Training on Timpanogas and Katcina Mosa 2007

A few weeks ago my brother and I took my friend Marcio Villar (from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) to run on some of Utahs famous mountain trails, the Timpanookee trail up the back side of Mount Timpanogas in American Fork canyon proved to be a great training run for us.

Marcio in the long sleeve white t-shirt and my brother Heath in the yellow tanktop. This is right at the start of the Timpanookee trail. It's a little over 6 miles to the top (the saddle) and reaches just over 11,000 ft above sea level.

There's lots of little streams to manuever over.....oh, and tons of rocky terrain making it dificult to NOT fall :)

This was just 3 days before Marcio and I would go pace Monica Otero at the Badwater 135 mile ultra marathon in Death Valley, California.

This is, to me, the perfect training run for a race like Katcina Mosa 100km and Squaw Peak 50 Miler. Lost of difficult terrain and elevation gain and loss.

One week after Badwater I was going to be running my second Katcina Mosa 100km Mountain Challenge Run (62 miles of this stuff....ouch)

Heath and Marcio making a speedy ascent up this rocky section of the Timpanookee Trail.

This was Marcio's very first snow EVER!!! He had never seen or touched snow in his life. Rio de Janeiro is nothing like Utah in the snow...hahahaha. He said that playing in this snow was the highlight of his entire trip to the U.S. :)

Heath up on the cliff's edge above where Marcio was making his first snowman.

The flowers on this section and this time of year are unbelievable...you gotta see it to believe it.

Yep....they're real. We ran into two sets of Mountain Goats, both a mother and a baby. I didn't see these ones until they were right in front of me on the trail....scared me half outta my wits. Luckily for me the were not aggressive.

Looking down on Utah county and Utah Lake from 11,000 feet !!!

Left to right: Me (Jarom), My brother Heath, my friend Marcio Villar.....we made the ascent in under two hours....including stopping for lots of pictures, and making snowballs...hehehe. My brother actually did this same run the very next day with some triathlete friends as part of a training. They swam in Utah Lake, biked up A.F. canyon and then ran to the saddle and back. Heath made it to the saddle in just 1:25:00 that day....that's freak'n haul'n !!!

Marcio is a great endurance runner. After returning to Brazil after Badwater, he ran a 24 hour ultra marathon in Rio and took first place, running 164km (~103 miles) in 24 hours straight.

Katcina Mosa 100km (62 mile) Mountain Challenge Run 2007 !!!

Okay.... now I've got a few pictures and words from the Katcina Mosa run I did on Saturday, August 4th. First of all, I want to mention that I ran this same race last year and had a great experience and a good run. This year proved to be opposite and taught me a few lessons...

(My brother Heath pacing me the last 10 miles of the course and my daughter and some nieces running with me just a few hundred yards from the finish line)

That not always do good plans, trainings and intentions equate to a good Ultra Marathon. I started the race with stomach problems right from the get go, and that only led to two emergency stops in the bushes in the first 12 miles of the course.

(I had a great last 30 miles of the course and from miles 52 to 59 I was making up a lot of time, but eventually it broke me to a moderate speed walk)

I was running with Marcie Christian (women's first place and new female record setter) for the first half of the race. She said she wanted to run with me as far as she could....hahahaha, well she did, and left me in her dust by two hours :)

(Elevation Map of course) Holy moly.....that's a lot of uphill!!!

My brother ran with the two of us to Aid Station #3 (16 miles) and then came back to finish the last 10 miles with me. After Heath left us Shaun paced Marcee and I on Lightning Ridge pass to Big Springs and then to Windy Pass. But for some reason climbing the six miles from Big Springs to Windy Pass I was totally overcome with fatigue, dizziness, dehydration and 100% lack of energy. I've never felt such a drain and I wasn't even halfway done with the 62 miles of the race.

I took like FOREVER to reach the summit at Windy Pass (9,300 ft) and was ready to drop out. There was no way for me to continue in the physical state I was in. I was quickly told that nobody can abandon the race at Windy Pass, since there's no vehicle access there. I would have to either go back 6 miles to AS#4 or continue on for 9 more miles to Little Valley (AS#6).

