Race Report:
Weiser River Trail 50K Relay and Ultra
04-27-2013
Most of you know this story REALLY begins either 20 years or 2 years ago when I started running the first and second times. But, we don't need to go back that far. How about to five months ago when I decided to train for a Marathon? To train, I used the Plan provided by my Run/Walk group and stuck to it. Week after week, month after month, logging the miles: building a base, increasing mileage, working in recovery weeks, then the taper.
On New Year's Eve, I ran 14 miles, which was my longest run yet. Then, a few weeks later I went for 16 miles. Then 18. Then 21 ... 23!
Somewhere along the way, I sent a message to the directors for the Marathon I had chosen asking about the route. I wanted to drive it, bike it, and run segments of it before event day. This is when I discovered that the event I had so *carefully* chosen had changed from a loop all the way around a lake to an out-and-back. I was so disappointed! I didn't want just to run a Marathon, I wanted an *experience*, and now I wouldn't have that caché of saying "Yeah, I ran around the lake". So, I decided to find another event within the same time-frame that fit my criteria, and discovered the "Weiser River Trail 50K Relay and Ultra".
Most Marathons are road races. What makes an Ultra, "ultra," is not only the greater distances (50K, 50 Miles, 100K, 100 Miles, +++!), but they are usually also on trails, over mountains, through various extremes of terrain and weather. A chance to test your mettle. However, this particular event seemed to offer the best of both worlds. As a "rails-to-trails" route, it has gentle changes in elevation so it's not your typical ultra, but you still get off the pavement, and of course, there is the distance. It didn't take me long to rationalize the extra distance. 5 more miles? Meh. No problem. Sign me up!
I worked a half-day on Friday, then came home and gathered up my stuff and off we went to Council, ID. We checked into the Starlite Motel and it was like checking into 1967. Although dated, the room was clean and we all slept well. I popped up right away with my alarm at 6:00 am on Saturday morning and started getting ready. I tried to keep to my usual routine as much as possible. Caffeinated drink, check. Get dressed, check. Potty, check. I was so jazzed I almost forgot to eat! Eat ... check!
We had scoped out the starting line the night before, and found that it was just half a mile up from the motel. I decided to walk to the start from the motel. This would allow me to burn off some nervous energy in a productive way, plus get a proper warm-up (which I often skip, much to my regret.) At about 7:30 AM, I gave Husband and Deedle a kiss, and off I went, with promises for the family to meet me at the checkpoints. After checking in to get my timing chip and another trip to the restroom, I walked over to the starting line for an early start. As an early starter, I would be self-reporting my time even though I had the timing chip for the finish. The starting mats were in place, but still inactive; however, this allowed me to make sure I began at the same spot as everyone else. This was important to me -- I didn't want to "cheat" the course in any way. I queued up RunKeeper, and at 8:05 AM I heard the familiar voice state, "Activity started." I tucked my phone in my bag and started trotting.
What a stupendous morning! Mild temps, clear skies, just the slightest breeze. Birds were chirping -- the red-winged blackbirds' "krrrrr! krrrrr!" and meadowlarks' "bloopity bloopity bloop! bloopity bloopity bloop!" The surface of the trail was packed dirt and gravel, like a fire road, and just like the levee of the Canal near home on which I've been running. I felt very fortunate to have been practicing on the same surface as the event.
My pace felt strong and steady, and that became my mantra, "Strong and steady". With 31 miles to go, I wasn't going to push it, but as long as I felt good, I wasn't going to hold back either! I reached the first aid station, right at the 10K (6.2) mile mark in 1:10. I could see that I was holding about 12 min mile, or 5 miles per hour. Husband and Deedle ran me in to the second aid station at 13.1 miles (the half-marathon mark). My watch said 10:40 AM. Time on course: 2:35. This was a good, solid pace. Still holding steady. The third leg would be the longest, 9 more miles to the next checkpoint at Mile 22.
