Lookout Mountain 50 Miler: The Trick is Not Minding That it Hurts...

Five days removed from my first 50 miler, I'm still coming to grips with what we did. My training towards this race did not go as I'd hoped. An ill-advised 24 miles on pavement in late August caused my plantar fasciatiis to flare up in my left foot, and I was reduced to minimal distance during the week, and trying to extend my long run on the weekends. I researched training plans and race strategies, the most encouraging of which stated that if you can run a marathon, you can finish a 50 miler if you're smart about pacing and eating. My only goal for this race was to finish, and the 13-hour time cut ensured that finishing would be a challenge.


The week of the race, we watched the latest winter storm march across the country. Rain and temps in the mid-forties were predicted for race day (had we been any farther north, it would have been snow). Race morning did not disappoint. The rain was unrelenting, with the temps in the mid 30s, so we stayed in the car until the last possible moment. I may have looked calm in that picture on Jordan's blog, but my mind was screaming, “what the hell are you about to DO?????” Though the race was sold out, there were definitely not 400 runners at the start line. Once we got moving were totally soaked, my mind calmed and we got down to the business of running.


The race packet said that the views of Chattanooga from the first 6.3 mile section are really amazing, but I will have to take their word for it; we were in a thick fog on the mountain. The trail descended down the side of the ridge, hugging rock formations over some very high cliff faces; with so little room for error, I was thankful we didn't encounter this section any later in the race. The first aid station at Craven's House came quickly enough; we had averaged better than 13 min/mile pace, keeping things nice and easy at the start of a long day. The next section remained in the valley, with gentle rolling terrain on jeep trails; I hadn't expected anything this easy on the course. I was stretching my legs a bit, so Jordan and I decided to split up around mile 10 and run our own races. I got to the next aid station a full 30 minutes before I expected to, but still feeling good, knowing that the next section included the long climb back to Covenant College at the top of Lookout Mountain.


I walked much of the climb, which is one of the secrets of ultra-running; we don't run the entire time. I'm sure some of the frontrunners and professionals can run 95% of the distance, only walking the most technical or steepest sections. I was aiming for a 60/40 ratio of running to walking, hoping to find a balance that kept me within the time cut. I chatted with a number of folks, which helped to break up the monotony. I rarely caught people's names; sometimes we'd chat for miles and I'd never even see their face as I followed them up the mountain. As the day went on, I could only recognized fellow racers by what they were wearing.


I returned to the start at Covenant College still feeling good; tired, but ready for more, as the first 22 miles were really only a warmup. 'More' turned out to be mud; miles and miles of mud. The hours of rain, overnight and throughout the morning, had turned vast portions of the course into thick, slick, sucking mud. There was no way to move through it quickly, and certainly no way to get through it cleanly. As mud and water poured into my shoes, the water leaked out, but the mud and silt built up into mounds under the balls of my feet that I had to periodically stop and scrape it out.


As we descended the far side of Lookout Mountain, we were on familiar trails. Jordan and I ran the Rock Creek stage race last year, part of which took place in the same area. We were approaching the part of the course that I'd been thinking about for months; a collection of switchbacks so steep they required a series of ropes to navigate. I wasn't worried about going up this section; my concern was that in 12 more miles I would have to descend it, possibly in the dark, having already covered 42 miles. Going up proved no problem, and the trails leading to the Long Branch loop passed without incident.


If I had a dark time during the race, it was on the Long Branch Loop. My left knee had been hurting off and on, but the pain turned on with a vengeance during this section (I discovered later that this was due to my quads cramping and pulling on the tendons in my knee). Going downhill was really painful, and even level ground was uncomfortable. The 'short 4.5 mile loop' as it was called at the aid station seemed to last forever; the trails were beautiful, but technical enough so that I could never find a rhythm. I began to think about what damage I might be doing to my knees, and how far I could push before I should consider pulling out at the next aid station. I must have felt better by the end, as a quickly grabbed my headlight and a small burger at the aid station and headed back the way I'd come, toward to the finish at the top of Lookout Mountain.


For the rest of the day, the passage of time was foremost on my mind. I had four and a half hours left to cover the remaining twelve miles; certainly possible, but this was unfamiliar territory, farther than I'd ever pushed myself on foot. The trails proved just as technical on the way back, but since they were now familiar, my perceived progress was quicker. I steeled myself for the climb down the roped switchbacks, warning runners around me that I was planning to take the section very slowly to try to save my knees (it did occur to me that flinging myself off the top would have been a more expedient means of decent...). I made good use of the ropes as my feet slipped out from under me at one point, leaving me dangling on a particularly steep switchback. I only took on water and a reserve energy gel at the last aid station, as seconds now began to count; I had less than 3 hours to cover 7.5 miles, and knew I might need every minute to beat the time cut.


