St. Pats 24 Hour

The ultramarathon is a fickle, unforgiving, bipolar temptress, half Athena and half Medusa. I did my first 50 miler in late September and it was epic, a dream day, the best of my life. Full of confidence, in Mid-October I tried to do the St. Pats 24 Hour and it was literally the polar opposite. (If I'm publishing the good races, I have to publish the bad ones too, otherwise nobody learns anything right?)

The course was a 3 mile loop at St. Patrick's county park about 10 minutes north of Notre Dame University on the Indiana/Michigan border; terrain was lumpy but otherwise mainly flat, leafy and very runnable. One good uphill, one good downhill, smaller slopes mixed in. Weather was perfect, upper 50's and sunny. Going in I knew how out of my league I was--even though there were fewer 24 hour participants, they were from all over the country, California to Maine. Somebody mentioned that it was Not an easy course for a 24 hour race. In the end that made me feel a little better, not sure if he was right or not.

I made two mistakes in the first couple hours that doomed my day, and which doom 100% of runners at some point in their race lives: went out too fast for my ability that particular day, and didn't have my nutrition dialed in. I actually thought I could try for 100 miles, but the sane, correct goal would've been to completely dismiss any sort of distance goals, start nice & easy, don't try to maintain any sort of pace, pick it up later if I felt good & see how long I could last / how far I could go. After all it was my first 24 hour race, I'd never run more than 11 hours in a day, never run more than 50 miles, this would be a learning experience. But being the over-confident moron that I was, I figured I would try for 5 miles per hour, go for 60 miles the first 12 hours and 40 miles the second 12 hours. Yeah hindsight is 20-20, but looking back I think wow, so, so wrong was I. For my own personal situation, this goal wasn't even close to being realistic.

Regarding food, in the past what I've done is alternate between gels and sport beans, eating on the 1/2 hour and hour, taking my e-caps and throwing in some real food from time to time. And it's worked. For this race I didn't have nearly enough gels to get me through even 1/2 of this race, and unfortunately due to the sponsorship of the race by a certain company (rhymes with "hammer") there were some raspberry gels that were probably healthier but they didn't have Gu's (chocolate, vanilla, espresso) like I thought they would, so I winged it by eating more real food like potatoes, pretzels & oranges and thinking I would only work in my own personal gels/beans later in the race as needed. Oops again.

My race started out uneventfully, miles 1-15 felt fine, marveled at the changing leaves on the course & natural beauty of the park, saw a few deer, and towards the 15th mile everything was going ok but my legs were already starting to feel a little beat up, which wasn't a good sign. But I figured I was just getting warmed up and things would be better later. Then around mile 20 I felt a little tweak in my left achilles. This wasn't new, I've felt it before. The smart thing to do would've been to stop, massage it, stretch it and try to fix the problem immediately (which has worked in the past for me), but in my unrealistic pursuit of maintaining a 5 mph pace I pressed on, hoping it would go away. This is a perfect example of a stupid ultramarathoner--by this point of the day I already knew in the back of my mind that 100 miles was almost definitely out of the question, but I tried to maintain my pace anyway. Something about banking time. I also started getting some top-of-foot pain on my right foot, which I've had in the past and have been able to run with. Wasn't worried about that. Also had occasional, temporary flare-ups of both IT bands which would appear throughout the rest of the day (not at the same time; it would be one side, then nothing, then the other side, then nothing, etc.). Not worried about that because they kept going away.

Around mile 20 I started to hit The Wall. Normally when I hit The Wall it takes a couple/few/several miles to work through it and then I get my second wind. However, this particular Wall lasted for about 12 miles (over the course of about 3-4 hours). I tried eating more (mainly salty potatoes, oranges, nothing out of the ordinary), drinking more (mostly water & some Powerade), slowing down my pace with more walk breaks, finding better music in my mp3 player, but nothing worked. So here I was, with a flared-up achilles, top of foot pain, occasional IT band flare ups, a Wall I couldn't get past, and 18 more hours to go. How am I doin'. At about mile 35 / hour 7 I even talked to the race director about dropping from the 24 hour down to the 12. I had to re-adjust my race goals several times: maybe I could do 80 miles, maybe 75 miles, I should at least shoot for 100k, etc. My inherent wishy-washy nature was on full display.

I became convinced that this whole Wall problem was caused by my saving my stash of gels/beans until later in the race, so I started back on my old tried & true method of alternating between gels and sport beans, eating on the 1/2 hour and hour. I had to do something, so I figured I'd burn through my supply and if even that didn't work, I'd finally quit & head off to the liquor store for a carton of Marlboros and a fifth of Jack Daniels. Fortunately about mile 38 things changed almost instantaneously, my strategy may have apparently worked and I started feeling like a million bucks. Sugar rush? Air guitar, singing out loud, flew through 3 great loops in a row, legs had energy, achilles wasn't bothering me nearly as much, Frampton Comes Alive causing me to ask the trees Do you feel like I do?, life was good again. At this point I was approaching 50 miles and 12 hours, still firing on all cylinders, figured I would keep going until I hit 100k and would re-asses at that point, seeing if I had a chance at 75 miles. But, alas, I ran out of Gu's and sport beans, and as the sun was setting, my energy surge faded with the light of day.

Maybe I'm genetically encoded to be one of those runners fueled by sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, chemicals and other nasty weird unnatural ingredients...but those Gu's & beans resulted in the only good running of the day. Maybe I should've trained more with real food (and trained more period). But once I passed 50 miles & ran out of fueling goodies I quickly went back to slogging along, soon completely unable to run, walking in an increasingly uncomfortable waddle and seeing how much further I could go until I finally threw in the towel. Turns out that point was at 60 miles. I only needed one more loop to make 100k, but miles 51-54 were agony, 54-57 were unbearable and 57-60 were the absolute end of the line. The only positive from the entire experience I could come up with was, I gave every single possible thing I could and left everything I had out there on the course, which really was my ultimate goal coming in to this event.

If I could have a do-over, I'd bring my own Gu's / beans (enough for the entire race), ignore any time or distance goals, listen to my body, strictly work within the constraints of what my own body has given me on a particular day, and DO MY OWN THING instead of going after some sort of distance or time goal. Especially going into a new race, you never want to trust what kinds of fueling/nutrition/gels the race will provide, so bring your own.

My last two races have been 50 and 60 miles. The 50 mile was the dream race of my life, a magical experience I'll never forget. The 60 was a disaster. Really this was absolutely a perfect way to have it work out, because while the 50 will keep me coming back, the 60 was a hugely important education for me and will remind me that I need to be honest with myself, pay attention to what I'm doing, work within my abilities, respect the Ultra distance and not expect everything to go perfectly. I learned way, way more from failing miserably at the St. Pat's 24 Hour than I would've learned from 10 of those good races. I now have a really cool hat & really cool shirt, but far more important, I'm humbled again and have this important experience to learn from. And to me at least, maybe the two most important tools in the ultrarunner's arsenal are humility and experience. I sure hope I bring those tools with me to the next race I do.