Crow Pass Crossing Recap

by Brandon  
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Last Saturday I ran the Crow Pass crossing, a 23-ish mile trail race through the mountains between Girdwood and Eagle River. I was really excited to finally run this race, as I’ve been wanting to do it for several years now. There are actually qualifying standards for getting into this race (since you’re basically unsupported out there, and they don’t want people in the race who aren’t up to the task), and 2 years ago when I first wanted to run it, I didn’t qualify. Last year it was just 1 week before the Resurrection Pass 50, and I felt like that was cutting it too close to allow for adequate recovery. This year, Resurrection Pass has a new race director, and they pushed the race back 2 weeks. Crow Pass got pushed back a week as well this year, but that still left 2 weeks between the races, so this year was finally my year!

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I’ve hiked the trail several times in the past, both as an overnight backpacking trip, and as a through hike in 1 day, but this would be my first time running on the trail. There are a few unique aspects to the trail and this race. First off, the race starts with a 2100′ climb to the top of the pass in 3.3 miles. You have 1 hour to make it to the top of the pass, or they turn you around. I made it up in 52 minutes – I was hoping to get there in under 50, but oh well. The other unique aspect of this race is the big river crossing. At right about the halfway point of the trail, you have to cross Eagle River. This is a fairly large river, and there are no ropes or anything to help you cross. And oh yeah, you’re crossing just a few miles downstream from where it’s melting off a glacier, so the water is COLD! The water level can vary quite a bit depending on the recent weather. In the past, the water has been anywhere between mid-ankle and mid-thigh high on me. This year, it was up to my crotch. To add insult to injury, as I was crossing, I felt something bump into my leg – I looked down and it was a basketball-size chunk of ice floating down the river.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let me backtrack a bit…

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After reaching the top of the pass, I stopped to wait for my buddy I was running with. We had taken an “every man for himself” approach to getting to the top of the pass, just in case one of us didn’t make the cutoff. He showed up a few minutes behind me, and we were on our way. Coming back down on the other side of the pass, it’s pretty technical trail, crossing scree fields and large patches of un-melted snow, with plenty of rocks and roots jutting out of the ground to trip you up. And if that’s not enough, much of the trail is overgrown with devil’s club and cow parsnip, obscuring your view of the trail and scratching up your legs (if you’re unfamiliar with cow parsnip, read here and here, it’s nasty stuff). There was also a smaller river crossing relatively early on. This one wasn’t anywhere near as deep or as wide as the Eagle River crossing, but big enough so that you couldn’t avoid getting your feet wet.

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The buddy I was running with isn’t quite as experienced with technical trail running, so it ended up being pretty slow going over some of these sections. As we were nearing the halfway point and the big river crossing, we hadn’t seen anyone in quite a while, and I was getting the sinking feeling that we were at the very back of the pack. My suspicions were confirmed when we got to the river crossing. There were a couple of race volunteers there, to check people off as they came through, and to give you a wrist band to prove that you had crossed at the right spot. I had gotten a bit ahead of my friend again, and while I waited for him to cross, 2 other runners came by. When my friend showed up, the volunteers said that was everyone.

After crossing the river and getting feeling back in my feet, my friend told me to push ahead without him. We were about 3:15 into the race so far, with a 6 hour cutoff for finishing, and he wasn’t sure he was going to make it. Part of me felt bad for leaving my friend, but I also didn’t want to not make the cutoff. Up to this point, I had been going at a relatively easy pace for me, so I was still feeling pretty fresh and was moving quickly. The 2nd half is more runnable than the first, though there are still some pretty technical sections, including several creek crossings over logs holding onto a rope, and even a ladder to climb up one particularly steep section. Still, I was moving well and able to pass other runners late in the race who had all but run out of steam at that point. Alltogether I passed 9 runners in the last 5 or 6 miles of the race (there were 140 runners total).

