Race Report - 2014 Philadelphia in24 24-Hour Urban Ultra

First, let's be clear about what this post ISN'T about.  It's not the Badwater post that you've come to expect around this time of year for the last four years.  And yes, it does feel a little strange NOT to be writing about Badwater at too-early-o'clock on the day after the race, as has been a mid-summer tradition for me.

This post is about another tradition, one that hearkens back to 2008, and the first Back on My Feet "20in24" 24-hour race in Philadelphia.  As a total unknown, having run ultras for only about a year, I showed up at the race with Collin.  While Collin had a bad day and dropped out early, I braved 95+ degree weather and no shade to run 111+ miles, and finish second overall, to Serge Arbona (who, at the time, was a relative unknown to me).  At the time, the thrill of battling it out for 24 hours under brutal conditions, and the resulting muscle pain, sunburn, and $75 prize check were the height of "epic" when it came to ultrarunning.

Then Badwater happened, not once, but four times, and each time was incredible and memorable in its own way.  It was a difficult decision not to run Badwater this year, but with the course change, and all of the background that went along with it, in the end, it just didn't FEEL right.  And, let's face it - a lot of things about ultrarunning, if not life in general, aren't entirely logical.

Fortunately, the Back on my Feet "in24" provided an exciting opportunity to do something different this year.  I had always wanted to go back and run it again, but since it always conflicted with Badwater, it was never an option.  Finally, this year, it was.  And not only was it a chance to run a race that I had always wanted to go back to, but it was also an opportunity to re-unite the Badwater 2013 crew - Chris, Shannon, and Meredith.  And, better yet, Chris, our perennial crew-member but complete non-runner, was going to race, courtesy of a few of us pitching in to cover his entry fee.  Back on my Feet also gave me a free entry to the Midnight Madness race to give away, and my friend Traviss won my contest for the entry, so he would be out there at midnight, too.  All in all, it was shaping up to be an exciting race.

There was one major downside, though - training.

After the Boston Marathon in April, I was sick for almost a full month.  Then I attempted 3 Days at the Fair in mid-May, and crashed and burned (unsurprisingly) in my attempt at a good 24-hour race there.  At that point, I now had 8 weeks before "in24," and between significant new job responsibilities at work, at church, and managing a newly long-distance relationship (after a couple of years of being as close as those type of relationships get), the time and energy to train the way that I had wanted to just weren't there.  I averaged 50 miles per week for the 8 weeks leading up to the race.  That's not terrible, but it's certainly not the kind of volume that's ideal coming into a 24-hour race.  (Although it's still better than Chris's 5 miles of walking a day, in preparation for his first 5K, 5-mile, 10K, 10-mile, marathon, 50K, 50-mile race . . .)

In spite of my lackluster physical preparation, for a number of reasons, I was mentally in the right place coming into this race.  The idea that, in contrast to 3 Days at the Fair, I would have my friends there supporting me, made a huge difference.  Even though there were not a lot of logical reasons to believe that this race would go well, I had a good feeling about it.  For eight weeks, on every training run, I thought about the race.  I thought about the focus that I would need to have, the pain that I would need to endure, and the feeling of reaching my goal, which was mostly to compete the best that I could for first place.  Considering the physical shape that I was in, a PR in the event, although possible, seemed unlikely.  That left competing with the course, the conditions, and the other competitors . . . the same way that the event was in 2008.

Pre-race dinner with Chris, Meredith, and friends, was as light-hearted as the pre-race Badwater dinners, albeit in the suburban jungle of Chipoltle and make-your-own-froyo, as opposed to a remote desert oasis.  Having not slept too well all week leading up to the race, I finally slept soundly the night before, knowing that when I woke up in the morning, the only thing that I would be worried about for the next 24(ish) hours would be forward progress, the best that I could.

After saying goodbye to Meredith's husband and daughter (the latter of which would have me laughing about her "on stairs" joke, that I'm not going to bother explaining here, since I am the only one in the world that thinks that it's funny), we headed off to Fairmount Park, found parking, checked in, and set up our tent (strategically next to Serge Arbona's tent, and just a couple of steps off of the course, for convenient access).  We had a good laugh at Chris's outrageously high blood pressure and resting heart rate (somewhere in the neighborhood of 145 over 91, and 78, respectively), which the paramedic taking the readings just shrugged at as he handed Chris the check-in form.  Chris, of course, being cheerful Chris, was undeterred.

