Ultrarunning National Rankings

 

We are living in the midst of the ultrarunning boom.

Frank Shorter's victory in the Olympic Marathon in Munich in 1972 is often cited as the launching point of the US running boom.  The explosion in popularity of "jogging" and road-racing in general (and marathons in particular) has its roots in that legendary race, as well as the publication of Jim Fixx's seminal The Complete Book of Running which was published in 1977.  Forty years later, ultrarunning is having its moment.  The success of Dean Karnazes' Ultramarathon Man and Chris McDougal's Born to Run have helped to fuel an unprecendented growth in ultramarathon participation.  An estimated 70,000 folks will complete an ultra this year, an increase of over 400% in the past fifteen years, according to Ultrarunning Magazine, the bible of the sport.

While it's still not exactly mainstream--that's about 12% of the 540,000 marathoners this year, not exactly a mainstream sport itself--the interest in our little niche has certainly swelled to unprecedented levels.  Sponsorship money is flowing--well, maybe not flowing per se, but at least trickling in.  Ultrarunnerpodcast and Talk Ultra boast thousands of downloads a month.  Ultrasportslive TV and irunfar.com provide live coverage of major races.  Stupid blogs like this one seem to be multiplying like rabbits.

So I've decided to do my part in servicing the Ultrarunning Boom.  If we're going to be a mainstream sport, let's act like it, dammit!  Let's get in on the sports conversation. Forget fighting about whether LeBron could take MJ one-on-one.  We want people arguing in bars (or, more likely, craft-beer tasting rooms) about who the best ultrarunners are, right?  Well, fear not.  Your prayers have been answered with the Ultrarunning National Rankings.

In truth, I've been kicking this idea around for a few years.  I train with alot of tri-geeks, and they all have their national rankings, both overall and for their age groups, courtesy of USAT.  I thought that was pretty cool, and thought a similar idea--a national ranking for any ultrarunning finisher in the country--would be pretty awesome.  I didn't particularly like the USAT formula, though, which involves comparing performances to estimated times by certain "pacesetters" in the race.  I didn't love the Ultrasignup rankings either, which work similarly, by awarding finishers a percentage of the race winner's time--it penalizes folks for racing in competitive fields, and rewards those who only run races they know they can win.  (Though admittedly the database power of Ultrasignup, allowing them to rank absolutely everybody, is very impressive.)  I wanted a system that acknowledged that not all races were created equal.  And so I found my model: golf.

The World Golf Rankings are very complicated, and may not be perfect, but they provided the basis for what I wanted in my system.  In the WGR, players accumulate points via their performances in tournaments on the various world tours.  The tours are all ranked--the US tour tanks the highest, followed by the European tour, and there are various factors for the Australian tour, the Japanese tour, and all the various mini-tours around the country--and the events within those tours are all ranked, too, based on how many of the top players in the world are playing.  Each tournament is assigned a value of importance--the majors are the highest, of course, with the World Golf Championships a step below.  The combination of what tour is involved, what the event is, and how many top players are there, determines how many ranking points are available, and how many players at that tournament will receive points.  The cumulative points are then divided by the number of events the player finished, and the result gives the player the number used for their ranking.

This was what I wanted.  Just like in golf, some events on the ultra calendar--Western States, Leadville, UTMB--are more important than others.  Placing highly in those events should carry more weight.  After all, which impresses you more: my win in a local 50K, or, say, Dominic Grossman's 19th-place finish at States last year?  (If you have to think about it, the rest of this post probably isn't for you.)  I could simplify things somewhat--ultrarunning doesn't have tours, for one thing--but the basic ideas were there.  Win small events, get a bit of credit.  Win bigger events, get more credit.  Beat the best runners in the country, get even more.

