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Li'l Phil says: "Protecting your eyes against UV radiation is not only the smart choice, it's the fashionable one too!"
As some of you have heard, my Western States race ended early and far from the finish line. Here's the self-pitying report I submitted to RunnersWorld.com.
IT'S NOT FAIR!
I'm in a whiny, feeling-sorry-for-myself mood right now. The more sympathetic readers among you may wonder why.
It's not because I didn't win Western States, which would have been difficult under even the most favorable of circumstances. And it's not because I failed to meet my time goal, which despite its ridiculous precision (16:41:59) was pretty much a wild guess as to what I was capable of. It's because I thought I prepared and raced sensibly, and yet it didn't matter. I was competely destroyed by the course and the warm weather anyway. Poor me!
The outcome was not one I had anticipated during the early miles. I settled into a pace that felt sustainable -- probably about 8:30 to 9:00 per mile on the flat, smooth sections -- and seemed all the more comfortable because of the tranquil meadows and mountainsides around me. I felt as peaceful as I ever have during a race.
That peace was disturbed slightly by my split times, which from the beginning were slower than I had planned. I arrived at the first major checkpoint, Red Star Ridge (mile 16.0), after 2 hours and 42 minutes, about 13 minutes behind schedule; by Robinson Flat (mile 29.7), my time of 5:02 was 18 minutes slow. But I was sure that speeding up would lead to disaster, so I kept my effort steady, telling myself that most of the people ahead of me would come back to me later or drop out.
Another intrusion on my peacefulness came in the form of Nikki Kimball, who passed me two or three times between mile 25 and 35 before pulling away for good. Getting "chicked" (i.e., losing to a woman) is not easy on my fragile male ego. On the other hand, Nikki finished behind only two male runners at last year's race, so I was in good company. Also, she's a friend and fellow Williams College alum, so I was able to enjoy a few minutes of relaxed conversation with her before she grew bored of my pedestrian pace.
All things considered, I was in good spirits as I reached the Last Chance aid station at mile 43.3. I was in 13th place, with plenty of time to work my way into the top five. The volunteers from the Stevens Creek Striders gave me a fresh coat of sunscreen, and I joked with them about eating the pizza they were offering to runners.
I don't know why that aid station is called "Last Chance," but in my case it was my last chance to feel good that day. The trail to the next stop, Devil's Thumb (mile 47.8), consists of 1.7 miles over fairly flat ground followed by a precipitous descent in which you lose 1300 vertical feet over 1.4 miles and then a brutal 1.4-mile climb in which you gain those 1300 feet right back. I thought I was mentally prepared for this section -- I had seen the elevation profiles beforehand and knew that I'd have to walk both the descent and the climb -- but it seemed to take forever, and I arrived at Devil's Thumb feeling defeated and somewhat nauseated.
Then came another descent down to El Dorado Creek (mile 52.9). This one wasn't as steep, but my quads were now showing the effects of the 13,000 or so vertical feet of cumulative downhill covered up to that point. I proceeded with a tentativeness generally reserved for activities like trying to surgically remove one's own appendix.
Meanwhile, my nausea worsened, and I switched from Gu2O to water. My "water diet," as might be expected from its lack of electrolytes and calories, proved to be only a temporary fix. I was able to run parts of the climb up to Michigan Bluff (mile 55.7), passing eventual women's runner-up Bev Anderson-Abbs, and got a rousing cheer from my crew (my wife and her sister) at the aid station. But within a few more miles I was reduced to a slow, unsteady walk.
As I ambled onward, I took stock of my situation. My quads were shot, to the point where I could no longer run downhill at all. I didn't feel like eating or drinking anything despite the obvious need to do so. Both feet had multiple blisters from the rough, rocky sections of the trail. I was no longer enjoying myself, and the thought of traveling another 40 miles in my weakened state was simply unbearable. I decided to quit.
Once that decision was made, my final Herculean task was to convince the well-meaning volunteers at Foresthill (mile 62.0) that I really, definitely wanted to stop and would not regret my decision tomorrow.
"Let me work on your muscles for a while," offered one. "Have some soup and think about it some more," suggested another. "Once you get your electrolytes back to normal, you'll feel a lot better."
I struck back with a determination to show that my decision was rational and final. "All the electrolytes in the world will not repair these muscle tears," I said, pointing to my quads. "I know that," I added somewhat gratuitously, "because I have a Ph.D. in physiology." Eventually I got my way.
