2024 Lake Sonoma 50
The Lake Sonoma 50 has the nickname “Relentless” because the hills never stop. The only thing more relentless than the hills this time out was the mud.
Background & Training:
I signed up for the Lake Sonoma 50 Mile on a bit of a whim. My wife had been out in Sonoma last fall, shortly after I ran the Sugg Farm 40 Mile Ultra, for a girls’ trip to wine country, and had been telling me about an ultra that had happened (or was happening) while she was there (the Lake Sonoma 100k). She said I could use her trip as an excuse to do a guys’ trip somewhere, but I said I’d rather go out to California and spend a weekend running around in the woods.
So with that, I signed up for my second-ever ultra - and the longest one yet. I knew I needed to improve over the training that I had done for Sugg, but my training was laughably inadequate for Sugg, so it wasn’t hard to do better. I did my best to be consistent lifting weights 2-3 days a week and running 3-4 days a week, but I knew I didn’t spend enough time on hills. There’s not a TON of elevation around me, and I didn’t take any extra actions to seek it out. Getting 1,000 feet of elevation gain in a run was a “big deal” - which should have been a warning sign. I also didn’t push for super-long long runs as much as I should have. I think my longest training run was 18 miles, followed by 17 miles. They were great runs, but I should have put at least one 20+ training run into the books.
In the 4-5 weeks leading up to the race, I had planned to push hard on training to ensure I was in peak form. Instead, we did a family vacation up to the Arctic Circle in Finland (no running there), then I got quite sick when I got home and spent a week recovering (no running then either). By the time I felt healthy enough to get back to running, I was about two weeks out from the race. I did my best to stack a few runs together, but it wasn’t much. I also spent those two weeks refurbishing my deck, tearing out all of the old boards and replacing them with composite decking and gave myself shin splints from wearing boots and crawling around on my knees for days.
Goals:
I didn’t set a ton of goals for myself, but I had a few specific things I tried to remind myself of. My first goal was to finish the race. My second goal was that I was hoping not to chase cutoffs (14-hour cutoff overall and certain aid stations also had cutoffs). And my third goal was to have fun. If I could hit any particular time, that would be great, but I wasn’t as worried about a specific time goal. I had run the 40-mile race in just under 10 hours, so I figured if I could do 50 in 12, that would be cool.
Race Prep:
Going into the race, I had originally wavered between just doing everything solo or wondering if my family could come and help spectate and crew. After our other trip, having the family come visit just wasn’t in the cards, so I figured I’d do the whole race solo. Instead, my parents graciously decided to come visit and crew for me. Neither I nor they really knew what to expect, but I figured I’d sort it out as we went. Unlike when I ran Sugg Farm (which was 2.5 miles out and back with aid stations at both ends), I’d be alone for the vast majority of the race and only have a few spots to see my crew. I’d be able to see them at miles 13, 21, 26, 30, and 38. Otherwise, I’d have to rely on whatever the aid stations had and what I had with me.
We all arrived in Healdsburg on the Thursday before the race, had a nice dinner, picked up my race packet, and called it a night. On Friday, we drove to the South Lake Trailhead (2.4 miles into the course) so I could do the “Demos & Donuts” shake-out run, hosted by several of the North Face elite athletes, and get a fasnacht donut cooked by the famous Zach Miller himself. It was meant to be a pretty easy shake-out run, I had a great time talking to folks, and yet one mile into our four-mile run, I badly twisted my ankle when a rock rolled under my foot. I kept running and it wasn’t that painful while running, but when we made it back to the trailhead it definitely started to hurt.
With that, my parents and I went back to Healdsburg and they dropped me at the hotel while they went to try to find the Warm Springs aid station (the 13 & 38 mile one) as a little bit of course prep for themselves. I showered, removed ticks, and found the ice machine to try to help my ankle feel as good as it could. We met back up for lunch later and I was still hobbling around, but we swung by a grocery store and I grabbed a bunch of ibuprofen and some KT tape, and then YouTube gave me some directions on how to tape my ankle.
I ended up driving myself back over to the Lake Sonoma Visitors Center for the pre-race athlete discussion / happy hour with some of the elites, then the pasta dinner where I met many awesome people. After that, it was time to come back to the hotel room, lay everything out, and do my best to get a good night’s sleep and hope my ankle felt better in the morning.
The Race:
The weather was definitely a wild card I had not wanted. I watched a lot of YouTube videos of prior years’ races and in most of them, it was hot and sunny, and even the race website specifically calls out that runners are required to carry at least one water bottle with them because of how far apart a few of the aid stations can be. This was not that year. This year, it was 45 degrees and it rained thoroughly the evening before the race - and was still drizzling persistently at the race start. I threw on every bit of clothing I had but wished I had brought more.
