As the month is almost over, time for one of those really boring "list all your miles" posts . . .
27 November: 1 mile (10 minutes)
28 November: 8 miles at lunch (56 minutes), 14 miles to the Fed Hill run and back (100 minutes)
29 November: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes), including some faster stuff (5x1 minute at 5-ish-minute-mile pace), 8 miles in the evening (56 minutes)
30 November: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes), 10 miles in the evening (70 minutes, Canton Square run)
1 December: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes)
2 December: 1 mile (10 minutes)
3 December: 14 miles, hiking, prepping the Balled Eagle 100 course (315 minutes), then 6 miles easy back in Baltimore (45 surreal urban minutes)
Minutes: 772
Miles: 92
4 December: 13 miles in the morning (90 minutes), 15 miles in the evening (105 minutes), all around the city
5 December: 10 miles at lunch (70 minutes)
6 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)
7 December: 9 miles (60 minutes)
8 December: 9 miles (60 minutes)
9 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)
10 December: Hellgate "100K" - 66.6 miles, 790 minutes
Minutes: 1215
Miles: 126.6
11 December: 2 miles easy (20 minutes)
12 December: 1 mile easy (10 minutes)
13 December: 5 miles (35 minutes)
14 December: 9 miles, at APG (60 minutes)
15 December: 17 miles (120 minutes), at Susquehanna State Park (wish the intermittent rain hadn't prevented photography of this - it was beautiful)
16 December: 6 miles (40 minutes), around Baltimore - ouch, for some reason. Yoga after.
17 December: 52 miles (1000 minutes), Balled Eagle 100-Mile attempt
Minutes: 1285
Miles: 92
18 December: 14 miles (100 minutes), all over parts of the Balled Eagle course that I didn't get to run during the actual race.
19 December: 1 mile easy (10 minutes)
20 December: 10 miles at APG (65 minutes), yoga later
21 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), 12 miles with the Wednesday Night Run crew (85 minutes)
22 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), 11 miles in Baltimore (80 minutes)
23 December: 10 miles at APG (70 minutes), yoga later
24 December: 15 miles in Baltimore (105 minutes), partially around Ravens Stadium during marching band practice
Minutes: 655
Miles: 93
And, finally, this week:
25 December: 13 miles (90 minutes) around Baltimore
26 December: 15 miles (105 minutes) around the old haunts in Churchville (Campus Hills Shopping Center to the house in 4:25 . . .)
27 December: A rainy 15 miles (105 minutes) at APG; hot yoga later
28 December: A windy 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG; a cold 5 miles (35 minutes) around Baltimore
29 December: A relatively pleasant 14 miles at APG (100 minutes)
30 December: 15 miles around Baltimore (105 minutes), then another 4 miles (30 minutes) to yoga and back
31 December: 15 miles around Baltimore, in the morning, with a sunrise so beautiful over the Hopkins Bayview campus that I almost turned around to get the camera (almost - 105 minutes)
Minutes: 745
Miles: 106
So, if you've been keeping track (and I hadn't, so I had to go back through my blog and count), that makes, by my count, 4,045 miles that I ran this past year, a figure which may be a little low, since, as I went back, I found some weeks that I hadn't recorded, so I put in a "low" mileage estimate for those weeks. (Yes, I really can remember what I probably ran during certain weeks, given enough prompting about the dates and races that happened during those weeks.) That's an average of a little over 11 miles per day, which is kind of a neat (and totally an unintentional) number, since this was 2011 - maybe I can bump the average up to 12 this year, in honor of 2012 (if the world doesn't end on December 21st and screw that up . . .)
Since this blog is pretty thorough about every race I ran this year (other than the Kentucky Derby Marathon post that I still need to put up here at some point - maybe before the 2012 edition of the race), I won't belabor the recap. The short summary is that I started 2011 with a stress fracture, but still running at least 1 mile a day and keeping the faith that things would improve, and, lo and behold, after an awful 50K Holiday Lake return-from-injury race, I went on to set PRs in the marathon, the 50K (twice), 50 miles, 100K, 6-hour, and Badwater, not to mention getting a few giant, nasty monkeys off my back (namely, Grindstone and Hellgate). I ran a lot, met a lot of cool people, climbed some trash piles, had some bad days, had some worse days, and had some absolutely spectacular days.
But I think what I'll remember the most about this "year of the rabbit" is that in spite of some rough patches, both in individual races and in life in general, on every day, in every race, I pushed through, got it done, and left very little (but not nothing) to regret. And I think that's ideal - enough success to feel as though the effort was worth it, but not so successful that I'm tempted to rest on any laurels in 2012.
So, in that spirit, I'll be taking on the Bandera 100K this coming Saturday. I feel fit, strong, and excited about this opportunity. But, more importantly, I feel excited about another year of running . . . which is a good thing, because I have many miles to run, and promises to keep . . .
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
"Balled Eagle" "100-Mile" "Race Report"
Never before have I used so many quotation marks in the title of one of these things. That's because while this past weekend's little adventure could be called many things, none of the "official" names for it really do it justice. The closest I can come are the following pictures, videos, and words . . .
First, the background. The "Balled Eagle 100" (also known simply as the "Eagle 100," prior to race morning) was Dave Snipes's (aka "Sniper's") brainchild, as a way to give his friend Mark one more chance to run a 100-mile race before his wife had a baby and sidelined his ultramarathon expeditions for a while. Mark had done some races in the Massanutten Mountains, and Sniper is no stranger to the Massanuttens, having completed numerous ultras there, so this was an opportunity for Sniper to design a diabolical course, integrating the toughest parts of other mountain ultras in the area into one monster race.
As this was a "trial run," we would be sticking together for the entire race - we would either all finish, or all quit. At this point, I'd post the course map, but since it probably won't mean much to most people reading this, and, as it turned out, we didn't run the entire course anyway, it's perhaps a moot point. But if you'd like to see the map, feel free to e-harass me, and I'll be more than willing to share. So, on with the story of the race . . .
Mark, Jim, and Mike (aka "The New York Boys"), and Sniper and me, all had a "last meal" the night before this ordeal, at a little place in Front Royal called "The Royal Oak Tavern." Normally, I wouldn't talk about this, except for three amusing things that happened during dinner:
1. Sniper threatens to administer "a drug test" (as he purchased only one, to detect marijuana usage only, from the Dollar Tree)
2. Sniper gives us our "ultrarunner survival kits," mostly courtesy of the Dollar Tree
3. This guy plays solo acoustic covers of everything the whole time
At this point, we were down to just five people starting the race, as opposed to nine expected - four had backed out before we even met in the Signal Knob parking lot. So, with a minimum number of participants, we bravely met at a little before 5:30 a.m. on December 17th, and after a speech in which Sniper revealed the "real" name of the race (the "Balled Eagle," for reasons beyond a "PG" rating that shall not be discussed here) and encouraged us not to drop out when we reached the parking lot again at around 70 miles, we were off . . .
And onto our first horrible obstacle, Sherman's Gap. In the Old Dominion 100, this climb, a rocky, nasty, steep, awful thing that happens a little after 75 miles into the race, has ruined many a race. Some have even been known to call 911 from the top of the climb, but that's a funny story for another day . . .
Oh brother, here we go . . .
This trail is legendary enough to have this monument associated with it.
Although it was in the mid-20s, and still dark, by the time we power-hiked to the top, we were sweating profusely. Mike, who had been deathly ill the night before, and didn't look any better on race morning, was the palest, sweatiest, dead-eye-est of us all. He almost gave us a legitimate reason to call 911. But since there was no way for anybody to get up there, except on foot, we had no choice but to continue down the trail, and on to the first aid station. As the sun came up, and the temperatures climbed, running became a bit more comfortable, but because it remained cloudy, we never saw anything warmer than the mid-30s.
Other than Adam (a friend who would be running the first 27 miles with us) having a run-in with a sawbriar branch that got him both coming into the first aid station, and leaving the first aid station, as he cut himself on it again trying to throw it off to the side of the trail, and me getting my right foot and makeshift sock-gloves wet in a flooded section of trail, the trek to the first aid station, at Veach West, from the top of Sherman's Gap, was pretty uneventful. The aid station, on the other hand . . .
. . . was downright awesome.
Sniper had clearly spared no expense (and since these were all volunteers, "no expense" was definitely the operative phrase) in setting up top-notch aid stations, with awesome volunteers, plenty of sandwiches, and even a very official-looking table. Perhaps this was detrimental to our overall progress, as we spent 15-20 minutes at each aid station . . .
But eventually, we were off on our relatively short trek to the second aid station at Milford Gap. Mike was looking a lot better, for unknown reasons, especially since the trail had gotten no easier . . .
Grunting up the trail from Veach West
Without particular incident, we made it to the second aid station, at Milford Gap, and spent some time tanking up, since the next section would be around 13 miles, including a climb up to Kennedy Peak. Some highlights from this section:
Sniper finds a coin on a carin; or "Sniper, no swiping!"
God blesses our otherwise cursed run.
We climb some more, while Mike (in the rear) gamely hangs on.
A powerline cut that we don't have to run magically appears just before we reach Camp Roosevelt (Aid Station 3); note that the colorful "ants" on the ridge are the other runners . . .
We reached Aid Station 3 without sign of our allegedly beloved Seth, one of the friends of the "New York Boys" who was supposed to have been at Aid Station 2. In between watching YouTube videos on my iPhone of old commercials (in particular, the commercial for "Pizza Party"), and almost accidentally stabbing Mike in the face with a tree I ripped out of the ground, after Snipes goaded me into illustrating my "Gerta" strength (see: Halloweeny 50K, where I dressed up as a decidedly manly-looking girl), and, because I had been distracted by said YouTube video, was paying absolutely no attention to where anybody else was standing (prompting jokes about the East German nearly stabbing the Jew), I had been sending distressed emails to Seth, at the behest of the other runners, asking him where he was, telling him to bring money in unmarked, non-sequential bills, and so on. He had responded once, so he was probably still alive, but that didn't stop me from carrying on with a round of "Sethy Boy" as we trudged up the Duncan Hollow Trail.
It was also in this section of the course that:
We found this dog (he eventually ran down the trail to his owner)
http://vimeo.com/33885694
Skunk incident occurred (Mark's video, so I'm linking this.)
After the above trials and tribulations, we made it to Aid Station 4, Gap Creek, and found Seth, who, with his girlfriend, had allegedly driven some 70 miles in the wrong direction, causing him to miss us at Aid Station 3. It later turned out that he thought that he was supposed to show up for Crew Shift 2, not Aid Station 2, hence the late arrival. At any rate, Seth took a bunch of probably embarassing pictures of us, since we were all a little beaten up at this point, and then we continued onward to Aid Station 5, as nightfall drew near.
This is mainly just a cool picture of Jim, thanks to the lighting, and also proves that the trail isn't always completely ragged and unrunnable.
On our way to our next Aid Station, at Crisman Hollow Road, the sky got darker, the temperatures dropped, and things generally got a lot creepier.
First this . . .
Then this.
I bombed down the comfortable, runnable trail to Waterfall Mountain, then grunted with everybody else as we climbed about 900 feet in 0.6 miles. About 20 minutes later, we were at the top, it was almost totally dark, and we still had about 0.4 miles to go to reach the aid station. At this point, the cold and the stoppage time at the aid stations were beginning to take their toll on me. While we were running, I was feeling okay. When we stopped, I quickly started to get cold, and the darkness was making this more uncomfortable. Mark hadn't been eating much, Jim was having trouble with his knees on the steep, rocky downhills, and Mike was hanging on by a thread.
And then came Kerns Mountain.
The trail along the Kerns Mountain ridge, on paper, does not seem too awful. What the paper doesn't show is that the trail actually crosses over the ridge a number of times, meaning that you are subjected to a number of steep, rocky climbs and descents . . . so many that apparently, it took us 2.5 hours to "run" the next 5.5 mile section along Kerns Mountain. Our conversation got goofier at this point, mainly as a means of masking the sheer torture. As we were moving as a group, we could only move as fast as the slowest person, which meant that one person's stumble was everybody's stumble. But we eventually pushed through, and, now at about 15.5 hours into this ordeal, we had "run" about 45.5 miles, which was not at all putting us on pace to finish within Sniper's conservative estimate of 36 (LONG) hours.
So we made a slight course correction from Aid Station 6, Moreland Gap. Rather than take the orange trail up to Short Mountain, along the ridge, and back down, we simply ran down the gravel road (Edinburg Road) to the next aid station, as we would have during the Old Dominion 100. This route was about 2.5 miles shorter, and probably at least an hour faster, than the original route, given our current pace. The run-walking in this section, which was much more vigorous than the stumble-hiking in the previous section, was keeping me awake . . . but so was an unexpected wetness in my rear end, which turned out to be the bladder in my pack leaking water. The hose had frozen hours ago, so not only was the bladder useless, it was making me wet and cold. For practical reasons, and out of frustration, I opened the pack, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the entire bladder. That didn't make my pants any dryer, but it sure made things a lot lighter and easier all the way to the aid station.
We reached Aid Station 7, Edinburg Gap, at about 16 hours, 45 minutes into the race, a little longer than my fastest 100-mile race time, and here was where things really fell apart. Mark, who hadn't been eating much, was shivering uncontrollably at this point - in temperatures this cold, most of what you eat goes to warming your body, and if you're not eating, you're not going to be able to warm yourself. Mark got into a heated van to try to warm up, but he wasn't getting any warmer. Since we were just standing around the aid station doing nothing, and that's how you freeze in this sort of weather, I got in the van too, and then Mike got in. So now a majority of runners were in the heated van, and Mark, who Sniper was doing the race for, was in no condition to continue. Eventually, Sniper got in the van and talked to Mark, and when it became clear that it was not safe for Mark to continue, we decided to stop the run, at about 52 miles. In Sniper's opinion, only he and I would have made it the rest of the way (assuming I could have gotten over my wet butt, which, if we had kept moving at a brisk pace, probably would have happened), and it was silly to keep all of those volunteers out all night for just two runners, while the other three runners went back to the hotel and then back home without saying a proper goodbye. So we all went back to the Signal Knob parking lot, then spent another night at the Hampton Inn, in its blissfully soft beds, and then said our proper goodbyes at a decent hour on Sunday morning, after a hearty breakfast.
