Oh, it
feels so good to be writing a race report! After a 2 year+ hiatus from
ultrarunning, I ran the Dawg Gone Long 50 Mile race yesterday. My goal race for
the year is the Grindstone 100, which requires a recent 50 mile finish. Lucky
me, there was a local 50 mile trail race that only cost $40 (less than
$1/mile!) and I happened to have the day off.
Training for this race was minimal,
with weekly mileages ranging from 15-50 and longest runs of 24 tough trail
miles at Mt Airy and 30 miles mostly on road. Balancing a 12 month old son and
residency hours makes consistent running tough for someone who values sleep as
much as I do. I was impressively nervous. I HAD to finish this race to qualify
for Grindstone.
The course was 3 loops of a 16+
mile loop at Caesar Creek State Park, on amazingly runnable trail. If you were
in good enough shape, you wouldn’t have to walk at all on this course. Enter Thursday morning, when a thunderstorm/tornado hit, knocking hundreds trees
across the trail. Add in a high of 89. It was a tough race.
I always have a rough time with
heat, so I made a couple rules for myself: 1) I would walk one minute out of
every 10 for a least the first half of the race. 2) I would pee at least once
an hour.
The race started with a road
out-and-back to make up for a section of the loop that had been cut for downed
trees. Down into the gorge we plunged and then back up a steep hill that made
it easy to keep my promise to walk early. I fudged on the walking rule a few
times this lap because of the line of people I found myself in, We waited our
turn to climb over huge trunks, pick through branches and leaves, and crawl
through underbrush on many detours from the original trail. One detour even
took us down a hill we had just climbed and then back up again. I expect all of
us to break out with poison ivy rashes tomorrow.
I started the second lap at 3:53,
and soon found myself running with a woman named Stephanie. She had run her
first 50K 3 weeks ago and found she could have kept going, so she signed up for
this race. She was worried about making the cut-off of 8 hours for 2 loops and
not being allowed to continue forward. I hadn’t been worried about this, but now
I was! She gave me the adrenaline boost I needed to power through the second
loop. We ran together most of the way, and I finished the loop at 7:35.
Comforted that I would finish, I
set off on the last lap with a woman named Nicole, who was much faster than me
but walking more often so we went back and forth for awhile. I saw one other
man, but otherwise ran the third loop alone. It was especially discouraging to
run through spider webs; there was definitely no one close enough to bother
trying to catch. I mostly kept up my walking one minute out of every 10 with
only a little trouble from nausea, much less than I usually have in the heat. My
IT band flared up for the last 7 miles, probably giving me a funny limp, but
not to the point that I had to walk. I stubbed my toes a few times, apparently
causing throbbing hematomas beneath both of my big toenails. I finished in
11:49:10, and was surprised to learn that this earned me 3rd female.
Aside from finishing, I was most
excited that I was able to manage the heat by keeping a slow pace and giving
time for my gut to absorb the water I needed to stay hydrated. It ended up
being a great training run for Grindstone!
The aid stations were great, with
several of my running friends Pat Farrell, Steve Hamilton, and Geoff Peterson
manning them and making my feel like I had my own crew at the race. I didn’t
take much more than PB&J and bananas from them, sensing my stomach couldn’t
tolerate anything else, but they had a nice spread. Instead, I ate more shot
blocks than I care to again for a few months.
Thanks so much to the race
directors, volunteers, and Nathan and Fuller for coming out to cheer! Time to
knuckle down and train for Grindstone.
-Jordan