Initially, I had envisioned something akin to what USAT and Ultrasignup provided: a ranking for every finisher of an ultramarathon in the US.  Quickly, though, the impracticality of this idea became apparent.  First of all, there was just too much data to enter manually.  I don't have an automated database like Ultrasignup does, and I can't manually enter, say, 1100 finishers at JFK into a spreadsheet.  Plus, even if I figured out a way to automate it, more problems reared their head.  For one, duplicate names--how would I deal with, say, having five different Matt Smiths in the results?  (I've encountered this problem on Ultrasignup, which sometimes confuses me with another Jason Friedman about my age who happens to live less than 100 miles away.)  Limiting the rankings to top finishers doesn't eliminate this problem, of course, but makes it much more manageable.  Also, golf doesn't award points for every finisher--you have to hit a certain minimum criteria at a tournament for ranking points to become available.   That might mean making the cut, or the top 20, or whatever.  But not everyone gets points.  So not every finisher was going to get a ranking.  I had to make peace with that.

Trying to be as comprehensive as possible, I'm including every domestic race I can, as well as major international ones which might attract the top US talent.  Using the Ultrarunning Magazine race calendar, I started by assigning each race a score on a five-point scale.  Most races were ranked as Level 1: there are over 1000 ultras in the country, and you haven't heard of the overwhelming majority of them.  Level 2 races are slightly more prestigious--they might have some local or regional cachet, or they might have some name recognition by virtue of being associated with a race where a different distance is more important--say, the Ice Age 50K, which gains some prestige by riding the coattails of the Ice Age 50 Mile, but is decidedly the less important of the two events.  Level 3 races have a strong regional importance and maybe some mild prominence on the national stage, but aren't quite attracting the top fields--think Leona Divide or Umstead.  Level 4 races are national-class events--Miwok, Chuckanut, Speedgoat--that are separated from the top only by degrees.  (By default, I assigned all national championship races a Level 4.  They should be a big deal, even though not every US championship is created equal.)  Level 5 is reserved for the true majors: States, Leadville, Sonoma, North Face, and a handful of others that if you win, you just consider retiring right there on the spot since it probably will never get any better.  IAU World Championships and World Cup races are automatically granted a Level 5.

Using the same ratios for points and places that are used by the WGR, I then established how many points were available for each level of race, and how deep the scoring fields go.  A Level 1 race is worth five points to the winner, three for second, and one for third.  Level 2 races score out to the top 5; Level 3 the top 10; Level 4 the top 15; and Level 5 the top 25.  Generally, second place is worth about 60% of the points of first place (again, similar to the WGR), placing a premium on wins, which I like.

Next, we have to calculate a multiplier for strength of field--I want to reward people for racing against the best.  For the WGR, the top 200 in the world are used to calculate field strength; I settled on the top 50.  Each spot in the top 50 is assigned a point value, and those values correspond to a certain factor by which every finishing spot in that race is multiplied.  Of course, this is the first time we've done this, so there is no top 50 to work off of.  Instead, I used the results of the Ultrarunning magazine Ultrarunner of the Year voting from 2014 to set a baseline top 10 for the men and women.  When any of those top 10 run in an event this year, that race is worth correspondingly more points.  Not only does this place a high importance on seeking out top competition, it also acts as a reward for those who have previously achieved a high ranking.  (Once I have enough data for a reliable top 50, this multiplier effect will become a bit more pronounced.)

I decided to base the rankings on the sum of the points earned, not a per-event average, for several reasons that I will get into later.  At this point, my formula was set, and I started the (rather laborious) task of compiling results and manually entering the data into a spreadsheet.  It's a painstaking process.  I use the Ultrarunning website, as well as Ultrasignup, and I wind up doing a lot of Google searches to find results that aren't posted there.  So far, out of the 575 or so races that I have listed through the weekend of May 31, I've found results on about 90-95% of them (several were cancelled or have been removed from consideration due to fat-ass status or other situations that will make getting results unlikely).  In all, over 1400 men and 1300 women have earned at least one ranking point so far this year.

Before I unveil the actual rankings, I know you probably have some questions/concerns/criticisms.  I'm going to try to anticipate some of them now, and address them as best as I can by trying to explain my reasoning. 

