Sacramento Running News

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.

(more…)

Dakota Jones and Joelle Vaught set new course records on a muddy Lake Sonoma 50 Mile, yesterday.

Dakota Jones, of Durango, Colorado, ran 6:17:27, beating Hal Korner’s course record of 7:08:20 that was set in 2010. In fact, the field was stacked with so many ultra-talented ultrarunners, the top seven men, including the 4th place Hal Korner, were under the old course record.

On the women’s side, Joelle Vaught, of Boise, Idaho, set a new course record of 7:52:44, knocking more than 30 minutes off the 8:26:53 set by Devon Crosby-Helms in 2010. As with the men, the top women in this field were throwing down and six of them went under the old course record!

Tyler Stewart, of Novato, was the second woman with 7:56:30. You might remember that Stewart was the women’s winner in her ultrarunning debut at last month’s Way Too Cool 50K.

(more…)

The lead pack after 8-miles: Gary Gellin, Rich Hanna, Shaun Martin and Sam Robinson

This past weekend featured two of the regions most popular races.

On Saturday, over 700 ultrarunners, including some of the top names in the sport, lined up near the Cool Firehouse for a go at the remarkably dry Way Too Cool 50K.

This was the second running on a new and designed to be faster course. For last year’s debut of the new course, mud was the theme of the day and thigh-deep stream crossings kept a lid on the pace.

(more…)

You are probably by now aware that the Olympic Marathon trials were held in Houston this past Saturday.

During your long run this morning, you may have asked your running buddies something like, “I wonder how that woman from our club did? I think her name is Susan. Or maybe it’s Suzanne. I’m not quite sure but, you know, she’s has kind of brown hair and is kind of skinny? You know who I’m talking about?”

No. I don’t know, but I did look through the results and tried to pick out as many locals as I could find and collected their results here.

(more…)