In Dean Karnazes' latest book "A Runner's High" he talks about a conversation he had with Billy Yang at the start line of the 2018 Bishop High Sierra Ultras. Dean was signed up for the 100K, and asked Billy if he was running the 100K as well. Billy's response was "no way, dude. I'm running the 50K. I haven't been training. I know better". My problem at this year's Canyons 100K was that I didn't know better until after the race was over. Unfortunately, I dropped out of Canyons for the second year in a row on April 27th, 2024. My race came to an end at the Driver's Flat aid station at mile forty-eight after I missed the cutoff by fifteen minutes. It had been a long ass day. I was disappointed in the result, but I was still grateful for the experience, and the exciting day I had out there.
Just like my prior DNF's there was a lesson to be learned. This year, early on, everything seemed to be working in my favor. I drove out to Auburn early on Friday morning and worked all day out of a coffee shop before signing off at 3:00 PM to go pick up my bib at the pre-race expo in downtown. After that, I made a run to Target to get some supplies, and made a stop for some food, before checking into my hotel in Rocklin. I had plenty of time to myself to get some rest before having to wake up at 2:00 AM to get ready. I got some decent sleep, and felt pretty awake when my alarm went off. By 3:30 AM, I was on a shuttle bus at Overlook Park that was bound for the start line at China Wall, just outside of Foresthill. This year, the race started where the 2022 race finished, and we were essentially going to be running the 2022 course in reverse, finishing in downtown Auburn. It was a pleasant ride out to China Wall. The ride was just like the early years when the race started and finished at the Old Foresthill Elementary School. It was pitch black and dead quiet. We drove past darkened houses and a few cars parked off to the side of the road near the overlook. I stared out the window as a thick fog rested in valley of the foothills. The air outside was cool and crisp, and the sky was clear. It felt energizing.
Before long, we arrived at China Wall, and the race kicked off at 5:00 AM. I started off feeling good. The weather felt nice, my backpack felt just right from a weight standpoint, and the crowd was giving off good vibes. We had a steady downhill for several miles, and eventually climbed up to Deadwood, to the first aid station, ten miles in. The volunteers were very helpful, including my friend Kaycee, who I had seen working aid stations at countless other races in the area. Pretty soon, we were descending into Deadwood Canyon down to the swinging bridge. It's a notoriously steep descent, and after we turned around at the swinging bridge at the bottom of the canyon, it was an 1,800 foot climb in 1.8 miles back up to Devil's Thumb. On the way up, I began chatting with a couple who introduced themselves as Bill and Mel. They were from Dana Point, an area not too far from where Samantha, Aidan, and I are planning to move this fall. We chatted about all kinds of stuff, including kids, life in Orange County, how freaking hard this race was, our jobs, etc. It's always cool meeting new people during these events and being able to have a distraction from the brutality of the course with some engaging conversation. Even though it was challenging, this section is my favorite part of the Canyons course. There was no shortage of beautiful views of green foothills and snowy mountains in the distance, and tall conifer trees lined portions of the path. Bill, Mel, and I left the aid station at Deadwood together and hung with each other during the four-mile plunge into El Dorado Canyon. I had a nice cadence going, so when we arrived at the bottom of the canyon, I powered up the climb to Michigan Bluff while Bill and Mel took some pictures by the river. During the 2,000-foot climb up to Michigan Bluff there was a guy hiking behind me. I asked him if he wanted to pass, but he said I had a good pace going, so no need to let him by. "Okay cool" I said. "I'm glad you don't mind staring at my butt for a couple of miles". "Nah, man" he responded. "I'm checking out your shredded calves" we both had a good laugh at that one. He was Brandon from Cupertino, and coincidentally enough, he also had a toddler son named Aidan, although spelled differently.
At the top of the climb, I rolled into the aid station at Michigan Bluff with an hour to spare before the cutoff time. I recognized another familiar face, a local named Steph, who was offering runners an ice soak on their way out of the aid station. I had met Steph's sister in our local running group in Mountain View, and Steph and had come out to run with us when she visited Silicon Valley. Most of the aid station volunteers at these races are local runners living in the Auburn area, and they often come together as a community to make the race experience enjoyable for runners. That's really cool to me. Although I've paced a few half marathons through Beast Pacing over the years, and I've volunteered at a few marathon expos, I have yet to volunteer at an ultramarathon aid station. I need to do that sometime. I said hey to Steph, thanked her for coming out to support us, and headed out towards the halfway point in Foresthill. Mel and Bill had also caught up with me at Michigan Bluff, and about a mile down the trail towards Foresthill, the pushed onward, and I told them I'd hopefully see them later. After another twisting plunge into Volcano Canyon, I crossed the creek, climbed up to the main road, and arrived in Foresthill at about 1:30 PM. I was still feeling good, and it was a relief knowing that I was halfway through the race and the hardest section was now behind me. The one thing that I found somewhat troubling was that I arrived in Foresthill with only forty-five minutes to spare before the cutoff time. I was about thirty minutes behind where I wanted to be, but I tried to not let the anxiety get to me. I sat down for a few minutes, freshened up, and left Foresthill thirty minutes before the cutoff time.