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In general, this is a remote trail race with no support and no cheering crowds, except for right at the start and end. But about 5 miles from the end of the race, there was a group of women camped out, cheering us along and handing out small cups of Gatorade and homemade chocolate chip cookies. It was such an unexpected thing, that it ended up being a huge boost for me. As you near the end of the race at the Eagle River Nature Center, the trails become wider, better groomed, and more runnable. These last few miles I felt like I was really moving, and passed several more runners. I pushed hard up the last hill to finish in 5:35 – a negative split of almost an hour!

I got some food and drink in me while I waited for my friend to finish. His family was there and getting worried as the 6 hour cutoff drew closer. With about 10 minutes to go, I put my pack back on and headed out to check on him. I was hoping it wouldn’t be long before I ran into him, but it was probably 2 – 2.5 miles until I did. He wasn’t injured, but was just having a rough day and moving slowly. I ran/walked back towards the finish line with him. It ended up taking him 7 hours to finish, and his family was happy and relieved to see him.

Apparently this was the year of the bee: my friend got stung twice, I got stung once, and everyone else I talked to got stung at least once. In all my previous trips hiking this trail, I don’t remember ever getting stung before.

This was a really fun race on some beautiful trail, despite some of its’ unique challenges. I’ll definitely be back again!

Next weekend: Resurrection Pass 100!

An Awesome Day of Mountain Running, Followed by a Painful Lesson

by Brandon  
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After several years of lackluster summers in Anchorage, I can truly say that this summer has been amazing. Even if it rained every day for the rest of the summer (but please don’t!), I would still look back on this as being one of the nicest summers in memory. We’ve had tons of sun, with temperatures regularly pushing into the high 70’s and low 80’s – which is pretty much as hot as it gets around here. For those of you thinking “Low 80’s? That’s nothing!”, consider this: pretty much nobody has air conditioning in their house in Alaska. So when it’s been 80+ degrees outside all day, and the only thing you can do to cool off your house is to open the windows and have a few fans running, it can be pretty miserable.

Anyways, this past Sunday I set off into the mountains with a buddy for one last long run/hike/climb before Crow Pass this weekend and Resurrection Pass 100 two weeks later. When we set out in the morning, the weather was looking absolutely beautiful. We had strung together a route that combined a number of popular trails in the mountains above Anchorage, and we’d be hitting some places neither of us had been before. It had all the makings of an epic day – and I wasn’t disappointed.

For those familiar with Anchorage, our planned route was to start at the Glen Alps trailhead, head up the saddle of Little O’Malley, climb O’Malley Peak, descend back down past Black Lake to Williwaw Lakes, then go up and over the pass on the left side and come down on the back side of Long Lake, finally coming out over Near Point to end at the Prospect Heights trailhead, where we dropped off a car that morning. We set out only having a fuzzy idea of what the total distance and time was going to be.

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The climb up to the saddle of Little O’Malley is fairly steep but other than that not particularly difficult. Then you come to an area known as “The Ballpark” or “Football Field”, because it’s a large flat area, with random boulders sticking up here and there. From there we headed towards O’Malley Peak, which requires a steep climb up a scree field that can be difficult to find a good/safe route up. Once we got up the scree field, the wind was really whipping and my friend almost lost his hat down the mountain! A bit more climbing over rocks and boulders, and we were at the peak. The view from up there is pretty amazing. It’s one of the highest peaks around (nearly 5200′), so you get a panoramic view of the Chugach Mountains, the entire city of Anchorage, and beyond. It’s fun looking so far down on Flattop, a short but steep hike that offers great views of Anchorage and is very popular amongst tourists.

omalley-peak-selfie

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After enjoying the views, we headed back down the scree field. I was worried about the descent being a bit treacherous, but found that if you do sort of a skiing motion down the scree, that actually works out really well – aside from ending up with tons of little rocks in my shoes that I had to empty out once we got to the bottom. From here we continued across the Ballpark, past Deep Lake, then descended down another scree field to Black Lake. Then it was on past Williwaw Lakes, up and over a pass to the left, before a big descent to end up behind Long Lake. This last descent to Long Lake was a little sketchy in places. It was very steep, and the trail we were following seemed like little more than a sheep trail, just barely wide enough for a big guy like me wearing size 14’s.

