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2021 Oakland Hills Trail Run 35k race report – Oakland, CA

2021 Oakland Hills Trail Run 35k race report – Oakland, CA

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It was so nice to toe a real-deal starting line, with a bib pinned to my shirt, and stand around to use a Honey Bucket — the whole shebang! — last Saturday. I can’t not smile when I think about it. I’m short on time (as always) to post before bedtime, so I’ll forgo the pics this week and will include them next week, instead.

Anyway. When I saw that Inside Trail Racing (ITR) was hosting a 35k race in the Oakland hills just a couple weeks before my 50k race, I couldn’t pass up the serendipitous timing. The race would boast about 4,600 of elevation, give me a welcomed change of scenery, and basically offer a supported long run, probably my last real long-long run before my 50k. Any one of those qualities is hard to pass up; that the race offered all of them would make me a fool for not taking advantage of it. 

Plus — big plus! the clincher! — I couldn’t discount the enormous bonus points status that the race would situate me nicely in the east bay and thus give me good reason — and ready access! — to meet up with friends there I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. 

I treated “race week” (even though I wasn’t viewing it as a race, per se) as the soft beginning to my taper, so by the time Saturday rolled around, I only had about 20 or so miles in my legs and less than 2k of elevation. I had also probably run roads more often that week than I had in all of my training cycle, too, just to give my legs a break from climbs and to run for less time than usual. Otherwise, “race week” life was pretty normal, full of the normal life obligations with kids’ activities and school and such. Chill was the name of the game.

Temps on race morning in the woods were mild and wet, and I was pleasantly surprised that the rain gods and goddesses blessed us with their precipitative gifts for the entiiiiiiire morning in the form of fog, mist, rain, and the ever-popular sideways-rain. 50-60-or-so degree temps, alongside the rain, made for a pretty comfortable run in shorts and a LS, though I elected to remove the LS and stay in a short sleeve from about mile 3-onward. A visor kept both my hair and the rain out of my face, and I never really needed the sunnies that stayed atop my head for my 5:03 hour endeavor for the “35k.” (Trail races usually aren’t known for their precision; it’s all good). 

I felt, let’s call it, “cautiously optimistic” or “optimistically hopeful” about being able to cover the distance and the elevation without a lot of fanfare. More than anything, I appreciated the opportunity to yet again practice my nutrition strategy (but with the support of aid stations). As I have in my long runs of 16+ miles, I carried about 64 oz. of water on me (between two Ultimate Direction bottles, a backup floppy UD bottle, and two 10 oz. no-name bottles I bought from Uncle Bezos), enough SiS gels to take one every four miles (with a couple extra as back-ups), and a tube of SiS hydrate tabs. It made for a rather packed hydration vest, but everything fit. (Not an affiliate link or anything, but I’ve had this vest [in different colors] since 2014, when I was training for my other 50k, and it has really held up well).  

The night before the race, I finally received High-Performance Nutrition for Masters Athletes from the library, and from the very little I read before I went to bed, I decided that I probably needed to be drinking more of the SiS carbohydrate drink on the run than I had been using on my training runs. I know, I know, “nothing new on race day” and all of that, but again, “cautiously optimistic” or whatever. It felt right, so I went with it. Fortunately, my stomach fared well with this little last-minute experiment, and I honestly think it helped me feel really good pretty much all morning long. I wasn’t going for any land record speeds or anything, but when I finished, I felt like I could probably keep going for a bit longer. I attribute that to the better fueling.  

I didn’t even bother to do a warm-up or a cool-down — I don’t usually for training runs, so y’know, do more of the same — and I’m glad I didn’t because it allowed me to spend time with Connie before the race and Meredith afterward! I hadn’t seen Connie in years at that point and Meredith pretty much the same, save for our brief encounter in GGP a few weeks (months?) back for XC. It was wooooooooooonderful. 

Shortly after I finished, Meredith and I hauled out to Alameda to meet up with Connie and Meg, and Janet also hauled up from SJ for the morning’s fun… and of course, we have no pictures (except of passing around baby J). Seriously, for as much as I enjoyed the training run in the redwoods and ferns and all (so many ferns!), spending time with friends made my heart swell. 

It’s hard to believe that race day is almost here, but I’m excited and happy to report I’m feeling well! With not a lot of training left between now and race day, hay, please allow me to introduce you to barn.      

Happy November, ya’ll.

the totality

the totality

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Dang, what a weekend and a Monday! 