EPILOGUE:
Since my legs were in decent shape, and I had some time, and I had driven almost three hours to get to the race, I thought it might be "fun" to go out and run up the last devilish climb that Sniper had thrown into the race, a powerline cut less than a mile from the finish, in Woodstock Tower. The powerline cut looks like this:
After a 5-minute warmup jog, I ran/power-hiked the climb, pausing briefly to take pictures of parts of it. The "worst" part (in my opinion) looked something like this:
It took me almost exactly 10 minutes to reach the top. As I took in this view:
. . . my cell phone re-connected to the network, and I received a text message with a link to this video:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a1b7018f17/drunk-santa-caught-on-tape
And as I sat at the top, quads burning, heart pounding, gasping for breath, I laughed hysterically, especally at the part where "Santa" falls and bangs his head on the rear bumper of a parked car.
And I wouldn't include this detail, except that it reminds me of something that Dakota Jones posted after finishing second in the North Face 50-Mile Championship Run in San Francisco a few weeks ago. He said that, at the end of the day, we're not superhumans - we're just guys that like to run. But we like other things, too. And while we all could have hung our heads in shame because we failed to finish the "Balled Eagle" course, we also had a lot of awesome experiences in the process, none of which would have been possible if we weren't out there exploring and pushing ourselves to our limits.
Plus, 52 miles rounds up to 100, which was good enough for all of us to receive ridiculous "finisher" buckles:
In its original wrapping, shown pretty close to actual size (except sideways, because stupid blogger wanted it that way . . .)
So as I close out the write-up for the last of my running-related adventures for 2011, mostly what comes to mind is how thankful I am for the many people I've met, run with, influenced, inspired, or otherwise impacted with my running this past year. I don't primarily do this for my health (although good health is a positive byproduct of this endeavor), and I definitely wouldn't do it at this level if I didn't feel like it was somehow making a difference in other people's lives. So thanks for being there, thanks for reading, and I'm looking forward to raising the bar in 2012. :)
First, the background. The "Balled Eagle 100" (also known simply as the "Eagle 100," prior to race morning) was Dave Snipes's (aka "Sniper's") brainchild, as a way to give his friend Mark one more chance to run a 100-mile race before his wife had a baby and sidelined his ultramarathon expeditions for a while. Mark had done some races in the Massanutten Mountains, and Sniper is no stranger to the Massanuttens, having completed numerous ultras there, so this was an opportunity for Sniper to design a diabolical course, integrating the toughest parts of other mountain ultras in the area into one monster race.
As this was a "trial run," we would be sticking together for the entire race - we would either all finish, or all quit. At this point, I'd post the course map, but since it probably won't mean much to most people reading this, and, as it turned out, we didn't run the entire course anyway, it's perhaps a moot point. But if you'd like to see the map, feel free to e-harass me, and I'll be more than willing to share. So, on with the story of the race . . .
Mark, Jim, and Mike (aka "The New York Boys"), and Sniper and me, all had a "last meal" the night before this ordeal, at a little place in Front Royal called "The Royal Oak Tavern." Normally, I wouldn't talk about this, except for three amusing things that happened during dinner:
1. Sniper threatens to administer "a drug test" (as he purchased only one, to detect marijuana usage only, from the Dollar Tree)
2. Sniper gives us our "ultrarunner survival kits," mostly courtesy of the Dollar Tree
3. This guy plays solo acoustic covers of everything the whole time
At this point, we were down to just five people starting the race, as opposed to nine expected - four had backed out before we even met in the Signal Knob parking lot. So, with a minimum number of participants, we bravely met at a little before 5:30 a.m. on December 17th, and after a speech in which Sniper revealed the "real" name of the race (the "Balled Eagle," for reasons beyond a "PG" rating that shall not be discussed here) and encouraged us not to drop out when we reached the parking lot again at around 70 miles, we were off . . .
And onto our first horrible obstacle, Sherman's Gap. In the Old Dominion 100, this climb, a rocky, nasty, steep, awful thing that happens a little after 75 miles into the race, has ruined many a race. Some have even been known to call 911 from the top of the climb, but that's a funny story for another day . . .
Oh brother, here we go . . .
This trail is legendary enough to have this monument associated with it.
Although it was in the mid-20s, and still dark, by the time we power-hiked to the top, we were sweating profusely. Mike, who had been deathly ill the night before, and didn't look any better on race morning, was the palest, sweatiest, dead-eye-est of us all. He almost gave us a legitimate reason to call 911. But since there was no way for anybody to get up there, except on foot, we had no choice but to continue down the trail, and on to the first aid station. As the sun came up, and the temperatures climbed, running became a bit more comfortable, but because it remained cloudy, we never saw anything warmer than the mid-30s.
Other than Adam (a friend who would be running the first 27 miles with us) having a run-in with a sawbriar branch that got him both coming into the first aid station, and leaving the first aid station, as he cut himself on it again trying to throw it off to the side of the trail, and me getting my right foot and makeshift sock-gloves wet in a flooded section of trail, the trek to the first aid station, at Veach West, from the top of Sherman's Gap, was pretty uneventful. The aid station, on the other hand . . .
. . . was downright awesome.
Sniper had clearly spared no expense (and since these were all volunteers, "no expense" was definitely the operative phrase) in setting up top-notch aid stations, with awesome volunteers, plenty of sandwiches, and even a very official-looking table. Perhaps this was detrimental to our overall progress, as we spent 15-20 minutes at each aid station . . .
But eventually, we were off on our relatively short trek to the second aid station at Milford Gap. Mike was looking a lot better, for unknown reasons, especially since the trail had gotten no easier . . .
Grunting up the trail from Veach West
Without particular incident, we made it to the second aid station, at Milford Gap, and spent some time tanking up, since the next section would be around 13 miles, including a climb up to Kennedy Peak. Some highlights from this section:
Sniper finds a coin on a carin; or "Sniper, no swiping!"
God blesses our otherwise cursed run.
We climb some more, while Mike (in the rear) gamely hangs on.
A powerline cut that we don't have to run magically appears just before we reach Camp Roosevelt (Aid Station 3); note that the colorful "ants" on the ridge are the other runners . . .
We reached Aid Station 3 without sign of our allegedly beloved Seth, one of the friends of the "New York Boys" who was supposed to have been at Aid Station 2. In between watching YouTube videos on my iPhone of old commercials (in particular, the commercial for "Pizza Party"), and almost accidentally stabbing Mike in the face with a tree I ripped out of the ground, after Snipes goaded me into illustrating my "Gerta" strength (see: Halloweeny 50K, where I dressed up as a decidedly manly-looking girl), and, because I had been distracted by said YouTube video, was paying absolutely no attention to where anybody else was standing (prompting jokes about the East German nearly stabbing the Jew), I had been sending distressed emails to Seth, at the behest of the other runners, asking him where he was, telling him to bring money in unmarked, non-sequential bills, and so on. He had responded once, so he was probably still alive, but that didn't stop me from carrying on with a round of "Sethy Boy" as we trudged up the Duncan Hollow Trail.
It was also in this section of the course that:
We found this dog (he eventually ran down the trail to his owner)
http://vimeo.com/33885694
Skunk incident occurred (Mark's video, so I'm linking this.)
After the above trials and tribulations, we made it to Aid Station 4, Gap Creek, and found Seth, who, with his girlfriend, had allegedly driven some 70 miles in the wrong direction, causing him to miss us at Aid Station 3. It later turned out that he thought that he was supposed to show up for Crew Shift 2, not Aid Station 2, hence the late arrival. At any rate, Seth took a bunch of probably embarassing pictures of us, since we were all a little beaten up at this point, and then we continued onward to Aid Station 5, as nightfall drew near.
This is mainly just a cool picture of Jim, thanks to the lighting, and also proves that the trail isn't always completely ragged and unrunnable.
On our way to our next Aid Station, at Crisman Hollow Road, the sky got darker, the temperatures dropped, and things generally got a lot creepier.
First this . . .
Then this.
I bombed down the comfortable, runnable trail to Waterfall Mountain, then grunted with everybody else as we climbed about 900 feet in 0.6 miles. About 20 minutes later, we were at the top, it was almost totally dark, and we still had about 0.4 miles to go to reach the aid station. At this point, the cold and the stoppage time at the aid stations were beginning to take their toll on me. While we were running, I was feeling okay. When we stopped, I quickly started to get cold, and the darkness was making this more uncomfortable. Mark hadn't been eating much, Jim was having trouble with his knees on the steep, rocky downhills, and Mike was hanging on by a thread.
And then came Kerns Mountain.
The trail along the Kerns Mountain ridge, on paper, does not seem too awful. What the paper doesn't show is that the trail actually crosses over the ridge a number of times, meaning that you are subjected to a number of steep, rocky climbs and descents . . . so many that apparently, it took us 2.5 hours to "run" the next 5.5 mile section along Kerns Mountain. Our conversation got goofier at this point, mainly as a means of masking the sheer torture. As we were moving as a group, we could only move as fast as the slowest person, which meant that one person's stumble was everybody's stumble. But we eventually pushed through, and, now at about 15.5 hours into this ordeal, we had "run" about 45.5 miles, which was not at all putting us on pace to finish within Sniper's conservative estimate of 36 (LONG) hours.
So we made a slight course correction from Aid Station 6, Moreland Gap. Rather than take the orange trail up to Short Mountain, along the ridge, and back down, we simply ran down the gravel road (Edinburg Road) to the next aid station, as we would have during the Old Dominion 100. This route was about 2.5 miles shorter, and probably at least an hour faster, than the original route, given our current pace. The run-walking in this section, which was much more vigorous than the stumble-hiking in the previous section, was keeping me awake . . . but so was an unexpected wetness in my rear end, which turned out to be the bladder in my pack leaking water. The hose had frozen hours ago, so not only was the bladder useless, it was making me wet and cold. For practical reasons, and out of frustration, I opened the pack, unscrewed the cap, and dumped the entire bladder. That didn't make my pants any dryer, but it sure made things a lot lighter and easier all the way to the aid station.
We reached Aid Station 7, Edinburg Gap, at about 16 hours, 45 minutes into the race, a little longer than my fastest 100-mile race time, and here was where things really fell apart. Mark, who hadn't been eating much, was shivering uncontrollably at this point - in temperatures this cold, most of what you eat goes to warming your body, and if you're not eating, you're not going to be able to warm yourself. Mark got into a heated van to try to warm up, but he wasn't getting any warmer. Since we were just standing around the aid station doing nothing, and that's how you freeze in this sort of weather, I got in the van too, and then Mike got in. So now a majority of runners were in the heated van, and Mark, who Sniper was doing the race for, was in no condition to continue. Eventually, Sniper got in the van and talked to Mark, and when it became clear that it was not safe for Mark to continue, we decided to stop the run, at about 52 miles. In Sniper's opinion, only he and I would have made it the rest of the way (assuming I could have gotten over my wet butt, which, if we had kept moving at a brisk pace, probably would have happened), and it was silly to keep all of those volunteers out all night for just two runners, while the other three runners went back to the hotel and then back home without saying a proper goodbye. So we all went back to the Signal Knob parking lot, then spent another night at the Hampton Inn, in its blissfully soft beds, and then said our proper goodbyes at a decent hour on Sunday morning, after a hearty breakfast.
EPILOGUE:
Since my legs were in decent shape, and I had some time, and I had driven almost three hours to get to the race, I thought it might be "fun" to go out and run up the last devilish climb that Sniper had thrown into the race, a powerline cut less than a mile from the finish, in Woodstock Tower. The powerline cut looks like this:
After a 5-minute warmup jog, I ran/power-hiked the climb, pausing briefly to take pictures of parts of it. The "worst" part (in my opinion) looked something like this:
It took me almost exactly 10 minutes to reach the top. As I took in this view:
. . . my cell phone re-connected to the network, and I received a text message with a link to this video:
http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/a1b7018f17/drunk-santa-caught-on-tape
And as I sat at the top, quads burning, heart pounding, gasping for breath, I laughed hysterically, especally at the part where "Santa" falls and bangs his head on the rear bumper of a parked car.
And I wouldn't include this detail, except that it reminds me of something that Dakota Jones posted after finishing second in the North Face 50-Mile Championship Run in San Francisco a few weeks ago. He said that, at the end of the day, we're not superhumans - we're just guys that like to run. But we like other things, too. And while we all could have hung our heads in shame because we failed to finish the "Balled Eagle" course, we also had a lot of awesome experiences in the process, none of which would have been possible if we weren't out there exploring and pushing ourselves to our limits.
Plus, 52 miles rounds up to 100, which was good enough for all of us to receive ridiculous "finisher" buckles:
In its original wrapping, shown pretty close to actual size (except sideways, because stupid blogger wanted it that way . . .)
