(Preface - premature post, because there are a whole bunch of pictures I want to throw in here, but am not up to fighting the system to do right now. Come back later and the parts where it seems like there should be a picture will make more sense. Also, not proof-read, so consider yourself lucky to get this limited-edition inside scoop, before I go and correct whatever minor thing might be wrong with this.
What's this? An all-nighter to get an early start on this week's blog post? In the spirit of sleep deprivation training for the MMT 100 (at 25 straight hours awake, and couting), you bet! Here goes (EDIT - I was unable to maintain consciousness for long enough to finish this post when I started it, so you now are getting the 12-hours-later version):)
13 March - 1 semi-pointless mile (to keep the streak alive) (8 minutes)
14 March - 1 sick (as in, physically ill) mile, keeping the streak alive (8 minutes)
15 March - Back to the grind - 8 miles (60 minutes) as follows: 2-mile warmup around Patterson Park, 16x(200 hard, 200 easy) on the Ellwood side of the park, running the uphill half hard (average 38 seconds/rep), 2 mile warmdown out to the Canton Can Company Chipoltle and back
16 March - 5 miles easy (36 minutes) as weightlifting warmup, 8 miles (56 minutes) as part of the Falls Road Wednesday Night Run from Canton Square
17 March - 15 miles, including, after 20 minutes warmup, 4 "3s and 7s" (3 minutes hard, 1 minute rest, 7 minutes hard, 1 minute rest); rest was "warmdown" (1 hour, 45 minutes)
18 March - 10 miles at APG (72 minutes)
19 March - 40 miles, 10 hours, 11 minutes (activity time approximately 7 hours, 30 minutes), MMT 100 Training Run #3
Total Time: 795 minutes
Total Distance: 88 miles
In spite of two low-mileage days (due to being sick with a lung/stomach bug), I bounced back pretty big this week, posting my highest weekly mileage in 2011 thus far. Of course, nearly half of that was a result of the MMT 100 training run, but considering how successful I was in achieving my goals for that run, it definitely counts. Also of note are the solid interval/speed sessions, which helped a lot with efficiency, turnover, and pace-shifting ability, all of which are important in a run like the MMT 100 . . .
So, without futher ado, the report on MMT 100 Training Run #3.
When Dave Snipes asked me how long I thought I would be taking to finish MMT Training Run #3, off the top of my head, I guessed around 7 hours, maybe a little over. He promptly told me that if I were really serious about running that time, I should stay with Keith Knipling (one of the fastest runners at MMT, year after year) for as long as possible, so as not to get lost. Considering that Dave had previously lectured me on how easy it would be for the "big boys" to drop me at any point, I approached this run with some trepidation, and I'd be lying if I said that the half-dozen Pringles and the Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar that I ate five minutes before the start were sitting well on my stomach.
Sure enough, when we took off down the first relatively flat stretch of orange trail, Keith went out ahead of the crowd, although not quite as fast as I had feared, so I decided to keep pace and see how long I could last. At the first stream crossing, where most runners would cautiously wade through, Keith barrelled ahead with impunity. I later realized/remembered that this was because at times, the Massanutten Mountain Trail could more aptly be labeled the Massanutten Mountain River, as it has the potential to degrade into a rocky, muddy mess at nearly any point along the way. Speaking of which, Keith was deftly picking his way through just such a mess on a gradual incline, and this was, within the first couple of miles of the run, where I had to decide how to respond. Often, in this situation, I decide that it's best to conserve energy, and I just drop back, eventually losing motivation to push through anything difficult, leading to a mediocre finish. For a change, I decided to pick up my feet, step lightly, and let the training miles take over, and to my surprise, I maintained my distance from Keith, and felt surprisingly good. I felt even better when I noticed that the other runner who had been just behind me before the stream crossing slowed him was now dropping back. Technical trail running what what.
Then we began the climb up the Gap Creek trail, and that's where all of the uphill training paid off. I steadily gained as we power-hiked, until finally Keith let me pass. A 100-calorie celebratory Mrs. Freshley's Strawberry Cereal Bar was in order. Of course, passing him and bombing down the hill to the Gap Creek crossing was a bad plan, since I really didn't know where I was going, so instead I cautiously stayed ahead of him (up to 50 meters) for the next 12 miles or so, on the climb up to Jawbone Gap, on the section along the orange trail on the ridge, occasionally letting him come back to me to make sure that I hadn't run off course. It was somewhere along the road down to the first aid station (at around 14 miles) that he mentioned that he was going to skip the pink/purple loop and cut ahead to the last stretch, which both explained why he had asked me while we were picking through rocks on the orange trail on the ridge if I had planned on running the whole thing and made me a bit nervous about continuing on my own.
Nevertheless, I had some pretty good directions coming out of the first aid station, not to mention six chocolate-chip cookies in my fuel belt pouch (plus the two I had eaten at the aid station, and another half-dozen Pringles), and on the climb to Bird Knob, and me and the mood ring that I bought at a 7-11 on the way to the race were doing pretty well:
And to add to the awesomeness, I actually descended from Bird Knob to the road, found the pink/purple trail, and navigated it successfully without mishap. (This picture of the trail marker is the closest thing that I have to proof of that. That, and the confirmation that it really is 5 switchbacks from the peak of the purple trail to the transition point between the purple and pink trail.)
I also had a bit of a spiritual moment on the pink trail, right here:
If this picture doesn't explain it, then I can't, either. I was suddenly filled with peace and joy. That's just how it was.
