Race Report--St. Pats "Marathon-Plus"

(...and this one took place on 10/20/2012)


Lead-Up:

This is now the second "long race" this year that I've decided to do with not anywhere near enough training. I really, really hope that I a) learned my lesson today and b) will not be making this mistake again. But since I'm such an idiot, I'll probably make this mistake again. My training consisted of about 1 month of light 15-20 mile weeks with long runs of, oh I don't know, maybe 8-10 milers? I wasn't even trained for a 5k, let alone a 6 hour trail ultra. My thinking was that all of the elliptical, light jogging and moderate swimming (especially kickboarding) I'd been doing at the health club over the past year got me in sneaky good shape so that I could make up for the light training buildup and be able to pull this thing off. Rule #1 of running training is Specificity: you need your training to mimic the event you're training for. The other Rule #1 is, don't go into a serious race like that undertrained.

The race was in St. Pats park in Northern Indiana on the Michigan / Indiana border, just a little north of Notre Dame / South Bend. The main event is a 24 hour loop race on a 3 mile trail course, and my minor little claim to fame is that I think I'm the only person to have at least started all three events in the short 3 year history of this very, very cool event. (Started, not necessarily finished) Once again the course was fantastic, the volunteers were spectacular and the aid/support was spot on. This race continues to really impress me; the directors are an absolute credit to the sport of ultra-running.

Getting There:

Lost, part 1: Since the race was taking place on the weekend of a Notre Dame home football game, every hotel in town shamelessly price-gouges the hell out of everyone who even thinks about getting a room in/around the South Bend area. It makes me sick. So to defy those scumbag hotel directors I decided that I would get a room in Benton Harbor, MI, just a short 30 miles away from the race site. So Friday afternoon I'm driving west on I-94 and come to a massive traffic jam; apparently the highway is closed ahead because of a 12 car pileup. So, I get off 94 and take a long, convoluted "emergency route" for at least 45 minutes which probably only gets me about 7 or 8 miles up the road, at which point I get back on and finally make it over to Benton Harbor. My instructions told me to get off the highway at exit 33, but it turns out the correct answer should've been exit 29. As a result I drove all through downtown Benton Harbor and all the way to St. Johns, until finally backtracking, finding the right road, driving through a long stretch of dicey area (who knew a town with a name like Benton Harbor would have a ghetto?) and finally arrived at my motel. I think I'm finally going to get one of those GPS things for my car. The motel room was a almost comically bad; no heat, no carpet(!), it smelled, but I was too tired to care anymore so I got to bed somewhat quickly, slept but woke about 3 or 4 times (as is always the case the night before a big race) and headed out the next morning with a 2 hour cushion for a 30 mile drive.

Lost, part 2: My instructions told me to hang a left on Meadowbrook Road and take it over to 31 south. So I did, and I drove, and drove, 10 miles, 20 miles, through pouring rain, until I ended up on a dirt road that led straight to hell before turning around & backtracking. I found 140 South, figured anything heading South would be good so I took it. More countryside BFE, ended up in Niles, MI, pulled over a couple times to study my road atlas, finally found a way over to 31, took that to the turnpike and then by the grace of God I got off at the correct exit. Drove north on Business 31, hung a left at Auten Rd., hung a right too early and missed the entrance, backtracked again and found the entrance, flew up the road and got there with 30 minutes to spare before Race time. No problem. I am Totally, DEFINITELY getting a GPS thing for my car. Apparently I'm even more of an idiot than I originally thought.

Race:

It was cloudy, damp and cool. Rained on & off all day the two days prior, I thought the course would be a swamp but turns out it was very runnable, only a couple of small puddles. And the scenery was absolutely beautiful; the trees were at the tail end of peak colors, with exploding yellows practically making the day brighter all by themselves. I saw several photographers throughout the park taking advantage of the scenery. Anyway, it's a 3 mile loop, so that's kind of the gauge you use to track your progress. My sole mission was to hit 9 loops which would give me 27 miles. Wanted at least a marathon. I went out too fast, ran the entire first two loops without any walk breaks, and got through them in just over an hour which banked plenty of time for later, which I would need. The other Rule #1 of ultras or just plain old marathons is never, Never go out too fast and try to bank time. It will always bite you in the ass guaranteed.

So hour 1 was pretty solid; hour 2 things started going south, namely with my left achilles, left knee, left IT band, right foot, right hamstring, and one of my hip flexors, I think my left one. I started doing a lot of Gallowalking, which helped and I was still moving pretty well. By the time I hit 3:00 on my watch I was in bad shape, doing mostly walking and not particularly enjoying that walking. Plus my stomach was at least making suggestions to my brain that maybe barfing might need to at least be part of the conversation. The good news was that my legs still seemed to have a lot of life, and I figured I'd better walk fast, which I was able to do. As I approached 4:00 on my watch my legs were downright Screaming at me; they had no more life in them, they were miserable, I was miserable, everything was miserable. I actually groaned audibly a few times, when nobody was around of course.

This race is a fund-raiser for a gal named Faye who developed ALS (Lou Gherig's disease) 10 years ago and at this point is only able to move one finger, which she uses to communicate to the outside world. Otherwise her entire body is completely unusable. Whenever my inner voice would get especially whiny & bitchy I would think about Faye and grudgingly shut that inner voice down & keep moving. Somewhere between 4:30 and 5:00 on my watch I started to feel a little better; maybe my body finally switched from calorie-burn to fat-burn? I really don't know what happened, but after completing my 8th lap (24 miles) at 5:08 and not being sure if I could finish the 9th lap by the 6 hour mark (if I didn't, that last lap wouldn't even count), I decided to head out anyways because come hell or high water, I was going to get 27 miles in, even if the official results would only indicate 24. So about 1/2 a mile into that 9th lap, all the pain, agony and suffering almost magically disappeared from my legs and I was able to start doing a significant amount of running again. Still had ITB issues but was able to run a good bit. I got through my 9th lap in only 37 minutes which meant I had time to squeak out a few 1/4 mile mini-loops to fill out the full 6 hours. Final tally was 27 and 3/4 miles, good for third place in the 6 hour race. (3rd out of 4)

Hindsight:

The thing that made this a really weird race was that I literally "bonked" for at least 2 hours (which is way too long for a bonk), but then I got a second wind almost out of nowhere and was able to start running again after I thought for sure my legs were completely 100% fried. The other thing was that I hit my hydration and fueling goals pretty much right on the nose, but that didn't seem to do a bit of good--I felt great, then I felt like dog hurl, then I felt great again almost regardless of my hydration & fueling. I don't know if this day will "inspire" me to start running more & getting back into better shape & all that other stuff. Running just isn't important to me like it used to be... However I did see a lot of very positive, good things and met a lot of wonderful people, and it reminded me of why I developed such a fondness for going-long in the first place, which makes me think that I should get back into the whole running thing more seriously again. It's a really good world to be a part of. We'll see. Maybe the biggest surprise of the whole event is that I didn't get lost on the race course like I did on the way to it and ended up running into Missouri or Kentucky. I'm left with a question on my mind: is 27.75 miles a marathon, or an ultra? It's in that weird in-between dead zone...