Race Report - 2014 Philadelphia in24 24-Hour Urban Ultra

First, let's be clear about what this post ISN'T about.  It's not the Badwater post that you've come to expect around this time of year for the last four years.  And yes, it does feel a little strange NOT to be writing about Badwater at too-early-o'clock on the day after the race, as has been a mid-summer tradition for me.

This post is about another tradition, one that hearkens back to 2008, and the first Back on My Feet "20in24" 24-hour race in Philadelphia.  As a total unknown, having run ultras for only about a year, I showed up at the race with Collin.  While Collin had a bad day and dropped out early, I braved 95+ degree weather and no shade to run 111+ miles, and finish second overall, to Serge Arbona (who, at the time, was a relative unknown to me).  At the time, the thrill of battling it out for 24 hours under brutal conditions, and the resulting muscle pain, sunburn, and $75 prize check were the height of "epic" when it came to ultrarunning.

Then Badwater happened, not once, but four times, and each time was incredible and memorable in its own way.  It was a difficult decision not to run Badwater this year, but with the course change, and all of the background that went along with it, in the end, it just didn't FEEL right.  And, let's face it - a lot of things about ultrarunning, if not life in general, aren't entirely logical.

Fortunately, the Back on my Feet "in24" provided an exciting opportunity to do something different this year.  I had always wanted to go back and run it again, but since it always conflicted with Badwater, it was never an option.  Finally, this year, it was.  And not only was it a chance to run a race that I had always wanted to go back to, but it was also an opportunity to re-unite the Badwater 2013 crew - Chris, Shannon, and Meredith.  And, better yet, Chris, our perennial crew-member but complete non-runner, was going to race, courtesy of a few of us pitching in to cover his entry fee.  Back on my Feet also gave me a free entry to the Midnight Madness race to give away, and my friend Traviss won my contest for the entry, so he would be out there at midnight, too.  All in all, it was shaping up to be an exciting race.

There was one major downside, though - training.

After the Boston Marathon in April, I was sick for almost a full month.  Then I attempted 3 Days at the Fair in mid-May, and crashed and burned (unsurprisingly) in my attempt at a good 24-hour race there.  At that point, I now had 8 weeks before "in24," and between significant new job responsibilities at work, at church, and managing a newly long-distance relationship (after a couple of years of being as close as those type of relationships get), the time and energy to train the way that I had wanted to just weren't there.  I averaged 50 miles per week for the 8 weeks leading up to the race.  That's not terrible, but it's certainly not the kind of volume that's ideal coming into a 24-hour race.  (Although it's still better than Chris's 5 miles of walking a day, in preparation for his first 5K, 5-mile, 10K, 10-mile, marathon, 50K, 50-mile race . . .)

In spite of my lackluster physical preparation, for a number of reasons, I was mentally in the right place coming into this race.  The idea that, in contrast to 3 Days at the Fair, I would have my friends there supporting me, made a huge difference.  Even though there were not a lot of logical reasons to believe that this race would go well, I had a good feeling about it.  For eight weeks, on every training run, I thought about the race.  I thought about the focus that I would need to have, the pain that I would need to endure, and the feeling of reaching my goal, which was mostly to compete the best that I could for first place.  Considering the physical shape that I was in, a PR in the event, although possible, seemed unlikely.  That left competing with the course, the conditions, and the other competitors . . . the same way that the event was in 2008.

Pre-race dinner with Chris, Meredith, and friends, was as light-hearted as the pre-race Badwater dinners, albeit in the suburban jungle of Chipoltle and make-your-own-froyo, as opposed to a remote desert oasis.  Having not slept too well all week leading up to the race, I finally slept soundly the night before, knowing that when I woke up in the morning, the only thing that I would be worried about for the next 24(ish) hours would be forward progress, the best that I could.

After saying goodbye to Meredith's husband and daughter (the latter of which would have me laughing about her "on stairs" joke, that I'm not going to bother explaining here, since I am the only one in the world that thinks that it's funny), we headed off to Fairmount Park, found parking, checked in, and set up our tent (strategically next to Serge Arbona's tent, and just a couple of steps off of the course, for convenient access).  We had a good laugh at Chris's outrageously high blood pressure and resting heart rate (somewhere in the neighborhood of 145 over 91, and 78, respectively), which the paramedic taking the readings just shrugged at as he handed Chris the check-in form.  Chris, of course, being cheerful Chris, was undeterred.

The weather was much cooler than expected, thanks to the "polar vortex," rearing its head once again in the middle of the summer.  This would make the race interesting, since with reasonable temperatures, anybody who was truly in shape for the event (not me) and raced smart could potentially log huge mileage.  Off we went, and I settled into what felt like a reasonable, comfortable pace for the first four hours or so, ticking off the 8.4 mile lap in somewhere between 1:15 and 1:30 per lap, employing strategic walking breaks to make the task more mentally manageable.  Serge had gone ahead, and there was nobody in particular who was running at my pace, but that was okay.  I was enjoying the freedom of finally running the event that I had planned on running months ago.  My stomach was bothering me a bit as I started settling in, but amusingly enough, when I passed Chris, he had Gas-X to give me, proving that he can crew even when he's running a race.