Ultra rankings won't work.  You're comparing all different kinds of events: road, trails, track, timed events.  Different runners have different strengths.
True, but that's a feature, not a bug.  That's exactly why I think this is a cool idea.  You can accumulate points in any race, in any discipline.  In theory, the most well-rounded athlete should have the best chance achieving a top ranking.  Think about golf: some courses are long, some short, some with tighter lies or deeper rough.  Doesn't matter.  You have to beat whoever shows up on that day.

You're not accounting for times, or margin of victory.  What about course records?
I want the focus to be on the head-to-head competition, not the times.  Course records are nice, but ultimately meaningless.  You don't get more credit in golf for winning by 10 shots than winning in a playoff.  A win is a win.  Also, comparing times across courses--just like comparing golf scores across courses--doesn't work.

Your race ratings are terrible.
Yeah, well, that's like, your opinion, man.  This is obviously the most subjective part of the system.  I live on the East Coast, so there's probably some local bias involved.  And I certainly can't keep track of 1500 races and know which are necessarily the most important.  What I'd like to do in the future is have a committee of folks spread out around the country, so I can have people responsible for rating races in their home region.  Let me know if you want to volunteer.  When we monetize this thing we'll all be rich.

How come all the timed events/track races are rated so low?
That's not 100% true, but I'll admit, the track events generally are receiving lower ratings than their road and trail counterparts.  My explanation is that, in the current climate, these races are not as highly regarded, and the fields are (usually) much weaker.  This isn't to say that some of the stuff Zach Bitter and Joe Fejes are doing isn't incredibly impressive or historically important.  But the truth is that less people are paying attention to, and talking about, these accomplishments than they are dissecting results from Leadville or Lake Sonoma, and that less of the top runners are showing up at these events.

What about FKTs/solo record attempts?
There's no way to account for these in the system, which I am OK with.  As I've stated before, this is about head-to-head competition deciding who the best runners are.  I don't want to be in the position of deciding whether Zack Bitter's 12-hour record is more impressive than Rob Krar's R2R2R FKT or Mike Wardian's treadmill 50K.

In reality, I think all of these things that we're talking about--FKTs, course records, national bests--are fodder for voting, not rankings.  Which is great.  I find the UROY vote fascinating, and I'm not saying we should replace that vote.  This ranking is meant to be an objective supplement to that subjective process.  Golf has the WGR which is completely objective, and the Player of the Year vote which is completely subjective.  You can use whatever criteria you want to value when you're voting.

You should use an average, not a cumulative score.  Without an average, there's no penalty for running poorly or DNFs.
I struggled with this decision for awhile.  This is where I deviated from the WGR, which uses an average.  In the end, I decided an average for our sport simply didn't work.  First of all, I wasn't comfortable with setting a minimum amount of races to qualify--that seemed way too arbitrary to me.  Secondly, from a logistic standpoint, it was almost impossible.  I'd have to comb through all the results of every single race and record zeros for anyone who didn't earn points for that race, just so I could average that race in later if they happened to record points--just not doable.  Plus, how would I count slower, non-scoring performances vs. DNFs?  You'd like to reward finishing, I guess, so if non-scoring finishes are worth zero points, should DNFs result in losing points?  And then, how would I track DNFs at all?  Most race results don't list them.  If I can't track them, it might encourage people to DNF, rather than record a slower finish.  (The Ultrasignup rankings have run into this issue.)  Finally, some people use low-key races as training runs, or social events.  I don't want to discourage this practice by penalizing people for participating in a race without actually racing it.  Ultimately, cumulative points was the only way to go.

You do a terrible job with international races and international runners.
I'll admit this is the one of the biggest problems I'm having right now.  These are US rankings--God knows I can't do world rankings, though it'd be fun--but there are plenty of top US athletes racing overseas in big races, and I need to account for their results.  And since I'm not keeping track of international runners (except in certain cases when I know they'll run a bunch of US races) the field strength of these races isn't as robust as it probably should be, so the multiplier isn't as significant as you'd want it to be. These races aren't as important on the domestic level as they are overseas, so maybe, it's not as big a deal as I think it is, but I'll readily admit this is a problem that I haven't solved, and I'm open to suggestions.

