From: Tom Hayes Subject: Cle Elum Ridge 50K Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 07:30:31 -0600 I hope this story isn't too self aggrandizing. I had fun at a great race and thought some of you might be interested. Cle Elum Ridge 50K An entry lost in the mail nearly kept Dad and I away from one of the more successful days of our running lives. Even though the Cle Elum Ridge 50K in Washington's Cascade Range is short, for an ultrarun, and over 400 miles away requiring a day off from work and a long drive, it is such a great race that we have to go. What makes it a great race? The course is a constant variety of wooded and open terrain with occasional views of mountains stretching to infinity, precipitous drops to Cle Elum and the Columbia Basin, and one point where you can almost reach out and touch a snow covered Mt. Rainier. You finish with about 13 miles of downhill through park like conditions on a single track trail paralleling Taneum Creek which you ford twelve or fifteen times. The food on the course is excellent including salty boiled potatoes and M&M's (who can resist that combination?). Race headquarters in Rosalyn is such a scenic old mining town that it was the location site for the filming of TV's Northern Exposure (and the moose is still walking through town). And last, but way not least, is a wild and crazy race director named Frank Fleetham. He is indescribable, you gotta be there to understand. Though his maps may be low on detail, the course is marked so well even a sodium depleted ultrarunner will stay on track. The baked potato carbo loading dinner is delicious though a little scanty for my appetite. I noted in the entry list that both masters who finished ahead of me last year were back - Mark Hartinger and Rob Lang. The Montrail shoes for the masters winner had me excited as I thought I could take a good 15 minutes off last year's 5:06 finish if I didn't stop to take pictures and ran the first half a little harder. Race start at 7:00 AM was around 50 degrees but clear skies and a rising sun promised warmth to come. I decided since this was just over a marathon and started on a paved one mile downhill I was going to throw caution to the winds and run a seven minute first mile. That gave me nearly a thirty second lead as we commenced climbing for nearly 17 miles and five thousand feet. What a great feeling to actually be out in front, a place I have never been in an ultra. The trail wends back past the start only higher up on the hill so Mom even got to see me leading the pack. I loved it. Amazingly it was five miles into the race before anybody caught up. Jeff Tiegs was well known in Montana having run XC for the MSU Bobcats and nearly breaking Mark Tarr on the 50 mile Le Grizz in 1996. I was ready to concede the lead but he said my pace was fine. Suddenly he bolted for some seclusion off trail and I was on my own again. At 8 miles John Flager caught up pulling a train of five others including my two master's nemeses. He too said my pace was fine and he too, along with his train, soon pulled over at the 10 mile aid station, which I bypassed thanks to my camelback. The terrain was constantly varying. Though we were predominantly climbing, we often dropped down off the ridge or down into a saddle before switchbacking up again. For a short time we had a great view 2,000 feet down a sheer hillside to the Columbia River Basin and the mining settlements of Cle Elum and Rosalyn. The trail was often rocky and included many two foot long divots produced by the motocross users of the trail. Those areas generally were filled three or more inches deep in an ultra fine brown dust. At times we were surrounded by stately pines while other times we passed through clearings where the fall colors were in full bloom with mountain maple, alders and the most vividly red underbrush I have seen. Jeff caught up just before the 12 mile aid station where I finally relinquished my lead as I stopped to drink coke and Gatorade while he drove relentlessly on up. About two miles later John overtook me, thankfully alone this time. He too decided to forge ahead after we had talked and I learned he had recently completed a trail 50K in Bend, Oregon in three and a half hours along with a personal best in the marathon at 2:20. He was thirty seven while Jeff was 30 so my montrail shoes were still safe. The trail was mostly all runnable now save for a new bushwhack Frank had inserted after a logging operation obliterated his old trail. This bushwhack was truly amazing. There was no discernable reason that the dirt and bushes were hanging on to the ultra steep hillside and I would have feared grabbing them as I climbed except I forgot my mountaineering rope. Just before reaching the trail again we had to do the limbo under a fallen fir tree and that can be very challenging for the back and quads after four thousand feet and 14 miles. Two more steep climbs up to the draw and then onto the ridge again brought us to a windswept open ridge where Mt. Rainer loomed like a giant snow cone to the west. What an awesome sight, especially knowing we were at the top with very little climbing in the final 14 miles. And it was a very good thing because I had about decided I had gone too fast trying to maintain my role as