Inside Trail – Santa Cruz – Race Report

timclarkAt the Races

The week before our RunScribe Plus announcement, we had the pleasure of getting out from in front of our screens, heading down to Felton, a little town outside of Santa Cruz, CA. Inside Trail hosts a series of trail runs, with distances typically ranging from 10K to 30K, with some races including a 50K.

We took down 12 demo sets, and were happy to go along for the ride with 12 runners doing various distances.
The most notable comment during the pre-race announcement was when Tim (the race promoter) was cautioning the runners about the river crossing, and describing it as mid-thigh. He wasn’t wrong. We were glad that RunScribe is IPX7 rated, and passed the (unexpected) 1m submerged test!

We were pretty stoked when the first runner coming in to finish for the 1/2M turned out to be someone wearing a RunScribe!
Craig Schmidt finished the 13.5mi course in 1:44:04 – which works out to 7:42min/mi on a rather technical course.

     

As we are big data geeks, part of the fun of doing an event like this is in creating race reports for people who haven’t run with RunScribe before. Showing them what all we can capture, and making comments about what I’m seeing in their sample-of-one run. Craig was gracious enough to let us use his report as an example of what types of things we can glean from a run, using our various analysis and compare tools.

Inside Trail Race Report
Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, Santa Cruz, CA

Craig Schmidt — 1/2M [1st Overall] — Bib # 3275 — 1:44:04
Notes : Altra Lone Peak

Comments

Symmetry

  • You are one of the most symmetrical runners I’ve seen, particularly in a trail race like this!

FootStrike Type

  • Solid mid/fore-foot striker, which is ideal for the Altra (zero drop) shoes!

Community Comparision

  • Flight Ratio : 19% vs 17% … while that is only 2% more time in the air, you are 12% above the community average!
    You’re achieving this by a combination of both lower Contact Time and higher Step Rate
  • Braking Gs : 12Gs vs 10Gs … which may not seem like much, but that’s 20% above the community average!
    I would be interested to see if something with a little more cushion lowered your braking Gs. I heard you mention the Superiors, but I would be curious to see how you do in something like the new Altra Timp…
  • Max Pronation Velocity : 800 vs 550deg/sec … which is 45% above the community average!
    This is how ‘fast’ (vs how ‘much’) you pronate. Your pronation excursion is right in the sweet spot. I’d be concerned if they were both high, but this (alone) isn’t something to be alarmed about. Unless … you have issues with your peroneal tendons, then I’d definitely suggest trying a shoe with more cushion.

Learn more about the metrics that RunScribe captures.

We’re excited to continue with more of the Inside Trail runs this fall/winter, and will continue to share our findings!

Photo Credits: ChasquiRunner (via Inside Trail)