"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. :)

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 . . .)

Week in Review: 23-29 October 2011, and Halloweeny 50K Race Report/Product Review

Getting back on track with the mileage thing:

23 October 2011: 20 miles (140 minutes), including an impromptu Diane Heiser-brand beatdown, as I joined her for pickups of ~4 minutes, 6 minutes, 4 minutes, and 2 minutes on the promenade. Almost hit by a car in the process, jeered by a group of guys in Fells when she dropped me on the 6, and saw a guy with a boa constrictor draped over his shoulder coming back on Monument Street. What a day . . .

24 October 2011: 15 miles (110 minutes), out, back, and along with the Fed Hill group, plus a little extra meander.

25 October 2011: 6 hard-fought miles (~40 minutes): 1 mile warmup, 2 miles warmdown, and about 3 miles of intervals on the track on "relay night." Mile (6:15-ish - bad), quarter, half, half, quarter, plus some jogging around. Last quarter in 68, which is the fastest quarter I've run in a long, LONG time (which is a feel-good, even though Diane ran a 64 and beat me in the last few meters . . . boo)

26 October 2011: 9 miles (65 minutes), easy with the group running from O'Donnell Square

27 October 2011: 7 miles, wandering in and around Patterson Park (50 minutes)

28 October 2011: 3 miles (25 minutes), test-running the Hokas in Patterson Park

29 October 2011: 30-ish winning birthday miles (probably more like 31), in about 5.5 hours (330 minutes) - see below.

Total Time: 760 minutes
Total Distance: 91 miles

Back to a solid mileage total. Good variety of speed, distance, and terrain this week, and getting beaten by the best on occasion, made this week productive and satisfying.

Now, the race report, and product reviews (man, this thing is going to be jam-packed - if you're just interested in the Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe and Nathan VITABand reviews, skip straight to the bottom now):

For my birthday weekend, my original plan was to run back-to-back 50Ks, in keeping with the tradition that I started last year of running a mile for each year (where last year's event was a wandering 29-mile loop around some of my favorite places in Baltimore City). This year, the Halloweeny 50K and the Fire on the Mountain 50K were scheduled as back-to-back races on my birthday weekend, so I had planned to run them back-to-back, in honor of 30 being a big year and a nice round number, for whatever that's worth. I was also planning to try to go under 5 hours for each of them, or under 10 hours total. But, as we shall see, the best laid plans of mice and men (especially mice, and even more especially, men dressed as women dressed as mice) . . .

In any case, at 5:05 a.m. on Saturday, Octoher 29th, my cell phone alarm rudely awoke me after a night of warm, sound, cat-free sleep in my own bed. I spent the last 10-ish minutes of still being 29 tending to my three cats and starting to put on my costume (which, for those still not in the know, was Karen Smith from the movie "Mean Girls" dressed as a mouse for Halloween, in keeping with the monologue in the movie about Halloween being an excuse for girls to dress like sluts without retribution, and that the "hardcore" ones dressed in lingerie and animal ears). My costume, which cost about $15 (total of $6 for women's size XS running skirt and size M running tank on deep clearance at Target, $5 for blonde wig, $3 for mouse ears, and $1 for a roll of pink ribbon to use as accents for the outfit), proved more complicated to put on than I had thought - apparently it's not easy being a girl. Somehow, I managed to take an hour and a half to get out of the house, in spite of laying things out the night before (maybe I should have stopped noticing things out of place and fixing them before I left).

The drive out to Gathland State Park for the race was a bit harrowing, as it was alternately snowing/sleeting, and people were choosing either to ignore this fact and drive 90 mph as if nothing were wrong, or panic and drive 40 mph as if there were already a foot of snow on the road. I arrived at the parking lot at about 5 minutes to 8 a.m., when the race was supposed to start, only to find that due to the snow, the start had been moved to the pavilion a little less than half a mile up the hill. I drove up the hill and checked in right around 8 a.m.; fortunately for me, due to the changed start location, the start time was pushed back 15 minutes to account for anybody who had gone to the original start location and been re-directed. After a pre-race briefing with more course directions than anybody could possibly remember all at once, we were off.

To back up for a second, because this was a "fatass" event, the event was not postponed to a later date due to weather. As a "fatass" (no entry fee, no t-shirt, no awards, no wimps), participants take their ability to navigate the course and their safety into their own hands, since the course is not marked, race-related medical help is not available, and the event is not sanctioned by the park. Given this background, although a little over 100 people signed up for the race, only 41 actually showed up, and, with the ever-worsening conditions (more about that later), only about 10 people actually finished the entire race.

