2012 Psycho Wyco Run Toto Run 50k Trail Race: Another year, Another Test

No matter what other races I run, climbs I do, or adventures that I go on; there’s one race that keeps calling me back.  My first race of any distance back in 2007, the Psycho Wyco Run Toto Run 50k Trail race has become an annual litmus test. Racing only myself, I’ve measured my growth as a trail and ultra-runner by how I perform each winter on the bridle and single-track trails which climb and fall around Wyandotte County Lake.  Last weekend I took a sixth measurement.   

At “Wyco”, there’s the terrain. If you’d never run the 10.35 mile loop trail around the Lake, you would not believe such topography could exist in Kansas. I’ve seen GPS estimates of 4500 feet of climbing per loop, that’s 13,000 feet of climbing…in Kansas!?!? Then there’s the weather. February in Kansas is cold, but it can be a wide-range of possible “colds”.  Thick or thin ice, wet or dry snow, cold rain and mud, wind and freezing temps, or any possible combination of any or all of the above…you just never know what the trail will look like on race day. Arguably the toughest, slowest, and most frustrating 50K course outside of the mountains, it’s known for steep climbs, quad mashing descents, ice, snow, and mud…lots of mud. More cage-fight than trail run, there’s no such thing as an easy day at “Wyco”. In the weeks leading up to the race, I seemed to forget this.

As a local, I’ve been spoiled with the warmest Kansas winter I can remember in my entire life (we had a 70 degrees F. day in January!).  It was also dry…up until a few days before the race when the rain hit. “Ok”, I thought, “so it’ll be muddy as usual…but warm”.  The day before the race, the temperature plummeted to single digits with negative wind chills, the jacked-up horse-trodden trail surface froze as solid as concrete, and I realized that I had not been training in the extreme cold weather. This was gonna hurt.

So early Saturday morning, with no temperature outside (zero deg.), I made the half-hour drive to the lake and joined a few hundred other nut-jobs for a trail run.

Early in the first loop.

Loop One:

Not usually one to sit in a warm car, I tried to go through my usual pre-race stretching and warm-up routine and walk around the race HQ chatting…that didn’t work. It was COLD (colder than the frost-bite on the toe inducing 50-mile winter night run I did early last year). I kept the inside of my truck company until just before the race started. It turned out to be a good “strategy” as I started towards the back of the pack running nice and easy, finally beating that tendency to put the hammer down early. I consider myself a pretty experienced winter trail runner and can usually feel comfortable by mile two or so, but today the entire first loop left me chilled. I couldn’t seem to get any heat going. I felt slow and frozen the entire 10 miles.  By the time we hit the first road crossing, I had icicles in my beard.  My hand-held water bottles froze around mile six so I wasn’t taking in fluids at my usual rate. The surface of the trail was horrible. Frozen solid; it was like running on asphalt…no it was worse than that because asphalt is flat. It was like running on an asphalt road that had been jackhammered beyond reason. Other than that, it was a good start! Somehow, I finished the loop in 1:57:00.


Loop Two:
The original strategy was to run as self-supported as possible and just skip all of the aid stations but I had spilled water on my left glove while trying to get the ice-ringed lid off of a water bottle so pausing to get a fresh pair of gloves couldn’t be helped (x-tra gloves in the drop bag – lesson learned from Psycho ’08).  It was also an opportunity to grab two unfrozen (for the moment) bottles. The jacket also came off since I was planning to pick up the pace and was finally starting to feel unfrozen.

The second loop felt pretty good and I thought my pace was reasonable given that I wanted to save something this year for that third loop. As I hit the first aid station of the loop, I tossed a water bottle to Mark Van Nuland, who, along with the other volunteers, was spending a cold day providing “lights-out” service and care to runners. He thawed the bottle and topped it off while I was down in the twisting and confusing single track of the “Wyandotte Triangle”. 

Wyandotte Triangle Aid Station

Mark’s words of encouragement as I left the triangle gave me a boost and I picked up the pace all the way to “fall-down-hill”, an endless series of quick switchbacks that drop runners down below the dam. From there it was a run across a field and a serious climb back up to lake level and the top of the damn dam aid station. I went ahead and stopped here again to take in some calories before starting the long haul up the dam (damn) road. As a paved road, it’s the one section of the course that’s always “run-able” but I rarely see anyone “run” it due to the vertical gain. A huge drop off and a great view to the Northeast make the road a nice excuse to slow down.  From the top of the hill we moved back into the forest and down “speed-demon ridge”.  I love technical descents and the ridge is always my favorite part of the loop. For the first time ever though, I got passed on this descent!?!?! A guy was just flying down this thing sideways! He wasn’t running exactly, he was doing some weird kind of sideways skipping action. Strange, but it was working for him. Still, getting passed on a technical descent fired me up (it just doesn’t happen to me!) and I made good time to the three hills section where I had to cool my jets a bit.

