Context/Before
I’m training for a few long races this fall, and a few weeks ago realized I should probably get some long training runs in before those longer races. I decided to run Rodeo Beach 50k on August 5th with Inside Trail. I’ve run it twice before – once in 2019 when I came in 2nd with a 5:49, and once in 2018 when I ran it in 6:35 (and I guess didn’t write about it? Weird).
I registered for the race same day, so there wasn’t a lot of prep / planning here. My goal was mostly to just get some miles down and not have to plan my own route. My time target was loosely an easy 6:30 or so, and I finished in 6:28, so that was spot on.
Overall this was a super fun day on a course I know well. I felt good at the end – pretty fresh, considering I did not taper at all and was not racing it. Also, ITR does good races and I hadn’t run with them for a while, so it was fun to be back.
Here are some pictures with commentary.
Note: Rodeo Beach is pronounced roh-DAY-oh (source: Wikipedia, edited by Kate)
Course Description
The course consists of two laps. The first lap is 18 miles, and the second lap is 12 miles (NB – some rounding on the math below but largely this is correct).
The first lap consists of a 12-mile loop that goes through the Tennessee Valley Trailhead/Aid Station; from that aid station, there’s another loop (6 miles), that bring you back to the Tennessee Valley Aid Station.
On the second lap, you do the 12-mile loop again but skip the 6 mile add on.
The course has six major climbs, of which four are on the first loop.
- Climb 1: A slow ascent with a pretty shallow grade. I was able to run most of this. This is followed by a traverse, then then a glorious 1-2 mile downhill to Tennessee Valley.
- Climb 2+3: the 5 mile loop out of Tennessee Valley had one major and one minor climb. The first came right after the aid station, and the second was a set of stairs after a gentle downhill along the coast, and then we come back to Tennessee Valley.
- Climb 4: The steepest hill of the course. This one comes between Tennessee Valley (2nd pass) and the start/finish.
- Climb 5: Do climb 1 again
- Climb 6: do climb 4 again
Lap 1
On the first lap, it was pretty foggy at the beginning, with some wind on the eastern side of the course. I was glad to have a longer sleeve shirt.
I was pretty grumpy during most of this section and it wasn’t totally clear why. Possible reasons:
- It was cold (unlikely reason)
- There were a lot of people and I didn’t want to talk to them (medium-high likely reason; e.g. there was a group of four bro-runners who were DETERMINED to take up the whole trail and use poles; we were yo-yoing the whole first lap. If you’re reading this – I loved your guys’ energy, but share the trail! 😂 )
- I wasn’t going very fast because I hadn’t tapered and my body was really tired from a high-mileage prior week (medium likely reason, but I was also not trying to go very fast, but even knowing this intellectually didn’t make it feel a lot better)
I was enjoying the course quite a bit, however. On the first lap specifically:
- Gorgeous cloud forest of eucalyptus trees in the fog, with sun rays coming through (see pictures below)
- The stair climb (Climb 3) – anything stupidly hard just seems silly and therefore entertaining
The race really turned around for me after Climb 4, when the course descends back to the start/finish area. I felt really strong and was having a lot of fun on the downhill, and felt like I could easily clock out another 13 miles.
Lap 2
Lap 2 was a lot of fun. I powered up the uphills and cruised the downhills and just had a good time the entire way.
There were a lot fewer people on the course by this point – there were only about 50 people running the 50k, and a lot more people running the 30k; the people running the 30k stopped after Lap 1. So it was pretty empty on the course for Lap 2, which was great.
My downhill game was really strong on this course – nobody passed me on any downhills. I was moving pretty quickly.
Afterwards
At the finish line, I took a gratuitous jumping photo, and some spectator who did not run 31 miles laughed at me, but I was pretty impressed with my agility after running 31 miles.
Overall this was a pretty fun, easy, low-key race. I got what I wanted out of it, which was a good training run, with trail variety different than my normal training trails, and a not-super-slow time relative to lack of tapering.
BRB Running 