I headed down the white-blazed Appalachian Trail (AT) section up to Weverton Cliff, behind Sean Andrish and another faster runner. The snow was coming down, the rocks were getting slippery, and it was a gradual uphill. I stopped to put on a jacket and re-tie my shoes, and Sean ran out of sight, so I held my pace once I got running again, was passed by a guy dressed as a nun and another guy not in costume, both of whom I passed by the end of the first AT section. I came into the first aid station looking like this:


Time to fly, indeed, turn sheet in hand.

Not super-fast up the mountain, but definitely rolling down the backside, where the snow had turned to light rain. The next section was "easier," following the AT down to the C&O Canal Towpath (of JFK 50 fame), but on the Towpath, the snow had turned to freezing rain, flooding the path and ensuring that I would not be even remotely dry for the remainder of the race. So a theoretically flat, fast 3-ish miles on the towpath became a slower, colder, wetter slog than I would have liked. Sean and his fast friend passed me on the towpath coming back from the aid station, about a quarter-mile from aid, which was a little bit of a blow to morale, as I had hoped to make up a little more distance here.

Due to the cold temperatures, and the tiny skirt I was wearing, leaving more leg bare than is optimal under these conditions, I didn't dawdle at the aid station, and headed back down the towpath as quickly as possible. The turnoff, on the second footbridge to the left, came sooner than I had passed Sean, which led me to believe that he had decided that enough of this was enough, and simply turned around and headed back to the start, bypassing most of the race (this later turned out to be true). This left me in first place, apparently 5-10 minutes ahead of the second-place runner, heading up what appeared to be a rough section of trail. The volunteer on the other side of the footbridge directing runners up the trail was reluctant to try to give me directions (which, in retrospect, would not have been a huge task - how difficult is "green trail, to a left on blue, to a left on red, turn around at overlook, red to green back to the towpath" to remember for an hour or two?), and, a bit frustrated with this, I began climbing the steep green trail/fire road, and worrying about how my increasingly frozen hands were going to pull out the turn sheet to keep me on track. The soaking-wet cloth gloves, which I had balled my hands into and tucked into my jacket sleeves, were doing very little to keep my hands warm, and only the fact that I had my hands balled up, recirculating body heat to the extent possible under those circumstances, was keeping me from frostbite. Any attempt to take the turn sheet out had to be completed within a couple of minutes, or else my crippled fingers may never work again.

As the snow came down harder, the green trail turned more narrow and winding, and it occurred to me that, based on prior review of the turn sheet, there was a potentially difficult turn-off on the green trail to the blue trail, and I may have gone too far and passed it. Struggling with frigid fingers, I pulled out the turn sheet, and, sure enough, the distance that I had gone seemed a bit too long, and so I turned around, brushed the snow off of an info sign along the way, and found that it was the Naval Battery location that the turn sheet mentioned was what you would see if you went too far.

Back on course, I headed further uphill, to encounter my first downed tree, due primarily to the freak snowfall on the trees, which were more leaf-covered than they typically would be when snow starts here. I then realized two things: 1.) Those shotgun-like sounds that I had heard earlier in the race were the sound of trees falling under the weight of the snow, and 2.) the tree which had freshly fallen in the path (only the slightest hint of snow on it) had fallen in the path while I was off-course, and, had I not missed the turn, I may well have been under this very large tree when it fell. As if all of this was not nerve-wracking enough, I was struggling to pull on my soaked cloth gloves and to tuck my hands into my sleeves after I exposed them in order to read the turn sheet. This slowed my progress up the hill, as I attempted, mostly with my teeth, to pull on the gloves to protect my fingers. As I progressed up the hill, a trail of footprints became apparent, and I began to wonder, since Sean had turned around, and was running with another person anyway, if the runner in second had passed me while I had spent about half a mile off-course. I decided that it was cold enough that I was just going to follow the footprints, even if they were on the wrong path, since whoever was out on foot probably didn't want to stay out in these conditions for a long time, no matter where they were going, and there would likely be help wherever they were.

All of this caused me to slow and be more cautious, and it was on the rocky downhill at the end of the blue trail to the red trail that the second-place runner passed me. He had been following my footprints, apparently, and had sped up for the same reasons that I was being more cautious. We decided to stick together, and he let me borrow an extra pair of socks and a Gore-Tex glove cover to keep my hands warm. The gentleman, Tom Kubicz, dressed in a much more weather-appropriate medieval costume, turned out to be a professor of Oceanography at Johns Hopkins Homewood campus (my undergrad alma mater), so we quickly had fodder for conversation as we descended to the overlook, then back onto the red trail, onto the green trail downhill (flying down this relatively tame trail section), and back down to the C&O Canal Towpath to the aid station where all of this mayhem had started. We also passed the gentleman whose footprints I had been following, who turned out to be a hiker with a dog (explaining the frequent animal tracks next to the footsteps), coincidentally on the same path that we were following.