So as I close out the write-up for the last of my running-related adventures for 2011, mostly what comes to mind is how thankful I am for the many people I've met, run with, influenced, inspired, or otherwise impacted with my running this past year. I don't primarily do this for my health (although good health is a positive byproduct of this endeavor), and I definitely wouldn't do it at this level if I didn't feel like it was somehow making a difference in other people's lives. So thanks for being there, thanks for reading, and I'm looking forward to raising the bar in 2012. :)
Thursday, December 15, 2011
The Eagle Has Landed: Eagle 100-Mile Endurance Run Preview
For what will probably be my last major "adventure" of 2011, this Saturday (December 17th), starting at 5 a.m., I'll be running an all-new 100-mile race, mapped, organized, and directed by Dave Snipes, with a modest amount of input from me. This course takes parts of The Ring, the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100-Mile Run, and some fun new surprises (some of which I am forbidden from posting pictures of here), and remixes them all at the very end of the year, far away from all of those races, to present what will hopefully be an exciting new challenge for runners and the foolhardy alike.
This will be a limited-entry pilot test of this course, and if it turns out awesome, who knows how high this eagle will fly next year. But for now, here are a few preview pictures from the course-marking expedition that I participated in a couple of weeks ago . . . Enjoy!
The first image in this blog entry because it's arguably the coolest, but in the race, it's the last thing you'll see . . .
Rocks coming down . . .
Rocks going up.
If you can't see the course markings, you probably shouldn't run this race.
Look familiar?
This will be a limited-entry pilot test of this course, and if it turns out awesome, who knows how high this eagle will fly next year. But for now, here are a few preview pictures from the course-marking expedition that I participated in a couple of weeks ago . . . Enjoy!
The first image in this blog entry because it's arguably the coolest, but in the race, it's the last thing you'll see . . .
Rocks coming down . . .
Rocks going up.
If you can't see the course markings, you probably shouldn't run this race.
Look familiar?
Sunday, December 11, 2011
2011 Hellgate 100K Race Report
It has been said that the Hellgate 100K is a "special" race, for a number of reasons. It was certainly a "special" race for me this year. And here's why . . .
As you may know, I've dedicated this past fall to "redemption" in races that I've failed in falls past. First The Ring, where I still didn't finish, but made it further than my previous attempt. Then, North Coast, where the story was the same, except that I did it in spite of a dry respiratory system as a result of pacing at the Wasatch 100 the week prior. Then the Grindstone 100, which I finished in 27-and-a-half hours, in spite of pretty much coming straight off a plane from Israel to go to the race. But the crown jewel this fall was Hellgate. Reference my 2009 race rehash on this blog () and you'll see that "things didn't go well" was an understatement. So, out of all the "redemption races" that I had planned for this fall, Hellgate was the one where I wanted to put in my best effort and my strongest finish.
To that end, all of my crazy running-related adventures this fall (Richmond Marathon finish-to-start, then start-to-finish, Stone Mill 50+ miler and Philadelphia Marathon on back-to-back days, etc.) had been geared towards preparing for Hellgate. Cold weather, late nights, lots of running in the dark, lots of consecutive miles on little rest. To top it all off, from the Sunday prior to Hellgate to the previous Monday, I put in a 130-mile running week, one of my highest-mileage weeks this year. I felt strong after that week, and with some strategic tapering before the race, I knew I had a good shot at achieving my goal: primarily, to finish, but ideally, to finish in the 12-13 hour range (going one better than Sniper's prediction of a 14-hour race for me, and spiting my unseeded #70 bib), and hopefully, with a time in that range, finish in the top 10 men. Regardless, I came into the race confident that, although some may be faster, nobody was going to be tougher than I was. I was fully prepared and unafraid to risk life and limb to finish this silly race.
This time, I wasn't going to go it alone. A Baltimore local, Henry, contacted me before the race, and we worked out a plan to travel down together, and to use his white crew-cab Ford F150 as the crew vehicle for my two crew members/pacers, Hope and Mark, both relatively new to the ultrarunning world, but sufficiently excited about this race from all the talking-up I had given it in the prior months, on this blog and otherwise. So after going to my little sister's chemistry thesis presentation at Goucher (aww, she's growing up!), congratulating her, and getting the requisite good luck wishes from her and from my parents, we loaded up the truck, and at a little after 2 p.m., we were on our way down to Camp Bethel.
We arrived just after 6 p.m., a drive that was thankfully without incident, in plenty of time to eat the pre-race dinner of pasta and lasagna (meat and vegetarian, and, I hate to say it, but the vegetarian lasagna was better), chat with the other runners, and make ourselves at home in the cabins. At around 8 p.m., the pre-race meeting started, and after a little over half an hour of Horton's usual horsing around, and the typical questions about how much snow/ice/water was on the course (none, a little, and a lot, respectively), we went back to lounging around in the cabin, laughing, joking, and pretty much acting like we weren't about to start running in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in a few hours.
At 10:50 p.m., the caravan left the camp, and we began the half-hour drive to the starting line, all still in good spirits. The amount of "dead time" before Hellgate is a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have all that time to relax and do what you need to do . . . but only if you can really relax. And, for me, the nerves had somewhat set in the whole time, but became really apparent on the drive out there. It's hard to see those same sights by the side of the road that I saw in 2009, and not think about how badly that went. I kept telling myself that this time, although it looked the same, would be different. Between that, Hope and Mark's threat to abandon me for the "Monster Maze" that we saw advertised on billboards along the way, and our riotous laughter over Henry's bottle of Boost and a Starbucks coffee drink mixed together, which looked like, well, liquid poop, I started the race with those negative thoughts at least relegated to the back of my mind. (For me, Natural Vitality's Energy 28 and their liquid multivitamin would be my stay-alert boost of choice.)
(The above begs the questions of how much caffiene is required to make one's heart explode, and what would such an explosion look like - topics discussed at length prior to our little run.)
At midnight, we were off, and the first section, arguably one of the fastest sections of the course, went by without incident. In stark contrast to 2009, when I went out a little bit hard, and felt exhausted immediately, I stayed within myself, and found that I was still up near the front of the pack, without killing myself. I decided not to push to run with the lead pack, as they were clearly racing hard from the beginning, and considering that I didn't want another DNF, it was an unecessarily risky strategy. The famed creek crossing came and went without incident (after several shallower impostors, which would be the order of the entire race), although being nearly up to my knees, I nearly took a cold, wet spill. Before I knew it, I was at the first aid station, Forest Service Road 35, and already feeling better about this year.
We began the first climb up the gravel road, and I found that, again, in contrast to 2009, I felt strong, and this felt doable. I passed a few more people going up the climb on my way to the second aid station, Petite's Gap, where I saw my crew for the first time, and was proud to come in looking strong (and, as I would find out later, in 15th place). Although I didn't want to jinx things, I began to think that this would be a very special race . . .
(Apparently ready to attack the Petite's Gap aid station . . .)
(. . . and then guzzing something gross)
But of course, we all have to have our low points, and about a mile out of the Petite's Gap aid station, I suddenly started feeling weak and exhausted. Maybe this was because it was around 3 a.m., or because I hadn't eaten enough, or that I realized that it would be a relatively long time before I saw my crew again (no crew access again until the fourth aid station, at this point, 13-15 miles away). Whatever the cause, I struggled in the next gravel road section, and on the trail downhill, where the leaf-covered jagged rocks were making rapid progress very difficult for me. A lot of people passed me. I started having flashbacks to 2009, as I was feeling very much at this point the way I did in 2009. I kept telling myself that this was different. I ate a banana, drank some water, downed a gel, and kept pushing forward, and by the time I reached the third aid station, Camping Gap, I was starting to feel in control again. Unfortuately, I had dropped plenty of places, and perhaps at the rate I was going, my aspirational goals were out of reach.
But still, I had an obligation to myself, and to my crew, to give it everything I had, and to run a respectable race, regardless of how long it took me to finish. So as soon as I started feeling better, I started pushing a little, a la Badwater this past summer after Panamint Springs. I turned on the "grind" gear and began cranking out 8-9 minute miles over the thankfully wide and runnable (but rolling) grassy trail. And slowly and steadily, I was passing people. I reached the rocky downhill trail, and here it occurred to me that I should turn on the headlamp that I had around my waist, to supplement the one on my head. This was the first time I had ever used this light setup, and, as it turns out, this is the correct light setup. The waist light covered the near-field, and the headlamp covered the far-field, so I had a full 3 feet of visibility in front of me. It may as well have been daylight. So now I ran down the rocky trail with far less incident, and passed a few other runners. After what seemed like a long time (and probably was, considering that this was possibly the longest section of the race between aid stations), I reached the fourth aid station, Headforemost Mountain, and my crew - a huge mental boost. I was now in 20th place (again, as I would later learn), but making a comeback, in stark contrast to 2009 - in 2009, I nearly dropped at this aid station, and only continued because Sniper came through and urged me to come along with him. Far better circumstances this time . . .
And so it went into the fifth aid station, Jennings Creek. The next section was about six miles, half of which was wide, runnable downhill, and I was really able to pick up the pace on that section, especially with my new headlamp setup. I passed some more people, reaching the Jennings Creek aid station in about a hour - encouraging. As I crossed over the bridge to the aid station, running strong, I remembered in 2009, when Sniper had dragged me to this one, and I was really messed up, and a woman at the aid station was giving me some sort of pressure-point massage to try to improve my situation. Strange, the things you remember . . .
I began the big long climb up a gravel road towards the sixth aid station, the moon full and bright, but still no eclipse (it was apparently not visible where we were). I distinctly recalled the suffering in this section in 2009 - my legs hurt terribly, and every step was more difficult than the last. This time, though, I kept putting one foot in front of the other on the gravel road climb, then down the trail, then back up the gravel road to the sixth aid station, Little Cove Mountain, where I had given up the ghost in 2009. As I neared the aid station, besides noticing that the climb did not seem nearly as steep and awful as it had in 2009, I saw two of my friends, Jeremy and Patrick, walking to the aid station. As I realized when I was leaving the aid station, Patrick was about to drop - I definitely felt for him, since he looked much like I must have at that point in the race in 2009. Jeremy jogged up the hill with me for a bit, and told me that I looked strong, and was on pace for a mid-13-hour finish - also encouraging, considering that earlier in the race, I thought that all hope of that was gone.
I continued down the trail to the seventh aid station, Bearwallow Gap, now in early daylight, feeling confident about the progress I was making and the finish that I was shooting for. This section took some of the wind out of my sails, with some really rocky, ragged single-track that slowed me significantly. But I persisted forward, and made it to the Bearwallow Gap aid station to find David Horton sitting there, waiting to check me in, and Mark ready to pace me through the next section. Mark told me that somebody had just come through a couple of minutes ago, looking to be in bad shape. More encouragement . . .
Mark and I braved some steep uphill, as he regaled me with tales of skinned bear carcasses in the vicinity of the perhaps aptly-named previous aid station, and how Horton had made Hope sing an "Oh Holy Night" (his second favorite hymn, next to "Amazing Grace") duet with one of his Liberty students. Eventually we neared the ridge, where the trail flattened a bit, and we started picking up the pace. The last part of this section, a gradually-rising gravel road into the eighth aid station, Bobblet's Gap, was frustrating - I felt with the grade as shallow as it was, I should try running, but at the same time, there was still too much race left to risk blowing up now. When I reached the Bobblet's Gap aid station, Hope was ready to take her turn as pacer, and the aid station volunteer told me, surprisingly, that tenth place was just ahead of me. With a fresh pacer and a place to chase, we set off down the gravel road.
We rolled easily down the road, at a little better than 7-minute mile pace, passing not one, but two runners ahead of me. Unfortunately, in the one part of the course where the markings were tricky, we ran right past the turn-off onto the "forever" trail. Fortunately, another person who was out running the course on his own had made the same mistake, and was just up ahead to tell us that he hadn't seen a course marking. We figured out our mistake and got back on track, but in the meantime, about ten minutes and the two people that I had passed had passed me back. Oh well, time to pass them again . . . but it wasn't going to be easy. The trail in this part of the course was the rockiest, raggedest trail yet, and being as tired as I was at this point, footing was becoming a more significant issue. I could hear Horton's voice drawling in my mind, taunting me: "Come on, boy! You're weak! You're soft!" as I picked my way through the rocks as quickly as I could. Hope tripped, but didn't fall, and about thirty seconds after that, I tripped and hit my right knee - hard. Good thing I had been wearing tights - otherwise, that knee would have been really bloodied. I walked for a couple of minutes to make sure that I hadn't done any serious damage, and once I was satisfied that things were okay, I resumed running again, having passed Aaron, who was in tenth place, and rolled into the ninth aid station, Day Creek, with a little over 6 miles to go, and Mark ready to pace me through the last section of the course. Shaun, who had been up near the front of the pack, but gotten lost a couple of times, was also at this aid station, ready to drop (a situation that I could sympathize with), so Hope got the job of driving him back to the finish line.
The last section of the race was an uphill grunt, much akin to the climb up Mount Whitney at the end of Badwater (except only about half an hour of fast-walking to the top), followed by a very fast downhill on a wide trail/road back to camp. Walking briskly (but not easily), I passed the other runner that I had passed on the downhill in the previous section before getting lost, and, once we reached the top, all I had to do was hold on for dear life down the hill, and I would finish in ninth. I told Mark that we would jog and ease into it, but within a minute, we were running sub-7-minute miles downhill, 63+ miles into this race, and I could feel the emotional floodgates opening. I thought about all of the disappointment and hurt and anger that surrounded my attempt at this race in 2009, and how I had turned it all around to run the way I had today. I thought about how awesome my crew had been, and how thankful I was for them, and I also dredged up a memory that I hadn't thought about, or talked about, until then . . .