long-lake

As we made our way along Long Lake, it was very obvious that this side saw much less traffic than the other side we just came from. The trail back to Williwaw Lakes is very popular. We probably saw 20-30 hikers along that route, along with a few tents from those making an overnighter out of it. On the way back out past Long Lake, we only saw one other hiker until we were on our way back down from Near Point. The trails here were much less defined and harder to follow. One minute we’d be on what appeared to be a well-established trail, only to lose it completely a few minutes later. We eventually found our way out to Near Point, and from there we weren’t far from the Prospect Heights trailhead where we left a car that morning.

view-from-near-point

When it was all said and done, we covered just over 20 miles in a little under 8 hours, with 5500′ of climbing, and 7260′ of descent.

A Painful Lesson

It seems like this is a lesson I have to relearn the hard way every 5 years or so: yes, even in Alaska, you can get sunburned – BADLY!

When I woke up in the morning and saw it was going to be a beautiful day, I was excited and decided that it would be a good idea to wear my new sleeveless tech shirt. Up until this point, I was sporting quite the farmer’s tan, with the skin on my arms above the elbow a blinding shade of white. Yes, I did apply sunscreen in the morning before we got started, but didn’t think to bring any with me to reapply later. The length of time we were out there, combined with the sweat from running and climbing washing away what sunscreen I did have on, proved to be too much for my pasty white upper arms and shoulders. When I got home Sunday night, I noticed that my arms were a little pink, but really didn’t hurt much so I didn’t think a whole lot of it at the time. It wasn’t until Monday that they really started to hurt, and small blisters began to form on the tops of my shoulders. This wouldn’t have been so bad on its’ own, but then Monday night I was playing with my son and at one point he jumped on my back, completely ripping open the blisters on my left shoulder. Talk about painful!

My first concern was that I’m supposed to be running the Crow Pass Crossing this Saturday. Things have been progressing pretty well, and the pain gets less and less each day. At this point, it doesn’t look like this is something that will prevent me from running the race, though I’m sure it’s going to make for a less-than-comfortable experience. I’ll just do the best I can at bandaging it up in the morning, and hope for the best!

I’ve still got 2 weeks until Resurrection Pass 100, which should hopefully be plenty of time to be well healed from my foolishness.

3 Weeks Until My First 100 Miler

by Brandon  
· · ·

With summer now in full swing, training for my first 100 miler has been going well. I’ve spent some great time out on the trails with friends, and set a few new PR’s along the way. Now, there’s some catching up to do – between work, training, projects around the house, T-ball games, camping trips and that month long murder trial I managed to find myself on the jury of, I haven’t exactly had much time to write here.

Mayor’s Marathon Mini-recap

Last month, I ran the Mayor’s Marathon here in Anchorage for the 3rd year in a row. Coming off a shiny new 1/2 marathon PR of 1:35:24 a month earlier, I had high hopes of running a good race and setting a new marathon PR as well. It turned out to be a fairly warm day, which has been the case all 3 of the years that I’ve run this race (though remember that this is “warm” by Alaska standards, you people down south would probably laugh at what we consider “warm”). I set off at my goal pace, and actually felt really good through most of the race. There are some decent hills around the middle of the race that slowed me down a bit, but nothing that I wasn’t expecting.

As has become our tradition with this race, my kids were waiting to spray me with squirt guns around mile 19 where the course goes near our house. It’s always nice to see familiar faces late in the race, and get a little cool-down. After that, I was on the home stretch. They changed the location of the finish line this year due to construction. This only affected the last 1/2 – 3/4 mile of the course, which includes the dreaded hill right at the end. At first I thought this was good news, but in reality, that relatively short but steep climb was replaced by multiple shorter ups and downs in the final mile, which I found to be more difficult overall.

