The G Running Diary

AR50: More Running in the Sun: 4/6/04

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Then the fun began: trails and poison oak! I started to notice the distances between aid stations and our arrival times. I noticed that we were suddenly at the 50K distance in good time. I wondered about the people behind us making cutoffs. There were cutoffs at aid stations, but I had never noticed them before. We didn't have to worry about them. From Beale's Point onward, we were continuously passing other runners. I thought about how great this must be for Karen. There were times when it seemed to give her a lot of energy. I felt good too. Most people were very polite about stepping out of the way when it was a single track. This is difficult to do on some sections that are a little rocky and the trail is narrow. The weather was warm, but with ice in my bandana and my nice hat, I didn't feel bad at all. I felt like I was drinking enough, but I certainly wasn't draining both bottles. Everything was fine.

We rolled along on the trails and tramped through big bushy poison oak while looking at wonderful wildflowers and the views of the river. Karen and I were both looking for places to make a pitstop. She was hoping for aid station portapotties, since we'd seen that earlier. I was pretty sure there wouldn't be any more of those. We stopped at different times, away from poison oak. Away from ticks too, I hoped. Don was surprised how fast we both were, taking man-breaks. The trail continued to roll. At this point I knew, we would continue to gradually go down and then the trail would turn pretty sharply up and that would be 3 miles to go. So, I was just waiting for that part to happen. Don and I had done calculations at different times and both come up with a finish time of around 11 hours.

The Last Gasp aid station was at 2.5 miles to go. It was uphill to the aid station and then uphill on a gravel road to the finish. Don, of course, sped through the aid station. I didn't bother with too much either, except to get a one bottle refill. Karen was lingering, finding food to eat. I started yelling at her to get a move on. The volunteers were laughing. It was great that we could joke around this late in the race. Then we headed up to where Don was. I became the one who was lagging. They were both moving along so fast. And Karen had been worried about the Miwok 100K coming up. I was thinking to myself that she was obviously ready for that and maybe even for a 100 miler. I've never seen anyone have so much energy at the end of a 50 miler, much less their first one. The course leveled out a bit, and I could finally catch them. Suddenly we piled through the finish line and confused the scorers, because I wanted to make sure they got Karen first in our three-way tie. We had finished in 10:54 -- comfortably under the 11 hour mark. We were all happy and we found our cooler right there at the finish, so we could give Karen champagne for her first 50. I wished we could have hung out a little longer at the finish and wait for our friends to finish and find out how everyone did, but the bus left at 5:45 pm and we had to make sure to get all of our stuff. Besides, we had a mission. We were heading off to a bed and breakfast in Amador County. So I just hoped that everyone had a great day, because I sure did.