Frogs, bugs, and sunshine at the 2024 San Diego 100

When I signed up to do the San Diego 100 I thought about it as a reality check for the Plain 100, which is my big goal race for the fall.  That, and I knew it would be nice to get a break from triple digit temperatures in Tucson.  As the race approached, I looked at the forecast for the Julian area near San Diego and daydreamed about highs in the 80s.  I also wondered if it was even worth trying to do this.

My body and brain already felt hungover from moving across town. While it wasn’t as insane as moving across the country, it’s still a lot to deal with.  As I was exhausting myself packing and planning and trying to keep up with the most important projects at work, I didn’t force myself to stick to my running plan.  After enough years building a consistent base, it doesn’t pay off as much anymore to push myself beyond exhaustion.  As May hurtled into June, I did my best to quiet the guilt and panic that I wasn’t running enough and tried to focus on stabilizing the other parts of my life instead.

When it was time to head to San Diego, I made a new goal to make it to 100k.   After that point, I would see how far I could go but I wouldn’t consider it a failure to drop out.  62.13 miles is still a very long distance to cover in one go, and most of the 12k+ feet of elevation gain happened during that chunk of the course anyway.  My highest volume training week in the last couple months included about 60 miles of running and 10-plus miles of walking, or more like 50 running miles combined if you didn’t count the week that included the Zane Grey 50 Miler.  (We’ll reminisce about that one another time.)

---

The drive between Tucson and San Diego takes you parallel to the Mexican border on Interstate 8.  A while after the sun set and I passed into southern California, Google Maps decided to take me north by way of a lonely, windswept two-lane highway.  As I turned into the tiny town of Ocotillo, my field of vision was filled with bright dots of red lights in the sky, all flashing in sync.  As I got closer and passed through them, I could see the blades of wind turbines turning in the red glow.  They winked at me in the rearview mirror for a while and I wondered what it was like to live in a place like Ocotillo, with these surreal structures filling the landscape.

For the next 30ish miles, I was the only car winding through the night.  My brights shone on skeletal ocotillos and tiny desert mice rushing across the road, as if on a dare.  I inched around a few hairpin turns that seemed thrown in just for funsies.  Surely there were less treacherous ways to get around some big hills.  A couple coffee mugs I’d been planning to donate for weeks clinked against each other in the back of the car on every turn.  On the final stretch up into Julian they clinked every quarter mile as the road swerved and wiggled up the mountain.

After a very frustrating experience where I couldn’t get into my hotel room, I conked out for 3 hours and got up at 4:30 to go to the race start at Lake Cuyamaca.  This race already had everything.  Muffins, coffee, tape and markers for your drop bags.  The sun twinkled over the rolling, grassy landscape and glinted on the green hills sprinkled with white boulders.  We started out slow as these big races always do, shuffling in a sleepy conga line through a few early bottlenecks in the trail and making lots of dad-worthy jokes.  “So what are you running from?”  “If I just keep up this pace, I can probably finish in 72 hours!”  And so on.

We spread out and I enjoyed the luxurious dirt paths and greenery.   The morning went by fast.  After the first sustained climb plus a rocky descent I rolled into the first aid station at Trout Pond.  It was busy and had everything someone would want on a warm, sunny day.  I filled up my ice bandana and started up the next climb.

This was where the bugs started.  Flies and mosquitoes swarmed the trail.  Besides monsoon season, it’s rarely wet and warm enough for these kinds of bugs to really get going in Tucson.  The insects I’m usually the most worried about bumping into are Africanized bees. I decided to listen to a podcast and accept that a bug would sometimes fly into my ear or start sucking my blood.  There’s one spot on my arm that must have an especially tasty vein, because that’s where I had to keep slapping them away.

Luckily, when I got higher up in elevation again they seemed to calm down.  As we ascended up to Cuyamaca Peak, the air got dryer and the heat really started to kick in.  We passed through beautiful spreads of purple, red, and yellow wildflowers in the grass.  I recognized Indian Paintbrush from past mountain adventures in Washington State.  This area also reminded me of Mount Lemmon in Tucson.

The final grind up to the peak was up a paved road that radiated the heat back up into everyone’s wilting bodies.  Everyone who was coming back down from the peak looked like plants who had just been watered, and someone said “you’re gonna feel so good after getting up there!”  They were right.

Again it was time to go down.  On the way to Green Valley I stopped at a creek to douse my hat, my bandana, and my sun shirt which I had turned into a cape under my vest.  I regretted not bringing my filter bottle since my two 500ml water bottles never lasted to the next aid station during the day, and there was a lot of running water along the course.

Another highlight of this section was the part where I almost stepped on a giant snake hanging out on the side of the trail.  I can’t believe how quickly I’ve been able to convince my hyper-vigilant self that snakes are more cool and interesting than scary.  When I saw this one slither away into the bushes, I noted that I needed to keep an eye out for more of them, but I didn’t scream or get freaked out.  I didn’t see enough of this one to identify what type it was.  It didn’t rattle, so it might not have been a venomous snake.

