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.

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