Race Report: 2012 Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, and 2012 Bel Air Town Run 5K

At long last, time out from lugging heavy bags through many airports (one of which was Cleveland Hopkins - can't seem to get away from that place) to write about round 2 of my Old Dominion/Bel Air Town Run double.  For those who missed the first round, refer to this: http://tokenrunningblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/week-in-review-29-may-4-june-and-old.html.

Why do it again?  Well, besides feeling as though I could better last year's performance, and the training benefits, this year was to be a "reunion" of sorts.  I ran my first Old Dominion 100 back in 2008, after Collin Anderson talked me into it, with Chris Avedissian crewing for us.  It was only my second 100-mile race, and the race where I met Dave Snipes.  To make a long story short, I endured brutal heat, got lost a few times, including in the last three miles, but managed to sneak in under 24 hours, totally spent.  (It was even more epic than that sentence suggested, but that's not the point here.)

Fast-forward four years, and Collin, who now lives in Utah, was coming out to run Old Dominion again, Chris was coming up from Georgia to crew, and of course, Snipes was going to be there.  Between that, and the tradition of the Bel Air Town Run (shooting for 17 consecutive finishes there), I was excited to continue a weekend of running tradition.

In the week leading up to this ridiculous double, though, my body was less excited.  I felt crummy just about every day, on every run, and I was glad that I was limiting myself to 5 or 6 miles a day, because my body wasn't having much more than that, anyway.  Wednesday midnight Collin pickup antics at BWI (with the cops aggressively forcing cars through that weren't actively picking people up), followed by an epically long last day at work on Thursday, with two late nights with my girlfriend thrown in there, and things leading up to the race weren't particularly restful.

Still, on Friday, Collin and I managed to leave Baltimore around noon, in plenty of time to stop by Whole Foods for his $7.00/gallon chocolate milk ($5.00 for the milk, plus a $2.00 bottle deposit), without any sort of scramble to get on the road, and the 2+ drive via Route 70 and Route 81 was mostly uneventful . . . except for the part where my "crew" sent me a text, around 3 pm, saying that he wasn't going to show up.  Considering that this race uses Succeed electrolyte drink, and my fueling strategy lately depends heavily on Gatorade, this was a potentially serious problem.  Fortunately, it was enough notice for me to stop at the Food Lion to pick up Gatorade and Zip-Lock bags to make drop bags, and to stop at Arby's for dinner.

With drop bags distributed, and the pre-race meeting underway, I was feeling a little better about things.  I calmly ate my Arby's roast beef and cheddar and curly fries with hummus that I had bought at Whole Foods while the race director went through the standard litany of cautions and informations (perhaps most amusing of which was NOT to call 911 at any point during the race, because three counties will show up and there will be a huge mess).  The meeting was over in less than an hour, which gave us plenty of time to organize our things for race day, set up sleeping space in the barn, and hang out with Meg and Charles, who were there to volunteer/crew.  The rain came, as predicted, but was over by 9 pm, leaving behind this rainbow:

Left to right, Collin (in the barn), Charles, Meg, and Lynne, demonstrating a 75% rate of marveling at the double-rainbow.

In other pre-race silliness, in a video that needs no further explanation, Collin was tending to other things:



It turned out that only four of us (Collin, Meg, Charles, and me) were sleeping in the barn - far less than usual, and since we were sort of our own quasi-cohesive group, we could make group decisions such as "turning all the lights off" and "not making lots of noise during the night" so that we could all get some sleep.  We all went to bed a little after 9 pm, and, besides a brief bathroom break at around 1 am, I slept soundly, arguably some of the best sleep that I had all week.

We didn't really need alarms, because shortly after 3 am, people started entering the barn and checking in.  Since everything had been piled neatly the night before, there was no "scramble to get my stuff together" fiasco, and I had plenty of time to put on clothes, A&D ointment (except on my nipples - oops), and eat potato chips before the start of the race.

After a brief prayer, as is custom at the race, we were off for our lap around the fairgrounds, with little fanfare.  Although I had weighed in sort of heavy (138 lbs), I was feeling relatively light and springy, considering that it was 4 am, and compared to how I had been feeling all last week.  I led the charge, with another two runners nearby, and this neck-and-neck race continued through town and up most of the climb on Woodstock Tower Road.  It might be sort of silly to run up this, but it is a "road-grade" climb, and I ran up it last year, so, whatever, I ran up it, and dropped one runner, but the other runner, Oliver Leblond, continued to chase me, and, from the sound of it, he was chasing hard.  We crested the climb and I started bombing down the other side, and he continued the chase.  I wasn't sure how long he could keep this up (I had never run with him before), but it was going to be an interesting race . . .