At the Green Valley campground I was greeted by a kid with a sprayer.  “Do ya wanna get sprayed?”  “Sure!”  I said and he sprayed me and declared enthusiastically “the next aid station is water only!!”  I thanked him and made sure to eat a lot of watermelon, grapes, and potatoes.  Constantly eating potatoes is one of my key strategies during ultra marathons when they’re available. If you see photos of me late in a race, that’s probably why I start to resemble one. 

The next stretch was an even hotter climb and I hit a low point.  It’s always tough to start a climb right out of an aid station, when your bottles are at their heaviest and you’ve come to a complete stop for more than a few minutes.  This was a race full of stopping, sitting, and readjusting.  I have a feeling that setting my goal short of 100 was partly to blame.  I think its interesting how my brain and body respond to expectations.

The next section featured an even more exciting snake encounter.  This one showed off by coiling up and posing on the side of the trail.  It didn’t rattle, but I’m pretty sure it was a southern pacific rattlesnake.  This part also featured wading through murky water on front of a photographer in my sports bra, wondering how many snakes there were waiting to bite me in the water, and trying not to wonder how much my flab was poking out of the top of my shorts.

Luckily, I didn’t die of either snakes or shame.  As I got closer to the next water station, a volunteer let me know I was only half a mile away from water and Otter Pops.  That last part turned out to be a lie, but that was OK.  Cold water was more than enough. I put some ice in my bra that barely registered as cold.  This was around mile 36.  The difficulty felt very front-loaded at this race, and as I made my way through the later hours of the day I could see people visibly fading.

After the gently rolling and winding Blue Ribbon trail and a forest road, we crossed a main road and ran parallel to it for a while. This part started to feel long. The golden hour hit and I could hear water rushing past nearby. Getting close to Sweetwater aid station, I saw the race director and a few medical staff coming towards me on the trail. At least one person out there needed help, and we weren’t even halfway through the race yet.

Arriving at Sweetwater felt like an oasis as sunset loomed. I took my time. Some people looked like they were ready to park for a while. I loaded up on food and didn’t feel like leaving. “We’ve still got 20 hours,” I heard someone say who was sitting on the grass, “it’ll be fine.” I had reached this aid station a couple hours ahead of the cutoff and was feeling pretty good about that. Still, I knew it was a trap to feel too comfortable about hanging out indefinitely, and night was approaching which was always slower going. I set off towards the grassy fields that came next.

The next eight miles felt lonely. I was conserving my phone use since my phone battery was almost dead. As we did more climbing, I heard a couple voices ahead that I couldn’t seem to catch up to. At least the bugs were calming down now. I crossed into the Cleveland National Forest and finally crossed paths with more people in the waning light. One of them was definitely barfing. I got to catch a view of some glorious mountains turning pink in the last of the sun.

Once it got properly dark, I saw something small wriggling off to the side of the forest road. It was a tiny amphibian! It might have been a small Arroyo Toad. I caught up to a woman farther up and we chatted alongside each other for a while as we spotted more and more tiny toads crawling around in the dark. She was from San Francisco. We talked about how we both ran Javelina last year and about heat training. “Did they close down the water station?” she asked me. “No,” I said, “we’ll be getting there any minute now.”

At the water station we met up with a runner who had fallen severely behind his race plan. He’d put his headlamp in his drop bag at mile 70, which was still about 20 miles away. Luckily, my waist light was enough to light up the whole road for all three of us. We ran side by side and talked as we pounded down a paved road to where my drop bag waited with my night clothes. He had just finished the Folsom 100 six weeks ago at a decent pace, but was having a much rougher day today. He was in the military and had been stationed in both San Diego and Bahrain. We talked about Guatemala, where he had been born before being adopted by a couple in New York. The miles passed quickly, but we were all still relieved to finally make it to Hammer’s Hideaway at the bottom of the hill.

This is where I lollygagged and procrastinated again for a while. I sat on a cooler, had some soup, methodically went through my drop bag, and changed into all my night layers. I really wanted to lay down and take a nap. I started getting obsessed with the idea of napping. As I was sitting on the cooler and procrastinating, a volunteer came over. “What can I do help you get moving?” he asked. “I want to sleep, but I think what I really need is just to get moving again,” I said. He nodded in agreement and I got up to go. Another volunteer gave me a quesadilla and I headed off into the rocky dark.

Many frogs joined the chorus in the dark. A few times I turned my light towards the edge of the trail and saw a steep drop-off. I had flashbacks of running along Mad River later in the Plain 100k last year. I wasn’t as tired then as I was now, despite it being even later at night by that point. The level of sleep depravation I started to experience now made me feel like I was literally going to fall asleep while running. I was very glad I had my poles to prevent me from rolling down into the crevasse if that happened.

