2023 Terrapin Mountain 50K Race Report

Terrapin Mountain 50K is one of my favorite races, and I returned this year for the fourth time in a row.  Last year I felt fit leading in the race, executed well, and managed to finish in 4:51, a PR and 2nd place.   It seemed like a stretch to beat last years’ time, but I was excited to give it a go.

I intentionally was more aggressive on the first climb.  Usually, I sit back and steadily move up the field throughout the race, but I had to take a bit of a risk if I wanted a shot to improve on last year. 

That meant I was running in 3rd / 4th place right from the start with Sam Cohen, who I’ve been coaching and training with on some long runs.  I set a big PR on the first climb, running 40 minutes for the 1900-foot climb, and I felt strong.  The five-mile runnable descent was smooth, averaging 6:29 pace.

I throttled back a bit over the next 3 miles, as I had built up a nice cushion and planned to push hard on the big climb from mile 13 to 19, which has been a low point for me previously.  I felt strong and picked up a bunch more time on this section, giving Horton a fist bump as I blasted through the 4-way aid station.

I saw Horton again at the 4-way around mile 21, who told me I was looking good.  I felt good!  I didn’t see anyone on the out and back around mile 25.  Last year it was easy to close hard as I was chasing down two people ahead of me, but it was harder to motivate myself to dig deep with no one to chase and no one chasing me. 

Sub 4:45 seemed like a good goal though.  I pushed hard and managed to finish in 4:44, a 7-minute PR and good for 3rd place overall. Big thanks to Clark Zealand and all of the volunteers. Terrapin is an outstanding race that I highly recommend.

I have been in this crazy sport for 16 years and love that you can keep improving over such a long time.  As I knock on the door of 40 years old, I don’t know how long I can keep getting faster.  But for now, there seem to be more gains to be had, and most importantly I’m having more fun than ever regardless of the outcome. 

What did I do to find another 7 minutes on the course this year?  A big part of it is likely driven by consistency and stacking year after year of quality training.  But here are a few specific things that I think contributed to a great race:

Lots of short, high intensity Vo2Max intervals:

I am always a fan of periodized speed / Vo2Max blocks throughout the year, and Jan / Feb is a perfect time of year for it.  These workouts are so important for ultrarunners to maintain and improve speed, efficiency, and running economy.  They are all the more important for athletes over 35, and these are probably the most beneficial workout I do at this point.

I did weekly interval workouts for much of the time leading up to Terrapin.  These built over time to workouts like 10x 3min.  My times steadily dropped, and I had my best short interval workouts ever over the past few months.

Higher volume of “controlled” threshold efforts:

I previously wrote about the lactate test I did early January.  The results were incredibly helpful in telling me what thresholds I could hold without writing checks I couldn’t cash.

This let me increase volume at threshold with extended tempo runs, pushing into threshold effort on treadmill incline doubles, increased effort on uphill sections of some weekday runs, and pushing a bit more on uphills during long runs in the mountains.

I didn’t observe any downsides to the increased threshold volume, and my recovery times were as good or better than they have previously been.

Uphill tempo efforts on long trail runs:

Over the past four years, including a harder tempo effort towards the beginning of a long run has worked well for me. 

These were particularly effective for me before Terrapin, and during training runs I set several PRs on long climbs I’ve run dozens of times. During the race, nearly all of the 7-minute improvement came on the two big climbs.

Race nutrition:

I have written about this before and continue to dial in my fueling during runs.  During Terrapin I managed 430 calories per hour and 107 grams of carbs per hour.  I felt great throughout with zero GI issues.

I could go on for a while about this, but if you are interested in my race nutrition spreadsheet, feel free to shoot me an e-mail at willtoruncoaching@gmail.com.