Zane Grey Highline Trail 50 Mile Race Report: 2011

Is it shallow of me to want to elevate my overall rank in the results by including the nearly 40% of registered runners who didn't show up for the start? Out of 200 runners who each paid a Benjamin to register for the self-proclaimed hardest 50-mile trail race in the nation, 72 of them changed their mind.

Whatever. I'm including them.

Great News! Out of 200 registered runners, I finished 61st!

(wink,wink) Special thanks to MAP Photography for their great shots this year. This was my fourth time doing Zane Grey and my third time to finish. (The other time I was pulled off the course at mile 44 because I was told to stop early.)

Last weekend would have been really exciting on the course. The high temperature just one week before was 34F and almost a half-inch of rain and snow fell that day.

 As it turned out though, the race wasn't that day. It was a week later and the high was 69 with full sun. The streams were gushing with cold mountain water but this year I was able to cross all of them without making any of the little piggies run all the way home in a wet blanket.
The 5 am start was chilly but with calm wind and a full moon, everyone knew the heat would come soon enough. There are five aid stations along the 51 mile course. Their placement is determined by the road access to get vehicles and equipment into the rugged mountains. The aid stations are at 8 miles, 17, 24, 33, and 44. The 24 mile aid is on such a rutted road that drop bags aren't allowed. I had a double water bottle hip pack and a 70 ounce hydration backpack. I wanted to start with the lighter bottles then switch over to the pack at 33. Luckily, Race Director Joe Galope talked me into making the switch at 17 instead. Thanks Joe - that was a good tip as I filled -and drained - that bladder four times that day. That's 280 ounces of energy drink over 33 miles, plus whatever they were handing me to down at the aid station while waiting for the refill.



The day was yet another lesson in basic race preparation and performance.
In training I've practiced eating something every hour. That plan got thrown off at the start. At 5 am, Joe yelled "Go" to the throng of white hats and blinding LED headlamps, I was only interested in warming up and finding a spot in the pack where I could find out what kind of day I was going to have. That finally happened around 6:45. The sun was now full up and I had a comfortable distance both ahead and behind me. But I hadn't eaten anything. Nor had I taken any S-Caps (electrolyte replacement pills) yet. I usually take 3 each hour when running on warm days. As soon as I noticed this oversight, I took the pills and ate some Clif Shot Blocks and felt better about things. The early stages of this race are some of the easiest terrain and dangerously tempting to get carried away with speed. I found myself opening up the pace more than I should have but that old question surfaced again: "Do I hold back now and conserve for later or push the pace while it's cool to put away some miles before it gets hot." I've tried both ways on this course and both result in pain and suffering. I figured my 500 miles of training this winter should have allowed me to maintain an advanced pace so I pushed it. It felt great, for about 5 miles. Then reality set in. Despite my 35 mile training runs and back-to-back long weekend runs. This course was not going to give me a pass.

I spent a few hours while running trying to come up with an appropriate description of the course. Other runners around me said things like, "it's really more like a rugged hiking path with rare, isolated sections that could be considered run-able." Some of the sections of washout were 15 feet deep. Wait-A-Minute Bushes reached out to snag the skin off your thigh or forearm without warning. Long, dried overgrown grass bent down in a slippery blanket that obscured the trail and lurking roots, rocks and erosion controlling rebar. But the rocks are what get the most recognition.

If famed southwestern artist Ed Mell were to paint a single, 50-mile long row of a garden and fill it with a bumper crop of various winter vegetables in his classic angular style, you might picture why none of us could look up to enjoy any of the majestic beauty on the horizon. To pull a frequent conversation from my house, it's like, "Hey Daddy, look at this! Isn't it beautiful?" "Uh huh, ok. Just a minute." (Daddy has to plan his next twelve footsteps so he doesn't break an ankle.)

Here's a sample of Ed Mell's work: Step Down Canyon. After 50 miles of rocky trail, I felt I have lived each brushstroke of a picture like this:

The first aid station at mile 8 came up in no time and I only stopped to hand over my thin jacket and headlamp and top off my bottles. I didn't think to take any of the food out of my drop bag. Mile 17 also came up in good time. The trail opened up and we were on the plateaus which let you see the numerous ridges coming up as we worked our way east along the side of the Mogollon Rim toward Christopher Creek. As I swapped out my waist pack and bottles for my hydration pack, I hoped I was making the right decision. Running with shoulder straps and a larger pack adds stress to the run and if I wasn't going to need it, I didn't want to have to run with it for 33 miles.