I stopped and saw a tree to lean against up on the right, so I decided to go up there and take a little dirt nap. I immediately started feeling things crawling all over me so I got up and continued up the trail. I noticed now that when I looked at the rocks and trees that they were covered with spiders with long thin legs as well as sizable ants. Eventually I found a flat-ish rock higher up the trail that wasn’t covered in creepy-crawlies. I sat on the rock, turned off my light, and looked up at the stars.

Now I noticed a few other runners coming up the trail so I turned my light on low, not wanting to freak them out by sitting there in complete darkness. I greeted them as they passed and told them I was fine, just taking a breather. Then I made myself get up again, knowing that I wasn’t going to actually get enough rest on this rock to justify not moving.

I followed pretty close behind the last of the runners who had passed me and noticed him wander off the trail into a campground with a tent and hammock. He stopped in confusion and shone his headlight around the camp. I saw the main trail veering off to the right, so I called out to him as quietly as I could and pointed my light down the real trail. We started off again and about 10 minutes later I seriously regretted not making use of the hammock. Of course, it would have been about as good of an idea as passing out on a random person’s porch furniture, which I have done before during drunker times in college.

At last, I saw a bright light down at the bottom of a hill and arrived at the Penny Pines aid station. This aid station was amazing, but it was also the beginning of the end for me. I told myself I could finally nap here for real. There was a guy laying down on a blanket in front of a heater and some camping chairs nearby. I ate mashed potatoes on focaccia bread (my new favorite food for the middle of the night) and drank some coffee. A volunteer gave me a space blanket. I planted myself near the heater and wrapped myself in the crinkly blanket with my buff pulled up over my entire face. I heard a volunteer trying to coax the guy on the blanket to get up, but it was clear this guy was done. “I’m not gonna be that guy,” I told myself self-righteously as I dozed off amid the loud music and voices.

I’m not sure how long I actually slept for, but thank God for the volunteer who gently nudged me awake. I got up and psyched myself up to get to the next aid station. My luxurious time buffer was dwindling away by this point with all the stopping and sitting. I was at about mile 59, it was around 1:40 AM now, and I needed to leave the 64 mile aid station by 3:30 AM. Five miles in almost two hours sounded completely doable and I was feeling a lot better. I set off into the dark again and made pretty good time for a while, until I reached a big open area with no clear trail marked in any direction.

I stopped. I inspected the ground and was pretty sure I saw prints from running shoes, even though I couldn’t spot any markers. I started off in that direction and eventually got to a gate. There wasn’t a marker on the gate, either. Another bad sign. Nevertheless, I could hear voices in the distance that sounded like they were cheering, so I headed on into the trees.

Finally, I realized that the tracks on the ground were from a bike tire that had very similar treads to a trail shoe. I also still hadn’t seen any markers in a while. I was suddenly sure I was going the wrong way. I stopped and inspected the maps on my phone, but I had trouble actually using them to decide where I should have turned instead. I turned around and went back to the original open area where I got confused.

I spotted an orange flag tied to a branch this time, but it had stripes on it, which I hadn’t seen on any of the other markers. Did that mean it was the wrong way? I went up the trail a bit and saw another striped marker. I looked behind me and saw headlights approaching, so I decided to wait and ask for help.

The other runners seemed pretty sure that this was the right way, so I turned on the gas (or rather the fumes at this point) and charged up the trail, knowing that I’d lost a ton of time with my confusion and wrong turn. I put on my music and “Kashmir” came up on shuffle. It was perfectly intense and dramatic. I accepted that I might not make it, but I also didn’t want to give up until someone actually told me I was done.

The last few miles to the Meadows aid station were some of the hardest to run. Despite my brief recharge from my Penny Pines nap, I still felt more tired than I have ever felt at a race. At long last I charged into Meadows. “You have 5 minutes!” said a volunteer. “You might be able to make it to the next aid station, but it’s gonna be tight.” I grabbed water and Coke and moved on, doing the math and realizing it was highly unlikely I was going to cover 6.3 miles in an hour and a half. I thanked the volunteers and let them know I still felt like giving it a try.

I pushed pretty hard again in the next stretch. But part of it was rocky, part of it was through wet and bumpy grassland, and I felt like I was going to pass out. At one point I had to climb on top of a narrow concrete block to cross a pond or something and I thought “this is it, this is where I crack my skull open.” Spoiler alert, I didn’t crack my skull open and I caught up to a runner and his pacer. We were all in about the same mode of not having any real running juice left. One of them panicked when he thought I was the course sweeper.

