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Coyote Backbone Trail Ultra – Race Report

The weekend before last I participated in the Coyote Backbone Trail Ultra.  A 68 mile “fun run” from point-to-point along the Backbone Trail.  (In this pre-run blog post I wrote a little information about the trail itself.)  As the race director stressed many many times in the months leading up to the event and on the morning of the event itself, this was not a “race”.  It had elements of a race – a starting time and a starting line, bib numbers, aid stations, an entry fee and a bunch of competitive ultrarunners.  But the race directors also have this system of “bonus” minutes and “boner” minutes where you can earn or lose minutes from your final official time based on things you do and don’t do leading up to and during the event.  For example, people got bonus minutes for going to the official bowling night before the race and for wearing costumes during the race.  People got boner minutes for being rude to volunteers or for “acting like” they were racing.  I was mostly out there just to have fun and to run the full Backbone Trail, so I didn’t mind this structure, but it is still a little weird when I look at the results and truly have no idea what actual place I came in.

My official time –15:09 – is pretty close to what my watch said, so I didn’t get many bonus or boner minutes (unless they all averaged out).  In the official results, I came in 24th out of 124 finishers (and 155 starters).  I think that I was actually somewhere between 10th-15th. To make things even more confusing, I couldn’t even figure it out based on how many people crossed the finish line before me.  There were three waves of starters (6am, 9am and noon) and since I was in the last wave, there were people at the finish line who finished before me in terms of time of day, but after me in terms of race time.  It doesn’t matter, but it’s still a bit unsettling and honestly, I’d like to know (I guess I deserve some boner minutes for that…)

Anyway, to the run itself.  To put it simply, it was hard, really hard.  And to that you should respond, “of course it was.”  Thankfully, it was also mostly fun and definitely a great training day for my two other big race planned this year, San Diego 100 in June and Run Rabbit Run 100 in September.

Starting at noon was really weird.  I always run in the morning.  And usually pretty early. Starting at noon presented some challenges, mostly about trying to time eating and going to the bathroom.  I slept in a little bit and ate my first breakfast at about 6:30.  I had a second breakfast at 9am before I got in my car to head up to Point Mugu.  And I went to the bathroom a bunch of times before, in between, and after each meal.  I tried to drink a lot of water, along with coconut water and nuun, to get hydrated for the day.  Packet pick-up was at the finish line at Point Mugu and we were bused to Will Rogers for the start.  Some friends who weren’t racing, including Lukas, Dave Chan and Dan Lehnberg were at the start to see us all off.

Lukas got some great pre-race photos and a few during the first little bit of the race.

The pre-race briefing was done by a guy in a cow costume.  Race officials in costume were pretty common during the race.  Cows and the Easter Bunny, mostly.  It was actually only strange at first, later in the race, it seemed entirely normal.

The morning started off nice and cloudy and cool, which would have been perfect conditions, but then right about noon, the sun came out strong and it got hot just in time for our start. Sweet.

I decided to start the race with two handhelds – one with water + Nuun (or Heed) and the other with Infinit.  Then, I’d grab by hydration pack at the Tapia aid station (mile 25.1).  I had thought that two handhelds would be more than enough, but I actually ran out of water just before each aid station.  I still think I made the right choice, but had it been any hotter, I would have been in trouble.

As a reminder and reference point, here’s the elevation profile of the course:

I ran the first mile or so with Evan Hone.

I hadn’t seen him in a while and knew that soon enough he’d be far in front of me.  It was nice to catch up with him for a little bit before I backed off a bit.

Then, for most of the next 12-15 miles, I ran with a nice little group of 4 guys.  These next two photos were taken by Jayme Burtis in this early part of the race.

I was running really well and feeling great.  The initial climb up from Will Rogers to Eagle Rock, the descent down Musch Trail to Trippet Ranch and the Hondo climb from Old Topanga to Stunt (the second climb on the elevation map) all were comfortable and easy. During the Hondo climb, I was climbing strong, mostly hiking, but running bits here and there on the switchbacks.

The mile 18 aid station was run by the Coyotes and it was awesome to see a bunch of familiar faces.  Lukas was also there – he ended up crewing me throughout the entire race, which was a huge help.  The long descent after Stunt should have been fun and a good way to pick up some time.  Instead, sometime pretty early in the descent, my calves starting cramping.  Just like what happened at Bandit 50k in February.  My calves, mostly the right one, but sometimes the left, would just seize up when I started running.  I’m not a great descender to begin with and the cramping forced me to take this descent slower than I wanted.