Level 4 and 5 races are undervalued in points as opposed to levels 1, 2, and 3.
And this is the other problem.  Again, I based this off of the WGR, making level 5 races akin to the majors, level 4 in line with large events like the WGC or the Players, Level 3 some of the medium-sized PGA tour events, Level 2 a small PGA tour event, and Level 1 a mini-tour event. At baseline, winning a level 5 event is worth five times as much as a Level 1 event...and likely more, since the chance for having a field strength multiplier is much higher.  These are approximately in line with the ratios the WGR follows.  But the more I look at it, the less sure of these numbers I am.  Is winning Western States really just five times as important as winning a podunk 50K?  Should it be worth ten times as much?  Or twenty?  I'm a little too far into this now to change for this year, but next year I might need to tweak the relative values.  I could fix this by adding more levels, but I think parsing the different races between levels is going to get maddening.  (I mean, States is a 10, but is Leadville a 9?  Is Vermont a 6, 7, 8, what?  Too complicated.)  Probably the larger races will simply be worth more points.  (Incidentally, I do like the numbers of scoring slots for each level, which are 3, 5, 10, 15, and 25 respectively.  These seem about right and I'm pleased I got that right on the first try.)

ANYWAY...here are the first set of rankings, through May 31.  We're getting into the summer racing season now, when big events start coming more frequently, so I'm going to try to update these maybe every couple of months.  If you like, you can view the entire list here.  Sheet 1 is a list of all the races, with rankings and field strength multipliers.  Sheet 2 is my reference for how points are distributed and how multipliers are calculated.  Sheet 3 is men and Sheet 4 is women.  I have it listed alphabetically by first name, so you can find your name there.  Sorry, I don't have it set up to view the entire list in numerical order.  I'll figure out how to do that at some point I'm sure. Probably. Maybe.

Through May 31

	Men	State	Points	Women	State	Points
1	Alex Varner	CA	52.6	Magdalena Boulet	CA	77
2	Ryan Bak	OR	48	Stephanie Howe	OR	65.5
3	Brian Rusiecki	MA	46.2	Nicole Studer	TX	55.6
4	Paul Terranova	TX	45.5	Cassie Scallon	CO	46.6
5	David Laney	OR	43.9	Aliza Lapierre	VT	41
6	Dylan Bowman	CA	42	Jacqueline Palmer	DE	37
7	Chikara Omine	CA	40	Kathleen Cusick	VA	34
8	Mario Mendoza	OR	38	Traci Falbo	IN	33.8
9	Rob Krar	AZ	35.7	Caroline Boller	CA	32.6
10	Jorge Maravilla	CA	34.6	Katalin Nagy	FL	32.5
11	Jorge Pacheco	CA	32.8	Sarah Bard	MA	31.225
12	Benjamin Stern	CA	31.2	Ashley Erba	CO	30.9
13	Jared Hazen	CO	30	Megan Roche	CA	30
14	Jean Pommier	CA	30	Melanie Fryar	TX	29
15	Justin Houck	WA	28	Bree Lambert	CA	27
16	Andrew Miller	OR	26	Amy Sproston	OR	24
17	Ian Sharman	CA	25	Angela Shartel	CA	24
18	Scott Breeden	IN	25	Meghan Arbogast	CA	23.225
19	Alex Nichols	CO	24.8	Rachel Ragona	CA	23
20	Christopher Dannucci	CA	24.8	Laura Richard	CA	22.5
21	Christian Gering	CO	24.25	Nuria Picas	ESP	21
22	Karl Schnaitter	CA	24	Tracie Akerhielm	TX	21
23	Tim Tollefson	CA	22.5	Lindsey Tollefson	CA	20.975
24	Seth Swanson	MT	22.2	Kaci Lickteig	NE	20.275
25	Ben Nephew	MA	22	Amanda Basham	OR	20
26	Daniel Hamilton	TN	21	Camille Herron	OK	20
27	James Blandford	PA	21	Joelle Vaught	ID	20
28	Nate Polaske	AZ	21	Megan Stegemiller	VA	20
29	Jason Leman	OR	20.6	Michelle Yates	CO	20
30	Fernando de Samaniego	CA	20.3	Silke Koester	CO	19.4
31	Jim Walmsley	MT	20.3	Emily Richards	NV	19
32	David Kilgore	FL	20	Kerrie Bruxvoort	CO	19
33	Ford Smith	TX	20	Julie Fingar	CA	18
34	Mike Bialick	MN	20	Ashley Lister	PA	17.8
35	Patrick Smyth	UT	20	Amy Rusiecki	MA	17
36	Zach Ornelas	MI	20	Jennifer Edwards	WA	17
37	Ryan Smith		19.5	Catrin Jones	Can	16.8
38	Zach Bitter	WI	19.5	Robin Watkins	DC	16.5
39	Lon Freeman	CA	19	Gia Madole	OK	16
40	Owen Bradley	AL	19	Suzanna Bon	CA	16
41	Adrian Stanciu	CO	18.5	Emily Harrison	AZ	15.6
42	Jason Lantz	PA	17.35	Kathy D’Onofrio	CA	15.6
43	Bob Shebest	CA	17	Kerrie Wlad	CO	15.2
44	Jared Burdick	NY	16.8	Leslie Howlett	UT	15.2
45	Brandt Ketterer	CO	16	Alicia Woodside	Can	15
46	Catlow Shipek	AZ	16	Amie Blackham	UT	15
47	Charlie Ware	AZ	16	Beth Meadows	TN	15
48	Karl Meltzer	UT	16	Claire Mellein	CA	15
49	Ray Sanchez	CA	16	Jennifer Benna	NV	15
50	Mario Martinez	CA	15.9	Jessica Lemer	WI	15
				Joanna Masloski	CO	15
				Megan McGrath	NJ	15