I waited for Tom at the aid station, since he was taking longer than I would have, because the next section, through Harper's Ferry, was subject to complicated directions, and with minimal access to my turn sheet in the accelerating wintry mix, it seemed best to use the buddy system here. We went down the towpath, right over the canal bridge, slightly right up a set of stone stairs to a trail to more stone stairs to a graveyard to the right, through the graveyard and to the left, up a road and through a college gate to the left, back down onto the trail, down to the road and left again to loop back across a "no-bike" bridge to the right, onto a footpath which led us back to the towpath - phew! Got all that? In better weather, this would have been a lovely scenic tour of the town, and even in this weather, with more functional fingers, I could have gotten a few neat photos out of this, but at this point, I was too cold to fully appreciate any of it. We turned right on the towpath to head back to the first aid station, and the puddles had only gotten bigger and colder since we had left them last. In spite of our friendly banter, the towpath seemed interminable, although maybe it's not apparent from this picture of us heading back:


On the towpath - Lord and Lady of the Freak October Snowfall?

We reached the last aid station together, and at this point, a couple of new things were apparent: 1) Sniper and Chris, who had been patiently "crewing" for me this entire time ("crewing" which mostly consisted of making jokes about my costume and providing general moral support, so that I wouldn't think about how conditions were steadily getting worse), had firmly established my alter-ego's name as "Gerta," the steroid-pumping German, due to comments from Pam, a race volunteer, about how muscular my legs were, and 2) it was now officially too cold for that silly skirt. Tom and I left the aid station together, but Tom said that he was fading, and told me I could take off and run faster if I wanted, since I was cold, and motion was the best way for me to stay warm at this point - I wasn't insulated nearly as well as Tom was.

I scrambled ahead up the hill, up the tight switchbacks, with Tom not too far behind, competitive drive being what it is. Eventually, I lost sight of him, at about the same time that the course began to level out a bit (although it was still a gradual uphill), and also at about the same time that I realized that I probably wasn't eating enough, and was now playing a balancing game between level of exertion required to generate enough body heat to keep warm, versus energy to move forward. Or, some of the energy that I needed to move forward as fast as possible needed to be diverted to warming my body, but if I didn't keep moving foward, I wasn't going to get the benefit of the waste heat from forward progress. This was going to make the last 6 miles interesting. Although that doesn't sound like a lot of distance on paper, in practice, in drastic enough circumstances, anything can happen (see: 2011 Holiday Lake 50K, last two wobbly miles that took half an hour to complete). To add to the intrigue, the harder snowfall had now brought down so many trees that for a solid mile of the course, there was a downed tree in the path, without exaggeration about every fifteen feet. At the rate these were coming down, it was hard to believe that there would still be a forest when this was all said and done.

Nevertheless, I kept the faith and slogged through (briskly, as though Diane were chasing me, and ready to pass me at any second - ha!), passing a few more runners who had turned back early (including a very large guy - around 5'7" and 200 pounds - ambling towards the finish in a long-sleeved shirt and shorts, apparently unaffected by the cold . . . sometimes some extra body fat is convenient), and finally, a couple of hikers who confirmed that, in spite of the fact that I hadn't seen a white marker on the snow-covered trees in an uncomfortably long time, I was near the parking lot and the pavilion. I motored downhill, and sure enough, within a couple of minutes, it turned out that those car-like sounds that could have just been wind or airplanes were what I had wanted them to be, and I rolled into the pavilion, about five and a half hours after this whole ordeal began, first man, woman, and mouse to finish.


Finishing this silly thing, with a random dog. Also, note no exaggeration with respect to the snowfall.

Then the cold really set in, and I looked more like this:



Tom showed up about ten minutes later, second to finish, and we congratulated each other the best we could, given that we were both exhibiting signs of the early stages of hypothermia.

Overall, it was nice to begin my fourth decade with a win, but in particular, with a win under these conditions. It takes more than speed to finish first in a Fatass - it takes a lot of guts, self-sufficiency, and awareness of your environment to persist and make it to the finish in spite of minimal aid and no course markings. Furthermore, because Fire on the Mountain wasn't cancelled until a couple of hours after I had finished, I had been deliberately holding back a bit, under the assumption that I was going to have to run another 30-ish miles the next day under similar conditions, so I had been doing only what I needed to to get through the race in a timely fashion, win or otherwise. It was nice that that strategy turned out as well as it did, and saved my legs enough to allow me to run a 2-hour, 17-mile run the next day in the relatively warm, dry confines of Baltimore City, around M&T Bank Stadium during the Ravens game - my first stadium run this year during a game, and a huge come-from-behind win for the Ravens (down 24-6 when I passed the stadium at halftime, with folks in purple shamefully streaming out).