The weather was much cooler than expected, thanks to the "polar vortex," rearing its head once again in the middle of the summer.  This would make the race interesting, since with reasonable temperatures, anybody who was truly in shape for the event (not me) and raced smart could potentially log huge mileage.  Off we went, and I settled into what felt like a reasonable, comfortable pace for the first four hours or so, ticking off the 8.4 mile lap in somewhere between 1:15 and 1:30 per lap, employing strategic walking breaks to make the task more mentally manageable.  Serge had gone ahead, and there was nobody in particular who was running at my pace, but that was okay.  I was enjoying the freedom of finally running the event that I had planned on running months ago.  My stomach was bothering me a bit as I started settling in, but amusingly enough, when I passed Chris, he had Gas-X to give me, proving that he can crew even when he's running a race.

Nearing the end of four laps, the cloud cover was lifting, the sun was coming out, and the temperature was climbing.  This was the insidious sort of temperature increase, that you don't realize is a problem until your stomach turns and you start throwing up.  I could feel my control on the race slipping away, but then the first of a series of well-timed things happened.

About ten minutes away from the end of my fourth lap, Shannon showed up, right on time to begin pacing (pacing was allowed after four laps).  He was fresh, and throwing down a tough pace, but it was exactly the sort of challenge that I needed at that moment to push through the mental low point that I was reaching.  Shannon paced me for another two laps, and had me talking and laughing enough that I forgot about the increasing pain everywhere.

I could tell that Shannon was fatiguing, though, and at this point, not quite 9 hours into the race, there was still a ton of time left.  And then the second of a series of well-timed things happened.  Jackie and Jeff showed up just as I was finishing my sixth lap.  Although they weren't exactly "fresh," having "run" (read: scrambled over boulders) quite a bit on the Appalachian Trail earlier in the day, they were still less fatigued than I was, at just over 50 miles in.  Having their company and distracting banter for the next lap once again helped me push past what could have been a low point.  They left for a lap, which was just enough time alone with my thoughts, before Jackie jumped in for one more lap, again, just the right amount of help.

At that point, it was getting late (after 10 pm), and Jackie and Jeff needed to leave, but then the third in a series of well-timed events happened.  Traviss, who was my Midnight Madness contest winner, was standing around near the start/finish waiting for his race to start, and, as he overheard our conversation, he offered to pace me for a lap or two after he finished his race.  Left to my own devices for a lap, the Midnight Madness runners proved, again, to be the perfect distraction, as they ran towards me with their glowsticks and words of encouragement.  I smiled a lot during that lap.  Here I was, out there running for 14 hours, still 10 more hours to go, with these runners just starting out, and I was actually able to smile.  So, I may as well smile.

Near the end of the lap, I picked up Maggie as an impromptu pacer, and she pushed me through the next few miles, matching (and in some cases exceeding) my pace.  Once again, a well-timed event that carried me through to the end of the lap, where, as luck would have it, Traviss was finishing just as I was getting ready to head out again.  I set out for another lap with Traviss and Maggie in tow, and once Maggie reached Lisa, who she had promised to pace, it was just Traviss and me for the remainder of the lap.  Once more, the perfect support and distraction, especially at nearly two in the morning.

Unfortunately, Traviss needed to leave after a lap, since this was an unplanned pacing gig anyway, but he did bring me some particularly delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice before he left, which, stomach-churning effects aside (nothing that some Tums and Coke can't fix), was probably the best thing that I had tasted the entire race.  Now I would be on my own for a while, and my thoughts turned to the competition.  I had been at the start/finish a couple of laps ago when Serge lapped me, so, short of a blow-up on his part, or a miracle on his part, I was unlikely to beat him.  But Mark mentioned to me, a couple of laps ago, that the mysterious second-place runner (who I had heard was old, young, from Haverford, and probably a dozen other things) was only about 20 minutes ahead of me.

