Sacramento Running News

Top 50-mile finishers (L to R: Zach Bitter, Scott Trummer, Rich Hanna) (SRN photo)

When you report on the running of the American River 50-mile race, you have a couple of choices.

You can get to the start, in the darkness before the dawn, and then spend the day jumping in and out of your car, bouncing along spectating points, and watching the race develop through the day.

Or, you can sleep until sunrise wakes you up. Go for a nice long run, shower, have a leisurely breakfast as you check the race on the live feed, and finally wander to the finish in time to catch the hopefully exciting finish.

This year, I chose the latter, arriving at the Auburn Overlook shortly before noon. I laced up my trail shoes, threw on a pack with camera and notebook and jogged down the road to look for the leaders.

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Erin Wachter enjoying the perfect trail conditions. (Photo courtesy Erin Wachter)

What’s the recipe for course records and fast times on a long-running trail race? Perfect conditions and and a stacked field, clearly.

Sadly, I wasn’t able to be out there in person for this year’s Way Too Cool 50K, but as the results were coming in via text and Twitter, it was immediately apparent that something special and amazing had taken place.

First off, Patrick Smyth’s winning time of 3:04:48 is insane. That is a sub-6:00 pace over a hilly trail run, and a four minute improvement over Max King’s record 3:08:50 that was set in 2013.

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On Sunday, Folsom’s Allison Maxson, 27, ran away from the field at the Kaiser Permanente Women’s Fitness Festival 5K, winning in a solid 17:19.

Her nearest competitor was Folsom’s Erin Wachter, 26, who came in second with a 18:03.

Rounding out the top three was Juliet Wahleithner, 35, of West Sacramento, who finished in 18:32.

The mother-daughter team of Stacey and Chase Worthen won the mother-daughter team competition with times of 19:14 and 21:47, respectively.

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Jesse Barragan took 3rd in the 50K despite a bad stumble that had him walking the last mile or so. (Photo courtesy of Scott Sandow)

Sunday’s Run on the Sly trail races continue a long tradition of August trail racing along Jenkinson Lake in El Dorado County. This year, more than 600 runners completed the various races.

In the 50K, Palo Alto’s Cameron Berg ran away with the overall win in a smoking 3:57 on that hilly course.

The next three in were locals. These were Lincoln’s Michael Fink, finishing in 4:17 (only a couple minutes off his age group course record), Folsom’s Jesse Barragan, with 4:30, and the women’s winner Jen Pfeifer, of El Dorado,  in 4:33.

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Happy finishers (Photo by Matthew Perry)

There was hard work and there were challenging trails, but the weather was fine at Sunday’s Blood, Sweat and Beers Trail Run.

There is a long course (10.5 miles) or a short course (5.9 miles) and the race directors promise “a challenging mix of single track mountainous trail, a totally cool canal system, unimproved dirt roads with just a hint of paved roads to keep things interesting.”

Sounds like a good time!

In the long course, Chris Vargo led the way to win in 1:07:24. He was followed in by Matthew Twietmeyer , who ran 1:12:30. The 3rd place male was Eric Peterson, in 1:15:22. All were from Sacramento.

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