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. :)

Week in Review: 26 February - 3 March, and Seneca Greenway 50K Race Report

Miles:

26 February: Club Challenge 10-Mile Run, plus 2 miles warmup, 2 miles warmdown (14 miles, 95 minutes)

27 Feburary: 10-mile lunch run at APG, solo (70 minutes)

28 February: 15 miles (105 minutes) in Allen/Plano, Texas, including trespassing near transformers (the power-converting kind, and not the vehicle-morphing kind . . . that I could tell . . .)

29 February: 5 miles in the morning (35 minutes) in Allen/Plano, Texas, and another 10 miles (70 minutes) in the same darn place in the evening (so bored with strip mall running)

1 March: 15 miles in the evening in Baltimore (105 minutes), stubbornly refusing to wear a shirt in spite of the dropping temperature

2 March: 7 miles at lunch at APG (50 minutes), felt like death :(

3 March: Seneca Greenway 50K, 4 hours, 39 minutes, second place overall, 34-ish miles

Total minutes: 810
Total miles: 110

And now, the important part: The race report.

The Seneca Greenway 50K, along with the National Marathon and the Boston Marathon, have become rites of spring for me. And usually, this race turns out pretty well, even if it hurts like hell (which it usually does). So you can understand my trepidation when, the day before the race, I woke up with a very sick stomach, and bailed out of my intended 10-mile shakeout run at lunch at 7 miles because the stomach pain was no longer bearable. I considered not running this race.

But I also considered the people I would be letting down if I didn't give it the old college try, so I went the other way with this, and made plans with Meg Harnett (who was using the race as part of a 40-mile training run for her first 50-mile race, at my suggestion a few weeks ago) to drive her back from the race, and posted a Facebook status about doing the race, so now I REALLY couldn't back out.

Then I proceeded to have a friend over and "help" (in the loosest sense of the word) her bake vegan cakes for a party the next day, which mostly consisted of me eating chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream straight out of the tub, and occasionally making precision cuts on parchment paper while "Semi-Pro" played in the background. After lots of laughter about nothing, and other similarly whimsical activity, we eventually went to sleep around midnight, which, with a 5 a.m. wakeup time, was maybe pushing it.

But in retrospect, maybe not the worst decision, since I woke up in a good mood as a result of our general mirth-making. I picked up and put on clothes from my neat piles, and, after minimal foot-dragging, I was out the door at around 5:30 a.m., which was kind of a late start for a 6:45 bus from the finish line to the start, but I made it there exactly at 6:45, only to find that they had underestimated demand by one bus, and I would have to wait for one to come back.

So I had plenty of time to sit in my car and think about not running the race (especially since, at this point, it was cold and rainy). But they knew I was here, so I couldn't not do it. Eventually, after about half an hour, the bus showed up, and it was off to the start, which they were delaying for our "short-bus's" arrival.

This worked perfectly, as I got off the bus, handed in my entry form and fee, pinned my bib on, filled my water bottle, and scavenged a Hammer Gel from one of the tables for breakfast (fortunately, it was Montana Huckleberry, one of the better flavors). It had stopped raining, and, also in the category of pleasant surprises, it was not horribly cold, as it usually is at the start of this race.

Meg found me right away, and we walked over to the start together - apparently, her six miles before the race (to bring her to 40 for the day) went well. I saw Mosi just before the race started, and when I mentioned that I hadn't had breakfast, he gave me two Hammer Gels, which was really awesome of him. And then, with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever (a trademark of this race), we were off.

I went out pretty fast, and since I had been hanging out in the back before the start, talking to my friends, that meant that I had to pass a lot of people. Fortunately, the first half-mile or so is a wide paved path, which made passing easy. Normally, I don't go out that way, but after Club Challenge this past Sunday, I decided not to be "slow" in races, ever, whatever that means. (I think it means to be aggressive and push yourself, maybe.) Remarkably, I felt okay, in spite of how I had been feeling for the past 24 hours, and how little I had eaten.

Then, things got uneventful (albeit muddily uneventful - about 50 percent of the course was slick mud, and required constant care, so as to avoid face-planting). Up to the lake section (where "50K" runners split off and run a loop on the trail around Clopper Lake before returning to follow the "marathon" course), a few people were ahead of me, but only one person, a guy in a red jacket, had passed me. He didn't pass me too hard, and he was in sight most of the time. I couldn't quite catch him, lost contact, and then sort of forgot about him.

Adding to the non-descript confusion, because people who are running both the "marathon" and the "50K" are on the same course, it's hard to tell who's actually ahead of you, except when you get to the lake, which only the 50K runners run. During the lake loop, when I could see across the lake, I could see one person ahead of me, and one person who appeared to be not that far behind me.

I had gone out to race, and so at this point, I started drawing on the training I had been doing this past week, where, in just about every run, I had been throwing in random pick-ups, mostly to convince myself that I could always run faster, probably. (Incidentally, the lingering soreness from this might have contributed to my less-than-ideal physical state on Friday.) As I reached the end of the lake section, I saw the guy who I had seen ahead of me walking - apparently, he had burned himself out. I didn't see the guy behind me anymore, so I must have dropped him.

