Dances With Dirt Gnawbone 50k

I ran my first 50k last weekend.  Can you believe that?  I was there and I still can’t quite wrap my mind around it!  I’m amazed, thrilled, and so very proud of myself.  It’s difficult to put all of the feelings into words but at the moment, I feel absolutely invincible.

As race week approached, I was on top of the world.  The taper left me full of energy and the anticipation was just about more than I could stand.  No fear of race day, I just wanted to be there and get it started.  I had trouble sleeping the weekend before:  going over my outfit choices, what would I pack in my hydration pack, would I use a drop-bag, and just in general wondering what it was going to be like.  I felt excitement, but no fear.  My training this spring had me confident and well-prepared.  Fortunately, as the week went on my sleep improved so I got to race day well-rested and well-fueled.

The 50M and 50k races started at 6:15 am, just late enough that the trail was visible and we didn’t need headlamps.  I planned to start the race with a friend and we’d see how the day went.  We had both trained with heart rate monitors and planned to stick to that through the race.   I was giddy at the starting line, I just couldn’t wait to get going.  The race started and we were doing it.  We were going to run 31 miles before the day was done.  Unbelievable.

The race started out on a gravel road that quickly dumped us onto the muckiest horse trail I’ve ever seen.  It’s described as “shoe-sucking” because that’s exactly what the mud does to runners who haven’t tied their laces tight enough.  We were glad that this year we were running the ultra distance:  that meant we got to be some of the first to tackle the horse trail.  By the time we’d hit it last year during the half marathon, it was a swamp!  It was still nasty, but not quite as bad.  We had to walk most of this because the effort of traversing the mud was enough to push us up and out of our heart rate zones.  Beep beep beep!

Eventually, we ended up on a single track trail. Ahh, that’s more like it!  We settled into a more reasonable pace once the mud and slop was gone.  As we got to our 4^th mile, we heard fast feet coming up behind us and moved to the side to let the faster runner pass.  We asked if he was running the relay (they started after us).  Hhe replied no and asked  what mile we were on.  We told him 4 and he said he was on mile 9:  he’d been with a group that had gotten lost already!  I can’t even imagine how demoralizing that must have been to have already run 5 extra miles that early in the race.  Ugh, I felt awful for him!  And we resolved not to let that happen to us!

I am not familiar with the trails that we ran on at that point so events there are a blur to me: we took a gel at mile 6, ran by a lake, passed a girl that looked like she was on the verge of a DNF (she didn’t), and obeyed our heart rate monitors.  I was feeling great:   legs were good, I was breathing easily, we wondered how our friends were doing, and the miles ticked by. 

At about mile 9, we got to the Hesitation Point aid station.  This brought me to trails I knew, so I was actually a bit disappointed that we took the logging road rather than the trail.  It was the easier path of the two, but I’d been looking forward to familiar terrain.  Not to fear though, it was only a mile or so until the road got us back to that trail and I was happy to be in an area I knew.  These felt like easy miles to me, both physically and mentally.  After this section though, I again have trouble remembering what happened when. 

There was an incredible aid station with music and the most divine orange slices.  We leap-frogged with a trio of runners until we eventually left them behind.  We heard voices but couldn’t tell if they were in front of or behind us.   One of my favorite things was getting to see our friend who was running the 50 mile race:  he was on his second lap as we were on our first and he was WINNING!  He looked great, chatted for a bit as we climbed up a crazy-steep hill, then he asked us to holler when second place came through and he was back to his race.  (Second place didn’t come by us for more than an hour!)  We went off-trail and had to claw our way through mud to find roots and rocks to pull ourselves up the hill.  That was stupid crazy fun. 