Especially since at this point, disaster almost struck.  At the bottom of the hill, we reached Boyer, where we were directed to "go up the road, make a left onto the trail, run the trail loop, and come back to the aid station."  My memories of the early parts of the race are fuzzy, so as we ran down the road, and it got to be a few more minutes without a marker than were comfortable, the thought occurred to us that we might have been going the wrong way.  But I spotted an orange flag, so we continued up the road, and eventually, we found a double-orange flag that signaled the trail turn-off.  We climbed the winding, technical trail, only to discover, in horror, three runners coming TOWARDS us . . . they had thought they were the leaders, because they were breaking cobwebs.  Oliver was confused, but I immediately realized that, since there were no arrows on the ground, we had mistakenly entered the loop where we were supposed to exit, and were now running the loop backwards.  Panic set in - would we have to re-run the loop?

In any case, it made sense to finish out the loop, since if we had to re-run it, we would have to go back to where we got off course (which was the entrance to the loop).  After lots of reassuring oncoming runners that they were going the right way, we made it back to Boyer, where Ray, the race director, was sitting on his truck, directing us left.  Oliver talked to him, and he let us continue, since we had run the same distance, and correctly followed the ambiguous directions (we were technically not wrong, since there were no arrows indicating the direction of the loop; there were, however, arrows throughout the rest of the course, painted on the ground).  I imagine that they will paint arrows on the ground on this part of the course next year.

At any rate, with that minor catastrophe resolved, we ran together to the first crew stop, where Chris was waiting for me.  My bottles were empty, and somehow, my drop bag hadn't made it there - minor catastrophe #2.  Fortunately, Chris Wilde, a runner from Baltimore who was crewing another runner, had a jug of blue Gatorade that he was willing to share, so I was able to leave the aid station with one bottle of Gatorade, and one bottle of gross Succeed drink (which I eventually dumped).  Half a banana and some Coke later, I was heading down the road.

For the next 13 or so miles of road, Oliver and I ran closely together.  Sometimes he would get ahead, and then I would catch up (at one point, he ran off the road, distracted by extraneous orange flags on somebody's property, which led him partway up a grassy hill), but he was starting to put distance on my by pretty much blowing through the aid stations, while I was taking a minute or so to drink a Coke and/or eat a few banana chunks.  I was feeling good on this fueling strategy, and reasoned that he couldn't possibly keep skipping the aid without crashing.  Plus, this was apparently his first 100-mile race (or so he said, in some sort of accent), and he was running with me because he was "crazy."

As I neared Four Points, at around 33 miles, Oliver had pulled out of sight, and now, entering one of the more difficult sections of the race, I had to decide how hard to push.  Ultimately, I decided that with about 2/3rds of the race left to run, it would probably be better to run a little conservatively, in the hopes that Oliver would blow up.  I ran so conservatively here, in fact, that the third-place runner, Mike Mason, briefly caught and passed me at around mile 44, on the gravel road back to Four Points.  Fortunately, I gambled that he was running too hard too early, and that the tougher stuff ahead (particularly the ATV trail) would get the best of him, and I won that round . . . eventually, coming downhill on the ATV trail, I passed him.  But on the return to Four Points, Carter (who had taped my bleeding nipples on the way out) commented that I had slowed down, and seemed concerned (although I wasn't too concerned), and nobody was talking about where the leader was, so I got the feeling that people were thinking that he was totally out of reach.

And so it went for the rest of the race.  I stuck with my Gatorade/Coke/bananas fueling strategy, and kept plugging along - the temperatures never got much about 75 degrees, and with the shade and the breeze, the conditions were very forgiving (which may have inadvertently made Oliver's race strategy a good one - going out too hard in the typical Old Dominion heat tends to be a recipe for disaster).  I felt pretty good the whole way, but I never had any indication of how far ahead Oliver was, and, in retrospect, maybe I should have asked.  Because by the time curiosity got the better of me (just past mile 90), it turned out that he was about 15 minutes ahead - apparently I had been shrinking his half-hour gap for a while.  I charged as hard as I could in the last 9 miles, but it was too little, too late - in town, with about a mile and a half to go, I saw the lead Jeep coming at me, and I knew that he had finished.  So I slowed down and pretty much walked the rest of the race, costing me about 15 minutes on my finishing time, but since I was solidly in second place, I wasn't terribly concerned (room for improvement next year, right?)

