2011 North Coast 24-Hour "National Championships" Race Report

Okay, I ran some miles this week, but that can definitely wait, because right now, this race report is way, way more interesting and important.

Before I start, though, I'd like to make a few things clear. Although what I write here may (no, probably will) be construed as insulting to the city of Cleveland and its residents, I am in no way blaming the city for my disappointing performance. Rather, dry/irritated sinuses (as it eventually turned out; fortunately, not a cold or infection) made it difficult for me to run without generating tons of mucous, which found its way into my lungs and sent me into uncontrollable coughing fits of increasing frequency as the race progressed. If anything, this was a result of pacing on the dry, dusty Wasatch course last week (as I type this, my lips are still sort of chapped from that). Fortunately, by this time tomorrow, I'll be in humid, 85-degree weather in Israel, and that should go a long way towards clearing this up. Ultimately, it's my responsibility to take care of myself, and I did a poor job with this (although I did a remarkably good job with everything else, which perhaps made this worse by comparison), and I suffered as a result. (But make no mistake - I laughed harder and longer at this race than I did at any other race that I've ever run, which is why I will be first in line when registration for this opens next year.)

With the bottom line out of the way, begin humorous rant:

If you're one of the three people who hasn't seen these videos, or if you'd like a refresher, here:



and, here:



So you know what they say about a lot of truth being said in jest . . .

Well, Mark Rodriguez, Jackie Ong, and I saddled up this past Friday for another road trip, all having seen the videos, but of course thinking that this was no doubt exaggeration. The trip was totally uneventful until about here:


Don't worry if you miss this one - there's one about every 50 feet along I-71, which proves that Cleveland has no idea exactly where their corporate limits are.

After a totally safe, homogenized lunch experience at the Olive Garden, we headed to our rooms at the Days Inn on Lake, just outside of Edgewater, the "host hotel" of this "national championship" event. We should have been a little bit more prepared when everything along 130th and 117th looked exactly like the stuff in the parody "tourism" videos, but apparently, we're slow learners. For the moment, I'll let this picture speak for itself:


Why aren't there bars on this window? (Maybe the front desk has them on request.)

The "non-smoking" room smelled like a seedy bar (i.e. cigarette smoke and cheap perfume, more the former than the latter), there were bits of pizza and fried chicken all over the chairs and carpet, the sheets were stained . . .


Zero points to the first person who can guess what caused this stain, because if you know, you are no doubt familiar and/or complicit with horrible, horrible things . . .

But fortunately, we're good sports, so we couldn't stop laughing. One of the hotel employees overheard us, and when we told him that the room smelled like somebody had been smoking in there as recently as ten minutes ago, he responded "yeah, everybody does that." Okay, Cleveland, stop and think about that for a second - is that not your property, that you charge people money to stay in? Don't you have any concept of pride, or ownership, or pride in ownership? You can't just ENFORCE YOUR NON-SMOKING RULES? Okay, maybe to their credit, somebody did come in with a spray to try to clean things up . . .


Other hotel employee: "Isn't that the spray that they use when they evacuate buildings?"
Spraying employee: "Yeah, and it works great!"

Not long after (now that the window was open), we heard yelling outside the window, and saw a bunch of cop cars. Most of the shouting was unintelligible, but the clearly audible "this is bullshit!" would become our rallying cry for the weekend. We made the best of the situation by blasting gangster rap and gunshot sound effects from YouTube out the window, in an attempt to appear "hard."

The "official" pre-race dinner of the "national championships" was at a place called "Players on Madison," which I won't dignify with a link here. Go ahead and Google it if you like, but all I will say is that any place that calls itself "Players" and doesn't have gambling or strippers involved is clearly mis-named. We opted for the Pizza Hut instead, which was right next to this lovely establishment:


Racism, alive and well in Clevelandtown.

Then it was back to our hotel room, which still smelled terrible, and was now really cold on account of having the window open, to sleep on our dirty sheets and pray that we didn't wind up with bedbugs.