It quickly became full dark as I started the last section. I spent much of it alone, ticking off familiar landmarks and following the dim shine of my headlamp. I fell hard at some point, flat on my back in the mud, but didn't injure anything. I kept looking for the start of the climb; my leg muscles were so sore by this time that going uphill was the only action that didn't hurt. I worried that I wouldn't make the time cut; I knew the difficult mud sections were at the top of the climb, and wanted plenty of time to navigate them in the dark. As I got higher on the mountain, the fog grew thicker, until when I emerged at the summit, I couldn't see more than five feet ahead. Cold wind hit me in the face as I came out of the tree cover, almost blind, slipping in mud, trying to avoid the reaching briars. I remember laughing inwardly, thinking, “this is absolute hell.” Soon I was joined by another runner (never got a name, only know she was from West Virginia), and we chatted for the last mile and encouraged each other to the finish. At some point, I mentioned that this was my first 50 miler, and she asked if I planned to do another one. I responded by saying that now was not the time to ask me that question... We knew were getting close when we could faintly hear cheering and a voice through a loudspeaker. We knew we were very close when we suddenly saw white Christmas lights strung through the trees and a large red clock showing that we'd made it inside the time cut with almost thirty minutes to spare. I crossed the finish line, heard my name announced over the loudspeaker, and bowed my head for a volunteer to hang a medal around my neck. Jordan finished about ten minutes later, and as it was cold and they'd run out of burgers, we quickly hobbled to the car, returning to the hotel for hot showers and some of the best pizza I have tasted in a long time.


Now that the legs are less sore and the swelling has gone down, I find myself already eying races for the future. Until Saturday, fifty miles was a distance to be covered over a week of hiking; now it's just a long day's work. And I had more to give at the end of the race; I could have kept going. And that makes me curious...


-Nathan



PS – The endurance test didn't end on Saturday, as I had to drive my standard transmission truck all the way back to Charleston; shifting gears after a 50 miler is no easy task...

Lookout Mountain 50 Miler: The Day I Fell out of Love with my Kinvaras

For the past three weeks, I have been traveling for interviews, dragging with me an embarrassing amount of luggage, including two separate pairs of Saucony Kinvara 3s.  One pair tends to cut into my heels but only has 100-200 miles on it, so I brought this pair for all my shorter runs.  The other pair broke in easily and had not rubbed on my heels, but it had 500 miles on it, so I carried these shoes to Pittsburgh, Greenville, Cincinnati, Rochester, and Columbus, just to wear for the Lookout Mountain 50 Miler in Chattanooga, TN.

In training for past 50s, I have run weekly mileages in the 60s with long runs every weekend working up to 6 hours or 36 miles.  Since starting my clinical years, I have not been able to maintain this schedule. With a front-loaded fourth year schedule, I struggled to get a few short weekday runs in a week with long runs occurring every 2-3 weeks.  I did manage a 5 1/2 hour mountain run 3 weeks prior to the race and I was counting on this to carry me through. I knew this training could allow me to finish, but no more, so I spent a lot of time preparing myself to be miserable for much of the race.  As such, the pace chart I wrote on my arm was quite conservative:

This race was Nathan's first 50 miler, and he drove up from Charleston to meet me for the race.  We were a little nervous about the weather: 39 degrees is perfect, but rain complicates things. We got to the race start, waited in the car awhile, dropped off our drop bags, and then decided to go back and sit in the dry car some more.  Nathan was very excited to start his first 50:

He perked up once we hit the trail.

400 runners were signed up for the 50 miler.  There were definitely not that many at the start.  I heard rumors that some people ran a few feet in the rain and then said, "Oh, nevermind," and turned around.  Not us.  We were in it to suffer.

Much of the first section was single track along a ridgeline.  The rain was falling and there were plenty of puddles.  The options were to step in the puddle or on the slippery edge of the cliff. I chose the puddles.  There was no hope of keeping feet dry anyway.  The result was that when Nathan and I arrived at the first aid station at 6.3 miles, my socks had fallen down in my shoes and my heels were already bleeding. I tried to pull up my socks but they were not budging.