Chris and Henry were the only people waiting for me at the still-darkening finish line.  Chris took pictures of me (I'm sure my nipple-bleed looked great), and Henry recorded my time:

Old-school Old Dominion Results Sheet

17 hours, 46 minutes, 58 seconds later, I was finished, and shortly afterwards, I was on the road back to Baltimore.  The intermission between races at my girlfriend's apartment is worth mentioning:  I drove back in the clothes that I wore during the race, nipple-bleed on my shirt, number still pinned to my shorts.  She lives just up the street from a club in downtown Baltimore, so on a Saturday night, parking is scarce, and I was forced to park about three blocks away from her apartment. Just as I was parking, the police arrived and began clearing the club, due to some sort of physical altercation on the premises, so I was walking towards a parade of evacuated clubgoers in my gross running clothes.  You would think that the first thing somebody would have commented on was my nipple bleed, but it was actually the second - the first comment was from a guy who said "dang, you been running?"  I smiled and said, "yeah, a little bit."  But the height of this experience was when two police officers stopped me a block away from my destination and said "are your nipples bleeding, sir?"  I explained that I had been running and that it was no big deal, and once they were satisfied that I was not injured in the club brawl, they let me go.  (And things like this are why I do things like that.)

And . . . on to Act 2, the Bel Air Town Run.  Last year, I was pretty much crippled, and it took me over 25 minutes to finish the run, but the important thing was the finish.  This year, I finished Old Dominion nearly 2 hours faster, and felt better after the race, so I figured I could at least go slightly faster than last year.  I had a nice little "reunion" prior to the race with my family (all of whom came out to watch), and some friends from high school (Pete DeCapite and Patrick Early), which helped me feel a little less terrible about three more miles under these conditions.

The weather remained cooperative, though, and I optimistically lined up near the front of the pack, to discover that once the race started, my legs loosened up, and I was running reasonably fast (albeit not entirely comfortably).  I went through the first (downhill? short?) mile in 6:58, according to the clock on the course, and was not feeling as though I had totally spent myself, so I just went with it, kept passing the people in front of me, and, in what seemed like a comically short amount of time after 17+ hours of rugged trail running, I was at the finish line, 21 minutes and 47 seconds later:

Snuck through the crowd and snapped a picture of the results.

The "after-party" at the Town Run was better still - it seemed like everywhere I turned, somebody I knew was there hanging out, wanting to talk about running (including Brien Christesen, another friend from high school, with his wife and children). It was sort of surreal, since so many years have passed since high school, but being back there, where the Town Run has been every year, made things feel, in an odd way, like they hadn't changed at all.

And speaking of "not changing," we all waited patiently through the traditional long age-group awards, and then the more-to-the-point overall awards for the bike raffle, and, for the 17th consecutive year, I did not win the bike.  Oh well, better luck next year.  Then it was back to my parents' house for shower, food, and a ride to the airport, so I can spend two weeks at Fort Leavenworth learning about . . . um, something, I forget.  I hope there are good places to run here!

All in all, a satisfying weekend of upholding running traditions, making new memories, and, in some cases, squeezing Hi-C boxes into empty gallon jugs of water.  And I don't feel cripplingly bad . . . maybe I'll continue a tradition, and go running again today. :)

2011 Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run - Pace Report

(. . . weekly mileage at the end, maybe, if I feel like it . . .)

Dave Snipes, aka "Sniper," is an East Coast ultrarunning legend for the frequency and consistency with which he races (coming in to Wasatch, 220 ultras run in the past 10 years, with only 1 ultra DNF), as well as a good friend of mine ever since he "saved my life" by giving me a water bottle at Old Dominion in 2008, when I was foolishly running without one. So when he gave me the opportunity to pace for him at the 2011 Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run, the last race in his bid to complete The Grand Slam of Ultrarunning (Western States, Vermont, Leadville, and Wasatch, all100-mile runs, all about a month apart) The Last Great Race (all of the preceding, plus Old Dominion, about three weeks before Western States, and Angeles Crest a week after Vermont, both 100-mile runs),and The Western Slam (Western States, Angeles Crest, Leadville, and Wasatch), I was immediately grateful for the opportunity to help him out, as well as to preview the Wasatch course. I made my travel arrangements a couple weeks before the race (thanks, Priceline, for the awesome last-minute deal), and before I knew it, I was on a plane bright and early on Thursday morning, headed from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City.