pace setter. My quads were clearly fatigued and I was mentally a little lethargic. I was just hoping I had not totally taken the edge off my normal strength of running downhill nor headed for my hyponatremia saga which followed the Elkhorn 100K. We practically dove off the ridge down an almost unrunnable series of switchbacks. A sharp left turn to the Taneum Creek drainage led steeply down again. My well padded Brooks ASR shoes protected my feet only partially from the large rocks on the steep trail. It cost practically more energy to check my speed than it did to climb the same trail. Finally I saw the old log cabin ranger building and knew the best part of the trail was about the begin. There was also some bad news in the trail. A grouse was sauntering along which was a clear sign that any runners ahead of me had passed more than a few minutes before. Oh well, I had totally discounted catching those two speed demons though I did want to finish at least a respectable distance behind them. I ate the second third of my flask of hammer gel along with a couple of ibuprofen and a big slug of water just before hitting the 20 mile aid station. A quick guzzle of water and diet coke and I was back on the trail with assurances from the aid station crew that the two leaders were less than five minutes ahead of me. As the caffeine and hammer gel kicked in along with some well earned endorphins I felt so euphoric I just didn't want the race to end. I was running beside a clear rocky stream on a grassy single track trail with fall colors and a deep forest calm and overcome by enough rapture to make a junkie jealous. My only concern in life was that Mark or Rob was really hammering the downhill and my solitude might be interrupted. I was almost flying myself (literally) and figured I was doing very close to a seven minute pace. And 30 years of competing made me confident I could judge my pace. That is I was confident until I got to the 25 mile mark and did some quick mental arithmetic and figured out that five miles in 42 minutes was nowhere close to a seven minute pace. It was even over eight minutes! That got me a little concerned about Mark and Rob again but the euphoria quickly overcame even that. The guys at the 24 mile water station had advised me that Jeff and John were now five minutes ahead so I obviously wasn't closing anything on them. I decided to just sit back and enjoy the 15 stream crossing. About then I stumbled on the top of one of those motocross divots and fell into the foot deep divot to discover it was really two feet deep with a foot of dust in the bottom. I fell face first and nearly drowned before I was able to pull my stunned body out and do a quick check for injuries. I had banged my knee a little and bumped my nose but seemed OK. I walked groggily a short distance and then moved into a jog and then a run. My knee hurt a little but didn't seem to get worse so I figured I would go on. The last two miles has a half mile of gradual uphill before crossing a logging road, then a short level and down hill before a fairly grueling half mile climb to an old logging road. That was followed by 600 yards downhill to a sharp right turn on a switch back trail 150 yards steep down and then 150 yards of gradual uphill pavement across a small bridge to the finish. I am setting that stage in order for you to better visualize what is probably the most exciting moment in my running career. As I approached the first road with just over a mile and a half to go I could see what I though was a hiker on the trail ahead. As I broke out on the road I realized it was Jeff and he was walking! It looked like I could come in second place. I tried to reassure him that nobody was right behind me and the adrenaline rush of passing him propelled me all the way up that next hill without walking at all. As I came out on the old logging road and could see down the trail a ways I realized that John was only 150 yards ahead of me. He saw me at the same time and picked up steam. I decided I was going to go all out so that I could tell my friends that I finished only seconds behind the winner, a 2:20 marathoner. I was gaining on him and suddenly I realized I probably could pass him before we hit the hard right down the trail. I momentarily hesitated, pondering the ethics of passing a competitor on a 31 mile race with only 200 yards to go. But I just couldn't hold myself back, flew by him and my feet hardly hit the ground as I sprinted across the bridge. That feeling was absolutely beyond description. I was shocked, I was ecstatic, I was proud, and I was a little worried that I might have ruined John's day. But I just couldn't help it though I did go up and apologize later. I had set a master's record (4.41:24) which was only ten minutes slower than the open record. And I had won my Montrail shoes. The next best part was watching my 72 year old Dad finish. He looked great as he ran in with Cheri Gilles who he had stayed with the last nine miles. Despite competing in the sixty and over age group he had finished first, though by only a minute. He didn't get any of the messages of encouragement I left with aid station volunteers because I had gotten his number wrong, 18 instead of 13. Oh well, it was still a great day to be an ultrarunner.