I had no idea who I was looking for.  Maybe I had already passed him.  But without the aid of pacers, I needed the motivation of trying to catch somebody who was ahead of me to prevent me from lapsing mentally.  After a little bit of iPhone-aided research, I discovered that his bib number was 61, and I would spend the next several hours looking at every person that I passed for that magical number.

Finally, heading into my 14th lap, coincidentally enough, very close to where I had stopped in 2008 when I ran 111+ miles, I jogged up behind a group of three people in their mid-20s, surrounding another person in his mid-20s.  This fit one of the vague descriptions of this "Cohen" fellow that I was chasing down.  I passed him, said a friendly hello, looked at his chest, and sure enough, partially obscured by the mandatory reflective gear that he hadn't yet taken off (I hadn't taken mine off, either) was that magical "61".  He asked how I was, and I said "just taking it one step at a time."  And with that, I knew that I had to make my move, and I took off running.

I pushed through the next lap in around 1:25, the fastest lap that I'd completed in quite some time.  I wanted to make sure that when he came around at the end of the lap, and asked how far behind he was, I would have put the maximum distance between us that I could, and that that might break him.

As I later found out, after the race, when he came over to me and shook my hand and congratulated me, he confirmed that my strategy had worked exactly as intended.  He had thought that he was further ahead of me, but was already a bit demoralized to learn that he had just a 12-minute lead.  When I passed him with authority, and got far enough ahead of him, he actually stopped after 14 laps.  Not knowing this, I had to "suffer" through an entire 15th lap, to arrive at the start/finish with 45 minutes left, to confirm that I didn't need to go any further, and that, with 126+ miles, I had secured second place, with no chance for first.

Meanwhile, amidst all of this competition, the final of the very well-timed things happened.  As I reached the last half-mile of my 14th lap, Shannon and Chris were off to the side of the course, getting ready for one last push to the finish.  Chris was going to make his 50 miles!  I slowed down to walk with them, and we walked in together.  I didn't realize it at the time, but, as we crossed the finish line, both Chris and I were victorious (him with his 50 miles, me with securing second place) at exactly the same time.

What I did realize at the time is that both Chris and I were in horrific pain, Chris moreso than I was.  But my time would come.  I could feel myself mentally breaking down at the end of my 15th lap, having left Shannon behind, who himself was tiring as a pacer for Chris, and Meredith, and me, putting in over 50 miles himself between pacing the three of us.  As I let my guard down, and the adrenaline started to wear off, the pain starting to overwhelm me. The thought of Chris dragging himself through the finish, and how he must have felt, was in the back of my mind.  Slow or fast, in these races, we all have our moments of doubt and suffering.  Soon enough, though, I would be sitting in a chair near the finish, spent, glad to be finished, and delighted with the DJ's sense of humor, as he played "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, and then "Money" by Pink Floyd, in succession.

After a massage and perhaps lingering too long on the Lloyd Hall upstairs patio with a banana and a bottle of water, I went downstairs for the awards ceremony, to greet Serge with a fist bump, and it looked something like this:

Serge and me, 1st and 2nd place, post-race, all smiles.
(Thanks, Meredith, for capturing this moment!)

Just like in 2008, Serge had finished first, and I had finished second.  He had run just over 142 miles today, and I had run just over 126.  Just like in 2008, neither of us had had our best day, but as competitors, we gave it our all until the end.  Unlike in 2008, we both walked away with a lot more money - Serge with $2500, me with $1000.

The in24 in Philadelphia certainly isn't Badwater. Only Badwater is Badwater (and this year, even that is unclear).  But the in24 was the right midsummer race for me this year.  At the end of the day, I got exactly what I had wanted out of the race - great competition, and quality time with great friends, all of whom I cannot thank enough.  I've definitely started races in better shape, and I've definitely had better performances by the hard numbers.  But I can't think of a single race that I've run where I've had more timely and valuable support from my friends leading up to, and throughout the event.