To those who achieved greater success than I did -- from winners Hal Koerner (16:12:16) and Nikki Kimball (18:12:38) to the 250 or so others who finished within the allotted 30 hours -- I say: congratulations. My lightweight, sun-shielding racing hat is off to you. As for me, I will not attempt another race like this anytime soon. Although Western States provided some wonderful moments, it exposed my weaknesses (lousy downhill running technique, feet not accustomed to rocky trails, uncertainty about food and drink choices after the first eight hours, etc.) so completely and mercilessly that I feel a strong need to retreat to my strengths for a while. Strengths like my capacity to consume fried chicken, for example. Which should be even more impressive now that my nausea has subsided
Naturally, some people did finish the race, permitting me to determine a winner in my prediction contest. Below is a summary of the voting and actual race performances. The format is: name: votes received; place (among runners of the same gender), time.
MEN
Jae-Duk Sim: 9 votes; 10th place, 18:44
Lon Freeman: 9 votes; DNF
Greg Crowther: 7 votes; DNF
Erik Skaden: 5 votes; 2nd place, 16:36
Brian Morrison: 5 votes; DNF
Brian Robinson: 2 votes; 23rd place, 21:20
Graham Cooper: 1 vote; 3rd place, 17:11
Andy Jones-Wilkins: 1 vote; 4th place, 17:20
James Bonnett: 1 vote; 12th place, 19:41
Jon Olsen: 1 vote; 16th place, 20:26
David Goggins: 1 vote; 21st place, 20:52
Jim Huffman: 1 vote; DNS
Joe Kulak: 1 vote; DNE (did not enter)
WOMEN
Nikki Kimball: 25 votes; 1st place, 18:12
Kami Semick: 7 votes; 8th place, 21:40
Anne Lundblad: 6 votes; 9th place, 21:46
Annette Bednosky: 2 votes; 6th place, 21:15
Bev Anderson-Abbs: 1 vote; 2nd place, 19:31
Karine Herry: 1 vote; 3rd place, 20:12
Julie Fingar: 1 vote; 15th place, 23:34
Noticeably absent among the list of vote-getters is men's champ Hal Koerner, who clocked an impressive time of 16:12. Surprises among the women were less dramatic, with 4th-place Caren Spore (20:36) being the top finisher not to receive any pre-race votes.
Although no voters correctly guessed both the men's and women's champions, three people (AJW, Craig Thornley, and Leanne McCulloch) came quite close by endorsing the combination of Erik Skaden (2nd male) and Nikki Kimball (1st female). Based on the predictions of winning times, the tiebreaker goes to AJW. Please step forward to identify yourself -- the world wants to know if you are 4th-place finisher Andy Jones-Wilkins -- and claim your prize! Thornley and McCulloch will be awarded consolation prizes of some sort.
Here's the first of two essays that I'm writing for RunnersWorld.com.
A HALF-FULL OUTLOOK ON THE WESTERN STATES ENDURANCE RUN
Have you ever completed a half marathon in a fast time and wondered, "Gee, I wonder how I'd do in a FULL marathon?"
That's kind of how I'm feeling right now -- except that my "half marathons" have been 50 miles to 100 kilometers long, and my "full marathon" will be the 100-mile Western States Endurance Run this Saturday.
For those who aren't familiar with it, Western States is a trail race over the Sierra Nevada Mountains in eastern California. Due in part to its rich history, it is arguably the most prestigious ultramarathon in the United States. Its origins date back to 1974, when Gordy Ainsleigh decided to participate in a 100-mile horse race, the Western States Trail Ride, without the benefit of a horse. Eventually a separate event was established for runners, and since then it has grown to the point where it attracts more than 1,000 applications annually, from which about 400 lucky participants are selected. Moreover, some people are so fond of the race that they come back year after year -- people like Scott Jurek, who has seven victories in seven attempts (1999-2005); Ann Trason, who garnered FOURTEEN titles between 1989 and 2003; and Tim Twietmeyer, whose 25 sub-24-hour finishes between 1981 and 2006 included five wins.
This year's edition of the race will feature many Western States veterans, but I am not one of them. In fact, this will be my first 100-miler ever -- my first race beyond 100 kilometers. Given my inexperience, one might think it prudent to approach the race with modest and flexible expectations. Indeed, that's the advice Twietmeyer offered to first-timers in an interview last year with blogger Scott Dunlap. "Leave your watch at home," he said.