Nearing the end of four laps, the cloud cover was lifting, the sun was coming out, and the temperature was climbing.  This was the insidious sort of temperature increase, that you don't realize is a problem until your stomach turns and you start throwing up.  I could feel my control on the race slipping away, but then the first of a series of well-timed things happened.

About ten minutes away from the end of my fourth lap, Shannon showed up, right on time to begin pacing (pacing was allowed after four laps).  He was fresh, and throwing down a tough pace, but it was exactly the sort of challenge that I needed at that moment to push through the mental low point that I was reaching.  Shannon paced me for another two laps, and had me talking and laughing enough that I forgot about the increasing pain everywhere.

I could tell that Shannon was fatiguing, though, and at this point, not quite 9 hours into the race, there was still a ton of time left.  And then the second of a series of well-timed things happened.  Jackie and Jeff showed up just as I was finishing my sixth lap.  Although they weren't exactly "fresh," having "run" (read: scrambled over boulders) quite a bit on the Appalachian Trail earlier in the day, they were still less fatigued than I was, at just over 50 miles in.  Having their company and distracting banter for the next lap once again helped me push past what could have been a low point.  They left for a lap, which was just enough time alone with my thoughts, before Jackie jumped in for one more lap, again, just the right amount of help.

At that point, it was getting late (after 10 pm), and Jackie and Jeff needed to leave, but then the third in a series of well-timed events happened.  Traviss, who was my Midnight Madness contest winner, was standing around near the start/finish waiting for his race to start, and, as he overheard our conversation, he offered to pace me for a lap or two after he finished his race.  Left to my own devices for a lap, the Midnight Madness runners proved, again, to be the perfect distraction, as they ran towards me with their glowsticks and words of encouragement.  I smiled a lot during that lap.  Here I was, out there running for 14 hours, still 10 more hours to go, with these runners just starting out, and I was actually able to smile.  So, I may as well smile.

Near the end of the lap, I picked up Maggie as an impromptu pacer, and she pushed me through the next few miles, matching (and in some cases exceeding) my pace.  Once again, a well-timed event that carried me through to the end of the lap, where, as luck would have it, Traviss was finishing just as I was getting ready to head out again.  I set out for another lap with Traviss and Maggie in tow, and once Maggie reached Lisa, who she had promised to pace, it was just Traviss and me for the remainder of the lap.  Once more, the perfect support and distraction, especially at nearly two in the morning.

Unfortunately, Traviss needed to leave after a lap, since this was an unplanned pacing gig anyway, but he did bring me some particularly delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice before he left, which, stomach-churning effects aside (nothing that some Tums and Coke can't fix), was probably the best thing that I had tasted the entire race.  Now I would be on my own for a while, and my thoughts turned to the competition.  I had been at the start/finish a couple of laps ago when Serge lapped me, so, short of a blow-up on his part, or a miracle on his part, I was unlikely to beat him.  But Mark mentioned to me, a couple of laps ago, that the mysterious second-place runner (who I had heard was old, young, from Haverford, and probably a dozen other things) was only about 20 minutes ahead of me.

I had no idea who I was looking for.  Maybe I had already passed him.  But without the aid of pacers, I needed the motivation of trying to catch somebody who was ahead of me to prevent me from lapsing mentally.  After a little bit of iPhone-aided research, I discovered that his bib number was 61, and I would spend the next several hours looking at every person that I passed for that magical number.

Finally, heading into my 14th lap, coincidentally enough, very close to where I had stopped in 2008 when I ran 111+ miles, I jogged up behind a group of three people in their mid-20s, surrounding another person in his mid-20s.  This fit one of the vague descriptions of this "Cohen" fellow that I was chasing down.  I passed him, said a friendly hello, looked at his chest, and sure enough, partially obscured by the mandatory reflective gear that he hadn't yet taken off (I hadn't taken mine off, either) was that magical "61".  He asked how I was, and I said "just taking it one step at a time."  And with that, I knew that I had to make my move, and I took off running.

I pushed through the next lap in around 1:25, the fastest lap that I'd completed in quite some time.  I wanted to make sure that when he came around at the end of the lap, and asked how far behind he was, I would have put the maximum distance between us that I could, and that that might break him.

As I later found out, after the race, when he came over to me and shook my hand and congratulated me, he confirmed that my strategy had worked exactly as intended.  He had thought that he was further ahead of me, but was already a bit demoralized to learn that he had just a 12-minute lead.  When I passed him with authority, and got far enough ahead of him, he actually stopped after 14 laps.  Not knowing this, I had to "suffer" through an entire 15th lap, to arrive at the start/finish with 45 minutes left, to confirm that I didn't need to go any further, and that, with 126+ miles, I had secured second place, with no chance for first.

Meanwhile, amidst all of this competition, the final of the very well-timed things happened.  As I reached the last half-mile of my 14th lap, Shannon and Chris were off to the side of the course, getting ready for one last push to the finish.  Chris was going to make his 50 miles!  I slowed down to walk with them, and we walked in together.  I didn't realize it at the time, but, as we crossed the finish line, both Chris and I were victorious (him with his 50 miles, me with securing second place) at exactly the same time.