Coming out of the "triangle".

After the first eight miles of a loop, you think you’ve got it in the bag with “only” two miles to go…you don’t. Wyco hits you one more time on the way out! In my opinion, those last two miles of the loop are the toughest.  They include the aptly named “three hills section”, which are three serious hills that hit one after the other...after the other. If you can run that entire section, congratulations…you are a badass. I was feeling decent but decided to ease through the “hills” since I knew I’d have to face them once more.

Feeling like my loops were even and expecting to hit the main start/finish area at 4:00:00 I was a little disappointed that the clock read 4:12:00.  The second loop felt faster than the first…looks like I jacked around with aid stations too long.

Loop Three  

I decided to ditch the hydration pack and just run with two bottles. My previous PR at Psycho was 7:29:00 so I felt good about my PR chances as long as I didn’t do anything stupid.  Another runner and I had leap-frogged a number of times on the second loop and we started the final loop together. He was moving really strong so I backed down and watched him disappear ahead. By this time the frozen surface was starting to wear on my ankles and my pace started slowing dramatically. By the time I hit the triangle I was in a really dark place mentally. This is all too common at Wyco; the third loop can really eat runners up. Two solid loops can be lost in vain if the final round turns into a death-march. Even knowing this, I couldn’t stop the slide.

I kept chugging along and managed to find myself on the Dam road chatting with another former Marine who recognized the watch-cap I was wearing. It got me thinking about all my Marines that I miss since I left active duty. There’s been a couple of Ultra’s where I’ve ran into Marines and it’s always given me a little boost. No matter what I accomplish in life (ultra’s, grad school, football, whatever) there’s really nothing I’m more proud of than the fact that I was a Gunnery Sergeant of Marines. It’s a well that doesn’t dry up and today the “moto” feeling hit me at the right time. I went screaming down speed-demon ridge and hit festers wander free of the self-pity I’d been dragging behind me since the triangle.


Fester’s wander is a super fun section of single-track that was designed by the race director’s dog. It climbs up and down through a series of fingers and ridgelines and is very scenic. It was in the wander that I noticed a runner behind me. I managed to hold him off until right up until the “boat yard” when we started running together. “Bruce” from Minnesota turned out to be a pretty good running partner for the rest of the race. I think we pushed each other. I ran as much of the three hills section as I could…which meant all of the flats and the first quarter of each of the three monster hills. As I came down the tree-lined finish lane I saw the clock read 6:48:00! Finally, sub-7.  Way-better than I expected given what the third loop felt like. I passed the test for another year, beating my PR by 40 minutes. Here came the gush! I felt like throwing my water-bottles in the air, getting naked and running all the way to the parking lot …but I restrained myself.  I settled for a 50k sticker and cup of chicken soup.

Speaking of gushing! KC area trail runners….whose got it better than us?

I can’t say thank you enough to “Bad” Ben Holmes and the KC Trail Nerds. Trail Nerd races are absolutely the bench mark. Not just locally; nationwide I haven’t seen anyone do it better!!! And how about the volunteers? These guys and gals got up way earlier than any racer and braved the bitter cold all day just to take care of runners and make this whole thing happen.

Huge thanks to Dick Ross and crew of seekcrun for the thousands of great pictures. Not too many races where you can just get online and download race photos by the hundreds for no charge. You provide an invaluable service to the KC trail scene! Thanks also to Kristi Mayo for taking some high quality pictures as well!


Tons of gratitude to Matt, Rick, Bruce, Brandon, Larry, Mark, Travis, the sideways hill bomber, the unnamed former Marine officer, and all of the other nut-job ultra-runners with whose company I had the honor to keep today! Congrats to fellow KU Med School'er Brandon Hideka who won the 20-mile race! you killed it!

Most of all, love and thanks to my wife Jessica who has supported my ultra-running ambitions from the beginning; and my kids Ayden and Alyena. You guys are with me every mile of every run!


Psycho Wyco Run Toto Run Race times:
2007 – 8:30:23
2008 – 8:05:15
2009 – 7:46:18
2010 – 7:43:00
2011 – 7:29:00
2012 – 6:49:00
I’m slowly getting where I want to be…by my calculations, I should win this thing in my sixties.

Starting Line of the 50K & 20-miler.