After my DNF in 2009, and hours sleeping in cars at Little Cove Mountain and then at Day Creek, when I returned to Camp Bethel, I threw what could be most kindly described as a temper tantrum (which involved some literal throwing of things). I was frustrated and angry, not just about the race, but about a lot of other things in my life, and it caused something of a scene, enough that David Horton took me aside and gave me a stern lecture about my behavior, at which point I started crying, unable to keep it inside. Horton said a prayer over me, that the Lord would help me find peace with whatever was troubling me. As the finish line came into sight, tears welled up, and I realized that I had found that peace in the race. Nothing can change what happened in 2009, but having crossed the line in 13 hours, 11 minutes, to be welcomed back with a congratulatory hug and kiss on the top of the head from Horton as tears streamed down my face, 9th male finisher, achieving my top-10 goal, I felt that things were back on the right path again.
(This is what finishing Hellgate looks like.)
After getting all of the tears out, I took my shoes off, to find that my toes were bloodied, from being wet and going sockless, and wearing shoes that were just a little bit too big for my feet. My crew called Horton over, and he agreed that, so far, it was the best blood he had seen today (although he threatened to deduct points for my orange toenail polish, despite my argument that it matched the color of the course markings). Considering that the blood went through my shoe, and was foaming out of the side, I'd say I deserved plenty of points for creativity - certainly more interesting than the run-of-the-mill skinned knee. My lead in the best blood category would stand, so not only did I walk away with a sweet top-10 Patagonia hooded shirt (the only men's small that he had in the bunch, as if it were planned . . .), but also a red fleece Hellgate blanket and a very fitting "Best Blood" award (especially considering the figurative blood, sweat, and tears, that had gone into making this race what it turned out to be).
(Bloody foot, left)
(Bloody foot, right . . . regrettably, I don't have a picture of the blood froth through the shoe, but trust me, it was gross . . .)
As redemption goes, this one was particularly sweet. Following the progression from The Ring to Hellgate, I steadily improved and grew stronger this fall, and each race built to the next - especially Grindstone, since my finish at Grindstone was what gave me the right to enter Hellgate. I feel good about having turned things around, over the course of this past fall, and during this race. This was perhaps the first fall in a long time during which I actually got stronger, as opposed to burning out. Looking ahead, I can't say for sure which races will be on my schedule for 2012. But in the meantime, I will be out there, training harder than ever, because making any race as awesome and memorable as this Hellgate will be a lofty goal for years to come.
(Top-10 men in the top-10 finisher award, doing our clumsy best speed-skater impression - also, in the bottom right, my shoes - if you zoom in really far, you can sort of see the blood on the left one near the pinkie toe area)
(. . . and me and my crew/pacers, mid-race, proving that sometimes, the someday when this, too, will seem pleasant, is the same day.)
As you may know, I've dedicated this past fall to "redemption" in races that I've failed in falls past. First The Ring, where I still didn't finish, but made it further than my previous attempt. Then, North Coast, where the story was the same, except that I did it in spite of a dry respiratory system as a result of pacing at the Wasatch 100 the week prior. Then the Grindstone 100, which I finished in 27-and-a-half hours, in spite of pretty much coming straight off a plane from Israel to go to the race. But the crown jewel this fall was Hellgate. Reference my 2009 race rehash on this blog () and you'll see that "things didn't go well" was an understatement. So, out of all the "redemption races" that I had planned for this fall, Hellgate was the one where I wanted to put in my best effort and my strongest finish.
To that end, all of my crazy running-related adventures this fall (Richmond Marathon finish-to-start, then start-to-finish, Stone Mill 50+ miler and Philadelphia Marathon on back-to-back days, etc.) had been geared towards preparing for Hellgate. Cold weather, late nights, lots of running in the dark, lots of consecutive miles on little rest. To top it all off, from the Sunday prior to Hellgate to the previous Monday, I put in a 130-mile running week, one of my highest-mileage weeks this year. I felt strong after that week, and with some strategic tapering before the race, I knew I had a good shot at achieving my goal: primarily, to finish, but ideally, to finish in the 12-13 hour range (going one better than Sniper's prediction of a 14-hour race for me, and spiting my unseeded #70 bib), and hopefully, with a time in that range, finish in the top 10 men. Regardless, I came into the race confident that, although some may be faster, nobody was going to be tougher than I was. I was fully prepared and unafraid to risk life and limb to finish this silly race.
This time, I wasn't going to go it alone. A Baltimore local, Henry, contacted me before the race, and we worked out a plan to travel down together, and to use his white crew-cab Ford F150 as the crew vehicle for my two crew members/pacers, Hope and Mark, both relatively new to the ultrarunning world, but sufficiently excited about this race from all the talking-up I had given it in the prior months, on this blog and otherwise. So after going to my little sister's chemistry thesis presentation at Goucher (aww, she's growing up!), congratulating her, and getting the requisite good luck wishes from her and from my parents, we loaded up the truck, and at a little after 2 p.m., we were on our way down to Camp Bethel.
We arrived just after 6 p.m., a drive that was thankfully without incident, in plenty of time to eat the pre-race dinner of pasta and lasagna (meat and vegetarian, and, I hate to say it, but the vegetarian lasagna was better), chat with the other runners, and make ourselves at home in the cabins. At around 8 p.m., the pre-race meeting started, and after a little over half an hour of Horton's usual horsing around, and the typical questions about how much snow/ice/water was on the course (none, a little, and a lot, respectively), we went back to lounging around in the cabin, laughing, joking, and pretty much acting like we weren't about to start running in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night in a few hours.
At 10:50 p.m., the caravan left the camp, and we began the half-hour drive to the starting line, all still in good spirits. The amount of "dead time" before Hellgate is a blessing and a curse. It's nice to have all that time to relax and do what you need to do . . . but only if you can really relax. And, for me, the nerves had somewhat set in the whole time, but became really apparent on the drive out there. It's hard to see those same sights by the side of the road that I saw in 2009, and not think about how badly that went. I kept telling myself that this time, although it looked the same, would be different. Between that, Hope and Mark's threat to abandon me for the "Monster Maze" that we saw advertised on billboards along the way, and our riotous laughter over Henry's bottle of Boost and a Starbucks coffee drink mixed together, which looked like, well, liquid poop, I started the race with those negative thoughts at least relegated to the back of my mind. (For me, Natural Vitality's Energy 28 and their liquid multivitamin would be my stay-alert boost of choice.)
(The above begs the questions of how much caffiene is required to make one's heart explode, and what would such an explosion look like - topics discussed at length prior to our little run.)
At midnight, we were off, and the first section, arguably one of the fastest sections of the course, went by without incident. In stark contrast to 2009, when I went out a little bit hard, and felt exhausted immediately, I stayed within myself, and found that I was still up near the front of the pack, without killing myself. I decided not to push to run with the lead pack, as they were clearly racing hard from the beginning, and considering that I didn't want another DNF, it was an unecessarily risky strategy. The famed creek crossing came and went without incident (after several shallower impostors, which would be the order of the entire race), although being nearly up to my knees, I nearly took a cold, wet spill. Before I knew it, I was at the first aid station, Forest Service Road 35, and already feeling better about this year.
We began the first climb up the gravel road, and I found that, again, in contrast to 2009, I felt strong, and this felt doable. I passed a few more people going up the climb on my way to the second aid station, Petite's Gap, where I saw my crew for the first time, and was proud to come in looking strong (and, as I would find out later, in 15th place). Although I didn't want to jinx things, I began to think that this would be a very special race . . .
(Apparently ready to attack the Petite's Gap aid station . . .)
(. . . and then guzzing something gross)
But of course, we all have to have our low points, and about a mile out of the Petite's Gap aid station, I suddenly started feeling weak and exhausted. Maybe this was because it was around 3 a.m., or because I hadn't eaten enough, or that I realized that it would be a relatively long time before I saw my crew again (no crew access again until the fourth aid station, at this point, 13-15 miles away). Whatever the cause, I struggled in the next gravel road section, and on the trail downhill, where the leaf-covered jagged rocks were making rapid progress very difficult for me. A lot of people passed me. I started having flashbacks to 2009, as I was feeling very much at this point the way I did in 2009. I kept telling myself that this was different. I ate a banana, drank some water, downed a gel, and kept pushing forward, and by the time I reached the third aid station, Camping Gap, I was starting to feel in control again. Unfortuately, I had dropped plenty of places, and perhaps at the rate I was going, my aspirational goals were out of reach.
But still, I had an obligation to myself, and to my crew, to give it everything I had, and to run a respectable race, regardless of how long it took me to finish. So as soon as I started feeling better, I started pushing a little, a la Badwater this past summer after Panamint Springs. I turned on the "grind" gear and began cranking out 8-9 minute miles over the thankfully wide and runnable (but rolling) grassy trail. And slowly and steadily, I was passing people. I reached the rocky downhill trail, and here it occurred to me that I should turn on the headlamp that I had around my waist, to supplement the one on my head. This was the first time I had ever used this light setup, and, as it turns out, this is the correct light setup. The waist light covered the near-field, and the headlamp covered the far-field, so I had a full 3 feet of visibility in front of me. It may as well have been daylight. So now I ran down the rocky trail with far less incident, and passed a few other runners. After what seemed like a long time (and probably was, considering that this was possibly the longest section of the race between aid stations), I reached the fourth aid station, Headforemost Mountain, and my crew - a huge mental boost. I was now in 20th place (again, as I would later learn), but making a comeback, in stark contrast to 2009 - in 2009, I nearly dropped at this aid station, and only continued because Sniper came through and urged me to come along with him. Far better circumstances this time . . .
And so it went into the fifth aid station, Jennings Creek. The next section was about six miles, half of which was wide, runnable downhill, and I was really able to pick up the pace on that section, especially with my new headlamp setup. I passed some more people, reaching the Jennings Creek aid station in about a hour - encouraging. As I crossed over the bridge to the aid station, running strong, I remembered in 2009, when Sniper had dragged me to this one, and I was really messed up, and a woman at the aid station was giving me some sort of pressure-point massage to try to improve my situation. Strange, the things you remember . . .
I began the big long climb up a gravel road towards the sixth aid station, the moon full and bright, but still no eclipse (it was apparently not visible where we were). I distinctly recalled the suffering in this section in 2009 - my legs hurt terribly, and every step was more difficult than the last. This time, though, I kept putting one foot in front of the other on the gravel road climb, then down the trail, then back up the gravel road to the sixth aid station, Little Cove Mountain, where I had given up the ghost in 2009. As I neared the aid station, besides noticing that the climb did not seem nearly as steep and awful as it had in 2009, I saw two of my friends, Jeremy and Patrick, walking to the aid station. As I realized when I was leaving the aid station, Patrick was about to drop - I definitely felt for him, since he looked much like I must have at that point in the race in 2009. Jeremy jogged up the hill with me for a bit, and told me that I looked strong, and was on pace for a mid-13-hour finish - also encouraging, considering that earlier in the race, I thought that all hope of that was gone.
I continued down the trail to the seventh aid station, Bearwallow Gap, now in early daylight, feeling confident about the progress I was making and the finish that I was shooting for. This section took some of the wind out of my sails, with some really rocky, ragged single-track that slowed me significantly. But I persisted forward, and made it to the Bearwallow Gap aid station to find David Horton sitting there, waiting to check me in, and Mark ready to pace me through the next section. Mark told me that somebody had just come through a couple of minutes ago, looking to be in bad shape. More encouragement . . .
Mark and I braved some steep uphill, as he regaled me with tales of skinned bear carcasses in the vicinity of the perhaps aptly-named previous aid station, and how Horton had made Hope sing an "Oh Holy Night" (his second favorite hymn, next to "Amazing Grace") duet with one of his Liberty students. Eventually we neared the ridge, where the trail flattened a bit, and we started picking up the pace. The last part of this section, a gradually-rising gravel road into the eighth aid station, Bobblet's Gap, was frustrating - I felt with the grade as shallow as it was, I should try running, but at the same time, there was still too much race left to risk blowing up now. When I reached the Bobblet's Gap aid station, Hope was ready to take her turn as pacer, and the aid station volunteer told me, surprisingly, that tenth place was just ahead of me. With a fresh pacer and a place to chase, we set off down the gravel road.
We rolled easily down the road, at a little better than 7-minute mile pace, passing not one, but two runners ahead of me. Unfortunately, in the one part of the course where the markings were tricky, we ran right past the turn-off onto the "forever" trail. Fortunately, another person who was out running the course on his own had made the same mistake, and was just up ahead to tell us that he hadn't seen a course marking. We figured out our mistake and got back on track, but in the meantime, about ten minutes and the two people that I had passed had passed me back. Oh well, time to pass them again . . . but it wasn't going to be easy. The trail in this part of the course was the rockiest, raggedest trail yet, and being as tired as I was at this point, footing was becoming a more significant issue. I could hear Horton's voice drawling in my mind, taunting me: "Come on, boy! You're weak! You're soft!" as I picked my way through the rocks as quickly as I could. Hope tripped, but didn't fall, and about thirty seconds after that, I tripped and hit my right knee - hard. Good thing I had been wearing tights - otherwise, that knee would have been really bloodied. I walked for a couple of minutes to make sure that I hadn't done any serious damage, and once I was satisfied that things were okay, I resumed running again, having passed Aaron, who was in tenth place, and rolled into the ninth aid station, Day Creek, with a little over 6 miles to go, and Mark ready to pace me through the last section of the course. Shaun, who had been up near the front of the pack, but gotten lost a couple of times, was also at this aid station, ready to drop (a situation that I could sympathize with), so Hope got the job of driving him back to the finish line.