So now this is going to sound like the end of a Badwater race report, as I offer my most sincere thank-yous to Chris, Shannon, Meredith, Jackie, Jeff, Maggie, Traviss, Meg, Tina, the mysterious "Cohen/61," Serge, Mark, Christian, the rest of Serge's crew, all of the folks at Back on my Feet and Pretzel City Sports and Stroehmann Bakeries (that make lots of gluten-filled foods that I personally can't eat, but are great for everybody else), all of the participants in the Philadelphia in24 races, the amazing, enthusiastic volunteers on the course, all of the other sponsors that made this race possible, and probably a bunch more people that I'm forgetting.  At the end of the day, this, like Badwater, was a race that was about bringing a team and resources together, and competing the best that you are able to.  And, thanks to the great friends that I have, that all came together to help me through this, the 2014 Back on my Feet "in24" 24-hour race was exactly as amazing as I had hoped it would be, and, this year, exactly the right race for me.

Boston Strong, and the Road Ahead

The good news is that I made it back to the Boston Marathon this year. The bad news is that it didn't quite turn out the way that I had hoped. In spite of better training and a more focused pre-race taper, stomach issues got the better of me, and derailed what was, for about 18 miles, shaping up to be a PR effort. 

Still, it was an awesome experience to be a part of. In the now 9 times that I've run the Boston Marathon, I've never heard the crowds cheering any louder at the finish line, or along the course, for that matter. Coming around the final turn, the roar of the crowd was downright deafening. Congratulations are in order for all of the runners, volunteers, organizers, friends, families, and fans who pulled together to make this year's Boston Marathon an unforgettable event.

For me, the positive energy at the marathon lessened the sting of walking away knowing that I had a 2:45-2:50 performance in me that day, but failing to put up the finishing time to prove it. That same energy that the city of Boston rebounded with after last year's tragedy has, in spite of my performance, left me energized for the challenges ahead.

Next up is 3 Days at the Fair https://sites.google.com/site/njtrailseries/fair). Provided that I stay healthy, I think that this race gives me a great opportunity to better my 24-hour mileage PR of 134 miles, set at 24 the Hard Way this past October.

The other race that I'm particularly excited about is the 20in24 in Philadelphia, put on by Back on My Feet (http://philadelphia.in24race.com/). I competed in the inaugural running of this race in 2008, and, on a brutally hot July day, set a 24-hour mileage PR of 111 miles, finishing second. The support staff and the fans made the race an amazing, unforgettable experience. Since that year, I've wanted to run the 20in24 again, but until now, other commitments (most notably Badwater for the past four years) have made that impossible. So I'm excited to have the opportunity to once again slug it out in the heat for 24 hours, and test my limits on that course.

If you're interested in being a part of the 20in24, the good people at Back on My Feet have given me one race bib to give away, to either the Midnight Madness 8.4 -Mile Race, or the Finale 5K. All you have to do is "like" their page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/in24Philadelphia), and then email me to let me know that you liked their page, and why you want the bib. I'll pick a winner this Friday. Good luck!

Race Report: Rocky Raccoon 100 (2014 USATF 100-Mile Trail Run Championship)

It's been "go big or go home" for me lately when it comes to racing.  So as I sit down to write this, my first thought is that maybe I didn't go "big enough" at the Rocky Raccoon 100 this past Saturday.  Surely the prize money and the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run auto-entry for a top-three finish is as big as this sort of thing gets, and a reason to pull out all of the stops.  My effort fell a bit shy of that mark.

And considering that earlier today, I ran 6 miles at a typical training pace, my legs a little less than hard-marathon-sore, while others who finished ahead of me described their post-race experience as "crippled" and "hobbling" (and based on the people that finished close to me, I'd say that those words were not exaggerated), I can't help feeling that maybe I left something on the table.

But after further consideration, I think that I took a lot more away from this experience than a very respectable 11th overall/9th male/6th USATF male (i.e. competing under USATF rules, meaning, among other things, no pacers, no headphones) finish and a 16:38:36 100-mile finishing time (second-fastest 100-mile run time for me).  What I took away was arguably more important than either the prize money or the Western States 100 auto-entry.