So that's the race, but you're probably also curious about the gear. If you are, here goes:

Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe Review:

In the above pictures, you probably noticed the giant, goofy shoes that I was wearing, and wondered "what on earth?" I was wearing the Hoka Mafate Trail Running Shoe for this race, the first time I had ever worn them, save for a three-mile shakeout the day before in Patterson Park just to make sure that there was nothing catastrophically wrong with them.

In the pantheon of increasingly wacky shoes these days, these are some of the wackiest, with their oversized sole and bright colors. The concept is that the thicker sole allows for more cushioning, and, in spite of the appearance, a near-barefoot 4mm heel-to-toe drop (most shoes come in at around 12mm), which, combined with a wide, slightly rockered outsole, allows for more natural running form, and saves your legs on potentially punishing downhills, while also allowing you to run faster than you otherwise would. All of this is supposed to justify a lofty $150 price tag. So, did it? (Note that I will answer this hypothetically, as I paid far less than $150 for these . . .)

Well, first off, the claims about flying downhill are warranted. The first picture in this post is pretty characteristic of how I was handling the downhills in this race. The cushioning, rockered sole, and positioning of the foot allow for a little extra "slop" in the heel-braking that inevitably occurs on the steepest downhills to keep you from face-planting. Once you're comfortable with the height off the ground, and convinced that the shoe is wide enough to provide a stable platform on which to land (because it is), you can really fly on the downhills, as the tag line suggests - they force you to engage your lower back and butt more, which helps save your quads.

That said, in my experience, they were a wash on the flat C&O Canal Towpath, and on the uphills. Some people have claimed that they are too "mushy" uphill, but I didn't notice a difference, although I am generally strong and adaptable when it comes to climbing, so I might not be the best judge of that. In this case, a flaw with the shoe, probably particular to my foot, came into play. Because the back of my heel is unusually flat, it tends to slip in shoes with a pronounced rounding in the back of the heel (which is probably ideal for people with more "normal" feet). The slippage for me in the Hokas was pretty bad, to the point that in spite of my lacing tricks, my heel was eventually slipping significantly on almost anything that wasn't a downhill. Over the course of a lot of miles, fighting the shoe this way was tiring.

As far as tread and grip on terrain, this race exercised the shoe over a lot of different surfaces - road, gravel, puddles, snow, ice, rocks. Although out of the box the shoes were a little slippery on flat, wet surfaces (I almost took a dive on the linoleum behind my front door when I was running back to the house after tossing out a bag of cat litter in the park before leaving for the race), once the race began, and the shoes were "christened," the grip improved, and, for not having an outsole specifically tuned to any one surface, these were some of the better-gripping shoes that I've ever worn (heel slippage aside, of course).

Also, these were the "waterproof" version of the shoe, and, like every waterproof shoe, that works only until your socks get wet. As deep as some of the puddles were, wet socks, and ultimately wet shoes, were inevitable. I will say, however, that after close to 6 hours in the shoes by the time I finally got them off at the finish (including 4 hours of being pretty soaked), I somehow had almost no signs of pruning or trenchfoot, so they must have at least kept the water to a minimum.

Overall, because of the poor heel fit, I definitely would not have paid full price for these. But, with a better upper fit (which, within a few minutes of putting them on, I'm sure you can determine whether or not the shoe works for you that way), these are awesome trail shoes, and definitely worth considering for long trail races. My legs didn't feel terribly beaten-up the next day (they were good enough for a relatively fast 17 road miles), which I can't totally attribute to the shoes, because, again, I was running just fast enough not to freeze, but I suspect that the shoes helped, if for no other reason than I didn't have a single bruised toenail or blister. (And, with respect to bruised toenails, being a little higher off the ground reduces the risk of stubbed toes, probably.) For me, these are an effective heel mod away from being a great trail shoe. And, for Hoka, this is another "podium" for your shoes, you know, if you care as much about those things as your website claims. ;)

Nathan VITABand Review

As people apparently read this silly blog now, sometimes companies send me free stuff to test out, and usually, I'm remiss in reviewing it. But it's a new year for me, and I'm turning over a new leaf, so here's my review of the Nathan VITABand, provided to me for free by Nathan:


Here's me wearing the VITABand, just before all of that stuff above happened.

The Nathan VITABand is a Livestrong-style bracelet with a unique identifying number on it that you can link to an online profile with your medical history and emergency contact information. In the event that you, say, foolishly venture out into the cold, snowy wilderness underdressed, run out of food and water, and freeze to death, somebody can at least identify your corpse. (And if you're still alive, they might even be able to call the number on the bracelet and get you appropriate help.) The bracelet can also hold chips with your info written on it, so that the person who finds you doesn't have to call the phone number on the bracelet to ID you, and a pre-paid debit card chip, which you can use at places that accept pre-paid, touchless payment methods. Fancy.