What I did realize at the time is that both Chris and I were in horrific pain, Chris moreso than I was.  But my time would come.  I could feel myself mentally breaking down at the end of my 15th lap, having left Shannon behind, who himself was tiring as a pacer for Chris, and Meredith, and me, putting in over 50 miles himself between pacing the three of us.  As I let my guard down, and the adrenaline started to wear off, the pain starting to overwhelm me. The thought of Chris dragging himself through the finish, and how he must have felt, was in the back of my mind.  Slow or fast, in these races, we all have our moments of doubt and suffering.  Soon enough, though, I would be sitting in a chair near the finish, spent, glad to be finished, and delighted with the DJ's sense of humor, as he played "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, and then "Money" by Pink Floyd, in succession.

After a massage and perhaps lingering too long on the Lloyd Hall upstairs patio with a banana and a bottle of water, I went downstairs for the awards ceremony, to greet Serge with a fist bump, and it looked something like this:

Serge and me, 1st and 2nd place, post-race, all smiles.
(Thanks, Meredith, for capturing this moment!)

Just like in 2008, Serge had finished first, and I had finished second.  He had run just over 142 miles today, and I had run just over 126.  Just like in 2008, neither of us had had our best day, but as competitors, we gave it our all until the end.  Unlike in 2008, we both walked away with a lot more money - Serge with $2500, me with $1000.

The in24 in Philadelphia certainly isn't Badwater. Only Badwater is Badwater (and this year, even that is unclear).  But the in24 was the right midsummer race for me this year.  At the end of the day, I got exactly what I had wanted out of the race - great competition, and quality time with great friends, all of whom I cannot thank enough.  I've definitely started races in better shape, and I've definitely had better performances by the hard numbers.  But I can't think of a single race that I've run where I've had more timely and valuable support from my friends leading up to, and throughout the event.

So now this is going to sound like the end of a Badwater race report, as I offer my most sincere thank-yous to Chris, Shannon, Meredith, Jackie, Jeff, Maggie, Traviss, Meg, Tina, the mysterious "Cohen/61," Serge, Mark, Christian, the rest of Serge's crew, all of the folks at Back on my Feet and Pretzel City Sports and Stroehmann Bakeries (that make lots of gluten-filled foods that I personally can't eat, but are great for everybody else), all of the participants in the Philadelphia in24 races, the amazing, enthusiastic volunteers on the course, all of the other sponsors that made this race possible, and probably a bunch more people that I'm forgetting.  At the end of the day, this, like Badwater, was a race that was about bringing a team and resources together, and competing the best that you are able to.  And, thanks to the great friends that I have, that all came together to help me through this, the 2014 Back on my Feet "in24" 24-hour race was exactly as amazing as I had hoped it would be, and, this year, exactly the right race for me.

Week in Review: 25-31 March, and Umstead 100 Epic Fail Report

Getting the numbers out of the way:

25 March: 15 miles, half with Jesper (see previous blog post - 120 minutes)

26 March: 7 miles at APG, some faster parts in there (down to 6:30-ish/mile - 50 minutes total)

27 March: 1 easy mile (10 minutes) - sick

28 March: 1 easy mile (10 minutes) - sick sick

29 March: 1 easy mile (10 minutes) - sick sick sick

30 March: 3 unintentional miles (30 minutes), searching for my misplaced car (which ended up getting towed right before my eyes)

31 March: 83 miles (1080 minutes), or, in more human-readable form, the first 83 miles of the Umstead 100, in 18 hours

Total time: 1310 minutes
Total distance: 111 miles

And now, what you really came here for: the race report.

My Umstead 100 failure is, even a day later, still a difficult thing to pick apart, let alone digest (especially with the knives-of-fire feeling in my stomach continuing as I type this), but, since "I always try my best" has become my mantra lately, here goes:

Coming into this race, I was not exactly feeling my best. In addition to being sick for most of the week leading up to the race (which, due to a hectic schedule at work, was improving on a very slow timeline - one day of complete rest would have totally knocked it out; instead, I had to settle for 3+ days of gradual recovery), the morning of the race, my car was towed (story for another day), and I had to get it back from the impound lot before I could even begin my drive down there.

Still, I suppose it could have been worse. As recently as Thursday night before the race, I couldn't take a full breath without chest pain, so it was a relief on Friday to finally be able to breathe fully for the first time in a week. And Serge Arbona, an ultrarunner from the Baltimore area who has won Umstead a few times, had his car break down on him on the drive down - fortunately, not too far from the race, so Mark, Johnny, and Katie were able to drive out and pick him up (and Johnny was going back to Baltimore after the race, so Serge had a ride home), but the car wasn't coming with him.

So with a "nothing is perfect, so let's just work with what I have and see what happens" attitude, I arrived at the (entirely too-long) pre-race briefing on Friday, and totally unintentionally, found myself sitting underneath the poster listing the top times on the 100-mile course (no pressure). After the briefing, I found Mark Manz (who I was staying with, whose recent training mileage and race performances have been pretty much flawless, at increasing distances, and who lives just a few miles away from the course, and trains on it all the time - again, no pressure) and company, and it was off to dinner, Target, and bed, perhaps wasting a little too much time (but having a lot of fun) in the process.

