Out Of Gas At The Dick Collins 50M

TL;DR, I DNF’d. I ran the Dick Collins 50M in 2015 in what turned out be flawless day. Not so much this year. The long-running east bay ultra was getting canned. However, huge kudos to Adam from Scena Performance for reviving this and continuing on with this amazing run through many of the quintessential east bay trails. Here’s my (partial) Strava activity:

Dick Collins 50M

I’d originally registered for the inaugural 100K building up from Headlands 50M four weeks ago. I was so on the fence to potentially run Rio Del Lago as my first 100M. But as life goes, I was whisked away on a three week back to back business trip with way too much business and not a whole lot of running. One of them across the world. As the saying goes, it takes one day of recovery for every hour of timezone difference. For me, that meant I had no idea what timezone I was on when I showed up at the start line.

It was a beautiful, crisp fall morning. The (almost) full moon was up high on a star-studded sky and all indications were that it was going to be a warm day. Adam gave us a quick pre-race briefing and we were off after one of the least ceremonious starts ever. It was more like, “alright guys, you know the drill, have a good time, don’t get lost and see you at the finish”. 🙂 Well by mile two I was following a few of the lead runners and of course we missed the turn to the bridge! But oh well, back on the course and kept a relaxed pace.

With so few of us in the race, we spread out pretty well early on and there was plenty of solitude built in. I was doing pretty well, up until the steep climb up to Sibley. Beat the crap out of me and I showed up at the “heaven” aid station starting to feel tired. There were some fairly exposed parts leading up to Steams Trains and the sun was starting to beat down.

Last time around, I’d bombed down the long descent from Steam Trains and reached the turn around point @ mile 25 right about 4:30sh. Now, as I was hobbling down the descent down to Lone Oak, my mind, body and the collective “we” were done. I rolled my ankle along the way too (nothing too bad), but I was done for the day. Rested a while and eventually hitched a ride back to the start line.

Two upsides to this run. With the early detour and an extra mile, still managed to run a marathon! And more importantly I finally got my 8-9 hours of uninterrupted beauty sleep that night. I felt so refreshed the next morning with very little soreness. I guess all I really needed was just some good sleep after all. Now that RDL 100M is not happening, got to figure out a fun run in November. Maybe the Woodside Trail Run 50K?


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