The last section of the race was an uphill grunt, much akin to the climb up Mount Whitney at the end of Badwater (except only about half an hour of fast-walking to the top), followed by a very fast downhill on a wide trail/road back to camp. Walking briskly (but not easily), I passed the other runner that I had passed on the downhill in the previous section before getting lost, and, once we reached the top, all I had to do was hold on for dear life down the hill, and I would finish in ninth. I told Mark that we would jog and ease into it, but within a minute, we were running sub-7-minute miles downhill, 63+ miles into this race, and I could feel the emotional floodgates opening. I thought about all of the disappointment and hurt and anger that surrounded my attempt at this race in 2009, and how I had turned it all around to run the way I had today. I thought about how awesome my crew had been, and how thankful I was for them, and I also dredged up a memory that I hadn't thought about, or talked about, until then . . .
After my DNF in 2009, and hours sleeping in cars at Little Cove Mountain and then at Day Creek, when I returned to Camp Bethel, I threw what could be most kindly described as a temper tantrum (which involved some literal throwing of things). I was frustrated and angry, not just about the race, but about a lot of other things in my life, and it caused something of a scene, enough that David Horton took me aside and gave me a stern lecture about my behavior, at which point I started crying, unable to keep it inside. Horton said a prayer over me, that the Lord would help me find peace with whatever was troubling me. As the finish line came into sight, tears welled up, and I realized that I had found that peace in the race. Nothing can change what happened in 2009, but having crossed the line in 13 hours, 11 minutes, to be welcomed back with a congratulatory hug and kiss on the top of the head from Horton as tears streamed down my face, 9th male finisher, achieving my top-10 goal, I felt that things were back on the right path again.
(This is what finishing Hellgate looks like.)
After getting all of the tears out, I took my shoes off, to find that my toes were bloodied, from being wet and going sockless, and wearing shoes that were just a little bit too big for my feet. My crew called Horton over, and he agreed that, so far, it was the best blood he had seen today (although he threatened to deduct points for my orange toenail polish, despite my argument that it matched the color of the course markings). Considering that the blood went through my shoe, and was foaming out of the side, I'd say I deserved plenty of points for creativity - certainly more interesting than the run-of-the-mill skinned knee. My lead in the best blood category would stand, so not only did I walk away with a sweet top-10 Patagonia hooded shirt (the only men's small that he had in the bunch, as if it were planned . . .), but also a red fleece Hellgate blanket and a very fitting "Best Blood" award (especially considering the figurative blood, sweat, and tears, that had gone into making this race what it turned out to be).
(Bloody foot, left)
(Bloody foot, right . . . regrettably, I don't have a picture of the blood froth through the shoe, but trust me, it was gross . . .)
As redemption goes, this one was particularly sweet. Following the progression from The Ring to Hellgate, I steadily improved and grew stronger this fall, and each race built to the next - especially Grindstone, since my finish at Grindstone was what gave me the right to enter Hellgate. I feel good about having turned things around, over the course of this past fall, and during this race. This was perhaps the first fall in a long time during which I actually got stronger, as opposed to burning out. Looking ahead, I can't say for sure which races will be on my schedule for 2012. But in the meantime, I will be out there, training harder than ever, because making any race as awesome and memorable as this Hellgate will be a lofty goal for years to come.
(Top-10 men in the top-10 finisher award, doing our clumsy best speed-skater impression - also, in the bottom right, my shoes - if you zoom in really far, you can sort of see the blood on the left one near the pinkie toe area)
(. . . and me and my crew/pacers, mid-race, proving that sometimes, the someday when this, too, will seem pleasant, is the same day.)
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Happy Thanksgiving: Gobble Cobble 7K Race Report
Welcome to a special mid-week update, courtesy of my foolish decision to run the Gobble Cobble 7K this morning in Fells Point. Because I've never actually run a "turkey trot" on Thanksgiving Day, now seemed like the best time to start. That, and the race was only a couple of miles from my house, so it made for an easy warmup/warmdown en route.
I almost didn't go out to the race, and I got partway down the block in front of my house, feeling terrible, and thought about not running it. But since it was cold outside, and I had gone through the trouble to put clothes and shoes on, it seemed stupid to turn back. So I ran the rest of the way out to the race, stood in line at the MAC to register, and then walked down to the start line.
As I stood near the front, I looked around to see that apparently, nobody that could clearly beat me was standing there. I briefly contemplated that this would be a chance to win a race, NBP-style, but before I had too much time to think about that, Jim was mumbling some stuff into the bullhorn that we could barely hear, and then we were off.
For about the first half-mile, I was within 10 meters of the leader, and not feeling so bad, and it seemed as though I might actually be able to do this. Then things turned south very quickly. As we hit the cobbles, I suddenly had this overwhelming "dead" feeling in my legs, and, as Meg D would later tell me, a look on my face that was something to the effect of "what on earth am I doing here?" It wasn't long before people started passing me, and as okay as I felt in the lungs, I had nothing in my legs.
We passed the Polish war memorial and headed out to the Inner Harbor promenade, and I gradually started to make a comeback. That, or people in front of me were fading. At least this was something I knew how to do - hang tough when a race goes bad. I started picking up ground on the pack of four or five runners in front of me, and eventually passed them all. Then it was just hang on for dear life to the finish, down the chute to the right that came up all too quickly, which meant I hadn't really had time to kick in the finishing sprint.
This ordeal took a little over 25 minutes, which, considering how I felt, suggests that the course was probably a little bit short. Who knows what my exact place or time was, but I do know that I accomplished one thing, which was to find out what I had today. Not to wax overly poetic about a silly little Thanksgiving morning run, where nearly every winner left before the awards were handed out, but with all of the long races that I do, sometimes I wonder how fast I might be at a shorter distance. Today, I found out. And I also suspect that, on a better day, I could go substantially faster, and, with some more specific training behind me, I could go even faster than that. I'd like to do that.
But for now, I'm going to be thankful for everywhere I've been, everything I've done, and all the good people in my life over this past year.
That, and this sweet youth extra-large t-shirt from the race:
(EDIT: Reportedly, the race was 3.8 miles long, which, at about 25 minutes, means that I was running about 2:52 marathon pace, which is probably about as fast as I can run for any distance longer than 100 meters now. So, from that perspective, maybe I should feel a little less disappointed.)
I almost didn't go out to the race, and I got partway down the block in front of my house, feeling terrible, and thought about not running it. But since it was cold outside, and I had gone through the trouble to put clothes and shoes on, it seemed stupid to turn back. So I ran the rest of the way out to the race, stood in line at the MAC to register, and then walked down to the start line.
As I stood near the front, I looked around to see that apparently, nobody that could clearly beat me was standing there. I briefly contemplated that this would be a chance to win a race, NBP-style, but before I had too much time to think about that, Jim was mumbling some stuff into the bullhorn that we could barely hear, and then we were off.
For about the first half-mile, I was within 10 meters of the leader, and not feeling so bad, and it seemed as though I might actually be able to do this. Then things turned south very quickly. As we hit the cobbles, I suddenly had this overwhelming "dead" feeling in my legs, and, as Meg D would later tell me, a look on my face that was something to the effect of "what on earth am I doing here?" It wasn't long before people started passing me, and as okay as I felt in the lungs, I had nothing in my legs.
We passed the Polish war memorial and headed out to the Inner Harbor promenade, and I gradually started to make a comeback. That, or people in front of me were fading. At least this was something I knew how to do - hang tough when a race goes bad. I started picking up ground on the pack of four or five runners in front of me, and eventually passed them all. Then it was just hang on for dear life to the finish, down the chute to the right that came up all too quickly, which meant I hadn't really had time to kick in the finishing sprint.
This ordeal took a little over 25 minutes, which, considering how I felt, suggests that the course was probably a little bit short. Who knows what my exact place or time was, but I do know that I accomplished one thing, which was to find out what I had today. Not to wax overly poetic about a silly little Thanksgiving morning run, where nearly every winner left before the awards were handed out, but with all of the long races that I do, sometimes I wonder how fast I might be at a shorter distance. Today, I found out. And I also suspect that, on a better day, I could go substantially faster, and, with some more specific training behind me, I could go even faster than that. I'd like to do that.
But for now, I'm going to be thankful for everywhere I've been, everything I've done, and all the good people in my life over this past year.
That, and this sweet youth extra-large t-shirt from the race:
(EDIT: Reportedly, the race was 3.8 miles long, which, at about 25 minutes, means that I was running about 2:52 marathon pace, which is probably about as fast as I can run for any distance longer than 100 meters now. So, from that perspective, maybe I should feel a little less disappointed.)
Monday, November 21, 2011
Week In Review: 13-19 November, and Stone Mill "50 Mile"/Philadelphia Marathon Race Report
Day by day:
13 November: 7 miles (50 minutes), Canton/Fells
14 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL
15 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL
16 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), back in Baltimore
17 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), Patterson-Park-style
18 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), again around Patterson Park
19 November: 55 miles (538 minutes), Stone Mill "50-Mile" race, 8th overall (I think)
Total Time: 673 minutes
Total Distance: 72 miles
*Yawn* Now, on to the good stuff . . .
In preparation for the "big dance" that is the Hellgate 100K on December 10th, my past few weeks have been focused on long, logistically complicated, mentally (if not physically) draining events. For a race that starts at midnight, and is a good 4-5 miles longer than 100K, there's a lot to be said about being mentally prepared.
This weekend's festivities kicked off at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, when I woke up, got dressed, and hopped in the freezing cold car for the hour-long drive to Watkins Mill High School, the start/finish of the Stone Mill "50-Mile" race. I got there a few minutes after 5 a.m., only to see a long line for the OUTSIDE packet pickup. I knew better than to assume that packet pickup would be inside the school, but I was sort of hoping that it would be. Just more cold weather training, I suppose. After 20 minutes in line, I had my bib, a cup of coffee, and about half an hour before the start of the race - enough time to sit in my relatively warm car, drink the coffee, eat a couple of Hammer gels, and make one last trip to the restroom.
Why does every Saturday morning look like this lately?
The race started promptly at 6 a.m., ready or not (and there were quite a few "nots" in there), with a loop around the high school before we hit the single-track Seneca Greenway/Muddy Branch trail that comprised the majority of the course. Thanks to the dark and my dimming headlamp (should have put new batteries in it - oh well), I chugged along conservatively for the first half-hour or so, until the sun came up. Some people passed me, but I wasn't worried, especially since this was more about putting in a solid effort than placing high. I concentrated on keeping my uncovered hands warm, the valve on my hydration pack from freezing (which it did fairly quickly), and generally not doing anything terribly stupid.
In maybe an effort to be more like the JFK 50, aka the greatest ultramarathon ever, which is probably worth a $1000 entry fee, and a bargain at the current $200 (considering that Stone Mill cost $35, there might be a hint of sarcasm in that statement), the organizers added some additional road sections to the course, one of which passed by the entrance to The Kentlands. That, of course, raised the moral question of whether or not this:
belongs in a trail race.
In any case, there were plenty of friendly, familiar faces at the aid stations, and because I was keeping the pace comfortable, the experience was generally pleasant, even on the long, straight, flat, bland towpath section of the course near the water. As we neared the 30-mile mark, I passed a few people, the temperature had become much more bearable, and aside from some lingering soreness/fatigue, I was feeling pretty positive about the next 3 or 4 hours of this. Over the past couple of weeks, I've developed a pretty good "grind" gear, which allows me to churn out 8-9 minute miles, almost regardless of the terrain or how terrible I might be feeling - an invaluable resource in the ever-present uncertainty in an ultramarathon . . .
Especially because gradually, things seemed to be a bit "off." Distances between aid stations seemed longer than claimed, considering my effort level, and while nothing catastrophic had happened, I began to suspect that perhaps the race was longer than the already-too-long advertised distance of 51.5 miles. This was confirmed when I reached the last aid station, and was told that I had to run an "out-and-back" that would cover the distance from Mile 42.5 to Mile 48.5. Half an hour later, when I hadn't reached the turn-around point, I realized that this section was clearly longer than I had been told. All because they wanted us to run this:
which was pictured on the front page of the website. (You would have felt so misled if you saw that on the website and then never got to run it during the race, right?)
In any event, it was a good thing that I saved a little bit, because with the "turn-around" section being over 8 miles, this put the race at close to 55 miles total, which is enough longer than the claimed distance that the last few miles could have been a bitter struggle. As it was, when I reached the final aid station, I was glad to be close to the finish, and ran strong all the way in, to finish in just under 9 hours (8:59:17, say the official results), feeling relatively okay.
Pushing up the last hill on principle; Keith Knipling was about a minute behind me. (Also, clearly, I dressed myself in the dark.)
In retrospect, considering that the winner finished in just over 8 hours, part of me wishes that this had been a race unto itself, rather than a training exercise, because, with a PR of a little under 7:30 on a "real" 50-mile course, over comparable terrain, a winning time seems within reach. But, water under the bridge now . . .
End Act I.
Sunset over Watkins Mill High School - the first day.
For my next trick, it was back home to shower and put together a clean set of running clothes, and then head up to Philadelphia for the marathon. I hadn't actually entered the race, but I was able to purchase a bib for $50 from one "Brandon," so that I could run the race at least somewhat legally:
Brandon, the apparent road-running rockstar, has a Philly Marathon bib.
And, because I owed her at least one for her heroic crew/pacer effort at the Grindstone 100, I would be running the race with my friend - her first marathon. She was looking to run around 4 hours, which was about what I could feel comfortable committing to the day after a 50+ mile race, so this would work out well for both of us.
The start was predictably chilly, but things warmed up as soon as we started running. Although my bib gave me the right to start near the front, in the "black" corral (they really ought to re-think the corral colors), I started in the "purple" (GO RAVENS) corral with my friend, and we spent the first hour of the race weaving through a sea of people. It gave me a new appreciation for what people in the middle and near the end of large races go through - there was very little room to pass until almost 10 miles in. The water stops were dangerously crowded, the ground was covered with cups and discarded gel packets (and, in some places, was so gel-covered that you could feel your shoes sticking to the ground, as if it were a low-rent movie theatre). And, worst of all, there were lines at the port-a-johns along the course, which became a real issue when my friend's stomach started affecting her pace. We went from cruising comfortably at sub-9-minute miles to walking parts of the race, particularly from Mile 20 on.