I slept pretty well on the floor in Mark's apartment (Serge apparently slept on a board in the woods, much to Christian's chagrin, so I think that sleeping in hard, uncomfortable places is pretty much as critical to being a champion ultrarunner as eating pizza and Nutella), and woke up without too much foot-dragging at 4 a.m. on Saturday morning, with everybody else. Maybe I woke up more easily than usual because I was vaguely excited about what I was about to do.

I don't think I ate much of a breakfast, but I also didn't feel very hungry. Not having to drive to the race was a luxury (Johnny did the honors). We got there in plenty of time, and baffling ordeal in the start/finish lodge aside (we were told to "just set your drop bags anywhere near the back of the room," a direction which would later become problematic), it was a very comfortable way to begin an experience that would become very uncomfortable . . .


<3 . . . minutes before the start of the race. (not an S&M club, as somebody later suggested)

The Umstead 100 is 8 laps, 12.5 miles per lap, on a "crushed gravel" surface, which is so packed down at this point that it's basically a road (think NCR Trail with hills, for Baltimore people). The gain/loss is 1000 feet per loop, or 8000 feet total, so while it's not flat, it's not unmanageable, either, as none of the gain or loss is steep enough to truly force a walk. So this is basically a very fast course, and it was my hope that I could at least run sub-16-hours here and set a new 100-mile PR.

And then here's what happened, lap-by-lap:

Lap 1: 1 hour, 36 minutes. Just a little bit fast, due to the typical "everybody goes out fast in a race, no matter what distance the race is" energy. But after Mike Morton decided to go way ahead of everybody and run 6:30/mile, I decided that it was stupid to chase that, settled in, and soon, I was consistently hitting 8 minutes per mile, right on target, even with the hills. Since I was running shirtless, the light rain kept me cool and comfortable, and the pace felt manageable. Some stomach pain was creeping in, but nothing to be terribly alarmed about (or so I thought).

Lap 2: 1 hour, 40 minutes. The most uneventful lap. Now really locked in on my pace (considering that 1 hour, 40 minutes per lap equates to a 13:20 finishing time), I was, at least temporarily, enjoying this rolling run through what turned out to be, now that daylight was in full (albeit cloudy) effect, a really pretty park. The hills were actually a welcome break, as they allowed me to switch up the pace a bit, and also helped to mentally break up the course into smaller sections. In spite of my solid lap, people who were insistent on going out stupid-fast were actually gaining on me and passing me. This was a little bit demoralizing, but considering the kind of pace I was on, I was content to just let this go, even when one runner commented about how fast Morton went out, and how nobody was going to catch him. (I responded that if Morton can run 6:30/pace for 100 miles, more power to him, but I doubt that he can, and it doesn't matter anyway, because his race has nothing to do with what we're doing here.) I was also trying to be content to let my stomach pain go, but this would prove to be a mistake . . .

Lap 3: 2 hours, 2 minutes. Here was where things started to go wrong. No longer able to ignore my mounting stomach problems (which I suspect were a result of the cold not having entirely cleared my system - I have a history of sinus residue causing my stomach to be very upset), I stopped for a bathroom break twice on this loop, costing me about 10 minutes (and Mark passed me during my first bathroom stop, just past mile 3 of this loop - another mental blow). The other 10 minutes off-pace was due to deliberate slowing to try to contain my stomach problems. Unfortunately, the problems were also getting to my legs, and I was starting to get those involuntary twitches - the ones you get when you're behind on fluids/electrolytes. Between being sick, and the continuing light rain keeping everything cool, I had apparently been losing water and salts more quickly than I thought, or than what would be typical for me under these conditions. Now the best I could do was try to drink more, take more electrolyte tablets, and hope that they would absorb in time to bring things back to where they were at the beginning of the race, when everything felt better . . . But things were clearly trending in the wrong direction. Even sort of randomly seeing Sniper and Jon at the start/finish probably wouldn't be enough to fix this . . .

Lap 4: 2 hours, 32 minutes. And, now the wheels fall off the cart. Full-on "knives-of-fire" feeling in my stomach with even the slightest exertion (random, stabbing pain), and pretty soon, those knives were stabbing my quads, too. I continued my "slow down and hope the race comes back to you" strategy, but it really wasn't working. I started walking a lot (including with Toni and friends for a bit - which was nice, because misery loves company). The thoughts of just giving up at 50 miles (since they give you credit for finishing the 50-mile race if you finish the first half of the 100-mile race) were getting louder and sounding more sensible, considering the death march that this was turning into. And then, just when I felt like my race was trashed, and I stopped to take this picture, just past the 8-mile mark:



. . . who should come flying past me, lapping me, but Superman himself: Mike Morton, and a woman who was apparently pacing him. Because it had felt like too long since I had run, and, what the heck, why not, I decided to chase him down the hill. And, surprise, I caught him fairly easily, and passed him. But then the road went uphill, and, figuring that he was going to run, I decided I would also run up the hill. To my surprise, I was actually gaining distance on him going up the hill. I overheard his pacer say something about "guy in the red shorts," and I quickly got the sense that she was not happy that I had passed him (even though he was just about a lap ahead at this point). So, with some egging on, on the next uphill, he passed me . . . only to slow to a walk once he had about 50 feet in front of me. Ridiculous. So I power-walked to close the distance a bit, then resumed running and passed him again.

