50 Mile RR---Best race ever

LEAD-UP

On paper, I had no business even thinking about doing a 50 miler. My entire year has been one injury after another: Left IT Band, Right IT Band, Right Hamstring issues, Right index toe broken (April), Right pinky toe broken (August), ongoing Compartment Syndrome in my right calf, etc., and as a result I've really only averaged about 25 miles per week for all of 2010. I also walk Leroy about 15 mpw so that's a total of 40 mpw of motion on my feet, which sounds better than 25 mpw, but come on, dog walking as a part of ultra training? Really? Am I going there?

Still, I really wanted to take a stab at a 50 miler this fall, so as a last-ditch effort I, um, went on vacation...But it was 9 days of hilly trails in Northern Michigan ending on Labor Day, with some running but the vast majority just hiking. I covered appx. 110 miles during those 9 days, putting in a lot of time on my feet, mainly kept it at a hiking pace so I wouldn't put myself at as much risk of running/overuse injuries, and had it timed perfectly to end at the start of a 3 week taper for Run Woodstock Festival in Pinckney, MI.

I ran the 50k for this event last year, and it was a hard course so I figured it would also be hard this year, meaning that if I tried the 50 mile, with my level of training, I'd be doomed. (Course wasn't quite as hard as last year, but still plenty of hills) I signed up about 10 days before with all kinds of trepidation & uncertainty, but I figured that if I handled the Big Four perfectly (pace, fueling, electrolytes and hydration), I had a shot at finishing under the 15 hour cutoff. Still...50 miles?? Then one night about a week out I read a race report of someone's 100 miler and it put things in perspective for me (which is more honest than saying it "Inspired" me, but it probably did that too, a little), I felt way better about my situation, and achieved a tentative peace with what I was about to get myself into.

As expected, my Friday at work the day before the race was overly stressful, one of the most frantic days of my career, so when I finally got home & got ready for bed I was noticeably tired physically & mentally. This was good, because it meant I was able to get to sleep fairly quickly about 9pm. Then I woke up pretty refreshed & wide awake.....1/2 an hour later. Wide awake. Couple hours later I finally got back to sleep & slept about 3 hours, drove down to Pinckney, still had all sorts of uneasiness about things to come but it was too late to back out & time see what would happen.

RACE

We started at 6am in the dark with headlamps, I fell in with a group going too fast for me and, of course, I tried to stick with them, figuring I should bank at least a little time since surely I'd be falling apart later in the race and would need the time. The really cool thing about our course was, it was being shared by the 100 milers and 100k runners who had started yesterday afternoon at 4pm. Running all night is just incomprehensible to me, and the folks that we saw running the opposite direction at certain points in the course from time to time (the 100m/k people) are straight up MANIMALS.

So, I trucked along at what I felt was a comfortable pace, had the usual early fatigue & run-of-the-mill sore spots but flew through my first loop in 3.5 hours. I was figuring a Minimum of 4 hours per loop (around 16.6 miles per loop), so I figured, yeah, way too fast, I'm doomed. One thing I tried to do that I thought would really help my time was, I completely blew through several aid stations without stopping/lingering. I wore a hydration pack (with storage area for Gu's, electrolytes, etc.) so I was pretty self-sustaining throughout most of the race, just needed the water topped off a few times.

A few miles into Loop 2 I slowed to a walk and chatted with a gal named Terry Hayes. She's 67, done Eight 100's, she's a race director for several ultras in the South Carolina area and basically one of the coolest ladies I've ever met. 67 years old, competing in the 100k and been up for at least 30 hours or so, and we talked about how great ultras are. Truly one of the highlights of my day. (The site for her races is http://www.ultrasontrails.com/)

After talking with Terry for about 15 minutes I took off & tried to continue my surprising pace from the first loop...and soon started falling apart. I get this weird top-of-foot pain when I do longer hilly trail runs/races, and that was starting to re-emerge. I was also growing fatigued, thinking I was reaching the end of my rope since even my up north hikes were only 4-5 hours in length. Miles 20-25 were the worst, abysmal, awful, I was hatin' it.

Near the end of loop 2 I was getting a particularly Hot hot-spot on the bottom of my foot near my toes and wasn't sure if that would completely derail my day. I made a decision right then at the end-of-loop-2 aid station to lube up the foot & hope for the best. Turned out to be a good call. (While sitting there I listened to a 100 miler who'd just finished, having a completely normal conversation with some girl he knew, mentioning to her "Wine makes me loopy". He runs 100 miles from 4pm Friday afternoon until early afternoon on Saturday, but it's wine that makes him loopy, not all-night ultras apparently. People, huh?) I grabbed potatoes with salt and an orange wedge, figured I needed to get my butt back out on that trail before I made a stupid decision to quit & headed out.

At about mile 33 or 34, something happened where I was transformed from a half-awake under-trained bonking wannabe into, well, a whole new person. I Felt So Good! Flying along, effortlessly, dangerously. I kept having to bring myself back to reality, get back into the moment, not get swept up in "what could be", and not do anything stupid as far as injuring myself. But I felt on top of the world for about the next 7 or 8 miles, playing air guitar, singing, and I really have no idea why (maybe all the sugar in those Gu's & sport beans finally caught up to me?). (The greatest running music in the world? Grand Funk, but it's gotta be live, any concert from their heyday. Trust me on this.) Even the top-of-foot pain went from nagging to barely there. I would get a little more fatigued later in that loop but was able to carry that momentum through the rest of my race. My main goal for the day was to finish, secondary goal was to break 13 hours and a dream race would be to break 12; I finished in 10:57, 2nd in Age Group and around 12th overall. I flat-out nailed this race; it was a truly epic day.

NEXT DAY THOUGHTS

Seeing the 100 milers throughout the day was really was a great thing because I literallly had not one single reason to complain all day long. Whenever things got bad I would look at or think of one of the 100 milers and think wow, I've got it easy. Only doing 1/2 of what they're doing. Only 50 miles. Going into the day and throughout the day I would look at how far I'd gone and think about how it would be if I was at that point of a 100, which was a great little mental trick that put things in perspective and brought me back into the moment. Will I try 100 in the future? Oh yeah.

My 3rd loop ended up being almost as fast as the first. Stomach turned a little sour towards the end. Weather was perfect, upper 50s & cloudy, took one e-cap every hour which was just right for the conditions. Ran the downhills with these little bitty steps & tried to avoid a breaking motion (and only sorta bombed a couple of downhills), as a result the quads didn't take much of a beating at all, at least compared to previous trail races I've done. Volunteers were fantastic, aid stations were well-stocked.