But more about that in the closing paragraphs.  For now, the race:

After my third-place finish at the US National 24-Hour Championship (this thing), the US National 100-Mile Trail Championship seemed like the logical "next big thing," especially since it was about three months away (a decent amount of time to recover and rebuild), and at Rocky Raccoon, a race where I ran well in 2009.  The added benefit of having one more long race to add to my Badwater 2014 application, just before the application would be due, made Rocky Raccoon too enticing to pass up.  And of course, with the prize money and the Western States 100 auto-entry on the line, this race was going to draw a deep, competitive field, which would make it exciting to be a part of.

Between the US National 24-Hour Championship and Rocky Raccoon, I continued to train and race.  I ran 2:55:12 at the NCR Trail Marathon, as sort of a "target of opportunity" race, since it was a short drive, and a Boston-qualifying course.  A couple weeks later, I made it only a little past 70 miles in 12+ hours at the Desert Solstice 24-Hour Invitational, before throwing in the towel, primarily due to a total lack of any sort of speed.  Then I took some time off, and started a mileage re-build in mid-January, so by the time that it was Rocky Raccoon time, I was in the best shape that I could reasonably be in.  But given this mixed bag of training, I couldn't be totally confident that this was going to work out.  If anything, my performance at Desert Solstice had me slightly concerned that I had either reached my ultimate performance limit, or burned out entirely.

In the interim, life also happened.  My beloved 2001 Honda Civic EX (five-speed manual transmission, accept no substitutes), with over 207,000 memorable miles, nearly all of them driven by me, was totaled, in an accident that I watched from outside of the car, and I changed work assignments, both of which required plenty of attention that I may have otherwise given to running.  And then, on this trip, since I would be in Houston for a day prior to the race, and my girlfriend lived there for a substantial period of her life, I made a point of visiting all of her recommended restaurants, parks, and other attractions (incidentally, I highly recommend the Rothko Chapel).  Not to mention that I was car-pooling/room-sharing with two other runners, which I don't normally do (although this made for a highly amusing trip to the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas, the town where the race is held).

So there were plenty of twists and turns and distractions, enough so that on the eve of the race, I wasn't particularly excited about running it.  In my mind, all of the other experiences that were rattling around in my mind, both on this particular trip, and in my life in the past few months in general, were far more meaningful and substantive than five 20-mile loops in a state park in an obscure city in Texas.  I didn't NOT want to run the race, but my pre-race lacked a certain sort of nervous energy that I'm used to before huge events like this.

On the other hand, being less wound-up about the race afforded sounder pre-race sleep, and helped me keep my cool during the parking catastrophe that turned a 20-minute drive to the start of the race into a 60-minute lurching-slowly-forward car-march.  Jackie, Robin, and I arrived at the start with about 10 minutes to spare, which is just the right amount of time to get to the starting line with your shoelaces fully tied, but not so much time that you pace idly back and forth and waste precious running energy.  It's even enough time to go back to the car, get your phone, and bring it back to your start/finish drop bag, as I learned by doing exactly that, re-arriving at the starting line about two minutes before the start, and using most of that time to weave through the 600-person crowd to the front of the pack, where I presumed optimistically that I would finish.

The countdown to the start happened, and we were off, at a leisurely pace for maybe the first quarter-mile, before, inevitably, people started sprinting ahead.  I was not at all surprised or shaken by this.  I said repeatedly, to various people in the weeks prior to the race, that my goal was to run the first 20-mile loop no faster than 2 hours, 50 minutes, and do the best I could from there, and that if I stuck to that plan, there would probably be about 40 people ahead of me at the end of my first loop.  That's how competitive races with a lot of whatever-you-want-to-call-it on the line work.  I didn't keep exact tabs on all of these numbers, but that's about what it felt like.

For my part, the first loop felt easy and comfortable.  The course was in great shape, with only a few random mud puddles here and there, all easily avoidable.  Of course, the roots were out in force, as they were on my last go-around with this race, but I was having no trouble picking up my feet and picking past them.  Some minor aches and pains settled out in the first half an hour, and I found myself enjoying the relative warmth.  After a month of running in temperatures in the teens every day, weather in the high 60s feels like a tropical paradise.  And not entirely in a good way, as it also had me drinking 20 ounces of water every half-hour, in my non-heat-acclimated state.  But overall, after a first pass, the course seemed easier than I had remembered it.  I even found myself socializing with other runners during the race (as it turned out, the woman who would go on to finish in second place), which I don't often do in these sorts of races.  And, with a split of about 2:55, I had more or less achieved my first-loop goal.