This game continued for the remainder of the lap - passing him, getting passed again on a hill, at which point he would slow to a walk, and I would speed up and pass him again. On the fourth pass, I heard his pacer, exasperated, shout "oh my God!" . . . which led me to believe that his pacer was pushing him to do this, since he didn't look at me or say anything to me while this was happening. After this pass, I kept my slight lead on him all the way through to the end of the loop, at which point I arbitrarily decided not to play the game anymore - I had held off being lapped for 50 miles, a nice round number, where I was going to "quit" anyway. Mike kept going, of course, dropping his pacer and not acknowledging anybody at the start/finish.

EDIT: Mike Morton later sent me a Facebook message to clarify that his pacer was not exasperated, but instead impressed by my effort. And Mike, for his part, was just racing, as fast as he could. So no hard feelings here - just a thing that happened. :)

Lap 5: 3 hours, 25 minutes - yep, problems. Although, in retrospect, most of the time that I wasted on this lap was at the "airport loop" turnaround. About a mile and a half into the loop (during which Serge and his pacer, Christian, encouraged me to run with them, but suddenly, the knives of fire in my legs were back again, and I took two horrifically painful steps and decided that it wasn't happening, although I appreciated the thought), there was a turnaround point . . . with chairs. I sat down, at about the 52-mile mark, and just watched people come past the turnaround for the next hour. Fast, slow, running, walking, whatever - I sat there, drinking sweet tea and taking electrolyte pills and just hoping that my legs would stop twitching involuntarily. Eventually, when the twitching had somewhat subsided, I decided to get up and start walking, and for a little while, I walked with Meredith, until I stopped to go to the bathroom, they walked ahead, and then I had to run to catch them, at which point, I decided to just keep running, and wound up finishing the loop in a somewhat reasonable time . . .

Lap 6: 2 hours, 58 minutes. And then, crash again. After what seemed like a momentum gain (albeit a slower one than the one from Lap 4 into Lap 5), starting on my sixth lap, things started feeling terrible again. At this point, I was near Tony Portera during the airport loop section of the course, and we stuck together for a little while, until he ran off, looking and apparently feeling a lot better than I did at that point (he would go on to finish in 19 hours and change - awesome run for him). I walked most of the way to the far-side aid station (at mile 7), then mounted a brief charge, then crashed again, then reached the unmanned aid tent at a little over 11 miles into the loop (or about a mile and a half to go), when I crossed paths with Mark, on his way to a finish of just over 14 hours (third place, just two minutes behind second). Somehow, I managed to run in with him, and to look and feel totally fine doing it, even though we were more or less finishing-sprinting at that point (low-to-mid 7-minute-mile pace). I congratulated him, and then told him that he could leave (advice which he did not take to heart). After some confusion (which involved being offered three other headlamps), I found my headlamp, then headed out for my 7th lap, hoping the momentum would carry through . . .

Lap 7: 4 hours, 50 minutes. But unfortunately, not so. After another mile or two of running, the stabbing pain was back, reducing me to a walk again. Fortunately, sort of out of the blue, I got a text message from Meg D early in the lap, and our subsequent text banter at this critical juncture in the race kept me from giving up the ghost. And when I say "critical," I mean that this last little bit of running had sent my body into such a deep downward spiral that even walking almost the entire way to the far-end aid station, once I got there, my legs were twitching, my stomach was protesting, and my body was on the verge of near-collapse. So I went into triage mode, and ate some potato soup and whatever else would go down, and slept on a cot for a little over an hour. When I woke up and went to stand up, the pain of the first few steps was pretty close to unbearable. But after a few more steps, it became apparent that walking was a possibility; running, however, would not be. I continued my long walk to the end of the lap, just as it began to thunderstorm. Perfect.

Lap 8: 3 hours, 39 minutes. And speaking of storm, I had pretty much had it at the start of this lap. At no point did anybody ever organize the drop bags (rendering mine somewhat useless), so, in frustration, I walked into the cabin, straight to the back where my drop bag was, stumbling over dozens of walking wounded and strap-hangers otherwise, grabbed my iPod shuffle out of the bag, and walked out, ignoring everybody who was offering to "help" me. I felt bad about storming off like this, and later apologized to people, but at this point, there was nothing anybody could do. I had a little under 5 hours left to make the sub-24-hour cutoff, and while I had thought at the end of lap 6 that maybe I could rally and finish the last two laps in 4 or 5 hours, apparently, this was not going to happen, and the best I could do was to just steadily walk to the finish, so as not to risk another crash like the last one that happened on the 7th lap, and risk not finishing under 24 hours. I texted Mark and crew and told them emphatically to go home, since they had actually stayed around during my last lap (my slowest of the entire race) - I felt bad that I hadn't been more adamant about this point sooner. With my music blasting (Lady Gaga, Rage Against the Machine, and Andrew WK, mostly), I did my best power-walk-to-the finish that I could (which I knew that I could do, since this was about the distance of the climb up Mount Whitney at the end of Badwater, and I've done that twice now, both times in less-than-idea physical states). And after a few hours of walking in the dark, passing other people walking, and only being passed by one other person, in spite of the fact that I walked the ENTIRE lap, I was finally walking up the steps to the finish line . . . and I tripped a little and stubbed my left big toe on the third-to-last step, letting out a very loud expletive as I registered my only black toenail from the race . . . which pretty much summed up my experience right there.