The flight was uneventful, and I met Sniper at the rental car counter at SLC, where we soon were introduced to Magellan, the voice-changing lesbian GPS (so dubbed for the seemingly arbitrary lower voice when naming certain streets), which quickly acquired the "ego-boost" feature, as a result of my irritation at the GPS's apparent need to reassure us that we were going the right way every 15 seconds, rudely interrupting our conversation. We added our own commentary: "Gosh, you look nice today!" "Is that a new hat? It looks great on you!" "Where did you get that haircut? They did such a great job!" Yes, we were going to have fun on this trip, no matter how awful the race might turn out.

After the requisite Wal-Mart stop for a $99 point-and-shoot camera to photo-document our adventure, plus a stop at Sniper's favorite retail outlet, the Dollar Tree (which, it turns out, has all of the supplies you might need to run an ultra, at an unbeatable price), and finally, a stop at McDonald's (where the sodas were tightly controlled, but the french fries were somehow the best I've ever had at a McDonald's), we went to the packet pickup and pre-race meeting. The meeting lasted only 20 minutes, and they went over only the most important rules (most of which were not very strictly enforced during the race anyway). I suppose when the race is as difficult as this one, they figure common sense will ultimately reign supreme. We collected our swag (containing a lifetime supply of camo-pattern Moeben sleeves, courtesy of Shannon Farar-Griefer, as well as four pacer bibs - you know, just in case anybody else wanted in on these wilderness shenanigans), and then went to meet Collin Anderson for a run up to Grandeur Peak (with the race tomorrow, Sniper wisely chose to sit this one out). I got a few good pictures from the top, and a few good road rashes from a wipeout on the way down, when I was flying down a steep downhill and caught my left toe on a rock - thankfully, no serious injury, and then it was off to dinner at the Spaghetti Factory, final preparations at the hotel, and then sweet, sweet sleep for about five hours.

The alarm went off at 2:45, and we dressed, packed our things, and headed for the buses to the starting line, conveniently a block down the street from the Motel 6. We had a dark, quiet bus ride, and then, ominously enough, we were dropped off AT THE BOTTOM OF A STEEP HILL, left on our own to walk uphill to the starting line. We had about half an hour before the start to make any last-minute changes to our plans, which involved me going back to the hotel with another runner's wife (Miriam Wilcox, whose husband Adam Wilcox would finish eighth, in a bit over 22 hours, and earn the prestigious Cheetah belt buckle), sleeping a bit more, then going out to the Big Mountain aid station with her when she went to wait for Adam, then waiting at the aid station until Sniper showed up. This all seemed good enough, so I had plenty of wherewithal to take a video of the start (which was hard to see, because unless you pass the gate in front of the start, you can't see the runners in front).


The start . . .

Then I caught a ride with Miriam back to the hotel. I got a few more hours of sleep, a little tour of Temple Square, an awesome breakfast at a Mormon cafeteria there (really, they're too nice!), and did a little bit of sightseeing and geocaching with Miriam at the "holding area" for cars before we went up to Big Mountain around noon to wait for Adam.

At Temple Square - almost as imposing as some of the climbs and descents in this race. ;)

Our lovely "holding area" . . .

Miriam said that Adam wanted video of him coming down Big Mountain, so I decided to practice by shooting a video of the first person I saw coming down the mountain, which turned out to be none other than ultrarunning elite Karl Meltzer.


Karl Meltzer, crusing in to Big Mountain (mile 39.4)

So that immediately went on Facebook, properly tagged and hash-tagged, poor cell phone signal be damned. Adam came through about 20 minutes behind Karl, looking strong as well.


Adam Wilcox, entering Big Mountain

After his quick stop at the aid station (a minute, if that), Miriam packed up and left, and I was on my own, meandering about the aid station, alternately seeking shade and warmth as the situation warranted, watching the runners come in. Sniper was hoping for a sub-30-hour finish, which would have had him at the aid station at around 2:30, but 2:30 came, and instead, Collin showed up, to pace another runner for about 15 miles. I chatted with him briefly before he had to take off, and he commented that my pack (15-20 extra pounds, depending on the amount of water in the bladder) was a bit much, to which I responded that I felt like it was a fair handicap, on top of which I needed to be absolutely certain that I had all of the supplies that I might need to ensure a successful finish for Sniper. Collin eventually left, the clock continued to run, and still no Sniper.

