Canyons 100k

If nothing else, Canyons 100k is aptly named — the race is a journey through canyons and more canyons. I'm not quite sure I realized how big of a race this was when I signed up. Not only is it a Golden Ticket race for the Western States 100, but it gives top 3 automatic entry into CCC at UTMB, and runs along ~28ish miles of the Western States course.

As such, it draws quite the crowd of professional ultra runners including previous Western States winners, Hardrock winners, UTMB podium finishers, and many more on both the men's and women's side.

This was also my first race put on by UTMB. UTMB is the "private equity" of the ultrarunning world (but not in a bad way!) — they run many serious ultramarathons across the world, and their races are much more professionally put on than many others: great aid stations, volunteers, course markings, etc. It was a fun experience and I'm looking forward to many more in the coming years (and hopefully a run at the classic UTMB 100 at some point).

Lead-up

Many of my race weekends thus far have been alone, but I was lucky enough to have Connor (who was running the 50k) and Eliza with me this weekend. I flew into SF a few days early and stayed with them before we went out to Auburn on Friday morning.

Auburn is known as the endurance capital of the world — although we heard rumors that it should also be called the poison oak capital of the world (but more on that later). Bib pickup was smooth, right into a quick shakeout. I knew Western States has its iconic finish on the track, so I made Connor come with me to hunt down the track just to see it. Some day I'll finish there. Then back to packing at the Airbnb.

I was planning on around 14 hours out and ~75g/hr of carbs (about 1050g of carbs total, or 1.05kg of carbs). We were allowed a drop bag at mile ~30, so I planned to carry about 65% of my fuel to start and grab the other 35% at the halfway mark — giving myself a bit of leeway if I needed more carbs early.

Morning of

Canyons 100k starts at 5am in China Wall, about 100k away. This means the buses to the start leave anywhere between 2:45 and 3:45am. Yikes. I set my alarm for 1:55 and woke up feeling wide awake at 1:45am. Not sure how I pulled that one off. Eliza drove me to the bus pickup at around 2:45am (you're a saint for that, Eliza), I was on a bus and heading up by 3:10 or so, and we got to China Wall around 4:30.

The main excitement from the start was that someone had burned down the porta potties at the start line??? All 24 of them were just gone — burnt entirely to the ground in the middle of the night. As you can imagine, it isn't easy to find porta potties at 2am, but they managed to get a handful shipped up from Forest Hill to China Wall. This definitely led to some longer lines but wasn't a huge issue.

Pretty quickly the elite men were off, then the elite women, then we were up.

Race

The start of this race is verrrrrry friendly. 8 miles of mostly runnable rolling downhill. I ran this stretch entirely to feel with a pretty small group of 5-8 people. We were just cruising, not really pushing at all and also trying not to beat the quads up, but running for most of this stretch. I had to pee a few times in here which isn't abnormal, albeit slightly annoying. Around mile 6-7 I also stopped to retie my shoes — they were a bit loose and my foot and heel were sliding around more than was comfortable, especially as it got steeper down.

Pretty quickly we hit the river at the bottom and were into the first climb. During this climb my group of 6 or so caught up to about 25, and then ballooned into a group of about 35 people. I wasn't too upset as it helped me chill a bit on this first climb, but the conga train was out for sure. We got over the first climb, rolled about another mile, and hit Deadwood #1, the first aid station.

Right as I was coming into Deadwood #1, I got to see the leaders coming through from their out and back, which was awesome. I recognized and said hello to Zach Miller and Hayden Hawks as they were ripping through. I had a very quick stop at Deadwood #1 — refilled my front flasks, added some carb powder to them, and took off heading down to Swinging Bridge. The first mile or so out of aid was chill, but it got quite steep right after that.

If you were curious where my legs got beat up, it was in the mile and a half down to Swinging Bridge and then the mile and a half climbing back up. This stretch is about 1700 feet of descent, a U-turn, and about 1700 feet of climbing. Woof.