22 hours, 46 minutes, and 12 seconds later, this catastrophe came to a close. I got my belt buckle and my split sheet:


(plus a penny that I found on the porch of the lodge as I walked in right after the race - one more for the Speedgoat 50K jar . . .)

And then I flopped down in a cot in the cabin and slept for five hours. I woke up feeling sore, but not miserably so, and I spent a few more hours socializing with Serge (who ended up dropping out at mile 85 because he was throwing up uncontrollably), Christian, and whoever else happened to be wandering by the start/finish. Eventually Mark and crew showed up, and after a brief attempt to sort out the headlamp fiasco (since the drop bags were disorganized, when I came in from my sixth lap, it took a while for somebody to find my headlamp, and, in the meantime, I was offered three other headlamps, and somehow, Johnny lost his headlamp in the process . . . we never did find it), we went our separate ways - I had lunch with Mark, Katie, and Zane, and we had a good laugh over all of this (and other things), and then I began the long drive home, stopping at the 930 Club in DC for the Andrew WK show (which was pretty awesome - party till you puke, indeed).

So none of this was very pretty. And, to be very honest, the last two laps felt really pointless to me, since it was clear that I wasn't going to meet any sort of time goal of meaning, other than sub-24, and I didn't feel as though I had anything to prove by finishing. But at the same time, with so many people pulling for me to finish, I felt as though I owed everybody my best effort, and that's what I gave. Unfortunately, that day, it wasn't as good as I had hoped it would be.

And now that I have a little bit of distance on the situation, I can appreciate the positive aspects of it a little more. Since I was going slower than I typically would have, I had a lot more opportunity to socialize with the other runners when I was working through my low points, and that was something different and fun. The course is actually a lovely place for a walk, so of all the places where I could be forced to deathmarch, this was one of the least-bad places (with the MMT 100 being near the top of the "awful" scale in this regard). And I am really grateful for all of the people who supported me throughout the race, both at the race and from afar.

And in an even broader sense, considering how sick I was before the race, I made it out alive, without making myself sicker, and without injuring myself, so that I can continue to train through this. In fact (huge confession here), this was the first run of any substantial distance in about five years where I didn't have nagging knee pain afterwards. I tend to have somewhat loose joints, and my knees tend to get a little swollen and irritated from running, so in the past couple of weeks, I've made a few minor changes to my stride to correct this problem. In the long-term, the fact that I was so successful in doing this, and that it held up over a variety of speeds, from slow trudge to fast run, over 100 miles, is a huge confidence boost that I'm on the right track. But in the interim, there are muscles to re-train, and this might have been a contributing factor to that "knives of fire" feeling in my quads. (Although I still think that the lingering sickness was the main problem here.)

So once again, and now more than ever, a huge thank you to everybody who supported me during this race, and congratulations to everybody who finished. (And a special huge congratulations to Mark Manz, who ran 14 hours, 16 minutes and change in his first 100 - amazing stuff. Not to mention he let me crash at his place, and, outside of the race itself, we had a fun weekend together.) Yeah, maybe I'm sounding like a broken record with this lately, but I really do enjoy the fact that because of everybody's support, all of this "crazy" stuff that I do takes on a life and a meaning that's bigger than just a bunch of wackos running around in the woods all day. And I've got more than a few big running events planned in the months ahead, so stay tuned - this one was just a speedbump on the road to awesomeness. :)

Week in Review: 5 February - 11 February, and Mid-Maryland 50K Race Report

Cold, hard numbers:

5 February: 2.5 miles (17.5 minutes) to Our Daily Bread for a service project, during which I saw a guy punch another guy square in the jaw, causing him to drop like a rag doll. Then, 2.5 miles (17.5 minutes) back home, wearing "nice clothes" (jeans, button-down shirt, and a Ben Sherman jacket) on Monument Street, narrowly avoiding getting jumped by four high-school-sophomore age boys (race redacted) - clearly a case when you're "asking for it" by dressing a certain way. Finally, 10 miles in normal running clothes in normal places (70 minutes) - what Super Bowl?

6 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes)

7 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes), then my return to Tuesday Night Track - 2+ mile warmup, fast "minutes" (1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1), with 1 minute running "rest" between - intervals at high-5-minute-mile pace, "rest" at low-7-minute-mile pace, 2+ mile warmdown, for about 10 miles (70 minutes) total

8 February: 10-ish-mile lunch run with Luke (70 minutes), then 10 more miles in the evening (70 minutes) with the Wednesday night Canton run crew.