I made the decision to continue on but only after taking a nap and eating and drinking as much as possible. I left the aid station a while later, after many other runners had caught up and passed me. I couldn't believe that at AS#4 I was 5 minutes ahead of my goal (to finsih an hour better than I did last year) and now I was over 45 min behind my schedule already :(

(Here I am after finishing the race. People wanted to talk to me and I did my best to converse, but all I really wanted to do was throw up.....yuck!)

Somehow, about 10-15 min after leaving Windy Pass I started to feel better and soon began running again. I recoved quickly and made it the next 9 miles in good time. Then took some time to rest and rehydrate at Little Valley, before making the next big climb to AS #7 (mile46).

I felt great and kept running and passing people again. I even felt great on the last big mountain pass and didn't stay long at the Bathtub Aid Station. I wanted to finish the race. I continued on alone to AS#8 (mile 52) where I met my brother Heath. He gave me his running shoes and took my trail sandals I had been wearing (and now think was a bad idea).

(Here I am after the race getting an IV from the Race Director's wife, an RN, after vomitting and an hour of cramps and shaking)

Once I left AS#8 with Heath we made the next 4 miles of trail in very fast time, catching 3 or 4 runners who had been ahead of me the whole time. I only got water at the last AS#9 and kept running making Heath catch up to me after changing his shoes. Heath kept me going for the next several miles but I eventually became so nauseated I was dry-heaving and stopping to walk every few hundred yards. I had hopes of finishing with a better time than last year's 16:40:00, but with all the time I lost at Windy Pass and until I recovered it was too much to make up.

But the important thing is that I managed to finish at all. It's kind of funny that I run these races with a goal, but in reality I'm always just hoping to finish them...hahaha. My final time was just under 17 hours at 16:57:00....so not far off of my time last year.

btw....if you were wondering, Marcee finished the course in 14:51:00 taking first place in the women's field and breaking the record by 25 minutes.

Pictures taken by John Bozung (RD)

Results:

Place # Name Sex Age From Finish Time

1st 2 David Hunt M 48 UT 12:49:00

2nd 1 Brian Beckstead M 25 UT 13:04:08

3rd 44 Matt Galland M 30 UT 13:42:10

4th25Chad BrackelsbergM34UT13:58:30

5th 51 Dan Mitchell M 38 UT 14:05:10

6th 26 John Jorgensen M 51 IA 14:24:15

7th 55 Marcee Christian F 34 UT 14:51:07 (First Female and new course record)

8th 32 Bruce Coulter M 48 UT 15:31:48

9th 49 James Breyfogle M 25 NM 15:46:27

10th 28 Kristen Swenson F 37 UT 15:58:22

11th 47 Jim Skaggs M 48 UT 16:12:08

12th 24 Emily Mitzel F 34 UT 16:30:28

13th 41 Chris Boyack M 37 CO 16:32:04

14th 46 Chris Anderson M 47 UT 16:42:08

15th 11 Jarom Thurston M 33 UT 16:57:53 (12th Overall Male, 5th in Age Division)

16th 23 Dave Evans M 30 UT 17:24:04

17th 60 Dan Harris M 29 UT 17:28:10

18th 59 Matt Ward M 30 UT 17:33:01

19th 58 Mori Hannemann M 42 CA 17:36:52

20th 48 Carolyn Luckett F 40 UT 17:41:20 ES

21st 7 Lyle Nay M 45 UT 17:59:08

22nd 34 Laura Pyle F 36 CO 18:09:45

22nd 54 Holly Pyle F 33 CO 18:09:45

24th 31 Lori Pratt Smith F 54 UT 18:12:08 ES

25th 33 Kenneth Posner M 44 NY 18:21:23

26th 38 Andrew Barney M 34 UT 18:57:48

27th 22 LeRoy Gleichmann M 37 UT 18:58:05

28th 40 Herbert Ley M 49 UT 19:01:41

29th 39 Jeff Flick M 48 UT 19:10:00

30th 29 Marit Janse F 46 MI 19:27:39

31st 17 Colleen Ford F 45 UT 20:05:04 ES

32nd 52 Carl Tippets M 54 UT 20:19:09 ES

33rd 57 Gary Stosich M 50 UT 21:57:59 ES

34th 53 Joe Larsen M 57 UT 22:39:08 ES