Oh, right, a race happened eventually. We went to the breakfast lounge, where there were no spoons for the cereal, and where somebody comically asked "is that real orange juice," as if he could expect to drink anything in this city that wasn't tainted with antifreeze. Then off to the race, where, in an attempt to play upon patriotism to band everybody together in spite of the poor conditions, we listened to somebody sing the National Anthem, then had about two minutes of pre-race meeting before the blasted event began.

There was a veritable "who's who" of ultrarunning at this event: Zach Gingerich, Jamie Donaldson, Phil McCarthy, Byron Lane, Connie Gardner, Anna Piskorska, Serge Arbona, Nick Coury, just to name a few. Suckers, all of them; all of us, really. At this point, there's not much to write about running around in a circle about a million times, except that the leaders went out way, way, WAY too fast (50 miles in the first six hours is ridiculous, sorry, guys), and there was a brief period where there were some overweight nuns flying kites in the park (god, how I wish I had my camera for that, but they were gone by the next lap).

EDIT: PICTURE OF KITE FLYING NUNS:


For my part, I went out pretty conservatively, and everybody commented on how good I looked, and I kept saying (the best I could, considering that I could barely talk through these sinus problems) that as long as this stayed out of my lungs, I would be fine.

And it did, somewhat, for about 8 hours and a little over 50 miles, and then things just became unbearable. I tried to sit down and change shoes and eat food and all that, but the fact was, mucous was draining into my lungs, and I was coughing hard, and my chest hurt, and without knowing for sure that it wasn't something more serious, I was hesitant to push through this, even though I felt pretty much okay otherwise. Besides, they had gotten about ten Hammer Gels for this first-class "national championship" event, and by three hours in, the only gels left were the ones loaded with caffiene, so I had no steady nutrition source at this point, making forward progress even more risky.

So I slept for about six hours, got back up, and decided to run a few more laps at 1 in the morning (what better time to run?) and passed a number of people who had been out there the whole time (who, with their fast start, were now predictably trudging along), but the mucous was heading back into my lungs, and that was it for me. I hit just over 60 miles, went back to the tent that Laurie Colon had so generously set up for us, and hung out with Mark Rodriguez (stopped due to blistering at about the same mileage) for a little while before we went back to his heated car to sleep some more.

We got up around 7, and I took the most brutally cold shower ever in the restrooms (I had to, because I was not getting on a plane that dirty), cursing all the way, accusing Cleveland of being a giant concentration camp as I shivered uncontrollably under the cold mist, which did almost nothing to rinse the soap off. We went to the timing table to officially check out, to take our medals, and to have one last photo op:


Race official: "Just ignore the part on the sign that says '2010'"

Then off to the airport, to eat a burrito at "Currito" (which was actually pretty good, or maybe I was just hungry), and to write this report.

Okay, in all seriousness, a few parting comments:

The biggest problem with Cleveland is not that it is this bad, but that people in Cleveland seem to think that it's OKAY for things to be this bad. From the smoking in the non-smoking hotel room, to the randomly-stocked aid station at the race, everybody had the attitude as if this was fine, and it was okay to inconvenience people this way. Look, guys, seriously - if you want people to take this seriously as a NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP event, you have to raise the bar a little. It's not a big deal if this is just some random stupid race, but you've made lofty claims and failed to deliver.

The exchange between Mark and I on the course: "we are all witnesses" (reference the Lebron James poster), to which the reply is "this is bullshit" is an epic classic, and was totally worth the price of admission.

