Tushar's 93k - A Race Report

Everybody has demons.

Sometimes they are itty bitty little guys that you can brush off or flick away like the little insects that they really are...

Other times they are (seemingly) SO BIG that they crush your ability to feel like you can accomplish ANYTHING, or even feel like you can breathe properly.

Which really... is NOT true. Don't let yourself believe that.

But it is hard to when you have what seems to be a 666 lb snarling demon sitting on your shoulders slavering filth and bad feelings all over you keeping you mired down in the dreary dregs of despair.

SO ANYWAY!!!

This past weekend I ran the Tushars 93k race - the final event in the Grand Circle Trail Series put on by the amazing RD Matt Gunn and his Ultra Adventures race company.

Nothing too crazy... you know... just your average 58 mile run with just under 17k vertical GAIN...

The Bear 100 - The Agony, the Triumph, the Mud

For a long time I never thought I would run a hundred mile race.

Taking eight hours to run a fifty mile race sounds SO much better than over twenty (or THIRTY!!) hours to run a hundred miles!

Definitely not interested in such ridiculousness as that!

Or anything taking over ten hours!

That was before I did the Rim to Rim to Rim back in May, which took over seventeen hours, AND before we ran the Blubber Creek Aid Station at the Bryce 50 and 100, which was a crazy 40+ hours of no sleep!

So after those, I knew I could do it, and why not?

2014 Antelope Island Buffalo Run 50 Mile Race Report

The first couple of days after a big race are interesting.

The highs of completing a hard race.

The higher feelings of surpassing your own expectations

The lows of thinking "I could have pushed harder" and "What's next?!"

That and ALL you want to do is look at pictures and read race reports and talk about your experience and hear about the experiences of everybody else...

It's a rough couple of days!

But it's awesome to have accomplished something like that.

I ran my second-ever fifty mile race last Saturday.

The Awesome Antelope Island Buffalo Run

For those keeping count that is two fifty em's, three official fifty kay's, and four unofficial ultramarathon finishes - nine ultramarathons.


I still have no idea what I'm doing.

My overall main goal going into the Buffalo Run this year was to finish the race in less than ten hours. My REAL goal was a sub-nine finish and hopefully matching my finish at Pony last fall (8:44).

My PLAN was pretty much non-existent other than hoping I could pace myself with the great Ryan Lauck - who is a race day machine, especially at this race and this course.

I woke up at 4:00 and drove to my brother Matt's house - he was running the 50 miler as well, so we headed out to the island.

It was WINDY in the parking lot, so we ducked into the start tent and congratulated Matt Van Horn on his amazing first place finish. SO amazing to see his hard work and incredible training pay off.

Van Horn Destroying the 100 Mile Race
Photo: Matt Williams

We said hi to a whole slew of friends, listened to the pre-race instructions, and headed out to the start.

I started in the back of the starting line crowd with Matt, but as we got started I cut out to the right and he went to the left, and I passed a whole bunch of people until I recognized Ryan and Stephen Lindsay and decided I probably shouldn't go any faster than that at the start.

2 and a half miles in the moon was bright, we had reached the top of the first climb, and we didn't even need headlamps so we were howling at the moon when I looked down at my watch and realized we were running around 8 minute miles... Maybe a little too fast?

I felt really really good and I tore down that first big downhill towards the first climb up lone-tree hill. Ryan caught up to me before the hill and we had a nice walk up the hill. There is really no point in killing yourself to run up that hill when you are only 5 miles in!

We charged right through the first time at Elephant Head Aid station and on through the out'n'back to Elephant Head. Stephen caught up to Ryan and I again, and as we counted the leaders heading back we realized we were currently running 9, 10, and 11, and we traded the top ten positions back and forth.

"CAN YOU FEEL THE TOP TEN POWER!?!?!"
I really was ahead of Steve and Ryan for a bit... see?