All right!  Let the ad hominem attacks on my character begin!

Race Report: Cayuga Trails 50 Mile

Photo: Ron Heerkins

I came into the Cayuga Trails 50, which doubles as the US National 50-mile Championship, off of one of the best training blocks I've had in recent years--a six-week stretch of over 650 miles with some excellent workouts on both the roads and the track.  In the weeks leading up to the race, I was extremely excited and confident.  I couldn't wait to get back to Ithaca and run the beautiful trails of Treman and Buttermilk Falls State Parks, to compete with my MPF/RNR teammates, and hopefully put up a national-class result.  Six days before the race, unfortunately, the family and I were in a pretty good-sized car accident (we're all ok, thanks!  A little sore, but no major injuries.  No, it wasn't the new car; it was Jodi's car, which was eleven years old and had over 200,000 miles, so she's going to get a new one.) and so my final week of preparation wasn't quite what I had hoped.  But between some ART from Scott Field at Performance Sports and Wellness, some electrical stimulation from Greg Cecere at Momentum Physical Therapy, and some excellent massage from my good friend Angi Williams, I was able to make it to the start with some soreness in my ribs but otherwise ready to go.

I graduated from Cornell in 1997 and so Ithaca holds a very special place in my heart.  I had run the inaugural CT50 two years ago, and I knew that my friend Ian would put on another world-class event.  Plus, this was one of the big races for the Mountain Peak Fitness/Red Newt Racing team.  Many of my teammates were gathering in Ithaca to test ourselves against some of the best in the country.  Ian hosted a pre-race dinner for the team at his house on Saturday night, and I had a great time meeting some of my new teammates and catching up with some old friends as my kids ran around with Ben's and Ian's in the backyard.

Race morning was overcast and a bit humid, but with temps in the mid-50s, nearly perfect conditions (though the trails were a little soggy from recent rain).  My warmup was OK; my ribs were tender from the accident but didn't feel as though they would limit me much, and my legs felt absolutely ready to go.  We took off at 6am, the start feeling a bit more controlled than it had two years ago, which had felt like an all-out sprint to the mile mark; I settled into a quick but comfortable tempo, about twentieth place, running with Brian Rusiecki and several others at the tail end of the lead pack.  We strung out pretty quickly, and by about the ten-minute mark I was running with just one or two others as we started to climb the steps past our first gorge to AS1.