I had run mileage in the low teens many times, but I had only gone into the 20's twice (21 & 23). Here is where I would discover if my training was good enough. I would find out if I was eating and drinking enough. My event strategy had several aspects. First, pace. I have been using the run/walk method as a technique for covering long distances. Different folks have different intervals. I take a walk break every mile, which works out to running about .9 and walking for a tenth of a mile or so, about every 10 minutes. At each walk break I use a hankie, drink some water, maybe put on some lip balm. Depending on the distance, I also take this opportunity to eat.
Fueling and hydration are other major aspects of the strategy. I've discovered that the farther I go, the more I need to EAT! On my final long training run of 23 miles, I didn't take in enough fuel and I bonked. It was a painful slog back to my car. I really didn't want to experience that again, so based on tips I picked up from nutrition seminars hosted by my running group (Boise Run/Walk) and reading the biographies of champion ultra runners, I developed a plan to start fueling even earlier and more often. For this event, I planned to eat *every* mile, in a pattern like this: newton, newton, gel. The idea was to keep a steady source of fuel, and stay ahead of the curve of glycogen depletion from my liver and muscles. One's gut can absorb approx 300 calories an hour, but at my pace I was burning 500-600 calories an hour. If I fell behind in supplying energy, I wouldn't have a chance to play catch up!
Academically, I understood that the mental aspect of the event would be interesting. It didn't faze me that a 50K, at 31 miles, is five miles farther than the Marathon's 26.2. But one day it hit me that 50K is *20*percent* longer than a marathon! Given that my longest event to date was a half-marathon, I questioned my ability (and sanity) to skip right past the marathon and go 20% farther. How could I break this into units I could comprehend, yet still abstract enough that I stopped freaking myself out? Five 10K's? One mile, 31 times? I decided I liked the feel of "Ten 5K's". At mile 21 I could say, "Seven down, three to go!"
As I progressed through those next nine miles, things started feeling a little tougher. I had already shed my layers. The gloves went quickly around mile 3, I left my undershirt at the first checkpoint, and my long tights at the second. The temps were rising now, and there was little shade. Thank goodness for my goofy skirted hat! Also at this point, the first of the folks who started at the regular time of 9:00 began to overtake me and pass me up. This was a mixed bag. One the one hand, it was nice to be reminded that I wasn't out there alone, but it's tough to watch folks who started an hour later than you breeze on past. My pace started to slip; I knew it would, but would I bonk?
Talk about testing my mettle! I concentrated on steady breathing with each footfall -- out, out, out, in, in. out, out, out, in, in. I did pace calculations in my head. I did "form check" and worked through my posture, head to toe: Chin down, shoulders dropped and back, chest out, back straight, arms loose, hips tucked, short stride, quick footfalls. The phrase "Slipped a little off your pace" triggered the Van Halen song "Right Now" to play in my head over-and-over-and-over. But also, blissfully, for stretches I didn't think about anything at all and just enjoyed the scenery. The hills were lush and green, dotted with the cheery, bright yellow bunches of arrowleaf balsamroot, serenaded by birdsong.
I continued drinking and eating every mile, newton, newton, gel. Even so, my mouth was getting dry and it was harder to choke down the newtons. Moist and chewy had turned to gummy and pasty. My stomach was flitting on the borderline of queasy. I didn't want to get sick out there (that's one rite of passage to "real" ultra runner I plan to put off as long as possible!) I started wondering if in my plan to stay ahead of the glycogen curve, I might be eating too much, so I skipped eating for a mile here and there: gel, --, newton, --, newton, gel.
In my waist pack, I carried two-20 oz water bottles. At the rate of about a bottle an hour, I should have had plenty to get me through the 9-mile segment between aid stations #2 and #3 -- but I was only halfway in and almost dry! I started to consider rationing my water for the next few miles, when one of the volunteers riding sweep on his ATV 4-wheeler came along. Saved! Dragging tail I loped up to the third station, carried in by the dulcet tones of a lone Cowbell, where the volunteers had icy Popsicles waiting. Saved again! Distance: 22.2 miles. Time: nearly 5 hours. Only 9 miles to go!
