More speed, less grace than four years ago. I’ll take that trade off. Still running happy.

On Saturday, I broke a personal rule: I ran the same race a second time. The last time I ran it, I had gotten stitches out of my leg the day before. It was a brutal, 12-hour slog, beginning and ending in the dark. This time, I was hoping for a slightly better performance.

This was the North Face 50 mile championship race, in the Marin Headlands of San Francisco. Long story short, I’m proud of the race I ran on Saturday. I finished in 10:40, which is much faster than my time in 2011. I felt very strong, and my spirits were high the entire time. Overall, a good day.

Here are some pictures.

Crossing the start line at 5:03 a.m. They started us in waves, with each one going off a minute after the previous one. I was technically in wave 4, but they didn’t seem to be aggressively checking our bibs, so I started with 3.

Running in the dark, before the sun came up. The trail here was pretty easy to navigate, in that it was wider fire roads and not extremely steep. That said, the rains earlier in the week had shaken a lot of debris off of the trees, so there were leaves, branches, and twigs dotting some of the downhill portions. My headlamp’s light was insufficiently bright for the task, so I trusted my night vision and the much more useful headlamps of my fellow runners.

Sunrise photo, courtesy of Will. The pre-dawn light was welcome – no more headlamp! And the sunrise was gorgeous.

Heading downhill early in the race. Not actually sure where on the trail this was.

Charging up some single track.

The course featured lots of hills, and many of this hills were on single track. This meant that you got into place between a couple of runners and were pretty much stuck there until the trail got wider again. This was actually a blessing in disguise; the single-file nature of these hills meant I had to keep pace with the runners around me. No slacking off! This kept me moving at a very brisk pace. Early in the race, I thought I’d regret the speed up these hills, but it turned out I was up for the task.

This dynamic also meant more of an opportunity to get to know other runners, and there were some very cool people out there! They kept me motivated, even as we leapfrogged ahead of each other on different parts of the course.

Will joining me at the finish line. He came in at 9:18 – a 50-mile PR for him!

Me at the finish. There was actually a heel click here, but the photographer missed it!

More finish line joy.

Will got me a present!

And here are some of my favorite people on the day after the race. Several Antarctica marathon buddies came out to CA to participate in the weekend running fun as well. It was fantastic to be able to hang out with them, especially during this post-race karaoke session.