It's funny how one can feel great after 35 miles and be completely destroyed at 50. That's what I remember from Mohican. Going from feeling ok, maybe even felling good, to feeling like I couldn't go on within the span of what felt like a few miles. I don't remember feeling in-between at any point. Good, then horrible.
No need to tell you that I feel a bit gun-shy about Burning River this coming weekend. I used to feel invicible. I used to think that (barring an injury) I could just push on no matter what. I knew that the temptation to quit is always strong, I've felt its siren song many times before, but I thought I could always overcome it. I guess that's one reason we run ultras. We want to find out what it takes to break our will. Mohican bitch-slapped me. I didn't see it coming. My ears are still ringing.
One of the biggest challenge at BR will be the heat. As hot as Mohican was, the course was almost entirely in the shade whereas BR has a lot more road and tow path where we will be running in the sun. The forecasts are for pretty warm weather, but then again, we're running in Ohio on July 30th. It's not like it's unexpected. I'm going to go with a 25 minutes run/5 minutes walk schedule, same as Susitna. My thoughts are that heat is even more debilitating than cold, so I need to recovery time. I will take the time to take care of myself, eat, take my salt and drink. The key will be to keep a good walking pace. When it's all said and done, in the second half of the race, a solid walking pace is not much slower than running, where the term "running" only loosely describe what I'm doing.
For the first time, I plan on not using my Crosslites, at least for the first 20 miles. The first 10 miles are on road, so I want to save my legs a bit and the Crosslites are a bit lacking on the cushioning side. I will wear my Mizuno Wave Ascend 5 trail shoes and plan A is to run the whole race in them. I've never run very long in the Mizunos so I'm not sure how my feet will react. They have a bit of a road shoe feel to them, similar to my old Wave Riders 11. I'll have a pair of Crosslites in both my 19 mile and my 50 mile drop bags. I'll put my old Wave Riders in my 75 mile drop bag just in case but I probably won't use them. I'm still hesitating about the hydration system. Probably start with two hand-held so I get a good start on the calorie intake, switch to the Nathan vest at 50 mile. Something like that.
Still, I'm excited about this race. Nothing else would have satisfied my need for redemption. God forbid I had to wait until September or later to try again. When I was in my teen, I had a car accident and I wrecked my car. I was fine physically but mentally shaken. The next day, my mother told me to take her car and drive for a while. The longer you wait, she said, the worse it's going to be. That's how I feel now. I need to give it another try now. Not just to the distance, but rather the distance, the humidity AND the heat. BR is just what the doctor ordered. My only reservation is the amount of road/tow path, around 25% or basically a full marathon. Personally, I prefer trails, where you don't have that long strip of asphalt/gravel ahead of you. I guess it could mean a fast time, but I don't really care about time for time sake. What does a 24h hundred miler means out of context? It's all about the course, right? It's a little bit like life, you don't want to see too far ahead. You need to be able to imagine some surprises are waiting around the corner or else things can get a little boring.
I hate running in the morning. When I drive my daughter to school and we see morning runners, I always point to the offending runner and say "I hate you". I hate morning runners the same way non-runners hate runners: I wish I could do what they do. Since I can't, there must be something wrong with THEM.
When I got into my rental car in Phoenix a few weeks ago, I started driving and I noticed that the clock was wrong, it said 1:17 and it was sometime around noon. Then, I figured out that I wasn't looking at the clock. I was looking at the thermometer and it was 117F, or 47C. In the shade. Holy fuck. We actually had to turn around and go back to switch from a Dodge Neon to a Malibu because the Neon's AC just couldn't cope.
By the time we got to Sedona at around 3PM, it was a balmy 104F. How am I supposed to run in that? Well, I have two choices. One, I wait until 6 or preferably 7PM, when the temperature goes down to the low 90's but than I only have an hour of daylight left. It's nice though. But this isn't a good choice when you're vacationing with a non-runner, which is the case for my wife.
The other choice, the only choice, is to run in the morning. Early in the morning. At 5:30AM, the temperature up here is usually around 65F. By 10:00AM it's usually in the mid-80's and there ain't much shade, this being the desert and all. There are trees, but they're short and don't project much shade. So there you have it, I've been getting up at the crack of dawn, I eat breakfast and then drive to the trail head and squeeze a decent run.