I had just received the bracelet a couple of days before the race, so I didn't have either of the chips for it yet (they come in the mail once you fill out your profile online), but I figured that since it matched my outfit (it was hot pink - not sure if it comes in different colors), it was at least a fashion statement, if not a precaution in the event of a catastrophe on a mountain. So I really can't vouch for it saving my life, but I can offer some initial impressions:

Good:

- Pink color looks cool, is highly visible, and supports breast cancer awareness ('tis the month . . .)
- Lightweight
- Easy-on, easy-off
- Fits securely
- Holds a lot of information in a neat little package

Bad:

- Time-consuming data entry online (but basically a one-time thing)
- Subscription service ($20 per year; not backbreaking, but still not free)
- Cats think that it is a small snake and try to chew on it (mine has teeth marks in it now, and is missing the placeholder "debit" chip . . . although that's better than missing a real chip)
- Pre-paid debit service is as useful as touchless debit is available and as much as you pre-pay (which I typically do not do)

But all things considered, this is a compact, sturdy ID system, probably the best on the market in that regard. The subscription fee might be cause to balk, but at the same time, it's not terribly expensive for a little peace of mind. I wish that the touchless payment was credit, as opposed to pre-paid debit (personally, I would me more likely to use it if it were credit), but they could probably modify that without having to modify the bracelet itself. If you can keep it away from curious cats, and the subscription model doesn't bother you, this is arguably the best bracelet of its type out there.

And with that, I've written more than my share of words for the week. Now, back to running . . . :)

Week in Review - 3-9 April, and Bull Run Run 50-Mile Race Report

Comin' atcha now with that blah blah blah:

3 April 2011: 8 quasi-slow Canton/Fells/Fed Hill miles (60 minutes) in the morning, and a faster reprise (9 miles, 60 minutes) in the evening.

4 April 2011: 1 stupid mile, in about 10 minutes, in bare feet around Patterson Park, carrying my dress shoes, with my keys and phone in my pockets, post-Sara's-recital, keeping the streak alive.

5 April 2011: About 9 miles (65 minutes) at TNT, including the following workout: 4x(600m hard, 200m jog rest, 400m hard, 200m jog rest, 200m hard, 200m jog rest). First run in Asics Pirahna SP 3s, 4.6-oz miracles which can be summed up with two words: SO FAST. Oh yeah, workout times: (2:02, 77, 37), (2:12, 81, 37), (2:08, 83, 44), (2:08, 81, 37). (Yes, note the trend of the first set being fast, then getting slower, then getting faster again - I really think I have a mental block about the track sometimes, but that's a topic for another post.)

6 April 2011: 16 miles (conservatively; 1 hour, 53 minutes), in part with the Wednesday night Canton Square crew, and in part on my own, running at dusk in dangerous places like East Monument Street, and being called a black boy's "n-word." Street cred, yo.

7 April 2011: Orioles magic, as they come back from 2-0, 4-2, and 5-4 to defeat the Detroit Tigers 9-5. Went there, saw it, bought a 40-dollar "on-field" official home team hat. Oh, and because my running streak needs to stay alive, 2 miles (15 minutes) around Patterson Park just before midnight, just beating the buzzer.

8 April 2011: Pre-furlough(-that-never-came) madness at work, combined with pre-Bull-Run-Run traffic that make a 2 hour drive take a little over 3 hours (thanks DC-area highways on a Friday at around 6), so this was another stupid mile (10 minutes), around the Hemlock Overlook camp.

9 April 2011: 54 miles; Bull Run Run 50-Mile in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 50 seconds, 10th overall, plus a mile and a half warmup (10 minutes) and a mile and a half warmdown (10 minutes), and later, a mile just because, well, you'll see in my totals . . .

Total Time: 812 minutes (not a very round number)
Total distance: 100 miles (a round number)

Before I get to the (probably epically too-long) race report, you'll notice that this was the week of stupid mileage. Lots of elsewhere-in-my-life activity happened that precluded some of the running that I had planned. On the other hand, I knew I had a 50-mile chunk coming in on Saturday, so ironically, even though this was officially my highest-mileage week in 2011, it was also, in some ways, my "easiest" week in 2011, relative to my recent activity. It was also a lot of fun, running stupid short distances at stupid times. Definitely not something to do as serious training runs all the time, but maybe something to incorporate now and then, because just running randomly for about 10 minutes is a different (and often surprisingly fun) way of doing business.

Okay, now for the race report:

I'm going to try to simplify and shorten as much as possible here, because in a way, Bull Run was a very simple race for me this year. Okay, fine, my goal for the race was a bit ambiguous and complicated:

1. Run at least as fast, or faster than last year (most likely meaning a time between 7 and 8 hours), but feel much stronger doing it.

