The 1990 Trans-Sierra Classic -- Tom Davis

This year, preparations for the 12th annual Trans-Sierra Classic started at the beginning of the summer when we interviewed college students for summer jobs at Silicon Graphics. The most important interview question was "Are you willing to be the driver for the Trans-Sierra Classic this year?" The problem is that the race starts in Onion Valley, up the hill from Independence, California, and goes over the sierra, ending in Kings Canyon National Park. The run is only about 22 or 23 miles long, but the drive from start to finish takes 7 to 8 hours. The student we hired, Iain McClatchie, assured us that he'd love to be the driver for such an event.

Last year, only three Silicon Graphics employees participated in the run -- myself. Rocky Rhodes, and Gary Specker. This year there was a lot of additional interest, and 7 of us finally did the race. In addition to the three veterans. Scott Carr, Bruce Thompson, Bryan Bolich, and Jeff Korcan ran.

Since the last year we had done a lot more hill running (usually we ran 12-18 miles in the hills every Thursday, instead of the usual run at work. Many of us also had a few marathons under our belts (for me and Rocky, last year's Trans-Sierra was the first race either of us had done that was longer than a half-marathon). Rocky was also interested in setting a course record (the record was 3:55; last year he ran it in 4:20, which included about a 10 minute penalty for getting lost). To this end, he ran intervals every Tuesday that involved 6 minutes on and one minute off, where you go as fast as you can for the 6 minutes. Rocky increased the number of intervals to 13 a few weeks before the race; the rest of us did some intervals, but not nearly so religiously.

A couple of months before the race, I managed to damage some muscle in my hip (I claimed that my hip felt like the leg had been ripped out of the socket), so I did very few long runs in the last couple of months, and did a lot of bicycle riding instead.  I also managed to bruise the top of my foot, and that seemed to cause even more trouble than my hip.

As the summer went on, and the race got closer, we all began to worry about our proposed driver, Iain. It sounded like the only thing that interested him was doing ridiculously dangerous things in cars and motorcycles. He was paying $700 speeding tickets, describing how he'd destroyed the brand new tires on his mother's Porsche 928 over the weekend, and practicing stopping his motorcycle so fast that the rear wheel only occasionally made contacts with the ground. Every day, we heard about more of his exploits. Most of them had to be tall tales, since if he'd done only half of what he said, he'd have been killed 10 times over.

The Trans-Sierra has been organized every year by Jeff Hausch (an SGI employee) and his brother. Bill, who lives in the Los Angeles area. Every year, there is a competition between the northern California (no-cal) and southern California (lo-cal) runners. Since the race is easier to attend from the south, the lo-cal runners traditionally bring a much larger support crew (in fact, the support crew is usually a lot larger than the group of runners). The job of the support crew, as far as I can tell, is to sit at the finish line, cheer wildly as each runner comes in, and thoroughly test each bottle of champagne to make sure that none of the runners is poisoned. Suspect bottles are completely consumed. I think that a lot of beer and food is similarly tested.

The Trans-Sierra wouldn't be a real race if there weren't T-shirts for all the participants, and the lo-cal crew provides these, and, at least for the past two years, has done a great job.

This year, I decided this year that it wouldn't be a real race unless we all had race numbers, so I made that my project The main problem, as far as I could see, was to get the right kind of paper. Today, race numbers are printed on material that looks like it is filled with tough fibers, so it won't rip, and is somehow waterproofed so that it won't disintegrate in the river of sweat generated by the long run.

Nobody had a clue where to get such paper, and we even called some of the running stores around here to try to find out. I had just about given up, when I got an envelope in the mail from Silicon Graphics with some information about our health plan or something, but the envelope was exactly the paper I had been looking for. I found out later that it is called Tyvek. Anyway, we bribed one of the secretaries at work to acquire bunch of the envelopes for us (I guess they're expensive), and I wrote a little graphics program to generate the artwork for the numbers.

My plan was to print the numbers on the laser-writer, and then to xerox them onto the Tyvek. I made 16 numbers on the laserwriter (the maximum possible number of runners was 15), and Rocky and I went to work with the xerox machine. Iain was sitting in the room next to the xerox machine, and he said he heard us make a copy, then a few minutes later, he heard a loud "Shit!", and half an hour later. Rocky and I returned. It turns out that Tyvek is plastic, and that the drawing engine in xerox machines gets really hot, and we had filled the drawing engine with molten plastic with the first sheet. It took us half an hour to clean up the mess enough so that the machine worked again, and it still smells a bit funny - something like burning plastic.

What I finally did was to use spray-mount to glue the laserwriter output to the Tyvek, then cut out the numbers, and finally I sprayed the paper part with some of the gunk that artists use to protect their work from water. The final results looked pretty good, and everybody was pleased with the results. The folks at the finish were amazed, and the numbers were certifications of insanity for the benefit of all the backpackers we met along the route. All of them were quick to get out of our way when they saw us coming.

