Cuyamaca 100K

“Life is short. Running makes it seem longer.”

I read the sign a volunteer had placed beside the trail as I power hiked up the final grade to Cuyamaca Peak, at roughly mile 23 of the 62-mile long course. I was 3 hours and 40 minutes into the race and now, at the end of the longest climb, was relishing the idea of a sponge soak soon. Nick was a minute or two behind me, and since we had promised we’d each run our own races, no matter where that put us in relation to the other, I focused on refilling my water, downing a few slices of warm watermelon, and stuffing ice into my sports bra. This part of the Cuyamaca 100K was a short out-and-back, and I’d seen first and second place men maybe five minutes ahead, both looking as equally hot as I felt. That put Nick and I in third and fourth, but who knew where the other 280-something runners were behind us. It was time to move.

Loop One: 0-31.8

I’ve had a long term goal of completing all of the major San Diego trail races since I started trail running in 2014. Since then, I’ve finished San Diego 100, Peak Marathon, Oriflamme 50K, Old West 50K, San Diego 50/Marathon, PCT 50, and Noble Canyon 50K. I still have a few to go, and yesterday just checked off Cuyamaca 100K, a three-loop course that runs on trails that, somehow, don’t traverse those of the other trail races I’ve done. I had been looking forward to the race since I was selected from the waitlist back in July, but as the days drew nearer, it started to seem less and less likely that the race would go well. 

For one, this summer has been busy, culminating with a 50K in Manning Park a little over three weeks ago. After that race, Nick and I spent a day packing up our belongings after two months spent in Canada, then driving from Vancouver, BC to San Luis Obispo, CA, with ten animals, in under 24 hours. To say we were overtired and stiff from cramped legs and lack of sleep was an understatement. Since then, we’ve both been dealing with minor aches and pains. In an attempt to feel better for the race, we hunkered down on recovery last week, visiting the acupuncturist and chiropractor and prioritizing all of the small things that might add up to something big enough to equal Healed. By Friday night, hours before the race, I’d say we were 75% there. 

With that in mind, I had very rough goals for the race, which in order of importance were finishing, winning, and getting the course record. Nice and easy, right? Since these pressures were entirely internal, it was easy for me to feel light and joyful at the start of the race, even if 62 miles still sounded like a daunting number of miles to run in a day. 

Nick and I set our alarms for 4 a.m., then rolled out on our yoga mat, made matcha lattes, and navigated our way from our Airbnb to Camp Cuyamaca, an hour east of San Diego. Neither of us had put much planning into the race, despite the distance, and without a crew we each had simply stuffed in an extra pair of shoes, a headlamp, and extra nutrition to grab between loops.

“Just checking,” Nick said as we took our places at the start. “We’re each running our own races?”

“Exactly,” I replied. “Wherever that puts us.” 

Turns out, that put us right next to each other. 

From the start we found ourselves running the early miles together, either passing or being passed as we navigated through chilly creek crossings and across meadows still darkened by twilight. Though my fingers were cold, I could tell the day would heat up fast as I’d feel warm, trapped air through some of the canyons. In the first 10-12 miles, when the field hadn’t yet dispersed, we chatted with other runners and stayed on top of nutrition and hydration. I figured that the more calories I could get in early on, the better I’d fare. I doubted things would go well in the heat of the day, and I wanted some sort of reserve. 

As the course began to wind its way up the 6 mile, 2,600 foot climb to the top of Cuyamaca Peak, I began to catch other runners. Nick trailed behind me, and we made steady progress while still aiming to run conservatively due to the heat. Near the top, I realized we had made our way from 10th and 11th to 3rd and 4th, though my focus was more on staying hydrated on future sections; I had misjudged the length of this climb and had opted to take only one bottle of water, which meant I ran out halfway up the climb. That aid station water, when I finally got there, never tasted so good. 

Not knowing where the other runners were behind us, and wanting to keep running while we still felt okay, we hurried back down and onto the Conejos Trail, one of the few trails I recognized. It had been five years since I had been on it, and I swear it had just gotten rockier. My achilles, which had been bothering me a little, started to act up and I began to feel other muscles compensate.

I relaxed as Conejos flattened out, and the next several sections were rolling, but runnable. At mile 28, I noticed Stonewall Peak in the distance and realized we were coming into Paso Picacho, which had been decorated to look like a Tiki bar complete with volunteers wearing leis and grass skirts. I refilled my water again, dumped some ice into my sports bra, and began to leave the aid station when my eyes seemed to recognize the figure in front of me before my brain did. Suddenly, it clicked.

“Robert!” Robert “The Impatient Hiker” Hunt is a good friend we hadn’t seen in a while, and as unaware that we were that he was volunteering, he had no idea we’d be racing. After a quick hug, we both carried on to the remaining 3.6 miles of loop one. Nick had become quiet, and I figured he was battling some lows. Luckily I was still feeling strong and as luck would have it, the roles would be reversed soon enough.

Loop Two: 31.8-44.6

As we came into the finish, Nick just a few seconds behind me, I recognized so many faces: Scotty Mills, Chris Siegel, Jesse Haynes and Keira Henninger, Paloma Ortiz, Becca and Ricky Roane…it’s one thing to feel a community amongst trail runners and another to feel like you’re in your community of trail runners. In this way, the start/finish of each loop felt welcoming and fun. Even so, this was still a race and the goal is always to get in and out as fast as you can. Volunteers refilled my bottles while I swapped out my nutrition, some more salt pills, and split a sparkling water with Nick. Within two minutes, we were back out onto the second loop, following not orange markers of the first loop, but now blue markers of the second loop. 