2. Win prizes.

3. Have fun.

As such, coming into the race, with the help of the illustrious David Alan Snipes, I put together an all-male "team" to compete for the "fastest male team" prize (fleece blankets). The team was Matt Bugin (at Dave's recommendation), John Cassilly (Matt's running buddy), Jack Pilla (who won Vermont in 2009, in just over 16 hours, and who Sara, who was working the finish line aid station then, thought was me, because him and I look similar, although he is 52), and me. We were all looking to run in the 7-8 hour range, so I felt that our team would be pretty competitive, even with the "WUS" teams, which are typically stacked with the fastest runners, in the mix. This was all in keeping with goals 2 and 3 above (particularly the team's name, "Equipo de Deportes," or, in English, "Sports Team," the best I could come up with three hours before team registration closed).

The drive to the race was not fun, as it took nearly 3 hours, but fortunately, even though I showed up half an hour after dinner ended, I was still able to pick up my packet and eat leftovers in the lodge, while I caught the end of the pre-race briefing, and met with my teammates for the first time. None of us actually knew each other, other than online (except for Matt and John), so it was a little awkward and first, but being the non-psycho version of ultrarunners, we were all cool, and Jack's wife (who runs, but is still recovering from surgery, so was crewing for Jack during the race) was also cool, so I knew that everything would be cool. (Cool.) Jack and I retired to our respective cars early for sleep, and Matt and John slept in the cabins (although Matt got fed up with somebody's snoring in the middle of the night, and moved all of his stuff out to his car and slept there instead).

I woke up at 5:15, 15 minutes later than I do on a normal workday, after having gone to bed at 9:00, hours earlier than I do on a normal workday, so I felt a lot fresher than I usually do in the morning. After a disgusting breakfast of half a sesame-seed bagel with peanut butter, 3/4ths of a muffin, and some water, I ambled down to the starting line, and got up front with the rest of our team, which, although there was no requirement to do so, packed up to run together at the start.

It became quickly obvious that Jack was going to take off and do his own thing, but Matt, John, and I stuck together in a loose pack for about the first ten miles. This brought back cross-country memories, as we traded the lead, talked trash, pushed each other through the tougher spots, and turned on the intimidation factor as we passed other runners in a group. The trail got muddier and muddier closer to the turn-around, and both Matt and I were wearing MT101s (in black), which are awful on mud, while John was wearing some sort of heavy shoe with giant lugs, so he would pass us on the muddy sections, we would curse his lugs, and then scramble to make up the distance on the dry sections.

As the trail got dryer as we neared the 16-ish mile mark (the start/finish area, and beginning of the second out-and-back), Matt and I put some distance on John, and we chatted about running philosophy, work, life, the universe, everything. Matt and I are the same age, and although Matt hasn't been running ultras for as long as I have, I found we were very similar in a lot of ways, which was really reassuring, and a huge mental boost in a race like this. I probably should have mentioned, at the start, that goals 1 and 3 were potentially in conflict, in that running on the slow end of what I thought would be doable would be an "also-ran" performance, while running on the fast end would most likely be top-ten. So, in the interest of every race being a little scary (and therefore, on some level, a growth experience), the fact that I was running very comfortably with somebody who I could really relate to was mostly easing that fear. That said, Matt has a lot more experience on trails than I do, and he finished top-10 at Holiday Lake (my first-race-of-2011 learning experience/disaster), so there was still an element of intimidation factor, particularly at any point where he would temporarily take the lead, or zoom down a hill that I was approaching more cautiously.

Our comfortable pace continued towards the marathon mark (as it turns out, Matt's entered in the Boston Marathon this year - it will be his first one - do the similarities ever end?), and it was about this time in the race that we finally started to chase people down. In these races, typically the faster guys go out hard, slow down in the middle, and then find something left at the end. Matt and I had been going at a pretty steady pace all day, and while Matt was concerned that we would never see anybody, I reassured him that if we could hold steady, we'd gradually make up ground. Sure enough, we started picking off runners in front of us, including Keith Knipling as we climbed one of the short-but-vicious back-half hills. Matt decided that he wanted to pass authoritatively, so we bombed down the hill faster than I would have liked, but I was still hanging in, so, whatever.

Then, when we got to the "Do Loop," a 3-mile circuit through leaf-covered, short, steep, zig-zagging hills, Matt fell apart. I didn't realize that I had dropped him until about halfway in, when I noticed that I was no longer hearing footsteps behind me, and I thought his calf was the problem. As it turned out later, his nutrition was the issue - not enough calories (been there, oddly enough, at Holiday Lake this year). So now I was running alone, with only the crew teams on the lake and the aid station volunteers as human life, and I was vaguely worried. I pulled back on my attack on the jack-knife hills, worried that maybe I would also burn out. After all, thanks to my unintentional taper, there was no way of knowing how much I had left in the tank - maybe I just felt good because several days this past week, I ran only a mile or two, but I didn't have enough to go 50 miles at this pace on this kind of training/rest. I recalled that we hit the marathon mark in 3:43, which would be on pace for a 7:06 50-mile - the aggressive end of my time goal. Finally, as I approached the aid station at the end of the loop, I decided to take the advice of an aid station volunteer earlier in the race, who, seeing me staring at the table with a puzzled look as I pondered which cookies to eat this time, and whether I needed to eat something saltier than that, told me that I was "thinking too hard." Bottom line was that I was feeling good, and I needed to just keep running.