At 6:30 am, the race started and we headed off into the cold rain as the sun was just starting to give enough illumination to make headlamps worthless. The first 2.4 miles of the race is on pavement, headed from the visitors center up to the South Lake trailhead (where the shakeout run was the day before), and it’s pretty much all uphill. I did my best to run anything flat, jog some of the uphills that weren’t too bad, and then otherwise hike the uphills. By the time we got to the trailhead, one of the race organizers (Skip) was there waving and cheering and joking about how he’d ensured the aid stations were full of sunscreen for us.
At that point, we hopped onto the singletrack where we were to spend most of the rest of our day … and I realized just how bad the trails had gotten. The first 2 miles of the trail were the exact same route I had run the day before, but it was almost unrecognizable. Everything was a mud pit. By that point, folks had strung out enough that I found a few other people running a pace that seemed fairly comfortable, and we did our best to run along the trails. Very quickly, I saw a guy lose his shoe to a mud pit, have to fish it back out, and then try to scrape the mud out of his shoe in order to put it back on. Not ideal, that soon into a race.
After 4.5 miles on the trails, we made it to the Island View aid station. It’s a pretty sparse one, out in the middle of nowhere, but the crew was great and cheered us on. I spent about 3 minutes at the aid station, taking off my raincoat and gloves and trying to un-kink my hydration bladder’s tube (I had two 16oz bottles on my vest that I had been drinking out of, but couldn’t get a drop out of the bladder). With that sorted, it was back to running. As we left Island View, they warned us it was 7 miles to Warm Springs (first aid station with crew), so it was going to be a while.
Those were some hard miles. It was 7 miles of grueling and muddy single-track, constantly going either up or down hills as we switchbacked our way around the lake. There were a few crossings - they had bridges set up for the big ones, but there was also a funny point where me and the folks I was running with came to a knee-deep water crossing, we looked at each other and realized we just had to wade through it. I also ended up falling at one point, covering most of my left leg in mud, as I was climbing a hill. My shoes, needless to say, had gone through so much mud at that point that I looked forward to the stream crossings as a way to get them clean, and no longer avoided puddles.
At the Warm Springs aid station at mile 13, I saw my parents for the first time in a few hours. They helped me refill one of my bottles with more Tailwind, I grabbed a PB&J slice from the aid station and got out of there again in just over 4 minutes. Climbing out of Warm Springs was a bit rough, so I hiked a good chunk of it and then did my best to run where I could. There were a bit more runnable trails between Warm Springs and Wulfow, so that was nice to actually feel like I was capable of running. Unfortunately, the mud was still everywhere and many of the downhills weren’t safe to run. I almost wiped out a few more times, catching myself on trees where possible. I think at this point I also put my raincoat and gloves back on, even though they were soaked because I was so cold without them.
I passed through Wulfow pretty quickly, it was a water-only aid station, and I just filled up one of my bottles there to give myself an alternative to Tailwind as I was definitely feeling some palate fatigue from hours of drinking the same thing. Heading into Madrone, there was a very big hill - I didn’t even try to run it, I just did my best to hike it as quickly as possible, but I know it wasn’t quick. By that point, my quads were absolutely on fire and I could see the muscles spasming while I was walking. Should have done more hill workouts. I saw my parents again at Madrone, but didn’t do anything other than grab a PB&J slice and say hi, I just wanted to keep moving and wasn’t feeling the best, and figured I’d see them again shortly at the Lone Rock turnaround.
Headed into Lone Rock was the bigger hill, and it was no joke. It felt like forever walking up the hill, like it would never end. Even once I got to the top of the hill, there were still some rolling hills as I kept running toward the aid station. I hadn’t been paying super close attention to my watch at this point, but I knew that I wasn’t doing fantastic on time. I didn’t think I was in danger of getting dropped for time, but I also wasn’t thinking straight. I had stopped eating my own snacks an hour or two prior and wasn’t drinking a ton of Tailwind, either. I was mostly subsisting on water and PB&J slices, which wasn’t enough.
I spent about 4 minutes at the Lone Rock aid station, refilled my bottles, tried to eat something, and then got back out there. As I was headed out, my parents told me that I was about 30 minutes ahead of the cutoff - a lot closer than I had figured. I walked a good chunk of the distance from Lone Rock back to Madrone, trying to run when I could, but I was at a low point - I was cold, hungry, sore, and definitely low on motivation. I saw my parents again at Madrone, grabbed another PB&J slice, and kept going, just trying to keep plodding.