This became a theme for the race.  I climbed strong and descended awfully, primarily because of cramping.  I was taking electrolytes like crazy – salt pills, Heed, gels, boiled potatoes dipped in table salt at the aid stations, but for the most part, I cramped during all flat running and descents – starting in my calves but also in my hamstrings and quads – from about mile 20 until Danielson Ranch at mile 60.  I don’t know if the noon start and the disrupted my electrolyte “balance” and caused me to cramp or if there’s just something else going on.  I’ve never really suffered from cramps until Bandit and don’t have them during training.  It’s something I need to figure out. The other thing that happened then was that I started getting nauseous.  I’d guess that all the salt and electrolytes I was taking to combat the cramps didn’t sit so well in my stomach.  The nausea persisted off and on for most of the rest of the run.  I would never claim that the cramping or nausea ruined my race, but it did slow me down and was a bummer because except for the cramps, my legs felt good.

I got into the Las Virgines/Tapia Park aid station before 5pm.  Lukas, Matilda (Lukas’ daughter) and Travis were there.  I got my drop bag, picked up my hydration pack and changed from my Skechers GOrun 2 into a pair of Skechers GOtrails.

Going into the race, I was more worried about the six mile Tapia climb from Las Virgenes to Corral Canyon than any other section of the race.  As it turned it, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared.  I was still climbing really well.  I was mostly by myself through this section.  

On the other hand, I expected the section of the course between Corral Canyon (mile 31.6) and Encinal (mile 40.6) to be really easy and fun.  It’s net downhill without any big climbs or descents.  But I was still cramping and just plodded my way through those 9 miles.  And it was during this stretch that I ran into the other challenging thing about the noon start.  At 7:30, just after the Kanan Road aid station (mile 38.1), it started getting dark.  That means that after running just 7.5 hours in daylight, I was about the spend the rest of the run (another 7.5 hours) in the dark.  If the race had started at 6 or 7am like most races and I ran the same time, I would have finished around 9 or 10pm, which would have meant only two or three hours of night running.  I enjoy running at night and it was a beautiful night for it, but it’s more challenging and slower than daylight running, especially on a technical course like this one.

At the Encinal aid station, Matt and Aaron caught up to me.  I hadn’t seen Aaron since around mile 12 and hadn’t seen Matt since the start (evidently he spent the first part of the race puking his guts out).  We ran and hiked together for the next 15 miles, which really kept me going.  We hiked together from the Mishe Mokwa aid station (mile 52) to the top of Sandstone Peak.  Once we got to the top, both Matt and Aaron took off to run that really long descent down to Danielson Ranch.  My cramps were still acting up so I watched them disappear into the dark.  That six-ish mile descent took me what felt like hours longer than it should have.  I’m good at (and enjoy) power hiking up hill, but hiking downhill sucks!

I finally made it to Danielson Ranch at around 1:30 in the morning.  My friend Gil who was a 9am starter was there and we chatted for a couple seconds.  Coming into this aid station, I was a little bummed about how poorly that descent had gone.  For the first time all day, I sat down.  A volunteer brought me a cup of lentil soup, I chugged some Heed and some ginger ale and relaxed for just a minute or two.  When I started up again, I actually felt better than I had in hours – both physically and psychologically.  The first 1.5 miles out of Danielson Ranch are a flat dirt road.  I was running well and my cramps had mostly gone away.  Just like magic.  It turned out that these last 9 miles were the best I felt since before mile 20.  I climbed out of Sycamore Canyon up to the Overlook Trail feeling strong and spent some of this time with Gil.

When I finally got to the top of the Ray Miller Trail, I could see the finish line at the bottom and ran the whole way down.  I wasn’t cramp-free, but either they’d mostly gone away or, with the finish line in sight, I was able to ignore them.  Lukas found me near the bottom and reminded me that this event ended at La Jolla Canyon campground instead of the official Ray Miler Trailhead.  In order to actually complete the “official” Backbone Trail, you had to run a few hundred meters past the finish line to the Ray Miller sign.  I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, but Lukas helped convince me.  I ran and tapped the sign, then came back and ran through the finish line.

It was 3am.  I was tired and dirty.  I hung out at the fire pit near the finish for a little bit, chatted with some friends and made my way home.

The race director, Howard, and his team did a fantastic job.  I know they busted ass to make this first-ever full Backbone “race” happen.  The course was super well-marked, the aid stations were fantastic and all the volunteers made it so easy for us to only have to focus on running.  I hope they put this event on again next year, not because I think I’ll run it again, but because I think other people deserve the chance!