IMTUF 10 Years Later

I've long said I don't like repeating races (Western States and Hardrock aside) but I decided to do IMTUF again this year. I ran it in 2015 as part of my 400-mile Onion Slam [race report]. 

2015 was a fire year, so the course was significantly different than the standard at the time. The start was further north at Bugdorf Hot Springs, but the new "Super Course" starts at the sound end at Jug Mountain Ranch, which makes staying at a Bay Area friend's cabin nearby much easier, and made it nice for Amy to come along and make a weekend of it, and meant I'd only seen something like 40% of the course before. 

2015 v 2025 course

 

I trained pretty well, maxing out at two 90+ mile weeks (90+ running, 120+ if you include biking) three and four weeks before the race. I tapered and was well-rested for the race. My goal was 30 hours, compared to 31:46 in 2015. To my pleasant surprise, my friend Zak from Washington state called me the day before the race and let me know he was running too. Nano and a few of his SoCal friends were running too, so I hoped to run into him as well.

The pre-race meeting was "mandatory" but short and sweet, and Jeremy was quite enthusiastic about his race, so I didn't mind it. I got a little worried because the forecast had migrated into the hot category, and I packed more for cold. Partly due to the forecast and partly from my mind always doing a delayed updating that includes my previous trip, and my recent Minnesota trip was unusually cold. I asked everyone I could think of if they had a spare pair of arm sleeves, which I loved at Hardrock, but foolishly left out of my bag for Idaho. I couldn't find a pair so I hoped that my sun hoodie would accomplish the same thing.

The race was scheduled to start at 6 with a generous wait-until-the-porta-potty-line-is-done exact start, so I got my two morning poops in for a good start to the day. I saw Zak right before the start, and again pretty soon after. I wasn't exactly killing it, but he let me go ahead, even though he's generally faster than me. I figured I'd see him again.

The race starts off climbing a dirt road, and didn't become a conga line as it switched to singletrack (it's not a very large race). Jughandle Mountain is the first climb, and there's a nice talus section at the top that requires slowing down a bit to jump/step/climb from rock to rock with great views over a sheer drop-off on one side. The first aid station is after descending back down to the shore of Louie Lake, with great views back up to the peak. 

Louie Lake

 

Then another and another aid station, and I remembered that, oh, yeah, 10 miles is far apart between aid stations. Thankfully I told myself from the beginning of the race that this was a high altitude eating contest. At first I was trying to keep a running tally of all the calories I was taking in, but that quickly became too complicated since I was only guessing about how many calories were in a bottle of sports drink from the aid stations, and I couldn't remember whether I counted the bottle when I started drinking it or when I finished it. So instead I just turned on my watch timer and told it to beep every 25 minutes, and I would take a gel or eat every time it went off. 

The RD did a good job telling us what fuel would be on the course in advance, so I bought some in advance and trained with it. It is very simple, no flavor, 2:1 glucose to fructose. Somehow it tastes fruity to me (fructose, duh). Not exciting, but I'm fine with it. I also brought a bunch of Never Seconds (very similar) and a few Maurtens that I had left from Hardrock. I got over the dead slug consistency of Maurtens and actually like them (and wish I'd grabbed more from HR since I'm not going to pay $4 per gel for them myself.)   Carbs Fuel's drink mix ratio is slightly different (1:0.8) but mostly what matters to me is that most aid stations made it reasonably strongly concentrated, the way I like it. 

The second descent around mile 29 was a nice runnable switchbacking road. When I started it I was soon bunched up with three other runners. The road was dusty, so I sped up to go in front and avoid choking on their dust. I also love a good runnable descent, and I wasn't going super fast (9-10 minute miles) but I felt in my quads that I was going to regret it. I knew it, but it was fun, and I didn't want to stop or slow down, and I didn't want to be behind the three runners near me. And unfortunately I was right. By the time that downhill was done, my quads were cooked and descending was slow and painful the rest of the race. I could still climb, so that's what I had to rely on.

After this aid station was a runnable dirt road, and the only bad part was that it was getting hot. So I now had to test my sun hoody for cooling, by taking it off and dumping it fully in a nice cold creek. It was annoying and slow to take off my pack, hat, and sunglasses as well, but it was even more annoying that as I was doing this, a female runner said to me "You don't mind if I pee right here do you?" and proceeded to squat and pee directly into the creek, 10 feet downstream from me. I said neither "What the fuck is wrong with you?" nor "Uh, yes, I do mind, pee 100 feet from water like everyone else," but I thought them both.

Hearing about ultra-runners who attempt to run the AT or PCT I'm often amazed how ill-prepared (or wimpy) they are in bad weather or just what they don't know about camping that seems obvious to me since I backpacked before doing ultras. You pee 100 feet from water and you poop 200 feet from water. I'm not at all saying that needs to be strict, or I myself always follow that. Some runners pee in the trail, sometimes while running. So we're loosey goosey about it. But I've never heard of anyone choosing to squat in the creek while someone else is basically dunking themselves in it. Was the sudden urge to pee at the sound of rushing water uncontrollable? Was she a Colorado River rafter and used to being told to pee in the river since it stinks up small beaches if done on land (the solution to pollution is dilution)? People are weird and/or uninformed.

