Wednesday, April 29, 2015

The Trail Marathon / No Wimps Challenge RR


Two races: a trail ½ marathon Saturday morning, then a full trail marathon Sunday morning. I’ve never done “long” races on back to back days like this before, so there was the specter of the great unknown that had me far more concerned than I really needed to be. As usual.

I’ve done the full marathon before on its own so I was familiar with the course. The full has an elevation gain/loss of 2550, so it’s like going to to the top of the Empire State Building and back to the bottom, twice, while covering 26.2 miles on your feet. It sounds way more impressive that way, but really it was just hilly trails.

Conditions both days were very conducive with starting temps in the upper 30’s, finishing temps near 50, mix of sun & clouds, and no mud. During pre-start pacing I made it a point to meet Chuck Cova and Katie Zopf, a couple of fellow insane running maniacs that do crazy-long races and live nearby. One can never know enough trail runners in this world.

Everyone lined up and just after 7:59 we started going in waves. Since I knew I’d be doing a full the next day I specifically tried to go out “slow” and treat this as a soft little practice/training run as much as possible. However I also didn’t want to go so slow that it would take all morning. Further into the race I found that I was maintaining a remarkably consistent 12 minute pace. So, I ended up deciding to try and stick with that through the remainder of the race and finished with an average pace of 12:02. (46th place out of 51 guys in my age group? Really? I didn’t think I was going THAT slow.)

The outside of my right ankle started bothering me about half way through, just under the knob that sticks out, and continued to bother me all the way to the end. Some kind of a tendon or ligament. This was a concern, because even though it felt better later in the day, I knew I’d have to run a full marathon on it the next morning. Sometimes you need to trust that you know the difference between a minor pain and a minor injury; this was clearly the former so I didn’t let it derail the weekend. Just something to watch.

Saturday afternoon I didn’t want to take a nap and then not be able to sleep the night before Sunday’s full, so I made a cup of extra-potent coffee and went to hit a bucket of range balls. I was feeling a bit loopy after I had dinner and a few of cocktails while watching the Red Wings win a playoff game, but still I was on track to go to bed early so that I’d be well-rested for the full. The cocktails would help me sleep, right? Right.

So, I went to bed about 10, woke up and looked over at my clock—it said 3:45. Knowing I needed to get up at 5, I tried to go back to sleep for that last hour…but then I started thinking, well, shoot, I’m wide awake right now, maybe I should just get up now. So I got up. Picked up my phone, which said 2:50, and started to wonder. Went downstairs to double-check the other clocks, they said 2:52 and 2:53, so once I finally got my act together I determined that my normal bedside clock has it’s own internal clock that determines on it’s own when to make adjustments for Daylight Savings time. It must’ve perhaps been built based on an old algorithm.

Anyway, here I was at 3:00am, extra wide awake now, knowing if I tried to go back to sleep I’d wake up exhausted, so I decided to just stay up and deal with it. Of course, right before I was planning to leave for the race (6am) I started becoming insanely tired. Still I had to go so off I went, I-69 West to 23 South. That 4th cocktail I had right before bed must’ve been lingering in my system. I felt extremely loopy driving, probably would’ve blown a .2 if I’d gotten pulled over, but I managed to get there and started prepping. Deciding what to wear when temps start in the low 30’s and go up to the 50’s can be tricky, but I came up with a good combo. When I was about 90% ready I heard the early notes of the national anthem and realized oh yeah, we start at 7:30 today, not 8, so I had to scramble a little to get the rest of my act together and get down there in time to start.

Again there were wave starts and I started in the last or second to last wave. Off we went and I tried to treat the opening 13.1 mile loop like the start of an ultra—start easy, then ease back. That right ankle was becoming iffy again, but I quickly figured out that running uphills made it worse, so from that point I made it a point to walk every uphill, no matter how gradual. It got better and despite my woozy, sleep-deprived, still-half-drunk disposition, things were going fairly well from a pain standpoint. My only issue was my weariness, which turned into sloppiness a couple of times, especially when I turned my left ankle 90 degrees inward at about mile 11. Wow, two bad ankles? Fortunately I didn’t hear/feel anything snap crackle pop so I slowed down and just kept running (but more slowly/gingerly), which is what you’re supposed to do when this happens. Within another 5 minutes it was pretty much 100%.

My other problem now was my stomach. Maybe it was the booze from last night, or the Honey Stingers I had about 6 miles in, or the Gatorade, but things were not going good. I felt barf-y. Then I had a scoop of trail mix at the halfway point, but there were too many raisins and M & M’s. No problem with water all day, but I was clearly over-sugared at the 13.2 mile mark.

