Hope ACE is ok, any news? Last few miles of a race like this…rough.
The suspense is killing me but I’m sure he’s fine. I know the day after I was pretty much dead to the world. Imagine he’s enjoying the simpler things in life, like not moving. It was funny, I actually thought of him a couple times yesterday during the day and would laugh, so glad it wasn’t me. I used to go through these existential crises through the last 10-15 miles of really questioning who I was and my decision process, like why on a Saturday was I here when normal people were doing fun things, haha. But then the minute I crossed the finish line I’d instantly be like, maybe I can do a hundred?
I just got back from a hilly 20 in the boonies. It’s beautiful on the east coast today. Super fun.
High 5! I just got back from my track interval workout. Yes!.. the sky is turquoise and the leaves range from bright green to deep orange. Light wind, 55 degrees. The air is cool but the sun is warm. Had a stellar workout… good splits!
Also… I can report that ACE is ok (from facebook) but his results are his to report. I will let him do that. I get the impression he had a good day out there.
I had an amazing experience.
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I wanted to do 50mi cycling Friday and 50mi trail running Saturday, but only got to 27.2mi cycling and 47.4mi trail running. I did a 3.5mi warmup to test out the new Adidas, so technically have put in 50mi in 24hrs, but wanted that race 50mi so bad.
I didn’t have a headlamp and it was much darker than expected. Ground conditions perfect. Some other dude Shaun that I just met gave me his extra headlamp on the spot. He said to put it on his truck if I got back before him. I didn’t. Thanks Shaun.
And before I get too caught up in the story, yes BS, I am focused on the simpler things in life now. I don’t think that Ultra was really a race. It was a quest for truth. Who are you, what are you, what are your demons, your fears, your passions … what are you doing for them and what are you willing to do for them?
Its hard to make further progress in long distance events in my opinion without being entirely true with yourself. That doesn’t mean it makes someone a better person, but it enables one to do an examination of self. You’re not putting another foot forward unless you know damn well what you are fighting for.
It was dark when we started; I stayed up all night prepping nutrition bags (6). The first 20mi were pretty fun and we had a solid crew of 3-4 people including a dude that attempted Leadville.
I listened to music and was smoking blunts and stuff with my oversized headphones on just cruising through the forest. No one I was with smoked, but they were all chill with me smoking during the jog. As my friend says ‘race how you train’.
I started to feel a wall coming at 25mi then it hit at 32mi. My inner thighs towards my groin, my groin (like the muscles in your lower lower abs and all the way around below/behind the nuts. My ass also was feeling it on the muscles.
At 32mi I basically said to myself ‘fuck, you can’t jog anymore’. I was real pissed off at this and made some kind of cane and put flowers on it and stuff then was basically trying to brisk walk to clear 14hrs and it was getting close.
I was still like 5hrs away though. I planned on a brisk jog the whole way as well, so didn’t pick up the headlamp in the last station. I didn’t have a headlamp at the next aid station and had to put my phone and flashlight app on the forest in a Pringle’s box for probably 10 miles. At this point, I can’t afford music for battery life and got to a point where I was 2.4mi away from hitting 50mi and 3.7mi to finish (I went slightly off course). In the high 40s, I was off course in the dark freezing my ass off doing a bunch of calculations in my head.
It was 15hrs. I had another 3.7mi or so to the actual finish. I was only putting out a 20:00 pace at best. Sometimes it was 25:00. So I was about a mile from a highway with low traffic (if I needed help). I couldn’t find the next course marker diamond and was getting cold to the point where I didn’t know if my nutrients and water were enough to get me to the morning if I was stuck/unable to move.
I thought about sleeping there and finishing it in the morning, but was already over time. My body and mind were screaming certain dangers of temperature/fuel inadequacies.
I was thinking if it took me half an hour to get back to the highway and if my phone died (light / SOS) or I ran out of water / food, my body would be really really fucked. It was close though. I think I could have done it by going back and finishing on the highway back to the start, it might have been possible, but 47.4 mi is my longest trail run so far and really I had an absolute blast.
We had one portion from 18mi - 32mi that had no aid stations, which was tough for me. I ran off trail at that point too for a mile so was about 15mi with no aid in the middle of the race. I brought a 3L camelbak and killed a lot of it with still 4mi before the aid station.
In an Ultra though, my mindset was like hmm 4mi could be another hour or 2 hours. I was sipping with little water for 90min prob, which probably contributed to my body locking up a bit.
I feel pretty good today, better than expected, but my body is just asking for a lot of TLC and water and coconut water and stretching / yoga stuff I guess to unwind the pressure I put on my body yesterday.
To get to that state of mind yesterday and get through it, was life changing. I get Ultra now. I see why people do it. I just really didn’t understand it before, but it’s not really about the run at all or the event. It’s just mind games - how far are you willing to take your mind? The physical battles I had out there were all from the mind. When I hit that wall at 32mi I said to myself “you are not fucking stopping - slow down if needed, but keep forward momentum.”
And I did. And that’s really all that matters.
Part of the motivation on this run though was the real danger present. Not that I completely get off on that, but we had no GPS trackers and were required to bring a phone, but if it died and you were out in the forest with no water, you were shit out of luck. I couldn’t stop movement at certain points of the trail as at times I saw no one for hours and wasn’t really near anything. Huge personal accountability. I like that though.
