Zoom Zoom at Skyline to the Sea 50K

01 Race Report
02 Official Results
03 My Piddly Collection of Images
04 Better Images and a Great Report on Scott Dunlap's site
05 Additional Reports on Mike and Victoria's site
06 Specific Race Notes

QUICK AND DIRTY SUMMARY
Showed up ready to race. Pumped up and excited since I haven't raced since July, did a mini-taper and everything. This was a tune up race for the Firetrails 50-miler in October and staged in the mountains of Santa Cruz. You start in the mountains and make your way to the Pacific coast. Total elevation gain is 3000 ft. and total loss is 5580 ft. Beautiful, mostly downhill with very little climbing, lots of soft tree covered single track, not too technical and the last 10k+ is flat fire road, perfect for the road speedsters, excellent aid stations and great competition. This inaugural race sold out all 210 slots and had 178 finishers. Perfect race for beginners, perfect race for veterans seeking a personal best.

Yours truly ran as hard as he possibly could. I threw everything into it with the hopes of finishing in the top 10. I lined up with the front guys, started out too fast, wisely pulled back and recovered, dropped the hammer for good around the 15k mark and finished 8th overall and 4th in my age group with a 4:24:53. It's also a personal best for the 50k distance. I was in my element in those long downhills.

I put all of my heart into it but it was my stomach that suffered. I couldn't comfortably eat food until the next day. Must have been engaging that core extra hard:) Legs are fine. Minor stiffness but nothing I could whine about. I have one yellow jacket sting on my back that was so itchy it woke me up the next morning and stayed itchy all day but no whining about that either since folks like Fred Ecks got 20 or so stings!

I spoke to Scott Dunlap after the race and he felt he could have gone 20 mins faster. After hearing about the little small mishaps that he had on the race I believe him. I got to meet Chris Ratliff when we were using the facilities at the Nature Center, he too felt he could have gone faster than his 3:49:10. Boy not me, I felt like I gave it my all that day but if there is a next time you know I'll be gunning for another personal best. Almost there...not quite 100% but I'm getting there. It's only been a month since I restarted my training.

One caveat: Don't race this if you are allergic to yellow jacket or bee stings or hate downhills or beautiful tree covered trails or nice people or competition or great race directors or nice race shirt or the ocean. Okay I'm serious about the first two.