So I puzzled over that for the next while, as my sun hoody eventually dried out and the day heated up. There's a nice packed-in-by-goats aid station at mile 36, I dunked the hoody again, and Zak caught up to me. We did the next section to North Crestline at mile 47 together, and he made me laugh a few times--he has a humorous way of saying something to the effect of "yeah you didn't exactly hide your opinion on that subject matter, Garret" that recalls some hyperbolic strongly opinionated statement I made about any number of mundane topics. That helped make the hot section faster and more fun.

Fun with goats

 

He didn't need to stay long at the North Crestline aid station though, and I needed at least another minute. It was a gently descending, if rocky, dirt road descent out of there, and I was having trouble with it. It's a perfectly runnable section if you're in good shape, so I guessed I probably wouldn't see Zak again, and I didn't. After the road stretch is a mile and a half of the "Terrible Terrence" Trail, which isn't much of a trail, but a steep descent that was tough on my quads. I tripped and ate it once at the bottom when you're paralleling the North Fork of the Payette River. Then there's a bit of road to Upper Payette Lake and mile 55. I'd gotten to 50 miles in 13 hours and a bit, which is I was happy with. The problem is always the second half.

Along Crestline

I don't remember mile 55 to 70, but I assume they happened. Leaving the Snowslide aid station at mile 70 I knew would be a brutal climb--that was one of the few things I remembered from 2015--just an unrelenting switchback-free, loose dirt and anklebreaker gully of a climb. 1,800' in 2 miles. At least the climb wasn't sharply painful, as the descent was. Not quite as steep, but brushy, narrow, uneven, and not fun on the quads. Eventually I connected back to trail we'd been on earlier in the race for a short out and back to the only repeated aid station (mile 20 and 82). I might have hit them at a low moment (it was 4 or 5 in the morning after all) but I didn't feel like I got the emotional boost or hot food I was hoping for, so I moved on to the last climb. I had seven consecutive miles slower than 20 minutes/mile. Two of those were the aid station and a poop, but I wasn't setting land speed records when I was moving either. 

It started to get light, and on the final climb up to 8,000 feet I switched from podcasts to the latest SA Cosby thriller novel, King of Ashes. It was plenty thrilling and easy to follow in my mindless state, but I don't think I'll bother listening to any more of his books--none of the characters ever have to seriously deal with consequences of their morally questionable actions. It's just "for the family" like it's a Fast & Furious movie and the "good" guys always win. Thrilling but too stupid. 

The descent was fine but long. There was one short section where we veered off a road that looked like it continued down, but instead we had to climb. There was a sign that said something like "Turn left and GO UP. Yes, up! Use your anger as FUEL!!" which I sincerely appreciated, because sarcasm, anger, and making it blindingly obvious which way the course goes is indeed the best way to deal with a climb in the last few miles of a race that really does seem unnecessary, but probably is unavoidable for whatever property ownership/trail maintenance/other reason.

Clouds rolling in after sunrise

 

The final miles were mostly downhill to get us back to Jug Mountain Ranch, and I ran them at just under 15-minute pace. Not astounding, but I got it done, in 29:14. 40th place out of 121 finishers. I guess I'm happy with that. My only goal was to go under 30 hours, and I did it. But it's hard to be completely satisfied with such large positive splits. Such is the hedonic treadmill of life and running.

 

Summary: 

Overall this was a great race. The course was very well marked. Basically perfectly marked. Flags before and after turns, arrows (and distances!) at key junctions, and a few sarcastic comments at the stupidest points so it was clear that yes, this really was the right way (sorry, not sorry). The trail is rough, and perhaps a bit brushy, but logged out well. Most importantly, it's beautiful, with some great alpine terrain.

When people ask me what are the best (i.e. most scenic and well-organized) 100s they can get into without lotteries, I have long said IMTUF and Bighorn, and I recently added Crazy. I feel even more strongly about that after doing IMTUF again.

Fueling:

I fueled well, eating a gel or taking caffeine or a salt tab or something nearly every 25 minutes when my watch went off. I gagged a couple-few times, but I didn't let that scare me off continuing to eat. Maybe next time I'll see if I can increase the frequency to every 20 minutes. 

Gear: 

I wore a brand new pair of La Sportiva Prodigio Pro shoes. I took a risk on them, having tried them on but never really run in them before race day. Risky, but I had a change of shoes in my mile 20/80 drop bag if I needed them. (I didn't.) I'd say they're almost as good as everyone says they are, and there's a reason nobody seems to be able to keep them in stock. The built-in gaiter is probably mostly good enough by itself, but I ran with a pair of gaiters over them anyway, probably overkill. I used my ancient Peter Bakwin 2.0 UD pack as usual. The aid stations mostly did not have ice so my insulated bottles were not really accomplishing much, but it worked. The aid stations are often 10-12 miles apart, so I was needed the full capacity of my two 21-ounces bottles. A wet sun hoody works to cool off in the heat, but light-colored arm sleeves are much better since you don't have to strip down so much to dunk them.