As I made my way down into the valley along the Western States Trail, I began to slowly deteriorate. In 2021, the Mosquito Fire had burned a significant portion of this land, including many of the trees, so this section of the trail was more exposed than it had been in the past years. The weather was great, much cooler than last year, but the afternoon California sun was still beaming strong. When I eventually arrived at the Cal2 aid station at mile thirty-eight, I was tired, but still focused on keeping moving. Another runner who came in after me was expressing his concern over not being able to make the next cutoff at Driver's Flat. We had to be there by 7:45 PM to stay in the race, which was about three hours and twenty minutes away. "Don't worry man" another runner told him. "If you leave within the next few minutes, you just have to do twenty-minute miles, and you'll make it". With that in mind, I took off from the aid station, and tried to take advantage of the two-mile downhill section that followed. I had been on this course enough times that I knew what was next after that two-mile downhill: a steep climb up to Ford's Bar. That climb was brutal, and depleted a significant amount of the energy I had left, but I made it to the top, and continued along the rolling hills. As the miles carried on, my energy levels plummeted. My running was reduced to shuffling, and when I finally arrived at Rucky Chucky, mile forty-six, the wheels totally fell off the bus. I had no more energy left, and my legs felt like they had 200-pound weights attached to them. I felt completely drained, and it became a struggle to move forward at even a twenty-minute-per-mile pace. I stopped at a picnic table near the river and sat down to try to regroup. Another runner named Jeremy sat with me for a few minutes and gave me some words of encouragement before moving on. I sat there for probably twenty minutes trying to regain some of my energy, but the all this break was doing for me was providing me relief from the physical beating of forty-six miles, rather than restoring my energy. I only had about another two miles to the next aid station at Driver's Flat, but unfortunately, it was all uphill on a dirt road. As I sat there and did the "trail math" so to speak, it became pretty clear to me that my race would be coming to an end at the next aid station.
When I finally started moving again, I had thirty minutes to get to Driver's Flat. Normally I could do two miles in thirty minutes easily, even on an uphill section, but not today. It simply wasn't going to happen. I had very little energy left, and I couldn't even run anymore at this point. All I could do was march forward. I huffed and puffed up the climb, and finally arrived at 8:00 PM, fifteen minutes after the cutoff time. I greeted the volunteers. They were encouraging and asked me if I needed anything before getting on the shuttle back to Overlook Park. "No thanks, not unless you can fix my damaged ego" I responded jokingly. The volunteer put his hand on my shoulder and said "look at me". So, I did. "You did some amazing things today. Don't worry, there is always next time". He was being sincere, and I appreciated his compassion. "Thanks man, that's much appreciated. Thanks for being out here." I said with a smile. I hopped onto the shuttle, and an hour later I was back at my hotel room ready to take a shower and pack it in for the night. I got some good sleep, and the next morning I checked out of the hotel, had a nice hot breakfast at Granite Rock Grill, and headed home to be with Samantha and my little dude.
During the drive back to Silicon Valley, I had a lot of time to think. I spent the drive home reflecting on the events of the prior day. Most of the thoughts were positive, but I wasn't going to ignore the elephant in the room. The elephant in the room was the fact that I dropped out of this race two years in a row. When I dropped last year, I blamed it on the unusually hot weather. But after dropping out this year, I was beginning to think that the heat was likely only part of the issue last year. I spent quite a bit of time on the way home thinking about what caused me to drop out again. I needed to identify the problem because something was clearly off. It became increasingly obvious to me. The problem was I hadn't put in enough training. I thought back to the years that I finished the race and what I had done differently back then. Back then I was doing more races and putting in more miles. Over the last couple of years after Aidan was born, my running has slowed down compared to the pre-Aidan days. I thought about how many miles I had put in leading up to the 2023 and 2024 Canyons 100K. It wasn't enough, and that's why I ran out of energy at the forty-eight mile mark. With the volume of training that I've been putting in these days, I can get through a 50K fairly easily, and I can grind my way through a 50-miler if there's a generous cutoff time. But a 100K race? Namely, the Canyons 100K? Nope. I just haven't been putting in the proper miles. With my current training volume, fifty miles is probably about the maximum I can go. If Canyons had been a 50-miler with a generous cutoff, I would have had it in the bag. I could have rolled into Driver's Flat and gone another two miles to the finish line, even if it was slow and painful. But at that moment, with my lack of training, I was in no condition to go another fifteen miles. I typically go into races a little undertrained, but for the last two years, I simply had not put in enough volume. There's no running a 100K race without having paid your dues. It certainly doesn't mean I'm not capable of finishing a 100K. I've finished that distance before. But the times I've finished it, I've trained properly. I'm not giving up on Canyons, or the 100K distance, but if I sign up for Canyons next year, I need to make sure I put in the proper training. No more half-assing it. Will I be able to put in enough training to finish Canyons next year? Who knows. It all depends on what life will throw at me over the next year. We'll just have to wait and see, but I sure as hell will do my best. If I can't put in the proper training next year, I'll take Billy Yang's approach, and sign up for 50Ks and 50-milers, because hopefully I'll know better, like he did. In the meantime, I feel like I have some unfinished business out there on the trail, so I recently signed up for the Cool Moon Trail 50-miler in Cool, California on June 1st. I know nothing is guaranteed, but I'm hoping I'll have that one in the bag so I can have some redemption.