Including four restroom stops, and some walking, we finished in 4:23, in spite of having lost 25 minutes to the aforementioned obstacles. I felt relatively comfortable the whole time, and almost a little bad crossing the finish line as fresh as I was (especially since one person in the crowd actually recognized me and cheered for me by my real name, unlike the dozens of other spectators, including one particularly loud and frenzied fan near the finish, who were cheering wildly for "Brandon.") But that said, this effort was about helping my friend finish her first marathon, and from that standpoint, it was completely successful. Even setting that aside, the constant weaving and pace-shifting and eating on the go, all on less sleep than I would like, was all good Hellgate training.
In summary, over the span of 30 hours on the clock, I ran about 81 miles in about 800 minutes total, for about a 9:52/mile average pace, driving a little over 200 miles and consuming about 3500 calories in the process. (No wonder I'm hungry today.) I'm satisfied with this effort, and really looking forward to the next couple of weeks of biting off the mileage in more "normal" 5, 10 and 15-mile chunks at a time, each day, not to mention turkey trots, turkey day, and sleeping in on a couple of Saturdays. Mentally, the "down time" will be nice. But I don't intend to get too comfortable - as David Horton said in his last e-mail to Hellgate participants: "I hope your training is going well. It better."
13 November: 7 miles (50 minutes), Canton/Fells
14 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL
15 November: 2 miles (20 minutes), Huntsville, AL
16 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), back in Baltimore
17 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), Patterson-Park-style
18 November: 2 miles (15 minutes), again around Patterson Park
19 November: 55 miles (538 minutes), Stone Mill "50-Mile" race, 8th overall (I think)
Total Time: 673 minutes
Total Distance: 72 miles
*Yawn* Now, on to the good stuff . . .
In preparation for the "big dance" that is the Hellgate 100K on December 10th, my past few weeks have been focused on long, logistically complicated, mentally (if not physically) draining events. For a race that starts at midnight, and is a good 4-5 miles longer than 100K, there's a lot to be said about being mentally prepared.
This weekend's festivities kicked off at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday, when I woke up, got dressed, and hopped in the freezing cold car for the hour-long drive to Watkins Mill High School, the start/finish of the Stone Mill "50-Mile" race. I got there a few minutes after 5 a.m., only to see a long line for the OUTSIDE packet pickup. I knew better than to assume that packet pickup would be inside the school, but I was sort of hoping that it would be. Just more cold weather training, I suppose. After 20 minutes in line, I had my bib, a cup of coffee, and about half an hour before the start of the race - enough time to sit in my relatively warm car, drink the coffee, eat a couple of Hammer gels, and make one last trip to the restroom.
Why does every Saturday morning look like this lately?
The race started promptly at 6 a.m., ready or not (and there were quite a few "nots" in there), with a loop around the high school before we hit the single-track Seneca Greenway/Muddy Branch trail that comprised the majority of the course. Thanks to the dark and my dimming headlamp (should have put new batteries in it - oh well), I chugged along conservatively for the first half-hour or so, until the sun came up. Some people passed me, but I wasn't worried, especially since this was more about putting in a solid effort than placing high. I concentrated on keeping my uncovered hands warm, the valve on my hydration pack from freezing (which it did fairly quickly), and generally not doing anything terribly stupid.
In maybe an effort to be more like the JFK 50, aka the greatest ultramarathon ever, which is probably worth a $1000 entry fee, and a bargain at the current $200 (considering that Stone Mill cost $35, there might be a hint of sarcasm in that statement), the organizers added some additional road sections to the course, one of which passed by the entrance to The Kentlands. That, of course, raised the moral question of whether or not this:
belongs in a trail race.
In any case, there were plenty of friendly, familiar faces at the aid stations, and because I was keeping the pace comfortable, the experience was generally pleasant, even on the long, straight, flat, bland towpath section of the course near the water. As we neared the 30-mile mark, I passed a few people, the temperature had become much more bearable, and aside from some lingering soreness/fatigue, I was feeling pretty positive about the next 3 or 4 hours of this. Over the past couple of weeks, I've developed a pretty good "grind" gear, which allows me to churn out 8-9 minute miles, almost regardless of the terrain or how terrible I might be feeling - an invaluable resource in the ever-present uncertainty in an ultramarathon . . .
Especially because gradually, things seemed to be a bit "off." Distances between aid stations seemed longer than claimed, considering my effort level, and while nothing catastrophic had happened, I began to suspect that perhaps the race was longer than the already-too-long advertised distance of 51.5 miles. This was confirmed when I reached the last aid station, and was told that I had to run an "out-and-back" that would cover the distance from Mile 42.5 to Mile 48.5. Half an hour later, when I hadn't reached the turn-around point, I realized that this section was clearly longer than I had been told. All because they wanted us to run this:
which was pictured on the front page of the website. (You would have felt so misled if you saw that on the website and then never got to run it during the race, right?)
In any event, it was a good thing that I saved a little bit, because with the "turn-around" section being over 8 miles, this put the race at close to 55 miles total, which is enough longer than the claimed distance that the last few miles could have been a bitter struggle. As it was, when I reached the final aid station, I was glad to be close to the finish, and ran strong all the way in, to finish in just under 9 hours (8:59:17, say the official results), feeling relatively okay.
Pushing up the last hill on principle; Keith Knipling was about a minute behind me. (Also, clearly, I dressed myself in the dark.)
In retrospect, considering that the winner finished in just over 8 hours, part of me wishes that this had been a race unto itself, rather than a training exercise, because, with a PR of a little under 7:30 on a "real" 50-mile course, over comparable terrain, a winning time seems within reach. But, water under the bridge now . . .
End Act I.
Sunset over Watkins Mill High School - the first day.
For my next trick, it was back home to shower and put together a clean set of running clothes, and then head up to Philadelphia for the marathon. I hadn't actually entered the race, but I was able to purchase a bib for $50 from one "Brandon," so that I could run the race at least somewhat legally:
Brandon, the apparent road-running rockstar, has a Philly Marathon bib.
And, because I owed her at least one for her heroic crew/pacer effort at the Grindstone 100, I would be running the race with my friend - her first marathon. She was looking to run around 4 hours, which was about what I could feel comfortable committing to the day after a 50+ mile race, so this would work out well for both of us.
The start was predictably chilly, but things warmed up as soon as we started running. Although my bib gave me the right to start near the front, in the "black" corral (they really ought to re-think the corral colors), I started in the "purple" (GO RAVENS) corral with my friend, and we spent the first hour of the race weaving through a sea of people. It gave me a new appreciation for what people in the middle and near the end of large races go through - there was very little room to pass until almost 10 miles in. The water stops were dangerously crowded, the ground was covered with cups and discarded gel packets (and, in some places, was so gel-covered that you could feel your shoes sticking to the ground, as if it were a low-rent movie theatre). And, worst of all, there were lines at the port-a-johns along the course, which became a real issue when my friend's stomach started affecting her pace. We went from cruising comfortably at sub-9-minute miles to walking parts of the race, particularly from Mile 20 on.
Including four restroom stops, and some walking, we finished in 4:23, in spite of having lost 25 minutes to the aforementioned obstacles. I felt relatively comfortable the whole time, and almost a little bad crossing the finish line as fresh as I was (especially since one person in the crowd actually recognized me and cheered for me by my real name, unlike the dozens of other spectators, including one particularly loud and frenzied fan near the finish, who were cheering wildly for "Brandon.") But that said, this effort was about helping my friend finish her first marathon, and from that standpoint, it was completely successful. Even setting that aside, the constant weaving and pace-shifting and eating on the go, all on less sleep than I would like, was all good Hellgate training.
In summary, over the span of 30 hours on the clock, I ran about 81 miles in about 800 minutes total, for about a 9:52/mile average pace, driving a little over 200 miles and consuming about 3500 calories in the process. (No wonder I'm hungry today.) I'm satisfied with this effort, and really looking forward to the next couple of weeks of biting off the mileage in more "normal" 5, 10 and 15-mile chunks at a time, each day, not to mention turkey trots, turkey day, and sleeping in on a couple of Saturdays. Mentally, the "down time" will be nice. But I don't intend to get too comfortable - as David Horton said in his last e-mail to Hellgate participants: "I hope your training is going well. It better."
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Week in Review: 6 November - 12 November, and Double-Richmond Marathon Run Report
Okay, let's do the darn thing:
6 November - 34-ish miles (370 minutes), counting being lost at Fire on the Mountain; we went over this
7 November - 2 miles, in my button-down shirt, khakis, and Steve Madden dress shoes; 1 to lunch in 6:17, 1 back in 5:53
8 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes), 7 miles at TNT, including 2x800m (3:04, 2:51), 2x400m (79, 79), and 4x200m (37, 35, 34, 34), 2 miles warmup, 3 miles warmdown (45 minutes)
9 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes)
10 November - 10 miles fast-ish at lunch (65 minutes)
11 November - 2 miles easy, around Patterson Park (20 minutes)
12 November - Starting at 2:15 a.m., Reverse Richmond Marathon in 4:40, followed by Regular Richmond Marathon in 3:46; 52.4 miles
Total Time: 1075 minutes
Total Distance: 113 miles
And now, somewhat belatedly, but before this coming weekend's adventures push last weekend's too far into the back of my mind to write this, the Double-Richmond (what does this mean?) Marathon Report . . .
To say that I was a little bit nervous about attempting this would be an understatement. Richmond just sort of "happened" for me, in that I was contacted to pace the 3:10 marathon group, as a result of my prior pacing exploits, and Dave Snipes has a tradition of running the Richmond Marathon from finish to start, starting at around 2 a.m. on marathon day, then changing clothes and running the official marathon. Glue those two together, and you get a challenging, vaguely risky endeavor . . . right up my alley.
Theoretically, it seemed doable - Sniper was planning on running around 4:30 for the "reverse" marathon, so it would be a total of 7:40 for 52.4 miles, which is more or less in the ballpark of my 50-mile PR set this past spring at Bull Run. But there was also the drastic difference in pace (non-stop 10-ish minute miles down to non-stop 7-ish minute miles), the early start time (and associated minimal sleep), the weather (a little below freezing overnight), and the general unfamiliarity of all of this to consider.
All of that aside, I set out for this ridiculousness at around 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and by the time the traffic (which made the drive closer to 4 hours, as opposed to the 3 hours it was supposed to be), the expo (pleasantly low-key), dinner (pizza at a local place with Sniper), and parking near the finish (on a street fittingly "just south of Grace (Street)") were behind me, it was nearly 11 p.m., leaving me with less than 3 hours to sleep. Sniper woke me with a phone call at 1:30 a.m., and not long after, I found myself stumbling onto the streets, dressed in multiple layers, top and bottom, clutching my water bottle for dear life.
I met Sniper and another friend and we walked to the finish line, chattering away pleasantly, as if it were totally normal to be out like this on the nearly-deserted, starkly-lit city streets. As we unceremoniously began our run, we passed a crowd of sloppy drunks, who, it briefly occurred to me, might have more sense in them than we did at this point.
But my reluctance gradually faded as we settled into a comfortable pace, and Sniper settled into "tour mode," telling us all about details of the course that, in the dark, were sometimes barely visible. The most amusing of these was the Dollar Tree, which Sniper pointed out as we got closer, only to have our other friend point out that somebody had apparently crashed a car into it, breaking down the center panel in front of the store, and, judging from the debris on the ground, had made off with a ton of iPhone cases.
Aside from the cold and the dark, both of which became more managable following a port-a-pot break around 4 miles in (thankfully, these were all over the course), trotting along through the streets at an odd hour of the night was peaceful, even pleasant. Thanks to the cold, I didn't have to drink as much as I usually would, and I was perfectly comfortable subsisting on Gu Chomps which I kept in my pants pocket in a reasonably successful attempt to keep them warm and edible.
At around 10 miles in, another friend jumped in to run the last 16 miles with us, and at this point, the course (which I hadn't seen up to this point) got significantly more scenic. About a mile later, we crossed a bridge with a view like this:
Richmond apparently has a skyline; see above.
Eventually, this gave way to neighborhoods, and then a dark, rolling section near the water, before we headed back into downtown again. As we came closer to the start, and past 6 a.m., nearing 7 a.m., the sky became lighter and somehow, it seemed as if we hadn't spend the past 4+ hours running at all. We passed the Dollar Tree again, and, now camera-equipped, we got a shot of it in its now half-repaired state:
The Dollar Tree, in some sort of glory.
We jogged towards the finish, talking about nothing and playing chicken with the faster runners striding out before the start of the 8K. With as little ceremony as we had when we started, we crossed the start line (our finish line), and weaved our way into the crowd.
Now, at almost 7 a.m., I had about 15 minutes to use the port-a-pot, change clothes (and put on my multi-bibbed pacer shirt), and get to the hotel where the pacers were meeting. Wearing different shoes (Asics 2150s - the blue and white ones - for the reverse, my trusty blue-and-yellow Nike Run Avants for the official) and less clothing (long-sleeved undershirt layer, and gloves, but just shorts without pants on top, and a baseball cap in place of my skull cap), I jogged to the hotel, where, fortunately, I was on-time enough to spend some time making small talk with a friend of mine, who was pacing the 3:05 group. A little small talk actually made me feel a lot better about what I was going to do.
