The "Where I've Been At" Saga, Part 4: Massanutten Mountain Trail 100-Mile Run Race Report

And now, the (maybe) exciting conclusion . . .

After the North Coast debacle (short version: about 50 miles in about 8 hours, then totally gave up because everything hurt too much), you might think that I wouldn't want to attempt one of the most difficult 100-mile races a week later.  And you would be right - sort of. 

As I woke up from my uncomfortable slumber in the back seat of Laurie's Nissan Versa at around 3 am, while North Coast was still going on around me, my first thought was that there was probably no way that I was going to be able to run MMT a week later.  But after staring at a neon-lit kite flying around in the night sky for what felt like a really long time, I looked down at my phone, and saw a missed call from Dave Snipes.  I called him back, and we talked about what was going on at North Coast, and, after we had finished talking, he said that he would put together drop bags for me for MMT.  No discussion about whether or not I should run the race - apparently, I was running it.

He wasn't the only one - Mark Rodriguez made hotel reservations, the girl I'm dating (after ragging on me for my plans apparently being ill-conceived and not entirely thought-through) immediately started discussing what she thought I needed to do in the next week to be ready for MMT, Meg Harnett got in touch with me about possibly pacing me at the end of the race . . . even my mom sent me a text message saying that she "had a good feeling" about the race.  So with all of that energy directed towards my running MMT, as the week went on, it seemed crazier and crazier to question whether or not I should run the race, in spite of the facts to the contrary.

And with the MMT 100, the facts are these:  The race is 103.7 miles (the current "official" distance, although I suspect that this measurement is a little short) of ragged, rocky, relentless mountain trails, punctuated only occasionally with gravel road sections to make you feel extra-terrible about not running because you're too tired from picking through rocks to run anymore.  Last year, I had a total meltdown at around 64 miles, but still managed to finish . . . in almost 32 hours.  That's a long time to be awake, and the prospect of another 32-hour slog after everything I had been through in the past month was not at all appealing, and, furthermore, seemed somewhat likely, after how poorly North Coast went.

But the week prior to MMT was occupied with travel to and from Israel, and by the time I got back on Friday, there was no time or opportunity to re-consider - Mark and Sniper had already put together my drop bags (with some assistance from Mike Bielik, who left some Hammer Gels with Sniper for me after the Bull Run 50-Miler) and made hotel reservations, and my girlfriend had planned the day around me leaving for the race.

I arrived at the Holiday Inn in Woodstock around 10 p.m., got to sleep around 11 p.m., and was up bright and early at a little after 2 a.m. for a 4 a.m. race start.  At least the 3 hours of sleep that I got was sound sleep, and I didn't feel too tired at the start line, or, for that matter, too cold, even though it was in the mid-40s (although my nagging sinus pain was suggesting that I may be coming down with a cold).  Most of the people I saw before the race (Jason Lantz, the eventual winner, Ryan O'Dell, 10 minutes behind me at the Winter Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run a few months ago, Jack Pilla, most recently of pulling-off-the-ground-at-the-Bandera-100k fame) looked at least a little bit cold, tired, and nervous, which made me feel a little better about my chances.

And when I say "chances," specifically, I mean my chances of finishing the race in under 24 hours.  Finishing any 100-mile race in under 24 hours is generally regarded as an accomplishment of note, but at MMT, finishing the race in under 24 hours is very difficult.  Each year, about 200 people start, and typically, only the top 10-15 runners finish the race in less than 24 hours - not to mention that about 40% of starters fail to finish the race.  But ever since I first came out to MMT, to pace Sniper in 2009, finishing this brutal race in less than 24 hours was a goal of mine.  Of course, considering my past month, finishing at all would be a minor miracle.  Then again, having made it to the starting line after all of that, and being presented with the opportunity to achieve this goal, there was also no thinking about whether or not it was realistic, given the circumstances.  Here was the opportunity, and I had to do my best to make the most of it.

In contrast to last year's start, this year's start, on the paved road, felt awful.  I was nowhere near the front of the pack, and all I could think about as we ran down the road was how much I wanted the road to end, so we could get on the trail, where hopefully this would hurt a little less.  Amazingly, once we turned onto the trail, I started speeding up, and passed a number of people who were ahead of me during the road section.  With my trusty dual-headlamp setup (one on the head, one around my waist), it may as well have been daylight in front of me, and I was running fairly comfortably over the rocks.

