Chuckanut

The Start (by Glenn Tachiyama)

I have known for a while that endurance sports and endeavours are about energy management. You have a limited resource in reserves, made up of talent/fitness, to rely on for the event and you have to figure out how to best use that resource over the course of the race. The key in this process is knowing, and being honest, about the levels of your reserves. On Saturday, during the first 10-11kms of the Chuckanut 50km, I wasn't honest with myself.

With full respect to the talent toeing the line, I really wanted to have a crack at a podium finish and set off with that as my goal. I always want to be competitive at races and test myself, and I have been training hard the past four months. In short, I was looking forward to racing. I am also a realist and I didn't think that my goal was unrealistic, but I knew that it would take a big effort. In retrospect, I forgot to give myself room to readjust my goal, or to set benchmarks along the course of the race to achieve it. My approach is best described as running completely by ego and it lead me to ignore my body's internal signals telling me that I was tapping into reserves that I didn't really have to give early on in the race.

Feet twitchy with anticipation (Joradn Stead-Bellingham Herald)

I ran the opening, mostly flat, urban trail segment alongside Geoff Roes, Erik Skaggs and Jacob Puzey, with Michael Smith, who I chased around the Colorado Rockies 2 summer ago at the Trans Rockies run, about 20-30 seconds up the trail and with my Trans Rockies partner Aaron Heidt, trailing us by 20-30 seconds. Although I wasn't uncomfortable with the pace, I was a bit worried that the effort required to go at that pace was too hard for me given the 3-3:30 hours of racing left.

Recognizing the caliber of the athletes that I was running with, I knew that I was likely in the mix with the podium (I was right about this and course records were eventually smashed) and with a podium place in mind, I chose to keep rolling with them rather than back off on the pace, which would have been the mature/honest thing to do and would have been a much wiser use of my energy resources.



A smile concealing a grimace (Glenn Tachiyama)

At around 12kms, we turned into some initial rolling trails and I instantly knew I was hooped. As the trail narrowed to single track and the terrain headed up, my heart rate skyrocketed, my neck and chest tightened and my legs felt like lead. With Mike already out of sight, I quickly became a spectator to Erik and Geoff, who were bounding their way up the switchbacks ahead of me. My seat to their show got progressively worse as they got smaller and smaller and I fell back into a classic case of self-loathing, as I knew my goal was rolling away from me.

This was a completely ridiculous mental state to be in and I knew it. Geoff has won almost every ultra that he has raced, and is considered one of the best in the world, and Erik is held in equally high regards, but one of the first signs of an energy low is negative irrational thought. I tried to relax and keep my turnover up and I wasn't moving too slowly, but I could see that Aaron and Tim Olson were closing in on me, as I discreetly glanced down at them along the switchbacks. Once again, I let my ego get in the way and rather than worry about myself, I kept pressing, rather fruitlessly, trying to hold them off.

Finally, after about 16-17kms or so of running, Tim, then Aaron, went by me quite effortlessly and I finally admitted that I was in a bad way and began to internalize my goals. I focused on finding a rhythm that my body was happy with and consuming enough sugar to make a 12-year old on Halloween night proud, in order to pull myself out of the funk.

I had very little coordination and almost no fight in me, as I watched singlets turn into shoes as people ran up and past me. I couldn't dance my way along the "ridge" trail, instead, I clumsily moved forward and resorted to a fatigue induced over-abundance of caution on this technical stretch and I really didn't appreciate the views like I should have. But I did religiously suck back gel after gel, washing them down with water and chasing with the odd salt tablet. I really wasn't racing at this point, I just wanted to make sure that I didn't have a total melt down.

After about hour of this lull, running through a mud puddle and being surprised that there was a rather large lake to my left, I realized that I was feeling much better and my stride started to feel lighter. I was still careful not to press too hard, since I still felt on edge, so I continued to be methodical with taking in food, but as I entered the Chin Scrapper hill, a section that I knew would either "kiss or kill" my reserves, I happily realized that I was climbing alright and I found myself able to run up the hill.

Finding some pop on Chin scrapper (Glenn Tachyama)

Once at the top, I knew it was mostly downhill, or flat, home, and I was able to find a comfortable rhythm and surprised myself with some turnover in my legs. I did have a lighter moment through here, when I filled my water bottle with Coke at an aide station, only to realize that it wasn't de-fizzed as a stream of warm sticky liquid started spraying out of my bottle. With my water bottle continuing to fizzle, I locked into a rather monotonous but steady running rhythm and I let the miles tick by.

With about 3 or 4 kilometers to go, I could see fellow Canuck Oliver Utting up the trail. I figured that since I could now see him, that I was moving faster than him, but he had quite a gap on me and, with my legs' approval, I set about seeing how close I could get to him. I ended up having a bit of a battle with him and Joe Grant over the last 800 meters, as we all came to within a few seconds of each other, but we held our respective positions. I finished 8th in 3:54:47 (the results are wrong, Ollie held me off, but I believe the splits are accurate).


The Canuck crew (photo by Mom)

The main positives from the race are that I got in another hard 4 hour effort, for my 3rd ultra finish. It was great to see the level of fitness that I need to be at in order to be competitive at the race. I experienced and was able to pull myself out of a low, something that I think will serve me well as I move into longer races. I was reminded how much the first quarter of the race can come back to kick you in the ass later in the day (a lesson which seems to lack stickiness in my memory). I felt reassuringly strong at the end and, most importantly, I was reminded of how much I do enjoy the challenges of racing. We all train hard and it's great to put it on the line and to be able to test myself against other, equally passionate and committed people on a wonderful course. A huge thanks to Krissy and her team for putting on the race.

I really enjoyed catching up with friends and meeting new people at the event and all in all, it was a decent start to 2011. Lots of races to come!


"Oil the Machine" Team with Erasmus Udo