Anyway, since there were 7 of us and only one driver, and drivers are hard to get, we decided to rent a van and split the cost. Even though it seems that the amount of equipment required to spend one night in the mountains and then to do a run would be minimal, 8 people require an amazing amount of crap, so we rented a pretty big van -- it seated 8, and had a bunch of storage in the back.

The plan was to leave the bay area at 9 AM on Friday, and drive through Yosemite and south to the start, camp that night, start the run at 7 AM Saturday, camp in Kings Canyon Saturday night, and drive home on Sunday morning. We were going to eat in restaurants on the way out, fend for ourselves on Saturday morning for food, and have a group dinner and breakfast on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

The first flaw in the plan was that as of Friday morning, Yosemite was burning to the ground, and all the roads through it were closed. The only reasonable alternate route was over Sonora Pass Ñ a very narrow and steep road crossing the sierras just north of Yosemite. It would probably take an extra hour.

The second flaw became apparent at about 9:10 on Friday - no Bruce. We called his wife, Kathy, who told us he'd just left. Unfortunately, he lives in south-east San Jose, and he finally showed up more than an hour late. We then had to go to Silicon Graphics to pick up the last runner, Jeff Korcan. Jeff had finally given up on us, and had gone to run a quick errand, and we waited for him for another 10 or 15 minutes. Anyway, we finally left Silicon Graphics at about 10:45.

By the time we got to the top of Altamont Pass and entered California's central valley, we could already smell smoke, and the air was distinctly clouded. Things got worse and worse as we approached the sierras, and Bryan finally admitted that he'd set all the fires earlier in the week in hopes of gelling the run cancelled. Unfortunately, he'd counted on the winds blowing the fires south, and the north-blowing winds just burned Yosemite and left the running course undamaged.

Gary drove the first stretch to the town of Sonora where we had lunch in a Burger King. Iain constantly advised him about how much faster he could take the corners, and that it was impossible to flip a van like that unless you caught the rim of the wheel on the ground. I drove from Sonora over Sonora Pass very slowly, as the grade is 17% in places, and the van was really struggling. Iain told me my line was all wrong going down the pass, and I could go much faster. He also started wondering what the record time from Onion Valley to the finish was via the highway, and assured us that he'd hold the record by the next evening. I drove to Bishop in the Owens Valley, where we had dinner at the same place as the year before - a pizza place that also sold pasta. We put away an amazing amount, and Bruce drove the rest of the way to Onion Valley. We got there just before sunset, found a place to set up our tents, and found most of the other lo-cal runners.

The two fastest runners from the year before, Jeff Hausch's brother Bill and his friend Peter were there, together with some others. Two other no-cal runners had hitch-hiked up earlier. Bob and Miko. Miko was the lone female runner.

I had baked a load of bran muffins to precipitate an incident in the morning before the run, and I ate 5 of them just to make sure. Rocky had 3, and I don't know how many Scott had, but it turned out to be at least one too few. In the morning, I had a couple of cups of strong coffee, and minutes later, I had my incident. I then ate three Power Bars, and started drinking water. This year, I think I only drank about a half gallon, and Rocky drank about twice that.

I carried the same fanny pack I'd used the year before, and carried 2 bottles of a water/gatorade mixture (32 oz. total), some iodine tablets to fix any water I picked up en-route, and some aspirin. I also took a space blanket, some toilet paper, matches, some identification, 2 Power Bars, and 20 bucks. Most of the other runners carried maps, but I never looked at my map last year, and was sure I wouldn't look at it this year either. Besides, I was a veteran, and knew exactly where I'd made my two wrong turns last year. By 6 AM it was already warm, so many of us decided to run without shirts, and I wore a hat to try and avoid sunburn.

At about 2 minutes before 7, Scott was seen desperately trying the doors on the bathrooms, and unfortunately, both were in use. He started with everybody else but had to stop to make a deposit quite early in the run.

Rocky, Bryan, and I took off at the start, determined to be the first to the top of the 3000 foot climb to Kearsarge Pass. Last year, we tried to jog the whole way, and found that most of the time we were jogging so slowly that we might as well have been walking, so this year we alternately ran and walked, but when we ran, we tried to go significantly faster on the running parts. We tried to walk the steep parts, and run the level and slightly uphill parts, but it seemed that the leader wasn't always able to determine when things were steep, and had to be reminded by the people behind.

As we approached the top, I checked my watch, and it seemed that we could get the record time to the top if we stepped on it a bit, so we actually ran the entire last quarter mile or so. The previous record time to the summit was 1 hour and 8 minutes set by me and Rocky last year, and we got up in 1:07:02 this year. We were about 8 minutes ahead of the second group of runners, whom we could see a few switchbacks down. We had the traditional urine test at the top of the pass (all of us could pee), and then we started down the other side.

