50k Run in the hills to experiment with food

This weeks long run was a 50k plus a little extra.

I needed to figure out where I was going wrong with crapping out after 25 miles and doing the walk, shuffle, and slow run dance to finish the route.  I knew it had to be fuel related because after the run I felt fine, no muscle aches or other issues.  It had to be fuel related and not simply lack of strength or endurance capacity.

So today I got a bunch of different food items together and loaded up a new running pack I was testing out with water food and lots of other essentials for a long day in the hills.  The new pack seemed empty in comparison to the usual Ultimate Direction FKT vest.  I'll do a separate blog entry for my gear some time in the future.

Enough water for a self supported six hour day is pretty heavy, but the new pack felt great.

The food I packed is listed below.

2x Cliff Bars - Coconut Choc Chip
 - https://www.clifbar.com/products/clif/clif-bar/coconut-chocolate-chip
Not labeled as wheat free but close enough.

3x Date and Coconut chunks from a local Organic grocers.  About 100 calories each.
1x Homemade Oat Bar, peanut butter and, honey and cocoa. About 100-150 calories.
2x medium sized boiled potatoes with a generous sprinkling of Himalayan Pink salt.
1x Banana.
2.5 Liters of filtered water.

Nothing contained wheat or sugar or processed ingredients.  All pretty much real whole foods.
The Cliff bars are not perfect in that respect, but really convenient and taste great.

My idea was to have  something every 45 minutes and wash it down with water.

I had one of the potatoes at about mile 13, then the other at about mile 20.  The rest of the food I had spaced in between the salty potato.

The end result was I felt great and even about half an hour before the end I had the idea of refilling the water bottles and doing another 20 mile out and back over a hill in the other direction to do a 50 mile run.  I would have done that, but I have a race next weekend and after this weeks high amount of miles that was a really dumb idea, so I bailed on that one.  Plenty more opportunity to do that coming up.

Here are some pictures of the route today.  I added some new paths and forest roads to a run I do from time to time to add the miles on to make it a 50k ish one.


A few random pictures of the route below.

Looking back towards the Ocean.  Where I started from is just to the left of my head down a sea level.

The picture above is from when I reached a dead end on a trail/road but I could see another set of roads below that I knew intersected a road I just passed, so I wanted to get down there to do a loop.  I noticed a fairly well used Elk trail ahead and going that direction so decided to go that way.
Elk have long legs thick skin four wheel drive and as I found tend to jump of 10-15 foot high ledges like they are level.  Not so easy for us two legged human things!

Got there though, and that's where I scrambled very carefully down.  its actually a lot further and steeper than the picture indicates.

Today was a nice temperature and overcast so there were some really nice views of the hills.

 This shows the road behind me that went to the dead end, the road in the left of the picture is where I came up from my Elk impression scramble to get to the roads.

Next time I'm going to run over all of these roads.  Where I got down to. 

Overall a great day out and I figured out how to fuel for a long race/adventure run.  It might look a bit sketchy in places but its actually pretty safe going.  Wild animals don't like human interaction and keep out of your way, its other humans (which you don't see many of this far out) that are the dangerous ones!

The stuff below is the route stats etc.

32.79 Miles
6,143 feet total climbing and loss.
Time:
  Total time: 6 hrs 12 mins
  50k Time: 5hrs 56 mins
My goal has been for a sub six hour 50k, I failed that the last two times.  Done it this time!  Happy!!

50k Run in the hills for last day of June

I decided on a long run for the last Saturday in June.  This will probably be my last long run (>20 miles) until after the Elk Kings 50k trail race in October and the 20 mile trail race in September at Mt St Helens.

Back County Rise:
https://www.daybreakracing.com/backcountry-rise-20m

Elk Kings:
https://gobeyondracing.com/races/elk-kings-25k-50k/50k/


I had a fairly high mileage month for June and done some back to back 50+ mile weeks, was feeling great and decided to top the month off with an epic run.  I've wanted to have a go at the 50k distance for a bit of time now and felt like it was the right time to have a crack at it.

Saturday morning was wet and a bit windy when I got up at 6:45 AM and didn't seem all that appealing in my semi awake foggy morning-head state.  Made my usual high octane oats and dried fruits breakfast (maybe a blog about that some time...) and had a cup of hot herbal tea.  By this time the rain had pretty much stopped and having woke up a bit more the run seemed like a better idea.

I got all my gear packed into the running pack and double checked everything and headed out the door feeling ready for a long run.  I had a goal of somewhere just under the six hour mark for this one.  The route is pretty steep a lot of the way and goes from sea level at home to about 2,800 feet up to Onion Peak.

Took it nice and slowly and even (hard as it is for me) took it easy and didn't charge up the hills which I usually love to do.

The route is an out and back with one additional side spur to add six miles bringing the intended total run distance to the 31.5 mile +- a bit route for today.

I didn't bother messing about with the camera too much because above 1800 feet ish was into the cloud base and visibility was down to just a few feet.  I did take a handful of pictures on the way down below the cloudbase.  They are posted below.

I drank and ate on the move, taking roughly 100 calories every 45 mins to an hour. Used a mix of raw honey and some oat based organic bars.  I also had some real food, an apple and a banana which I'm glad I took.

Was up at the base of the summit in about two hours, I didn't go all the way to the summit though because its inside a wildlife protected area.  This was at about the 12 mile mark.  Then after being thoroughly soaked by running inside a cloud and from the long wet grass and bushes I headed back along the ridge and then back up a side spur a few hundred feet higher.  Had a 5 minute food and maintenance stop there then plodded back down hill out of the clouds.

Looking back towards where I started from.  (out of site but down there somewhere in the distance)

The mountain top where I ran to is behind that gray cloud over the horizon.

One of me just to prove I really was there 😃  The summit is in the clouds.  This picture is at about 24 miles into the run.  I bumped into a couple out hiking with their dog just before this picture was taken and stopped for a few minutes for a conversation with them.

Elevation profile.  Total climb was 6,000 feet plus or minus a bit.  Distance somewhere between 32 and 34 miles.  The GPS on my watch was being a bit sporadic on the setting I was testing out so it wasn't totally accurate.  I looked at the topographic map route and the elevation seems about right though.

Overall a great run and I' happy with the time, distance and elevation gain/loss.