I hate it. Not the running, the morning thing. Even if you've been up for an hour, the first few steps of a morning run are jarring. Every step resonates deep into my skull. I'm immediately winded. My legs hurt. My stride is way off and I feel like my legs have forgotten how to run. Things do eventually get better and I end up having a great time anyway, but I ain't a morning running convert. If I wasn't scared shitless by Burning River, I'm not sure how many times I would have run. As it is, I'm not sure I ran as much as I should have, but I probably ran enough to maintain what I had and have a good shot at finishing. Hopefully.
My vacation is now almost over, I have only one or two runs left. I'm probably going to rest tomorrow and try to get up REALLY early on Saturday and do an epic climb. I did that run last Xmas when it was nice and cool and it was hard so I have to be up there before the heat. Coming down should not be an issue even if it's a bit warm.
Now on a completely different topic. I've always been amazed that one can actually run in trails without face-planting every 2 minutes. I believe my trail running is slowly improving. When I first started running in trails, I remember being very indecisive. I always looked for a better line than the one I was taking, therefore not paying enough attention to MY line and tripping frequently. Tripping (or stubbing your toe) can be frustrating, painful and down right scary if you're going down hill. I've noticed a sudden and dramatic decrease in the frequency of such tripping incidents. Somehow, my brain seems to have decided that it doesn't matter which line I pick, as long as I pick one. I also think that my focus has moved a little further ahead but somehow, my feel still seem to end up at the right place. Mostly. Anyway, I find it interesting because this is not something I've been consciously trying to change, other than NOT falling on my face, obviously.
Obviously, I'm totally scared of Burning River. I told Russell (the runner I paced at Sulphur Spring) that I preferred to run alone and wouldn't need him as a pacer. Maybe it's a mistake. I just feel I need some alone time out there. Mohican was confusing to me and I need some clarity and I believe running BR by myself will do that.
In the last few days, I've spent a lot of time flashing back to the race, to the last fateful hours where my will to finish were finally overwhelmed by the humidity, frustration and fear of the coming suffering. The point of all that thinking is obviously to answer the question: could I have finished?
It's a difficult question to answer. I remember thinking how thrashed I was after 50 miles. I couldn't believe I was only halfway. In contrast, last year at Haliburton I was relatively fresh after that distance. I certainly didn't feel defeated. This time around, after two loops and 54 miles, I wanted my suffering to be over. I've rarely wanted something so bad in my life. On the other hand, I couldn't believe what a cup of soup and a change of clothes were able to accomplish. I was tired but ready to finish.
I can't remember what happened, what made me decide to quit. I know that it became mathematically impossible to finish and that's why I quit, but why did I let it happen? Why didn't I tell My running partner that I needed to go? He would have understood.
If I let my mind wander a bit, I always end up in that forest, with my headlamp illuminating the trail. I remember thinking that I was scared to go on. By that time, I had never sweated so much in my life. I was wondering how I could go on in that oppressing humidity.
The 100 mile race is a mental race. Sometimes, one is tested, like we were tested last weekend. We thought we knew what we were doing. For some of us, our inexperience showed. In my case, I had a purely mental breakdown and let my mind take me to an emotional state where it became impossible to finish. I know I'm babbling, but that's how it's been all week inside my head.
Thank God for Burning River in 5 weeks! I need redemption so bad I can taste it and I rally don't feel like waiting until the Fall. I'm going to spend the next 3 weeks in Arizona, running in the desert looking inside myself, trying to understand why this is so important to me when nobody else really cares.
It never crossed my mind that I might not finish this race. I may not be what you would call a high mileage runner but I did put in some good mileage preparing for this race. I just didn't expect the challenge that was coming. The tone of the post might be a bit bitter, but then again, I am.
I drove down to Loudonville with Chris Mcpeake and his wife Kim, who was crewing him (but ended up helping me almost as much). Thanks to modern GPS technology, we got there without getting lost. After picking up our bibs and waiting 45 minutes for a plate of spaghetti, we attended the pre-race meeting where we learned that the toughest part of the course would be the last 2 miles. how hard could they be?
There are a few things that were troubling me going into this race. It was pretty hot and humid. The weather was really muggy and it didn't cool down much during the night despite an evening shower. The aide stations were pretty far apart, more than 10km in some case and never less than 9km after the first 2 loops. That's almost 2 hours on tired legs. Other than the start/finish drop bag, you only had one other drop bag at around the halfway point. Not a problem, I thought, I'll take advantage of the aide stations. Anyway, I knew this was going tombe a challenge so it was all good.
The next morning at 4:15AM, after a short but decent sleep, I drove down with Steve, who had come in too late to attend the meeting and he picked up his packet. Steve, Chris and I decided to run together. Steve was kind of my unofficial pacer and Chris was a bit gun shy after a tough experience at Suphur so he decided to stick with us despite my slower speed.
