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Spending (half) a day on the Backbone Trail

The Backbone Trail stretches 68 (or so) miles through the Santa Monica Mountains from Point Mugu State Park in northern Malibu to Will Rogers State Historic Park in Pacific Palisades.

The Backbone is popular with runners because there’s lots of single track, good climbing and descending, a wide variety of terrain, it’s underused so there aren’t a ton of people out there and most of all, it’s a friggin’ beautiful place to be. For Southern California ultrarunners, tackling the whole stretch of the Backbone Trail is a badge of honor. One I have yet to achieve. The hardiest try to do it all in one day. A group of friends of mine decided to do it last weekend, but they made the relatively “sane” decision of splitting it up to do half on Saturday and half on Sunday.

I decided to join them on Sunday for the first 18 miles of the day. It seemed like a good idea to me because (a) it would be with a great group of people, (b) I knew they’d have heavy, tired legs from Saturday and probably would go at a pace I could keep up with and (c) I miss spending time on the trails.  A lot.

Sunday morning I met up with Billy, Andee, Helen, Erin and Jack at Corral Canyon. Helen, Erin and Jack had run the whole 37-mile first half on Saturday (along with Colin, Kristin, Matt and some others). Andee did about 25 miles of it. Billy was on fresh legs like me.

We got started at 8:30.

And after running past this:

and around this:

and through this:

and past this:

and this:

and through this:

Nearly five hours later I finished here (nice aid station, right?  Thanks Matt and Dave):

I was muddy and tired and smiling from ear to ear (not only because I got to call it quits while the rest of them trudged on towards Will Rogers, but partially because of that!)

All five of them finished the trail sometime early in the evening.  Congrats to them!!

Most of the trail was ankle-deep mud, except when we were crossing streams.  We had sunny, sorta warm weather, light rain, deep fog and chills, and pretty much everything in between.  The views were fantastic.  As was the company.

There’s no way I should have gone out and ran 18 miles.  I’m paying for it this week with sore, tired legs.  But it was worth it!  And next time, I’m doing the whole damn thing!