By: Mizuno Race Team Member, Michael Aish
What can I say, for me racing the Lake Sonoma 50 mile was a bit of a disaster.
Not that I’m complaining, it was a great trip and for as long as I’ve been in the sport you quickly understand that for as many good days you have out there, you’re going to have twice as many bad ones. You just have to work out what went wrong, learn from it and move on to the next challenge.
Starting out, our plane got delayed for a few hours, which got us into San Francisco at a crazy late hour (3am). Which I now know has a direct correlation with the quality of your rental car. The man at the reservation counter told us that they were out of the economy size cars and that we would get a free upgrade, which sounded great in theory. The problem was he upgraded us in to what felt like a mid 1990’s Impala, which felt like it had been around the block a few times, and had the battle scars to prove it. Needless to say that by the time we made it up to Healdsburg it was late and we were in desperate need of some sleep.
The next day, the Friday before the race started, we started our day with a way over-priced breakfast sandwich that tasted like crap, but because I’d paid so much for it, I wasn’t going to leave a crumb behind. The way I looked at it, the day could only get better… and it did.
At around noon we decided to go for a little trot on the course. You hear so much about this race and how hard it is that I wanted to see it for myself. The course is tough, but it’s also spectacular. Along the way I ran into a few locals who had been tasked with clearing the trail from a few fallen trees. I think I stopped with more of a hope of being able to have a play with their chainsaw than anything else, but one thing lead to another and I got some good advice and made a few new friends while I was at it.
Race day=Nothing special and nothing new. The gun went off and I was again in the middle of some of the best ultra runners in the world. Besides the one random guy that might have been lost on his way to a Cross-Fit class, it was business as usual. I was feeling great, the pace was controlled and I was in the thick of it.
This lasted until around the 28-mile mark. Up until then, life had been good. I was running with Alex Varner and Ryan Bak (a good friend of mine that has just started trail racing, but has world class pedigree on the track and the marathon). We were talking and ticking off the miles, enjoying the day and trying to keep one step ahead of the chase pack. At the turnaround I felt great. I could see that Alex was having a great day, and I knew from a training weekend in San Francisco a few weeks earlier, that he was in great shape and that he was the man to beat. So I set my sights on Ryan, and guessed that he and I would have a great battle over the last 10 miles to the finish. It never happened.
Around mile 37, I started to feel off. The body was not happy and I was starting to have a little trouble staying on the trail. My stomach felt bad and I got really dizzy. I think the only way to describe it is if you can imagine being in a hot car, in the back seat and on the worst mountain road with a rally driver behind the wheel. It’s the feeling of having shivers and uncontrollable pins and needles from my hands all the way up to my head. I can’t control my hands, can’t talk and even just standing up becomes hard work. The same thing happened to me at Western States last summer and I thought that I had it all worked out. Guess I was wrong.
After a few hours of rest and recovery, I was mostly fine. It sucks to have to drop from a race, but I got myself in to such a deep hole last time this “thing” happened that I wanted to be careful and not end up on a cot for two hours.
I think the best part about the weekend was having dinner after the race. What started off as “meeting up with an old friend” turned into an open table dinner. Between the race battle stories and my wife doing impressions of how bad I looked and sounded, I got to talk to Robb Krar for the first time. You get a certain kind of impression from someone that your racing side by side with for 100 miles, and I’m happy to say that at dinner I got to see and talk with the other side of Rob. He’s a good guy and I enjoyed talking about our college days racing at the same track meets.
All in all, it was a good weekend. We returned the rental car and noticed as we dropped it off the attendant wrote a big ‘R” on the window (RETIRED) as soon as we got our bags out of the trunk. We loaded ourselves back on the plane and headed home. Not really much to show for the effort that went into preparing for the race, but happy that I was healthy and focused on the next task at hand. Which, oddly enough, is moving into our new house in Golden, CO.
Michael Aish is a former New Zealand Olympian, 2000-10,000/2004-5,000m, and current ultra marathoner for the Mizuno Race Team. With PR’s of 13:22 for 5K and 27:46 for 10K, Michael has been tearing up the ultra scene for the last four years, with his most notable performance being a 2nd place finish in the 2014 Leadville 100.