The race started at 5 AM sharp in warm, stuffy darkness. We started toward the back, to let the 50 milers move ahead of us. Immediately, we were stuck in a long single file that went on forever. There was very little running in the first hour, even on the downhills because the line was sonlong that someone ahead was walking up a hill and keeping the pace down. Even at that slow speed, we started sweating immediately. By the time we reached the first aide station, it was light and we were able to turn off our headlights. We refilled and left.
Time passed. We were sweating heavily and were careful to take our salt tablets every hour. I ate gels from my flask, sandwiches from the aide stations and a Boost when I got to a drop bag. We ran through beautiful scenery. That course is just gorgeous. There are no flats. It felt like every in was an incline, usually long and often steep. As we got to the end of the first loop, we were all in excellent spirits. We got to a short section where we met a few runners going out on their second loop and just before we turned on the final 2 mile loop, a guy said: "take it easy on the loop". Holy shit he wasn't kidding.
I didn't time that one, but it probably took us over 45 minutes to run those two miles. It was madness. The loop was entirely composed of 5 long uphills, with the matching downhill on the other side. Not gentle switchbacks; brutal staight up and down. I got to the start/finish a little shaken by the thought of having to run that loop 3 more times.
We had a short stop at that point, just enough time to switch my headgear from a buff to a regular hat. Drank a Boost and we jetted out of there. It was easy not to linger because it was slim pickings at the aid station. It was getting warm. We walked to the trail and started running. The amount of sweating was just ridiculous and it had no cooling effect whatsoever, or so it seemed. There was no wind to speak of. As we get to the Park Road aide station, we're really hot but thank goodness they have a sponge bucket filled with ice and water. When they pour the water on my neck it feel like an electric shock! I wish I could dive in that bucket! I get a few pieces of turkey sandwiches. It was a nice novelty a few aid stations ago, but this is getting old. With the heat, my stomach is starting to get picky and the sandwiches just don't cut it. I'm sick of gels. We leave for the next leg. It's a pretty short one (meaning a normal 5 or 6 km) and surely, things will be getting better soon. See where I'm going?
I'm starting to get some chafing down there. Never happened before but then again, I've NEVER sweated so much in my life and none of it is evaporating, it's just pouring down my body. It's probably only 28 or 29C, but I bet the humidity is above 90%. In this section, it's not too hilly but it's never flat. We're not talking so much anymore. We get to the next aide station and now I'm getting worried. They're out of Heed and I have to fill with Gatorade instead. They must be low on ice, because the sponge bucket is filled with tepid water. Again, only fucking sandwiches.
We're slowing down. It's getting hot and I think Chris is getting the first signs a heat stroke. He's panting, his breathing short and shallow even when we're walking. Steve is starting to worry about time, but I'm thinking things will improve when it gets cooler. We did the first 27 miles loop in 7 hours, we're going to do the second one in 7:30 and the last two loops are only 23 miles each. Why worry? He worries anyway. We climb down the canyon and stick our heads under the waterfall. We're starting to get worried about the water. All of us are almost out. We get to the dam and the water fountain is off so no luck. We're all out but thank God, it's only a flat couple of miles to the Covered Bridge aide station, where we have our drop bags. The aide station area is like an oven. My Boost has been cooking in the sun for a while and Chris gives me one that's semi-cool instead. Steve is chomping at the bit, he wants to leave so bad. I look at the table in disbelief: there's only fucking sandwiches. My morale is in free fall. I sponge with cool-ish water and we get out of there. At least, the trail is in the shade.
My mind is racing. As expected, I can barely take a sip of gels without wanting to hurl. One can only take the taste of warm gel for so long. What I didn't expect, was that the aide stations would have nothing appealing as far as solid food is concerned. What the fuck am I supposed to do? It's 5.5 miles to the next station, the better part of 2 hours going up and down horrendous hills, all that on half a sandwich? We're still running, but definitely not as fast as we should at this point. There's no more laughing. Well, some, but not much.
OK, the rest of the loop is not good. The expected fall in temperature is simply not happening. I'm eating less and less. Chris is panting like a dog. My mind is all over the place. Steve is trying to help us finish but we don't want to hear what he's telling us. Or we simply can't do it. Chris because he's in trouble physically and me because I've snapped mentally. I try to regroup and pick it up but just as I'm almost turning the tide, we reach what we are now calling the lollipop, the 2 mile loop from hell. I believe this is where I lost my race. Chris and I convinced Steve to go ahead and finish ahead of us. It took a while to convince him but he finally took off (Steve finished in 29:10). It's past 7 PM and it feel just as hot as it was at 2. I try to imagine running all night, getting to aide stations that offer me nothing but turkey sandwiches and jujubes. I want this to be over. I'm almost excited by the idea of quitting.