The second loop was more of the same.  Now we were entirely in daylight, so I could see better the parts of the course that I had run in the dark on the first loop, which added some variety to an otherwise monotonous task.  The eventual second-place woman, Kaci Lickteig, passed me on this loop (handing me a gel that had fallen out of my pocket as she passed, which was nice of her), and I passed a couple of others that were ahead of me, including Neal Gorman, who was walking at the time, but would go on to make a very strong comeback.  With an extra bathroom stop (the most interesting one, and perhaps the most interesting thing that happened on this loop, being the one where I went off the side of the trail to pee in the woods, and who should pass, but none other than Connie Gardner), and a few more walk breaks, I finished this loop in about 3:10, still feeling okay.

In the third loop, the wheels came off a bit.  Just outside of the Dam Road Aid Station (colloquially, the "Dam Nation Aid Station," due to its being the beginning and end of a six-plus-mile loop, the longest unaided section of the course), I waved to a couple of runners who were coming back, took my eyes off of the ground, and caught my toe on a root.  I sprawled forward, fortunately onto soft pine needles, so there was no real damage done.  But, having hit the deck, I was a bit shaken, and so, a couple of miles later, when I went to try to swallow something, I choked on it, and immediately had a violent vomit reflex.  Although I didn't actually vomit, my body wanted to, and it took some standing still, followed by some slow walking, to bring me back to "comfortable" (in a relative sense, considering that I was some 7-plus hours and nearly 50 miles into the race).  As a result of that episode, I stopped eating for a bit, and soon found myself dizzy and low on calories.  Fortunately, I was carrying a few gels, so I pounded those, then headed quickly, yet conservatively, to the next aid station, where high-glycemic-junk-foods of every variety awaited me.  While it was an ugly, slightly slow patch, it was far from the typical "bad patch" that people talk about in these races, and probably cost me only about 10-15 minutes, as my overall lap split of 3:25 suggested.

No major mishaps on the fourth loop, as night began to fall and people began to turn from runners into zombie-walkers.  I continued at a steady pace for the most part, taking walk breaks only when I felt that they were absolutely necessary, and continued my trend of not being passed by anybody, but not making what I believed to be any major passes, either.  It's worth pointing out that in a loop course that doubles back on itself in several places, it's hard to tell when you're passing people as opposed to lapping them.  So I could have been legitimately passing lots of people, but unless they were people that I could recognize under headlamp light, there was no way for me to know.  And, in a way, it didn't matter to me.  By this time, I was fairly "locked in," making steady progress, enjoying the race, and not really stressing too much about anything.  I turned in another 3:25 lap, and felt no dread at heading out for one more lap.

In the final loop, things got tougher, in a relative sense.  Given the general trend of my laps getting slightly slower each time, I anticipated more effort to counteract the natural slowing effect, which I needed to counteract to the maximum extent possible if I were to run a mid-16-hour race, as my prior lap times had now positioned me to run.  I can't say that the last lap hurt any more than the prior laps.  But it definitely required more focus than the previous laps.  As far as I could tell, I was in no-man's-land, with nobody close to passing me, or nobody close to me to pass, and the best I could do was to continue doing what I had been doing.  I ran the final lap entirely in the dark, which slows progress somewhat, as a headlamp can only illuminate things so much.  In spite of some slower first segments, and nearly running headlong into Jason Lantz as he was coming out of the Dam Road/Dam Nation loop for the final time, and I was going in, I managed to hold it together, especially in the final segment of the last lap.  About a mile from the finish, I was running up behind two runners who were walking abreast, and I said "excuse me," but they must not have realized how quickly I was coming up on them, and were slow to move out of the way.  To avoid running headlong into them, I half-stepped, and caught my toe on a root, falling one last time before the finish.  Again, as a fall into soft pine needles, very little damage happened, beyond a dirty arm and a slightly skinned knee.

