The Golden Hills Trail Marathon and Three Things I Learned on the Trail

(How about this, let's ignore the yawning gap since my last post and just chalk it up mostly to my laziness/busyness)

Last weekend was the Golden Hills Trail Marathon from Tilden Park in Berkeley, CA to Lake Chabot. In broad strokes, it was a great race. The coordination was well done, the trail markings were great, swag was top notch (Patagonia t-shirt, Moeben sleeves, wine glass), and there was some good food at the finish. Oh, and of course, the trail itself was beautiful.

I'll skip giving the blow-by-blow of the race, but suffice it to say that it is a tough course. In the race materials it says that there's 4,800ft of total elevation gain, but when I plugged my Garmin in after the race it gave me roughly 8,600ft. And I will say absolutely that it felt way more like 8,600ft. There were a few really killer climbs during the race, but the leg-beating that you got from those was only exacerbated by the fact that there really weren't any long stretches of flatter running that gave your legs a chance to recover. You'd work 'em cranking up a hill and then give them a good beat-down pounding back down. Rinse and repeat.

But of course trail runners don't ditch the pavement to run sissy flat dirt paths, so the elevation profile was a very welcome challenge.

I'm not sure what level the competition was at for the marathon -- the Firetrails 50-Mile was going on simultaneously and that was not only a larger race in terms of participants, but it appeared from past years that the real animals went for that race. At the very top of the marathon, though, there were some serous speed demons -- the winner finished in around 3:06, which seems like an unreal time on that course. In any case, with a 4:20 finish, I managed to place 7th overall and 2nd in my age group, which I was pretty psyched about considering this was my first full-on-running marathon and first trail marathon.

That's was also nice considering this wasn't a focus race for me so it was far from a full-out effort. Of course, as a tune-up race for the upcoming Bootlegger 50k in November, I was hoping to come away with some aspects of my game that I could step up in the few weeks I have left. And oh did I ever...

Here are the three primary lessons I took away from the Golden Hills experience.

1. Getting a little salty... Before recently I hadn't really thought much about sodium. But after a conversation with some local ultrarunners, I realized that I needed to get that into my mix if I wanted to avoid some bad episodes on longer trail days and particularly in races. For Golden Hills I packed two salt tabs and downed one about 1.5 hours into the race. The other was left chilling in the pouch on my water bottle for the rest of the race. Bad move. With about three miles left, my quads started badly cramping and when I finished I was so nauseous that I couldn't stomach food for about 20 minutes. Some post race research connected the dots and let's just say that I won't be skipping the salt at Bootlegger.
2. Plan ahead for aid... Aid stations on trail races and ultras aren't the simple water-or-cytomax affairs manned by high school kids that they are on road races. With a veritable buffet of edible goodies plus a variety of drink options and a knowledgeable station crew that wants to help you get in and out quickly, trail aid stations can be a little overwhelming. Prior to Bootlegger, I plan to take some time to think about my overall hydration and nutrition plan so that I have a general sense of what I'll be putting in my body when. But on race day I'll also want to have some thoughts brewing prior to each aid station about what I need so that I can get in and out of each stop quickly and with everything I need. 
3. Oh God, the hills! Um, so I think that Golden Hills revealed that my hill training during this cycle has been pretty pathetic. I was walking sections of hills very shortly after the start and pretty much the whole race I was getting smoked on uphills. Not that I need to be overly hard on myself -- after all, I did just start running trails. More dedicated time working the hills needs to find a way into my schedule and I definitely need to get some gym time back in my life to work in some strength training. And it's not even just a matter of the uphills -- I gained a lot of lost ground on the downhill sections, but I could really feel the pounding from those stretches and know that some weight training will help keep my legs strong (and injury free!) through punishment like that. Alas, while the two points above I can definitely remedy prior to Bootlegger, I'll really have to wait for my next training cycle to work this stuff in.

Now before I close out the post, I have to give a big thanks to my great pal Lauren, who got up butt early to drive me to the starting line of the race and was there at the end to cheer me across the finish line, take the picture above, and listen to me bitch about how sick I felt. Running a race like that is hard, but the logistics can be a pretty big pain in the ass without awesome family and friends to help you out!

What's next? Well, with Bootlegger just around the corner, I've made the somewhat questionable decision to cram in one additional tune-up / challenge: A Grand Canyon double crossing next weekend. More on that soon...


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