I have never laughed so long or so hard at a race in my life. I'm going to be first in line to sign up for this ordeal next year. :)

Week in Review: 24-30 July 2011, and 6-Hour Pajama Run Race Report

Okay, making with the miles:

24 July 2011: 6 miles in the morn (45 minutes), 9 miles in the eve (60 minutes), all on the streets of Tel Aviv

25 July 2011: 10 miles in the morning (70 minutes) - last run in Tel Aviv for a while

26 July 2011: 14 miles (95 minutes), back in Baltimore, MD, USA

27 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - feeling lazy

28 July 2011: 5 miles (45 minutes), including a half-mile warmup, 35 minutes of treadmill hills (1628 feet of gain), and a half-mile warmdown, followed a couple of hours later with a 15-mile (105 minute) run through the streets of Baltimore

29 July 2011: 1 mile (10 minutes), in Baltimore - lazy again

30 July 2011: 46.81 miles (360 minutes), 2nd place at the 6-Hour Pajama Run in Queens, NY (revised total - see race report)

Total Time: 800 minutes

Total Distance: 107.81 miles (revised total - see below)

And now, the Pajama Run Race Report:

The 6-Hour Pajama Run, put on by the Broadway Ultra Society, in Astoria Park in Queens, NY (so-called because it starts at 6 p.m. and ends at midnight) was a "spur-of-the-moment" decision for me. I had been toying with jumping on the Burning River bandwagon, but a 100-mile race between Badwater and Beast of Burden (alliterative though it may have been) seemed like I might have been pushing the envelope a bit too far, not to mention the significant time and cost commitment (probably around $500). I still felt like this was a good weekend for a long run, and so on Thursday night, I looked at the ultrarunning.com website, and lo and behold, a race that was relatively close, time-limited, and only $50 to enter on race day. Pretty much sold . . . but I still waited until Saturday morning to decide to drive up there.

The drive was well-timed, with minimal traffic and only one wrong turn, and I arrived there in about 5 hours, right at 5 p.m. . . . only to find that they were waiting to let "post-entries" (i.e. race-day entries) in, because they had only 6 volunteers, and probably no extra pajama pants. I waited for about 20 minutes for them to let me enter; in the meantime, I made small talk with a long-time internet-only acquaintance who lives in New York, and who, via a series of Facebook posts on the drive up, I conned into running the race. Definitely an odd time to be meeting somebody face-to-face for the first time.

With 40 minutes before the race, this gave me just enough time to go to the bathroom, change into my shorts and singlet, set up a bag to put near the one aid station at the start/finish, and meander about for a few more minutes before the pre-race briefing.

At this point, I should mention that I did absolutely no research on the course prior to driving up, and, as it turned out, it was a paved path (good), but under a noisy bridge (bad-ish), in a crowded park (which meant dodging and weaving between people the entire race, also bad-ish), and on a hill. Over the course of the 1.27-mile loop, there was about 50-70 feet of gain/loss, which doesn't sound like much, but adds up, lap by lap, until you're not really running a very flat, fast course anymore. To add to this, the temperatures at the start were in the mid-90s, and humid, thanks to our proximity to the water (and never dropped below 80 as the night progressed). None of this boded well for a 6-hour PR for me (my previous best was 44.4 miles, set in the fall of 2007 on a much more forgiving course), but nevertheless, since I figured I was in much better shape now, and my Nike LunarTrainers seemed to have an extra spring in them today, I thought, why not go for it?

The race started exactly at 6 p.m., and the "lead group" of 4 or 5 of us (consisting in part of Phil McCarthy, who holds the US 48-hour record, Byron Lane, who usually wins the Staten Island 6-hour race, and is capable of running around 50 miles in 6 hours, and Tommy Sung Pyon, the heretofore unknown Asian) ran tentatively through the first loop, since the race director had only been allowed to mark the route lightly with chalk. Once we made the circuit, it was time for everybody to take off and settle into a pace. Tommy led the chase, with me close behind. We were hitting low-9-minute laps (or high 7-minute mile pace), which was pretty fast, especially considering the hilly course and the heat. I decided not to push the pace too hard, and diligently took my Endurolytes (one every 20 minutes or so) and my cups of water/Gatorade/Coke at the aid station after each lap.

