Today’s Golden Gate 50k served me up a nice bowl of mental toughness training. So, two weeks of struggling to get over 6th Grade Teacher Funk culminated with 31 miles of stumbling toward today’s finish line at Rodeo Beach. Happy to not have gotten off course, a beautiful Bay Area day, gorgeous trails, and a first place finish (it wasn’t exactly a North Face 50mi field). We went off with the 30k runners so I wasn’t even sure I won it until the finish, and not really then–these are more training races than anything. I was content just to sit down, have some soup, and let the results come to me. Someone megaphoned that the first place 50k runner had taken 30min off the course record! Wow, I thought, I was way behind that today. Anyway, we got a good laugh out of it since it turned out the initial 50k results had a runner from some other distance (there’s four races goin’ on–hard to keep track).

Once they figured out that first place didn’t actually average 6:40/mi on a 31mile course with 6500′ of gain, yours truly slipped in the highly coveted top position. I got my beverage coaster, limped the mile back to my car, and drove up the road to visit with more of my ultra-running brethren at San Francisco Running Company.

Good to see Brett & Larissa Rivers, and Jorge Maravilla at SFRC. I picked up a t-shirt and my fave NF shorts. Their shop is sweet, right off the 101, with great trails right out their door. This will quickly evolve to be the next Rogue Valley Runners, serving up fresh new talent daily. Stop by the next time you’re in Marin and/or go for a run with ’em! I’m gonna try and get down for something longish over my spring break. 

Congrats to Sonoma County’s Jady Palko and Suzanna Bon, top finishers today. And congrats as well to all the runners that made up today’s largest Golden Gate 50 & 30k fields. Finally, thanks to The Black Keys for providing moral support today via my, shall we call it, “shuffle.”