Of course, not all could be well, or this wouldn't be a run on the MMT. At the end of the pink trail (which, like most trails in the area, eventually turns orange), at the Picnic Area, I wandered around for about 15 minutes, trying to figure out where to pick up the orange trail to get to 211, given the only direction on the turn sheet of "head east" (which, in the absence of a compass, I found by staring indirectly at the late-morning sun). In the meantime, a half-dozen people who were running slower than I was, but still fast/careless enough to miss the pink/purple marker, came off of the section of orange trail that I was supposed to head down, thus solving the mystery, but irritating me, so I hauled down the orange trail to the second and final aid (two clear 32-gallon plastic containers full of junk food, and a pile of 2-liter bottles of soda and gallon jugs of water), at around 25 miles. Because I still had 12-ish miles until the finish, with plenty of opportunity to get lost, I was meticulous in refilling my water bottles, stowing a half-dozen Wegman's Brand Oreo-Style Chocolate Sandwich Cookies in my belt, and double-and triple-checking my internal vitals to ensure that I wasn't going to leave the last traces of civilization on bad terms.
Which of course gave the half-dozen accidental course-cutters time to catch up with me, and me time to marvel at how raccoon-like they appeared, rummaging through the bins for food, and greedily pouring paper cups full of nasty soda down their gullets. This is ultrarunning (stereotypically).
I climbed up to 211 and crossed the road to the white "trail," a dirt-road, powerline-cut-esque affair that was exposed to the sun (which is probably how I got burned). This is the kind of "trail" that makes me happy, so I ran bits and pieces of the climb, where ordinarily I may have walked. The turn-off onto the white single-track was excessively marked, with a huge pile of branches in the way of the straight path, and a white turn arrow spray-painted on a tree just below the white blaze.
White gave way to orange as the trail bottomed out, and the rocky climb commenced. I stopped for about 10 minutes to try to give directions to a group of lost hikers, but all I could tell them was where 211 was based on where I had come from, which they seemed no interest in. They did confirm that I was heading for the yellow Scothorn Gap trail, so it was not entirely a wasted stop. It was at this point that I started feeling the munchies, and decided that, remaining 8-10 miles be damned, I was going to Cookie Monster those Wegmann's and hope that I had enough energy to hold on to the finish.
One thing I did have enough energy for was to add a rock to the top of this carin, before bombing down the Scothorn Gap Trail:
My satisfaction with this minor accomplishment distracted me from the fact that I was out of food, and nearly out of water, when I reached this point in the course, the last place where I wasn't lost:
The trick is, the directions tell you not to continue down the road, and to turn right off of the road, and that the Aid Station is called Gap Creek (of course, this being a training run, there was not an actual aid station at Gap Creek). In fact, the correct thing to do at this point is to go further down the road and turn left, where the blue trail becomes Jawbone Gap Trail (it's that little white spot at the very end of the bend in the road). Instead, I dutifully followed what the turn sheet appeared to be telling me, and turned right and headed up the Gap Creek Trail. The situation was worsened by the fact that I recognized the trail from the morning (since both Gap Creek and Jawbone have already been covered at this point in the run), and that there were yellow blazes (that look sort of orange; see picture below) at almost exactly the distance where the turn sheet said that orange blazes should be (of course, the turn sheet also said that the trail would end at orange, which it clearly did not, and which was my first indication that something was amiss).
To make a long, sad story short, two other runners made the same mistake that I did, and through a 90-minute process of introspection and self-discovery, punctuated by brief periods of sitting down on logs and feeling hopeless, we finally correctly concluded that if we continued on the trail that we were on (Gap Creek), we would eventually hit the orange trail, at which point we could turn right and head back the way we went out at the start, and wind up in the parking area, which was nice, because if we had done the course the "right" way, we would have wound up at the finish line at Caroline Furnace Camp, with about half a mile to get back to where our cars were parked. I was not thrilled with the prospect of having to re-climb to the top of the Gap Creek Trail, then descend the rocky backside, so I ambled a bit listlessly until we hit the orange trail again, at which point I decided our logic was well-founded, and that I could get back to my car in 20-25 minutes if I stepped on the gas, so I redoubled my rock-picking efforts and started pushing 7-8 minute miles on the flats until at last I was back at the car, a little over 10 hours after this whole thing had started, and not one of the few people who had actually run the entire course correctly.
All that said, discounting the nearly 2 hours of being lost, and the half-hour of generally screwing around taking pictures and texting/posting to Facebook, my net time was about 7.5 hours, for closer to 40 miles of actual distance (including the parts where I was temporarily going the wrong way). So I really wasn't all that far off of my time goal in terms of actual effort, and, what's more important, that effort felt very reasonable and controlled. I walked away feeling as though it would be possible to run that section of the course like that (minus the Facebook-posting and wrong-turning) in the actual race. Plus, now that I've (unintentionally or otherwise) sandbagged pretty much every run since Beast of Burden in August 2010, nobody will be expecting me to do well, so I'll have the added benefit of surprising everybody on race day (assuming my training doesn't hit an unforeseen snag).
And in conclusion, the MT100s are not designed for rocky East-Coast trail mishaps, as evidenced by the cut in the toe of my shoe from a brief run-in with a rock:
No, really, though, the real conclusion here is this, which I saw at a rest stop on the drive home, and which completely speaks for itself:
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