Identifying the Problem

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.

Hey! Its Been A While

I know it's been several months since I last wrote a blog post.  But it wasn't until after I typed "blogger" into my search bar on Google Chrome and nothing popped up in my history, that it dawned on me how long its been since I've visited this website and written a piece.  So, here I am!  Hey, world.  It's been a while and it's good to be back.  The last time I wrote anything on here was when I told the story of my experience running the Great Shasta Rail Trail 50K in July of last year, when it was 103 degrees Fahrenheit up in McCloud.  That was an incredible day, and I loved it.  But I suck at running in heat.  And on that day, I was forced to face my demons point blank.  Fortunately, I won the fight, and I crossed the finish line without dying, although it took a while.

The last nine months have been pretty exciting.  Shortly after publishing my last post about the Great Shasta Rail Trail 50K, I went to work on writing a book.  It was something that I had wanted to do for quite a while, and it seemed like a great time to knock it out.  I didn't go into it with a lot of expectations, and I just started writing.  I took various stories from these blogs, re-wrote them to make them fit into the narrative of the story, and wrote a bunch of new material as well.  Keeping in mind that I also had to be a husband, a dad, and devote adequate time to my career, I tried my best to block off certain times of each day to write.  It would write for roughly an hour to an hour and a half each day.  The book came together over a period of about three and a half months.  After I edited it and created the front and back covers, I was ready to put it out there.  The only remaining issue was how I was going to put it out there.  The traditional path that most people would follow is to write a manuscript and submit it to several publishers.  Some people even hire an agent to submit their manuscript to publishers on their behalf.  If a publisher likes it, they'll decide that they want to market it and put it out, and they'll throw together a contract for the writer to sign.  This usually results in an advance payment to the writer, and if the book doesn't sell the agreed upon number of copies, or if the writer doesn't fulfill their obligation, the advance payment needs to be returned, and the deal is off.  It all sounds good on paper, but that wasn't the route I wanted to take.  I knew I had something special.  I knew I had a good story to tell.  Why should I wait around for some big shot publisher to decide they like it and they want to put it out?  Why should I have them tell me "well, it'll be easier to market this book if you change this or take out that".  The hell with that.  There was nothing stopping me from becoming a business man and jumping in there by putting it out myself.  And that's exactly what I did.  I wrote the whole thing out on a massive Microsoft Word document, uploaded it to Barnes and Noble press, and added my artwork for the cover and back cover.  The first copies were delivered in December of 2023, but the formatting was a little misaligned, so I wasn't ready to start promoting it yet.  I fixed the formatting issues, and by January of 2024, my book, Running Rebel, was ready to make it's debut.  I started promoting on social media and before I knew it, boxes of books were arriving at our apartment, and I was selling them and shipping them out.  I had all kinds of people reaching out to me who wanted to read my story.  My current friends, old friends, family members, co-workers, former co-workers, even people from high school that I hadn't heard from in twenty years.

Getting my book out there and into the hands of people was a really cool feeling.  The feedback I received from readers was a powerful tonic.  I wanted to inspire runners, and non-runners alike.  I didn't want to convey the message that people should run and that will make their lives more vibrant.  I wanted to inspire people to follow their dreams and do things that brought them joy and peace.  My book isn't a guide on how to become an untouchable endurance athlete.  It doesn't tell people what to eat, how they should train, or what kind of gear they should use.  It's a story about my childhood, the difficulties I had to overcome, how skiing and snowboarding brought me a better quality of life as a teenager, and how running did the same for me in my adult life.  The book has been out for almost four months now, and it's been an exciting journey.  At some point I'll likely record an audio book, get written copies for sale on Amazon, and market the book in other ways than just through social media stories.  Maybe at some point it will catch the attention of a publisher, but I certainly don't plan on giving up my accounting career.  I don't want to be a full time writer, so I don't plan on that ever happening.  My book sales are technically a business that generates a small profit, but it's a very grass roots operation, at least for now.  The profit that I made from the first batch of books I sold was spent on a nice Valentine's Day dinner with Samantha.  Who knows what kind of adventures this book will take me on, but for now, it's a fun side project that brings me a small passive income.

Since my last blog post was written, Aidan has evolved from a crawling infant to a full on toddler whose greatest joys in life are running around our apartment, climbing on things he shouldn't, playing on the playground, being read to, eating, and sleeping.  He loves to laugh and smile, and it seems like he has a genuine appreciation for the outdoors.  We've taken him on a few trips to the mountains over the last several months, and he's always curious and wanting to explore when he's out in nature.  He's a great eater and will generally eat anything we put in front of him, including chicken tikka masala, Thai curry, and a wide variety of fruit.  We're trying to work on vegetables, but that's been more of a challenge.  Being a dad continues to be a big part of my identity and one of the coolest experiences of my life.  I took a quick trip back home to Michigan in mid-February.  It was fun to catch up with family and hang out in my hometown for a few days, and my role at work has continued to evolve, which is always exciting.

