up the hill. Ow, this hurt.


I came up on another barrel-chested guy who was running shirtless with compression socks and gaters on his legs. This guy's accessory distribution was all wrong. He didn't have so much as a visor or a watch anywhere above the waste, but he was wearing everything that he could cram on below the waist. He had the opposite distribution of body mass, with a giant, boxy torso and spindly chicken legs. It reminded me of something that one of the trainers at work had told me, "You can tell the gay guys who are sick (HIV+) because the steroids that they put them on to fight muscle wasting makes their abs stick out." He didn't look like a Castro muscle queen, but something about this guy's build gave me the heebie jeebies. Actually, I just kind of had the heebie jeebies. My mind was in that place: when you're running all out in the gym and then suddenly someone makes a loud sound with some weights and it explodes in your head so loud you think you're going to fall over.



Finally the singletrack trail opened up onto a wider (steeper) fire road. I was walk/running around people and they were walk/running around me. I came around a guy who had the gaunt body and moribund stride of an ultrarunner that didn't know when to take a rest day. It took me forever to get around him, and he was deep mouth breathing on my shoulder for what felt like an eternity. His mouth was agape and his big cheeks and sunken teeth reminded me of the pictures you see of mummies or mummified hikers that they find in the desert on CSI. I couldn't wait to get around him.

I finally shook off the Cadaver, and a guy came down the hill in the other direction, finished with the "out" portion of the out-and-back and now onto the "back." This was a particularly steep part of the trail, making it hard for even the elite guys (which he must have been to be so far forward in the pack) to look coordinated as they scrambled down the 15-20% grade, but this guy looked even wilder than that. He was wearing a shirt that said "run happy," but something about his gait made him lurch like a toddler just learning to walk. Was I seeing things? A runner behind me encouraged him, "run happy, my brotha'," and Run Happy Guy's response came in and out of my hearing like a wave. "MMMmmmmhuMMMmhuhhhmmmmmMmM." At the time I thought that I was really falling to bits and the fatigue was starting to affect my senses, but it turned out that Run Happy Guy really did have some sort of neurological disorder, and he was still out there running happy and way, way faster than most people. Well how could I possibly feel sorry for myself now?



I got all the way to the top of the mountain without running into Sponsor, and figured that she hadn't come to the race after all, so I turned around and decided I'd take the rest of the course at whatever pace occurred to me. A few minutes down the hill I finally spotted her. "I was in the bathroom line at the beginning!" she yelled to me. "I got a late start."

"Well I'm running at a snail's pace, so you'll probably catch me in a few," I said. I relaxed my pace as much as I could, and even stopped to pee behind a bush, but she never did catch me. Now that I was going back downhill, life was good. I was glad I had legs again (rather than them just being a source of pain and misery), and I bombed down the trail with my arms outstretched like an airplane. Actually, it felt really good to stretch out like that, my chest and triceps were deeply sore I'm guessing from riding on a busted bike for 3 hours.

Unfortunately, the hill ended and it was time to climb up the second hill. This is the shortest hill on the course, made up of grades that I usually find run-able. Not today. I continued my walk-run which looked a bit like "run 5 steps, walk 3" until I reached the top. This downhill wasn't quite so full of life. I could feel the bruised area in my shorts complaining from all the movement going on, and I was also badly chafed between my thighs where the shorts didn't cover. I knew that I was wiped because I could feel my core muscles working on the descent.

By the time I hit the only flat-ish section of the course--a half-mile slight uphill jog on a gravel path to the last hill--even running on this road was tough. It was like I was stuck between miles 16 and 20 of a marathon for 21 kilometers. I wasn't seeing any more ghosts, and I was still passing people on the uphills, but I was falling apart quickly.

The final hill is an endless series of almost 30 switchbacks that climbs about 1000 feet over 1.5 miles. Even though I've run this trail several times, I still never know when I'm getting close to the top. There's tall brush to either side of the trail, and the trail makes its way up the spine of a ridge in such a way that it always looks like the mountain must end after this next bend. Above me, below me, behind me, and in front of me I could hear runners talking about how hilly this course was. Yep, and I run it all the time, suckas! I thought. When you finally reach the top, there's an anticlimactic sweeping turn and down you go.