I decide to make a major stop at the start/finish and try to rebuild. If I don't, there's just no way. If I leave before 9PM, I have 16 hours to finish. Two 8 hours loops. Doable. IF I rebuild. I get to the start/finish and they have nothing. I shake my head in amazement. I grab my drop bag, and go to my chair. Kim offers me some warm chicken noodle soup and drinking the broth almost gives me a hard on, it's so good. I change my clothes, my socks and my shoes. I put my buff on and my headlamp. I switch to my Nathan hydration vest because my arms are just about to fall off. I have more soup, more water and probably something else but I can't remember. I feel 90% better. My side stitch, reminiscent of the one I got at Creemore last year, is still there but it never really got bad.
At 9PM sharp, with 16 hours to go, we get up and get out of the station. We're all excited because we're going to finish this! As we walk into the forest, the humidity hits us in the face like a baseball bat. We start running and we're drenched immediately. I'm feeling pretty good though. After a few miles, Chris tells me he's panting again. Now. Chris and I are not two babes in the woods. We do things because we decide to do them. At any time, any of us could have told the other that he was going to either fall back or push on. I decided to stick with him to the next station and see what happens. It was mostly uphill anyway so we weren't losing much time. We actually passed a few people! The next station was as bad as I feared, maybe worse.
We get out of there and we actually started running again but after a bit we had to stop and then we started doing the math and it was becoming pretty much impossible to finish before the cutoff. Personally, it was because I couldn't look forward to anything except humidity and lack of food. I just couldn't summon the will to finish because I felt like I had no real support. It was midnight and I had not seen any improvements in the aide station food. It was 50k race food: a few fruit, pretzel, candy, chips, sandwiches.
We decided to drop, each for our own reasons. I don't regret it. I wasn't ready for this race. I was ready for a hot, humid, hilly 100 mile race. The aid station thing got me by surprise and as you can tell be reading this, I became totally manic about it.
Anyway, again, instead of accepting early in the day that this was how things were going to be, I kept rehashing that in my head all day and I went to the dark side. There was no time to pull out of it at that point. At 32 hours, the limit on that course seems pretty tight. This is a new course and the winning time went from 19:07 last year to over 22:00 this year. Last year's winner was there but I was told he pulled after the second loop. He wasn't interested in running a 22 hour hundred miler. Some of us don't mind staying out there for a long time, but we need potato wedges and chicken noodle soup. I believe about 60% of the starters DFN'd. I'm told the weather wasn't bad for the area and the time of year. It was a tough one.
Not much running over the last week, this being a taper and all. I'm looking at the weather reports for Loudonville, OH, every 30 minutes hoping for perfect weather. After running in the heat last week, I know that a hot weekend could make for a character building experience. Not much I can do about that.
One weird thing that's happening on my running route, is that I'm being bullied. Some bird has decided that he hated my guts and has been bomb-diving me, actually hitting me on the head. I tried changing my hat and it still happens. He attacks me going out, and coming back. I've asked other runners if they had been attacked and they look at me like I'm crazy. Yesterday, I looked at a cyclist ahead of me and he went through no problem so I followed and sure enough, the friggin' bird came after me. On the way back, I picked up a stick and tried to hit it when he came for me. He started hovering just out of reach, mocking me, so I threw the stick at him and almost got him. Be careful bird! Law of the jungle and all that.
Overshare warning! Skip this paragraph if you're not comfortable with intimate-part running injuries. I don't know what happened last weekend, if some of my shorts shrunk or something, but on Thursday morning I woke up with shooting pain in my left ball area. Was it the heat? That kind of pain is a bitch. It radiates to other location and I was worried my race was doomed. I went for my run on Thursday and it wasn't too bad, but it sure didn't help. I decided not to aggravate it and take 3 days off. I could have panicked but I didn't because I've had this kind of pain before, ending up laying down on an ultrasound table, a towel under my sack and a female technician named Frieda running the ultrasound stick all over it. Not fun. Not to panic, I was told, leave it alone, stop squeezing it to see if it hurts and it will get better. That's what I did this time and sure enough, I'm now perfectly fine. End of overshare.