So I didn’t eat anything the rest of the way, figuring the exercise would help me burn through whatever foul nastiness was in my stomach and I’d be ok by the end. Starting that second loop, I was still weary, sore in spots, and not looking particularly forward to running for another 13 miles. But then a funny thing happened: at about mile 14, I got this weird, mysterious second wind. Something was telling me to start flying. Coincidentally, around this time some guy passed me pretty quickly and when I mentioned he was making this look easy, he responded saying he’d gotten a second wind and needed to take advantage of it. About 15 minutes later I had passed him for the very same reason.

That last 12 miles were some the greatest miles I’ll ever run. I was bombing the flats and the downhills, even running most of the uphills. The harder I ran, the less my ankles hurt. I was passing a lot of people at this point. For a while I’d had thoughts of trying to break 5:20 (which would mean a PR for this course) but because I’d started so conservatively on the first loop it would prove to be just out of reach. Still it felt so good to run full-blast over those last couple hours and I was reminded once again why trail running is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to me. I finished in 5:24 (3rd from last?? You know what, screw these 45-49 year old Men with their faster, less-drunk legs), euphoric at the end and wanted to keep going, got my swag (Turns out my coveted No Wimps Challenge t-shirt was a Women’s XL, oops, working to rectify that), soaked my legs in the agonizingly cold water of Silver Lake, and then headed home.

One note of reflection: Not 100% sure, but I’m seriously thinking my low-carb diet is going to work for me. It was my first ever race of marathon distance or above where I did not hit any sort of a wall. We’ll see how well that holds up over 50k,  50m, 100k or beyond, but so far so good.

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

College Cultural Marathon--RR


The online community recently presented me with the opportunity to run a different kind of marathon, one without an entry fee, t-shirts, medals, swag, aid stations, spectators, a set start line or finish line. The ‘race’ would begin when I hit start on my Garmin, and stop when I hit stop. I wanted this to be on a course that was interesting enough on it’s own merits, but with as little traffic as possible so that I could blare dumb music into my ears without fear of being run over. I wanted it to be outside, where I’ve always felt I belong ever since I was a little kid riding my bike through the neighborhood, playing football in front yards of my friends and enjoying one of those glorious sunny days that seem to last forever. Most of all, I wanted to re-visit that utterly unique Long-Run feeling, the one you get when your distance somehow goes from a just a couple/few miles up to 20-something, you start to lose yourself in the act, a weird cosmic flow happens, time becomes irrelevant, your consciousness elevates, the soul becomes cleansed and this life we’re living finally starts to become truly Alive again.

Someone I’ve never known (and only briefly may have spoken with during a race earlier in the year) was putting together a 24 hour run to help raise awareness about teen bullying, depression and suicide. Her name is Adele Garcia, and her event was called the Upward Spiral 24 Hour run. I really wanted to participate, but the 5 hour round trip plus the timing (it would start on a Friday afternoon) just weren’t conducive to my situation. Still I wanted to do something positive on my end to help out and maybe raise a little awareness. I’m not entirely sure why; I’ve never done something like this before, and I’ve never had involvement with that particular cause. I just wanted to help. She didn’t ask me, I simply decided to run a satellite marathon on the same weekend and do what I could to contribute to the cause.

In a way, fate was on my side. On the day I would end up doing this run it would get all the way up into the 20’s and the sun would shine all day. This during the coldest February in the history of the state of Michigan, when almost every day of the month it never seemed to get out of the single digits and clouds have been so prevalent you’d think the sun was gone forever, never to return.  

In other ways, fate was not on my side. The day before my Saturday run, a burning plastic smell started to permeate the air of my Flint, Michigan home. Upon further inspection I discovered my furnace had somehow managed to tear apart and suck a piece of air filter into the motor, frying the motor and rendering my furnace useless. It would get below zero outside that night, and indoors I awoke to a crisp 53 degrees in my house.

So, earlier in the week I’d published online that I would be running a 2 mile loop of trail and roads until I reached a distance of 26.2 miles. I was calling my run The Applewood Marathon since much of the course would be on the Applewood Trail that runs through Mott Community College near my house. There was even a port-a-john on the course for workers doing construction on the planetarium that sat next to where I would start. Every marathon worth a darn has got to have a port-a-john, right?

The plan was to start at 9am, and finish around 2pm. However, with my furnace dying the night before, I had no choice but to put off my run until my Furnace Guy came and my furnace was fixed. Fortunately I have the greatest Furnace Guy ever, and he got me back up & working that very morning.