The requisite elevation chart.  Yeah, it's as bad as it looks.

The CT50 course is an unrelenting beast.  It's more or less a double out-and-back, with four major climbs per lap, a total of 10,000 feet of elevation gain.  The footing is generally superb--a mixture of double-track, some paved roads, and a ton of technical but eminently runnable singletrack.  And steps.  Oh, my god, the steps; hundreds of them per climb; thousands over the course of fifty miles.  It's a brutal course because almost the entire thing is runnable but extremely hard.  You rarely get a break from going uphill or downhill, and when you do, you feel like you need to take advantage of it and hammer.  And that's a tough combination.  In three years, only five runners have ever broken seven hours, and they're some of the best ultramarathoners in the country: Sage Canaday, Chris Vargo, Matt Flaherty, Jordan McDougal, and Mario Mendoza.

My point is, it's not a PR course.  In 2013, I had run 8:48 for 16th place.  My goal this year was eight hours, which was a pretty good bet to be in or close to the top 10; I thought even with an OK day I was in shape to run 8:15-8:20.  Anything outside of 8:30 or a top-15 finish was, frankly, going to be a disappointment.  Ideally, I'd like to try to run even splits, but on a course like Cayuga, this is incredibly difficult; since there is obviously no respite in the second half, some slowdown is almost inevitable.  I set a target of 3:45-3:55 for the first lap, which would give me a bit of a cushion to slow down by 10% or so over the second half and still have a shot at that 8:00-8:15 goal.

I climbed the first section well and reached AS1 (5K) in 26:30, a little faster than I wanted to be, right with Scotie Jacobs, a MPF/RNR teammate and the facilities manager for the Ithaca Beer Company.  Scotie and I don't know each other well, but he is easy company, and a very strong runner, and we attacked the next section of the course with a bit too much enthusiasm.  Scotie was definitely pushing a little faster than I would have otherwise, but I was feeling great, and I was so excited to be not just racing--finally, after all that prep--but racing with a teammate, and went along for the ride.  We hit AS2 (seven miles) at 59:30--way too fast.  As Scotie said, though, at this race, you have to take what the course gives you, because it doesn't give you much.

Climbing with Scotie.
Photo: Ron Heerkins

I settled in.  The miles clicked by pretty easily.  I pulled away from Scotie and ran solo for awhile, feeling in control; he caught back up and pulled a bit ahead on the bomber descent down to the base of Buttermilk Falls, the quarter pole for the race (1:50 and change, still a little fast but seemingly in control).  We immediately started climbing back out of the gorge, passing through the aid station without stopping; I hadn't stopped at an aid station yet and wasn't planning to for awhile.  We saw Elizabeth and Joe Azze within the first half mile of the climb; Joe chased us with his video camera as Scotie and I ran what I thought was a pretty solid ascent of the gorge.




Just past the top I pulled away again and was running solo; I felt great and focused on running a sustainable tempo for the second quarter of the race.  I picked off a couple of spots and before I knew it I was heading back toward the start/finish line at the end of lap 1, hitting the turnaround in a near-perfect 3:49 (1:50/1:59), in 17th place.

On my way out to start the second lap, two problems became quickly apparent:

1. There were about ten runners, including Scotie and our teammate Ryan Welts, tailing me by about five minutes or less.
2. I was starting to get really, really tired.