I have not started to pack for the weekend. I still have to buy my gels and Advil. It's Wednesday for Pete's sake. Last year, I think I started getting my drop bags ready a week in advance. I'm not sure I opened more than one during the race. The only thing with Mohican, is that the aid stations are pretty far apart, about 10km in a lot of cases. That's a long time when you're shuffling in the heat, so you need to carry a lot of water. At least two handhelds. I will also leave my belt and my bladder in drop bags in case I get sick of carrying both bottles. I will leave 3 different kinds of shoes at the start/finish: my oversized Crosslites, my Mizuno Ascent trail shoes and, in case of emergency, my Nike Lunar-something road shoes because the toe box is so nice and roomy. I will start with the Crosslites.
My plan for this race is to eat and drink more than I did last year. Derrick always told me to eat close to 300 calories per hour, but I doubt I did. This time I will. Of course, it's easy to say that now. We'll see what happens after 50 miles in the heat. Eating is not so easy then. I keep getting flashbacks from Creemore, where I experienced the worst bonk of my life. Was it the hydration, the salt, the heat, the side stich from hell, all of the above? Freaks me out just thinking about it.
I could go on, but let's end this now. Race report next week.
You know a race is coming when you can see it on the 10 day forecast. This week is going well, mostly running medium distance in hot, humid conditions. Hopefully, those forecasts (max 24C) will hold because the heat is just killing me. We basically didn't have any warm weather, so a long race like this in hot weather would be a challenge.
I'm experiencing the usual last minute doubts. I second guess my training. Did I do enough? I really think I did. The problem is the enormity of the task. It's easy to forget the specifics of 50 milers. I remember being tired, I remember pain but I could always visualize the finish. But with 100 milers, I remember darkness, despair and exhaustion, with 30 miles to go. I remember at the turn around at Haliburton (25 miles to go), thinking I was 95% fried, having that feeling that the end was still so far into the future that you can't allow yourself to think about it yet.
It's weird that just as I question the wisdom of running 100 milers, I've signed up for two and I will probably run a third one in the Fall. And then there's R2R2R. Am I stupid? I don't have anything to prove: I've done it twice already. So what's up? I just don't know.
Obviously, there's no good reason to run ultras but that's ok. There's no good reason for people to do yoga either. So what if they get all bendy? So they can tie there shoes without bending their knees? Really, who cares? In the words of Evan Hones, at least with ultra running "When Armageddon comes,[...] running really fast and jumping over stuff will come in handy". So there.
This was my second pacing experience and it was awesome, yet again.
I jumped in on the Saturday evening at around 9 or 9:15 PM. Russell was done with his 5th loop and had equalled his previous longest-distance record. Only 60km to go.
My man Russell looked great for a guy who just ran 100 km. I had seen a few people come in that looked pretty terrible (Hi Chris!), so that was a relief. The course was wet and muddy, the day had been humid and all those factors combined were taking their toll. By the time we started running it was dark and we took off in the dark.
The night was warm and wet. All night I felt a weird disconnect between how I felt and how I knew Russell felt. Both of us are from Quebec and we became known as the “French Connection” at some aid stations. I tried to gently help by initiating a gentle jog every time the trail was flat-ish. It’s easy to “forget” to start running again when you’re as tired as those guys.
After our 7th loop, with one loop to go, Russell announced that we were going to walk the last loop. We walked for more than 10km on that loop, until he realized that he could probably make it under 28 hours. That (and wanting to be DONE) gave him the motivation to get running again and we ran a fairly solid second half. I was happy to start running again, cause I was starting to feel very sleepy. Running, a cup of instant coffee and a volunteer’s Tim Horton Breakfast sandwich, brought me back to life. Dear volunteer, I’m so sorry. I couldn’t say no when you offered. I don’t know how you guessed that I was dieing for that sandwich. Was it the drooling?
According to the splits, we did the 8th loop a shade faster than the 7th so we must have done something right.
That hill at the start/finish is STEEP.
We got to the finish with time to spare and Russell finished his first 100 miler in 27h 50min in pretty difficult conditions. As I mentioned, it was muddy and it rained on and off pretty much all night.
I have to admit that my feet were in pretty rough shape for a 60km run. I felt solid, but my feet were hurtin’. I have a fair sized blister on each pinky toe and one of the toenail (left pinky) will probably fall off soon. Weird. Maybe there’s been too many wet races in a row.
Mohican is coming in less than 3 weeks now. I’m going to take those weeks fairly easy, with a decent run next weekend but nothing like this. There’s nothing I can do to get fitter now, I can only screw it up. I’ll try not to.
