Michael: The Sycamore 100K

Garden weeds are as
Green and as full of wonder
As any flower.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

The next ultra I’ll attempt is the Sycamore 100k at the end of February in San Diego, California. We’ll be in the Southern California area anyway visiting family and arranging shipping to Panama, so why not break it up with a nearby 100k?

My success rate in races over 50k isn’t very good. I’ve had a few great races, but more often than not, I’ve dropped out. But I am determined to conquer the puzzle of long races and the Sycamore, with it’s quirky format, should be a great testing ground to figure out my difficulties with completing long ultras.

The Sycamore is run on a non-technical single track 7 mile figure eight loop with approximately 1000 ft of elevation gain each lap. That’s means completing 9 laps to finish the 100k race.

In high school, I would beg the coaches to let me out of the 8 lap 2 mile track race near the end of every meet. We didn’t need the points. I had already run the mile, and 8 laps on a track was just a bore.

Of course, if I go a bit further back into my past, I remember having a figure 8 slot car track and watching those little cars zip into each other at full throttle was pretty exciting. Maybe if the Sycamore allowed you to bull rush other competitors off the trail at the figure eight intersection it would add some excitement and a new twist to trail racing. I haven’t read over the rules yet, but that’s not a highlighted feature on the home page and I’m sure they’d play that up if it was part of the race.

All right, so if loops are such a bore, why do it? Because it will give me the chance to test everything and figure out how smart and/or how tough I am.

Presuming I don’t get into another freak bicycle accident and I train properly, running a race where every 7 miles you can stop, make planned adjustments or try and fix whatever’s not working sounds pretty enticing. And, of course, the decision as to whether to stop at all or how often and why becomes part of the mental challenge and planning process of both pre-   race preparation and under the gun problem solving.

I’ll delve into the specific aspects of how I’m going to approach this great racing and learning opportunity once I’ve solidified my planning. The race is still over 3 months away. Now I’m focusing on gearing up my training and trying to get over the fact that I’m so excited to do a race that consist of 9 laps.