This race was a struggle for me last year as I was pretty sick and probably shouldn’t have been running. This year, I got off the wait list about 4 weeks out. Oh Snap! I’d not run more than 8 miles since Hellgate back in December! So I quickly got a 20 miler in 4 weeks out, and a 17 miler in 3 weeks out, as my only prep. But the philosophy is “The Event is Life,” and taking that to heart, I should be able to jump into just about any crazy adventure in a very short time period. So it’s not like I hadn’t been training, I just hadn’t done any long runs in 3 months.
My phone died early so I only have two photos from the course that I took!
The race photographer caught these two:
Casey and Riley surprised me at the finish, so I have these as well:
I ran much better this year — as I should have not being sick. 13 hrs 14 minutes compared to 14:22:51 — so over an hour faster. I was also 33rd out of 97 finishers and 120 starters. So not too bad for an old man that feels quite slow these days! I’ll take it!
My only real insights is that I’m a strong climber — this race has 3 major climbs and I did not get passed on one of them, but often passed 5 or more other runners. But most of the time, all of those I passed would fly by me on the downhills. I was once a good downhill runner, but as you get older, you get wiser (or more likely just scared). I do worry about blowing up the quads going too fast downhill too early, but there were also some technical trails here that are sketchy (to me) to take too fast.
Strava data:
Funny last year’s GPS data showed over 14k, which I know is wrong. But I think this course is closer to 12,500 not 11,608!
Nutrition was a base of vFuel and Tailwind, and I supplemented at the aid stations with whatever looked good. At the last aid, I grabbed a 1/4 grilled cheese and started back on course. About 20 steps in I took a bite and immediately turned around to get a couple more — they were so good!
Gear was Hoka Speedgoat 5, injinji toe socks, XO skin base liner with a TenThousand short above, and then the Hellgate Patagonia Capiline from 2021 up top, with a NorthFace vest when the weather got cold. I did wait too long to put on my injinji gloves climbing Mitchell, where the weather was mid 30’s and damp and windy. Should have put them on much sooner and I suffered for that. I didn’t bother changing into dry socks up top — I knew the trails down were going to be swampy and they were.
Shoutout to Brandon and Tanawha Adventures — they always put on great races. Great course, great aid stations, very well organized, etc.
2023 ended up having more races than recent years — I think I did 6 or 7 ultras — Uwharrie (40 miles) (10th time, I’m now retired!) (*), Mount Mitchell Challenge (40 miles), Mount Mitchell Heartbreaker (50 miles, 14k elevation), Grand Canyon adventure run (40 miles), Barkley Fall Classic (~35 miles, 12k of elevation, and Hellgate (66 miles, 13k elevation) .
I didn’t do any of the challenges I mentioned last year like a Everesting or vEveresting (bike) challenge, nor the marathon on the concept ii rower. I really need to make a list of these ideas and knock them out one at a time. Other adventures I need to get serious about are The Quad (4 state AT challenge), SCAR, etc. And I’ve actually never ridden a century on the bike! All things to think about in 2024 and beyond.
(*) I reserve the right to run Uwharrie again if some special reason arises!
Here come the normal graphs I track….
First up, elevation. So I’ve still not hit 365k in a year, and think that’s going to be tough until we live I the mountains some day! But it was still a good year at 308k (Strava graph further down shows 311k?). (I still think 2021 may have some elevation that shouldn’t be in there — Garmin DH mountain bike tracking counting the chairlift rides up, for example??)
Next up is total time… I always put in 550, not really sure why. 500 should be the goal, which I hit this year. :-)
Running – goal was 1000 and surprisingly I hit it!
Barely:
Riding – pretty low:
Strength training, was again a focus, and will remain so. Last year I had created some strength bench marks to shoot towards, and to be honest, I actually lost some strength. The way the year worked out with all the running races made it hard to make big gains in the gym. But I still spent a lot of time there and feel healthier for it!
And a few from Strava. This shows a pretty even split, I’d like to see biking increase a little.
And this shows the numbers here don’t line up exactly with the ones above, but they are pretty close:
Fairly even distribution on climbing, but the summer months when at the coast or Puerto Rico hurt!
This one is funny – it shows top 1% which I thought was impressive. But then I saw someone else post a 1% — yet she had nearly 3 times as many hours tracked as I did! So there are some real outliers in that top 1%
And that’s a wrap. I probably need to change the goals to time based (other than elevation), or just delete some of them and focus on the big two — total time and total elevation. Otherwise I sometimes track to those more than I should.