Unfortunately, my stomach was a little less comfortable, and I spent a total of about 30 minutes during the first third of the race taking "bathroom breaks," mostly in the woods, with the exception of the "real" bathroom break at Elizabeth Furnace.  Other than these unscheduled stops, I was mostly feeling okay - taking what the terrain would give me, and backing off a little bit as it gradually warmed up.  Much of the first third of the race is a blur in my mind, punctuated by loops of "Someone's in the Wolf" by Queens of the Stone Age and thoughts that a sub-24-hour finish might be possible.  After the first 20 miles or so, I wasn't gaining on anybody, but I wasn't losing ground, either.  I was mostly running alone, with a nearly blank mind.

The race only started to become distinct in my mind when I reached Habron Gap, knowing that the next section, nearly 10 miles long, in the mid-afternoon heat, to Camp Roosevelt (mile 64-ish), was the one that ruined me last year.  In my mind, if I could make it through this section relatively unscathed, I should be able to finish strong.  I had also skimmed times from last year, and realized that if I made it to Camp Roosevelt around 5 p.m. at the latest, I had a good chance at finishing in under 24 hours. 

In spite of the seemingly never-ending yellow trail to Camp Roosevelt, on which I ran out of water and wound up walking the last mile and a half of, just to be safe, I made it to Camp Roosevelt not feeling too bad at all, and was in and out of the aid station quickly (just long enough to drink some Gatorade from my drop bag), prompting the volunteer in charge of the aid station, who had been there last year when I spent three hours there, to comment on my improved "through" time.  It was around 20 minutes after 5 p.m. when I left the aid station, and while I was thrilled that I was still in the 24-hour-finish ballpark, I was trying to keep restrained, as the last third of the race is notoriously difficult, and any number of things could happen to mess things up.

And sure enough, not long after, mini-disaster.  All this time, I had been waiting for my cold to sneak up on me and ruin my race (which it never did), but I hadn't anticipated that my left contact lens, which had been bothering me since earlier in the race, when I took a branch to the eye when I took my eyes off of the trail for a second to drink from my hand bottle, would actually fall out of my eye.  But there, on Kerns Mountain, picking through some of the nastiest rocks on the course, with 30+ miles to go, I felt the lens loosen, blinked, and then it was gone.  I spent a few seconds looking for it on the ground, before I realized that (a) I wasn't going to find it, and (b) even if I could find it, it wasn't going back in my eye.  I would just have to re-learn to run over the rocks with compromised depth perception.  As it turns out, this is not easy, and my feet were hating me the entire time.  (Miraculously, for as many times as I stumbled, I didn't fall to the ground - sometimes it's better to be lucky than good.)

Fortunately, I made it off of Kerns Mountain before the sun set, and just after sunset, I was climbing Bird Knob, and now very seriously thinking about going sub-24.  I had been running fairly conservatively up until this point, and feeling relatively good the entire time.  But now that I couldn't reliably run over the rocks, I got the feeling that I was going to have to be careful on the really technical sections, and run every runnable section as quickly as I could.  I had already lost 10-15 minutes by walking the flat section at the end of Kerns Mountain, and I lost another 10-15 minutes by walking the flat section at the end of Bird Knob.  But when I made it to Bird Knob, and had three major sections of the course left, and was still looking at a potential sub-24-hour finish, I decided that perhaps this feeling should be more than that, and that I was going to have to buckle down and run everything that I could.  And considering the safety net that I had following the upcoming purple/pink trail section leading to the Picnic Area aid station (Meg Harnett was waiting to pace me, if I got into trouble), now seemed like the best time to put this plan into action.

In spite of lots of rocks, and not being able to see very well, I somehow made it to the Picnic Area at around 19 hours, 35 minutes, leaving me a little over 4 hours to complete the last "16" miles of the course ("16," because with the rampant mis-measurement of the course, plus the rugged terrain, this "16" miles is more like 18 miles).  I bounded down the steps to the Picnic Area aid station, where somebody offered me a chair, and, after looking at my watch, I flatly responded "I think that's a really bad idea right now."  I also turned down Quattro's offer of a shot of Jim Beam, instead choosing to twin-fist Gatorade and Coke (it really seemed to be doing the trick).  I was happy to see Meg, and although I didn't need her services, I thanked her for being there, and continued down the trail without much delay.  At this point, I was a man on a mission.