Refreshed, I headed off again. Five miles to the next station at mile 27, just past the Marathon mark. If I had run up to 13-14 miles many times, and up to 22 miles only twice, now I was truly heading into uncharted territory. As tired as I felt, I still had no doubt I could finish the event. The question was, how strong could I finish? I figured the "worst" that would happen is that I would have to walk. As someone joked before the race -- he knew he wouldn't die out there. If in trouble, he'd just lie down and wait for the sweep! Even so, I was aiming for a victorious "Chariots of Fire" finish, not crawling across the line.
Shortly after setting off, I saw a beacon of blue bobbing towards me ... it was Rich! another of the Coaches from my Run/Walk group! He knew several people in the race and came up to help out on the course and be part-of. He had run out from the finish to meet me and pace me in. Suddenly, the final miles looked a little brighter. With his boost, I passed the Marathon mark with an unofficial time of about 5:45. My darling girl ran me into the fourth and final aid station. Mile 27. Four miles to go. I glanced at my watch on the way out and saw 2:05 PM. Six hours on the course.
The last leg of the journey is mostly a blur. Due to the staggered start, there were all kinds of people meeting up on the course as we funneled into the finish. I played leapfrog with a couple of other tired solo runners as we alternately ran and walked. All of us were passed by relay runners on fresh feet. I couldn't recall the last time I had taken a salt tab, so I took another one. I hadn't gone pee since mile 13. When my phone chirped another mile and it was time to eat, I was ready to chuck my baggie of fig newtons into the river! After the walk break, I broke back into a trot with a grunt of effort.
But then, miraculously, the Angel of RunKeeper said, "Distance. Thirty. Miles." Was it really true? Just one mile left! The home stretch! My brain snapped out of the Twilight Zone. I stood up straighter, and my pace perked back up again. Since Rich had run out to meet me and was on his way back in, he knew that just around the next bend we could see the finish. When we rounded that curve and I saw the little white shack that marked Midvale City Park and the Finish line, I now knew what was meant by the phrase, "the horses can smell the barn!"
We were about a quarter mile back, the shed just a speck up ahead. I looked at my watch. 3:00! I had five minutes to come in under seven hours! Time to dig deep and tap into those reserves. I took a long breath, then did my best to pick up the pace. "Faster, breathe, faster -- wait! Not too much, still a ways to go. Hold on, hoooooooold on ... ok, Crank it!"
DONE! Whooo! 50 kilometers. 31 miles. Time: 6:59.
Somewhere along the way, I sent a message to the directors for the Marathon I had chosen asking about the route. I wanted to drive it, bike it, and run segments of it before event day. This is when I discovered that the event I had so *carefully* chosen had changed from a loop all the way around a lake to an out-and-back. I was so disappointed! I didn't want just to run a Marathon, I wanted an *experience*, and now I wouldn't have that caché of saying "Yeah, I ran around the lake". So, I decided to find another event within the same time-frame that fit my criteria, and discovered the "Weiser River Trail 50K Relay and Ultra".
Most Marathons are road races. What makes an Ultra, "ultra," is not only the greater distances (50K, 50 Miles, 100K, 100 Miles, +++!), but they are usually also on trails, over mountains, through various extremes of terrain and weather. A chance to test your mettle. However, this particular event seemed to offer the best of both worlds. As a "rails-to-trails" route, it has gentle changes in elevation so it's not your typical ultra, but you still get off the pavement, and of course, there is the distance. It didn't take me long to rationalize the extra distance. 5 more miles? Meh. No problem. Sign me up!