Then we got to some beautiful downhill and I was somehow able to rally again. I ran some miles like felt like they were flying but were probably about half as fast as they felt. I didn’t care because I felt good that I was moving this well. The three of us passed a few people and chatted about the race. The other runner seemed pretty sure we’d make it. I also tried to stay optimistic, but I knew my watch said otherwise. Eventually I got ahead of them, until we hit one last small climb and I knew I had to walk.

I started noticing birds chirping around me in the dark. “They must be night birds,” I thought with my one remaining brain cell. Then I noticed the sky lightening on the horizon. Oh yeah that’s right, we’d been running all night and now the sun was coming up! I enjoyed the approaching sunrise, despite the sinking feeling that this would be the end of my race.

By the time I got to the Red Tail Roost aid station, I think it was about twelve minutes after the cutoff time and the volunteers let me know they had to take my bib. The comfort-seeking part of my brain felt very OK with this, knowing that meant I would be in bed soon instead of stumbling 20+ miles down the Pacific Crest Trail. My watch when I stopped said almost 73 miles. I knew that was still a lot to have fought through on three hours of sleep and with plenty of heat and climbing along the way.

Part of me knew that if I hadn’t run at least two extra miles while getting lost, things could have been different. But even more than that, I had spent way too much time stopping and convincing myself that if I could just sleep, all my problems would be solved. It reminds me of something that happened when I ran the Javelina Jundred. Towards the end of Javelina I got totally convinced that I just needed to go to the bathroom to feel awesome again. I literally spent an hour in portapotties, not because I actually needed to, but because my brain was trying to find some good excuse to stop.

When I got pulled from the race, I joined a few others in the same situation. The volunteers as always were extremely kind and helpful. I ate a bunch of warm and satisfying leftover rice balls and drank some water while they packed up the aid station. One of them offered to drive me back to my car. I used a space blanket to shield her car from my funk.

We chatted about how this was her first time at an event like this and that she’d been up since 4pm the day before. She had brought a sleeping bag but never actually slept. On the way we stopped to take in one of the most beautiful and pink mountain sunrises that I’ve ever seen. I literally fell asleep while talking, woke up, and carried on the conversation like nothing had happened. I think this happened more than once.

Back at my car I turned on the heater and passed out. I was wrapped in the space blanket like a baked potato roasting in foil. (What did I say about slowly turning into a potato?) At one point I woke up and switched from the heater to AC. Then I slept some more. The next time I woke up, I felt good enough to drive back to the hotel and pass out again in a bed this time after taking off my filthy clothes.

After getting one more solid nap in, I drank a bunch of electrolytes mixed with collagen and started my 6 hour drive back home. I noticed that I didn’t have to take any Tylenol to do the drive or sleep comfortably for this one, which was surprising, since that’s usually the hardest part for me right after running anything that is 50+ miles.

The mental aspect of ultrarunning is one of my favorite things about the sport. I love competing against myself while feeling the shared energy of other people doing the same thing. I made mistakes at this race that I’d already learned from at other races. I thought that I had done a better job of overcoming them by now. But lack of sleep changes everything. You have to rely on strict mental habits and rules more than good judgement in the moment.

And I wasn’t the only person who had a harder time than usual. A few days after the race, I found out the finish rate was only 52%! A lot of experienced ultrarunners didn’t make it to the end.

Here’s what I would have done differently if I was in the same situation again:

• I would have promised myself a nap at every aid station without actually napping and just ‘saved it for the next one.’ I do something similar during hot training runs where I promise myself a Slurpee if I finish a certain number of miles. Then when I’m done I tell myself to save it for next time. With the Slurpee promise, I think that I visualize the thing I want so clearly that I feel like I’ve already had it. With the napping promise, I think I would have eventually felt less tired without actually resting. That is the weird magic of not stopping – somehow you will always feel better again, as long as you keep eating and drinking.
• I should have downloaded the GPX file onto my phone for the trickier parts. This one was a no brainer but I got lazy.
• I should have used bug spray specifically to repel ticks, and checked for ticks right away. We ran through so much long grass and other vegetation. I did shower fairly soon after, but I didn’t think much about ticks until later, and now that’s a new worry hovering in the back of my mind.

And to be fair, here’s some things that I think went really well:

• Talking to people and getting to know them when I got the chance – shared misery in nature creates the perfect environment for introverted people like me to break out of their shell.
• Eating and drinking consistently – this is where my mental rules are set in stone and I don’t tend to have problems after doing this a lot during training. I take this for granted, since I did overhear a lot of people not wanting to eat or having stomach issues.
• Letting myself enjoy the experience – this is the upside of having low expectations, and something I always try to do, even when I’m putting more pressure on myself. Every part of this race had its beauty and I felt so glad to be able to do this.

I recommend this race for anyone who wants to do a challenging 100 miler that feels like a local race. And it’s a Western States qualifier if that’s something that you’re going after! Just try to get more than three hours of sleep the day before, don’t keep stopping, drink water, and you’ll be fine. 🙂