Mount Diablo Trail Run

I really enjoy the Pacific Coast Trail Runs series and try to do them whenever possible. The Mount Diablo run has several distances: 8km, 25km, and 50km. I chose the 8k given my lack of recent long distance training. I love hill running and have been feeling good lately, so I was hoping to win this one outright. That plan in mind, I tried to hang on the leaders going out. Brian McKinney was a bit ahead of all of us though. I ended up running alongside the woman who was the eventual winner. I was feeling great on the hills and we both ended up passing Brian going up, and we seemed to drop him aways back. I pulled away close to the summit hoping to drop her. I reached the apex first and took the turn to go downhill at 26 minutes. The intense effort caused me to get nauseous a little bit ahead on the descent and the woman raced ahead. I have to figure out how to avoid the nausea that happens when I kick in an intense effort. Maybe no coffee anymore before the race?

I started running again slowly and Brian came up on my tail. I let him pass and tried to hang with his pace. I wasn't paying attention to my steps on the steep downhill and wiped out into some bushes (which saved me from falling down the mountain). I was a bit shaken and did a slow descent from then. As I got down the flats I picked up speed again and hoped to catch at least one of the leaders. I went a bit off course towards the finish, turning to the right too early. I ended up going a quarter mile extra, perhaps adding an extra minute. I don't think staying on course would have been enough to catch Brian though. I finished in 45:30, 1 minute 40 seconds off of Brian's finish in 43:50, good for third.

Overall it was definitely a fun race. Apparently they do this course twice a year. Now that I know where to run, I will definitely do it next time in the spring. My goal is to do it in 43 minutes. Maybe even a practice run some time during the week before my Cal class will be called for.