Race Report: Water Gap 50K

(All photos courtesy of Joe Azze and Mountain Peak Fitness.)

I'm tempted to say it's been a long season.  I ran my first race of 2015 on January 3, even though it was pretty low-key; the first of my two 'A' races for the year was at the end of February.  By mid-October I might be ready for a break.  But in reality, it doesn't feel like that long a season.  All of my races were crammed into the first half of the year; since the Whiteface Skyrunning weekend at the end of June, I've barely raced at all.  Maybe it'd be more accurate to think of the year as two separate seasons, with July serving as a recovery period, and this fall being the first part of a longer 2015-16 campaign that will probably stretch into next summer.  So, depending on your point of view, I either wrapped up the 2015 season or kicked off the 2016 season last weekend at the Water Gap 50K.

As a member of the Mountain Peak Fitness/Red Newt Racing team, I'm certainly encouraged to enter Red Newt events.  But even if I wasn't on the team, these races would be at the top of my list.  Ian Golden, who I've mentioned multiple times before, is a truly great race director, with an outstanding vision of what he wants his races to be, and the ability to shepherd those visions into reality.  Water Gap was the last event on the 2015 schedule for Red Newt Racing, and it promised to be something unique for a Red Newt race: fast.  Ian has a (well-deserved) reputation for courses that are not only beautiful but extremely challenging; anyone who has run Breakneck Point, Whiteface, or Virgil Crest can confirm how difficult those courses can be.  Ian further solidified that reputation this year by co-directing (with Charlie Gadol and Mike Siudy) two of the most notoriously difficult trail races in the Northeast, Manitou's Revenge and Cat's Tail Trail Marathon.  Even Cayuga, while eminently runnable, is a very difficult course that is easily 60-90 minutes slower than a "fast" 50 mile.  So when Ian declares a course to be "fast," that needs to be taken with a grain of salt.  The Water Gap course seemed to fit the bill, though: 31 miles of almost exclusively graded double-track, with only about 2000 feet of climbing.  A welcome change from what I'd been racing earlier in the year.  As always with a Red Newt event, I knew the competition would be stiff, at the very least from whatever of my ultra-fast teammates would show up that day.  But I was excited to get back into racing after a pretty long layoff.  Even though I wasn't in top racing form--probably more like 85%--I thought I could run near four hours on the course, which would be a nice stimulus for the training block leading up to January (more on that later).

I spent the night before the race camping near the finish with Elizabeth, Joe, Natalie, Lenny, and Ian; all would be volunteering on race day (along with several other teammates: Scotie, Zsuzsanna, Julian, and Amy; hopefully I didn't forget anyone).  I woke up early and grabbed breakfast in downtown Milford, PA with Joe and Mike Siudy before Joe gave us a lift to the start, 31 miles to the south.  The weather was perfect: clear and cool, in the low to mid 40s, with minimal wind.  At the start I met Phil Vondra, a frequent training partner, as well as teammates Carlo and Silas, who I expected to run away with the race.  Both had to be tired (Silas was on his third ultra-type effort in five weeks, following Virgil and Cat's Tail; while Carlo was only six days off a sterling 2:35 in Chicago) but both are strong runners who had to be considered the favorites.  Phil and I had a quick strategy session and decided to try to run 8:00/mile pace for at least the first ten miles, then reassess.  As I was basically training through, still running 75-85 mpw, and Phil was tired from a heavy week of drinking (it's an occupational hazard, apparently), a conservative approach seemed prudent.  So at least we had a plan in place that we could immediately ignore as soon as the gun went off.

Carlo and Silas went immediately to the front, joined by Justin Weiler (a strong upstate NY runner coming off of an excellent 3:44 at the Green Lakes 50K) and Tony Kharitonov (a solid masters runner from NJ).  Phil and I formed a chase pack with Jay Lemos, who was finishing up what truly was a long season that had included an impressive second place at the Eastern States 100.  We came through the first mile in 7:25 or so, obviously much faster than we had wanted, about 10 seconds behind the leaders.  We were able to let them go without any problem after that, but despite our efforts to find 8:00 pace kept turning out miles in the 7:30-7:40 range.   Conditions were perfect, and the course as very flat in the opening miles, so we maintained the pace, chatting constantly and every mile making noises about slowing down without actually doing so.

Catching Tony, just before AS1.

