If you spend an afternoon perusing web pages for ultra races, you will find that most of them of quite friendly, welcoming, and encouraging. There are a few however, that plainly send the message: “Stay the hell away if you know what's good for you.” The Moonlight Boogie fits into this latter category. One of the two pictures on the website features as big a snake as I've ever seen outside of a zoo (and I grew up in a swamp) and the text brags about starting temps around 85 degrees with no shade and a dropout rate of 40% among veteran fifty milers.
So why was I doing this race? I needed to get a 50 miler in for training for Burning River 100, and this race was relatively local (3 ½ hour drive to Ellerbe, NC) and cheap ($30 entry fee). The race started at 6pm, requiring running through the night, and advertised “heat, hills, and humidity.” I was looking at it as worst case scenario training for Burning River and I was bracing myself for a suffer-fest.
The course was 5 laps of a ten mile course, all on road: a six mile loop plus a four mile out-and-back. After a very long race briefing accompanied by thunder rolls and heat lightning, panicked runners sprinted off to the porta potties. Then the marathoners and 50 milers lined up to start in separate directions and we were off!
Lap 1
I groaned as I started running: my legs felt stiff and tired. Doing races as training runs has really taught me to appreciate how much tapering helps when I actually do it. Weather on this lap was a blessing: everywhere we ran in had just rained, but somehow we were never in the rain itself, allowing for unexpectedly cooler temps. Don't get me wrong: I was sweating just standing around waiting for the race to start, we spent much of this lap running through steam rising of the pavement, and an oppressive wave of humidity rolled for a mile or two, but it just wasn't as miserable as I had been planning for. I was rather discouraged for much of this lap because I could see so many people ahead of me. I thought I must be at the back of the pack. I would later learn that the marathoners had only run their 0.2 miles before following behind us, and it was actually mostly them who were ahead of me. I ran much of this lap with a man named John, and finished the lap around 1:46 (the plan was to run two hour laps for a total time of ten hours.)
Lap 2
I pulled ahead of John at the start of this lap and ran alone for most of it, as I would for the majority of the race. And I'll just go ahead and admit it: I was grumpy. For the entire first 28 miles, I was annoyed that my legs felt crummy from the start and having a hard time wrapping my mind around staying up all night to run 50 miles on paved roads that all looked exactly the same (two lanes, hills, woods on either side). I had spent the first lap walking most of the uphills and a steep downhill to save my IT band, but I realized the downhills felt the worst. So I switched to a general run 5 minutes, walk 1 minute pattern, regardless of uphill vs. downhill. This worked well on the six mile loop, but was tougher on the out-and-back which was essentially two miles downhill and then turn around and run back up. There were a few patches of light rain which felt nice, and by the end time I finished the lap with a split of just under 2 hours, it was DARK.
Lap 3
I was soon convinced that this was the most monotonous race I have ever run. Yes, more so than 102 laps around a .98 mile course. With the moon hidden behind storm clouds for almost the entire race, it was far too dark for to run without my headlamp on. This meant I could only see a few feet ahead of me, and I basically spent the last 33 miles of the race with nothing to do but follow the white painted line on the road. I really wanted to quit during this lap, even though my legs were starting to feel better. I've never experienced an urge to quit before, but I was so bored and lonely. Other runners were out on the course, but to me they were just bobbing lights that would blind you if they looked at you, and without the facial recognition I felt less of a sense of community as I usually do at these races. Then it started to rain, and a man named Eric Fogleman caught up with me on the out-and-back. He was walking the whole two mile hill back up to the start, but he walked really fast (he had about six more inches to his legs than I do) so I stayed with him for this hill and chatted. He corrected my thinking that I was at the back of the pack and we talked about some mutual ultrarunning acquaintances. I felt much better after this, clocked another 2 hour loop, and took off for the last 20 miles.
Lap 4
As soon as I started the fourth lap, the rain started coming down hard. Even though I was running in a circle, the rain always seemed to be shooting directly into my eyes. We were all caught in a downpour for over an hour, and there was lots of thunder and now some bolts of lightning mixed in with the heat lightning so I was starting to get a little scared. In spite of all this, I was feeling great, both mentally, and physically. The 5:1 pattern was still working well and allowed me to run most of the uphills, which was tiring but felt better on my legs. It serves as anecdotal proof of the importance of flexibility in race strategies for ultras. The storm was moving away, but I still gave Nathan permission to pull me from the course if he thought it wasn't safe (and I promised I wouldn't get mad at him for it). It continued to rain for an hour or more longer, but without the same driving force so that it was much more manageable. I finished another lap in a little under two hours.
Lap 5
I picked up my pace a little as I started the six mile loop of this lap, or at least I thought I did. For the last two laps, I ran alone the entire time. I passed a number of people during these final laps, but I was actually lapping most of them so we didn't run together at all as I passed. As I cruised into the 43.5 mile aid station for my last water bottle fill up, I heard country music, smelt cigarette smoke, and had a man in a cowboy hat help me with the water cooler-in case I had forgotten I was in the middle of nowhere. I saw something coiled in the grass beside the road which I hope was a fat, short garden hose and not one of the area's rattlesnakes. I was able to speed up for the last 4 miles of the race and run almost the entire hill back up the finish (mapmyrun.com rates it as a category 5 climb by cycling standards) to finish in a time of 9:35:46. I have no idea where I finished place-wise.
As I hobbled from the finish back to the car, I told Nathan “I felt so much better while I was running than I do now! I should have just kept going. Remind me in the future that a finishing kick in a 50 miler is just not worth it.” Luckily after a couple hours my legs felt much better (though I'm not about to head out for a run today).
A few notes: I must give props to SmartWool socks—My shoes were filled with water for the entire last 20 miles and yet I didn't get any significant blisters.
Food: I ate 5 ½ packs of shot blocks, a PB and J sandwich, ¼ of a hamburger, ½ can of Pringles, a rice cake with PB spread on it, 2 saltines, some gatorade, and a sip of ginger ale. I was nauseous when/after eating for much of the race but it never got to to point where I had to slow down or wasn't able to eat.
Next time I promise I'll wait more than 7 hours after finishing to write a race report so I forget some details and it isn't so long. In two weeks, Nathan and I do the Chattooga River 50k together for his first ultra so he will write the race report for that one.
Thanks!
-Jordan
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