I picked up my 3:10 sign, used the port-a-pot one more time, and headed for the starting line. Of course, now that the Boston qualifier is 3:05, 3:10 isn't what it used to be, so a lot of people were asking me where the 3:00 and 3:05 groups were. But my loyal core of 3:10 runners and I headed out together, and, despite my worries, and the temporary panic that we had gone well under pace until somebody noted that the 1-mile sign that we saw was for the 8K, we passed the first mile in 7:09 - remarkably close to pace, and with little feeling of fatigue.
And so it went, splitting a little under 7:15, and not feeling the worse for wear, for the first 10 or 11 miles. I think the pace group coordinator, who saw me at around mile 7, was surprised that I looked so comfortable, considering that I had been up most of the night running in the cold. And the weather was getting warmer (almost a bad thing, given all of my layers - in retrospect, I could have worn less and been okay), and for a while, I thought I was going to pull it off.
Then, around the halfway point, things started getting more difficult. Maybe it was the rolling hills, or maybe just being up for so long, but for whatever reason, I was struggling to hold on to pace. I gave back nearly a minute of cushion between miles 11 and 13.1, splitting the half at right around 1:35. I bravely held on for as long as I could, but at around mile 16, when the 3:15 group passed me, I stepped off the course (and into a much-needed port-a-pot) at 1:56 and change into the race. Still technically on pace, but not feeling like I could continue.
And then my body decided to subject me to every version of difficulty that I've ever had in a race. About five minutes later, I was back on the course, walking through the aid station, feeling spent. I tried to run, but the pain in my legs was reminiscent of what I had felt at Fire on the Mountain the prior weekend (oh right, speaking of reasons to be nervous about this whole thing . . . ), and I did my best to slow down to make it manageable, but eventually, only a walk was manageable.
In about fifteen minutes, my body started to come around, but then I started feeling weak - the same feeling I had at the end of Holiday Lake, when I out-ran my nutrition and staggered through the last two miles. Knowing how bad this could have gotten, I made sure to eat plenty at the next aid station, and, gradually easing back into running, I managed to avert this crisis.
Now all that was left was the pain, and to struggle through this, I kept recalling scenes from "Surviving the Cut," when the drill sergeant is yelling at the recruits, telling them that they are weak, and to "stop feeling sorry for yourself!" and sometimes, "what are you doing? if this was for real, you would have gotten somebody killed!" Strangely, this seemed to work, and, as I approached the last 5K, I started picking it up again, running the last 3.2 miles in about 25 minutes - not blazing-fast, but much improved from walking not so long ago. I hauled down the last hills into the finish, and, 3 hours, 46 minutes, and 17 seconds later, I could breathe a sigh of relief. It was finished.
So, overall, about 36 minutes slower than I would have liked, which was disappointing, and a large part of why it took me this long to write about this. But, on the other hand, I was closer to the goal than it appears. In retrospect, my nutrition during the reverse run was good enough for that run, but not the run to come. I essentially ran out of gas for the pace that I was trying to run, and it might have helped to eat more at the aid stations during the official marathon, in spite of the water slosh in the stomach (gels maybe, and less water, because it wasn't particularly hot).
Still, I'd consider it progress, and a solid training run for Hellgate (which, if you haven't guessed, is the next big race for me), thanks to the timing, temperature, and distance involved. One more big weekend like this, and then it'll be back to focusing on the daily run until midnight on December 10th . . .
6 November - 34-ish miles (370 minutes), counting being lost at Fire on the Mountain; we went over this
7 November - 2 miles, in my button-down shirt, khakis, and Steve Madden dress shoes; 1 to lunch in 6:17, 1 back in 5:53
8 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes), 7 miles at TNT, including 2x800m (3:04, 2:51), 2x400m (79, 79), and 4x200m (37, 35, 34, 34), 2 miles warmup, 3 miles warmdown (45 minutes)
9 November - 3 miles easy at lunch (30 minutes)
10 November - 10 miles fast-ish at lunch (65 minutes)
11 November - 2 miles easy, around Patterson Park (20 minutes)
12 November - Starting at 2:15 a.m., Reverse Richmond Marathon in 4:40, followed by Regular Richmond Marathon in 3:46; 52.4 miles
Total Time: 1075 minutes
Total Distance: 113 miles
And now, somewhat belatedly, but before this coming weekend's adventures push last weekend's too far into the back of my mind to write this, the Double-Richmond (what does this mean?) Marathon Report . . .
To say that I was a little bit nervous about attempting this would be an understatement. Richmond just sort of "happened" for me, in that I was contacted to pace the 3:10 marathon group, as a result of my prior pacing exploits, and Dave Snipes has a tradition of running the Richmond Marathon from finish to start, starting at around 2 a.m. on marathon day, then changing clothes and running the official marathon. Glue those two together, and you get a challenging, vaguely risky endeavor . . . right up my alley.
Theoretically, it seemed doable - Sniper was planning on running around 4:30 for the "reverse" marathon, so it would be a total of 7:40 for 52.4 miles, which is more or less in the ballpark of my 50-mile PR set this past spring at Bull Run. But there was also the drastic difference in pace (non-stop 10-ish minute miles down to non-stop 7-ish minute miles), the early start time (and associated minimal sleep), the weather (a little below freezing overnight), and the general unfamiliarity of all of this to consider.
All of that aside, I set out for this ridiculousness at around 3 p.m. on Friday afternoon, and by the time the traffic (which made the drive closer to 4 hours, as opposed to the 3 hours it was supposed to be), the expo (pleasantly low-key), dinner (pizza at a local place with Sniper), and parking near the finish (on a street fittingly "just south of Grace (Street)") were behind me, it was nearly 11 p.m., leaving me with less than 3 hours to sleep. Sniper woke me with a phone call at 1:30 a.m., and not long after, I found myself stumbling onto the streets, dressed in multiple layers, top and bottom, clutching my water bottle for dear life.
I met Sniper and another friend and we walked to the finish line, chattering away pleasantly, as if it were totally normal to be out like this on the nearly-deserted, starkly-lit city streets. As we unceremoniously began our run, we passed a crowd of sloppy drunks, who, it briefly occurred to me, might have more sense in them than we did at this point.
But my reluctance gradually faded as we settled into a comfortable pace, and Sniper settled into "tour mode," telling us all about details of the course that, in the dark, were sometimes barely visible. The most amusing of these was the Dollar Tree, which Sniper pointed out as we got closer, only to have our other friend point out that somebody had apparently crashed a car into it, breaking down the center panel in front of the store, and, judging from the debris on the ground, had made off with a ton of iPhone cases.
Aside from the cold and the dark, both of which became more managable following a port-a-pot break around 4 miles in (thankfully, these were all over the course), trotting along through the streets at an odd hour of the night was peaceful, even pleasant. Thanks to the cold, I didn't have to drink as much as I usually would, and I was perfectly comfortable subsisting on Gu Chomps which I kept in my pants pocket in a reasonably successful attempt to keep them warm and edible.
At around 10 miles in, another friend jumped in to run the last 16 miles with us, and at this point, the course (which I hadn't seen up to this point) got significantly more scenic. About a mile later, we crossed a bridge with a view like this:
Richmond apparently has a skyline; see above.
Eventually, this gave way to neighborhoods, and then a dark, rolling section near the water, before we headed back into downtown again. As we came closer to the start, and past 6 a.m., nearing 7 a.m., the sky became lighter and somehow, it seemed as if we hadn't spend the past 4+ hours running at all. We passed the Dollar Tree again, and, now camera-equipped, we got a shot of it in its now half-repaired state:
The Dollar Tree, in some sort of glory.
We jogged towards the finish, talking about nothing and playing chicken with the faster runners striding out before the start of the 8K. With as little ceremony as we had when we started, we crossed the start line (our finish line), and weaved our way into the crowd.
Now, at almost 7 a.m., I had about 15 minutes to use the port-a-pot, change clothes (and put on my multi-bibbed pacer shirt), and get to the hotel where the pacers were meeting. Wearing different shoes (Asics 2150s - the blue and white ones - for the reverse, my trusty blue-and-yellow Nike Run Avants for the official) and less clothing (long-sleeved undershirt layer, and gloves, but just shorts without pants on top, and a baseball cap in place of my skull cap), I jogged to the hotel, where, fortunately, I was on-time enough to spend some time making small talk with a friend of mine, who was pacing the 3:05 group. A little small talk actually made me feel a lot better about what I was going to do.
I picked up my 3:10 sign, used the port-a-pot one more time, and headed for the starting line. Of course, now that the Boston qualifier is 3:05, 3:10 isn't what it used to be, so a lot of people were asking me where the 3:00 and 3:05 groups were. But my loyal core of 3:10 runners and I headed out together, and, despite my worries, and the temporary panic that we had gone well under pace until somebody noted that the 1-mile sign that we saw was for the 8K, we passed the first mile in 7:09 - remarkably close to pace, and with little feeling of fatigue.
And so it went, splitting a little under 7:15, and not feeling the worse for wear, for the first 10 or 11 miles. I think the pace group coordinator, who saw me at around mile 7, was surprised that I looked so comfortable, considering that I had been up most of the night running in the cold. And the weather was getting warmer (almost a bad thing, given all of my layers - in retrospect, I could have worn less and been okay), and for a while, I thought I was going to pull it off.
Then, around the halfway point, things started getting more difficult. Maybe it was the rolling hills, or maybe just being up for so long, but for whatever reason, I was struggling to hold on to pace. I gave back nearly a minute of cushion between miles 11 and 13.1, splitting the half at right around 1:35. I bravely held on for as long as I could, but at around mile 16, when the 3:15 group passed me, I stepped off the course (and into a much-needed port-a-pot) at 1:56 and change into the race. Still technically on pace, but not feeling like I could continue.
And then my body decided to subject me to every version of difficulty that I've ever had in a race. About five minutes later, I was back on the course, walking through the aid station, feeling spent. I tried to run, but the pain in my legs was reminiscent of what I had felt at Fire on the Mountain the prior weekend (oh right, speaking of reasons to be nervous about this whole thing . . . ), and I did my best to slow down to make it manageable, but eventually, only a walk was manageable.
In about fifteen minutes, my body started to come around, but then I started feeling weak - the same feeling I had at the end of Holiday Lake, when I out-ran my nutrition and staggered through the last two miles. Knowing how bad this could have gotten, I made sure to eat plenty at the next aid station, and, gradually easing back into running, I managed to avert this crisis.
Now all that was left was the pain, and to struggle through this, I kept recalling scenes from "Surviving the Cut," when the drill sergeant is yelling at the recruits, telling them that they are weak, and to "stop feeling sorry for yourself!" and sometimes, "what are you doing? if this was for real, you would have gotten somebody killed!" Strangely, this seemed to work, and, as I approached the last 5K, I started picking it up again, running the last 3.2 miles in about 25 minutes - not blazing-fast, but much improved from walking not so long ago. I hauled down the last hills into the finish, and, 3 hours, 46 minutes, and 17 seconds later, I could breathe a sigh of relief. It was finished.
So, overall, about 36 minutes slower than I would have liked, which was disappointing, and a large part of why it took me this long to write about this. But, on the other hand, I was closer to the goal than it appears. In retrospect, my nutrition during the reverse run was good enough for that run, but not the run to come. I essentially ran out of gas for the pace that I was trying to run, and it might have helped to eat more at the aid stations during the official marathon, in spite of the water slosh in the stomach (gels maybe, and less water, because it wasn't particularly hot).
Still, I'd consider it progress, and a solid training run for Hellgate (which, if you haven't guessed, is the next big race for me), thanks to the timing, temperature, and distance involved. One more big weekend like this, and then it'll be back to focusing on the daily run until midnight on December 10th . . .
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Week in Review: 30 October - 5 November, and Fire on the Mountain 50K Race Report
Okay, first the mediocre news:
30 October - 17 miles (120 minutes), sort of fast, around the usual Baltimore Inner Harbor haunts
31 October - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling lethargic
1 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), still feeling lethargic
2 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling like this lethargy needs to end
3 November - 6 miles (45 minutes) - that's more like it. Patterson Park, and such.
4 November - 10 miles (75 minutes), Loch Raven, where somebody called me "Nadal" . . . it's everywhere
5 November - 7 miles (50 minutes), Inner Harbor and whatever, cold morning warm-up for the next day's race
Total Time: 320 minutes
Total Distance: 43 miles
Clearly, sort of a crummy week. In retrospect, the 17-mile run on Sunday was a depleted run, run to exhaustion, and took me perhaps too long to recover from, as we will see . . .
And now, the race report:
The Fire on the Mountain battle began long before the horn went off. It began at exactly 2:47 a.m., when I woke up, without the aid of my cell phone alarm, and immediately began to dread the day ahead. Not that this is necessarily uncommon when I race; I can't even count the number of races (good ones, even) where I felt like dropping out in the first mile. But this kind of trepidation, this early in the game, was particularly nerve-wracking. In general, this was an all-sorts-of-out-of-sorts day, with this not even supposed to be Fire on the Mountain day (it was postponed from last Sunday, due to snow), daylight savings time meaning that 2:47 a.m. was really 3:47 a.m. (although, thanks to a very early bedtime, sleep-wise, this felt like 6:47 a.m.), and the fact that there were several other races this weekend that were of interest to me, all of which I had to forego to run this race. At least a dozen times on the dark, desolate drive out to Flintstone, I thought about turning around and going home, right then and there. (The problem, of course, was that every time I thought of it and didn't do it, I was a little further from home, making that decision just a bit more impractical.) My Vans Warped Tour 2011 CD kept me awake and company until I finally stopped to use the restroom at the Sideling Hill rest stop, and, having gotten out of the car and walked around a bit, now felt a little more human. Still not great, but slightly more invested in the race.
