Race Review: Xterra Black Mountain 15k
The trails that make up the Xterra Black Mountain 15k are just a few miles from my house, and yet I’d never run on them. They are home to rattlesnakes and mountain lion, and they are remote enough to be creepy if you are a lone, early morning female runner.
This morning, though, that area between 4S Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe in northern San Diego put on its best party dress to impress hundreds of runners, most of whom finished well before me.
The race starts and finishes at Black Mountain Community Park off Carmel Valley Road. I arrived 90 minutes before the start and within 15 minutes of my arrival, the parking lot was packed. Overflow was sent a few miles away to a shopping center to catch a shuttle. That distance guaranteed a late start of about 30 minutes.
By then the sun had warmed the place to the mid 50s, which is perfect for a spring race and preferable to the rains we’d been experiencing in the days prior. Portable toilet lines moved along better than expected. I saw Meg and her family and was grateful for her husband’s heads up on some difficult sections of the course.
Best I remember, the first couple of miles are along mostly single track, some of which is rather rocky and rife with bottlenecks. But it’s nothing compared to the stone-strewn trails across the street to access the top of Black Mountain. And there are some ups and downs but nothing compared to the second half of the course.
If there is course crowding up to this point, it dissipates as soon as you hit residential streets within the affluent gated community of Santaluz. We hit our first “water feature” on a dirt pathway in this section, where most of us chose a muddy walk-around while one woman bravely inched across a barely visible raised curb to avoid plunging into an impromptu stream.
More residential trails that parallel asphalt streets and then before you know it you are facing the first of two big rollers. This is where I fell apart, around mile 6. Like most of the folks in front of me, I power walked the climbs. It’s very hard for me to regain momentum after I’ve started walking, and it’s doubly so when I can’t bring my heart rate down. That may be a testament to my lack of fitness or my advancing age. Or both.
After the second huge hill, you eventually cross a road and head down a gulch. By then I’d come to dread the downhills as much as the ups. My quads were trashed, my breathing still unusually labored and I was thirsty and no longer sweating despite taking in enough liquids. My toes were tender, my fingers looked like sausages and my ankle was throbbing after I’d twisted it a couple of miles back.
Worse, by now I’d figured out the mile markers were not accurate. This, though, is definitely the most scenic part of the race. There is nothing for miles to break the lush landscape of plump sagebrush offset by wildflowers in full bloom. The track by now was an overgrown fire road, and you basically picked which rut to run in and soak in the views and the quiet.
I’d been worried about a creek crossing, but when it arrived, it felt really good to soak my shoes and feet for a moment as we pushed through the moving water. Another 1.5 miles of aloneness and I finally heard the noise of the finish line as I walked (with no power) up the final, cruelly located hill.
This late in the game, arrivals have blown in somewhere on the course, but the race officials made it seem like I’d finished right behind the front-runners (who, thankfully, shooed off the rattlesnakes reportedly on the course.) I thank them and the others at the finish line for making such failure seem less so. That includes Todd, who came in 20+ minutes ahead of me and camera-carrying Christine, who shot me at my worst.
Xterra bills Black Mountain as the easiest of its trail series, and from what I’ve heard it is. There aren’t any real technical sections to trip you up. However, this is not a flat place. It does have excellent course support and is well marked. It’s also a little longer than the traditional 15k distance, but what’s a little more time running through the countryside on a beautiful spring morning.
Photo by Christine Newman (aka Listgirl)