As the morning continued to lighten, we passed a lot of friends and acquaintances who were heading out to Elephant Head, I paused at the AS to put eyedrops in (yay LASIK) and caught up to Ryan on the Split Rock Downhill. FUN section, but I made myself hold back some so I wouldn't blow up later.

I'm not sure I did a good enough job holding back.

Downhill Blurry GoPro selfies!

The switchbacks up to the Mormon Rocks were rough as usual, but Ryan and I kept up a good pace as Stephen pulled ahead. Finally I let Ryan pass on the final LONG switchback and walked for a bit. That one ALWAYS gets me. I caught up to them just after the old rock horse corral, and we stopped for water refills at the final trip through Elephant Head AS, and I chugged some Mt. Dew as well.

 I'm not a huge fan of going UP the lone tree hill... but it sure is fun going down! I felt great all the way down and back up the little hill section as the sun came out above the island we realized that we were moving REALLY well. Normally at this point you would see the frontrunners of the 50k heading down the hill but we didn't see any. We were cruising.
I took the lead at the split and kept it all the way back to the start line, around mile 20.

At the Start/Finish area I looked around at the THRONGS of 25k runners waiting to start, hoping I would see my wife or some of our spectator families so I could drop off my jacket, but no luck. I made a bad choice and went IN to the tent and had a hard time getting out! When I made it out I saw Ryan tearing up the dirt road so I took off trying to catch him... I guess I'd shed the jacket somewhere else.

Oh look I found my wife! Too bad this picture was from my dad...

Thankfully my jacket compresses small enough to fit fairly comfortably in my UltrAspire Spry vest!

Up the road and down the steep trail along the fence to the shoreline and the Mountain View Aid Station where we head for a quick (but really long feeling) out and back - cheered Zac and the other front runners and Ryan and Steve as they were still ahead of me, turned around and headed back to the aid station. Caught up to Ryan at the Aid station, downed some Mt. Dew (although not as much as is usual for me on these longer races... which is weird) and took off after Ryan.

When I caught up to him he was walking and a bit upset about some hip issues... It is his tradition to run his "Birthday Miles" sometime in the month of his birthday, he figured he would take it to mile 33 and drop at the Ranch Aid Station. I doubted him and knew he would pull it back together. He told me to continue on and not let him catch me, so I headed out.

I saw my brother-in-law Steve at the Frary Aid station - he was pacing a friend on the 100 Miler and headed out still feeling pretty good there. My dad was here too - and he let me know that my brother Matt had DNF'd at the 20 mile Start/Finish part - he had been sick earlier in the week and moved a whole buncha stuff for my parents the week before as well. I felt bad that he didn't have a great race because he totally deserves a good one!

About a mile after Frary Aid Station... I started struggling.

About Mile 30 - starting to struggle a bit

I looked behind me and there was Ryan, catching up. I yelled "What are you feeling better already?!?" and kept going. He finally passed me at the next little parking area that is an aid station in the Fall course, and that's the last I was really close to him. Kept moving at a decent pace until I got to the Ranch Aid Station. Amie Blackham, the eventual 50 Mile Woman's Winner passed me looking strong right as we arrived.

Coming into the 33 mile Aid Station with Amie right in front of me and Ryan headed back

Got rid of the jacket in my pack finally! More Mt Dew too!

Heading out with Steve coming in

From 33 to 36... there was some major run walk run going on. I was trying to count my steps running and only allowed 20 steps of walking in between 200-500 running steps. Sometimes I think this strategy works all right... other times I'm not so sure - but it keeps my mind occupied and I think that helps in itself.

Walking for a bit before crossing the street

Running again for a minute! Wish there was a horse there at the tie-up...

Overall my legs felt pretty good, mentally I was good, I wasn't particularly tired, (I mean, 35 miles in - of course I was TIRED, but not unbearably so!) but there was something off in my stomach and lungs - but I couldn't push past it. I kept saying "Something's missing but I can't figure it out?!"

Literally saying "Something's missing!" here - pic by my bro Matt

At the Frary aid station I changed my socks which felt GREAT!

New Socks at Mile 39!!

