San Diego 100 #2

 I just got home from running the San Diego 100. This is the only 100-miler I have ever officially run more than once (unofficially I did the Western States course before running the race.) I like seeing new places and generally have little desire to repeat things. I've repeated 50-milers and 50K, mostly because Mt. Diablo and Rodeo Beach are gorgeous, but also it's nice to occasionally have an apples-to-apples comparison of my performance on the same course with the same amount of elevation gain. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure the course of the San Diego 100 changed since I first ran it in 2011, so this isn't an apples-to-apples comparison.

Start

 

I wasn't sure about my fitness level going into the race. I've done some long hikes in the past couple months--I tried to hike from my house to San Gorgonio, I did a loop of the Baldy Marathons with 9,000 feet of vertical gain, and last weekend I did two big runs in the Bay Area--but I would call my training neither hard nor consistent. My time in 2011 was 26:32, and I figured I'd try and beat that. I also wanted to have a non-miserable second half, so I decided to take it easy in the first half. Normally I'd be shooting for 5-6 miles per hour for the first two hours of a hundred-miler. This time I only shot for 4.5 mph. I hit it for the first few hours, but I definitely didn't feel like 4.5 mph was easy enough that I was banking energy--the course had rolling hills, and it was a struggle to do 4.5mph when reigning it in on downhills and hiking the uphills.

Eventually it got quite hot. Not Palm Springs in August hot, but still uncomfortable, since it hit during the first big climb of the day, up Noble Canyon. For good measure, the canyon had a bunch of biting black flies. When I got to the top of the climb at mile 43, I didn't feel great. The next few miles were rolling but I was very slow, and stayed slow all through the night. (Would a brighter headlamp help improve my nighttime performance?)

Sunrise

The sun came up, it was briefly very cold and windy, but of course it got hot by the time I finished. I crossed the finish line in about 30 hours and 10 minutes. After thinking I could do a 12-hour first half (I think it ended up being more like 13.5) this was pretty disappointing, but I'm glad I did it. The course is pretty, and the drive from my house down there is gorgeous--on the way back I drove through Anza Borrego State Park. The race goes through tiny bits of the park, but I'd never been to the wild and stark desert portion I saw on the drive. 

Though I'm not exactly impressed with my performance, I'm glad I did it. I've got another 100 next month in Idaho that is going to be a serious butt-kicker, so the more miles logged this month, the better.

Things I liked about the race organization:

• Aid stations had porta-potties.
• Aid stations had signs or volunteers always knew how far away the next aid was.
• Aid stations had plenty of ice.
  
• Some aid stations had plain white rice--I find this goes down easy even on a hot day.
  
• It's easy to (car) camp in the same campground as the start line.

Things I didn't like about the race:

• No vegetarian noodle soup. The vegetarian "soup" was straight veggie broth out of the box, which in my opinion, tastes awful. As I have mentioned numerous times before Soy Sauce flavor Top Ramen is vegetarian. So are all flavors of Costco ramen (I think. I know their chicken flavor is.)
• The end of the course feels very circuitous. It's 9 miles from the last aid station to the finish, and after three miles you can clearly see the lake and the finish line, but then you turn away from it and follow a circuitous dirt road in and out of gullies for several miles. I don't know if there is a more direct way to the finish line, but if there is, it would feel a lot less demoralizing to do the "out and back so this thing is exactly 100 miles long" part earlier in the race--running away from the finish line at mile 95 isn't the best feeling.

Gear Talk:

• I tried wearing compression shorts to see if that kept chafing at bay. It did for a while, but not after getting super sweaty on the hot climb. 
• I wore gaiters for the first time in a while, as well as calf compression sleeves. I don't know the counterfactual, but they seemed fine.
• I'm still rocking the five or 10-year old Ultimate Direction Peter Bakwin pack. I like carrying hard bottles, because they're much easier to refill at aid stations than a bladder. The pack is getting really ratty and the bottles chafe my rib cage a bit, so I probably ought to get a new pack. I suppose most people are using soft flasks these days, but they can't hold as much volume and they aren't insulated.