So I did, and then I started passing the hundreds of people who were still on their way out. I smiled at each one of them and told them "good job" as they passed, because it's the good-person thing to do, and because I was wearing my Natural Vitality t-shirt and hat, and wanted to make my Badwater sponsor proud. (Incidentally, the cotton/hemp fabric blend for the t-shirt? Really awesome cool-ish weather running wear; who would have thought?) As I neared the 40-mile mark, I sensed that this could be where the big crash might happen, so I kept smiling and looking as strong as people were telling me I was looking, because that way, if there was pain, I wouldn't feel it. One woman asked me what it was like to be young and fast, and then told me that "it looked good on me." Other than that, no particularly memorable comments, just lots of runners showing a lot of grit in being out there for that long.

I reached the aid station 10 miles from the finish, still not having passed any runners in front of me, but a man at the aid station told me that there was a runner not too far ahead, so this spurred me on for the next 5-mile stretch. Over that stretch, I passed him, and I also passed Aaron Schwartzbard, one of the WUS runners that Matt had mentioned that he wanted us to pass, so I felt a little disappointed that Matt wasn't there to share in this kill (although it was a bit anti-climactic, because Aaron was dying and actually very politely let me pass, as I was power-walking an uphill, before I even got right up on him). I reached the last aid station, about 5 miles from the finish, still feeling pretty good, but really wanting to use the bathroom.

Here were the final gambles. I knew there were port-a-pots ahead, near the soccer field, but I didn't know how much distance I had on people behind me, or whether or not somebody would try to make a move. I also wasn't sure how much food I needed to prevent a late-race crash, a la Holiday Lake, and it would be awful to have this effort end with a 20-minute final mile (or 40-minute final two miles) and blow my race. I decided that 3 Oreos was enough food for 5 miles, and that I would play the bathroom thing by ear. As it turned out, the 3rd Oreo was either at my limit, or one too many, because I spent the last 5 miles on the verge of vomiting. I also decided that the port-a-pot, although very tempting, was something that I could handle after the 3-ish miles left to finish, and uncomfortably passed on the opportunity. I felt okay about this, because I had completed the previous 5-mile stretch in about 40 minutes, so if I could hit 40-ish minutes on this, I would be flirting with sub-7:30, and it's nice to be under a number like that. As I neared the finish line (which I knew because I remembered that the bluebells get denser about a mile from the end), I was finally relieved that the "crash" that I had expected from previous 50-mile races, had not come, and was unlikely to come at this point. On the last steep climb to the end, I passed Jack, coming down the hill after his race, who told me "no walking!" on the hill. So I muscled up the longest, steepest hill in the race as fast as I could, and as it turned out, this was a good thing - I finished in 7:28:50, 10th place (in the top-ten visor, as no prize money is involved here), an uncomfortably narrow margin ahead of the next guy, who finished just two minutes behind (and just over 7:30).

As it turned out, Jack finished in 6:49:57, 4th place, setting a new over-50-years-old course record by a huge margin, and John came in not too long after I did, in 7:37:10, good for 14th place. Then the three of us stood around and worried about Matt, who John had passed, and said that he looked bad. To our very pleasant surprise, Matt came jogging in at 8:01:02, 24th overall - not bad for his first 50-mile race. So now the waiting game began, because the all-male WUS team's fourth was supposedly a 9.5-hour 50-miler, but their fastest runner, Matt Woods, set the course record in a blazing 6:08:14. Finally, enough time elapsed that it was mathematically impossible for them to win, and we all celebrated with hamburgers, hot dogs, cookies (ew, SO MANY COOKIES), and, best of all, sitting down.

The fact that we won the team competition was especially gratifying, since the WUS team was trying to stack the competition to win the male, female, and co-ed awards. As such, they couldn't put all of their fastest guys in the male team, or else their co-ed team might be too slow. In any case, some of the race organizers vaguely resented this type of prize-engineering, so a team of four people who only vaguely knew each other, and had a collective 1 prior finish, but came together to push each other to better races, and ultimately winning, was the feel-good story of the two minutes when they were actually thinking about it. So there.

