Oil Creek End-of-Racing-Season Report

Before I get into the details of my latest DNF-semi-debacle, I'd like to thank everybody for their support after the Grindstone fiasco. If it weren't for you, I may not have made it to the Oil Creek starting line. But, after a week of consideration, I decided that since I could still run, and since so many factors at Grindstone were confounded that it was hard to tell if burnout was truly the culprit, or if some other factor was the key, it would be worth it to try Oil Creek (since I had already signed up months ago, and the website clearly states that there are no refunds), and see if a little bit of rest and learning from mistakes would change the outcome.

The short answer is, a little bit. The long answer is . . .

The race started at 5 a.m. on Saturday, which was good, because it meant more sleep before the race (albeit on a gym floor), so already, one thing improved over Grindstone. I was wearing my new Black Diamond Icon headlamp, which is much brighter than what I had been using at Grindstone, and I had my water bottles in a belt, which turned out to help immensely. Still, as we took off from the starting line, things just didn't feel right. I led the race for the first three miles, which were on a paved bike path, mainly because it was pavement, and I knew that as soon as we hit the trails, I would slow down. Sure enough, as we turned off the bike path, within minutes, people began to pass me. This made me wonder if the marathon record wouldn't already be under two hours if we took a bunch of average runners who are trail-running obsessives and just let them loose on 26.2 miles of hilly, technical trails. Still, as I perservered in the dark over rocks and roots, I felt as though I was technically running much better than usual, although I was starting to feel pain in my chest, particularly when I took a deep breath. I found myself at the first aid station, about 7 miles later, amidst Christmas lights, not really sure what to make of all of this.

The section from the first aid station to the second aid station (at about 6 miles, the shortest distance between aid stations on the course) began with a steep climb, followed by a steep descent. I knew that it was going to be a long day when I began to climb and I felt like I had no power in my legs. Normally, I am a very strong climber, but not today. The pain in my chest was still nagging, and I felt like I was working harder than I should have been. As a result, I slowed on the downhill, which is always a mistake, because going slow downhill generally hurts more than going fast. Of course, more people passed me. I made it to the second aid station still running, but not comfortably.

The stretch from the second aid station to the third aid station, at nearly 10 miles, was the longest in the race, although it didn't feel like it, at least at that point, because there was plenty of variety in the trail. For the first time, there were some extended flat stretches where I could open up my stride. I ran when I could, but I couldn't run for more than about 10 minutes straight without feeling weak - not sore, just weak in the legs. Yes, more people passed me, but eventually, I made it to the third aid station.

From the third aid station to the fourth aid station (the start/finish area), the terrain was the most gentle and runnable, in part due to the fact that two miles of the 8-ish mile section consisted of flat, grassy area, and the bike path. At this point, I was running more than I was walking, albeit grudgingly. I couldn't shake the weak feeling, and by this time, the fact that the pain in my chest wasn't going away was very disturbing.

I should mention, at this point, that I have a number of chronic and semi-chronic physical problems, all of which have been previously diagnosed, which could mimic symptoms of a heart attack, including acid reflux, gas, muscle strains in the chest and back, inconveniently on the left side only, mild asthma, a heart murmur, and probably some others that I can't think of off the top of my head right now. To add to all of this, the hours that I spend in the car driving position me in such a way that my left hand and arm are subject to near-constant strain, and, my father nearly had a heart attack at a relatively young age (i.e. before 50), although granted, he was not very physically fit at the time. With all that constantly in the background, and the public spectre of apparently fit people such as Ryan Shay and Alberto Salazar dropping dead, and nearly dropping dead, respectively, due to undiagnosed heart conditions, I confess that I experience a constant, low-level fear that one day, I too will drop dead in the middle of a run. Most of the time, I am comfortably resigned to this fate, but on occasion, when one or more of the aforementioned conditions are particularly severe or persistent, I become irrationally afraid of sudden death. So, 50 kilometers into the race, when I was still experiencing discomfort in the chest, it was becoming increasingly difficult to convince myself that it was not something serious.

