Being away from home means missing the traditional local running races the morning of the Thanksgiving holiday. But they must still have these things out here right? I'd been meaning to try one of the X-Terra Trail Series races for a few years now, and sure enough on Thursday morning the Topanga Turkey Trot was fairly close by. The event offered 5k, 10k, and 15k options, all on trails in Topanga State Park. The 10k course profile showed around 1400 feet of climbing, so I chose that, and signed Robin up for the 5k. The 15k started earliest and I did not expect it to have a big turnout but I was wrong. It turned out to be the largest with around 300 runners. There were around 225 in the 10k and 160 in the 5k. I guess the series is a pretty big deal for some people, thus most of the serious trail runners did the 15k.
Topanga canyon is the home of the legendary Geo Snelling, college roomate of Gewilli, but there were no sightings. We got there pretty early, yet the parking was already full and we were directed to an overflow lot at Topanga High School, which was up a steep hill. A long line was already waiting for the shuttle, so we decided to walk. One of the kids manning the lot advised us against this, as he said it was "freezing cold." I think it was around 40 in the shade and 50 in the sun... Well it turns out that the race site was 1.5 miles from the boulevard, up a 10% grade. So the walk was a decent warmup. We got our numbers just as the 15k started. For a $45 entry fee, the event organization was not exactly top notch, but the situation was manageable. Rob went off for the 5k, and twenty minutes later I lined up for the 10k.
The first 1.25 miles of each race went straight up fireroad, climbing at least 600 feet onto the ridge. The views were spectacular. The Santa Ana winds have been blowing all week, which clears the air. All the Channel Islands were visible. But of course there was no time for sightseeing. The first mile took me 9:07, and I was pretty close to the front of the pack. A short downhill led to some rocky uphill singletrack. By now we were pretty spread out. The middle was all fire road again, some up and some down. Then we ended up on a steep descent, merged with the 15k runners again. Running as fast as I could, I still got dropped. I'm much better going uphill.
Eventually I passed a mile four marker. The distances at this event were highly suspect. The 15k may have been true distance, but the word was the 10k was closer to 10.5, and the 5k was actually a full 6k. At any rate, no records were broken. I was expecting the fire road to head right back to the park, so I was quite surprised when we turned on to extremely narrow and steep single track with a mile or two to go. The trail was barely wide enough to pass, all switchbacks, with wooden water bars cut into a lot of it. Some of them were a two foot drop. Running full speed down this, suffice to say your legs took a pounding. Some dude caught me from behind, but at ever place the trail crossed the ravine, there would be a short uphill at the switchback and I'd sprint away. Then he'd catch back up on the downhill. This pattern went on for about a mile. Nearer to the end, the trail opened up a bit and got rocky again. At one point I stumbled and barely caught my self, windmilling forward with my face about a foot from the ground (or so it seemed). We were catching some 5k backmarkers too, but most let us by without incident. At the end of the trail there was a hundred meters or so of uphill and I opened a gap. Good thing, as I was not expecting a long downhill sprint on a paved park road back to the chute, but I held on.
My finish time was 52:51, 8:32 pace if you believe the distance. At the start I'd spoken to the eventual winner who'd told me his 10k PR was 31:30, and he ran 46 something. So at 14 minutes off my recent 10k times, I guess I did OK. I was sixth overall, and first in the 50-54 age group (they do not use your actual race day age here, I guess because the series ends next year) but it did not matter to me because the medal is not engraved and I'd have been first in the 45-49 anyway. Rob won her age group in the 5k too. The weather was nice and they at least had muffins and scrambled eggs for everyone, along with finisher medals and decent T-shirts.
The shuttle ride back to the parking was the funniest part of the whole day. The bus was built with maybe 24 seats, and at least sixty people crammed on this thing despite the driver pleading "no mas" after about thirty had boarded. And we're driving straight down the twisting grade. I envisioned it ending something like this. We made it though, and then ground up the other side of the canyon to the school. Let's just say things did not smell too good around that bus when we unboarded. Thanks for reading.
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