Beau's Blog

A couple months ago, I collapsed in a chair and cried. Tears of fulfillment. I had just completed a 70km trail running race in Jangsu, South Korea (Strava). This was a powerful moment. The memory motivates me and reminds me why I run.

How I Got Here

In May, I quit my job.

I was bummed it wasn’t working out but proud of myself for recognizing the situation for what it was. Around that time, several people from Tokyo Trail Runners (TTR) were signing up for the Jangsu Trail Race in late September. There were a variety of options from 20km to 100km. The 70km route featuring 4800 meters of elevation gain seemed perfect for a personal stretch and opportunity to work towards something with newly realized free time. Prior to this, my biggest run had been a 52km/2400m farewell loop in Boulder and my biggest race had been the Okumusashi 35km/2300m (blog post). This race would represent a step level change in my progression as a runner and endurance athlete. Additionally, this felt like a golden opportunity given the rare chance to see middle of nowhere Korea with a community of Tokyo runners and a Korean guide facilitating everything – thank you Yeonock and TTR!

With my newfound freedom, I schemed up a summer away from hot and humid Japan – both an opportunity to visit friends & family as well as better conditions for training where cooler weather is ideal. The experience ended up being a successful mix of maximizing quality time with loved ones, planning subsequent travels and running whenever possible. A couple of runs neatly squeezed in were a 5km during downtime at a bachelor party weekend and a dawn trail run in Ashland amidst a go go go disc golf road trip from San Francisco to Portland. I managed a couple of sweet adventurey runs too: a new record distance 60km effort and an epic long solo day in New Zealand.

One other consequence of Jangsu is that I reduced my drinking. Between learning about alcohol’s harmful effects, noticing my friends are drinking less and a desire to do whatever I could to actually finish this race, I decided to be very intentional about when and how much to drink. I am happy to have used fear of not finishing the race as an effective motivator.

The Race

I arrived at the Seoul airport the day before the race at 11:30am. This was right after having spent about 48 hours in Tokyo… after being away from Japan for about two and a half months. It was great seeing a few familiar faces and meeting many new friendly ones. We took a bus several hours from the airport to Jangsu and registered at the stadium where the event was hosted. A few of us did interviews and then a large group found dinner at a nearby restaurant. Given we were in the boonies and none of us knew Korean, ordering was tough. The restaurant also ran out of meat and some food.

The race started at 7am. I woke up at 5am in the dark with a solid 5 hours of sleep. We made it to the stadium about 6am, finished up gear check, felt the hype and we were off!

As per all trail race tradition (at least ones I’ve been in), we started debatably too fast. An unsustainable pace. I think the three main reasons for this are 1) everyone has starting line stoke AKA energy 2) when the race inevitably narrows to single track, the further ahead you are, the less likely you’ll be slowed down by people ahead of you 3) it’s super fun! – After all, if it wasn’t fun, I wouldn’t do it. The first two kilometers, I averaged under 5 min/km pace (about 8 min/mile) which is dumb for me to attempt over any substantial distance (my final pace ended up being about 12 min/km). However, doing so, I kept up with Carlos, Chisato and Derder – three hotshot TTR runners I had just met and knew were destined for speedy times this race. It’s always nice doing stuff with friends so I cherished the first 10 minutes knowing I had many hours alone from friends in my future. After that, the flattish paved road became a distinctly uphill paved road and I eased up averaging about 7.5 min/km until I arrived at the first aid station, at 9.5km just over an hour in.

At the aid station, I refilled water and decided to experiment with Pocari Sweat (Japanese Gatorade that isn’t as sweet) in one of my hydroflasks. Given just finishing would be successful for me, I wasn’t too worried about truly minimizing my time at aid stations so I took my time scouting out the available foods. I made sure to grab a couple handfuls of salt candies. My trail running mentor Olivier warned me about his firsthand experience of neglecting to take in enough salt during races. I ended up sucking on one or two at a time nearly nonstop for the next 12 hours until I finished. The only real exceptions being when my mouth was preoccupied eating other foods.

After the aid station, the race route became a steep uphill single track. For me and anyone not at the very front, this meant slow lines. Upon arriving at the first summit, the day’s beautiful clear day blessed us all with amazing views.

It was around this point that I developed my mental approach for the day. I wanted the day to be as fun as possible and to achieve this, avoiding mental despair is key. Knowing I had over 50km with a crap ton of elevation to go is a daunting idea so instead I decided to solely focus on the distance and elevation until the next aid station. My race bib on my chest smartly had an upside down elevation profile with aid stations and cut off times indicated so I could look down and see what was coming. Aid stations were located roughly every 10km and with my training, 10km felt pretty casual regardless of how much climbing it contains. In this way, I myopically made my way through the day. It was almost surprising to not feel a sense of betrayal upon arriving at each aid station with the goal consistently extending again and again – maybe it was overshadowed with the happiness of making it to the next oasis. I actually felt a sense of amusement more than anything at this dynamic.

