Tour de Dale Ball

On Saturday Crone and I did a "Tour de Dale Ball" run: 19 miles and 4900' feet of vertical. Crone's question to me when I suggested the run: how do you get 19 miles out of Dale Ball? Well, it took some creativity, but basically like this:

Tour de Dale Ball route. Click for larger version.

Elevation profile (with start/finish at Sierra del Norte)

It's a large figure eight, with roughly 9 miles in each loop. The southern loop includes a summit of Atalaya. We had considered running from my house to the TH which would have added 4-5 miles. Instead we decided to drive to the Upper Canyon TH so we could use the car as an aid station and thereby get away with handheld bottles instead of hydration packs.

We decided to do the southern loop first. The climb up Atalaya was a grind as expected - about 40 minutes to the top. We had started in the dark but fortunately by the time we hit the summit there was enough light to navigate the descent fairly quickly. I would not have wanted to run down that with only a headlamp to light the way. Toward the bottom as we turned north onto the Dorothy Stewart Trail I realized I had forgotten the map at the car. I had never been on that section of the trail, and Crone hadn't in a long time. But we managed to pick our way through the trail intersections and somehow stuck to our planned route. We made it back to the car right at the two hour mark, and took five minutes or so to ditch our headlamps, top off water bottles, and refill pockets with food.

The start of the northern loop was a bit sluggish. However once we got warmed up again we pushed a really good pace the entire way. I was very pleased with how my body felt: clearly there was a good deal of accumulated fatigue in my legs from the last few weeks, yet the strength was there too. I sort of reached a steady state level of discomfort, but it didn't get any worse and I was very easily able to power up all of the climbs at a decent clip. Our time for the second loop was about 1:38, so 3:38 total. And I already have notions of a Dale Ball Marathon or 50k percolating in my head...

Overall this was another good week with lots of vertical. I'm tired, hungry, and sleep deprived, but things are starting to come together. The numbers:

Mon: 5.9 mi / 900 ft. Easy S-Site out-and-back with Porter.

Tue: 6.0 mi / 2000 ft. Hill repeats. Splits: 4:10, 4:17, 4:15, 4:28, 4:40, 4:35, 4:25, 4:30. Legs felt pretty flat so I kept it comfortable. Coblentz and I thought we were the only ones stupid enough to venture out in the snow and driving wind, but a couple other morons showed up midway through.

Wed AM: 4.1 mi / 400 ft. Recovery pace. Really needed that one.

Wed PM: 6.1 mi / 1300 ft. Good hill climb run with the lunch crowd. Up a trail that parallels Camp May Rd, down Nail Trail. Finished with Crone, Coblentz, and Porter.

Thu AM: 4.1 mi / 400 ft. Another good recovery run.

Thu PM: 9.2 mi / 2000 ft. Nail Trail to Townsite plus a partial ascent of Pajarito. The beating from the previous two days set me up nicely for a long steady climb on tired and depleted legs.

Fri AM: 5.3 mi / 500 ft. Nice and slow.

Fri PM: 7.1 mi / 1400 ft. Nail Trail easy. I didn't really need to do this run but it was too nice of an afternoon not to get out for a cruise in the woods (and away from the wind).

Sat: 19.0 mi / 4900 ft. Tour de Dale Ball.

Sun: 5.3 mi / 500 ft. Easy.

Total: 72.2 mi / 14300 ft.