Plans this year – SMR relay run in April as an ultra (6-man team) and Barkley Fall Classic is it right now as far as races, but there are other things under consideration that may pop up. Just nothing that can be announced yet. :-)
Ah, Hellgate…. I’ve only run it twice now, but it has become as dear to me as Uhwarrie 40 and Barkley Fall Classic. Such a hard course — starts a at midnight and then 66.6 miles and ~13,000′ of elevation change over single track and forrest road (grass, gravel, rock), finishing at Camp Bethel.
I missed it last year — my application didn’t make it past the “race committee” (e.g. Dr. David Horton himself). Either my credentials weren’t up to snuff, or what I’m guessing (hoping!) – my attempt to send an electronic copy in from Greece via email didn’t meet the race’s old school method of snail mailing in an application once it’s posted to the Internet in early to mid October. I was in Greece celebrating my Dad’s 80th when the application was posted, so couldn’t print it and mail it. I tried to edit the RTF file (!!) on my phone, and formatting looked terrible. But I didn’t have much choice.
Anyway, I was able to get in this year and was excited to give it another shot. In 2021, I kind of fell apart after mile 45 or so with a tweaked knee and incredibly sore feet, so much so that I had to limp in much of the last 12-15 miles.
Kelly and I drove up in the van, scouted Aid Station (AS 5) in the daylight so she would know where to go (to sleep after the race start), grabbed some food at a little mountain cafe, and went to registration check-in and the pre race meeting at Camp Bethel. Horton is a hoot and the meetings are a ton of fun with a lot of laughs, yet the important messages are not lost in that fun atmosphere. After the briefing wrapped up around 8:30 or 8:45 pm, we opted to head right to the start rather than wait for the caravan to leave at 10:50. We arrived and a I spent a little time packing my gear, and then tried to rest. Rest never came so around 10:50 I got up, made coffee, and started getting dressed. Checked in with Horton at 11:40 or so, then waited for the 12:01 start.
The race went better this year than 2 years ago. I felt so much stronger and would have expected my times to be even better than they were, but I’m not complaining. The only real issue I had this time is temperature regulation. Starting at midnight, and running in the mountains up and down from elevations of 1500-2000′ difference means you will get some temperature swings, but it felt like it could have been a little more than that. There were points where I felt clammy running downhill if I ran moderate for more than 8-10 minutes. Daylight came, I met Kelly at AS 5 (mile 31 or so), changed clothes, and the clamminess never really came back.
While there are 9 AS’s I only have times for when Kelly met me and wrote them down, but it’s a good comparison of 2021. vs 2022. Note these are the “official” mile markers but everyone knows they are off and the total distance is much closer to 66 than 62… My times are in:out.
AS
Milage
Horton Time
My 2021 time
2022 time
1 – FSR35
3.5
12:45 am
2 – Petities Gap
7.5
1:37 am
3 – Camping Gap
13.1
3:13 am
4 – Floyd’s Field
22.4
5:38 am
5 – Jennings Creek
27.6
7:00 am
7:06 – 7:20
6:59 – 7:09
6 – Little Cove Mountain
34.5
8:33 am
7 – Bearwallow Gap
42.5
10:30 am
x – 11:16
11:04 – 11:05
8 – Bobblets Gap
49.5
12:00
1:00 – 1:04
12:48 – 12:51
9 – Day Creek
56.1
13:36
x – 14:32
14:51 – 14:54
10 – Finish
62.4
14:45
16:49
16:15
While the times improved steadily, the biggest difference here is the time from AS 9 to the finish. This year I was actually able to run down the last 3.5 miles, whereas in 2021 I had to shuffle as any uneven ground really hurt the knee.
That was good for 80th out of 120 finishers (145 starters) and 8th out of 15 (16 starters) in the grandmasters. I certainly don’t stack up in the results like I did 6+ years ago, but I’m going to blame that on running 20 miles per week (instead of 40-50), and carrying more muscle around. I probably train the same, if not more, in total hours, but I bike and lift a lot more than I did back then. Age is of course a factor too, I just don’t think it’s as big a factor as training changes. But maybe I’m kidding myself. :-)
Photos all from Kelly as I never got my phone out… In fact I didn’t even listen to the playlist I made until the last big climb!