At about 4:30, as I sat in a chair near the aid station entrance, jacket on, legs wrapped in a trash bag to keep warm against the insult of the cold wind, Ryan, a local gentleman who is a friend of one of Sniper's friends, and his father showed up to help crew. Since there are very few crew access points during the race (only three, and none in the critical last 25 miles), we weren't sure how helpful they could be, but as it turned out, they had an extensive knowledge of the trails and local environment, and were an able extra set of hands at the aid stations that they could access.

Finally, at around 5 p.m., Sniper came in, later than he had hoped.


Sniper arrives at Big Mountain

Knowing Sniper, I suspected that things were generally not going too well. The first words out of his mouth - "This is TOUGH!" were instant confirmation. I knew that we were no longer pushing for a sub-30-hour finish, but simply a finish within the 36-hour time limit, to complete the Slam,the Last Great Race and the Western Slam. My role would be primarily of the patient companion, helping to maintain a comfortable pace for him, and administering the ass-kicking only when necessary. After about ten minutes at the aid station, we set off down the trail to Upper Alexander, and my first taste of this amazing race. Part of my job as pacer was also to be his "PP," or Personal Paparazzi." With my trusty red Wal-Mart camera in hand, I would be taking pics along the course of the beautiful mountains while he was running the race.

Sniper was right - this was tough. We immediately started climbing out of the aid station, under tree cover, but that soon gave way to an exposed downhill, which afforded incredible views, but not much help in the way of increasing the pace, due to the steep, rocky trail. The exposed roller-coaster ride continued the entire way to Upper Alexander, and we enjoyed views of an ominous raincloud in the distance, occasional flashes of lightning, and conversation about everything and nothing. It was clear that my presence was helping, as we caught and passed seven runners on our way to the aid station, in spite of our slow, steady progress.

Thunderstorm in the distance . . . thankfully, it never reached us (or, we never reached it . . .)

We reached Upper Alexander, admired the sunset (and I posted pictures to Facebook for the rest of the world to share), and then it was off to Lamb's Canyon.

Sun sets on Friday . . . still more than half of the race remains.

We stopped briefly a couple of times - for a photo op with Andy Kumeda and Catra Corbett, and to put on our headlamps as it got darker.

Light-hearted photo op. :)

We kept our eyes peeled for the tricky hidden right turn onto a single-track trail, just after the power lines crossed over the path. The turn was marked, but in a way that you could have easily missed it if you weren't looking for it. We went back and forth with Shannon Farar-Griefer and her pacer Cheryl in this section, ultimately arriving at Lamb's Canyon at about the same time. This gave me a chance to take a picture of Sniper with Shannon and Cheryl (where all were clearly showing signs of the toll that 50+ miles of this rugged terrain had taken on them), post it to Facebook, and assemble my pack for our trudge to Milcreek.

The start of a long night for some legendary ultrarunners . . .

We set off down a seemingly endless paved road that went under I-80 and climbed to another hard-to-see right turn onto the trailhead. At the trailhead, Sniper wanted the Butt Paste to stave off some potential chafing, but when he went into my pack to look for it, he couldn't find the baggie that I had put it in. This prompted a brief panic, as that baggie also had my iPhone charger in it. I reassured Sniper that we would worry about that later - right now, the focus needed to be on getting through this race, and particularly, this next hellish climb. After a single-track climb and descent, we were dumped unceremoniously onto another paved road, where we walked uphill about three miles against an increasingly cold wind. By the time we reached Milcreek, we were both uncomfortably cold, in spite of our added layers.

I took the relatively rare opportunity at Milcreek to use an outhouse, as well as to empty my pack, and discovered the "lost" baggie - it had been shoved deep into the bottom of the pack, behind the water bladder - no wonder Sniper couldn't find it. We rearranged our layers, put cream on our bare legs to stave off the cold, and thanked Ryan, his wife, and his father for their generous assistance at the aid stations, since they had no opportunity to see us for the rest of the race.

