San Bruno 50 Miler

Watch "San Bruno Mountains 50 Mile 02-24-2013" on YouTube

On February 24, 2013 I ran my first ultra marathon on this year, the San Bruno Mountains 50 Miler. My goal was to use this race as a "training run" of sorts for the American River Run 50 mile race that I will be participating in this April for the 4th year in a row.

The night before the race I only managed to get about 3 hours of sleep. This is normal for me the night before a race. I tend to get really anxious and have a difficult time sleeping.

I got up early the morning of the race and drove from Fresno to San Bruno with my wife Lori, my mom, and my running buddies Rudy and Lupe.

We arrived to the event with about 30 mins before the official race start time. The 50 mile event started at 6:00am, before the sun came up.

The course consisted of five 10 mile loops.

There was one pretty tricky part of the course somewhere between mile 4.5 until mile 6. We went on a fairly steep downhill and then turned around and went right back up.

The first two times I ran this section I didn't realize how difficult this part of the trail was, but when I hit it on the 3rd loop it began to become much more difficult as my legs grew more and more tired.

Mile 8.5 to mile 10 of the loop was very forgiving, and very fast. I was able to run this section pretty well. It contained mostly a rolling downhill section that was very fun to run.

Somewhere around mile 22ish I did something that I haven't done in a few years. I tripped and fell really hard on the trail. Luckily I decided to use a water bottle instead of a hydration pack for this run. When I fell I went down pretty hard and luckily fell with most my weight in my hand that was holding my water bottle.

 Overall I had a good time at the event. The course was pretty tough, but most of it was very runnable. I hope to go back to this event again next year. Having a cool belt buckle as a finishing award is also pretty nice too.

I can honestly say I didn't train very well for this event. My longest training run was only 20 miles, and that was only a week before the race.

I feel like this race really helped me get back on track with my training for AR50. My training right now is very on point. I've been sticking to my schedule of running, weights, Jiu-Jitsu, and eating healthy. I foresee good things happening at AR50. I'm really looking forward to my next race!!


Until next time...

Keep Running!!!!