A few screen shots from Strava data. For the HR, that was my Whoop (on my wrist) broadcasting to my Coros, not a chest strap. But looking at it, I would think fairly accurate. (In reality I felt like I was red lining a lot, but know that wouldn’t have been possible…)
That last one shows I definitely slowed in the last quarter of the race I little more than I would have liked — about 30 minutes slower than the 1st quarter. I do feel like my 1st mile or two was probably a little fast, but it felt pretty good so I went with it.
Why do I do hard things? My thinking on this has evolved over time, but being a student of the Big Barkley (and BFC is what I call little Barkley), I have better insight now. Big Barkley is arguably one of the most difficult athletic events in the world – out of more than 1000 starters over the race’s 30+ years in existence, there have been just 21 finishes by 17 different runners. I highly recommend the book “The Finishers: The Barkley Marathons,” for any one who wants to dig into the psyche of those who have tackled this course (which gets harder every time there is a finisher) and beaten it….
Final prep at the camp site — camp site 2 in Big Cove.My bike at the start — I again rode from my campsite to the start to avoid the parking crowd.
So back to why do I do hard things? Everyone reading this leads a life of relative comfort. How often do you either voluntarily or forcefully get taken outside of your comfort zone — to somewhere really dark and difficult? Probably quite rarely. On the one hand it’s a little silly to leave comfort, but then, rather than a life of quiet desperation, aren’t we all leading lives of banal/mundane complacency? And is that better — or worse? For me, getting out the door and doing really hard things is a big part of the joy I find in life. (And yes, I find joy in the little mundane things of life just as much!)
Beyond that, I have yet to sign up for a race that truly scares me, or one that I truly have a slim chance of finiishing. Ok, the elevation at Leadville scared me, as I had never run that high for that long before — but I finished. The weather at Pinhote was brutal — over half the field dropped due to hypothermia — but I finished.
Now, (spoiler) I’m 5 for 5 for the 50k finish at BFC, but this race still challenges me like no other. Every year it’s something different that makes it hard — though last year I really crushed it (and after this year I am more certain that was fluke!). Year 1, I cramped in my toes two hours in and the cramps slowly worked their way up my body hitting muscles I didn’t even know I had. Year 2, I was vastly undertrained as I had not run a single step for nearly 6 months at the start of the year. Year 3 was the Covid year, so there were all kinds of restrictions placed on the race — incredible Laz was able to make it happen. Year 4 – I crushed it. What would year 5 hold?
Quiet contemplation at the start of the race.
What challenged me this year? Man, this one is hard. My dad passed away 12 days before the race. I wasn’t even sure I’d make it to the start line. I did, but being so close to his passing, and my 1st big event after his passing, it was tough. For those that don’t know, my dad was an accomplished endurance athlete himself, as outlined in this article written in 2012 after he competed in Kona, in the Ironman World Championship:
And Dad was one of my biggest fans. Always cheering me on, commenting on the blog, etc.
The grieving process is weird. You go through an emotional roller coaster, and sometimes the dark valleys hit at the strangest times. For me, the 1st five hours of BFC was like that. I’m out there running my race, and grief hit. I’m thinking about my dad, and his life, and his athletic career, and my relationship with him, and my relationship with my family, and on and on. My mind was not on the race, and that is a really difficult place to be in such a difficult event — an event that truly takes mental engagement the whole time.
This year’s course entailed 5 loops, and at 1st glance it appeared easier (shorter and less climb) than last year. But each loop escalated in difficulty, and last year’s hardest section/loop, was moved later in the race, making it that much more difficult.
Mentally and emotionally I was ok (not good, just ok) on loop one and part of loop two:
Some shots from loop two:
But somewhere on loop two, things went sideways. First, my right ankle was on fire — I thought ants somehow got on me and were biting me but the stinging would not go away no matter how many times I swatted at it or rubbed it. I finally stopped to check on it, and there was a bee stuck in the sock that had kept sting me. Ugh. But later, on one of the last climbs, the emotion of Dad’s passing really hit. And on Quitter’s Road, a three to four mile section I should have been running, I was crying and walking — walking a lot more than is good for a shot at a finish.
I want to thank the runners that became my therapists on the trail — not just on Quitter’s Road, but at several stages on the course as well as the finish line. Just having someone to talk to at my low moments was a huge gift, and all of you provided kind words and an emotional lift when I really needed it..