I knew there was going to be an awful set of stairs before we got to the Nature Center.  I’d not seen them before, so I was picturing the worst.  Happily, I didn’t find them nearly as bad as the ones at McCormick’s Creek.  I’m not sure if that was because of better pacing, better conditioning, or race-day magic.  Whatever it was, I was thrilled!  What I wasn’t so thrilled by was the pavement.  Once we got to the Nature Center, we ran on pavement for over a mile.  I vaguely remembered that area from last year’s half, but during the half you are only on pavement for a short distance.  I didn’t know that we’d be on it so long, so I was driving my running partner crazy because I knew that around each and every bend we were about to turn back onto the trail.  Ugh…that section was horrid for so many reasons.  The pavement hurt my feet, but we needed to take advantage of the smooth surface to make up some time.  Awful.  I just wanted to be back on the softer trail surface, even if it would mean a slower pace.

We finally got to the aid station that marked the return to the trail.  I grabbed a couple more M&M’s, a pretzel, and an orange slice and we were back on the dirt surface.  Aaaahhh….I remember thinking that I really didn’t feel any worse than I had at mile 9 or 10.  That wasn’t going to last much longer.  The hard-packed dirt trail soon gave way to more horse trail slop.  That mud seemed to suck the last drop of energy out of me.  I couldn’t wait to get that mud behind me.  Suddenly,  I was so mind-numbingly  tired.  We were at mile 27 (distance PR!) and in hindsight, I think this was more of a mental wall than a physical one.  There was some significant physical pain (my right big toe of all things), but I think that knowing how close we were to the finish was somehow giving us permission to acknowledge the fatigue.  Once we let that creep in, it took center stage.

We were looking forward to getting back to the single track that would dump us out at the top of the abandoned ski slope.  Every time we’d see a break in the trees, we’d get excited and ask “is that it?”  So exciting once we really were there!  Then we looked down the hill.  Unlike the muddy horse trail at the beginning of the race, this time we were some of the last runners to cross this section.  Most of the 50k, marathon, half, and 10k runners had already come through.  All of the vegetation had been stripped from the mud as the other racers had slid, skidded, and slopped their way down that initial drop.  We hoped to remain upright, so we scoped out a good spot to make our descent.  My friend went first:  she grabbed a low-hanging tree branch and used it like a rope to rappel down the drop-off.  I gave her enough room so that the branch wouldn’t whip back and hit me, then used the same branch to follow. 

The old ski slope was overgrown with waist-high grasses, briars, and saplings, but the previous runners had beat down a pretty good path for us.  We were so tired.  It was only a mile from here to the finish and we were just about completely spent.  A short briar bush was in the path and my friend plowed right over the top of it.  Why?  It was too much work to go around it!  We both found that hysterical and had a good laugh, which gave us a bit of a boost.  Not a lot, but every bit helped!

The course took us down the ski hill, across a field, then down to the creek.  We had been looking forward to the creek for miles.  We knew from last year that the cold water would be a welcome relief for our exhausted feet and it was every bit as wonderful as we remembered it.  Blessed cold water!  We waded through the creek for a hundred yards (or was it a thousand?), then we were practically within sight of the finish.  Our friend who’d won the 50M race was at the edge of the woods waving us in!  He high-fived my friend and ran in with us until just before the finish, then told us to take it on in.

The most incredible sight greeted my eyes.  Many of our friends from our running group had run shorter events of the day and had been done for hours.  I thought that there might be a few who’d stick around to see us finish but I didn’t expect the reception we got.  Almost every one of our friends was there lining the finish chute.  Screaming.  Cheering.  Holding out their hands for us to slap as we went by.  For us.  FOR US!  It was almost more happiness than I could bear.  I have the most amazing friends and they made me feel like a rock-star as I crossed the finish line.  My mom was there, too, but I couldn’t find her until after I had gotten my medal and she found me. 

So what does this finish mean to me?  It means that something I thought “impossible” a year ago wasn’t.  It means I’m tougher than I ever gave myself credit for.  It means I want to do this again and do it better.  It means that I get to take a couple of weeks off of training and then I get to do it again as I prepare for Flatrock in September.  It means I have earned my stripes as a trail ultrarunner.  It means that I shouldn’t be afraid to try new things because the only thing holding me back is myself. 