Overall though, had an amazing journey yesterday, one that I will never forget.
Thanks for the tips and sanity check, BS. I’ve met a lot of cool people this wknd in the Ultra community and one of them is a chef and said she wants to cook me dinner on Tuesday. She owns a culinary / catering company. She wanted to be the first female to finish the 100mi course but she got lost in the dark too and made it 80mi. Her next race is in Patagonia.
Just went to his FB. Waiting to hear his take before commenting.
Edit: NVM, here he is.
The stats are sick from that Garmin - the watch lasted the whole time as promised. I listed to a few hours of music off of it, but mainly like to have the Versa for music if battery life is an issue (I still need to get it replaced).
So, I’m not going to go off the deep end here, it was a pretty admirable effort. That said, going back and rereading some of your initial “I would excel / dominate at 200 mile distances and win these races” do you see where I was trying to bring you back to earth in terms of expectations and the logistics involved (to be fair I should have thought to point out the headlamp although I was thinking 14 hour cutoff)? Small miscalculations on gear can end an other wise good race and having out of sync expectations vs reality can be killer out there, cheerleading squads that don’t keep you grounded can be detrimental. Anyhow, kudos for actually showing up and giving it a very solid attempt, these things are very difficult few people would have even done that.
For the 18mi point - I had a prepared camelback ready to go (3L). I was using 2L ones for 0-18mi which were nice. Ironman Kona fanny pack for 0-45mi.
I used Naked Juice and water for half the race and Gatorade mainly for the start. Naked Juice strawberry banana watered down - tasted awesome.
I hardly ate much on the aid stations, I wasn’t hungry the whole time. Very odd.
To make sure I’m understanding it, 50 miles would have taken you to about 15 hours?
This is something you’ll have to correct if you want to keep racing. It’s not about whether you feel hungry. Most of the races you’re eating based on calculations of requirements and staying ahead of any potential crash taking into calculation different burn rates of different types of foods (based on digestibility). By the end of most races you feel like you’re going to vomit but you’re still pushing food in to keep ahead of the wall. That’s a major difference vs shorter races.
haha yeah was kind of trying to get a rouse out of you too in beginning.
200mi seems like an eternity now, whereas looking at a 13.1 distance or even 26.2… doesn’t seem too bad anymore.
I thought my body could endure a bit better than that but now know what areas to work on in terms of training if I do it next time. More hip flexor work, glutes , inner thigh, etc. These are the problem areas for that distance for me.
Id like to do the same event next year. I thought the course was a lot of fun and now I’ve seen and run on all of the 50mi course, so it’s great for visualization.
I live 40min from there so might go back for some long trail runs as now I’m very comfortable in that environment and with navigation now, which I think is a big deal in these small races.
Also, you owe me a $10 coffee gift card, I’ll delay payment and we can grab a coffee to catch up next time you’re up north. Reread some of those early posts though, in hindsight do you realize I was giving you some good advice? Having run the race and started walking around 32 mi do you see what I was getting at when I said the last 20% is the whole race?
Yeah you’re right. These Ultras are much more intriguing than I thought.
I’d like to do at least 1 Trail Run Ultra a year now as well as the 70.3 mile races. I like those races.
Are you over Ultras?
I think if you do that you’ll get hooked on trail running.
I always day dream about getting back into it so maybe. But its such a time sink and I’ve been swamped with kids lately so its hard to visualize a scenario where it actually happens in the near term. Truth be told, I’m definitely envious of you and Brainwash out there (except yesterday I wasn’t, I don’t miss the long races). If I do it again, it’ll likely be shorter stuff like marathons and halves. The other issue with those longer ones is they can lead to heart enlargement and scarring of the heart tissue over the long term which concerns me.
Yeah - my memory is of the kind that remember almost all the words and texts people say and those words were hanging on the forefront of my mind at about 34mi. I think after I hit the wall at 32mi… it took me 2mi to make a decision that I wasn’t going to stop. Then I was ‘pretty good’ for a while. I mean I was dying yeah every step, but I saw the light. I saw the end and made the verdict that I could do it, it was doable, and that I was going to do it. But, I mean what was the alternative? I’m in the middle of the forest with people passing me only once an hour. I had to do this. They can’t help me. There are no helicopters to pick me up. Some people quit on the aid stations but you can’t stop in the forest - you must go on…
Yeah I do owe you that $10 DD card.
haha
I really had very little idea of what I was getting into; I thought I knew vaguely the level of effort required. I didn’t. But hitting mental obstacles and getting past them was big for me. It’s hard to describe this sport in many ways, but glad to have raced with some people in the community.
I’m just glad you aren’t dead. Congrats
I heard some groups did a 5min walk 1min run when they started to hit walls. Def something to think about. I also learned the goal of these walks - you really want to be like those world class power walkers or like someone rucking 60lbs in a brisk hump pace. Efficient and as fast and low impact as possible. I learned a lot just from staying with certain people and groups during the race. So these will be tools for training for me in the future.
5min run 1min off? Could integrate that into post MMA workout beach runs or something. I thought this sport would be a lot more boring, but there are certain challenging aspects that really make me want to give a solid attempt next year. My friend got 1st in the 50mi that I started with at 10:XX. We did 20 mi together. I was feeling great in the beginning. Maybe did start a little fast.