In the meantime, I also happened to notice that my tap water was suddenly coming out orange. Anyone who follows Flint knows we’ve had an almost circus-like time of getting clean water in recent months, for which we pay some of the highest monthly water bills in the country. It’s even gotten some national attention from Erin Brokovich. I’d heard through the grapevine that the key is to run all faucets for a couple minutes to flush out the bad and then everything would be fine. Still, of all the mornings for this to happen, it just had to be that morning? Really? I’d been planning on doing this run for a couple of months; to have my furnace die and my water turn orange in just the few hours leading up to it, well, it was bizarre more than anything.

Fortunately, I seemed to have a somewhat zen-calm that morning and didn’t want to let it derail my plan. I mean, how could I really get upset over those things? They were out of my control, mere setbacks that I addressed calmly and moved on from. I would still get over to my little starting area by about 11:30, do my run and get back in time for some dinner, a shower, a cocktail and a smile as I drifted off to sleep. The final twist of fate unveiled itself as I approached the area where I would start my 13 two-mile loops and saw 5 or 6 City Of Flint maintenance trucks working on what was clearly a water main break. Ah, this explained my orange / rusty water. They had the area completely blocked off, and down the hill from where they were working, on the start of the paved Applewood Trail where I’d be running, there was about 100 yards of thick, frozen slush and ice from where water had leaked out, pooled at the bottom of the hill, and frozen everything in it’s path along the way. The trail was completely un-runnable. My course was destroyed.

At this point, really all I could do was shake my head and wonder. I briefly thought about throwing in the towel, considering that maybe this was a higher power telling me to not do this run for some uncertain reason. But I’d made a promise, one I felt compelled to keep. So I drove back home and decided to simply do loops through my neighborhood. The roads there were also snow covered and solid ice in many spots, but at least I knew the terrain and wouldn’t have to (literally) skate around those maintenance trucks.

After getting myself put together and ready to go, I walked down to the intersection of Meade and E. Second Street. For some reason it seemed that an intersection was the right place to start. I pushed the button, started my music and off I went, 3 hours later than I’d originally planned to start. My new course was basically the outer boundaries of what’s known as the College Cultural Neighborhood, roughly outlined by Dort Highway, I-69, Burroughs Park, the aforementioned Applewood Trail (only the runnable portion, not the mushy/frozen disaster area section) and Robert T. Longway Boulevard. Thus the College Cultural Marathon was born. Upon completing my first loop I discovered the distance was approximately 4 miles. I would simply keep doing this loop and then do a shortcut on my last loop to get to 26.2 miles.

It’s just not a marathon if you don’t go out too fast, which is exactly what I did, what I always do. My legs felt decent, it was a beautiful sunny day, good music flooded into my ears and out here on the roads, I didn’t have a care in the world, other than maybe getting hit by a car. As I ticked off a few miles I started calculating possible finish times: 4:10, 4:20, 4:30? I would soon see the error of my ways, as I always do. Certain parts of my feet started to hurt, and my IT Band started to grumble, and my hips started to groan, and my hamstring started to mumble, and my groin muscles started to voice their displeasure, and my Achilles started to protest, and my calves started to balk. It wasn’t long before I regained my common sense and eased off, thankfully. Plenty of walk breaks and only easy jogging/running the rest of the way.

My mind went everywhere and anywhere as it typically does during one of these long runs. But there weren’t any divine inspirations, no ethereal visions from the heavens, no Meaning Of Life insights to report. Just running. Living in the moment. Appreciating the gift. Since this “satellite” run was in support of troubled teenagers I tried to think back to the time when I was that age, awkwardly struggling through hormones and pressures and high school in my quest to figure out my place in the world. Even though I was listening to the music of my youth and thinking back to those days, it was hard to relate because I’m not struggling anymore like I was back then. Things have turned out well. I love my career, social life is as solid as it can be, I’m healthy, have a few bucks in the bank. Basically everything has worked out. If I had a chance to go back in time, I guess what I would say to my younger self is “Just be patient, everything will work itself out.”

Anyway, the run came and went with much fanfare. Simply a 26.2 mile long run through my neighborhood. I finished in 1st place at the inaugural College Cultural Marathon (and last place); my reward was food, a shower and a couple of cocktails. Sometimes the simple pleasures in life are the most profound; such was the case on this day. It was a great long run on a beautiful day that resulted in $262.00 worth of support for an important cause. Doesn’t get much better than that.