Last year Rocky and I missed a turn to Bullfrog Lake about 3/4 mile down from the top and managed to run for an extra mile or more, losing 10 minutes in the process. This year we found the correct turn, but within a half mile we got screwed up again. The problem is that there are a bunch of lakes with good camping sites around them, and there are all sorts of unmarked branches that lead generally in the right direction, but go via the campsites along the lakes rather than along the main trail. We went down too far, and found ourselves running along the edges of the Kearsarge Lakes through bogs and old unmaintained trails and sometimes plain cross-country, We managed to have to cross an old avalanche path (Bryan's euphemism for it was "the rock garden"), and hacked our way across to Bullfrog Lake, where we finally found the main trail again. The whole process of finding the way was quite democratic - we'd vote on the possible turns, and often spread out trying to find some signs of the trail.

We ran for another 20 minutes or so, and suddenly, we heard Bruce shouting behind us Ñ he'd gained 8 minutes in a combination of crazy downhill running, and perhaps not getting quite as lost as we did, although it was clear from his stories later that he wasn't on any approved trail, either. Bruce had managed to sprain both his ankles about 6 miles into the run, and wasn't feeling great, but there's no backing out, so he just kept going. The four of us ran together for awhile, and Bruce was pushing the pace so that it was hard for me to keep up. Finally, I had to pee, and got a rock in my shoe, so I stopped, and let them go. I ran alone for about 15 minutes and caught Bruce again -- his ankles were hurting. I ran with him, and found it easy to gain on level ground, but he would always catch me on the downhill parts.

After another 15 minutes or so, we caught Rocky and Bryan at a stream refilling water bottles.  Apparently while he was bending over to get water, Rocky's calf muscle had cramped, and he fell into the stream, so he got to run the last six miles or so in wet socks and shoes.

After we began to run again. Rocky and Bryan got ahead again, and Bruce and I ran together with Bruce going ahead on the downhill parts, and I'd gain it back on the flats. Since the last couple of miles to the finish is completely flat, I figured I wouldn't have any trouble taking him in the final 2 mile "sprint".

They say that the area is really beautiful. I wouldn't know, since I spent the entire run staring at the trail 5 feet in front of me to make sure I didn't trip on a rock and go head over heels down the hill. I stumbled a bit, and there were a couple of amazing saves I made when I was certain I was going to be flat on my face, and somehow recovered. Last year, I fell down many times, especially in the last few miles. I did fall once this year and it was pretty embarrassing -- it was perfectly flat, running on dirt. Suddenly I was flat on the ground and covered with mud. I still don't know what happened. Others fell more or less, and almost no one arrived at the finish without a few mystery scrapes. Peter had a huge gash in his ankle, and didn't even remember when it happened.

I could tell Bruce was really tired -- he kept asking how far it was, not only of me, but of every group of hikers and backpackers we passed. Of course, the numbers he got from each group of backpackers varied considerably. Those that looked like they were in good shape gave him short distances, and those in bad shape said it was much further. Al least my numbers always got smaller.

Just before the final 2 miles on the flat, there is a steep series of switchbacks, and at the bottom of it is a tricky river crossing that I fouled up the year before. I wound up on the wrong side of the river and had to cross on a log to get to the finish. I knew I'd have to be careful when I got there this year. Well, Bruce and I got to the bottom at the same time, and with all my experience from the year before, I managed to get on the wrong side of the river again. We'd run about a quarter of a mile, and I told Bruce we'd screwed up, and at nearly the same time, we saw a sign saying the finish was 2.6 miles instead of 2. At that point, Bruce lost the will to live, and basically started walking.

I found another crossing over a pair of fallen logs, and that, together with a half mile of cross-country, got me back to the correct trail. Just as I got to the main trail, I saw another lo-cal runner (Peter) a couple hundred yards ahead of me. I couldn't muster the effort to catch him, and he beat me, as well as Jeff, who was a hundred yards ahead of him. The three of us finished in about 4 hours and 16 minutes. At the finish, there was no sign of Bryan; Rocky said he had gotten a cramp at the bridge, and never saw him again.

Jeff Hausch's brother Bill finished a bit later, and finally Bryan arrived in a truck from the opposite direction. He apparently got on the wrong side of the river, ran to the finish, didn't notice that it was the finish, and kept going a mile down the road. When he finally started back, he hitched a ride in a truck. One of the folks at the finish recognized him as having made it earlier, so Bryan got second place with a time of about 4:10. Rocky's time was 4:04. I was not too coherent at the end, and I don't remember the exact order of finishing. I think Bill beat Bruce, and Gary and Scott came in at about 4:38 Other people dribbled in until the last person got in in about 7:26. Iain arrived in the truck two minutes later, with the truck and our belongings intact.

Most of the rest was anti-climactic. We hurt less than the year before, we had a nice dinner and breakfast, and fell asleep pretty early that night. In fact, we felt so good that the next morning before breakfast that we took a slow victory lap jog around the campsite.

Next year, we'll do everything right - we'll find the right path, and we won't put plastic in the xerox machine.