The first problem wasn't a big deal.  I didn't have any room for error, but I wasn't far from where I wanted to be either; Cole, Carlo, and Silas were running ninth through eleventh, and I wasn't more than ten minutes behind them.  Both my time and place goals were within reach with a strong second half.  The second problem was obviously going to be an issue, but my legs still felt pretty good.  Nutritionally, I was on top of things.  My stomach felt fine, I was well-hydrated.  If I could run close to two hours for the third quarter of the race--giving up about 1 minute per mile to my time from that segment of lap one--I'd be in good shape.  I was definitely walking more now, but was still making solid progress.  I saw Ian just after AS6, which I reached 30 minutes after leaving the start/finish, having surrendered my minute per mile.  I could tell from his expression that I still looked OK.  Fake it until you make it, I thought, and pushed  on down past Lucifer Falls.  I hit AS7 in 5:01, 72 minutes since the turnaround and a little slower than I wanted, but hanging on.  Legs still OK.

photo: Ron Heerkins

It was on the descent into Buttermilk Falls nearly an hour later that I knew I was in trouble.  Until then I had been holding it together--leaking minutes, to be sure, but I had actually picked up another spot or two, and was maintaining about 10 minute/mile pace over some pretty difficult terrain.  But as I started the descent I could tell my quads were not going to hold on for another 13 miles.  I hobbled downhill, each step becoming more and more painful; I tried to open up the stride to remove the "braking" element from my quads, but couldn't maintain the turnover.  I reached the aid station at 6:01, still technically on pace for an eight-hour finish, though that obviously wasn't going to happen.  My three quarters of the race had now gone roughly 1:50, 2:00, 2:10.  Could I run a 2:20 for the final quarter, maybe salvage an 8:20 and hang on to my top-15 finish?

In a word: no.

There's not much to say about the last 12.5 miles beyond the fact that it sucked.  I walked, limped, hobbled, spent a miserable 160 minutes out there just trying to move forward.  My quads were so shot that on the final stair climb up Lucifer Falls, with about five miles left in the race, I literally questioned whether I could get up the staircase.  I lost eleven spots in the last 12 miles and it's a miracle it wasn't more.  My quads felt like they had been through a meat grinder; I couldn't run uphill or downhill, and could manage a slow jog on the rare flat stretches.  By the time I stumbled into the finish chute I didn't really care how poorly it had gone, I just wanted it to be over.

Is he laughing at me?  I think he's laughing at me!
Photo: Joe Azze

Later, after I had a little time to reflect, I obviously did care, and was obviously pretty unhappy.  My 8:40 was eight minutes faster than I had run in 2013, but it was at least 20-30 minutes slower than I thought I was capable of.  The first half of the race had been great, and I had hung very tough through 37 miles, but it's a 50-mile race, and with the training block I'd had, I was bitterly disappointed with the finish.  Nutritionally things seemed to go pretty well, and the failure was less of a dietary/bonking issue than my legs just not being up for that pace on that course.  Looking back on my training, the one missing element was hills; I get plenty of climbing in on my daily runs, but didn't focus on hard hill workouts, doing most of the quality work on the roads and track.  Maybe that was the issue.  I don't know, I'm kind of out of answers.  As well as I feel like I can run a 50K, I feel pretty lost at the 50 mile distance right now, and I really don't feel any closer to an answer than I did the last time I ran this race two years ago.  Maybe 50 miles is just too far for me.  (I hope not, I'm running my first 100K in September.)


For now, recovery, and a quick rebuild before the Whiteface Skyraces at the end of this month.  All hills between now and then.  I'm not expecting much; I can't imagine the course will suit me particularly well, and I have to let Ryan beat the crap out of me on a course like this since he was a good sport and came to a "runnable" one last weekend.  So hopefully it'll just be a fun weekend with Jodi and my teammates.  As disappointed as I was with this race, it really was great running on a team again, encouraging each other on the course, feeding off the great support from Joe, Elizabeth, and Ian.  That's what I'll take away from this race and look forward to next time.

Goofing around a bit, before things started getting ugly.
Photo: Joe Azze

Almost forgot, quick gear report: Patagonia racing kit courtesy of MPF/RNR; Orange Mud HydraQuiver Single Barrel (continues to perform brilliantly) and trucker hat (I know it's cool, 'cause Kevin Bartow was wearing one too); Shoes: split time between the Salming Trail T1 and the Montrail Fluidflex.  Nutrition: GU Brew and Roctane, as usual.  The Sea Salt Chocolate gets a big thumbs up!