Just past the five-mile mark came one of the few decent-sized climbs on the course, about 3/4 of a mile long with multiple switchbacks leading up to AS1 (about 10K in).  I led our group uphill at a low intensity level.  We caught Tony at the top and the four of us ran together through the aid station.  I went through without stopping; Phil caught up within a minute, but it took Jay and Tony about a mile to rejoin us, and we continued on, running our 7:35s or so.  After a couple of rolling miles the course flattened out again and remained so for the next 12 miles or so.  Tony dropped back after the 10 mile mark and the three of us passed AS2 in the same fashion.  The miles clicked off fairly easily.  We still made overtures about slowing down, but as we neared halfway we figured we might as well keep on the pace as long as everyone felt good.  The terrain made it very easy to find a rhythm; our splits hovered around 7:30 with less than a few seconds of variation either way.  We were still chatting easily.  Jay had made a game of jumping over the three-foot-high barriers every time we crossed a park road or bridge, which kept Phil and I pretty entertained.

Through AS3 at 14 miles the pace remained steady; I ran through again without stopping while Phil and Jay stopped to refuel.  At this point I had yet to take in any nutrition other than some sips of water.  I felt a little bad not waiting for the guys at the aid stations, but at the same time, I had made the decision to go with the handheld so that I wouldn't have to stop.  Neither of them were carrying water.  We had each made our choice on either side of the tradeoff.  I couldn't feel guilty.

Our little pack, doin'' work.

My strategy was starting to pay off, though.  I kept running my 7:30s, not consciously trying to get a gap--I was having too much fun running with those guys to try to go solo at this point--but it was putting pressure on them to run a little faster to catch back up after each break.  After AS3 it took them almost a full mile to come back, having had to run well under 7:00 to do so.  These surges, however short, had to take something out of them.  After halfway (1:58) Jay had stopped leaping over the barriers, and through the 17 mile mark conversation had tapered off dramatically.  I took my first GU right around the two hour mark.  I was still feeling great.  The pace was starting to inch down a little bit, but it felt almost effortless, and we were getting into the stages of the race where getting a little more aggressive was OK.  Miles 18 and 19 were run at about 7:15 pace, and past the 19-mile mark Jay and Phil started to fall away.  I soloed on, into what had become a bit of a bothersome headwind, and took a second GU just before AS4 at 20.5 miles.  I made my only stop here, to refill my bottle, drop in a GU Brew tablet, and pee, giving up about 30 seconds before getting back out on course.


The course started getting a bit tougher.  Some rolling hills mixed with some short singletrack sections.  I started feeling some discomfort in my right patellar tendon, which has bothered me on an off for some time, though not to a significant degree; and also some tightness in the left hamstring.  I adjusted my stride, slowed to about 7:45 pace, and pushed forward.  The miles clicked by.  I passed the marathon mark at 3:18, approaching the final aid station.  On a long, flat, straight stretch approaching the checkpoint, I saw a flash of a green t-shirt leaving the aid station: Justin, in third.  That was a boost.  I had five miles to catch him and was obviously making up ground; I hadn't seen any of the top three since the opening twenty minutes or so.  I passed through AS5 feeling strong and ready to hunt.  Joe was waiting for me in the woods about half a mile later, filming me at the bottom of a technical singletrack descent.  He confirmed that Justin was just up ahead.  (Also that Silas and Carlo had about a mile lead on us at that point.)  We were in the midst of the most difficult section of the course--some steep singletrack with alot of sidehill running and thick leaf cover, obscuring the rocks and roots and making for some pretty slow going.  My pace had slowed to near 10:00/mile, but by the 27-mile mark I had caught and passed Justin.

Navigating some singletrack

About a mile later the singletrack ended and I started opening up the stride again.  I wasn't particularly concerned about getting caught--I felt pretty confident no one was coming back on my at this point--but four hours was looking possible, even likely if I could recapture my earlier rhythm.  I was able to drop down to 7:03 pace for mile 29 and 7:10 or so for mile 30, at which point I relaxed a little bit through the final finishing stretches, coming home in 3:57 for a nearly evenly split performance (1:58/1:59).

Silas and Carlo ran together the whole way, turning in an outstanding 3:44; my third-place finish made it a podium sweep for MPF/RNR, which was pretty sweet.  Justin gutted out a tough fourth, while Phil maintained a nice pace for fifth in 4:04.  All in all, a very successful day for me.  I met my goals of top five, top master, and four hours, all while training through.  The course was beautiful, the weather was perfect, the volunteers were great, and having Phil, Jay, Mike, and the whole MPF/RNR there at the end made for fantastic camaraderie.