All that being said, I managed to finish in 3:39:15, a 10 minute PR! Other than those new hills in the final mile, I felt pretty strong throughout the race, and my recovery in the following days went very well. Makes me think I could have pushed harder 🙂

Ultra Training

Training has been going well overall, with many 50+ mile weeks, a couple with 60+ miles, and last week I peaked at 71 miles, even with things not going quite to plan. For my peak week, I had planned on doing an all night run with 2 friends who are also running the 100 miler. We picked a nice set of trails where we could do multiple loops of various length, using our cars as an aid station. We planned to start around 8pm Friday night, and run through the night until around 8am Saturday morning. The idea was to get in some good time on our feet, and to get some experience running all through the night, since that’s definitely something we’ll have to do during the 100 miler.

Unfortunately, things don’t always go as planned. Around 2am, both of my running companions weren’t feeling too hot. One had a wonky ankle, and the other’s energy and motivation had all but disappeared. Having run a little over a marathon so far, we called it a night. The next day, after catching up on my sleep, I was feeling surprisingly good, so I decided to do back-to-back long runs, and headed out for another 20 miles. That brought me to 71 miles for the week, my highest mileage to date.

Now with just 3 weeks left until the big day, as far as my training goes, the hay is pretty much in the barn, as they say. I’ll do one last long training run this weekend. Next weekend, I’m actually running the Crow Pass Crossing, a 24-ish mile trail race from Girdwood to Eagle River. I’m really looking forward to this race. It’s a beautiful trail that I’ve hiked and backpacked numerous times, but never ran on yet. There are some pretty challenging climbs, and a big river crossing near the middle of the race, where you have to cross just a few miles downstream from where the water is melting off a glacier – talk about cold! Depending on the recent weather, the water can be anywhere from ankle to thigh deep.

Since Crow Pass is just 2 weeks before the 100 miler, I plan to take it easy and mostly just use it as one last long training run. It will be all downhill after that, trying to keep my sanity as I taper down to race day, and finalizing my plans for what exactly I’m going to carry with me and what’s going in my drop bags.

Choosing My First 100 Miler

by Brandon  

I've spent much of this spring (if you can really call it that, we're supposed to be getting 3-6" of snow tonight) thinking about which race I want to run for my first 100 miler. As I've written before, I had been leaning towards Javelina Jundred in Arizona in October. More recently, my thinking has changed, leaning instead towards the 100 miler right in my own backyard, the Resurrection Pass 100.

I kept going back and forth in my mind about which one I wanted to run. They both have their pros and cons. At a certain point, I just got tired of thinking about it, so last week I sent the Res Pass RD an email saying count me in the for the 100!

There are definitely a number of pros to running Res Pass:

  • It's a cheap race to run. It's a very low-key race with no registration fee, and I don't have to fly anywhere. It starts at 3pm on a Friday, so I don't even have to drive down the night before and camp out.
  • I'm already familiar with the course, having run the 50 miler last year. The 50 miler is a point-to-point from Cooper Landing to Hope. The 100 miler is an out-and-back of the 50 miler course, starting and ending in Hope.
  • I'll have company. My buddy Ray that I ran the 50 miler with last year is also running the 100, so it will be nice to have some company, especially while running through the night in the middle of bear country.

Res Pass is not without its' cons, however:

  • It's a largely self-supported race. The only aid stations are at mile 12, 50, and 88. In between, you're on a remote wilderness trail with no access. This makes it very hard to drop, at say, mile 65 if things aren't going well – this could be good or bad, depending.
  • Access to water. With so few aid stations, you're mostly on your own for carrying water, and refilling in streams as needed. Of course, that comes with the need to filter or purify the water, if you don't want to end up with Giardia. At the 50 miler last year, I carried a hydration pack with 70oz of water, which I only had to refill once. Though I found that refilling a hydration bladder from a stream can be a pain, especially when you're tired. And by the end of the 50 miles, the pack was really starting to weigh on my shoulders. I'm not sure what I'm going to do for the 100, but I've been experimenting on my longer runs.
  • No belt buckle. Small race = no swag. Most "big" ultras like Javelina give out belt buckles to the finishers. It's an odd tradition, but I've got to admit that I want one.