The next 8.5 mile section was impressively easy.  It was about as similar to road running as wet trails could be, and largely downhill.  Nathan's easy pace is naturally faster than mine and he started inching ahead, then he would periodically wait up for me.  I needed to go to the bathroom anyway, so I thought this was a good time for us to split and each run our own race.  I took this opportunity to go to work on my socks. They would not pull up and I couldn't get a good grip.  I needed to take off my shoes if anything I did was to last more than a minute.  My hands were so numb that my fingers had lost all dexterity, so I eventually gave up struggling with my double-knotted shoelaces.  In the end, I wasted about 10 minutes and achieved nothing.  At the next aid station, I asked for band-aids (the ones I started with were long gone in the rain, which had since stopped). The band-aids, which probably took another 10 minutes for the friendly volunteer to apply, quickly fell off again and I decided that the sharp pains in my heels would simply be part of the race.

It was 7.7 miles to the next aid station.  It contained a climb, but the elevation chart had made it look so impressive that it didn't seem too bad while hiking it:

I probably went quicker than I should have on the uphill, running whenever I felt the grade was reasonable and hiking with some "umph."  I was eager to reach the next aid station though, because it had drop bags, and therefore...dry socks!  Once I arrived and found my drop bag (the struggle of this made me really appreciate my crew from past races), I changed socks and applied large bandaids to my heels.  My left sock was soaked in blood all the way done to my midfoot.  The new socks were wet again within about two minutes.  The band-aids were so heavy-duty they may have lasted a half mile.  But the key was that my new socks were too big for me and I pulled them way up, so there was no more shoe-on-skin the rest of the race.

The next section was miserable.  Absolutely incredible mud.  Mud with a mind of its own. Mud that slides intermixed with mud that slurps.

I like mud.  It gives you something to show for the day and distinguishes you from road runners.  This mud did not like me. It threatened to send me into the creek.  It left me stuck in a split with the kind runner behind me propping me up. It slammed my arm into a root when I fell later in the dark (although I do appreciate having the scrape and bruise to show off).  One runner asked me to step aside for her to pass in this mud.  I gladly did, but I had to ask, "How it is possible to run faster than I am in this?"  She shouted back, from 10 feet down the trail, that it was her shoes.  Huh. Road shoes with 500+ miles may not always be the answer.  Mercifully, we reached a point where there were leaves on top of the mud, or I would still be out there sliding around.

We climbed up a steep technical section that requires a rope to ascend, and the mud made the parts without the rope particularly harrowing.   I knew what my goal needed to be: to get back down this rope section before dark.  First there was more mud, and very narrow trail with the faster runners coming back.  It was hard to get any rhythm while having to jump off the trail every 30 seconds.  Eventually the aid station came, and there was just on quick 4.2 mile loop before last 11.8 miles of the course, which were largely the last (muddy) section in reverse.

Quick 4.2 miles.  Ha!  It went on and on.  Great trails, but I finished it thinking "That was never 4.2 miles!" a la Monty Python's "Argument Clinic."  I share this not because it's particularly witty, but because Nathan had the exact same thought when he hit this part of the course.  Talk about made for each other (or at least both brought up in households with an appreciation for British humor, I mean, British humour).

I pushed it to make it down the rope before dark.  It was so close that some of the folks who went down ahead of me already had their headlamps on, but I was able to wait to turn mine on until after reaching the bottom.  I left the last aid station around 10:39 into the race-- over 2 hours before the cut-off time of 13 hours, plenty of time to cover the last 7.5 miles.

Of course, I had been planning to run most of those miles.  My legs were tired, yes, but still up to a few miles of running.  Unfortunately, the combination of darkness, mud, and sometimes technical trails meant that it really wasn't possible to run much at all.  The pace we needed to maintain walking is quite easy on a treadmill, but in the mud it was another story.  Runners who had been strung out in singles over the previous 45 miles banded together in groups and together we marched to the finish. Considering my lack of training, I was not at all disappointed with my slowest 50 mile finish time of 12:44.  Nathan was there waiting, but I will leave him to tell you about his race.

I must have looked pretty rough at this point.  I was covering in mud and thought I had 17 "boos boos" until I discovered a few more in the shower today I missed when counting yesterday.  No pictures from immediately post-race, but here is what my heels look like 24 hours after finishing:

As I hobbled barefoot into the hotel, the security guard asked me, "Uh, ma'am, do you have a room here?"  Thankfully he didn't ask for my room number, because I could not have produced that information at the time.

In spite of the struggles, I'm very glad to have done the race. It was a welcome break from interview season and a long over-due return to ultrarunning.  As for the Kinvaras, they still have my love.  They just may not be my top pick for the next rainy trail race.

-Jordan