 I was off and on for the next couple of miles, still moving, still feeling fine but still missing something.

When I finally got to the Mountain View Aid Station Stephen and the 2nd place woman had passed me. I couldn't bring anything up to catch them, but I maintained my position from then on.

The hill from the AS to the Road is one of the steepest parts of the course. Ryan said 'Lone Tree Hill and Mile 43 - the 2 absolute places where it's worth it to walk.' A friend on FB asked why so many people were smiling on this ROUGH hill, and I mentioned that it was nice to get to WALK for a bit!!

The Great Ryan Lauck

Stephen Lindsay - "You want me to let WHO pass me? No WAY!"

"Walk this hill and Run to the finish!" My brother said. I mostly followed that advice... but it sure felt slow!

Awesome picture from my bro of Stephen running strong - FOUR minutes ahead of me. Love the dedication in these pics!

Ditched my pack for the last 5 miles - SO nice!

As you can see from the last couple of pics, for me - there actually was a plus side to my brother dropping. His experience is basically what allowed me to have a stellar first fifty with him pacing me the last 15 miles at Pony. His advice was definitely useful and I was glad to have it here! It also meant I get these great pictures of me and our friends with the high quality trailandultrarunning.com camera! Honestly I would have rather he had a good race, but I'll be happy with extra benefits like these!

I am grateful for the support he gave me in both my first and second Fifty Milers! Thanks a lot Matt!

Picture from my dad of my brother taking a picture of me!

I ran through the devil weeds off the paved roads (seriously those weeds are the worst!) to the Bridger Bay Aid Station where I grabbed a couple salt caps because I was out.

I looked ahead and I could see Stephen's bright Orange coat just heading around the curve of the trail along with the 2nd place female close behind. I thought if I could get moving and move quickly through the rocky technical trail (it's a really cool trail) I might be able to catch them.

HA! That didn't happen.

I moved well overall but I couldn't get any good energy and pick it up much. I passed a couple 100 mile racers who were obviously feeling the effects of having been out for over 26 hours (!!) and then ran into quite a few horse riders and about 10 families out hiking.

"Look out! Crazy sweaty guy in a pirate shirt and short shorts coming through!!"

I hit the end of that trail and you are on the road for a few hundred yards - finish line in sight!

That last straight dirt road off the pavement, and then back along the fence to the finish line sure feels long! I kept moving and FINALLY found a burst of speed to make it to the finish line.

Photo: Craig Lloyd

Photo: The Beautiful Kristyan Williams

Of course, I ran in hard and almost faceplanted by tripping on the timing mats! YEAH!

Finished with an official time of 8:09:21 to take 16th place out of 113 finishers.

Finish Line Chinstand!

I ran FIFTY MILES in just over 8 hours?! I figured I had the physical ABILITY to pull that off, but I didn't think mentally and nutritionally I would be able to make it work...

I'm very happy about that.

I have to give a great big shout out to Ryan Lauck and Stephen Lindsay for allowing me to leech onto them and pace myself with them for basically 30-40 miles of this race. It was awesome. I'm looking forward to the official pictures where we are running together. Those guys are tough and I am happy they both pulled ahead and finished in front of me.

I definitely couldn't have gotten that close to 8 on my own. I probably would have spent a lot more time at aid stations too!

The finish line was awesome - so many friends, watching people finishing amazing and strong, and other shenanigans... Saturday was a good day!

50 mile snuggles!

Awww! Zac got FIFTH place! Amazing!

You can find my Strava map, Race Analysis, and stuff here.

One thing I really liked about this race was how many friends and family I had out there.

My brother and I were in the 50 miler, my wife ran the 25k as did my sister-in-law - one of my wife's brothers paced his friend in the 100 and another ran the 50k!

Our Facebook group, the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers had SO many people out running all the races! So many of them I am familiar with online but I've never met in person! It was great to meet some new friends and reconnect with many others. The support and experience of that group is awesome.

