Shadow of the Giants 50 km

Ted Liao and I decided to carpool up to Shadow the morning of the race. His plan was to run a smooth slow pace so he would be ready for the San Diego 100 mile Endurance Run he would be taking on the following weekend. What an animal! He needs a social director to manage his race schedule. And, what a pool party it was. We slept a couple of hours at his place in Monrovia before getting up at Midnight to hit the road by 1 a.m. I actually got in an extra hour and a half of sleep while he drove. Thanks Ted. He was probably happy about this because I can be rather chatty when I'm amped up for a race. We arrived at a relatively dead looking Green Meadows, after missing the turn and driving right up to the Southern entrance of Yosemite NP, and went in to register. It wasn't long before a crowd started to form as runners and their people arrived. Baz's pre-race briefing was in his typical style; laced with humor and profanities. "Who the f... is talking while I'm talking?!" The most important pieces of information were that we had to cross snow (shh, don't tell the ranger Boo Boo), cross over a tree, cross the same creek twice, don't cross the RD, and follow orange and yellow ribbons augmented by chalk arrows at key points. How could anything go wrong? I ran with my buddies iMichelle (Michelle Barton) and Robo (Rob Cowan) for a large part of the race. We cursed the cold creek crossing, our feet were numb before we reached the far bank (yeah, it was that cold), and laughed our way over the tree. Although, it was more like 2 huge trees lying side by side across the fireroad with no way to get around them. At some point we ended up following orange ribbons out into some deep scrubby bushes and something that resembled a brand new trail rather than something we would have expected from Baz. This was the something go wrong part. It had to be wrong, so back we went to figure out where we had gone astray. It turned out to be a 9:04 minute, half-mile extracurricular excursion off course. Wouldn't you know, this happened to Michelle in this race last year, as well. Each person we passed for the next half hour asked the same question, are you the guys that got off course? I wonder how they all knew? If they saw us go off course, that's yelling distance, no? So, why didn't they yell at us? It wasn't like they were within talking distance of each other, either. So, is there some secret ultra-runner mind-meld thread that provides one with the latest gossip of the course that I'm not aware of? I need to sign up for this. Once we were most assuredly back on course, I picked up my pace a bit to make up for lost time. After a few miles iMichelle caught up and we ran together again for a few miles until she moved on ahead and disappeared. Little did I know, but Robo was waiting for the right moment to move in on me. Rob is an incredible runner. His race schedule is also unreal. I need to make mine look more like his :)
It was about the time we returned to the tree crossing. It would prove to be a little tougher to get over than previously. I basically rolled over the two pieces instead of trying to climb over them. Robo hopped over them like they were simply branches lying across the trail. With that, I knew that he would take me out in the last 5 miles. I was just going to have to do what I could to keep that time between us to a minimum :) One more mile of uphill and I was really looking forward to the final 4 miles of relentless downhill. I couldn't walk, I knew that it would increase the time between us by too much. I was maintaining a 10 min/mile pace on the uphill part and slide to an 7:30 min/mile pace on the downhill part. Rob must have been flying at this point. He crossed the finish line 8 minutes ahead. The course is beautiful. No one particular place stands out, though. There are no individual fabulous vista points along the way. There are Redwood trees to entertain and delight you. If you've never seen one they might actually be a distraction for you, if you're really wanting to focus on your running. Being a California resident and getting out on the trails a lot, I've seen my share. I simply spent the morning enjoying the whole ambiance of the place and the time spent with some good running buddies. Thanks Rob and Michelle; not only for being such cool people, but for being so inspirational. And thanks Ted for a great trip!