SOCAL FAT TIRE EPIC 50 – Part I: Race Report

Huge thanks to Jason Ranoa for putting on a great event!

We don’t have many 50 millers in SoCal so we all appreciated seeing this on the calendar once again this year. If you were wondering what this race was like, or if you’ve been contemplating trying a marathon, here’s a quick review that might help you decide.

Part I covers the course and Part II covers what happened.

Getting out there
If you haven’t tried a marathon before, all I can say is that you get your money’s worth out of these races! It takes a little more nutrition planning and strategizing (write-up coming soon), but any of you XC or weekend warriors that like to crank out a few extra miles can surely get it done! If you are unsure about doing it solo, then one option is to sign up for the two-person category and just knock out 25 miles each.

Weather
The forecast leading up to the race was dismal. Thunderstorms were eminent and the humidity was high. Sure enough, the day of the race it was hot, humid and it even sprinkling at times. You could practically cut the air with a knife.

Course
On the flip side, the rain made for awesome riding conditions. The sand was tacky and the course was in the best shape ever. The ridge lines were fast and the tight single tracks were like downhill slalom courses.

The course was split in two: The 12hr loop and the Vail Lake (east) loop.


The Old
The marathon started out by following most of the 12hr course with a few modifications. All I can say is that it was fast! It started up the “damn” climb and followed mostly double track across to the ridges. From there it zig-zagged through the canyons as usual and then back to the campground. There was one sandy g-out that you had to just power through, but it was totally doable.

In the campground they had a main water station set-up so if you planned for it, you could swap water bottles here and save a little weight for the next section. Support folks were handing-off here as we climbed out of the park. Nice touch.

The New
The second part of the course went out to a brand new area that I’d never seen before. I heard horror stories from last year’s race, but the whole section changed and was greatly improved. That part extended Eastward out of the park across a number of tight ridges with a few short, tough climbs. Most of us had to get off a few times to clear everything, but it wasn’t bad at all. Actually, I think I could have cleared everything if I would have pre-road it. Nonetheless, at that point, it felt good to dismount and stretch the legs a little, so it wasn’t a big deal at all.

After the ridges, there were some super fast (and fun) fireroads and some descents. The course then went into some fast “jedi-like” singletrack as it approached Vail Lake. This was actually my favorite part. A few times I looked over and could see boats and wakeboarders down on the lake and I wished that was me! From there it lead us back past a water station and back through the other campgrounds back to the start mostly on wide double-track and paved roads.

Rough Stats
The east and the west sections combined were roughly 12 miles a piece, so one full loop was 23-24 miles. All of the solo folks ended up doing two loops for a total of about 48 miles. And yes, there was a little bit of climbing and I logged about 5,800 ft when it was all said and done, This is really quite reasonable for a 50 mile race when you compare it to other ones like Vision Quest!

The fastest guys finished in roughly 3:20hrs and the rest of us finished closer to 4:00hrs.

Aid Stations
Jason had a ton of water and aid stations sprinkled around the course. Each station was stocked with water, Heed and electrolytes if needed them. You actually couldn’t go more than 8 miles without running into one. This takes a lot of work and manpower to set-up, but it’s very important to the riders in endurance racing.

This also meant that you could actually carry one bottle if you wanted to and just fill it up at every station around the course (that is if you didn’t mind stopping). Or more importantly, just use the water to cool off every ½ hour as you heated up out there.

What I ended up doing was carrying one bottle for the 12hr loop and swapping it out at the aid station in the campground before heading out the 2nd section. That worked out perfectly.

The course markings were pretty good as well, although I did have a hard time seeing a few of them when we came out onto the pavements sections. I think this is mostly because we hit these sections at pretty high speeds.

Summary
Overall, I was impressed with the new extension to the course and all the work Jason did to make it a safe and fun race. I give it a solid 9/10.

1. The distance, climbing and elevation are all reasonable.
2. You can easily pre-ride the whole course and plan your race strategy beforehand.
3. Use your 12hr knowledge to save energy through those sections.
4. Numerous water stations (well stocked) all around the course.
5. Three pools to choose from and showers for riders after the event.

If you haven’t attempted a marathon before, then if any of these things make sense, then this actually might be a good one to start with.

Think about putting this one on your calendar for next year!

AL