Sunday, September 28, 2014

Hungerford Games Marathon--RR


INTRO

This would be my 19th race of marathon distance or above. And once again, distance running found a way to be humbling.

The race was The Hungerford Games in Big Rapids, MI. I planned on staying at Nirvana, a “town” 30 minutes away where I have use of a cabin on the bank of the Pere Marquette river. It’s late September so the salmon are coming upstream to spawn, rot and die. I saw at least a couple dozen. It’s heart-racing as a fisherman to see 10-15 pound king salmon swimming by in 1 foot of water.

My prior race was the 100k at Run Woodstock 3 weeks prior, where I had a great race, finished strong and felt invincible. About 10 days after that race I went for a run and proceeded to sprain my ankle. It wasn’t a devastating sprain, but it was of the high-ankle variety and I was limping for several days after. So, zero running, zero walking in the 8 days leading up to this race. In fact, really just a single 3 miler in the 3 weeks leading up. Probably not good, but apparently you only lose 1-2% of your training if you take 3 weeks off. I’d be fine.

On my drive up I saw a semi overturned on it’s side. Part of the payload had broken through the roof and spilled out. It was trying to pull into a business but cut the turn too close, back wheel went in the ditch next to the entrance and down she went. Not something you see every day.

The weather was beautiful, mid-70’s and sunny, leaves were starting to turn, it was Pure Michigan to make Tim Allen proud. Hadn’t rained in at least a week, so everything would be nice & dry. I went to bed unusually early after setting the alarm on my phone, which, it turns out, was set to PM instead of AM, so I overslept by about an hour. Fortunately I woke up at all, got moving and got to the race with plenty of time to spare.

 

RACE

They bused us out to the start, about ½ a mile from the finish. It was cute, my first school bus ride since I was a teenager. There were about 40 runners on the bus; we launched spit wads at each other, worried about the quiz in 3rd hour biology and talked about what we would do at recess today. I decided to do this race without music, which I ended up regretting. However it was such a beautiful day, birds were chirping, plus I’d be able to hear cars coming which is always nice when a race is 100% on roads.

My “A” goal was sub 5:00, B goal was sub 5:30, C goal was just finish, but I felt good so the initial plan was the A goal. We lined up, gun went off and off we went. A short way in we came to an uphill. This would become a recurring theme; I figured there would be some hills, but in fact there were WAY more hills than I thought there would be. I should’ve started hiking the ups at the start, but I didn’t think there would be that many. Plus this was my 19th Marathon-Or-More, I was invincible and thought I would try to run the whole thing and be a tough guy.

The early part of the course went from pavement to dirt road to seasonal road. It got a little rough in a couple spots where the ruts in the seasonal 2 tracks were deep and sometimes muddy. I can’t imagine what they get like after heavy rains. Still it was all pretty negotiable, sandy but not too bad.

Then we came to a stretch of powerline two-track, where the sand went from sandy to deep & mushy. This was the hardest part of the course because it was all hills, and all mush. With footing like that you trash your feet more than you might expect, tweaking the tendons/joints/ligaments a little with each step. Amazingly I didn’t re-sprain my ankle. However, when I got done with that stretch I had to reassess. No more running the whole course. In fact I was already pretty beat-up with still 19 more miles to go.

More seasonal road followed, then a long stretch of flat dirt road through the countryside. This was where I wished I wasn’t so beat up, because it was very runnable and I could’ve made some nice time through here. But I was beat up & beat down, and only just heading into the halfway point. This is where I missed a turn, the volunteers yelled at me & got me headed the right way, then I missed another turn about a mile later. Thankfully one of the other runners behind me yelled to me and got me back on track. Some days it’s just not your day, I thought to myself, and today was one of those days. I tried to enjoy the countryside, enjoy the weather, enjoy the damn birds chirping but it was hard to do because all I thought about was the pain. I wanted to stop, quit, go back to the cabin and play with my phone or something.

At mile 16 I thought to myself ok, 10 more miles to McDonalds, since there was a McDonalds on the way back to the cabin. A buddy of mine wrote a song many years ago called “One More Mile To McDonalds”, and for the next two hours that song was stuck in my head. Each time I passed one of the mile markers, “8 more miles…” etc. Then I got a different song stuck in my head: “I’ve seen better days, I’ve been the star of many plays, I’ve seen better days” and then the Game Over riff. Over and over. It’s always a good idea to wear headphones and have music available to listen to for this very reason.