Now let's talk running.  I haven't run any ultramarathons since the Great Shasta Rail Trail 50K last July, but I'm still getting ample miles in.  On a Friday evening in mid-October, I left my home in Sunnyvale and drove seven hours down to Big Bear Lake.  By the time I arrived in the middle of the night, the Kodiak Ultramarathons by UTMB were in full swing.  I had been in contact with my good friends at Anytime Runners, a local running group in Los Angeles.  A friend of theirs's, Jose, was running the 100-miler, and they offered me the role of pacing him the last thirty-three miles.  I jumped at the opportunity, and I was beyond excited to spend some time in the mountains of Southern California with my old friends and meet new people.  Jose and I had never met prior to my arrival in Big Bear, except for a thirty-minute video call earlier in the week to go over logistics.  When I arrived in the wilderness in the dead of night, it was similar to my experience pacing JC at the same race in 2018.  I parked near the Sugarloaf Mountain aid station at mile sixty-seven, met up with my friends Sheny and Cori, the leaders of Anytime Runners, and took a three-hour nap in the back of my car while I awaited Jose's arrival.  He eventually made his way into the aid station, and we hit the trail together at around 2:00 AM and began the long climb up to the summit of Sugarloaf Mountain.  We rallied through the night and into the next day, climbed and descended several prominent mountains in the area, and Jose crossed the finish line after thirty-four hours and thirty-three minutes on Saturday evening.  We had plenty of time on the trail to get to know each other, and he turned out to be a great guy.  He showcased impressive grit and determination, and nailed his first 100-mile race.  Cori, Sheny, Lisa, Angelica, and several other members of Anytime Runners did a great job crewing for him and taking care of him at the aid stations.  I was proud of him and it was a pleasure to be a part of his journey.  

In January, I ran a half marathon with my good buddy Chris down in San Juan Bautista.  When I arrived down there, I popped into a local bakery for some pre-race doughnuts and coffee.  I found Chris at the race day registration area near the start line.  Normally I enjoy running alone, but when he said he was shooting for a two-hour finish we decided to run together.  Two hours sounded like a nice pace to me, and I felt like it would be fun to change things up by running with someone.  We stayed together throughout the entire race, and even though we had hung out during the holidays at some gatherings, it was nice to chat and catch up.  About five weeks later, I was supposed to run the Way Too Cool 50K, but it was cancelled last minute due to inclement weather that involved sixty mile-per-hour winds.  In light of the cancelled race, I decided to run a homemade solo half marathon on the Stevens Creek and Bay Trails in Mountain View.  On a Friday night in late March, I embarked on my traditional annual solo through-the-night 50K run through Lake Tahoe.  I left the Bay Area at 9:00 PM, arrived in Tahoe City at 1:00 AM, and ran through the night along highway 89.  As usual, I was lit up like a running Christmas tree to avoid getting hit by a car.  It was a beautiful night, and although I was tired during those last few miles, I made it the whole fifty kilometers on my own.  I took a nap in my car in a McDonald's parking lot in Truckee, and after ordering some hash brows, sausage burritos, and a piping hot cup of McD's coffee at the drive-thru, I headed home to be with Samantha and Aidan.  I also ran a couple of local races in a dog costume to promote Samantha's pet care business, and most recently, I paced the two-hour group at the Run Rocklin Half Marathon, which is always a lot of fun.  It's always cool to help runners achieve their goals. 

All of this recent activity will lead up to a race that has become the de facto centerpiece of my annual running calendar for the last several years: The Canyons 100K.  Just like every other year that I've done this race, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic.  I've finished the race three times and dropped out three times, so anything can happen.  The weather was brutal last year, and I had to drop out at mile forty after the intense heat took all the life out of me.  The forecast is calling for much cooler temperatures this year, and I like to think that my training has been pretty adequate, so I'm looking forward to heading back to Auburn this coming weekend.  Unlike last year when I had Samantha and Aidan with me, and I ran with my buddy Arjun for part of the race, I will be going at it alone this year.  We'll also be running a different course, starting at China Wall in Foresthill, and finishing in downtown Auburn.  A lot can happen in sixty-two miles.  It's not a sprint, or even a marathon.  It's a journey.  It's a journey that involves lots of highs and lows, trips to the pain cave, pushing the body and mind to unthinkable limits, and sometimes moments where it almost feels like I'm talking to God.  Not everything will go right on race day.  That is to be expected.  But I'm hoping that I will have the strength to push through the challenges and get to the finish line in once piece.  Even if I have to drop out, it will still be a memorable experience.  It always is.  That race course has seen me at my best and at my worst, and regardless of the outcome, it's always an adventure.  Let's see what the 2024 Canyons 100K has to offer.  I'm looking forward to having a good story to tell afterwards.