I’ll keep this race report short because I go into the course details in my SOB 50K 2016 post.
I came back for another year to take on the Sean O’Brien 50K. Weather was good but the rain from the previous days made the trail conditions a bit tough. There was one section in particular that was extremely muddy. It was frustrating to loose so much time there but hey that’s the fun part about trails. You can run the same trail over and over and it will always be different, Mother Nature has a way of changing things up. My nutrition was good and I was hydrating well. I saw a lot of friends out on the course and it was extremely motivating cheering each other on. When I left the last aid station with 7.5 miles of down hill left that’s when things went a bit south for me. The pounding of the down hill was killing my quads and I couldn’t maintain speed, got so bad at one point I was wishing for more climbs. I took it easy, blocked out the pain and toughed it out for a 7:41 finish about twenty minutes slower than last year but I’m totally fine with that. 32 miles and 6,680 feet of climbing in the bank, It was a great day to be on the trails.
I’d like to end this post with this, The SOB 50K is up there with the hardest races I’ve ever done and I’ve done this thing twice. The views and the support on this course are incredible. It’s definitely not a good first time 50K but it is one that I will keep coming back to. I’ll be there again next year to enjoy everything the trails have to offer. If you are looking for a tough Ultra in Southern California this is it.
Congrats to all the finishers and thanks to all my friends for the support.
Nutrition On the run:
– A 20 ounce bottle of electrolyte drink every hour
– 3 bean burritos. I ate half every hour
– plenty of BASE salt.
– only 1 GU. tried to stay away from them.
– sips of Coke at the aid stations. On the last 7 miles I carried a 8 ounce bottle of watered down Coke to avoid some cramping. sipped it slowly until the finish line.
From Recovery To Endurance 