Normally this is a fun and non-technical downhill that you can take at the speed of gravity, but my legs had had it. I plodded down the hill as fast as my wooden legs could take me. I was uncomfortable deep inside, almost like cramping or when you take a deep breath at the wrong moment and you get a sharp, stabbing cramp in your side. It reminded me of the scene in Running on the Sun when they say that one of the Badwater runners' internal organs have started to chafe from rubbing against each other. I wasn't marathon tired where you feel like you've been beat up from the ground up, I was tired on a far deeper level from the bones out. Maybe I would be back to the endurance level I used to be at someday, but I wasn't there yet.

Finally I hobbled down out of the trail and to the finish line. It was my slowest half marathon ever: about 2:30, with 3764' climbed over that distance. I figured Sponsor was right behind me, so I grabbed fistfuls of corn chips and sugar cookie pieces and settled in to wait. And wait. And wait. What I didn't know was that she was signed up for the 30K, and wouldn't finish for another hour and a half (I finally gave up and left after an hour and 15 minutes).

While I was waiting, I got to watch other people finish. The female winner of the 30K race came flying through the finish line a few minutes after me sporting a t-shirt from a 100-mile race. She was short and muscular, built like a shit brick house just like me with slightly less fat. She had a forward-thrusting energy down to her facial features, even when she was standing still. A couple of heavyset women walked through the finish line wearing cotton t-shirts, Target sneakers, and fashionable sunglasses chanting "slow and steady wins the (9K) race!" Then there was a young couple that I'd seen out on the trail who could have been American Eagle models. She was wearing lime green compression socks, and he was wearing no shirt and a Camelbak which they'd both stopped to take turns sucking on the trail. When they came around the bend to the finish line, they both burst into grins and started sprinting to the finish, elbowing each other and giggling. They were having so much fun, it made me want to be them. For a moment I was a little sad that my girlfriend's knees are too fucked up to ride and her feet are too fucked up to hike these days, but that's a story for another time.

While I was sitting, one of the guys that I'd recognized as one of the front runners struck up a conversation with me. He was one of those hairless skinny straight white guys over 40 that looks like he's made of wax, but he sure was fast. "I saw you out on the course," I said. "I like your Hawaiian shorts!"

"Yeah, I try not to take myself too seriously..." he told me.

After we'd shot the shit for awhile and I was feeling more comfortable, I got up the nerve to ask him something that I'd always wondered. "So when guys like you run a course like this, do you run the whole thing? Like even the steep parts?" I asked.

"Yep, it's not a fast run, but it's a run."

Woooooow. There were quarter-mile sections of this courses that were over 15%. He looked at me, "You look like you could be built for something like this. You've got those short legs, so you can get a fast turnover." Yeah... well... no. "How do you like those compression socks?" he asked. I'd had to roll the compression socks down a couple of inches because they covered my short little legs up past the knees.

"I don't know, to tell the truth," I told him. "I'm wearing them today more to hold me together than out of faith that they actually work."

"Well do your calves knot up really bad after a long run? Do they prevent that?" he asked.

"What? Um, no, I guess I don't get that. I mean I get tired and stuff. Tight. But knots? No."

I went home and took an ice bath, then I took a hot epsom salt bath. With the chafe between my legs and my split... lip... it took a good several minutes to be able to submerge myself in the water and I yelped and whimpered like a hurt animal, but finally I was successful in submerging myself. That night I got a massage from our massage therapist at work. I asked her why my experience with foam rollers and massages hadn't been as painful as other people had described. But when she hit my IT band and I screamed, I felt what all those people were talking about. "I think it's because you never sit still. Your muscles never get a chance to knot up like other people's," she told me. Yeah, well I was a hurt unit. I crawled into bed after my massage and spent every free second I could find the next day asleep.

I think I deserve a recovery week.