We had come into loop two in 5 hours, 8 minutes, which meant we had covered the first 50K in a little over 5 hours, a decently fast time. I felt a bit hot and tired, and so did the muscles I had been using to move uphill with an achilles that wasn’t functioning quite right. As the grades became steeper, and the temperature continued to heat up, we switched into power hiking and suffered through exposed meadows with rutted out trails, at time catching our toes on hidden rocks and uneven terrain. At one point, we passed two hikers who took the time to let us pass, but also took the time to say, “That guy in the orange is way ahead of you. You’ll never catch him.” The guy in the orange, we figured, was in first place, but there was still the heat of the day to run through and 25 miles to go. There was time, but there sure wasn’t any shade. 

The smell of sage got stronger as the day got hotter and hotter, my desire to run everything began to dwindle. Still, we pushed on, knowing that the best we could do was take as much water as we could reasonably carry, continue drinking small sips, and dunking ourselves in water whenever we had the chance. 

At the miles wore on, we both faltered, this time hitting a low point that lasted until the next aid station where I crouched down to give my legs a break as I refilled my bottles once again. With another 4.6 miles to go before the end of loop two, I needed to continue staying cool, so took in small sips of the ice water in one bottle while spraying down my face, my neck, and my legs with the other bottle every few minutes. The gels I had brought were starting to sound downright bad in the heat, but I took in another, knowing that if I wanted to finish the race, I needed to keep eating. 

Loop Three: 44.6 to 62.8

Coming into the end of loop two was both relieving and daunting. While it was nice to know that two thirds of the race were complete, it was challenging to leave the start/finish knowing there was still 18 miles and likely three plus hours of running left before I could finally take a seat. Volunteers helped refill my bottles once more (how many times had this happened by the end of the race? Fifteen?) And with gels no longer working for me, I started stuffing pretzels and potato chips into baggies and fitting what I could into my pack. As I swallowed a handful of pretzels between this packing, a volunteer suddenly came up to me and said that second place female had just come in behind me and I needed to go! This caught me off guard, as I hadn’t seen another female since the first out-and-back at mile 8.5, and even then I had calculated her to be about 6 minutes back. Suddenly my only thought was to get out of the aid station immediately. Unfortunately, this meant that I also forgot to cool myself down with more ice and a sponge bath, which I would pay for on the next long, hot section.

Despite Nick’s lows earlier on, he started feeling better, right in time for me to begin to feel despair. Was second place female right behind me? Where were the other males? Were they right behind us too? Why was I moving so slow? Why was the aid station so far away? I had managed to maintain a positive, measured outlook on the race up until now, but with this sudden comment about placements, I fell apart. 

But, I kept moving forward, and now with Nick ahead of me, I did what I could to run. As we turned onto Green Valley and another long slog of a climb, I thought back to the canyon I had crossed during Angeles Crest 100 last year, and how that descent into that canyon during the hottest part of the course had almost cost me the race, so while it felt demoralizing to move so slow, it also felt like the best my body could do in the heat. Eventually we heard voices and saw three runners actually running, not just hiking, up behind us, and they were moving. As they passed us, Nick encouraged us to try and keep up, but within a few running steps realized we were in no shape to match these guys and carried on at our own pace instead. At mile 51.4, we reached Sunrise, which meant that the rolling, rocky, and windy miles of the PCT were next. I didn’t feel strong through here, but kept my head down with Nick behind me. Suddenly, Nick screamed in pain. “Heat cramps!” He yelled. “Go on without me!” After having run 53 miles of the race together, there was no way I was leaving him behind while he writhed in pain, so took the time to eat and tackle the next hill. When he caught up to me again, I increased the pace to a light jog and we carried on, mostly in silence, until the final aid station at mile 56. 

With 6.8 miles to go, I started to feel the pressure. Sure, I still hadn’t seen second place female, I reasoned, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t right behind me. She could be on the next curve back, or waiting to pass me if I showed a moment of weakness. I looked back again and again, expecting to see this ghost runner racing toward me, ready to challenge my legs when I could barely get myself to the finish. Any second now, she was coming. I knew it.

When we arrived at the final aid station, we had been moving at 12-13 minute miles; when we left, we began to increase the pace, going from an 11-minute mile on the rolling single track down to 10, and then 9, and finally 8-minute miles as we raced down the fire road and into the finish. 

“Come on, Nick! We’ve got this,” I said as I turned my hat backward, trying to encapsulate an alter ego of myself who was not in pain and was ready to actually race to the finish. Try to pass me now, second place female! I thought. 

Finally, the campground came into view and I felt myself relax. I wasn’t going to be passed at the end of the race, and Nick and I would have the memory of having successfully finished a 100K race together. 

And with that, another San Diego race is complete and we have the unique opportunity to talk about specific moments of the race that we both experienced, at the same time. I recognize that it’s rare for a couple to share similar fitness, and rarer still to train so much together and feel thrilled to get to race together too. Maybe one day Nick will pass me, or I’ll pass him, and we’ll cheer the other person on, but for now I think we’re both relishing the present. 

Thank you to RD Scott Crellin, the volunteers, and the San Diego trail running community for such a fun, supportive race. Now it’s time to take a few weeks off to prioritize rest before beginning the next training block toward HURT 100 in the new year. 

For a neat analysis of our individual post-race reflections, check out this table below. For more information about this post-race performance analysis, you can read Nick’s race report on our website, here.