My First 10 Hour Race
The Jitters (2016-07-09 13:45 @ Home Office)
It's slightly more than six hours before go time. I didn't sleep well last night. Despite staying up late (reading from "Today We Die a Little", for general motivation and to facilitate sleeping-in) I awoke early and could not resume sleep.My wife had a mid-morning hair appointment so I walked to the UPS store to mail a friend in Kansas my old GPS watch (his broke) and then to Highland Morning to have a pre-event coffee & breakfast.
I had been convinced of my strategy. Go out at a reasonable pace and slow down at the half (10% to be exact). I made a spreadsheet! Yet many experienced ultra-runners have tried to convince me that I should treat this as a training run with my first 100-mile race in exactly 28 days. They caution me to do no more than 50 miles. Yet I'll be wearing a racing bib. How does one not "go for it" when wearing a racing bib? Hazaa!! Still, within the last half-hour I've re-planned. I plugged -5% into aforementioned spreadsheet. Now the plan is to go out at a 9:33/mile pace for first 33 miles and finish the final 33 miles at 8:38/mile pace, for a total of 66 miles. Which seems close enough to 50 for my purposes.
I've never raced beyond 50 miles or been on my feet longer than 9 hours and 10 minutes. I want the experience of having been beyond 50 when I toe the line for my first 100-miler next month.
Other things on my mind: I've had some pre-gout symptoms on left ankle but have stayed super hydrated, donned compressions socks, and sipped cherry juice for last 24 hours, which seems to be working. The good news is my left knee has responded well to constant care over last few weeks and more specifically to this week's 40 pre-race miles. Yesterday's trial-accelerations (after taking Thursday off) did not bother it. That was the first time in a month I've been able to run at pace without knee pain. I'm cautiously optimistic. We shall see.
Pre-Race (2016-07-11 07:46 @ Home Office)
I arrived nearly 3 hours early to get my packet, perhaps because of the aforementioned jitters. The horse track was a half-mile fine gravel atop dirt with a fence along the insider perimeter. A horse fence, if you can believe it (not pictured)! There were several cars and tents already setup on the far side (the side opposite the bleachers and finish line). I chose to park and set-up my crew (a blue bucket from Lowe's containing race essentials) on the finish line side, where there were no cars. I wasn't being anti-social (I was hoping others would find their way here too -- I was 3 hours early) but that side was both closer to the restrooms and seemed most easily hobbled to post-race.I met some really great people. Some who setup near me were also running Burning River in 4 weeks! Eavesdropping 4TW? HaHa! Being a newer kid on the ultra block, I tried to gain from their collective wisdom. Many of them were planning to run 50 miles as their last training run (not training race) and then stop. Eerily similar to advice I had received earlier. I immediately updated my goal again, for about the 3rd time that day, and said it out loud to make it real and/or to convince myself. I wanted to run 60 for the psychological benefit at Burning River (as I'd never ran more than 50) even if I wouldn't necessarily get 100% of the physiological benefit from it by then.
I read a few quotes I'd highlighted from "Today We Die a Little", aptly titled for the upcoming night, and then changed from my flippy floppies into my race shoes.
The Race (2016-07-11 18:18 @ Home)
The race started on time at 8:00 PM. The sun was still out but the humidity was less oppressive than it had been most of the week. There was no wind to speak of, it was about 78 F, and I knew the temperature should be falling over the next 10 hours. In other words, weather was great for a July race in Indiana.
Miraculously, I hit my first mile exactly on pace, 9:33. I continued more or less around the goal pace until mile 9, when I dipped into the high eights. Unsure if it was lack of concentration or just general loosening up. I may have over compensated for a bucket stop (to get electrolyte pills). Who knows. I made a mental note to focus on relaxed breathing and slowing down a bit.
I chatted briefly with a few people I'd met before and met a few new people along the way too. I refilled my Orange Mud HydraQuiver Single Barrel several times and chatted with a gentleman on the course rocking the Double Barrel about the pros & cons of the two sizes. Someone was giving "high fives" every lap, which was neat. I took one gel and one electrolyte pill every 45 minutes. Five hours elapsed and approximately 32.5 miles were logged this way. I didn't even notice it was time for the first turn-around time (we switched directions every 2.5 hours)
A note about nutrition. I've experimented with severe muscle cramps in legs and entire body over the summer, trying to solve the riddle that plagued me in last mile of Louisville's Lovin' the Hills 50K and around mile 40 of Land Between the Lakes 50M. My hypothesis became electrolyte imbalance (I sweat too much, as measured by weight in separate experiments). I do a good job with hydration but not necessarily with electrolyte replacement or nutrition. Three hours into this race I upped the dose to 1 electrolyte pill and 2 gels every 45 minutes, drinking provided S.W.O.R.D. when thirsty.
Another note about nutrition: I was getting all my hydration and gels from the aid station. I had been going to my crew (the blue Lowe's bucket) for the electrolyte pills, until I noticed them at the RUTS aid station. It now became easier for one stop shopping!
The race was going well. The aid station was well stocked throughout the event (even providing pizza, grilled cheeses, and popsicles at times) though I stuck exclusively to drink, pills, and gels for the entire race. The crowd was fun, the volunteers awesome, and the participants friendly. This was my second Durbin race (the first being Land Between the Lakes 50 Miler this year) and they do an AWESOME job on both course selection and managing all the other details, big & small, that I rarely think about but add up to a great great event. Oh, the event. Yes. Time wasn't exactly pouring off the race clock, but it was streaming off nicely enough. There was a progress board that automatically updated (based on bib sensor) showing your position in the field, number of laps completed, and number of miles finished at conclusion of each lap. This was very useful as I certainly lost track of my number of laps more than once and was able to see my slow ascent from 7th to 3rd place. Along the way there was a firework show off the in distance and I quit noticing the smell from a nearby sewage treatment plant (fortunately it was only mildly "visible" to the nose and only on a small section of the track, opposite the combo finish line/aid station when it was present).