But the real bottom line in all of this (besides the fact that blankets are an awesome team victory prize, because we were all very cold) is that I felt really great for the whole race, thereby accomplishing goal #1, arguably the most important of my goals. In a way, I feel bad about my performance, because it was, by some standards, "lazy," especially considering how many people laid it all out there today at this race, and at the American River 50. On the other hand, I am still walking normally, and feel as though I didn't just run 50 miles, which is really important for training through and running well in Boston. And all of that (which wound up being really long, sorry) can be summed up in two words that are becoming staples of this blog lately: Mission Accomplished.

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.

What I Learned At Hellgate 2009

They (you know, those mysterious mass-majority who are the authority on life and everything in it) say that you learn more from your failures than your successes. As much as I don't want to believe that the conventional wisdom about everything is always true, I think that "they" have a point in this case, because for me, Hellgate 2009 was overall, a spectacular failure, and, upon further reflection, I have a list of things a mile long that I could have done better. Here goes:

1. Eat a lot more in the days leading up to the race. In the past, I've paid more attention to this, eating until just past full for about three to five days before the race. This time, given my hectic work and travel schedule, I had to eat on the run most of the time, which made it difficult for me to do this. No, I wasn't starving myself, but if anything, I lost weigh over the past two weeks, which is not the direction to be heading before a race like this. Consequently, I was hungry within the first ten miles, and that never got better because . . .

2. You have to warm your food before you eat it. At the second aid station, they had food, none of which looked appetizing to me, but I knew I needed to eat, so I shoved a potato chunk in my mouth, and . . . ouch. Not only was it so cold that it was hurting my teeth, but swallowing something that cold was making me nauseous. In retrospect, it would have made more sense to take food from the aid station, keep it close to my body, and eat it after it warmed up.

3. You need to be mentally and emotionally present before you start one of these things. Due to my hectic schedule between being out of town for work for a week and a half, traveling for Thanksgiving, getting engaged, final projects for school, not to mention the other miscellaneous life stresses (like laundry, bills, dishes, and all that other garbage that responsible people worry about), by the time I got to the race, I was physically there, but mentally, I was already exhausted. In the past, I've been able to put myself in the right frame of mind as the race went on, but at Hellgate, the race was too long and too dark for me to get myself back together. Every time I starting feeling even a little bit tired, all of the stresses of the past few weeks started bearing down on me, and I was too emotionally weak to fight them. So, although I was physically fit, I was emotionally burned out from so many highs and lows that I came in to the race emotionally exhausted - not good.

4. You need A LOT more sleep. I had a good 9 hours of sleep the night before race night, but that was after I stayed up for almost 40 hours straight (due to work, school, and personal commitments that were all happening at once), and I was not recovered from that going in to the race. Being sleep-deprived definitely does not help your emotional state, but unfortunately, that's where I was.

5. Not giving all of the above their due. You would think that, coming in to a race like this under-nourished, sleep-deprived, and emotionally distracted, I would have been more mindful that these were the real demons that I would be battling. Instead, all I could think about at the time was how bad food tasted, how awful I felt, and how much I wanted to give up. By the time I was able to properly recognize the source of the problem, I was too far gone to attack it. Really, these were problems that should have been dealt with in the week leading up to the race.

But, in spite of all of that, there were some successes during the race, and to give them their due:

1. My clothing worked. I hate cold weather, and normally I choose to just tough it out and freeze. However, in a last-minute 100-dollar shopping spree, I bought socks, glove liners, gloves, poly-pro baselayer, and an outer wind shell to keep me warm, and the system worked. Yes, it was very stressful to be doing this in the few hours before the race, but the point is, I was never cold, except at mile 22 when I was first thinking about dropping, and I stood around for about half an hour, making no attempt to get warm. Considering that it was about 10 degrees out there, I feel that my clothing strategy was successful, since I have NEVER been out in that kind of weather for as long as I was (9 hours) without feeling really miserable about the temperature at some point.

2. I found a comfortable long hill rhythm. For months, I've been trying to develop a "low gear" for hills in these long races. At Hellgate, after the food that I ate before the race kicked in, but before it wore off, I fell into this groove going up a very long hill. For about three miles, I chugged up a long hill, passing about a dozen people, and workig my way back into the top 15.

3. My shoes worked. Because they didn't have my size, I bought a pair of Mountain Masochist trail shoes that were a size and a half too big. As it turns out, this was exactly enough room for my feet to swell, so I wound up not having any toe problems, even though my feet got wet a lot during the race.

So overall, the point is, I focused so much on the cold weather aspect of the race, and being adequately trained for the race that the more basic physical and mental aspects of preparation fell through the cracks. In the future, I need to recognize that mental preparation is just as important as physical preparation, and, above all, that you are never alone when you run one of these races. There are always people back home that love and care about you, and if you are too full of confusion and negativity to have room to carry what may be the most important thing of all - their love - in your heart, then you might as well be running Hellgate naked, without food or water.

Oh, and also, don't get your shoes or your windpants too close to the fire - they don't have to actually be IN the fire to melt or burn. :)