From here to the finish, the journey is painstakingly clear in my mind, and I could recount it in overwhelming detail, but for the purposes of keeping things simple:  I rock-hopped the best I could down the orange trail to the 211 road crossing.  I reached the wide white Massanutten Mountain Connector Trail on the other side of the road and was pleasantly surprised to find a few flat stretches that were runnable.  Then I was displeased to find that the section beyond the connector, leading to the yellow trail, was a lot more uphill than I had anticipated.  (But overall, between the two sections, the total amount of runnable trail was as I had expected.)  I hauled down the rocky yellow trail as best as my vision would allow, then turned right onto the road to the Gap Creek aid station, and, seeing that I had taken only a little over 2 hours to complete the last 9-ish miles, felt very confident about my chances in the last section.  Twin-fisted Gatorade and Coke at the aid station, and then I was off.

I struggled up Jawbone Gap for the second time - this time around, it was much cooler, which made the climb easier, then decided to walk the rocky backside to the road, even though it was downhill - far too dangerous and unnecessary to try to run at this point.  Once I reached the road, after one final pause to urinate on the trail (because really, who puts one of the nastiest, rockiest sections of trail less than five miles from the finish that DOESN'T have some sort of malice in their hearts?), I began a deliberate, rhythmic run, at just around 3 a.m., an entire hour left to cover the last "3" miles (probably more like 4+), all on roads and easy trails.  As I made the final turn to the finish, I knew that I had my sub-24, but instead of being overwhelmingly happy, I was just frustrated that I still had to run the "Chapel" trail behind the camp (in deference to this being a "trail" race), instead of taking the more direct route on the road, as vehicles would.  In "protest," I began walking, much to the chagrin of those waiting at the finish, who could see me (well, my headlamp, anyway) from far away, and, after requesting that I shake my headlamp to confirm that I was a finisher, demanded that I run through the finish line, because otherwise, they would run out of applause.

And, with minimal fanfare, 23 hours, 32 minutes, and 19 seconds later, I was finished.  In relief, I dropped my hand bottles on the ground, and had an awkward moment with the race director, since he was there to shake hands with every finisher, but the way I had dropped my bottles made it look as though I wanted a hug instead (it wound up being a handshake).  Then I sat down and started shivering uncontrollably - maybe that was the illness finally catching up to me.  The volunteers wrapped me in a blanket and tried to feed me (shredded chicken), but I really couldn't eat, and within a few minutes, all of the pain that I had been ignoring the entire race hit me, all at once, and it was so overwhelming that I nearly vomited.  Fortunately, 3 or 4 minutes of being hunched over a trash can, not vomiting, seems to work just as well as actually throwing up.

Eventually, after sitting at the finish line in my blanket for what seemed like forever, seeing four more people finish under 24 hours (and one person finish just 6 minutes past the mark), and making no real attempt to move, I decided that I needed to try to shower and sleep, and I made it as far as my car (which a volunteer had to lead me to), where heat was plentiful, before I passed out with the engine running, waking up a couple hours later, sweating profusely, as the heat had been on full blast.  Finally, I drove to the showers, cleaned up, and came back to the finish line just in time to see Meg pacing somebody in - I was glad to see that she had the opportunity to experience part of the course.  We hung out for a while at the finish line before I drove her back to her car at the Picnic Area (where she then proceeded to go out for more running), then drove back to the finish line to watch others finish, and wait for the awards ceremony and my beautiful silver belt buckle.


Yes, it is beautiful, and I feel okay saying that, even if it sounds a little silly, because other people saw it up close and in person and said the same thing, too.

For reference, the over-24-hour finisher's buckle, from last year.

Even as I write this now, with about a day to reflect on what happened, I'm still having trouble processing it all.  Of course, I always hope for the best, and I always want to believe that every time I start a race, I completely have it in me to achieve my goal.  Many times, though, that doesn't happen, and considering the circumstances, I was fully expecting this to be one of those times.  All during the race, the buckle was changing from silver to pewter to silver to pewter again in my mind. 