Between Sunday’s hot Chicago Marathon (been there, done that, a few times over – it sucks, but dang, ya’ll are tough for finishing in the swampy and toasty temps!) and then Monday’s hopefully one-off Boston Marathon on the second Monday in October (not the third Monday in April), just as I said in last week’s entry, it sure is hard not to feel all jazzed right now with all things running. 

Of course, that doesn’t mean that everyone had great races so far this fall or even that everyone is hitting their training runs out of the park; certainly not. Running is far too mercurial, far too flaky for that. All most of us can do is hope that on the day when we decide that it matters most — typically, race day — that all the pieces fall into place and that we can effectively control All That We Can. We can only do so much. It sucks — truly, deeply, blows — when race day doesn’t materialize in the way that we’ve envisioned it for weeks (months, years), and it sure stings like hell in the immediate aftermath, especially when we’ve pored All That Is Available From Our Buckets into the race, our goals, and the experience. 

(goes without saying, but yeah, been there, done that, a million times over)

The same goes for training runs, too. Not everything feels miraculous or even goes necessarily all that well; I think most runners would say most of their runs are decent. Nothing more, nothing less. Just fine.

It’s hard not to put a lot of hope (or despair) at the heels of our training runs — that is, it’s hard not to get excited when things are clicking more often than not, and it’s also hard not to despair when quite the opposite is happening. Our best performances are a teeny, tiny blip in time. So it is for our worst (or our sub-par) performances. It doesn’t necessarily account for the totality of the running and training experience. 

We can have extraordinary training and a pretty crappy race day. 

We can also have a rough go of a training cycle and surprise ourselves on race day. 

The unpredictable nature makes all of this really frustrating and really, strangely exciting and attractive. 

Putting in the work as best as we can, and then throwing the dice and seeing where it all lands on the day, is reason enough for so many of us to keep showing up over, and over, and over again, no matter how distorted our heartache-to-happiness ratio is. 

Last week was a planned down week in my 50k training, the first in quite a long while, and I couldn’t shake this off-feeling that I had pretty much all week long. I wondered if it was because it was the week after my kids were off school for fall break, and in our off-week, we all had tried to sleep in as much as we could all week long, so naturally last week we’d probably be feeling a bit groggy as we recalibrated to our normal schedules. That made sense. 

I thought maybe it was because I had several consecutive nights of volunteer obligation meetings, some several hours long, and that, in combination with the aforementioned, was making me feel like I was digging myself into a hole I couldn’t get out of. 

Or hell, maybe it was all related to the previous week, almost like a delayed-onset fitness adaptation, wherein the week before I had run and climbed a whole bunch and so maybe last week my body was finally absorbing the totality of it. That also made sense.

Who knows? Maybe it was all of it; maybe it was none of it; maybe it was some weird combination to which only the running gods and goddesses themselves are privy. 

I just know I felt really meh, sub-fine for most of my runs last week and ultimately even bagged my 16 mile cutback LR over the weekend five miles into it (after pushing it from Friday to Saturday, and then again from Saturday to Sunday), just because I felt so crummy. Weird, right? 

This week at least, so far, so good (though I’m still sleeping a bit more than usual. Good for my recovery efforts, bad for my 60’ I usually spend with the NYT and my tea and breakfast before waking up the kids).  

My point is that when it comes to looking at people’s race performances on the day or their training, I don’t think any one day is IT when it comes to predicting success (or that similarly, success isn’t predicated on runners doing one specific thing in training). Having a breakthrough marathon or a really strong workout isn’t entirely dependent on one specific long run you did or the one day you fuelled and slept like a boss. It’s the totality that matters. 

As humans, I think we tend to want to simplify life as much as possible — especially these days, with the additional stresses that COVID has thrown into all of our lives — but I’m guessing that realistically speaking, it’s the sum of our best efforts that will help scootch us along toward realizing our goals, whatever they are. 

At earlier points in my decade-plus of doing this long distance stuff, I have absolutely no doubt that my last week’s training and non-absolute-subscription to my training plan would have mentally derailed me and made me count myself out of my race before I ever stepped foot anywhere near the starting line (hell, I’m not even in race month yet!). These days, fortunately, with a lot more experience under my belt and a lot of sagacious insight from some incredible friends and mentors in the sport, I know that last week was but a blip. Nothing more. Nothing less. 

If you’re in the throes of training for something and have similarly experienced a “non-adherence event” to your training plan for whatever — barring injury or catastrophe — it’s ok! The relative success of your future race isn’t hinged on the one time things went sideways. 

You’ve got this. Keep grinding! 

4 weeks and change