I worked a half-day on Friday, then came home and gathered up my stuff and off we went to Council, ID. We checked into the Starlite Motel and it was like checking into 1967. Although dated, the room was clean and we all slept well. I popped up right away with my alarm at 6:00 am on Saturday morning and started getting ready. I tried to keep to my usual routine as much as possible. Caffeinated drink, check. Get dressed, check. Potty, check. I was so jazzed I almost forgot to eat! Eat ... check!We had scoped out the starting line the night before, and found that it was just half a mile up from the motel. I decided to walk to the start from the motel. This would allow me to burn off some nervous energy in a productive way, plus get a proper warm-up (which I often skip, much to my regret.) At about 7:30 AM, I gave Husband and Deedle a kiss, and off I went, with promises for the family to meet me at the checkpoints. After checking in to get my timing chip and another trip to the restroom, I walked over to the starting line for an early start. As an early starter, I would be self-reporting my time even though I had the timing chip for the finish. The starting mats were in place, but still inactive; however, this allowed me to make sure I began at the same spot as everyone else. This was important to me -- I didn't want to "cheat" the course in any way. I queued up RunKeeper, and at 8:05 AM I heard the familiar voice state, "Activity started." I tucked my phone in my bag and started trotting.What a stupendous morning! Mild temps, clear skies, just the slightest breeze. Birds were chirping -- the red-winged blackbirds' "krrrrr! krrrrr!" and meadowlarks' "bloopity bloopity bloop! bloopity bloopity bloop!" The surface of the trail was packed dirt and gravel, like a fire road, and just like the levee of the Canal near home on which I've been running. I felt very fortunate to have been practicing on the same surface as the event.
My pace felt strong and steady, and that became my mantra, "Strong and steady". With 31 miles to go, I wasn't going to push it, but as long as I felt good, I wasn't going to hold back either! I reached the first aid station, right at the 10K (6.2) mile mark in 1:10. I could see that I was holding about 12 min mile, or 5 miles per hour. Husband and Deedle ran me in to the second aid station at 13.1 miles (the half-marathon mark). My watch said 10:40 AM. Time on course: 2:35. This was a good, solid pace. Still holding steady. The third leg would be the longest, 9 more miles to the next checkpoint at Mile 22.I had run mileage in the low teens many times, but I had only gone into the 20's twice (21 & 23). Here is where I would discover if my training was good enough. I would find out if I was eating and drinking enough. My event strategy had several aspects. First, pace. I have been using the run/walk method as a technique for covering long distances. Different folks have different intervals. I take a walk break every mile, which works out to running about .9 and walking for a tenth of a mile or so, about every 10 minutes. At each walk break I use a hankie, drink some water, maybe put on some lip balm. Depending on the distance, I also take this opportunity to eat.
Fueling and hydration are other major aspects of the strategy. I've discovered that the farther I go, the more I need to EAT! On my final long training run of 23 miles, I didn't take in enough fuel and I bonked. It was a painful slog back to my car. I really didn't want to experience that again, so based on tips I picked up from nutrition seminars hosted by my running group (Boise Run/Walk) and reading the biographies of champion ultra runners, I developed a plan to start fueling even earlier and more often. For this event, I planned to eat *every* mile, in a pattern like this: newton, newton, gel. The idea was to keep a steady source of fuel, and stay ahead of the curve of glycogen depletion from my liver and muscles. One's gut can absorb approx 300 calories an hour, but at my pace I was burning 500-600 calories an hour. If I fell behind in supplying energy, I wouldn't have a chance to play catch up!
Academically, I understood that the mental aspect of the event would be interesting. It didn't faze me that a 50K, at 31 miles, is five miles farther than the Marathon's 26.2. But one day it hit me that 50K is *20*percent* longer than a marathon! Given that my longest event to date was a half-marathon, I questioned my ability (and sanity) to skip right past the marathon and go 20% farther. How could I break this into units I could comprehend, yet still abstract enough that I stopped freaking myself out? Five 10K's? One mile, 31 times? I decided I liked the feel of "Ten 5K's". At mile 21 I could say, "Seven down, three to go!"
As I progressed through those next nine miles, things started feeling a little tougher. I had already shed my layers. The gloves went quickly around mile 3, I left my undershirt at the first checkpoint, and my long tights at the second. The temps were rising now, and there was little shade. Thank goodness for my goofy skirted hat! Also at this point, the first of the folks who started at the regular time of 9:00 began to overtake me and pass me up. This was a mixed bag. One the one hand, it was nice to be reminded that I wasn't out there alone, but it's tough to watch folks who started an hour later than you breeze on past. My pace started to slip; I knew it would, but would I bonk?