9 February: 5 miles at the end of the workday (35 minutes), waking me up for a night with Me Talk Pretty, Hawthorne Heights, The Young Electric, and some other bands at the Legendary Dobbs in Philadelphia (a pretty legendary night . . .)

10 February: Doubled, on a theory - 6 miles (40 minutes) at around noon, then another 6 miles (40 minutes) at around 7 p.m.

11 February: Mid-Maryland 50K in 4:29, follwed up with 7 miles (49 minutes) in light snow and whipping wind around the Inner Harbor

Total Time: 888 minutes
Total Distance: 120 miles

Warm, gently massaged memories:

I didn't want to run the Mid-Maryland 50K.

But this year, I set a goal to run a race of at least 50 miles in length every month. Unfortunately, when it comes to ultrarunning, February is the cruelest month (except for the Rocky Raccon 100, but it would have been 2 weeks after the Beast of Burden 100, and the race director didn't seem keen on late entries, although with the number of people that asked me about it, I'm regretting now that I didn't at least try, but anyway . . .), and so it seems unlikely that I'll be able to meet that goal this month. But I can maybe at least run an ultra every month this year, and 50K is pretty much the legal minimum for an ultra. Plus, this race was close (shortest drive ever to an ultra for me - just under half an hour) and cheap ($50, registering online 3 days before the race). And, theoretically, the course, 5 10K trail loops, was flat and fast, so maybe a chance for a PR.

So whatever, I entered.

The night before was total routine - less than 10 minutes to lay out cold weather running outfit A, and post-race warm-jeans-and-button-down-flannel ensemble B, and put together my bottles and pills. (Perhaps it's a little disturbing how dialed-in all of this is now.) I went to bed early, got plenty of sleep, left the house on time, arrived an hour before the race, and had plenty of time to do everything I needed to do, including take this picture:



Which is how it looked before the race, and why I was, even more than when I woke up and forced myself out of the relative warmth of my bed, dreading this race. All that snow, and still coming down - over the course of 4 or 5 hours, that would make clothing wet, heavy, and useless at best (burdensome at worst). But again, whatever, I was here, and so were Serge Arbona, Christian David Creutzer, Henry Peck, and Mike McGonagle, ultrarunning buddies. Time to run a race.

The race director gave us about two minutes of instruction, joking that he marked the entire snow-covered course with a white line yesterday (as it turned out, he really wasn't joking, which meant the course markings were nearly impossible to see - good thing there were a lot of signs). Then, with little fanfare, except for all of us shouting the word "Uno!" in a nod to the pizza sponsor, not the card game, we were off.



(Oops, wrong race. The other side of the sign was supposed to be directing vehicular traffic to the start of the race. Apparently, the race director thought nobody would be foolish enough to drive the wrong way to the start. *raises hand*)

The race director kindly ran the first loop with us, to blaze the path and help prevent people from getting lost. So I stuck with him and a small pack of front-runners for our loop around the fields before we entered the woods. But within the first couple of minutes, I could tell that something was horribly wrong. My quads felt like they were bleeding out, badly, for the first time in a run since the Fire on the Mountain 50K debacle (see this: . . . I am just now realizing the funny coincidence that was my relentlessly burning quads). Maybe it was that I wasn't warmed up, maybe that I haven't been on trails much in the past month, maybe something silly to do with uneven surfaces and muscle activation and whatever, but the point is, it was awful. I was struggling to picture the rest of the race continuing at this level of pain.

So I started falling back, and, predictably, within the first half of the first loop, Arbona, Creutzer, and McMonagle passed me, in that order. When Mike passed me, he asked how I was doing, and since I don't pull punches with that sort of thing, I didn't hesitate to tell him that I felt awful and this was going to be a long day. He was kind and reasonably encouraging as he passed me.

But really, it was going to be a long day at the rate that I was going. The second loop came, and this was the worst. All of the parts of the course that were muddy the first time were even muddier, and some parts that were only sort of muddy had gotten worse, all from a bunch of people trampling through the mostly narrow single-track for some reason. (By the last loop, conservatively, 70 percent of the course would be slippery-to-ankle-deep mud - not exactly a fast surface.) The second loop was the worst, since I knew we were still in half-marathon/training run territory, and there was no chance of anybody falling off pace at this point, so I would continue to struggle along.

Fortunately, the course was scenic, and offered a good amount of variety - it was seemingly in short, distinctive, mentally-manageable sections that made each loop feel a lot shorter than it actually was. Also, I could console myself with thoughts of A FRIEND who was also running a 50K today, under far hillier conditions, and solidarity with MY FRIEND'S pain was some consolation, since other feelings that I had kicking around at that point for various reasons were anything but.

Eventually, I reached the end of the second lap, and I saw Mike coming out, which was surprising, considering how poorly I thought I was doing. Maybe I had a chance to catch some people after all. Mike asked again how I was, and I shouted "TERRIBLE," and, just like that, whatever demon was afflicting my quads had been exorcised, and suddenly, I felt "normal" again.