When I passed through Wulfow again, I refilled my one bottle with water again, trying to just keep drinking something that wasn’t Tailwind, and headed back out. At this point, my body was definitely crashing - I had been neglecting my nutrition for far too long and I knew it. At the same time, I also really did NOT want to eat any of my own food. I saw my parents again at Warm Springs, but passed through that aid station too quickly. I was in and out in a minute and a half - didn’t refill anything, just grabbed a PB&J slice, told my parents I’d see them at the finish line, and left. That was a dumb move. I wasn’t worried about cutoffs (I was again about 30 minutes ahead of time and holding that pace), but I just didn’t want to see people and didn’t want to take the time to try to fix anything.
After Warm Springs, it was 7 miles to Island View - and those seven miles were both great and awful. At some point during those miles, things started to fix themselves. I got hungry and ate snacks, but I also realized that I had nothing left in my hydration bladder and only a few swallows of water and Tailwind, so now I was thirsty. Still, putting a little something in my stomach was a nice change. I also started to reel some folks in. I’d run with people for a little, then pass them, move on up to the next group of two to three runners, and repeat. One thing that helped me out was repeating to myself that I WANTED to be there. Nobody would have judged me even a little if I said it was too cold, too hard, too miserable, and quit. But I didn’t want to quit, this was fun and I wanted to do this.
By the time I hit Island View, I was mentally a new runner. I took a few extra minutes and refilled both bottles with water, drank a Coke, ate a banana, chips, and a PB&J, and felt fantastic. With only a 10k to the finish, it was time to go. While my pace on the 4.5 miles from Island View to the South Lake trailhead wasn’t great, I felt amazing. I had energy, I was able to run more, and was in a very happy and positive headspace. I wanted to be out there on the miserable trail conditions, I was going to finish the race, and I was having a good time. I was also looking forward to the final 2 miles of the race because if they were the same as the start, they were on the road, and I was so ready to be done with muddy trails.
I blew through the South Lake trailhead, yelled out “thank god for pavement!” to the amusement of the two folks within earshot, and headed down the hill to the road. My quads were absolutely dying, every step was agony, but I did my best to shuffle-run down the hill. However, about three-quarters of a mile after getting on the road, one of the course marshals directed us onto a trail that would take us to the finish. Back onto muddy trails for one last mile. I guess it was a good thing, as it would have been an extra half mile on the roads, but I would have taken that deal in a heartbeat if I was allowed to stay on the roads. I didn’t want to go back on the trails - especially since it was all downhill. Almost fell a few times in the mud, but finally hit the flats at the bottom by the visitor center.
I summoned what tiny bits of energy and strength I had left, plus some adrenaline, and managed to get a 8:45 pace for the final tenth of a mile to finish strong and cross the line 13 hours, 21 minutes, and 37 seconds after I set out. I got my finisher’s “medal” (a bottle of wine, which I don’t drink and instead brought home to my wife), then staggered over for a cooked-on-the-spot pepperoni pizza and a PBR.
Post-Race:
After finishing my beer and pizza, we went back to the hotel. I was so cold I didn’t want to spend another minute outside and was still pretty starved. At the hotel, I found out it was too late to order pizzas from anywhere (I should have tried DoorDash but was too tired to think about it), so instead I went up to my room, showered most of the mud off myself, and my clothes, got rid of another tick, and tried to order some food from the “room service robot” helper. I got a frozen pad thai and a beer that exploded all over me the second I tried to open it, so that was the end of my day and I went to bed.
Lessons Learned and What’s Next:
I need to do more long runs that last over three hours (don’t even care about distance or pace, just time on feet), and I need to do more hill work. My quads and hamstrings were in serious pain 20 miles into a 50-mile race, and that wasn’t great. My ankle and shins, on the other hand, didn’t hurt at all - so that was a nice bit of pre-race stress that didn’t end up mattering. The weather sucked, I wasn’t dressed appropriately. I should have brought running tights and I should have had better gloves. I don’t know if there are good waterproof running gloves, but definitely an area to research.
I saw some folks changing out shirts and shoes at various aid stations - I don’t know if I would have bothered even if I had brought a spare shirt or shoes. At no point except the last 2 miles was I ever able to say “Okay, NOW my feet won’t get wet and muddy anymore” so I don’t think there was a lot of value in changing out socks and shoes. My feet were actually fine, zero blisters, so I feel pretty comfortable with that decision.
Going forward, I’ve got around 4 months until the Squamish 50. It’s another big, ambitious (stupid) race, and I will absolutely need to do better in order to succeed there. Following that, I’m redoing the Sugg Farm 40 again in September, pacing a buddy of mine through his first ultra, and so I’m hoping that will be an easy change of pace after Sonoma and Squamish.