The best I can come up with is that with this race, I approached it with a healthy sense of balance.  Not just the kind of balance that you need to run over "trails" that are better described as rock piles, but the kind of balance over the week prior to the race that put training, sleep, nutrition, family, and friends in the places where they belonged.  That balance allowed me to step up to the starting line with a clear and healthy mind, and to approach each section of the race with an appropriate level of emotional investment.  And that approach allowed me to focus on my goal of running sub-24-hours, and not get too caught up in "racing."  In truth, there was at least an hour of slack time in that performance, and under better circumstances, I may have attempted to push harder.  But I'm very happy with the way this turned out - the storm clouds of last month really did have a silver lining.

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 . . . :)

Grindstone 2011 Race Report

(Pre-epilogue: See above; posting late, because, after the race, it took me a full 12 hours, from 6 p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. Monday, to drive back to Baltimore - 200 miles - due largely to a blockage on I-81 North, around mile 259, rumored to be due to a truck carrying bales of hay that caught on fire, and which the fire department was unable to extinguish, which left me sitting at a virtual standstill on the highway for four hours. Add in three or four intermittent hours of sleep in the car at random off-highway location, and a totally ineffective cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee from a rest stop, due to a random piece of plastic that fell in when I was pouring it, and brewed into the coffee as it cooled, eventually almost finding its way into my mouth, and the return trip was almost more mentally stressful than the race . . .)

At Grindstone in 2010, I had a terrible showing; I dropped out just 22 miles and a little over 6 hours into the race, a little after midnight, totally spent in every sense of the word. So of all of the races that I'm re-trying this fall, for the sake of improvement over my past performance, the bar for Grindstone was the lowest. That said, the bar for the desired finish was arguably the highest - my goal was to go under 24 hours if possible, which would likely put me in the top ten, or even top five, and would be no easy feat on a course this brutal - over 23,000 feet of gain and loss over 100 miles.

The road to Grindstone would not be easy, though. Due to my work schedule, I had to leave Israel and come directly to the race - the air travel time alone (including the painful trudge through international security checkpoints), from Tel Aviv to Philadelphia, and then from Philadelphia to Baltimore, was 18 hours, after which I would still have a little over 3 hours left to drive to get to the starting line of the race. As it turned out, the 3-hour drive turned into a nearly 6-hour drive, as traffic at the 495/66 West interchange was at a dead standstill, at 10:30 a.m. on Friday. No, I didn't see that coming, either.

I showed up at camp at 3 p.m., with the start of the race at 6 p.m., having missed the pre-race meeting at 1 p.m. I had wanted to nap for an hour or two, but seeing as to how friends were there, and were excited about the race, that never happened. That left me running on about 6 hours of intermittent sleep on the plane, which arguably put me in about the same place sleep-wise as I was with this race last year. Nevertheless, for some reason, I had a quiet confidence about the race. Although I had no specific basis for this belief, I was convinced that everything was going to be fine, that I was most likely going to run well, and if that didn't happen, then I was surely going to finish the race.

After a brief prayer, and David Horton's exhortation to "make wise decisions" on the trail (e.g. keep eating, keep drinking, pay attention to course markings and don't get lost), we were off, right on time at 6 p.m. In the interest of being wise, I had done some homework and come up with a sub-24-hour split chart, based on splits that others had run in previous years for each section to go under 24 hours. According to the chart, I needed to make it through the first section in about an hour, and the second section in about two hours (for a total of about three hours for the first approximately 15 miles of the race) . . . and that was about as far as I went in following the chart during the race. Although I carried it with me during the race, I was nervous about looking at it, for fear of putting undue pressure on myself.

At any rate, the first hour passed, I passed the first aid station on time (actually, about five minutes fast), and night fell. Time for 12 hours of running trails of varying degrees of technical by headlamp (an area where I definitely need to improve). While I climbed to the top of Elliot Knob quickly, and came down efficiently, via a gravel road, as soon as I hit the next section of rocky, slightly downhill trail, my pace slowed, and people passed me, because I just couldn't see what I was doing. Fortunately, since I was deliberately going out "slow," I took this as an opportunity to keep the pace in check, and save myself for the daylight, when running over this type of terrain would be less of a challenge. I made it to the second aid station in a few minutes over three hours - again, right on schedule. At this point, once I made it a step beyond this aid station, technically, mission accomplished, so this was a big boost going forward.

And so it went, sort of, for the rest of the first half of the race. I wish there were something more exciting to say about this, but there really wasn't - my vague plan for this race was working out well, and external circumstances (i.e. sleep deprivation, darkness, cold weather) seemed to be irrelevant.