Then, onward, to another cold climb to the next aid station, at Desolation Lake - cheerful indeed. Sniper and I were both starting to fall asleep on our feet at this point, and shots of Mountain Dew could do only so much. They did make us punchy enough to have a flirtatious exchange with a woman at the aid station, where her friend revealed that she also had nipple rings (although regrettably, the brain cells were not firing quick enough to propose a "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" deal at the time - that bright idea sparked later, about 10 minutes down the trail to the next aid station), and then Sniper asked her if she wanted to make out in the bushes, to which she responded that her husband was right there, to which Sniper responded that his back was turned (which it literally was, towards the campfire).

This bit of levity made the climb up to the next aid station, at over 9000 feet, a bit more bearable, not to mention that we felt good about having helped a fallen runner in the previous section by giving him a poncho for warmth as we passed him sleeping by the side of the trail, pacer standing watch. We gave another runner Tums for cramping in this section of the course, because we're good (Samaritans) like that (especially Sniper). When we had finally traversed the windy, cold, exposed ridgeline, we were heartbroken to learn that we still had 4.8 miles to Brighton. I thought that Sniper was upset because he thought that it was only 4 miles, but I later learned that he thought that Brighton was the next aid station, which is a much more severe mental blow.

In spite of dashed hopes, we trekked onward towards lower ground, mostly on roads. For me, this was where lack of sleep was at its worst. I was hallucinating anything and everything on the side of the dark, endless paved road, including a Lufthansa jet (seriously). Of course, being the steadfast pacer, I couldn't tell Sniper this, so when he asked (as he periodically does) how I was doing, I simply said, "Sleepy, but I'll make it." Fortunately, as we reached cell phone signal range again,Facebook on my iPhone provided the stimulus to wake me up, without the need for caffiene (which really says something about the drug-like nature of Facebook). I took and posted a picture of Sniper making the last cruel little climb to the Brighton Lodge, and we were then treated to warmth, real bathrooms, and egg sandwiches and hash browns for breakfast.
Our last climb in the dark, to the Brighton Aid Station

At this point, about 75 miles into the race, it was about 6:30 a.m. - 10.5 hours until the time limit, to go 25 miles. But the climb to Sunset Pass, the highest point on the course, loomed imminently, not to mention the unknown (but probably difficult) terrain beyond the pass. Sniper was beginning to worry about not making it to the finish line on time, but I was ever-optimistic, as was my duty. We made the steep climb to Sunset Pass - 10,200 feet elevation - and descended to the next aid station, having seen one moose along the way, with no injury to show for it, in spite of my flash photography to capture the moment. With daylight in full effect, and the belief that our worst climb was behind us, we left the aid station with high hopes . . .

Good morning, baby moose. :)

Highest marking on the course. I think there might be a nice view, too. :)

Only to be thwarted by a hellishly steep climb, followed by a similarly steep descent. It took a little over an hour for us to travel the next 3.12 miles to our next aid station - worst 5K ever. Now Sniper was really starting to worry that the rest of the course would be equally miserable. It was not helpful when he asked the aid station volunteers about the next section, and their response was "six miles that everybody says runs like 9." Upon hearing this, Sniper took off in a huff, with me in tow. He proceeded to be what we call a "Betty Bitchy Britches" as he complained that the trail was impassible, and that there would be no way to make up time.

Grunting up a short, nasty climb during the "5K" stretch of the course . . .

It was here that the ass-kicking was needed, and I administered it strategically. On the steep, rocky 600-foot descent (called "The Plunge"), I gave him a lecture on fast downhill running, and then proceeded to demonstrate by bombing down the descent at about half-speed, leaving him and several other runners in the dust. It worked, though, because although he begged for me to slow down, he had to speed up to catch me, which, in the process, convinced him that he could do better than he was doing on these trails. Sure enough, about two hours later, we arrived at the last aid station, at around quarter to 1 p.m. - 7 miles remaining, and over four hours to complete the distance.