If anything, the last fall gave me a little adrenaline boost that I may well have needed to finish as I did.  Near the beginning of the last loop, I had contemplated walking it in at the very end, not because I expected that couldn't run, but because I felt as though I had given everything that I had, and done as much as I could have reasonably done that day, and that a finishing sprint would serve no purpose.  But with the adrenaline surge still fresh, and the finish line so close, I started pushing a little bit, and managed an impressive finishing kick, which maybe a half a dozen people who could find the live finish line webcam and were watching it at nearly midnight (Eastern Time) may have seen.  Slightly more importantly, I edged out the 12th overall/10th male/7th USATF finisher, TJ Dunham (who I later found out that Jackie had been repeatedly mistaking for me in the dark, saying hello and being puzzled by why she never got a response) by less than a minute, having no idea that he was behind me the whole time.  (You know, for whatever that's worth.)  I also edged out the 3rd place female finisher, Shaheen Sattar, who had apparently been chasing me for the better part of the race, unbeknownst to me.  (You know, for whatever THAT'S worth.)  If nothing else, maybe I learned my lesson after the near edge-out at the finish of the NCR Trail Marathon this past October . . . all the way through to the line, all the time.

Not knowing any of that at the time, I raised my hands in triumph at the finish line anyway, and happily accepted the super-awesome re-designed Sub-24-Hour Finisher belt buckle and USATF medal for 6th Place Male, Open Division.  Then I congratulated all of the near-finishers to me, in their various states of disarray (Nicole Studer, the female winner, being the sweetest, and in the least disarray), and proceeded to spend several hours by the heater, lounging in a Texas-flag-themed camp chair, nursing a cup of mashed potatoes, and eventually nodding off to sleep.

I spent most of the time between my finish and Robin's and Jackie's finishes (just under 28 hours, and just over 29 hours, respectively) in the finish area tent, picking at the aid station food, helping out distressed runners where I could (turns out that chafing is EVERYBODY'S problem, and that the extra Butt Paste that I had brought along is decidedly the answer), and generally enjoying being outdoors (although never too far from the heater for too long, as I was having trouble maintaining my core temperature in the 50-degree, off-and-on rainy weather).

And now we come to the moral of the story, if there is one.  At the time, during the race, I felt as though I was giving everything that I had, and that I couldn't possibly have gone any faster.  After the race, I reasoned that my near-vomit escapade on the third lap cost me up to 15 minutes in time, but would have made no difference in finishing place, and was probably incidental to the experience.  But once again, considering just how broken every other finisher near or ahead of me seemed to be, and how functional I am as I type this, I wonder if I had more, and just wasn't able to access it, for whatever reason.

But regardless of what I had or didn't have left in the tank, what is clear to me is that this is the second-fastest 100-mile race that I've ever run, and through smart training, planning, and, most of all, working with my body and with life circumstances in general, I managed to maximize not only my performance on race day, but, more importantly, my life experience as a whole relative to this race.  The biggest accomplishment here is not my finishing time, but the way that I got there - through continued focus and resilience, while allowing things that could have been distractions or detriments to instead compliment or contribute to the experience.

I'll stop with that line of commentary here, as it's pretty much impossible to talk about this sort of thing without drifting off into various platitudes that soon start meaning nothing to people that haven't already had the experience, and therefore don't really need to hear them in the first place.  Let it suffice to say that for once, I truly feel the weight and value of all of those over-worn, home-spun sayings about patience, persistence, and commitment to excellence.  I'm sure that there are plenty more life experiences on the way that will one day make what I believe today to be a deep understanding of all of this seem relatively shallow, but for now, I consider this a major milestone not only in race performance, but in overall maturity in that other silly game that we're all playing, called "life."

And so, after an ambiguous past few months, it is once again clear to me that I'm on the right track, I'm doing things the right way, and that, regardless of what the deal was that day, there's more in the tank for the future, and many more good things on the way.

That, and I STILL haven't seen a single gosh-darn raccoon, rocky or otherwise, on that course.