Ups and Downs on Angeles Crest

Peter Penland didn’t particularly want to run 100 miles last weekend. In fact, he tried to pull out of the Angeles Crest 100-Mile Run because of an injury that drastically limited his training.

“I wrote a letter to the race director and asked for a refund and he refused, which I kind of expected,” said Penland, a 43-year-old plumber from Laguna Beach. “I took the challenge to just go out and get as far as I could get.”

Penland got all the way to the finish line in Pasadena Sunday. He finished in 30 hours 28 minutes, 52nd of 95 finishers among the 156 who started from Wrightwood early Saturday morning. The winner, Tom Nielsen of San Diego, finished in 19:07.

“I felt surprisingly good,” Penland said. “I lowered my expectations to nothing and tried to keep a good attitude. I tried to have a sense of humor about it.”

It’s a good strategy for a race that includes almost 22,000 feet of climbing and 27,000 of descending in the rugged San Gabriel Mountains.

Bill Braun, a 51-year-old doctor from Huntington Beach, struggled more than Penland. After about seven hours and 30 miles, he became ill from dehydration in the 90-degree heat. At an aid station at the 52-mile mark, Braun appeared spent. “Evidently,” he said, “my coloring wasn’t too good.”

But after two hours’ rest he pulled himself together, with the help of his wife Kayla, daughter Ashley and son Billy, and got back on the trail.

Then with friend Mark Kachigan of Huntington Beach, Braun walked under a full moon the next 22 miles and eight hours to the aid station at Chantry Flats.

Feeling a bit better and now paced by another friend from Huntington Beach, Doug Cline, Braun reluctantly tackled the 3,000-foot climb to the top of Mt. Wilson. Cline was encouraging, but Braun doubted he could make it. “I was cursing him to myself all the way up Mt. Wilson,” Braun said.

But Braun was thankful afterward and continued to gain strength, actually sprinting the last mile to finish in 31:59, an hour and a minute before the final cutoff.

By that time Bill Ramsey, a 48-year-old planner for the city of San Juan Capistrano, had been done for more than five hours. He finished 23rd in 26:46.

It was Ramsey’s fifth consecutive finish in the race, but not his fastest. He finished 13th in 1997 in 22:57.

This time Ramsey decided to push the pace early, but the strategy backfired and by the halfway point. “By the 74-mile mark at Chantry Flats my quads were shot,” he said. “It was a little bit of a death march into the finish.”

MOUNTAIN BIKE CHAMPION

Mission Viejo mountain biker Cameron Brenneman won the California State Cross-Country Championship Series pro/semi-pro division title.

Brenneman finished second in the final race of the season Sunday at Lake Castaic and passed Mission Viejo’s Mike Lee for the series points title. Lee, the defending state champion who finished third in the masters world championship this month, finished eighth Sunday and dropped to third in the points race.

Amber Neben, 24, from Irvine, won the 19-34 expert women’s division race, and clinched the series points title. John Soto from Mission Viejo won the 30-34 expert men’s division race and the points title.