Well, sorry, Tim; that's just not how I operate. In fact, that's almost the exact opposite of how I operate. As a research scientist with a road and track background, I crave the quantitative feedback that split times provide. Also, the numbers give me something to think about in between aid stations.
For better or worse, my race plan reflects this obsession with times. For example, my overall goal is to finish in under 16 hours and 42 minutes. Why 16:42? For one thing, that's exactly 10-minutes-per-mile pace, since the exact race distance is 100.2 miles. For another, 16:42 is often fast enough to win.
If you think that a goal of sub-16:42 is absurdly specific, hold on -- I'm just getting started. To determine just how one goes about running a 16:42, I scanned past results for finishes in the 16:32-16:52 range. Then I compiled and averaged the splits that led to each of those finishes, creating a split time profile that was a hybrid of Chuck Jones and Jim Pellon in 1986 (1st and 2nd that year), Tom Johnson in 1990 (1st), Brian Purcell in 1991 (2nd), Twietmeyer in 1994 (1st), and Jurek in 2001 (1st). After correcting for differences between the current course and previous versions (with the help of 2005 runner-up Andy Jones-Wilkins), I arrived at an extremely detailed, rather optimistic race plan.
The race starts at 5:00 AM. I intend to depart Red Star Ridge (mile 16.0) at 7:37 AM, Robinson Flat (mile 29.7) at 9:54 AM, Last Chance (mile 43.3) at 11:40 AM, Devil's Thumb (mile 47.8) at 12:35 PM, Michigan Bluff (mile 55.7) at 2:01 PM, Foresthill School (mile 62.0) at 3:01 PM, Peachstone/Cal-2 (mile 70.7) at 4:30 PM, the American River Crossing (mile 78.1) at 5:35 PM, Auburn Lake Trails (mile 85.2) at 6:58 PM, and Highway 49 (mile 93.5) at 8:26 PM. I should reach the finish line at 9:41 PM. This is all typed out on a piece of paper that I'll carry with me during the race.
Perhaps the main utility of my itinerary is that it will provide everyone with a hearty laugh when my actual splits are compared to my projected ones. For all of my number-crunching, even I can see the folly in trying to schedule every minute of a 100-mile trail race. Still, I'd rather have a plan that I can modify or abandon as necessary than go without a plan altogether.
In addition to my exhaustive perusal of old race results, I've tried to squeeze in some actual training now and then. Since recovering from the Miwok 100K (at which I placed 2nd to fellow Western States contender Lon Freeman) on May 5th, I've done a couple of 40- to 50-mile runs on hilly trails in order to simulate the race as closely as possible.
Of course, there's only so much confidence one can gain from training runs that are less than half the race distance. I feel good about my credentials for shorter, flatter events -- I've run a 2:22 marathon and a 6:59 road 100K, which are beyond the reach of most other entrants -- and yet they say little about my ability to survive a 100-mile trail run with 18,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain and 23,000 feet of descent.
Like an accomplished half-marathoner about to tackle his first full marathon, I'm confident that I'm in shape to run with the leaders, yet fearful that the extra distance might prove to be more than I can handle.
Either way, it's gonna be a long day.
Meanwhile, there's still plenty of time to enter my Western States prediction contest. Plenty of reasonable votes have been cast so far, but where are the Eric Grossman and Hal Koerner supporters?
How about a little prognostication contest? Tell me which man and which woman will be the overall winners of the Western States Endurance Run and you could wind up with an inexpensive but oddly gratifying prize!
RULES
1. The contest is open to anyone who lives in a place where this sort of thing is not forbidden.
2. To enter, submit a comment on this entry with the full names of the people you think will be the overall winners (one male, one female). For tie-breaking purposes, also submit a predicted winning time for each predicted winner.
3. Time predictions should be given in hours and minutes elapsed since the start (e.g., 17:52 means that the 100 miles will be covered in 17 hours and 52 minutes -- NOT that the person will finish at 5:52 PM). If seconds are specified, they will automatically be dropped (e.g., 17:52:44 will be truncated to 17:52). Once a given time has been submitted, it cannot be used by any subsequent entrant.
4. One entry per person, please. (And don't try to get tricky by submitting multiple comments under different names!) If someone enters more than once, only his/her first entry will count.
5. The deadline for entering is Saturday, June 23rd at 5:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time. (That's when the race starts.)