More thanks to the Race Director Jim Skaggs and all the amazing people who volunteered for crazy hours throughout all the hours and races supporting us silly runners.

Now I need to decide what I'm doing next!! Bosho Marathon? Skyline 50?!?

Look! It's a Guy on a Buffalo!

The Struggles of November

I had a pretty epic month in October.

I ran my first 50 mile race in a time that I was more than happy with.

I then ran my fastest 50k race so far on tired legs!

And just two weeks before the 50 miler, I ran another tough 50k where I came in 3rd overall!

Oh, and I ran to the top of a couple of mountains as well!

NOT a bad month at all.

Actually a really fantastic month!

Especially since this didn't happen to me:



I love that picture.

I think my blog needs more pictures of wipeouts. They are unfortunately harder to find than I'd like!!

So anyways. It's November. I feel like BLAH. Part of it is I'm STILL somehow recovering from the Pony Express and Goblin Valley. I'm tired. My head hurts. I think there is some Seasonal Affective Disorder going on as well... which is SAD.

But I've still been able to get out and do some fun things.

I watched the kids while my amazing wife ran the Moab Trail Half Marathon - she did awesome.

And we saw Arches National Park, and I was able to hike/run 6 miles seeing some amazing arches like Landscape Arch, Partition Arch, Navajo Arch, and Double O arc. Definitely somewhere I would like to go back to and maybe put together an adventure 50k!! (I need to modify that route a bit probably...) At only $10 for a week's entry to the park? That is NOT BAD!

Beautiful area! I really hope to go back soon!

After getting back from that awesome family vacation/adventure, I was tired and slightly sick for a few days. That's not fun.

Finally on the next Friday I got out with Matt to hit another peak, Ben Lomond. Even BETTER than that, the day before I found out I had won a GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition in a work Benefits Raffle!
So we had a lot of fun, and I made a video to test it out:




Yeah I am still figuring some stuff out with it.

Ben Lomond was great - even though my watch paused and messed up the total (should be 15ish) a bit.

The next day I went up to the Steed Creek cliffs again with Professor B, the next door neighbor of MVH who is trying to get into trail running more. I was definitely slow after Ben Lomond!

Last week I finally made it back out in the morning for a run up Farmington Canyon with the Newman Group.

It is very nice to run 11 miles in the morning before work!

Friday morning I got up early and drove up to Antelope Island to bag the big peak on that Island - Frary Peak. I went with MVH who had just won the Frary Peak Climb 10k Race the weekend before. It was nice to get him beyond where the race turned around and to the actual peak. With the snow and the rain we took almost twice as long round trip as he took on his race! 7 decent miles on a trail I'll definitely have to do again!

Finally on Saturday I went with my wife up the Steed Creek Trail again - this time up the Hornet Canyon split to a cool little canyon that supposedly has a waterfall when it is runoff season. Of course, we decided to do it in a blizzard! Almost 4 miles. It was very slippery and we had a few slips and falls, my wife came down on her hand a bit hard and we hope nothing serious happened to it - but after 2 days it is already greatly improved. Yikes.

I took my GoPro but haven't had time to finish the video. Hopefully I'll finish that soon and get it up!

While driving out to Antelope Island MVH and I were talking about how there should be a shorts contest for the winter amongst the Wasatch Mountain Wranglers. So I put it out there and had some good response.

Here's my response to the challenges:



Oh yeah! It's ON!

So November. It's just over halfway through and it definitely started with a big BLAH feeling.
Somehow it was awesome too... I mean looking back at this entry and it's been an amazing month so far!

I guess that BLAH feeling is being overcome! The Struggles of November are showing their fruits as some great memories, and dedication to keep on going!

Life is amazing. Live it amazingly!

Goblin Valley Ultramarathon 50K

I somehow decide to run a 50k eight days after my first 50 miler.

And I made that decision just a few days after that race!

My brother was going down to emcee the Goblin Valley Ultra, and through TrailandUltraRunning.com (TAUR) had a race entry that, since he was emcee-ing, he wouldn't be able to use.