Leaving a seasonal road to enter a regular dirt road I saw a pickup truck that tried to take a turn into a campground, but he cut it too tight and had slid into a ditch a little. 7 or 8 people standing around, coming up with a plan to get him unstuck. I thought, wow, that’s twice in two days that I’ve seen the end result of a badly negotiated turn. ½ a mile later I saw a third minor disaster, where a pickup pulling a horse trailer had it’s trailer in the ditch. He tried pulling it out but he’d spun his wheels so bad it just dug ruts in the road. Thankfully there weren’t any horses in the trailer. Still, 3 separate 1 vehicle accidents in 24 hours.

I was starting to feel like a car wreck myself as I plodded on past mile 20, 21, 22. Couldn’t run any of the uphills at this point, had to walk them. My feet were on fire, my IT band was flaring up badly, my hip was bothering me a little, it was getting hot out. I’m a little embarrassed with myself for all of this whining and self-pity but it’s an accurate depiction and it was all I could think about. I felt like one of those salmon, rotting and withering away, dying a cruel and painful death as I swam/ran uphill/upstream to seal my fate and succumb to an unceremonious death that would finally put me out of my misery. At last, the final mile. “One more mile, to McDonalds…”, I’ve seen better days…”. Finished in 5:25, got my awesome finisher’s medal, so glad it was over.

When driving back to the cabin I missed my exit.

All of those 19 races were hard, but this one felt like one of the hardest for some reason. Maybe it was the course (fear the mush!), maybe it was the completely staying off my feet for all of that time leading up to the race. Maybe I went out too fast. Maybe I should’ve walked some of those early uphills. Maybe I should’ve walked more in general early in the race. Maybe I should’ve listened to music. Maybe it was all of those things. It was a stern reminder that these races can be very humbling, and that it is never, ever a good idea to go into one of these events with a tough guy invincible attitude. I’ll give myself one day to lick my wounds, reflect, watch the salmon…and then figure out when & where the next long race will be.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Run Woodstock 100k--RR


When I showed up for this year’s Run Woodstock race in Pinckney, MI and started feeling the vibe and getting into the experience of the race, I almost immediately felt a twinge of disappointment because I was ‘only’ doing the 100k and not the 100 mile. Now, don’t get me wrong, 62 miles is a no little baby joggie; it’s a plenty long ways. But for an event like this, it’s a 100 miler, and everything is geared towards those 100 milers, as it should be. They’re the main attraction, and I lamented not being a part of that main event like I was last year. Fortunately it was still an ‘ultra’, and had all the ingredients necessary for a good ultra experience—humor, danger, religiosity and hallucinations.

11 days prior, I registered for the race. One day later I looked at the 10 day forecast on the Weather Channel website; it called for upper 80’s and thunderstorms on race day. So I checked back pretty much each day until race day and it continued to say the same thing, day after day, culminating in a high of 90 (hottest day of the year) and pretty much a 100% chance of storms, rain, etc. Clearly things would start ugly and stay ugly out there.

I did this race a few years ago when they got the epic monsoons that literally flooded certain parts of the trail in as much as a foot or more of water. That year I was attempting my first 100 Miler; the rain broke my spirit and I ended up dropping to the 50 mile. The difference this year was that I would “only” be doing the 100k, so I could endure any storms and finish.

The morning of the event (which would start later in the afternoon at 4pm and goes all night, mostly in the dark) I bought a rain jacket and a newer headlamp, both of which proved to be poor purchases. The jacket was really just annoying, and the headlamp wasn’t nearly bright enough. 18 lumens is nowhere near adequate for trail running. I recall seeing a 90 lumens option at the store, which would’ve been much more effective.

So we had our pre-race meeting at 3:00pm, then starting at 3:05 we all had to sit there and fidget, worry, wonder, look at the radar on our phones, take selfies, prepare and wait around to start. They should have their pre-race meeting at 3:45. Just a thought.
 

Finally we lined up, started at 4:00 and I just started roasting. 90 degrees with a heat index of 98 is too hot for running, period. Unless it’s the Badwater 135, which is a small field of mostly elite runners that have rolling crews available to help runners in trouble during any part of the race and has since been banned from existence for being far too dangerous to human health because of the heat…but that’s off-topic. So I was dehydrated an hour into the race, cooking like pork tenderloin and despite otherwise well stocked aid stations, for the first three hours I couldn’t get any ice. If a race is going to be held on a 90 degree day, every aid station needs to have ice. Just another thought.