Here I should note that several other runners were planning to stop at mile 50, so achieving 3rd place was much more a function of their discipline than it was of my pacing strategy or terrific running. Still, I sped up to Traci and Jeff when I saw that I was 3rd male (at the time he was 2nd male and she was 1st female). I'd neither been in nor finished in the top 3 before and was easily excited by this and I wanted to share that excitement with them (later in the race when I found myself in 2nd place, I knew it was because Traci and Jeff were sticking to their plan of 50 miles).
Five hours down, the first half was completed "as planned" in generally good spirits and without taking too much out of me. I was developing blisters between my biggest and 2nd toes that extended to the balls of the feet - but this happened at LBL too and was not alarming. I made a note of it and decided I should probably work on a solution to that before Burning River. I also decided, while talking to Scotty, that if I hit my goal of 60 I may see what my body could do in 10 hours. I know myself well enough to know that was simply a mind trick, trying to justify an arbitrary "place" in the results, even if it took more than 60 miles - yet who am I to argue with myself. So it was decided. Now I needed to keep my place.
Six hours in and my mind had yet to unfurl its greatest con. Out there on the horse track, under those stars, it began to pose challenges such as, "If you hope to finish Burning River, shouldn't you be able to close a 2-mile gap between you and the leader? He is using it as a training run. Do it!" I reminded myself that my goal of 60 miles was attainable if I stuck to my plan - and there were well over 4 hours to ruin that plan. My logic side held the pace steady, ignoring my idiot self.
I remember great conversations with other people in the second half too, like Will who is running Badwater next week, but the placement of these conversations in the timeline aren't clear. I think one of the elements about this event that made it easier than I expected was the quality banter with participants that broke up the monotony, distracted from the task at hand, and kept the pace reasonable.
The 7th hour became difficult. It wasn't all at once. There wasn't a sudden, "Oh that hurts" or "This is difficult" it was just a slow decrescendo of pace without any root cause. The blisters were worse but it wasn't that. Perhaps it was just a lack of concentration. I don't know. I drank some Coke for the first time to see if it helped. Whatever it was, I snapped out of it as the 8th hour began.
At the 8th hour, I noticed on the leaderboard that my distance from #1 had shortened from two miles to one mile sometime over the last two hours (the leaderboard was actually a recent lap board, dynamically showing the lap counts of those who had just finished another loop - so one wouldn't see distance between them and other relative positions unless they crossed the line in near proximity).
I found it interesting. Having two hours to complete eight miles didn't allow my thinking mind to overrule the idiot inside of me. "You need to make contact with #1", the idiot coerced. It wasn't really a decision. As I passed his rest area, I smiled at a relay dude (Bart) who had been cruising during his turns and said, "He's two laps up on me!" as a reminder to self that contact was going to take some work. I ran a few sub-eight minute miles and reduced the deficit to one lap.
I found Troy again with one lap between us. As I mentioned before, I've never been in the top 3. I didn't know the protocol and didn't want to be rude. So I opted for weird instead and talked to him about it. I said something like, "Hey, I've never been in the top 3 and I don't know the protocol but I wanted to let you know that you are one lap ahead of me and I want to try to catch you without being a sneaky shit about it". He basically said, "Good, you should, you're running well". So I did. I took the lead after a few more sub eight-minute miles. He didn't care. He looked plenty strong and quite relaxed sticking to his training plan and allowed me to have my fun.
The 9th hour rolled in and I only needed a trivial amount of laps to hit my original goal of 60 in that final hour. I start thinking about that #1 position Troy let me have. What do I do with it? He called out to me as I was making a slow pass. He said something to the effect that I should do whatever I wanted but it may be worthwhile to run conservatively in the last hour and save something for Burning River because he wasn't going to run any faster than his current pace. Our first conversation followed by this one really humbled me. Troy was unbelievably gracious in the moment I awkwardly declared my intent and genuinely classy the way he let me off the hook for the 9th hour. We ran together for a while and chatted about Louisville and family. I'm unsure if I thanked him. It was just such a great experience for me and my brain was struggling to take it all in while forcing my body into perpetual forward momentum. We separated for hydration and I just kept plugging away, paradoxically willing the clock to sluff of its time as quickly as possible and immensely enjoying my first time running in first place. I both wanted the race to end abruptly because I was fatigued yet I wanted it to continue in perpetuity as I knew I was truly enjoying something that would soon just be another memory.
Finally, I rounded the turn before the finish and the clock advised me less than 13 minutes remained. One mile or 1.5? Two laps or three? It wasn't really a question. Running faster doesn't get you closer to the finish line in a ten-hour race, but it is a hell of a way to pass the time. 1.5 miles it was. Three laps to enjoy this moment.
I crossed the finish line with 1 minute 36 seconds on the clock, having ran my last 1.5 miles at roughly a 7:28 pace and winning my first race.
The first 32.5 took approximately 4:59:33 and the second 32.5 took approximately 4:58:51. A rare (for me) negative split!
Certainly my first win was a confluence of classy people, a wonderful event, a terrific venue, good weather, and luck. Lots and lots of luck.
It was definitely a fun ten hours.
