Lately, I haven’t been much in a writing mood but here it is, my final race recap for 2014 on the Paramount Ranch Trail 30K. Almost took me the remainder of the year to write it up, and I think I’m down to a few hours, but with the holidays, work, taking naps, reading, putting gas in the car, going to the movies, hanging out with friends, doing laundry, washing my hair, and catching up on Sons Of Anarchy, I really had very little time to sit down and write anything up. But here it is. Finally.
And this is going to be epic! Supersized, if you will. Complete with 36% more photos! You can’t get this shit for free. Actually it is free. However, you may want a refund of the time you spent reading it, but I can’t help you there.
The thought of doing this race wasn’t implanted into my head until a friend mentioned it to me after the Griffith Park Trail 10K. “Hey Christina, are you doing Paramount Ranch?” he asked. “Paramount Ranch?” I responded, “Uh, noooo.” And then, I looked into the race and found out it’s the same weekend as my running club’s 20 miler. Also, the same weekend my pace group was manning the water stations for said 20 miler. As an all-volunteer running club, each week a different pace group is in charge of the water stations, when the run is over a certain mileage. When a group handles the water stations on Saturday, a make-up run is scheduled for Sunday. This was going to be perfect! I’d run the 30K and then do the make-up run of 20 miles! This idea was great a few weeks before the race, but when it came down to showtime, my legs were questioning my sanity.
Still feeling like my left knee was a bit unhappy, I decided not to run at all during the week leading up to the race. Maybe not the smartest of moves, but I wanted it to feel well rested. And it was well rested because it felt great during this weekend of running. Plus I had to look at the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is focused on being ready for the bigger race in a couple of weeks. My big eyes are on the 50 mile prize.
Sunrise photo not altered in any way.
Saturday morning of the race, I drove up to Agoura Hills with my sister and our dad who came to see me run this trail race. He’s never been to, or has even seen a trail race, so I was excited for him to be here. As I was going to pick up my race bib on site, we had the most amazingly beautiful sunrise! The sky was on fire with pink and orangey hues! My initial thought was a fire was burning up somewhere, but luckily there was no fire anywhere, and the sunrise was just a stunner. I wish it stayed like that all day.Paramount Ranch was originally owned by Paramount Studios (now owned by the National Park Service) and was used in many Western movies and tv shows, such as The Rifleman, Gunsmoke, and Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Westerns were never really my preferred genre, but my dad got a kick out of it. More info about the ranch can be found
here.
Welcome to Western Town! Dr. Quinn, you there?
Bib and goodie bag pickup was located in a barn and filled with blurry people and delightful
treats like bagels, fruit, and donuts! Sorry for the blurry photo. It was still early and I wasn’t fully awake yet. Neither was my phone apparently.
Blurry runners.
We all lined up at the starting area and so many people were decked out in holiday cheer! I loved seeing all the outfits. Keira Henninger gave us our race instructions that basically said you can either stop at this finish line when you’re done, or carry on and go another round. There were three events held this day: a 10K, Half Marathon, and 30K. If you’re running the 10K, you’ll complete one 6.2-ish mile loop. If you’re running the Half Marathon, you’ll run the loop twice. And if you’re one of the few remaining who decided two loops just isn’t enough, then you’ll be seeing everything again for a third trip around. My third trip around was a blur, but I’ll get to that later. After seeing my friend (who mentioned the race to me) briefly at the start line, we were quickly set on our way.
Ready to get our jingle run on!
And we’re off for our loop(s).
Due to the rains that hit earlier in that week, the trail was quite muddy. Up until now, I’ve never been on an overly muddy trail and it was challenging. It scared me. I felt like my footing was unsteady and slippery. My fear of rolling ankles plagued me for the entire race. The fact there were so many damn rocks didn’t help either. So I did what felt comfortable to me because I was not about to risk getting injured a few weeks before the 50 miler. That meant, I went slow. Verrry very slow.
Mud bath, anyone?
Having such beautiful views early in the race helped to go slow. I wanted to take it all in. Running along the trail on mostly single track made me imagine how it might feel to run on a island in Hawaii. I could just envision it with the fog laying low under the mountains in the distance. Loved it! I didn’t love it so much later in the morning when the fog disappeared and the sun came out. I love races that don’t have much sun. Pause for a moment and take in the serenity of the next 3 photos.
Aside from the muddy and rocky conditions, the trail itself by trail standards is quite flat. No huge climbs. Nothing overtly technical. If my footing was better, I probably would have gone faster. But I’m just at the point where caution is my primary focus. Not sure if that will ever go away.
The course itself was a zig-zag of winding trails that looped around and met up with a trail you just ran on. There was the first muddy portion of about 2 miles, south of Western Town, and then the second muddiest portion, which consisted of passing Western Town again and running north of it. I thought of it as sort of a figure 8 but the course really looks nothing like a figure 8.
There was also a water crossing. I’ll be honest here (actually I’m always honest with these blog posts), but I HATE water crossings. I do. I don’t want to fall in. I don’t like my shoes wet. I don’t like soggy socks. It’s really cold and I don’t want to get hypothermia. I’m wimpy when it comes to these things. However, thank goodness there were a couple of planks to cross that will help get to the other side. These planks are wide enough to accommodate your feet side-by-side, but they weren’t the steadiest of planks, especially the second one. Someone would get on the plank and then someone else would immediately get on right after them. Hold up y’all! I’m waiting for everyone to get off the planks before I step one foot on that board!!! My balancing skills came in mighty handy this day. Like I said, the first board was fine. It was the second board that was a little more wobbly. I took my time…like everything else I did that day.
Oh geez.
About to walk the plank!
I made it across the water perfectly the first time. And I felt awesome for doing so! And then I thought, I have to cross those damn things two more times. The third loop was tough, especially mentally. I was cold and hungry and really wanted to just be done with it already. I even had a thought of calling it a day after the second loop. Sure, I’ll just do a half marathon! I’m going to run 20 miles tomorrow anyways! But I knew I’d be cheating myself out of precious ultramarathon training so I pressed on…and on.
My Garmin was a little off this day too. It kept giving me the mile split at 0.7 miles. Whenever I’d hear it beep, it indicated 14.7 or 16.7 miles. It threw me off! All I kept reminding myself was towards the end, there was one uphill and the rest of the way was all downhill to the finish line. During my third and final loop, I forgot where that one uphill was. Here’s the last upill! Um, no. There was another one. Here’s the last uphill!! Um, no, There was yet another one. Finally! The last uphill! NO!!! There were two more uphills that followed! I got very loopy during this last loop. All the winding around made this last portion a blur.
At the finish line, I was 18.72 miles closer to food. Beep! However, this race was a little bittersweet since I was to run it with another friend, but she was unfortunately, not able to. Maybe next year though.
30K trail done!
And then there was the next morning, when I had to get up super early, yet again, for another 20 miles. I won’t go into full detail of this run but this was definitely a challenge. But that’s what ultratraining is like. At least that’s what I assume since I’ve never done this before. This is all so new to me. There are runners who eat 20 miles a day for breakfast and then go out the next day and do it again. They’re not human. I’m human.
My head wanted to quit. My feet wanted to quit. My body wanted to quit. I was fortunate to run with someone who didn’t let me quit entirely. The aftermath of this second long run left me completing 16.05 miles and with three blisters. Three blisters I didn’t have during my trail run. Three blisters that healed the next day. I tried to go the full 20 but I was really, really tired. I’m proud of myself for doing what I did that weekend, but I hope come January 17, 2015 that it was enough.
Thanks for reading and Happy Trails!