Because I was literally baking on my feet, the first loop was unusually unenjoyable, even though it was my fastest loop by far. It was appropriate that I was wearing an orange hat, orange shirt and orange calf sleeves (a.k.a. “calf panties”) because I literally felt like I was a 170 pound campfire chugging through the forest. Barbecued Ultrarunner. Alright I’ll stop with the descriptions. Eventually I did get some ice, in my hat and in my hydration pack. There is nothing on this earth better than ice cold water when you’re on the verge of heatstroke. It saved my race, and maybe my life.

As I was reaching the end of that first loop, the cold front came through. Winds of up to 70 miles an hour swirled, trees were falling, dust was flying, branches were dropping, I may have seen a small partial tornado, it was a wild environment. A tree branch about an inch in diameter bashed me hard square in the mouth (I actually caught the branch with my hand after it hit me in the face, that’s how I know how big it’s diameter was). It didn’t break the skin or give me a fat lip, which strangely almost disappoints me. What a badge of honor that would’ve been, coming into the home camp with blood all over my face, right?

Between loops 1 & 2 at the base camp, with enormous wind gusts bringing down campers’ tents and furiously flapping the tarp walls of our drop bag area, I chugged Powerade and Ensure like there was no tomorrow because I was desperately…lacking, in electrolytes and nutrition and fluids. Overall I don’t think I’ve ever drank more at a race than this one. I was also hitting the Gatorade at almost every aid station. Another check of the radar on my phone revealed that the storm didn’t look too terribly bad for us in the immediate future, but it didn’t look good for later. Afterwards the newspapers would claim it was the 10th most “impactful” storm in the past 111 years because of those winds and the power outages in created all over the state. Nice.

Darkness didn’t take long to settle in after the start of the second loop. The rain never came in a deluge, but it came. Basically it rained on & off for the next 8-9 hours or so. I was already drenched from sweat so I’m not sure why I was trying to keep myself dry with a raincoat. More than dryness, I was expecting the temperature to plunge so I thought I’d need it for warmth. You always try to plan for possibilities; this was one thing I kind of got wrong. I should’ve just run in my shirt the whole time.

I’ve always run these long races with music. However, something was different this time for some reason. What I found was that I simply didn’t want to listen to anything on my iWalkman thing. Plus I wanted to listen for thunder in case the skies were about to open up, but mainly I just found that music blaring into my ears was strangely upsetting and unsettling. So I started running this loop with no music, and whether it was a result of this or not, I settled into a wonderful, blissful running “flow”. Fellow runners who’ve been there will know why I say it’s hard to describe, but basically it was a zen-like purity, like I was running for God or something. Of course the old familiar “ultra-ache” was still there, I acknowledged it, worked within it’s confines and just ran. There was a profound yet understated magic to it. All of my problems, my anxieties, my job, my failures, any and every thing about my entire life faded and dissolved into nothing. I was left with nothing but my body, the moment, the rhythmic steps, the trail and surrounding environment, and breathing. It was beautiful beyond words, but the beauty of it wasn’t the point. I was completely living in the moment, but I also was transcending the moments and the reality of the situation. See? It’s hard to describe. All I know is, at one stretch I did an hour that felt like 5 minutes, and then another 2 hours that felt like 5 minutes. This was despite the nagging, incessant rain which, at the time, did not matter at all to me. Even the mud wasn’t a problem. I felt like a shaman, or the Dali Lama. I was Buddha wearing Brooks Adrenaline GTS running shoes. Granted I’ve “only” been running for about 7 years, and they’ve been productive years resulting in 4 marathons, 13 ultras and countless shorter races and runs. But never, in all of that time, have I felt this ‘flow’ in quite this way.

One lesson that I learned from my completed 100 miler last year was: MIND YOUR FEET. When I packed my stuff for this race, it seemed like overkill but without really thinking I packed three pairs of running shoes and like 5-6 pairs of socks; this ended up being the smartest thing I did.  Since I don’t run with gaiters, I always get sand gathering between my socks and feet. Combining sand with heat and moisture and friction from running is a recipe for disaster. So between loop 2 & 3 I cleaned up my feet, switched socks and switched shoes. Went through a lot of shoes but so what. This was huge.
 

Loop 3 was not particularly good for me, but it was also maybe the most interesting, or at least eventful. When your lighting is bad, and you’re running through the forest from midnight to 4am, your eyes can play fun little tricks on you. At one point I saw a catfish which, upon closer inspection, had a striking resemblance to a curved rock embedded in the trail. I also saw a nice trout swimming downstream/downtrail. Perhaps the fish sightings were a side effect of having spent the past several hours running in rain, puddles and mud. But then I also saw a cat (plastic bag), a mini statue of Frankenstein and a goat (tree trunks) so maybe not.