I couldn't have asked for a better end, or beginning, to the season.  I've got some small stuff coming up--a couple of 5Ks and 10Ks--including my high school alumni race, always a highlight of my year, and I think a beer mile as well.  But I'm keeping the volume and intensity fairly high for the next few weeks, hopefully building to a large training block in December, leading into the main attraction for the next few months: Bandera 100K, the USATF championships, on January 6.  I'll be heading out with Phil and Elizabeth.  All of us will be looking to get our lottery tickets for Western States in 2017; Phil and I will be attempting our first 100Ks.  I'm planning on a big first half of 2016.  Bandera is one of three national championships I'm targeting in my first year as a master (Caumsett in March, Cayuga in May); I won't win any national titles, but some age-group medals could be possible.  And I'm toying with the idea of a couple of timed events as well, maybe a six hour, and possible even a 24-hour in July.  Could be a big year!  Stay tuned.

Ultra running National Rankings: Fall Update

photo: the North Face

photo: Runners World

OK.  First off, if you're wondering what this is all about, or how I came up with this, go back and read the first Ultra National Rankings post I put up in June.  Briefly, as a fan of top-level ultra running, I thought it would be fun to have a system to rank elites (and non-elites) in an objective way.  So, I came up with a system.  The original post outlines much of the thought process that went into it and addresses some of the issues that I've identified with the system (some of which will be tweaked next year, some which will be left alone because I don't think they need changing, and some which are inherent to the system and just won't be able to be fixed).  It's pretty long, but it gives you a good idea of where this comes from, so if you think this might be at all interesting to you, I'd encourage you to read it.  There are a bunch of comments on that post also, much of which is a pretty interesting discussion (which was kind of the whole point), so check those out too.

At the end of that post I listed the top 50 men and women for the year, through May 31.  I'd like to remind everyone that it's not just the top 50 that are ranked; I have, at this point, over 2200 women and 2400 men who have earned at least one ranking point for the year.  Fifty just seemed like a good number to put on the blog, but you can view the entire list if you want.  (Fifty wasn't completely arbitrary either; starting next year, the top 50 will all count toward determining the "field strength multiplier" for each race (which is going to mean so much more work for me, ugh)).  I'm constantly updating the list each week, but my goal was to publish an updated top 50 every few months for people to see.  But, as I explained last week, my computer died, and I fell multiple weeks behind in August and September, so I've just now caught up and have a fresh top 50 for you, which you can scroll down to the bottom of this post to see.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with how the rankings are reflecting the results so far.  As you might have guessed by the pics leading off this post, Western States champs Rob Krar and Magdalena Boulet are leading the respective lists, both of whom would be tough to argue with at this point.  Looking down the rest of the top 10-20 on either side, I think the system has done a good job of identifying some folks who are really having some great years.  A few people might be a little over-valued by being prolific, which may get tweaked a little bit next year.  But, being prolific is a skill, too.  It's hard to run an ultra a month at a high level and stay healthy, so in the abstract at least, I don't have too much of an issue with it.

One aspect of this whole project that I've enjoyed the most is that it really highlights athletes who are having outstanding seasons that probably don't get enough attention or credit.  (Not that everyone necessarily wants that, but...)  I mean, everyone knows about Rob's and Magdalena's exploits, but before I did this, I never would have realized how great a year Kathleen Cusick is having, or Paul Terranova, or Nicole Studer, or Bob Shebest.  Hopefully this throws at least a little bit of a spotlight on those folks who aren't the household names in our sport, but are having great years nonetheless.

Of course, it's nowhere near perfect.  Two folks who are definitely too low are Sage Canaday and Camille Herron, both because they haven't run a ton of ultras this year.  Both have run some fast road marathons, which cut into their ultra schedules.  Sage's injury-related DNF at UTMB obviously cost him a shot at a lot of points.  Camille is ranked pretty high at 14th despite having run only two ultras, but in those two races she's won a national title and a world championship, and I'd like to see her in the top 10 at least.  But I think everyone in the top 10 really is deserving.

We'll see how the rest of the season plays out.  Magda has probably locked up the top ranking for the women for the year--and deservedly so, in my opinion--but the top placings on the mens' side are very much up for grabs, particularly with the TNF-EC championships on the not-too-distant horizon.  If we have some significant movement before then, I'll post an updated list in a month or so, but we'll see how it all shakes out.

