Dirty Dozen 07-09-2016

On July 9th, 2016 I ran the Dirty Dozen 12 Hour Race at Point Pinole Regional Park.  This was my 3rd time in 4 years running this race.

The race is a loop course.  For the first 11 hours you run around a 3.37 miles loop, and for the last  hour they open up a .76 mile loop to insure that all your mileage is counted for the entire 24 hours.

This year my parents went to the race with me (like always) and so did my girlfriend Samantha.  While I was running Samantha hung out and gave me whatever supplies I needed... water, sports drinks, food, etc.  Not only did Samantha help me out during my race, but she was also there to run as well.  Samantha ran 2 separate 10k races while I was running my 12 hour race.  One of her races started at 10:30am and the other started at 4:00pm.

My goal was to run over 65 miles at this event, but I fell short of my goal and only finished 58.49 miles at the end of the day.


I did a lot of things wrong at this event.

The first thing I did wrong was wearing a new race vest and not testing it our prior to the event.  I played with the straps a little, and I thought I had it fitting pretty well... but I never took it on a run before the race.  I ended up ditching my Nathan race vest about 3 hours into the event and just using a handheld bottle instead.  I had plenty of opportunity to run with the vest before the race, but for some reason I didn't.  Over the last couple weeks I have taken the vest out on a couple runs and made the proper adjustments to the straps, and now I'm confident that it will fit really nice at The Headlands 100 this September.

My other mistake was something that I easily overlooked.  I never do my really hard training runs with music, and I've ran my best times without music.  I like being in the moment and paying attention to my run and not having outside distractions when I'm trying to hit a PR, or if I'm just trying to put out a difficult effort during a run.  For some reason I decided that I would listen to music during this race and I honestly feel like this was the worst decision I made the entire race.  After realizing how far behind I was on hitting my goal about 8 hours into the event I decided to run without music, and that seemed to help me gain a little bit on the ground I had lost during the race.

I've found that I really need to focus on running if I want to run well.  Music at times is nice to have, but most of the time it becomes a distraction for me.  I tend to perform better the more I can become focused on my stride, my breathing, and my run in general.  Once I ditched my mp3 player I defiantly felt like I started running better... I just wish I did it sooner.


I have the Headlands 100 coming up on September 10-11, and I feel like I will be ready to run a good race that weekend.  I am a little concerned about the fact that I have never gone this long in between 100 mile events.  My last 100 miler was the Headlands 100 last year (2015).  Ever since my first 100 miler back in 2010, I've never had more than 6 months between 100 mile events.

My hard training for the Headlands 100 will actually start today, right after I take my kids to the all you can eat pizza buffet at Round Table Pizza.  I'm looking forward to the next 6 weeks of training and pushing myself to get ready for the next event.


until next time...

KEEP RUNNING!!!!