I was doing my best not to thrash my quads on the descent, but there was kinda no other option — if I slowed down it almost would've been worse, and walking felt silly on the down, so it is what it is. About a half mile from the bridge I caught up to a group of 2 older guys and latched onto them, listening to their conversation a bit. I had a fleeting thought I recognized one of them to be Nick Thompson (CEO of the Atlantic, WR holder in the 50k for 45+, 2:29 marathoner). I wasn't sure though, so held my tongue for a bit. We hit the bridge, and on the U-turn I saw his name on his bib as Nicholas!

My first thought was: woah, so cool! I get to share some miles with Nick Thompson. My second thought was: "oh shit — he's way faster than me lol, did I go out too hard??" Hint: yes.

We dropped the other guy who was with Nick, and I quickly introduced myself: "Hey Nick — my name is Hamilton and I actually also live in New York too." We had a nice chat through this stretch about living and training in New York, our upcoming races, his kid's college application process, and the like. I kinda had a feeling I was pushing a bit hard on the climb, but I also felt decently within myself even though my HR was pretty high. Having a chat in this stretch made the steep climb a lot more bearable, and pretty quickly we were at Deadwood #2.

From Deadwood #2 down to the next river was my favorite stretch of the whole race. I had taken some gels and was up on my carbs so was feeling great, and it was the PERFECT runnable, descending single track you dream about. Additionally this stretch is where we picked up the Western States 100 course, so I was enjoying that bit as well! I was passing people, felt phenomenal, and was barely pushing this stretch — clicking off 9-9:30's. The miles disappeared.

What goes down must come up though, and pretty quickly we were at the river again and starting the 3rd major climb of the race up to Michigan Bluff. Again I was pushing decently in this stretch, but genuinely felt pretty good. My legs had enough life, I was moving well, and my HR was in a reasonable range in here (155-165 for the most part). I got into Michigan Bluff fairly quickly, and was in and out pretty fast too, though I did grab some to eat. Being at such a famous aid station was pretty cool — it made me look forward to watching Western States again this year!

After a quick descent then climb from Michigan Bluff, we dropped down again to a river and traversed over through the canyon. This section I could tell I was a bit off. My stomach was bothering me, I was really warm too (the projected high was 60 for the day but it felt hotter already), and I was really hungry. I was taking in my nutrition mostly as planned but was still just feeling a bit off — nothing crazy. We did have a water crossing in this stretch which was both unavoidable and decently annoying.

Thankfully it was only a 2.5 mile climb up to Foresthill from here, and my drop bag with fresh socks. This climb wasn't that bad, and the descent along the road for a half mile into Foresthill was one of the coolest parts of the race for me. What a cool aid station! I got in there, changed socks, had a quesadilla or two, reloaded my pack with nutrition, and again pretty quickly was on the way out.

There were some jokes about Auburn being the poison oak capital of the world, and after running this race I'm pretty sure that's true. I did my best to avoid it, but man — we were running through overgrown trails with it up to our shoulders. Impossible to avoid. I somehow came out mostly unscathed though, which was nice.

I knew I needed electrolytes in here, but they didn't have any at the aid station and I had packed mostly carbs as I was anticipating a much colder day than we got. I ate some pickles and a potato or two with salt to try to make up for it, but I was behind already and entering into two of the longest gaps between aid stations — and also at the hottest part of the day.

I kinda thought I would just be ok — the terrain for the next stretches wasn't bad, I had been moving well so far, and didn't anticipate getting crushed. But this 3rd quarter of the race (~28.5-47.5) crushed me. With only Cal #2 in the middle, this stretch was split as an 8.5 and 9.5 mile gap between aid stations. Woof.

I felt ok the first bit coming out of Foresthill on the steep descent, but when it leveled off I started feeling pretty bad. I actually had the gaps between aid switched here — I thought it was 9.5 then 8.5, so after that 3-3.5 mile descent I was telling myself just 6 miles to aid.