6. Contest entries will be compared to actual race results using a proprietary algorithm. Picking me to win will not be advantageous unless I actually do win, so flatter me at your own risk. The contest winner will be announced next week on this blog.
7. The contest winner will choose from among the following prizes: (A) $25 of credit at the Western States Store; (B) a rare copy of the out-of-print Science Groove CD Muscles & Magnets; (C) the opportunity to write a guest entry on this blog.
8. In submitting entries, participants agree to the waiver below.
WAIVER
I understand that posting comments on blogs is a potentially risky activity. I promise that I have prepared adequately for this task. If anything bad should happen to me as a result of participating in this contest, it's my own damn fault.
Purpose of the trip: to attend a COST B22 conference on drug development for parastic diseases.
Number of presentations at this conference: 37 talks, 59 posters.
Number of these that I understood completely: 1 ("Welcome to Dundee" by Sir Philip Cohen, Dean of the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee.)
Best student poster, according to the panel of judges: "Meta caspase of Leishmania major parasites: arginine specific serine protease with a role in yeast programmed cell death" by Iveth Gonzalez et al. This narrowly defeated "TbAT1/P2 and drug resistance in Human African Trypanosomiasis in the field" (Anne Kazibwe et al.) and "Inhibitors of 6-phosphogluconate dehydrogenase as potential treatments for HAT" (Gian Filippo Ruda et al.), among others.
Best poster title, according to me: "Trypamosoma cruzi and beta-lapachone derived naphthoimidazoles: induction of alternative death styles" by R.F.S. Menna-Barreto et al. (The poster was about how these drugs can kill the parasite in different ways, depending on the stage of the parasite's life cycle.)
Best self-effacing remark made during a talk: The comment by Mike Gelb (from the University of Washington) that his lab's modification of compound JJ121 to retain inhibition of lanosterol 14-demethylase while eliminating interactions with protein farnesyltransferase in humans was "like falling off a log."
Best use of ambiguity during a talk: Vincent Delespaux (from the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp) talked about parasites' development of drug resistance ("Isometamidium resistance in T. congolense: a possible role of secondary multidrug transporters?") and at one point also noted his difficulties in persuading funding agencies to support this research. His next slide was titled, "Trying to survive a hostile environment."
Most vivid critique of research priorities: People who focus all their efforts on sequencing DNA are, according to Matt Berriman, "Just tossing genomes into the furnace."
Approximate number of jokes made during the conference about Alan Fairlamb's love of trypanothione reductase: 15.
Approximate number of rabbits seen during a one-hour run in Dundee: 100.
Biggest drawback of Scotland's beautiful public parks: the absence of public bathrooms.
Least tempting ad seen in a restaurant window: "Haggis Samosas Are Back!"
My office for my new job is in the University of Washington's Health Sciences Building, the same building where I spent several years as a graduate student. That's not the weird part, though. The weird part is that, although I'm now in a completely different field, and although Health Sciences is an enormous structure (a third of a mile long and, in one part, 16 stories high), I'm stationed just down the hall from the lab where I did my graduate work. I go up one floor to the hospital cafeteria for mid-afternoon salads, just as I used to. Sometimes I park at the bike rack I used to use -- although my bicycle is nicer now, my helmet and lock are the same -- and sometimes I run into my old adviser there.
One obvious difference is that, although I'm once again on the negative-1st floor (or the 0th floor, depending on your numbering conventions), my new boss' office is on the 13th floor. At the start of a recent meeting with him, I casually mentioned that all the stair-climbing might help me prepare for my next event -- "a 100-mile race with 18,000 feet of cumulative elevation gain."
"Oh, are you doing Western States?" he asked with an equally casual tone. "I once had a rotation student [Carol O'Hear] who ran that one. Her first time, the medical staff made her stop at mile 97. She was really upset about that."
A boss who is familiar with and unfazed by 100-mile races? That's different, too.
On Sunday I headed out for my final pre-Western States long run: three laps of a hilly 16-mile trail loop around Tiger Mountain in Issaquah. Ralph Pooler, also training for WS, had shown me the loop nine days earlier, so now I was ready to navigate it by myself. My car was fully stocked with Gu2O, water, PowerGels, and crackers and cookies. I had even brought my bathroom scale so that I could monitor my hydration status from lap to lap. Nothing could possibly disrupt my carefully planned afternoon workout.