Talk about testing my mettle! I concentrated on steady breathing with each footfall -- out, out, out, in, in. out, out, out, in, in. I did pace calculations in my head. I did "form check" and worked through my posture, head to toe: Chin down, shoulders dropped and back, chest out, back straight, arms loose, hips tucked, short stride, quick footfalls. The phrase "Slipped a little off your pace" triggered the Van Halen song "Right Now" to play in my head over-and-over-and-over. But also, blissfully, for stretches I didn't think about anything at all and just enjoyed the scenery. The hills were lush and green, dotted with the cheery, bright yellow bunches of arrowleaf balsamroot, serenaded by birdsong.
I continued drinking and eating every mile, newton, newton, gel. Even so, my mouth was getting dry and it was harder to choke down the newtons. Moist and chewy had turned to gummy and pasty. My stomach was flitting on the borderline of queasy. I didn't want to get sick out there (that's one rite of passage to "real" ultra runner I plan to put off as long as possible!) I started wondering if in my plan to stay ahead of the glycogen curve, I might be eating too much, so I skipped eating for a mile here and there: gel, --, newton, --, newton, gel.
In my waist pack, I carried two-20 oz water bottles. At the rate of about a bottle an hour, I should have had plenty to get me through the 9-mile segment between aid stations #2 and #3 -- but I was only halfway in and almost dry! I started to consider rationing my water for the next few miles, when one of the volunteers riding sweep on his ATV 4-wheeler came along. Saved! Dragging tail I loped up to the third station, carried in by the dulcet tones of a lone Cowbell, where the volunteers had icy Popsicles waiting. Saved again! Distance: 22.2 miles. Time: nearly 5 hours. Only 9 miles to go!Refreshed, I headed off again. Five miles to the next station at mile 27, just past the Marathon mark. If I had run up to 13-14 miles many times, and up to 22 miles only twice, now I was truly heading into uncharted territory. As tired as I felt, I still had no doubt I could finish the event. The question was, how strong could I finish? I figured the "worst" that would happen is that I would have to walk. As someone joked before the race -- he knew he wouldn't die out there. If in trouble, he'd just lie down and wait for the sweep! Even so, I was aiming for a victorious "Chariots of Fire" finish, not crawling across the line.Shortly after setting off, I saw a beacon of blue bobbing towards me ... it was Rich! another of the Coaches from my Run/Walk group! He knew several people in the race and came up to help out on the course and be part-of. He had run out from the finish to meet me and pace me in. Suddenly, the final miles looked a little brighter. With his boost, I passed the Marathon mark with an unofficial time of about 5:45. My darling girl ran me into the fourth and final aid station. Mile 27. Four miles to go. I glanced at my watch on the way out and saw 2:05 PM. Six hours on the course.The last leg of the journey is mostly a blur. Due to the staggered start, there were all kinds of people meeting up on the course as we funneled into the finish. I played leapfrog with a couple of other tired solo runners as we alternately ran and walked. All of us were passed by relay runners on fresh feet. I couldn't recall the last time I had taken a salt tab, so I took another one. I hadn't gone pee since mile 13. When my phone chirped another mile and it was time to eat, I was ready to chuck my baggie of fig newtons into the river! After the walk break, I broke back into a trot with a grunt of effort.
But then, miraculously, the Angel of RunKeeper said, "Distance. Thirty. Miles." Was it really true? Just one mile left! The home stretch! My brain snapped out of the Twilight Zone. I stood up straighter, and my pace perked back up again. Since Rich had run out to meet me and was on his way back in, he knew that just around the next bend we could see the finish. When we rounded that curve and I saw the little white shack that marked Midvale City Park and the Finish line, I now knew what was meant by the phrase, "the horses can smell the barn!"
We were about a quarter mile back, the shed just a speck up ahead. I looked at my watch. 3:00! I had five minutes to come in under seven hours! Time to dig deep and tap into those reserves. I took a long breath, then did my best to pick up the pace. "Faster, breathe, faster -- wait! Not too much, still a ways to go. Hold on, hoooooooold on ... ok, Crank it!"
photo credit: Wayne Ebenroth
DONE! Whooo! 50 kilometers. 31 miles. Time: 6:59.
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