Sweeping the Stevens Creek 50K
March 28, 2006

One of the gals I bike with (Chris) does long runs herself, but her boyfriend (Chuck) is an ultra-guy: he regularly does 50K, 50 mile, and 100 mile runs.  Anyway, on Saturday there was a 50K race he was doing up on skyline and Chris talked me into helping with the race.  I had a total blast!

We were the "sweeps" for the first 19 miles, so our job was to run slower than the slowest racer, to make sure nobody was having problems, and to gather all the ribbons that marked the trail.  There had been three inches of rain at skyline the night before, and there were little rain squalls all day long, so we were covered with mud and soaking wet after the first couple of miles.  With 50 or 60 racers ahead of us, the trails were really "interesting", mud-wise.  After you reach the point where you can't get dirtier or wetter, it suddenly becomes fun, since there's no reason to put any effort into staying clean or dry any longer.

There were two major stream crossings, the first about one mile out which was pretty exciting: fast muddy water (so you couldn't see where you were stepping) and about a foot deep.  I got a little adrenaline rush there, but it was nothing compared to the crossing five miles farther along: a roaring muddy torrent between four and five feet deep.  There was a log to hang onto, but it was slippery and the entire process of getting across was more than a little terrifying.  Chuck was helping others across when we arrived, and I was glad to have him there to help.  We scooted across the log on our butts, trying not to look down.

The great thing about these ultra runs is that the folks who do them are SO nice.  I remember when I first started to run and did 10K races I found that the 10K racers are very aggressive.  Then I did a half-marathon, and the runners seemed so relaxed in comparison.  Then the marathon runners were even more laid-back.  The longer-than-marathon folks are just off the charts.  It WAS a race, but people would always stay back to help others on the river crossings, to get across mud holes, they'd share food, water, anything!  If anybody had gotten hurt, I'm sure that even if he/she was the race leader, he/she'd have bailed to help the injured person.  Every time you met other runners, everybody would exchange encouraging words.  It was my first experience doing anything with an ultra-marathon, and I came away from it feeling really great!

When you're not running fast, you can digest stuff a lot better, so the food at the aid stations is completely different from what you'd see in a marathon or shorter race.  They had bowls of boiled potato chunks that you could dip in salt.  They had potato chips (covered with salt), pretzels, M&Ms, cookies, chocolate-covered raisins, flat Coca-Cola, veggie or turkey sandwiches, and of course the usual water and sports drinks.  It's amazing how your body can scream for salt when you've been sweating for so long and I just gorged myself on the salty potatoes and pretzels.  The M&Ms didn't appeal to me but Chris was snorking them down like there was no tomorrow.  She carried along a load of trail-mix on the run which tasted really good, too: salty nuts, some dried fruit and a few M&Ms.

I'd never dream of eating that sort of stuff on a shorter, faster race, but it really hit the spot!

We finished our 19 miles in 5 hours, 6 minutes, just a couple of hundred yards behind the last runner.  So our pace was around 16 minute miles: pretty relaxed.

I was a little beat-up at the end, but felt pretty good.  With all the mud, your feet tend to slide out to the side a lot, and you're constantly using your adductor muscles to pull them in, and unless a swimmer specializing in the breast stroke, you probably don't use those muscles much.  Chris sort of hit the nail on the head at the end when she said, "My haunches are sore!"