Free race in Goblin Valley? Awesome!

Timing-wise, just a few days before, Goblin Valley had been in the news across the world because a few dummies decided it would be a good idea to post a video of themselves knocking down one of the ancient rock formations.

Great job guys.

Because of that the first thing out of almost EVERYBODY's mouth when hearing I was heading down to Goblin Valley...

"Don't knock down any Goblins!"

Right. I'll keep that in mind!

Goblins everywhere!

Friday afternoon my brother and I drove down in his new FJ Cruiser to Goblin Valley - unsure if we would have a campsite or if we'd be sleeping in the car.

I guess we were supposed to have a campsite - and those campsites look pretty nice - but they were full, so the rangers told the Race Director that we could sleep at the Overlook, which is normally NO CAMPING.

It was really cool to set up the tent and sit outside looking at the amazing stars in the sky - with no light pollution whatsoever. It's crazy that up to two-thirds of people can only see some of the stars... and that some people have never seen the full brilliance of the night sky due to this light pollution! We just sat in the dark and watched the shooting stars.

It did remind me that maybe I should look into a lasik type eye surgery as some of the details just weren't there. Getting older. Blah.

It was cold when we went to sleep, but thankfully not as cold as it was last weekend at the Pony Express! THAT was bitterly cold.

I decided to start the race in the morning in a tank top and Matt's Pearl Izumi sleeves, as I knew it would be warming up and I didn't want to have to carry too much.

I was going to run with just a handheld bottle (and I probably could have) but after hearing that the Race Director had only ever done a road marathon and some half marathons, no ultras, I realized that this was NOT going to be normal Ultra-type Aid Stations but instead water, electrolytes, and gels of the road type races! So I took my Ultraspire Spry just in case.

This also allowed me to take my ActionCam, but I haven't been able to process any video yet.

I started off running with Kreuzer (you might remember him from the Millcreek 50k, Olympus, and Olympus again in the ROCKS ROCK video!) and his cousin Roxy, an experienced Marathoner but first-time Ultramarathoner!

We headed away from the start and down the ROAD (blech) past the campground, and then onto an ATV trail for a couple hundred yards and back onto a road. That road continued for the next six miles... And then it turned into a dirt road near the Wild Horse Canyon outside of the Goblin Valley State park. There were a few minor climbs but nothing too bad, and we kept a pretty decent pace until the 50K turnaround.

Just before the turnaround my body started to give me some signals that it was TIRED. I was definitely feeling the effects of 50 miles from the weekend before! But I was able to stick with Roxy until about mile 17, and Mark until 19.

I kept moving slowly until a girl (Her name was Jenny) who was moving really well passed me, and I decided moving faster would hurt just as much as moving slowly, so I kicked into a higher gear and blew by her and a few others and got within 200 yards of Kreuzer again, then my feet and hips just quit working - they didn't like the pavement. Jenny passed by me again and ultimately passed Kreuzer as well, running really smart and strong. It is always awesome to see people pull a good smart race together!

At this point I just pushed myself into a 200-300 steps of running, 25-50 steps walking all the way back to the turn past the campground and up to the Overlook Parking lot.

From the parking lot they direct you down to probably the best part of the race - about 3/4 of a mile through the Goblins. I could actually run again since I wasn't on the pavement!

Following the Halloween Candy Bowls (rocks, no candy, so sad) you weave through some of the goblins until you get to STAIRS at the END of the RACE. So mean!

Then to make it worse, you cut off the stairs and run straight up the hill around the fence, then across the parking lot to the Finish line.

Finish lines are fun!

Ninja!

JUMP!

Official time 4.52:20, 13th place in the 50k.

So that's a 50k PR for me. I think if I hadn't run 50 miles 8 days before - I could have cut off 30-45 minutes off that! It was a bit short for a 50k, but it was still a lot of fun.

We hung out and talked and took pictures and helped the race directors out

Then we had the long drive home!

Next up - Kakes runs the Moab Trail Half Marathon!