Nothing, perhaps, except for the trio of Mike Adams, Krissy Moehl, and Scott Jurek. I was all of 38 minutes into my first lap when I encountered them on their way from one distant place (Rattlesnake Ridge?) to another (the Red Town trailhead at Cougar Mountain). I quickly abandoned my original plan in favor of going wherever they were going at whatever their pace was. 48 miles is an awfully long way to run by oneself, and I couldn't resist having some company for two or three hours.
The company was great while it lasted. Then it was time for me to retrace my steps back to Tiger with the help of Scott's handwritten directions. By the time I finally weighed in back at the High Point trailhead where I had parked, I had lost ten pounds -- over 6% of my body weight. I also felt nauseated, a rarity for me, and more than a little tired.
If this had been a Western States aid station, the hydration cops would have forced me to stop until I had regained a few pounds. As it was, though, I was free to take as many stupid risks as I wanted. My first instinct was to grab a couple of bottles and head back out, so that's what I did. It seemed like a good exercise in summoning up the will to continue.
As I started walking up the West Tiger 3 trail, the part of my brain that was still working reconsidered the decision I had just made. How much did I really know about the sequelae of moderate-to-severe dehydration? At what point do the organ systems start shutting down? Perhaps right now was not the time to find out.
I turned around, jogged back to the car, got in and drove home. For today, 40 miles would have to suffice.
Although my wife and I watch only one TV program -- House -- our lack of cable TV service makes it hard to keep up with that show. Until recently, we relied on my brother-in-law to "TiVo" it, and we'd watch it on evenings when we invited ourselves over for dinner. Then my sister gave me an iTunes gift card for my birthday, which allowed us to reduce the frequency of our "militant yet lazy houseguest" visits by downloading episodes onto our computer.
This past week, we made it through our entire backlog of old episodes. Now what? We decided to sample some earlier work of House cast member Robert Sean Leonard -- specifically the movie Dead Poets Society. I really liked it overall, which made me all the more upset that protagonist John Keating (played by Robin Williams) is guilty of one of my pet peeves: quoting the final lines of Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" as if completely oblivious to the overall meaning of the poem.
Maybe I'm being overprotective of Frost's words, since I grew up in Vermont, which claims him as one of its own (though New Hampshire and Massachusetts might disagree). But really, if you make a film about an inspiring teacher with a profound understanding of poetry, and if the erudite instructor, in urging his students to find their own voice, offers up a few stirring lines of poetry in support of that notion, is it too much to ask that he recite an excerpt whose sentiment is not completely undercut by the poem from which it comes?
If you are considering using the last two or three lines of "The Road Not Taken" as part of your email signature or home page or yearbook profile or graduation speech, please read and think about the whole poem -- all 20 lines, reprinted below -- before heading down that particular road.
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I --
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
I've probably been cramming too many ultramarathons into the first half of this year. One indication of this is the fact that I haven't done any sustained, serious training since February; almost all my time since then has been devoted to recovering from one race or resting up for the next one. The latest example is my current training program for Western States, which, in a nutshell, is: (1) recover from the Miwok 100K for three weeks; (2) train hard for one week; (3) taper for three weeks.
It's kind of ridiculous, but it does force me to think very carefully about my priorities. With phase 2 lasting all of a week, I can't squeeze in more than a couple big workouts, so the two I do had better be good ones!
In descending order of scariness, the aspects of Western States that concern me most are: (1) the 23,000 feet of cumulative descent (which is sure to destroy my quads); (2) the sheer length of the race (38 miles farther than I've ever run before); (3) the probable need to consume "real food" (in addition to the sports drinks and energy gels to which I'm accustomed) during a race of this length; (4) the extreme heat of the first 80 or so miles; and (5) the many uphills (totaling 18,000 feet of elevation gain).
Living in Seattle, there's not a lot I can do about #4 without resorting to drastic measures such as running while wearing excessive clothing or running on a treadmill in a stuffy room. (No, thanks.) But my hard week includes two long (48-mile), very hilly runs during which I'll practice consuming pretzels/cookies/etc., thus simultaneously addressing concerns #1, #2, #3, and #5. Then in the last three weeks I'll do some additional uphill running, which in moderate doses shouldn't prevent my muscles from recovering from the hard week. Aside from that, I'll just do a lot of easy 6-mile commuting runs.
Completing this lackluster "program" won't do much for my confidence, but harboring a bit of humility and fear may prove useful on race day.