From there to the finish, the race was anticlimactic, as we both knew finishing was within reach, and there was no need to push too hard and jeopardize completion when we were so close to the goal. We spent the last seven miles climbing briskly up a very east-coast style graded dirt road, to a downhill on a very east-coast style rocky ATV trail (minus the divot in the middle of the trail, but that's to be expected in a state which is apparently obsessed with divots, ever since they realized that Salt Lake City was built in a giant one), to a final clean, gently-downhill single-track trail onto a road to the finish. The last, very East-Coast-style climb

With his signature sprint, Sniper crossed the line in 33 hours, 38 minutes, and 35 seconds, 2 hours, 21 minutes, and 25 seconds ahead of the 36-hour cut-off time. He hugged me, and we proceeded to the Homestead for uncomfortably cold showers before the post-race meal and awards ceremony, where Sniper was honored for his Grand Slam finish along with the remainder of the "Class of 2011." The Grand Slam Class of 2011

All in all, the race was a wild, unique experience. Pacing somebody else is definitely an exercise in unselfish patience, and although I've paced ultras in the past, this was my highest-stakes pacing job yet, and arguably the most challenging. Because of that, I'm proud of Sniper for finishing, and grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this once-in-lifetime experience. Wasatch is now on my "must-run" list for 2012, and I'm excited to chase the coveted sub-24-hour Cheetah buckle . . . Not to mention the paper crown that comes along with it. :)

Epilogue:

A few more minutes won't hurt, so here was my weekly mileage, 4-10 September 2011:

4 September: 10 miles (75 minutes), after The Ring, narrowly missing the Grand Prix, wearing my beloved LunarGlides

5 September: 8 miles (60 minutes), Patterson Park area

6 September: 2 miles (15 minutes), loop around Patterson Park

7 September: 9 miles (65 minutes), downtownish

8 September: 1 mile (10 minutes), just keeping the streak alive

9 September: 7 miles (90 minutes), climb to Grandeur Peak and back

10 September: 35 miles (780 minutes), pacing Snipes at the Wasatch Front 100-Mile Endurance Run (end week at 6 a.m. on 11 September)

Total Minutes: 1095
Total Miles: 72

Week in Review: 29 May-4 June, and Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run and Bel Air Town Run 5K Report

Same ol' drill; first the miles, then the race report:

29 May - 1 mile (10 minutes)
30 May - 10 miles (75 minutes), around the Harbor - hot.
31 May - 9 miles - 6 in the morning, another 3 in the afternoon, including a 15-minute treadmill hill session. (95 minutes)
1 June - 8 miles, from O'Donnell Square (60 minutes)
2 June - 1 mile (10 minutes)
3 June - 1 mile (10 minutes)
4 June - 100 miles, Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, 19 hours, 14 minutes, 30 seconds

Total Time: 1415 minutes
Total Distance: 130 miles

Now, the race reports:

First, a little background. When I ran the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run back in 2008, I was able to run both Old Dominion and the Bel Air Town Run 5K because, in a relatively rare turn of events, the first Saturday in June and the first Sunday in June were not on the same weekend. Collin Anderson, who had put me up to Old Dominion in the first place, had said at the time (before I had checked to see if there was a conflict) that I should just run both races, thereby keeping my Bel Air Town Run streak alive. The more I thought about this, the more I thought I'd want to try it some year. This, apparently, was the right year.

First up, the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run. This was the first time that I'd run the same 100-mile race more than once. Despite knowing the course, I didn't know was how the race would turn out. As I mentioned in my last post, my training runs over the past couple of week have been shorter and more painful than I would like, which was either a sign that I needed some extended downtime, or that I had just hit a low point in my training cycle, and was on the road to recovery.

In any case, since I knew that the race would be stacked (70 entrants, up from about 40 in 2008, and the list being a bit of an ultrarunning who's who . . . of course, they don't post the entrants list online, so the best information that I had was through the grapevine: http://nealgorman.blogspot.com/2011/05/deep-field-at-old-dominion-100.html), my plan was to go out aggressively, but not totally kill myself, and hold on the best I could.

This plan worked very well for about the first 30 miles, as I was relatively comfortably leading the race. I was climbing well (I actually ran all the way up Woodstock Gap, without feeling over-exerted), attacking the downhills, and generally feeling strong. Then, nutrition caught up with me. Old Dominion is very old-school when it comes to aid stations, so most of the food, aside from bananas and oranges, was sugary-fatty (Snickers bars, cookies, etc.), and my poor digestive system couldn't handle that much fat, sitting there, most likely getting rancid. So I started slowing, from my relatively breakneck pace that put me through the first marathon in around 3:40 pace, and people started to catch me. First Neal Gorman and Eric Grossman (running together at the time), then a couple others, and before I knew it, I reached Four Points (around 32.5 miles) in fifth.

Over the long loop out from Four Points and back in, things got worse. It was starting to get hotter, and I had no desire to eat or drink, and my stomach was churning. I continued to press forward, but at a slower pace, jogging a lot less and walking a lot more. The end result was that I reached Four Points again, 15 miles later, probably looking okay on the outside, but barely hanging on on the inside.