Things were feeling good, and everything was clicking, but Tommy had run off. I was slowing to a walk through the aid station at each lap to make sure that the fluids wound up in my stomach, and not on my singlet, but I never heard footsteps behind me. With no idea where anybody was, I decided to continue to run conservatively, in the hopes that Tommy would blow up, and I would take the lead by default. I was worried about a Badwater epic-cramp repeat in these temperatures, and I felt as though I was running on the edge of what my nutrition would allow. (Several people later told me after the race that they didn't think I was going to last, because I was sweating so hard at the beginning. Of course, nobody knew who I was at this race, so it was pretty amusing to tell people - including Byron Lane at the start of the race - who asked if I had ever run an ultra that I had run "a few" . . . In Byron's case, he yielded a position on the starting line to me due to that response.)

This all proved to be a tactical blunder, as somewhere around 2 hours and 45 minutes, Tommy lapped me. Now I had pretty much no choice - I had to sit in second, keep up the pace, and hope that he would blow up, because it was far too risky at this stage in the race to mount a charge to make up the 1.27-mile gap. So I sat where I was, running around 10 minutes per lap (or just under 8-minute mile pace), and it felt pretty good.

I was in such a good groove, in fact, that the rest of the race hardly felt like a struggle at all. There were a few points where I thought my stomach would rebel and ruin things for me, but as it turned out, 4-6 ounces of water every 10 minutes or so seemed to be just the right amount for things to stay steady. The fact that I had to re-adjust every 10 minutes was also helpful, as I spent a fair portion of my laps (when I wasn't dodging pedestrians or gawking at the sunset over the New York City skyline) deciding exactly what would be the appropriate nutrition the next time I passed the aid station.

The crowd, as it were (minus my internet friend, who, somewhere between two and three hours, left, as it probably was not all that fun for her at that point), was starting to get excited, seeing that I was cranking out the laps with hardly a sign of exertion, even if they weren't sure exactly what place I was in (these things are confusing in a short-loop race with 70+ people running). The race directors had me run the "big loop" all the way up until about the last 6 minutes of the race, at which point I switched over to the "small loop" (a 0.323-mile loop, divided into 17ths, just to make any kind of mental math virtually impossible).

At that point, I was solidly in second, and the only question was whether or not I would PR (as it later turned out, I would have had 44.45 miles, had I simply stopped at 35 large loops, which is how many large loops I ran - EDIT: actually, I had run 36 large loops at this point; the initial results were incorrect). Not having any idea how many miles I had run, I dropped the hammer on the small loop, and, in the last 6 minutes, made it around 2 and 11/17ths small loops, finishing with a heroic dive for the "11" marker, in part because I wanted every last bit of distance that I could get, and in part because after all that running, it seemed like fun to dive in the grass. 45.22 miles (EDIT: 46.81 miles, in the corrected results), a 6-hour PR by nearly a mile, and good enough for second place . . . because Tommy kept on rolling, and ended up with 47.22 miles (EDIT: 48.34 miles), 2 miles (EDIT: about 1 and a half miles) ahead of me. He must have slowed in the second half, which of course makes me question even more my tactics in the first half (especially since early on, I was gaining on him on every hill), but, oh well . . .

The real point of all of this, though, is that there was free pizza and soda after the race, I got a nice plaque for my second-place finish, and the race director was even nice enough to give me a pair of pajama pants, after I thanked him copiously (and genuinely) for allowing me to enter the event last-minute, and he found out that I had driven there all the way from Baltimore to run the race.

In conclusion, a fun race, a solid training run, and I felt pretty good for almost the entire time, which made me wonder how much damage I could have done if they had let me at the course for another 6 hours . . . but I suppose I'll have to wait until Beast of Burden to find out.



The spoils . . .

(Epilogue: The Molly Pitcher rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike was a mess at 3:30 a.m., with somebody in the restroom vomiting just like in that Crank Yankers "Phone Sex Vomit" skit - I couldn't believe that anybody vomits like that for real - and an arrest in the parking lot, involving four police cars. Oh, adventures . . . :)