Race Report: Hilo to Volcano 50K

I was lucky enough to be a part of a relay team competing in the Hilo to Volcano 50K on Saturday, January 23, 2009. Our team, creatively named Big Island Running Company, consisted of me and two other Kona athletes who were nice enough to join me, Luis De La Torre and Eric Neilsen. Our team was also ably assisted by crew member Wendell Braswell, who couldn't be talked into running a leg, but did drive a support truck for us and made sure that our pre-race diets were lacking in neither Mexican food nor libations.

First, a little background on the race. The race, put on by the Big Island Road Runners Club, begins in Hilo at sea level. It finishes in Volcano, 50K (31.1 miles) and over 4000 ft in elevation later.

The individual runners started at 6:00 A.M. and the relays started at 6:30 A.M. The weather in Hilo was nice and cool--I would guess mid-60s--but there was pretty bad vog down in Hilo, the kind of vog you can taste. Luis ran our first leg, which was 2.7 miles. The first and last legs are the longest (2.7 and 2.4), with the rest of the legs being 2 miles. Luis opened a nice gap on his leg and tagged off to me for the second leg. At this early stage of the race, the legs are pretty flat, so I was able to find a rhythm pretty quickly and the leg felt like it was over just as soon as it began. I tagged off to Eric and he encountered the first hilly leg of the race--an occurrence that would be frequently repeated as Eric seemed to routinely draw the hilly legs. There is some irony to Eric drawing the hilly legs because he was the only one of us who had previous experience in the race and accordingly he was instrumental in determining our order for running. Glutton for punishment or foggy memory? Either way, he drew some real bears.

I won't bore you with a blow-by-blow of the 15 legs, but I will say that I was surprised at how much tougher the legs got toward the end. While I was prepared for the legs to get hillier (you do have to climb 4000+ feet, after all), I had forgotten the toll that the thinner air at altitude would take. My last leg started at about 3500 feet and by the time I got to the end I was really sucking some air (and vog).

In the end, we finished a few ticks under 3:29, not a bad effort. We managed to build a pretty good gap on the second place team, the Ass Clowns, which is good because it's been a long time (but not long enough) since I lost to a bunch of ass clowns.

Luis headed for the finish:

The individual race was a good one, with Eric Glaus hanging tough for a victory over 2nd place Alan Ryan. Big Dog's blog has a post with individual results and some more photos from the race.

Here are the results from the relays:

	Results - Teams
Place
Finish	Time	Number	Team Name	Category
1	3:28:53	677	Big Island Running Co.	men
2	3:46:31	671	The Ass Clowns	men
3	4:11:40	672	On Fire	men
4	4:17:28	678	Beauty & the Beast	mixed
5	4:19:18	675	Fast Friends	women
6	4:44:52	667	Are We There Yet	mixed
7	5:08:18	673	Old Goats	men
8	5:32:45	674	Ageless	women
9	5:56:55	670	3 Good Men	men
10	5:56:58	669	More Is Better	mixed
11	5:57:55	676	Smiling Trio	women
12	6:06:30	668	DAD	mixed