Nevertheless, two more loops remained, and I was determined to force my way through as much more of the race as I could stand. So, after a fairly conservative 7-hour first loop, I set out for the second loop, feeling much, much worse than I had on the first loop. There's not much more to say about the course at this point, but I will mention that along the way, only pizza, supplemented with Hammer Gels, seemed to be effective nutrition, and for most of the loop, I struggled to walk slowly, although at one point between the second and the third aid station, I ran at about 10-minute mile pace for about twenty minutes straight, and thought that I might have caught my second wind. This was short lived, as I resumed my shuffle-sit-on-a-log-shuffle pace for the remainder of the loop. As the sound of who-knows-what from the Drake Wells museum (which shall henceforth be known as "the heartbeat of the forest") grew louder as I neared the end of the loop, forward progress seemed more and more painful, especially when being on a flat section of the course didn't make things any easier. After what felt like forever (but was, in fact, about 40 minutes), I completed the last two miles of the loop, putting me back at the starting line in about 8.5 hours. This was somewhat encouraging, in that I felt like the amount of slowing and stopping that happened on this loop should have added more than an hour and a half to my first loop split.


But now, I was back at the start/finish area, which, as the course description is quick to warn, makes it very tempting to drop out. I sat around for a while in the relative warmth of the cafeteria, eating beef barley soup and contemplating why on earth about all of this in the first place. People came over to try to help me, and, had I been in a better physical state, this would have worked. But as I sat there, my body felt wrecked, and my feet were throbbing. This was not the usual blinding muscle pain - this was total weakness and fatigue, and not even sitting seemed to help. After about half an hour of contemplation, I went to the gym, and called Sara, and told her that I was feeling like I was ready to quit. Finally, some encouragement - I can't remember exactly what she said, but it was matter-of-fact enough that it gave me enough energy to put down the phone, put on another layer of clothes, and get back out there to start the third lap.

I wish I could say that that was enough to make me finish. It wasn't. Less than a mile into the lap, the chest pain, which, in the hour or so that I had been off the course had dissipated, was back with a vengance, and the extra layer of clothing was unnecessary, even at my average walking pace in 30-degree weather - I was sweating profusely. Again, thoughts of a sudden heart attack and dying alone in the woods became very difficult to suppress. And of course, I wasn't walking much better than before. I got about a third of the way to the first aid station and felt totally finished. Fortunately, another runner, who was deliberately walking this section of the course so that he wouldn't arrive at the second aid station before his son, who would be pacing him, showed up, was willing to walk with me to the first aid station. When we made it there, I sat down, took off my shoes for the medical staff, and they took one look at my mushy, swollen feet and decided that that was enough for me. In retrospect, perhaps I could have protested, and continued, but the thought of my body protesting against me any longer was unbearable, and with no familiar face or voice to urge me on, and the pain in my chest refusing to yield, I gave up the ghost, and eventually, after some time in front of the fire with the medics and rescue dogs, rode back to the starting line in a golf cart, some 68 miles into the race. Somewhere in there, they put a cold stethoscope under my shirt, and discovered that I had fluid in my lungs - yet another contributer to the ever-present chest pain, and most likely the hold-over effects from a low-level cold I'd been fighting since the Monday before Grindstone.

I slept in the gym for about five hours, then woke up and watched other runners hobble in from their third loop, with a slight amount of regret that I hadn't persisted, which was quickly eclipsed by the throbbing pain in my feet. And that, plus or minus a few slices of Little Caesar's pizza, was my race.

So, in summary, what on earth did all of that accomplish? Well, for one thing, it demonstrated that at this point, I'm just plain burned out. After 3 100+ mile races this summer (Western States, Badwater, and Beast of Burden), the most I've ever done in that timeframe, my body is worn out. As much as I wanted to finish Oil Creek, the thought of a 31+ mile, 31+ total hour deathmarch to the finish line seemed like far too much after all I had done, and was clearly violating the first goal that I had coming into this race - to have fun.

At the same time, ironically enough, racing for 18-ish hours, when I felt okay for only about 40 minutes, was enough to re-light my fire for running. The parts of the race when I felt good - running on the bike path in the first three miles, and the random trail section of the third section of the second lap when I finally fell into a rhythm - stand out in my mind in stark contrast to the misery of the rest of the race. These parts of the race convinced me that somewhere underneath all of the accumulated fatigue from the stress of a life that never seems to quit, the part of me that loves running with something approaching a dying passion is still alive and well. While I would have liked to have the belt buckle as tangible evidence of this experience, these are memories that will fuel my next racing season. That, and the term "exposure," which will also be on my mind for a long time, for reasons that I won't get into just yet . . .

So congratulations to all who finished Oil Creek - it may not be the steepiest, but it sure is the creepiest 100 I've ever attempted, and it's a heck of an experience. Stay tuned for my next post, where I look back on the past year a little, and look forward to the next year a lot.