I felt my pace quicken on the third lap, and the amount of grunting increase (it seemed to help release the pain, so I really wasn't worried about who was hearing me at that point). But darned if the race hadn't somehow gotten faster - the first woman was not far behind me, and at this point, I was resigned to defining success as not letting the first woman pass me and not letting the overall winner lap me. So I pushed harder, and, at one point, fell with first woman not far behind me, and I've never gotten up and mumbled "I'm fine" to the nearest runner (who asked if I was okay) more quickly. Mud and roots came and went - the third lap.

I started my fourth lap optimistically, especially since one runner who was ahead of me was dawdling at the start/finish aid station (the lone aid station in the race). But somehow, he, like everybody else that day, was super-fast, and caught up to me and passed me within the first mile after the aid station. So much for that. I kept pushing, and feeling a little more human (albeit sore from slipping and sliding so much on the mud), but other than lapping lots of other runners, I wasn't passing anybody. I couldn't even see anybody close enough to pass. The lap ended, and I ended up right where I was.

Fifth and final lap - surely somebody will slow here. Nope, everybody is super-fast all the time. I had finished the fourth lap in about 55 minutes, and was hoping to go a little faster on the last lap, especially since I had finally shed my soaking wet outer layer (which, it turned out, probably weighed upwards of 5 pounds, and probably had not been helping my cause earlier in the race). But in spite of my pushing, and my lighter load, I still came through in just about 55 minutes for my last lap, and I still didn't pass anybody who was ahead of me. I came through the finish line, 7th overall, 4 hours, 29 minutes, and some-odd seconds, ripped off my teal Baltimore Marathon Under Armour recycled-fabric long-sleeve shirt (still best shirt ever) in discomfort and frustration, my brief shirtlessness causing small-scale stare-age and swoon-age by the females in the vicinity of the finish line (yeah, I just said that), before putting on the very dry, somewhat warm, long-sleeved finisher's shirt.

Mike apparently finished 7 minutes ahead of me, from the look of his watch, and we chatted a bit, during which time his lady friend Jackie (1) asked about Rocky Raccoon (okay, seriously, as soon as they open registration for that race next year, I'm signing up . . . and hoping the word really does end before then . . . kidding :P), and (2) informed me, after a significant amount of mental math, that 3:20 marathon pace was probably good enough to run sub-4-hours in a 50K (her goal, and mine, and everybody's, apparently - but this is the mystery of the 50K dance, one perpetrated in part by the fact that most "50K" races are probably closer to 35 miles than 31 miles - I'm curious to see a GPS on this one). Both completely valid topics. :)

I congratulated the people that finished ahead of me and had stuck around (Arbona and Creutzer, and that guy that I almost passed but eventually didn't), and congratulated Henry Peck when he finished about ten minutes after I did. Then I put on my warm clothes, ate pizza from Uno's, drank Dr. Pepper, and listened to 50 Cent on the radio ("In Da Club"), for some reason. And, after hanging around the finish line for a little while, I left, at 113 miles on the week - 7 more to go (on 2/11 - a great day for numbers).


(As visual evidence, a sample of the mud - if there hadn't been a few dryer gravel sections, this would have looked a lot worse.)

Back home, after shaking out my muddy clothes in the park across the street from my house, while the late 20-something neighbor guy carried flowers into his house for his girl (different lives, indeed), I sat on my front steps, lacing my house key into my black-on-black Asics 2150s, as the wind callously whipped tiny snowflakes in my face, just like this time last week. I pressed "play" on my iPod shuffle, to be shot down by a female voice that said "LOW BATTERY." This would be a run alone with my thoughts, apparently, to piece together this post to the sound of the earphone cable pounding against my chest, like a heartbeat in my ear. I cruised through the streets, totally comfortable, showing no sign of the 30+ miles that I had already put on my legs today. And as I came home, just like last week, the snow had stopped, although the wind had not totally abated, and the sky in front of my house was crazy, in the way that only the sky in front of my house can get crazy:



So if music had been playing, I'd go with Sunny Day Real Estate's "In Circles." It was not the same day as last Saturday (over twice as many running miles, and not nearly as many mall miles), but in a lot of ways, especially emotionally, it felt like it.

And, to go one further, it wasn't the same race as the Holiday Lake 50K this weekend last year (see this: . . . ), but, again, emotionally, it felt like it (although intellectually, it is nice to know that I'm in shape enough to turn out a race like I did today, even on a "bad" day). Maybe this weekend is just a bad weekend for an ultra, although the Mid-Maryland 50K is a top-notch race, on a beautiful, varied, challenging course, incredibly hitch-free for its first time, and poses stout competition to the race that Horton himself claims is his least favorite to put on. In any event, in all cases, it was a little high, a little low, a little bit of everything.

But in the end, whatever, a lot of it is just running, and the stuff that isn't is easily (if sometimes temporarily) obscured by running, even (and sometimes especially) by a bad day of running.

And as much of a mixed bag as these experiences are, they're uniquely so, and I'm thankful for everybody, "good" or "bad," who help to make them. And that's the best I've got right now. :)

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. :)