The race is still almost 3 months away, but I'm getting really excited. My training has been going well so far. I've been consistently running 50+ mile weeks, usually with a 20+ mile long run on the weekend. I've gotten up into the 60's once so far, and hope to reach the 70's a few times before race day.

I've heard it said that even though a 100 miler is twice the distance of a 50 miler, it's way more than twice as hard. For better or worse, I'm eager to find out for myself! I know that this will likely be the hardest things I've ever done, and that there will probably be times that I want to quit. I'm going into this race the same way I went into my first 50 miler last year: with the attitude that I will finish, and not even letting the thought of not finishing enter my mind.

And who knows, depending on how things go at my 100 mile debut, I'm thinking that I may still sign up for Javelina in October – I'll get that belt buckle yet!

How to Train For an Ultramarathon and Still Have a Life

by Brandon  

Last winter, when I first told my wife that I wanted to run an ultra, her first concern was the amount of time the training was going to take away from the family. I had the same concern, but promised to both her and myself that I wouldn't allow the training to take up all of my spare time, and that I'd still have plenty of time to spend with the family.

After finishing my first 50 miler last year, my wife confessed that she was surprised/impressed with how little the added training had affected our family life. I had to remind her of this last fall when I first expressed my desire to run a 100 miler this summer.

With the summer quickly approaching, I'll soon be getting into the thick of my training. I've already logged some of the highest mileage training weeks I've ever done, and I'm happy to report that family time is firmly intact.

How have I managed it? Let me count the ways…

  1. Be flexible – I recently postponed a planned run to take my daughter on a bike ride (instead running on the treadmill later that night). Last week I took 3 unplanned rest days while I dealt with a flooded crawl space (does digging a 3 foot deep hole for a sump pump count as cross training?). Did I let these things stress me out? No (well, yes I did stress out about the flooded crawl space, but not because it caused me to miss a few runs). Life, as they say, is what happens when you're making plans. I've yet to follow a structured training plan for a race. I have little doubt that I would be more successful if I did, but I also know that it would make running less enjoyable, and feel too much like "work". My "non-plan" leaves me with much greater flexibility, allowing me to take my runs as they come. I still have to work hard to get my mileage in for the week, but I'm not stressed over missing a scheduled tempo run.
  2. Make friends with your alarm clock – The majority of my runs these days are done either early in the morning or late at night after the kids are in bed. This has meant embracing my alarm clock and making friends with the wee hours of the morning. One of the best pieces of advice I've read on this is to abolish the snooze button. It's far too easy to fall into the trap of hitting snooze 3 or 4 times to get just a few more minutes of sleep. The reality though is that this isn't quality sleep at this point. The only thing you're doing is making yourself late getting out the door for your run.
  3. Involve your family – Running doesn't have to be a solitary sport, get your family involved! As the warmer summer months approach, I'll be doing more of my runs with the kids in the jogging stroller. In addition to being a harder workout, it makes for great family time! I'll usually run a few miles over to a local playground, let the kids play around for a bit, then run back home in time for dinner. Sometimes I'll pack a picnic dinner and we'll eat there. If your kids are a bit older, invite them to ride their bikes along with you for part or all of your run. Other times my wife will come along as well, and we make it a family affair!

Most importantly, we talk to our kids about why it is that we run. We explain to them how it's important to be active and healthy. It's my hope that they grow up viewing this type of a lifestyle as "normal", and that they don't make some of the same mistakes I did earlier in my life, in terms of unhealthy eating habits coupled with a mostly sedentary lifestyle.

So far I think we're on the right track. They talk about wanting to go running with us, and keep asking about when the next kids' race is going to be.