Still, I remained patient, knowing that the dreaded exposed, rutted, ATV-ridden "ATV trail" was the next section of the course. I wasn't moving forward as well as I would have liked, but I kept moving forward, somehow in fourth place. It was somewhere along the ATV trail that Jeremy Pade passed me, relegating me to fifth place (spoiler: where I would remain for the rest of the race).

From then on, the rest of the race was less of a race than a war of attrition, which, in the end, most 100-mile runs turn out to be. I navigated the dreaded 11-mile Sherman's Gap/Veach Gap section in around 3 hours (starting a new tradition by shouting "911" from the top of Sherman's Gap), and kept a fairly steady (albeit slow) pace from there to the finish. My stomach never felt better enough, and my food never digested enough, for me to move much faster, which was a shame, because I still had legs left at the end, enough to run down Woodstock Gap into town (where a woman standing outside her house asked where I got my headlamp, because it was really bright, and then asked if she could have it for walking at night . . . bizarre.) As it turned out, Keith Knipling finished about 10 minutes behind me, which meant that he had been chasing me for the better part of the second half of the race, without my knowledge.

If all of the above sounds a little more mundane than usual, it was. Other than my stomach problems, I didn't have any problems with chafing, or blisters, or any of those other ultrarunning nuisances that can ruin a race. For me, Old Dominion was about continued forward progress, even as my pace slowed, and at this race, more than at any other, I successfully worked the "dogged persistence" angle. It helped to have a crew out there, because nobody wants to crew for somebody who's having a crummy race (and, on the flip side, people like to crew for somebody who's doing awesome), and it also helped that if I didn't finish the race in a timely fashion (i.e. before midnight, or sub-20-hours), it would be much more difficult to make the 3-hour drive back up to Bel Air for the Town Run in the morning.

The bottom line was that I finished in 19 hours, 14 minutes, and 30 seconds, which would have been good enough to win the race many years, but this year, was only good enough for fifth (the place that I can't seem to get above in ultras - I've also placed fifth twice at the Seneca Greenway 50K). I was pleased with my effort, but had my nutrition been a little better, up to two hours improvement in my finishing time seems plausible.

In any event, water under the bridge, because the Bel Air Town Run 5K (my 16th consecutive Bel Air Town Run) was at 8:00 a.m. on Sunday, so I had about 8 hours after finishing my 100-mile run to get myself together for that. I can honestly say that I've never stood at the starting line of a race more afraid than I did at that run. I had no idea how my legs would respond. I walked around with my dad for about 15 minutes before the race to loosen up, and it was clear that I could walk, but this is the Bel Air Town RUN. As much as I wanted to keep my completion streak alive, I didn't want to have to resort to walking to do it, and I hadn't run a step since I finished Old Dominion, so there was no telling what would happen. My legs might just seize up, I might trip and fall and not finish the race.

For the first time ever, I started so far back that I couldn't hear the starting commands, so at a random gunshot, the pack lurched forward, and I began to desperately hope that I could keep up. So I took my first running steps, and - surprise! It hurt, but not as bad as I thought it would. Pretty soon, I was tucked in the crowd, running what would turn out to be about a 9-minute first mile. In fact, that first mile felt very cleansing. For the first time since things went south at Old Dominion, I was moving forward at a decent pace, without expending a lot of effort. It was, I imagine, the kind of pace I could have maintained at Old Dominion had my stomach not betrayed me.

Since the first mile felt okay, I started gradually picking up the pace, and came through the second mile in just over 17 minutes - an 8-minute mile. So I figured, why not? and ratcheted things up one more time, running the last mile at around 7-minute pace. It hurt, a little bit, but not much worse than it would have hurt had I been running on fresh legs at race pace. I crossed the line in 25:17 net (26:00 gun), which was a huge relief, since I was concerned that I would run over 30 minutes and be one of the last people staggering towards the finish. I stayed around for the post-race awards, and sadly, still did not win the bike, but nevertheless had the distinction of having bib number 999.

All in all, mission more than accomplished. While not optimal, I ran a strong race at Old Dominion, and I didn't run too badly at Bel Air. Provided that I recover quickly from this epic misadventure (which, at some point, will require having an appetite for some kind of nourishing food), this weekend's result indicates that I'm on track to do well at Badwater.