The race itself was split into several groups. Beyond the 70km option, there was a 20km option, two different 38km options and a 100km option. My race initially was shared with one 38km group (yellow bibs) and the 100km endurance beasts (pink bibs). In this way, I was super not competing with the vast majority of the people I saw early on. I mostly saw yellow bibs and then some blue (70km) and some pink as well. It was early on so people mostly looked good but it was interesting to spend a brief second sizing up how someone was moving and then consider the distance they were working towards. At around 25km, pink runners took a turn, disappearing on their ambitious adventure. Then at about 33km (just under 6 hours in for me), the yellow runners took a turn down the hill towards the stadium – happily heading home after a good day’s work. At the same time, the 70km course began a 7km section of overlap with the other 38km group and the 20km group. These other groups were on the same singletrack trail but going the opposite direction. At first, this felt annoying as navigating passing racers on narrow trail takes work. Fortunately, I realized that this was actually super fun. I approached it like a game, doing my best to be smiley and enthusiastic as I passed people and roughly a third of the people reflected back smiles, words of encouragement “fighting/hwaiting!” and thumbs up or waves. These joyful interactions provided welcome bursts of energy for me as things were starting to feel tired 6 hours in. To sweeten this experience even more, 8 of our group from Tokyo did this 38km race so seeing familiar friendly faces made this section even better! This section was a major highlight for me and I happily flowed through this hour.

Sadly all good things come to an end. Around 7 hours in, reality hit: the trail split, the few 70km people were on their own and the path became unquestionably uphill instead of playful rolling hills. Fortunately the climb was brief, roughly 100m only. Unfortunately the descent felt brutal. Massive, inconsistent steps over a meter in height made it crystal clear that my legs were tired. Perhaps a fresh Beau would’ve smoothly bounded down the steep slope but this was not happening. At the bottom of the 300m descent, I shook the dirt out of my shoes and reveled in the struggle of it all. I knew there was more than 25km of distance left and that it would go significantly slower than the prior 25km.

The next aid station came soon. It was easy to cherish sitting in the dinky plastic chair. It’s here I encountered one of the MVPs of the day: small, very salty rice balls. I ate about 8, grabbed some more salt candies, filled my water and slowly went on my way up the imminent 500m climb.

The spectacular views from the summit were a highlight from the day. Had I been feeling stronger and more competitive, I probably would’ve kept going but instead, I patiently posed (read: rested) as a photographer snagged pictures of me on top. The descent was rooty and steep enough to seriously challenge my exhausted self. One kilometer long section was 260m down and took me a full 20 minutes. Eventually I made it to the second to last aid station and gave myself time to recover physically and mentally for the remainder as well as nightfall – an inevitability prior to the next and final aid station.

I felt quite neutral about running in the dark. I’ve done a few trail runs at night with headlamps and they’ve felt fine, kinda fun, kinda hassle. When the time came, I found the headlamp to have surprising benefits. As my strength waned through the day, it naturally felt easier to convince myself to walk as opposed to run. This was especially true on uphills or even when I could see an upcoming uphill. With my headlamp in the dark, limited vision forced my awareness solely on the immediate terrain, not what was ahead. In this way, if the immediate trail was runnable, regardless of what was ahead, I ran. Additionally, in the darkness, headlamps are obvious tells of where fellow runners are which my competitive instincts absorbed and motivated my body to move faster.

Feeling decent prior to the final aid station (~6km from the end), I came up with what felt like a thrilling plan! The darkness hid my big grin as I decided to merely fill up on liquid and then press on instead of my typical routine of sitting down to rest and leisurely eating food. I had been dueling with a super supportive guy around here and figured this tactic would be super effective on him.

For long runs, I’ve found the trick is doing whatever I can to get myself to keep going. I like both games and structure so throughout a solo training adventure, I found an effective way to entertain myself. I shot selfie videos, one each hour. It ended up being a useful and fun experiment giving me something to continually look forward to and keep my mind off of pain/boredom/potentially negative thoughts. While I didn’t want to spend the time and effort doing this at Jangsu, I figured a quick selfie picture each hour would provide some of the benefit with negligible cost. Here’s the collection! Note the final one 13 hours in with only about 2.5km left.

FINISH

As I rounded the final turn onto the track at the stadium, I started to feel the weight of the moment. It was the end of a 70km journey… or was it a four month journey? That’s when I decided to commit to this race and began training. Regardless, I was brimming, full of emotion and intensely content; proud of myself for staying the course. It’s said you get out of things what you put in… as I sank into a chair at the finish line, the moment gave me everything.

Basking in it all, a whirlwind hit me:

• I successfully completed my goals for the event*
• Months of training were paid off in a meaningful moment
• I completed my goal of leveling up as a runner, which I established when goal setting at the beginning of 2024
• In the prior year, I did my first trail race and things felt so similar (physically pretty destroyed and proud of myself) and so different (community and serious training)
• Gratitude for all the people involved from trail running mentors/friends, friends who lent me a car to do runs this summer, family who encouraged me, Yeonock for guiding this Korea trip, the Jangsu organizers & volunteers and many more
• With this race possible, what are my limits? I don’t know but I will continue to explore and push them

*In the midst of the day, I clarified my goals for the race
1. Finish
2. Have Fun
3. No Injuries While Racing

While I primarily just wanted to finish, my time of 13 hours and 20 minutes especially made me happy. Carlos did awesome work and built a scatterplot of the prior finishers of this race comparing finish times with ITRA runner scores. Given my ITRA runner score of 510, a goal time of 14 hours looked reasonable and I beat that!

In a callback to my first ever running event, the LA Marathon in 2014, I found myself post race under an emergency blanket. For the record, no medical personnel were requested this time!

My TTR teammates are amazing and inspire me. Chisato won the women’s 70km race, Carlos took 3rd in the men’s 70km race and Brian took 4th in the 100km just two weeks after completing a 350km, 25000m race! It was through this event that I learned recovery time after these events takes a long time. I felt my body still feeling the effects of Jangsu a full two weeks after the race.

This was a life changing experience for me in many ways. Thank you to everyone who has supported me.