At the mile 24 aid station, I could feel I was starting to wear down but I was nowhere near as shot as I'd been at this spot in years past. Previously I'd sat down in the chairs here and contemplated calling it quits. The trail is challenging up to this point, but after 24 it really gets difficult. All of the climbing starts to blend together and you lose sense of how far away you are from the next aid station. This just makes you feel like going slower, as if you're never going to get there anyway so why rush it? I was wearing a GPS during the race and assumed it would give me precise distances but found that during the course of the day, canyon walls must have blocked the signal and caused it to go to autopause. I should have turned that feature off. As a result, the total mileage on the watch was off by 3 miles, just enough to make you wonder why it is taking so long to get to the next aid station.

About mile 27 I caught up with the only other runner I really connected with during the race, "and I never even got his name". He's a construction inspector from San Diego and "Mr. Diego, you're a cool dude." I didn't get to say that to him so perhaps the message will be delivered. We were both starting to bonk in that section when we noticed a blue tarp on the hillside about a mile ahead. I knew it wasn't the aid station so figured it to be the search and rescue crew checking in on people in this long hot stretch where a forest fire burned all of the trees, leaving behind what surely was the inspiration for Dr. Suess' "Snide Field, 9 miles wide".

It was the rescue guys and while they weren't an official aid station, they did have a few jugs of water in case anyone was needing help. They told us we were still 3 miles from the mile 33 aid station. We were both out of water and knew that we were only near the mid-point in the pack of runners. There would be a lot of people behind us also needing a sip to keep going. They gave us each about 3 cups of water and we pressed on to hydration salvation, just a 5k ahead.

At 33, I was happy to have arrived and I tried employing a trick I used last year at this point. I told myself that the race wasn't 50 miles. It was only 11, and it started at the 33 mile mark. There was this loooong warm-up until the mile 33 aid station, then it ended at the 44. (There was also this short little 10k cooldown thing to get to the finish line but that was just in the details.) Somehow, that logic worked last year. But this year, I think I felt more confident in my training that I didn't need to brainwash myself again. I downed a Red Bull, several cups of energy drink, several oranges, a banana, and a Clif Bar and headed out.

I'd mentioned before how this course wreaks havoc on your pacing. Had it been a flat, smooth course I could have finished in 9 hours. Thinking ahead in the days before the race, I decided that 12 hours was a feasible timeframe for the day. As I left 33, that finish time was still possible but the likelihood of it was slipping away as the next 11 miles were just as challenging as the last. Looking at my watch at 33, I noticed that I was at 8 hours. The leaders were likely finishing at this time. And I still have 17 miles to go. How do they run up this stuff?

Two things which should have been no-brainers to me but ended up making the teacher the student (yet again): 1. Prepare for what's there. I had built up my mileage in 10% increments over 4 months to complete these miles. That was the good thing. I had run up one mountain in a single training run as preparation for this race. Not so good. Duh. 2. I bought new shoes the week before the race. It was an identical pair to what I had been running in but the new sole was still stiff and contributed to some soreness during the race. 3. I had been running in some gel insoles all winter and enjoyed the extra cushioning. When replacing my shoes though I found that I had popped one of the gel pads some time ago and clear gel guts were squished all over the inside of the old shoe. When I replaced the shoes I also then replaced the insoles but the store I was in didn't have the same type so I went with a slightly stiffer design. This also caused some soreness in my feet during the run. I knew to avoid these problems. I learned that back in high school cross-country. But here I was, making the same error again.


At mile 44, I was ready to wrap this thing up. My hopes of a 12 hour finish had been dashed and I was now looking at possibly 13 or 14 hours. My previous personal record here was 15:15 and I hoped to blow that away. Leaving 44 you're faced with a stream crossing, a steep 2 mile uphill and, finally, a gentle 4 mile finish. I clocked in at 13:31, still in the daylight. I had improved my pr by a hour and a half.

More than improving my time over this insane course, I was asking myself throughout the day, can I repeat this day after day in Nevada this summer? It will be hotter. The mountains will be twice as high (11k feet) and I won't have the same interactions with other runners as readily as I did today. Then again, it's unlikely that the terrain will be an Ed Mell Painting.

I had wanted to go out Sunday after the race and try to run 20 miles. My sore feet said no to that. I'm looking forward to learning from this experience and getting back into the high mileage gear this week. More to come!