I had this happen at the Leadville 50 last year during the final descent too, but I was getting a very sharp pain in my diaphragm and around on my back too in the same area. This trickled up into my traps and neck as well. This pain made running super difficult. I could move for a quarter mile or so but the sharp pain would come on and I'd have to stop and walk. Additionally, I stopped to pee somewhere in here and it was a pretty gnarly brown color... not ideal. I knew I needed to drink more but also didn't want to run out of water as I only had about 1.5L or so left for this stretch.

I'm not super sure where this pain comes from. My best guess is during the first 4 climbs I was pretty hunched over on my poles, breathing hard, and also had my pack squeezing me a bit. I probably went out a bit too fast too and was working pretty hard during these climbs — so maybe the lactic acid was building up less in my legs (which I had trained pretty well) and more so in my back, diaphragm, and neck, as I hadn't trained going quite this hard and with poles.

I'm writing this 2 days later and taking a super deep breath is still a challenge, so you can imagine the rest of the race was a grind.

I got pretty frustrated in this stretch too. The terrain was very runnable and pretty fast, and my legs actually felt ok, but running was very painful and I just physically felt pretty poorly — which trickled into the mental side of it. (I was very envious of Connor's 50k during this part! I split my 50k in about 6:45 or so, and I realized Connor would be finishing his race pretty soon after this despite starting 2 hours later.)

Mistaking the mileage to Cal #2 was a blessing in disguise. I thought I had a mile to go and then boom — a wild aid station came out of nowhere.

I came into Cal #2 and collapsed into a chair. I hadn't spent more than 2 minutes at any aid station thus far (barring the change of socks) but I knew this one would be a bit longer. The only saving grace here was that once I sat down and looked around, I saw about 10 other runners looking about as badly as I felt. There's something sadistic about it, but seeing other people also suffering somehow made it better.

I probably sat here for 5-6 minutes and slammed some water and food — a lesson I've learned from other ultras is when you're feeling bad, eat as much as you can, so that's what I did. Drank a few glasses of Coke as well here, loaded up my bottles, and prepared for what I knew would be a slog to Driver's Flat.

Out of Cal #2 was a steep descent for a couple miles, into a flat/rolling 5 mile stretch to Rucky Chucky, before we split from the Western States 100 course (which crosses the river at Rucky Chucky) and climbed up 2 miles to Driver's Flat. This section went marginally better than the first 8.5 miles, but not by much. The food helped and I was eating a ton, but running was still pretty painful so I was mixing it in as I could. A lot of my miles here were between 11-14 minutes, which was probably about half a mile of running at 9:30 pace and half a mile hiking at 16 min pace (obviously mixed in a ton). Looking at those splits, it's definitely a lot better than I was feeling here lol.

The climb was actually a nice break almost. It was steep, but my diaphragm felt way better walking the climb than trying to run — although being hunched over hurt, so I tried to stand up as straight as possible to open the rib cage up. I couldn't really tell what was going on, but that definitely helped a bit, so I was stretching a ton on the climb just trying to get some air in and loosen my lungs.

Driver's Flat was a nice break. I got to see Eliza and Connor finally, and had messaged them I needed electrolytes and carbs badly. They loaded up my bottles with both, and I changed my socks again here (we had gone through a few more river crossings heading into Driver's Flat so my feet were soaked again). We took some quick pictures, I asked about Connor's race (which he crushed in 5:02!!!), and then figured I should probably get on my way. Finish line wasn't getting any closer while sitting there.

Either Eliza or Connor at this point said something like "16 miles to go from here, you got this." This bit actually caught me off guard a little somehow — I'm not sure I had really done the math of how far we had come and just how much there was to go (about 25% of the race...). I think one of my superpowers is to break things up into bite-sized tasks. When running an ultramarathon, I almost never think of the total distance or the total amount of climbing (trying to digest 62 or 100 miles is impossible). Instead, it's always aid station to aid station. Similarly with building a startup, I think building a company from scratch to hundreds of thousands or millions in revenue feels impossible — but building one thing this week, onboarding a customer the next week, and just doing what needs to be done each day, and all the sudden it just works out. With this, I was only thinking in terms of aid stations, and knew I had one more big gap (8 miles or so) then 2 ~4-ish mile sections and I was done. 8 and then 4 and 4 somehow sounds way better than 16, even after the race!