The check-in at the finish, in a random field somewhere, and the bus ride to the start, were pretty uneventful. The view from Lookout Mountain is worth noting:
As close to heaven as this is going to get . . .
The race director told us that the course was marked "as good as it was going to be" and that if we had a question, we should "find somebody who ran it last year." And, with those words of encouragement, we were off on our ridiculous adventure . . .
And it was apparent from the start that this was going to be a roller-coaster day. Not just the course, which, in the span of the first two miles, consisted of a very steep uphill on a road, an even steeper downhill on a road, and then a quick turn-off onto a narrow, rocky, leaf-covered single-track trail that dove further down the hill. But as I navigated this nonsense, somewhere in the top 10, every bit of my body was protesting. First my left quad hurt. I managed to shift the pain away, and then it was my right shin. And then above my left knee. And then above my right knee. The uneven terrain and nearly non-existent trail (thanks to the leaf cover, downed trees, and excess water) was not helping at all. I maintained position until around 3.5 miles, when I managed to run off course about half a mile, taking five other people with me. Turned out that there was a turn-off that we had missed, because although it was marked with a surveyor flag, the trail straight ahead was wide, while the left turn up the hill was narrow and unappealing.
Back on course, we all slogged up the hill, but now there was no way to tell what position we were in, since, this early in the race, a 10-minute detour is enough to put you all the way in the back of the pack. The random pains continued, and while I thought vaguely of dropping out, I also felt committed enough to this, particularly since this was what I was doing in lieu of several other things, that I wasn't going to do it.
As it turned out, I was soon cursing the fact that I had not given dropping more serious consideration, as the next segment of red trail, following a brief reprive on a logging road, was even more leaf-covered, less defined, and on the side of a steep hill, to boot. One missed step would send you tumbling to, well, let's not get that morbid right here. It was at this point that the pain from the laces on my Hokas (yes, I had hoped the heel slippage would resolve itself, but in spite of multiple efforts to lace them differently) started becoming a significant nuisance. The digging into the front of my foot was making navigation on the uneven terrain a more painful challenge than it should have been, and just when I thought I had made peace with that, here came the stream crossings . . .
I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least a dozen stream crossings. Maybe a dozen is too conservative. But for whatever reason, the trail wound snake-like across the stream bed, over and over again. It later turned out that because of all of the snow, this was a particularly wet year, and, last year, this section of the course was bone-dry. As it was still around 30 degrees, being forced to get wet, in some cases, up to your knees, was unpleasant. I foolishly tried to tiptoe around, and minimize the drenching, but on the third or fourth stream crossing, I slipped on a rock and fell in. Completely soaked, including through two layers of gloves, I spent the remainder of this trail section hoping that the sun would come out and dry my gloves. Somewhere along here, the numbness in my feet caused me to roll my right ankle at least three times. Perfect. And we weren't even 10 miles in . . .
Red turned to green, but the scene remained the same. Rocks, roots, water, stream crossings, fallen trees, over, and over, and over again. At least the sun was starting to come out, but the random pain all over, and the specific lace pain in my shoes, was wearing on me. Somehow, I managed to hold it together enough not to trip, and, as we approached the halfway point, navigating through the "green region" (which the "trails" shall henceforth be known as), got easier, and I passed the three people who were hanging with me through the wet, nasty, technical bits. I reached the "midpoint" (who really knows where it is) at around 3 hours and 20 minutes, obviously really slow, but at the same time, I didn't feel all that bad about this (which maybe, in and of itself, was bad).
Now for the "easy" logging road section. And although people complained about this last year, I have to admit, it was fairly easy. There were a few rolling hills, but overall, this was where things started to turn around for me. The sun was out, my clothes were drying, and, in spite of all of the pain, I was starting to find a rhythm (albeit an uncomfortable one), and I passed four more people on this section. This was in spite of having to re-tie my shoes twice, finally reaching a still uneasy compromise with the painful Hoka lacing system.
But eventually, easy gave way to the purple woods region, where we went back to leafy, rocky, vaguely marked trail. In spite of sore feet from my lace issue and rolling my ankle early on, I finally fell into a rhythm here. I wasn't moving all that fast all the time, particularly down the really rocky downhills, but I was averaging around 10-minute miles overall. The pain hadn't really stopped shifting randomly, or gone away, but I was finally dealing with it. As I climbed the last hill, to gunshots in the distance . . .
Firing on the Mountain (courtesy of Mark Rodriguez)
. . . having passed four more people in this section, part of me was actually disappointed that now that I was making some kind of decent progress, the race was over. (The smarter part of me realized that this had been a bad day, and it was probably best to cut my losses here.) I took a log from a volunteer, ran the last loop around the field, and dropped the log into the fire to finish the race.
The (arguably weak) fire . . . maybe if all 120 registered runners had showed up, it would have been more impressive . . .
Overall, I'm still not totally sure what to make of the race. I clearly had a terrible start, but ended up finishing in a little over 6 hours, which means that the last half took me somewhere between 2 hours and 40 minutes and 2 hours and 50 minutes - a little closer to what I wanted to do for the entire race, and, especially if I had counted only the last section, probably on pace for a "good" time given the conditions. Over the course of the race, in spite of increasing foot/ankle pain (which disappeared, even the ankle sprain pain, as soon as I took off the damn Hokas - back to the drawing board with those . . .), I managed to adapt and slog through it, so I must not be totally burned-out for the year. If anything, I think the 17-mile run that I did a week ago took quite a bit out of me, and I hadn't recovered my 50K speed for this race, Truthfully, I could have done with a 100-mile slog this weekend . . . my heart was in Alabama, pining for Pinhoti, and the way I ran today, it seemed like my body was, too. Ultimately, the overall effort was one that I felt like I could have repeated twice more . . . But oh well, live and learn. I'll spend this week running gently, recovering rapidly (I hope), and preparing for my next adventure . . .
All's well that ends with a smoothie from Sheetz (the race's sponsor . . .)
30 October - 17 miles (120 minutes), sort of fast, around the usual Baltimore Inner Harbor haunts
31 October - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling lethargic
1 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), still feeling lethargic
2 November - 1 mile (10 minutes), feeling like this lethargy needs to end
3 November - 6 miles (45 minutes) - that's more like it. Patterson Park, and such.
4 November - 10 miles (75 minutes), Loch Raven, where somebody called me "Nadal" . . . it's everywhere
5 November - 7 miles (50 minutes), Inner Harbor and whatever, cold morning warm-up for the next day's race
Total Time: 320 minutes
Total Distance: 43 miles
Clearly, sort of a crummy week. In retrospect, the 17-mile run on Sunday was a depleted run, run to exhaustion, and took me perhaps too long to recover from, as we will see . . .
And now, the race report:
The Fire on the Mountain battle began long before the horn went off. It began at exactly 2:47 a.m., when I woke up, without the aid of my cell phone alarm, and immediately began to dread the day ahead. Not that this is necessarily uncommon when I race; I can't even count the number of races (good ones, even) where I felt like dropping out in the first mile. But this kind of trepidation, this early in the game, was particularly nerve-wracking. In general, this was an all-sorts-of-out-of-sorts day, with this not even supposed to be Fire on the Mountain day (it was postponed from last Sunday, due to snow), daylight savings time meaning that 2:47 a.m. was really 3:47 a.m. (although, thanks to a very early bedtime, sleep-wise, this felt like 6:47 a.m.), and the fact that there were several other races this weekend that were of interest to me, all of which I had to forego to run this race. At least a dozen times on the dark, desolate drive out to Flintstone, I thought about turning around and going home, right then and there. (The problem, of course, was that every time I thought of it and didn't do it, I was a little further from home, making that decision just a bit more impractical.) My Vans Warped Tour 2011 CD kept me awake and company until I finally stopped to use the restroom at the Sideling Hill rest stop, and, having gotten out of the car and walked around a bit, now felt a little more human. Still not great, but slightly more invested in the race.
The check-in at the finish, in a random field somewhere, and the bus ride to the start, were pretty uneventful. The view from Lookout Mountain is worth noting:
As close to heaven as this is going to get . . .
The race director told us that the course was marked "as good as it was going to be" and that if we had a question, we should "find somebody who ran it last year." And, with those words of encouragement, we were off on our ridiculous adventure . . .
And it was apparent from the start that this was going to be a roller-coaster day. Not just the course, which, in the span of the first two miles, consisted of a very steep uphill on a road, an even steeper downhill on a road, and then a quick turn-off onto a narrow, rocky, leaf-covered single-track trail that dove further down the hill. But as I navigated this nonsense, somewhere in the top 10, every bit of my body was protesting. First my left quad hurt. I managed to shift the pain away, and then it was my right shin. And then above my left knee. And then above my right knee. The uneven terrain and nearly non-existent trail (thanks to the leaf cover, downed trees, and excess water) was not helping at all. I maintained position until around 3.5 miles, when I managed to run off course about half a mile, taking five other people with me. Turned out that there was a turn-off that we had missed, because although it was marked with a surveyor flag, the trail straight ahead was wide, while the left turn up the hill was narrow and unappealing.
Back on course, we all slogged up the hill, but now there was no way to tell what position we were in, since, this early in the race, a 10-minute detour is enough to put you all the way in the back of the pack. The random pains continued, and while I thought vaguely of dropping out, I also felt committed enough to this, particularly since this was what I was doing in lieu of several other things, that I wasn't going to do it.
As it turned out, I was soon cursing the fact that I had not given dropping more serious consideration, as the next segment of red trail, following a brief reprive on a logging road, was even more leaf-covered, less defined, and on the side of a steep hill, to boot. One missed step would send you tumbling to, well, let's not get that morbid right here. It was at this point that the pain from the laces on my Hokas (yes, I had hoped the heel slippage would resolve itself, but in spite of multiple efforts to lace them differently) started becoming a significant nuisance. The digging into the front of my foot was making navigation on the uneven terrain a more painful challenge than it should have been, and just when I thought I had made peace with that, here came the stream crossings . . .
I am not exaggerating when I say that there were at least a dozen stream crossings. Maybe a dozen is too conservative. But for whatever reason, the trail wound snake-like across the stream bed, over and over again. It later turned out that because of all of the snow, this was a particularly wet year, and, last year, this section of the course was bone-dry. As it was still around 30 degrees, being forced to get wet, in some cases, up to your knees, was unpleasant. I foolishly tried to tiptoe around, and minimize the drenching, but on the third or fourth stream crossing, I slipped on a rock and fell in. Completely soaked, including through two layers of gloves, I spent the remainder of this trail section hoping that the sun would come out and dry my gloves. Somewhere along here, the numbness in my feet caused me to roll my right ankle at least three times. Perfect. And we weren't even 10 miles in . . .
Red turned to green, but the scene remained the same. Rocks, roots, water, stream crossings, fallen trees, over, and over, and over again. At least the sun was starting to come out, but the random pain all over, and the specific lace pain in my shoes, was wearing on me. Somehow, I managed to hold it together enough not to trip, and, as we approached the halfway point, navigating through the "green region" (which the "trails" shall henceforth be known as), got easier, and I passed the three people who were hanging with me through the wet, nasty, technical bits. I reached the "midpoint" (who really knows where it is) at around 3 hours and 20 minutes, obviously really slow, but at the same time, I didn't feel all that bad about this (which maybe, in and of itself, was bad).
Now for the "easy" logging road section. And although people complained about this last year, I have to admit, it was fairly easy. There were a few rolling hills, but overall, this was where things started to turn around for me. The sun was out, my clothes were drying, and, in spite of all of the pain, I was starting to find a rhythm (albeit an uncomfortable one), and I passed four more people on this section. This was in spite of having to re-tie my shoes twice, finally reaching a still uneasy compromise with the painful Hoka lacing system.
But eventually, easy gave way to the purple woods region, where we went back to leafy, rocky, vaguely marked trail. In spite of sore feet from my lace issue and rolling my ankle early on, I finally fell into a rhythm here. I wasn't moving all that fast all the time, particularly down the really rocky downhills, but I was averaging around 10-minute miles overall. The pain hadn't really stopped shifting randomly, or gone away, but I was finally dealing with it. As I climbed the last hill, to gunshots in the distance . . .
Firing on the Mountain (courtesy of Mark Rodriguez)
. . . having passed four more people in this section, part of me was actually disappointed that now that I was making some kind of decent progress, the race was over. (The smarter part of me realized that this had been a bad day, and it was probably best to cut my losses here.) I took a log from a volunteer, ran the last loop around the field, and dropped the log into the fire to finish the race.
The (arguably weak) fire . . . maybe if all 120 registered runners had showed up, it would have been more impressive . . .
Overall, I'm still not totally sure what to make of the race. I clearly had a terrible start, but ended up finishing in a little over 6 hours, which means that the last half took me somewhere between 2 hours and 40 minutes and 2 hours and 50 minutes - a little closer to what I wanted to do for the entire race, and, especially if I had counted only the last section, probably on pace for a "good" time given the conditions. Over the course of the race, in spite of increasing foot/ankle pain (which disappeared, even the ankle sprain pain, as soon as I took off the damn Hokas - back to the drawing board with those . . .), I managed to adapt and slog through it, so I must not be totally burned-out for the year. If anything, I think the 17-mile run that I did a week ago took quite a bit out of me, and I hadn't recovered my 50K speed for this race, Truthfully, I could have done with a 100-mile slog this weekend . . . my heart was in Alabama, pining for Pinhoti, and the way I ran today, it seemed like my body was, too. Ultimately, the overall effort was one that I felt like I could have repeated twice more . . . But oh well, live and learn. I'll spend this week running gently, recovering rapidly (I hope), and preparing for my next adventure . . .
All's well that ends with a smoothie from Sheetz (the race's sponsor . . .)
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