If you run ultras long enough, you’ll see someone throw-up. Just past one of the aid stations, this poor girl didn’t just retch a little dry heave; it was projectile, a massive purge. I was hoping it would help her be able to start fresh (a good barf can do wonders for your race) but when I passed her again a few hours later she did not sound good at all. That was during loop 2; on loop 3, in almost the exact same spot, I saw a guy doing a standing/squatting dump next to the trail. This is a very Human sport, and being human is not always pretty. I heard numerous farts, probably because I was running without music. My excessively “human” trait is that I belch, loudly and often. If any of my fellow competitors end up reading this, I hope it didn’t bother you too much.

My Flow on loop 3 wasn’t nearly as religious or nirvanic but I was still able to run fairly well and made decent progress. Normally I have no issues with my stomach but on loop 3 my belly was not feeling good at all. Nothing looked appealing; salty, sugary, gels, any kind of drink, all of it was gross to me. Fortunately I got down enough to keep me in the game, but it was a definite concern at this point.

A stretch of the course is on dirt road. Because it was wet already and with the help of many hours of rain, the consistency of the road became something like diarrhea on top of firm dirt. The sound of running was a high-pitched splat splat splat splat. In comparison I definitely preferred the trails. At least the road only looked like fecal matter and didn’t smell like it, right?

Because of the many hours of rain, there was significant deterioration of trail conditions as well. If the trail was sand-based, it was fine; if it was clay-based, it was like the roads, almost an oily wet poo consistency and especially since it was dark those areas became very difficult to navigate. I never completely biffed but came close several times. I also stubbed my toes on roots about two dozen times. That always gets old.

When I got back to camp between loops 3 and 4 I changed shoes/socks again, chugged more Ensure, had some soup and wondered how I was going to get through that last loop because I was feeling extremely weary. But I didn’t have to wonder for long, since almost immediately upon starting loop 4 I got a second wind and suddenly felt invincible. The “Flow” was still there but now it was also combined with a new-found strength. I was churning up some of the uphills, running for long stretches, completely reborn at 4:30am. I tried to be conscious of how I was feeling, keep in mind that this was 62 friggin’ miles and not get too reckless, keep eating/drinking (my nausea was now gone) and hopefully not blow my race with this new confidence, but damn it was hard because I literally felt amazing.

Once daylight finally emerged it became much easier to run because I could now see all the nuances of the trails, the mud, the branches and roots, and navigate them much more effectively. It also stopped raining, the temperature was cool with a nice little breeze, conditions were perfect. It’s genuinely surprising how much you can run, and run Hard, on exhausted, beat-up, tired, sore, pulverized legs. My feet and hips were in pain at this point, but it was a very manageable pain and they weren’t getting any worse from the hard running. Again, the between-loop shoe/sock changes were just critical in keeping my feet from having the hotspots develop into full-blown Blister Hell.

For each distance in these races there is a uniquely colored bib. For the 100k, it was a light yellow. So as I was in the second half of my final loop, I started looking out for 100k bibs, seeing if any guys in the 40-44 age range were around and looking strong. I did see one. The Competitive Gene kicked in at this point and it was game on; there was no way I could let him beat me. Ridiculous, I know, but I couldn’t help it. So I started pressing a bit more, which was ok because I still felt great. Despite my increased efforts, he never really fell back. Maybe he was 51, or 36, didn’t matter. He was hanging tough. But so was I.

I drank a little more, ate a little more, kept running all of the runnable trail and hiked fast on the uphills. When I’m running like this I feel like my potential is way beyond the level I typically run at. Normally I always run easy because I don’t want to get hurt. But this day, I felt almost immune from injury. So on I pressed, felt great, fast, invincible, fantastic, my pursuer was getting further behind and I knew I had him beat. Unofficial time was in the 16:22-16:24 range, 1st place age group (out of like 3-4 people). I know I shouldn’t, but now I’m wondering and playing the what-if game: what if I went on and did the full 100 miles? As good as I felt, I’m sure I could’ve done it, and probably much faster than I did it the year prior. Or, I could’ve crashed & burned, especially since I ran out of running shoes. I don’t know. What I do know is, I need a nap. Maybe I’ll find the answer there.