Again, if you want to view the entire list (alphabetically, not numerically, sorry) please waste a bunch of time at work doing so.  As always, questions/comments/feedback/suggestions are encouraged.

Through October 1

	Men	State	Points	Women	State	Points
1	Rob Krar	AZ	87.5	Magdalena Boulet	CA	171.6
2	Brian Rusiecki	MA	74.75	Stephanie Howe	OR	89.7
3	David Laney	OR	71.1	Aliza Lapierre	VT	78.6
4	Ian Sharman	CA	69.5	Kathleen Cusick	VA	78
5	Seth Swanson	MT	67.8	Kaci Lickteig	NE	73.275
6	Alex Nichols	CO	57.8	Nicole Studer	TX	71.275
7	Bob Shebest	CA	54	Cassie Scallon	CO	61.6
8	Alex Varner	CA	52.6	Larissa Dannis	CA	58.2
9	Jared Hazen	CO	52	Kerrie Bruxvoort	CO	49.4
10	Paul Terranova	TX	52	Hillary Allen	CO	49.25
11	Chikara Omine	CA	50	Katalin Nagy	FL	47.5
12	Justin Houck	WA	48	Emily Richards	NV	46.6
13	Ryan Bak	OR	48	Rachel Ragona	CA	45.25
14	Mario Mendoza	CA	47	Camille Herron	OK	45
15	Benjamin Stern	CA	46.2	Jacqueline Palmer	DE	42
16	Andrew Miller	OR	46	Caroline Boller	CA	41.95
17	Dylan Bowman	CA	44.1	Ashley Erba	CO	40.9
18	Gediminas Grinius	LTH	44	Traci Falbo	IN	40.3
19	Jean Pommier	CA	42	Emma Roca	WV	39.75
20	Ryan Kaiser	OR	41	Lee Conner	OH	39.5
21	Jorge Pacheco	CA	39.3	Angela Shartel	CA	39
22	Mario Martinez	CA	38.4	Silke Koester	CO	37.4
23	Ryan Smith	CO	37.8	Kara Henry	CO	37
24	David Herr	VT	37	Darcy Piceau	CO	34.375
25	Michael Borst	WI	37	Beverly Anderson-Abbs	CA	33.6
26	Nate Jaqua	OR	36	Ashley Lister	PA	32.8
27	Mike Foote	MT	35	Robin Watkins	DC	32.1
28	Michael Wardian	VA	34.85	Meghan Arbogast	CA	32.075
29	Jorge Maravilla	CA	34.6	Alissa St. Laurent	Can	32
30	Sage Canaday	CO	34.5	Amanda Basham	OR	32
31	Christopher Denucci	CA	33.3	Sara Bard	MA	31.225
32	Tim Tollefson	CA	31.5	Joelle Vaught	ID	31.05
33	Tyler Green	OR	30.5	Ashley Nordell	OR	31
34	Chris Vizcaino	CA	30	Mallory Richard	Can	31
35	Nate Polaske	AZ	30	Megan Stegemiller	VA	31
36	Scott Breeden	IN	30	Darla Askew	OR	30.6
37	Scott Traer	MA	30	Neela D’Souza	Can	30.5
38	Timmy Parr	CO	29.5	Janessa Taylor	OR	30
39	Lon Freeman	CA	29	Megan Roche	CA	30
40	Jeff Browning	OR	28.7	Katrin Silva	NM	29.95
41	Daven Oskvig	NY	28.5	Bree Lambert	CA	29.75
42	Nickademus Hollon	CA	27.25	Melanie Fryar	TX	29
43	Mark Austin	ID	27	Kerrie Wlad	CO	28.6
44	Mark Hammond	UT	27	Laura Richard	CA	28.1
45	Oswaldo Lopez	CA	27	Leslie Semler	MA	28.1
46	Karl Schnaitter	CA	26.5	Luanne Park	CA	26.525
47	Nathan Stroh	OR	26.5	Amie Blackham	UT	26
48	Ford Smith	TX	26	Amy Rusiecki	MA	26
49	Gabe Wishnie	WA	26	Suzanna Bon	CA	26
50	Michael Owen	OH	26	Catrin Jones	Can	25.8
	Pete Kostelnick	NE	26
	Ray Sanchez	CA	26