My best over-exposed iPhone photo of the wooden bridge just before the North River Gap aid station - nope, the woods at night aren't scary in the least. :)

Even my highly inexperienced one-girl crew/pacer showed up at the right aid station, on time, and was appropriately totally business about things (more about that later). I made it through half of the race in 12 hours and 46 minutes, accomplished by a steady march forward at anywhere between a 12 and 15-minute mile pace, feeling like I hadn't run at all, even though I had 51 miles behind me. I was optimistic about the rest of the race. (Not to mention unconcerned enough about time that I stayed at the top of the turnaround long enough to take the below picture, and attempted to post it to Facebook right then and there, only to be thwarted by an intermittent data connection.)


A beautiful sunrise - better late than never.

This optimism continued when I picked up my pacer, and we ran from mile 52 to mile 66 in about 3 hours, including the dreaded "7-mile-climb" section in about 110 minutes, on the fast side of the split chart for that section. That left me with a little under 8 hours to finish the last 36 miles, which seemed challenging, but achievable.

Gradually, however, this started to slip away. More mentally than physically tired at this point, the little things that I would ordinarly be able to ignore were now making life difficult. My feet hurt intermittently, I felt heavy and out of balance running with my hand bottles (and, at the risk of TMI, being, um, "bound up," according to my pre-race weigh-in, to the disturbing tune of 10+ pounds heavier, as a result of air travel, which always seems to do that to me), and I was generally fatigued from being awake for so long and having gone through so much. In response, I started to slow . . .

And, on the way back, it turns out that the climbs are different. On the way out, they tend to be steeper and shorter; on the way back, they tend to be longer and more gradual. Especially late in this type of race, the latter is far worse. My walking got slower and slower, until I was struggling to even move forward at a typical 3-mile-per-hour pace. How much was mental, and how much was physical? Well, my pacer came out and paced me two miles in to the last aid station, and the last three miles to the finish, and once I picked her up, my walking pace picked up dramatically, without feeling cripplingly strenuous. So there was definitely a significant mental aspect to all of this. Also, the fact that just about everything in the last 30 miles blurs together in my mind as I write this (with the exception of my pacer mentioning that she saw a baby bear in the middle of the trail coming out from the Dry Branch Gap aid station, taking a mighty dump right where some poor runner would probably inadvertently step in it, and where I would have stepped in it, had she not pointed it out) is strong indication that mentally, I was suffering through some significant impediment.

I crossed the finish line in 27:30:55, 18th overall (a little worse than my 14-seed, but not totally out of the ballpark) hugged the totem pole, as is tradition at Grindstone, and then proceeded to receive a lot of comments about how it looked like I hadn't just run 100 miles, probably because I hadn't really run much of the last 30 miles of the race, and had strolled relatively leisurely through the first 70+ miles.

In retrospect, I would like to have gone faster, had I had my pacer to lean on for the remainder of the race, I almost certainly would have gone faster this year, and I'm sure that I can go faster there next year. But this was a huge, meaningful finish for me, considering that it's the first race in over a month in which I've had a proper, relatively satisfying finish. It's a great confidence boost going forward, and I'm really looking forward to taking the next step towards once again consistently putting in strong performances under duress, that show no signs of said duress, at Hellgate in December.

And that aside, perhaps the real guts and glory story here is my pacer, who, despite the notable limitations of (deep breath) not having run a race longer than a half-marathon (and that only a few weeks ago), not having run longer than 14 miles at a time, much less that distance on steep, rugged trails, never having been to an ultra, never having driven around that relatively obscure area of Virginia, particularly alone at night (and having to show up late due to work commitments earlier that day), never having run with a headlamp on trails at night (and navigating at this race with a bottom-of-the-line Petzl), and, as it turned out, being afraid of being alone in the woods in the dark (a fear that could have been validated by her bear encounter), and on top of all that (for whatever it matters; not being a girl, I wouldn't know), being on her period, bravely paced me through 19 miles of the race, 14 of which were consecutive, and legitimately at or faster than typical sub-24-hour finish pace, in addition to another 9 miles in transit on foot by herself to pace me. I'm reluctant to over-lube the hype machine here, but . . . that's hardcore, and if she ever decides to do one of these races, everybody up front should probably look out . . .


The physical evidence - as rugged and spartan as the course I took to get it.