 

 

Some silly stats because I like numbers:

Official finish:  9:05:48.94

My max HR for training:  144

Average HR during the race:  137

Average pace for the race:  17:33

Average pace/HR for the first 20 miles:  17:35/138

Average pace/HR for the last 11 miles:  17:32/136

Number of Ignite Reload Gels eaten:  6 (generally every 6 miles, the last one was 2 miles from the finish)

Weight loss since January 2013:  20 lbs

Spring Training 2013

Five years ago, I volunteered to work a relay station at a trail race called Dances With Dirt Gnawbone.  I had been running for a year and I was intrigued by the idea of trail running.  I was intimidated though and I had no idea how to get started.   I thought volunteering would be a good risk-free way to scope out this activity.  My job was to take down bib numbers as the runners came through, an easy job.  Watching the enthusiasm of the relay runners coming into my exchange station only fueled my desire to be a part of this event someday.  The only thing holding me back was that I was afraid I’d get lost if I ran the course alone.   Last year (2012), my friend and I decided to run the half marathon there together and we had an absolute blast.  It was so much fun that before the race had ended, we’d decided that we’d run the 50k in 2013.  Why?  Because we wanted to make the fun last longer!

As January rolled around, I realized that I had no idea how to train for a 50k but I knew that I needed to buckle down if I was going to do this.  I was terrified, excited, and extremely motivated.  In January, I happened to listen to a Trail Runner Nation podcast about Metabolic Efficiency Training and I was hooked.  This sounded like a method that could work for me!   I completely revamped my nutrition as well as my training methods.   In simple terms, MET is a combination of training at a low heart rate plus the elimination of simple sugars and grains from the diet. The idea is that you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar for the long runs.  This appealed to me on a few levels.  I hoped that it would help me to lose some weight, be better fueled on long runs, and it also gave me some guidelines on pacing.  What I didn’t realize was how good it would make me feel, even when not running.  Recovery from long runs was very quick, my energy level was better, and I felt like my running had taken on a whole new direction.  As luck would have it, my friends training for the 50k had adopted the same training regimen.

In the early weeks of heart rate (HR) training, it was frustrating.  I was shuffling in order to keep that darned HR monitor from going off.  Walkers were passing me.  Literally.  I imagine that I looked ridiculous but I’d been told to expect this and to just be patient.  So I shuffled.   For the first few weeks, I stuck to flat roads or even the indoor track on the nasty days.  Just when I thought I was starting to see improvement, I transitioned back to the trail.  I had to walk every hill.   Every single hill.   I couldn’t take 3 steps on an uphill grade without hearing my HR alarm go off.  So I walked.  And walked.  Sometimes I thought I might have to take a nap right there on the trail to get my HR down, it was that bad.  Insanely frustrating and I admit, I wondered if this was going to work after all.

I think it took about 2 months before I realized things were getting better.  Not in a big way, but I noticed that I’d get farther up a hill before I’d have to walk.  I also noticed that I could feel the change in my legs when I crossed that HR threshold.   I was getting more in tune with my pacing and my body.  As the spring went on, my pace was dropping and the weight was coming off seemingly without effort.  That only served to fuel my motivation and commitment to the training.  As my miles were ramping up, I realized that I wasn’t experiencing the fatigue that had been part of marathon training in the past.  Yes, I was tired, but I wasn’t popping ibuprofen after every run and I’d finish a long run without needing to take a nap to recover.  I was feeling good.  Not just good,  I was feeling better than I’d felt in years.   Magic beans indeed!  I’m just now getting to the point where my HR pace is in line with my pace from last year, but the effort is completely different.  The pace that last fall had me breathless and unable to carry on a conversation is now almost effortless.  I can’t wait to see where the next few months take me.