From Driver's Flat I was feeling physically so much better. My diaphragm was still killing me, but it was at least manageable now and the electrolytes were finally hitting so I was significantly less dehydrated. The next stretch was kinda gradually up for a few miles (with a few punchy bits in there), then rolling for a few miles, and then into a steep descent. It finally leveled off after that for the last two miles or so before Mammoth Bar aid station. I was running ok in this bit and passed a few people into the aid. I had a quick stop at Mammoth Bar — maybe 90 seconds to refill water — and was out, straight into the next climb. This one was pretty punchy, especially 55 miles into the race. That being said, I caught 2 people on this climb too, so I felt like I was moving ok all things considered. The climb was only about a mile or a little more, so not that bad — but just steep and never really let up.

The drop down off of this climb was awesome. I wished I was running 6 min miles on this (it felt like I was), but I still managed to click off a few 11 min miles on the drop down and into the Confluence — the final aid station. There was a point coming in where I was walking about a quarter mile out on a little climb into the aid station, but there were two photographers in the distance, so naturally I had to kick it into gear and put on a smile — ouch. I spent about 60 seconds at the last aid station — filled my water, had 3 orange slices, then on the road again. The aid station did have one of the prettiest views of the whole race, of what I'm sure is some famous bridge! Sadly I didn't appreciate it much.

Less than 4 to go.

I was on the road, then next to the river for a little. 3 to go. Dropped off onto a path next to a bridge. Gradual incline and I was actually running pretty well here. I knew there was one last climb but didn't know where, so was waiting for it the whole time. I was moving though, so just kept my head down and kept jogging. I passed some of the final 100 mile finishers during this stretch.

I remember the Run Rabbit Run 50 miler in 2023. The last 10 miles or so you overlap with the 100 mile finishers. That was my first time ever seeing someone at mile 90+ of 100, and I just couldn't believe how grim these people looked. I had the same experience during Canyons. "Wow. Glad I'm doing better than they are."

Finally I hit the climb. Connor said this one wasn't as bad as the 2nd to last one, and he was right. 1 to go. I was making good progress even up the climb, then quickly turned onto the road! I had watched the livestreams of Western States for the last few years and watched people run it in on the roads of Auburn. Pretty surreal to be doing that too. Sneaky uphill though still for a bit! Finally we crested the hill and I started running it in. About 3/4 of a mile to go. I actually felt really good and was happy with how my legs were feeling. I passed a good number of 100k and 100 mile finishers on the streets and was running it in pretty fast (9:30 pace). Finally we took the left, another left, a right, and the final right onto Main Street. I saw Eliza and Connor on the side and ran it in for the finish!

Thoughts

I was pretty happy with how my legs felt all things considered. I was running in the last couple of miles and my legs were turning over ok. I was however discouraged with how the race went in general. My fitness leading in was really good. My taper was great. I did more climbing in a block than ever before — and still was pretty cooked by mile 32 or so. I'm happy I finished well, but there's a lot to figure out before Leadville this summer. I think I just felt pretty bad for a lot of this race and wasn't having as much fun as I want to have during these things. The pain cave is expected, but somehow this one was a bit different.

On the positives, my feet had almost no issues even with multiple river crossings and sweating a ton. I also had no issue getting carbs down — I should just commit more to gels and liquid carbs over trying to eat bars and things too. The climbing was actually good. I was going too hard for parts, but my legs were fine for the climbs. I didn't chafe at all either. Finally, despite a decently miserable second half, I for sure felt better running the last mile than I did anywhere from mile 32-47. That bounce back is huge, especially if stretching the race over 100 miles.

That's the thing about ultra running though: there's only one way to figure out how tough you are and how good of shape you are in, and it's not from sitting on the sidelines.

Other thought: In-N-Out is so damn good. The best post-race meal.