Guest post by Karl
Race Report
Speedgoat 50k
I had some unfinished, no, unstarted business to take care of at the Speedgoat this year. From the first time I heard about it I knew it was for me. I mean, why wouldn't I run a race with about as much climbing as the Squaw Peak 50, all packed into a 50k? It's not like Karl Meltzer would design a race that's not crazy cool.
2009: I focus on 50k distance, train a ton, and then get myself a stress fracture a few weeks before the Speedgoat. Meltzer rolls my registration over to next year instead of taking my entry fee and leaving me out in the cold. Another reason he's a stud.
2010: I'm better trained for an ultra than I've ever been, but my foot starts feeling eerily similar to last year just 2 weeks before the Speedgoat, but I figure I have to give it a go. We're about to move out of state, after all!
I knew the course was hard, but I was clueless about the details of the course because of how much the course loops back on itself and how unfamiliar I am with Snowbird. Really, I pretty much gave up on learning the trails and just tried to remember the distance and elevation change between aid stations. I came up with goal times to get to each aid station so I could finish in 7 hours, with slow climbs and fast descents.
The talent in this year's race was pretty deep, and I figured I would be happy to finish in the top 20. Two miles of running, though, was enough to figure out where we would probably end up, and it was well ahead of #20.
My slow uphill/fast downhill strategy made for a lot of place-trading with another runner before getting up to the tram at Hidden Peak. If I had known who he was, I most likely would have slowed down. Or gotten excited and sped up too much. In any case, it's good that I wasn't around when people were cheering Nick Pedatella on. I felt good, and I was keeping within 5 minutes of most of my predicted times... except for a couple of them when I was more like 20 minutes off.
As luck would have it, running alone and clueless was a big advantage in this race, as long as you kept in the top 5. After the Larry's Hole aid station, one crucial turn was not yet marked when we went by. Actually it was marked, but for the wrong direction of a lollipop-shaped loop section. My only clue that something was wrong was that the course marking was very
confusing and would have been fine for people going in the opposite direction. It was frustrating at times, but it didn't even occur to me that I had made a wrong turn.
Once I got to a trail fork that showed me clearly I had come from the wrong direction, I realized my mistake. I had no clue what I should do about it, and my negative mind started trying to take over. I thought that I would be disqualified, and I thought that the way I had gone was shorter than the other way.
I was really upset for a few minutes and started placing blame on everyone, from race volunteers, to ATV riders I passed by, to Indian Paintbrush that looked just like the orange flagging through my sunglasses. When I ran into a race volunteer I tried to keep my frustration down, and she said that the 3 runners ahead of me had made the same mistake, and that I should go back the same way as I came. But she had no word from the RD. I went on like she said but it didn't do much to put away my negative mind.
Eventually I saw Luke Nelson's yellow La Sportiva jersey, and I thought I'd see if I could catch him. I really had thought that I would be running this race with other people, and I thought I could probably catch him and stick with him for at least a while. That wasn't to be, though. Luke was going through a temporary bad spot, but he stayed tough and never let me get too close. When he recovered from that, he blasted the rest of the race and left me way behind him.
The climb back up to more familiar terrain by the tram was brutally long, and I really worked hard to get to the top in decent time. When I arrived at the tunnel that leads back into the Little Cottonwood Canyon side, I saw friends Ben Corrales and Shane Martin. They took care of refills and let me know I didn't need to do a penalty lap for my wrong turn. That was really relieving and I took strength from that. However, for some reason I felt like I could imagine away the 5 miles that I knew were in between the Tunnel aid station at the top of the climb and the second Hidden Peak aid station. I started out quick, but then as I started climbing up Peruvian Ridge to get back to Hidden Peak I just couldn't get into a rhythm. As I approached the top of the ridge and the aid station, Greg Norrander cruised up and caught me just before the top. I worked hard to stay with him, but I was able to only because I could see how little was left to climb.
At the aid station, my only business there was to refill one water bottle and leave the other in my drop bag, so I got through quickly. I figured that just because Greg was feeling good on the uphills didn't mean that I had to give him the downhills easily. Since the rest of the race was downhill, I just decided to let myself go and cruise to the finish. That turned out to be enough, and I put in a decent split getting down to the bottom, and kept my 4th place.
At the finish it took quite a while to sort out the wrong turn situation. Apparently a dozen or so runners right after Greg and me had also gone the wrong direction, but unlike us had been asked to do a penalty lap. After the penalty lap people, the course had gotten fixed and the rest of the field stayed more or less on course. It turns out after all, though, that by going the wrong way we had actually taken about the same amount of time as the right direction. In order to make it more fair for the penalty lap folks they took a chunk of time off their finishing times. It was an unfortunate situation, but most runners had a good attitude about it.
It turns out that Nick's actual time was way behind me because of the penalty lap, but his adjusted time was ahead of me. It would have been cool to have duked it out at the end with Nick, but really it doesn't matter. The race management did what they could with a situation that nobody was happy with. In the end we were able to do a very cool race, and one that I had been looking forward to for a long time.
Note from Sarah:
Karl's time was 6 hours 26 minutes. That is amazingly fast! Wow! I am so excited things came together for him and he was able to run such a great race!
Note from Sarah:
Karl's time was 6 hours 26 minutes. That is amazingly fast! Wow! I am so excited things came together for him and he was able to run such a great race!
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