I continued my "aid station roulette" routine (having no nutrition plan in particular coming in, other than my water bottle and some Endurolytes, I tried to take in about 200 calories at each aid station, mostly in bananas, orange slices, and Nutter Butter cookies, washed down with Coke, Mountain Dew, or Gatorade), and headed down the trail for what is typically the "worst" section of the race. That is, if you're feeling bad as you leave the lake loop (the end of the loop is around the 20-mile mark), this section will make it worse, because the trail descends quite a bit for about half a mile, then immediately climbs just as much in as much distance. I was still feeling strong and pushing, and now I was passing people, but, at this point, there was no telling which race they were in.

Still, passing people is passing people, and since I had no watch to mark progress, this kept me mentally occupied for the remainder of the race. And the remainder of the race was similarly uneventful - I just kept pushing and staying in the moment as much as possible. Before I knew it, I was at the last aid station, and Jon was there, as photographer, and got really excited when he saw me. "What are you doing? You're killing it!" he shouted as he took dozens of photos of me. I would have loved to stay and chat, but I had the nasty little business of the last 3-ish miles of the race, beginning with a creek crossing and a steep climb.


Eyeing up that last hill, while Jon gets trigger-happy on the camera.

It was somewhere on the steep climb, when I could feel everything just clicking, and all the hard work from the past months coming together, that I suddenly felt all of the emotional distress and weight of the past couple of weeks just flood out of me. Yes, that sounds kind of stupid, but pushing my body over that terrain in the way that I was pushing it was perfectly cathartic.

And I wish I could say that I ended the race that way, but as I hit the pavement for the last mile or so, a man walking by said to me "number 5," and that took the wind right out of my sails. It seems as though 5th is my permanent 50K finishing place, and it seemed like for all of the focus and effort I had put into this race today, in spite of the circumstances coming in, 5th wasn't right.

That didn't slow me down, though - I pushed all the way through the appropriately unceremonious finish line, to learn that I was the second 50K finisher - the guy on the road had been counting total runners. The guy in the red jacket had apparently finished just a couple of minutes ahead of me, and was standing behind the finish line picking at the food on the table.

I was happy beyond happy at this point, even though my finishing time was slower than last year's (4 hours, 39 minutes this year, compared to 4 hours, 19 minutes last year). Considering that the course was about three miles longer this year, and the mud had made parts of it less than runnable, I consider this year's effort far stronger.

I went over to red jacket guy to congratulate him on his race. We talked for a bit, and then I realized I hadn't asked him his name, so I did, and he answered "Glen Redpath." Oops. I was immedately really apologetic about it, but he said not to worry, he tends to fly under the radar.

Glen started walking back down the road towards the picnic, and I ran after him (surprisingly, this didn't hurt a bit). We chatted some more, and he made a comment about how not wearing a shirt was a good way to get hypothermia (although I was really enjoying the feel of the sun on my back, and, more importantly, not freezing to death, as I usually am at the end of this race). Then I mentioned that I was waiting for my friend Meg to come in, since I had her change of clothes in the trunk of my car. I said that I would probably hang out with him a bit at the picnic, then go back out to my car and get her clothes . . .

And just as I was saying that, who comes down the road, looking not at all like she's nearing 40 total miles for the day? (Meg, obviously.) So with my water bottle, hat, and shirt in hand, I excused myself, turned around, and ran in with her to the finish, telling her that she was second woman in the 50K, which she apparently already knew, since people were telling her for most of the race that she wasn't far behind the first woman. She even managed a little sprint when the finish line came into sight, which I gladly went along with - a little "second-place finishers" sprint. 4 hours, 58 minutes, AFTER a six-mile "warmup," in a "training run" - as I've said in other media, totally baller.

Then Meg and I hung out at the finish line and waited for the rest of our crew to finish: Mike, in a little over 5 hours, Mosi, mid-5, and Jackie, who may be the only runner in the history of this race to state on the entry form that she would be running the "marathon," then elect to do the "50K" at the split-off (which is why she was "late" to the party). Some rough days, but this course, although fast if run right, tends to wear on you with its relentless ups and downs, and the extra distance and the mud this year added to that effect. (And, for what it's worth, Jackie's perfectly-painted "eye black" stripes made out of mud were totally winning, regardless of anything else.)

We all hung out at the picnic for probably too long afterwards, congratulating other finishers as they came in, and talking and laughing about nothing in particular. Eventually, it was time for me to drive Meg back to her car at the start, and then back home for whatever it is that I do at home (mostly cat-care and write race reports, apparently).

All in all, an awesome day in lots of ways. Not just my performance, but also the way I felt like my friends helped me to do what I did - after all, if I hadn't felt like I was out there for somebody other than myself, I might not have run the race.

And in particular, a special thanks to Meg D, whose performance at the Club Challenge 10-Mile Run last week (1:02 high, a PR for her by over 2 minutes, on a difficult 10-mile course), which I had the opportunity to watch from behind for most of the race, inspired my race. Watching her RACE that hard gave me a new perspective on my running - lately, as I've mentioned in recent posts here, I've felt like I've been "running" more than "racing" in races. Seeing the way she ran helped me to carry her brand of calculated, yet gutsy and fearless, running into my training this past week, and into this race, and if I hadn't run the race that way, it was unlikely that I would have finished as well as I did.

So, once again, I am thankful for all of the great people (race volunteers and staff definitely included) that made this experience possible. Here's to another week of awesome!


A few of the people who dragged me through this, post-race. (Not pictured: Meg Harnett, who, at the risk of TMI, was off TCB in the woods. :P)