Coming Up Short - Mesquite Canyon 50K Race Report

I'm so close.  I know they are too.  Right on my tail, looking down at my watch, trail crunching beneath my feet. 

I'm doing it.  

I'm winning.  

I'm out in front and nobody is going to catch me.

I look down at my watch to check my pace and see it ticking off at 6:37 minute miles as I feel someone coming up from behind me.  He's making his move.

There he goes.

He's gone.

My lead has disappeared, my single greatest moment in my ultrarunning career.  My first lead.

All 0.87 miles of it.  

I should have quit right there.  

I went into Mesquite Canyon for the fourth year, every year since it's started, and I wanted to put my training to the test.  My last 10 weeks of hard track workouts, higher mileage, more climbing, faster paced long runs.  

I was ready to see what I could do and I wanted to do so much better than I had before.  I wanted to take a full minute off my overall pace, down to 9:28 minute mile and under 4:45. 

Granted I've never ran a 4:45 50K, or at least at a race, and this wasn't an easy one.  Mesquite Canyon has 4,700 feet of climbing and some rugged, rocky technical terrain.  The climbs are long and sustained as the downhills are but very little flat running, maybe six miles total.  Add in a couple tough sandy miles in Ford Canyon around the marathon mark and it's a very challenging course.  A fact I conveniently forget every year.

In the end though, it was a PR for me with a 5:07, about 6 minutes faster than last year.  I ran all but 1.2 miles of it.  I wasn't sick, I wasn't overtrained, I just didn't pull it together on the goat camp climb and put in some terrible miles.  I used to get away with that when I was going out there and putting in a 5:30-6:00 hour 50K time but when you run one mile in 19 minutes followed by a 16 minute on a climb...that hurts your overall time and I just needed to hammer that and I didn't have anything in me.  

I still went from 8th to 4th in the back half of the race and ran nearly the entire course, something I was hoping to do to see where my real fitness level came out to.  As tired as I was throughout, I was still able to run a solid pace and that's at least encouraging.  I'm not going to dwell on the disappointment of it all.  I have 4 remaining weeks to take from this race what I need to and dial everything in for Zane Grey.  

Huge congratulations to Bret Sarnquist for winning the 50K.  He passed me heading into the bottom of Goat Camp around mile 12 as I expected and went on to pass everyone else including what was the leader in the final stretch into the finish.  He's a huge finisher and if I'm in front of him at Zane Grey early on...I'm doing something wrong. 

That's me in first place....yup. First place. By default really because nobody wanted to start the race out front...

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Mountain Lions...in the White Tanks

http://forums.mtbr.com/arizona/wildlife-593082.html

Look at this photo?  Yeah...cool except for the deer.  This is a water tank that is on the western slope of the White Tanks put out there with a motion sensor camera.  It has captured a good deal of mountain lion activity over the years (this photo is somewhat old), and not the most healthy looking of cats.  Although would you really care if it was healthy or not biting into your neck?  Me neither.  But it's interesting to see the documentation of their presence even though I knew they are out there.  

There aren't many times I'm in the Tom's Thumb rock formations at 4:30am thinking I'm alone...there always seems to be something lurking in those rocks and being that I've seen deer all through the eastern slope of the McDowell's, I'm almost positive they are up there.  Add in some photos from last march at the Boulders Resort (just a couple miles up the road) where a female and her two yearlings were hanging out on the golf course.  

So that's pretty encouraging.  I wonder how long before a runner comes across one up there?  Between the White Tanks, McDowell's, Spur Cross, you'd think there would be more sightings, even for a very reclusive cat such as the cougar.  Or maybe I've been readingthis site too much...(Warning:  It's quite disturbing and you'll never want to go to British Columbia after reading a few.  Or at least Vancouver Island...)

Mountain Lion in the White Tanks...Super cool in a terrifying kind of way

Goat Camp Trail. Basically a multi-use path.

Finishing. Nobody near me so I sprinted anyway.