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 . . .)

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

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

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

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

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



and, here:



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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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


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

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

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


Racism, alive and well in Clevelandtown.

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

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

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

EDIT: PICTURE OF KITE FLYING NUNS:


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

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

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

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


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

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

Okay, in all seriousness, a few parting comments:

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

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

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