Loop three was Chimney, which is typically my mental half way point, no matter where on the course it is. The false summits can be really demoralizing, and the climb just takes a lot out of you. Whatever happened to switchbacks? Parts of the trail literally go straight up the mountain. Somehow, as I climbed Chimney, I climbed out of my mental funk. My dad was an endurance athlete, he was a big fan of what I do, he would have wanted me “out there” on this day. And while I climbed out of my funk, I climbed into the fog. But at the summit and the long ridge that leads to the loop four, I finally started to feel better – like I could give this race the physical exertion it needs.
And then loop four came — and loop four is what the race is famous for. It’s a little insane, and I won’t describe it here again – you can read my previous race reports. Just know that the names Rat Jaw, Meth Lab, and Testicle Spectacle strike fear into the heart of many a runner. This out and back section is just a few miles, but it’s a few miles of insane off-trail climbs and descents, often bushwhacking through saw briers, sliding down scree, or scrambling up insane pitches.
Last year, descending Rat I got stuck behind a slow moving group, but this year I was farther back in the field and it was a lot more open (still a fair bit of bushwhacking, though enough runners had been through to make a little bit of a path) . I made good time but did get passed a couple times (which was a little disappointing – I had set a goal to not let anyone get by!).
Down Rat, through the tunnel, over the Prison wall, and run to Meth. Meth is hard to describe but at one place you look at where you are supposed to go, and it looks like wall. And the wall is when the rain hit — hard. I knew this was going to make the next few miles extremely difficult. There are literally 70% pitches that would be mud slides down, and brutal up.
Climbing meth — about the time the rain came in
Coming up Testicle I grabbed a stick to use to stab the ground and try to pull myself up, and on the downs, it became a self arresting “axe” — if you start sliding down, stab it in the ground and hope it stops you. I didn’t work out that well, but I held on to it as you can see below.
Down meth…
Rat was insane, up and down. I grabbed this shot from FB, not sure whose it was or I’d give credit. But I have to include it here as it captures the absurdity of it all.
Poor guy got his foot stuck
The climb up Rat probably took me at least 90 minutes and really took a lot out of me physically. There were times I’d climb 5-10 feet, and slide back down. You’d have to catch the fall, reassess, and try a new route. It was best to stay out of the mud and in the briers, but that meant you were semi-bushwhacking all the way up. For comparison, I typically climb Rat in an hour or just over. (Though in the covid year, in the cool temps with low humidity, I climbed in ~45 minutes.)
From Rat it was a 4 mile run down a typical Frozen Head trail — meaning rocky and rooty. At this point I knew I had a 50k finish in the bag, and I still wasn’t feeling it. So I set a goal to only get passed five times — and that’s what happened. Down the trail, on the road for a minute, through the woods, across a stream (which due to the rain was now nearly up to my waist, which did wash a lot of the mud off), and to the finish.
What a day!
I crossed in 12:14:48 for 78th place — last year was 12:02:57 for 28th place (a fluke!)… Out of ~400 starters, there were 135 50k finishers (~35% finish rate which is inline with historical rates). Ultra-signup is not showing the marathon finishers now, but I think it was about 80 more. So roughly 45-50% of the field did not get a marathon or 50k.
I am very happy to have achieved another 50k finish.
I can’t find my number from year 1. Note how my numbers keep getting lower — the more 50k finishes you have, the lower the number you get.
Thanks to Jenny and Misty the photographers — they do a great job, and conditions were awful this year. Misty was just above the wall on Meth in a tent, stepping out in the pouring rain to take photos whenever a runner came by.
And of course thank you to all the volunteers that make this race and so many others possible. As well as Laz, Durb, Bad Mike, who put it all together.
We started planning a Rim 2 Rim 2 Rim run many many months before the targeted date of April 18, 2023. But over the winter, we watched reports of serious snowfall, and worse, rock slides on the North Kaibab trail. A few in our original group decided not to go, but five us forged on. We had planned to go as far as we felt reasonably safe, and then turn around. There were reports of several runners making it al the way, but many more reports of people turning around. How far would we get? But then a few days before we flew out, the National Park Services closed the North Kaibab trail, and our hopes for a full R2R2R were finally off the table.
We opted to come up with an alternate route, including side trips to a few places we would have missed such as Plateau Point and Ribbon falls….. Route chosen was down Bright Angel to Plateau Point for sunrise, then back to Bright Angel continuing down to the river, crossing, hitting Phantom Ranch, and heading north until the trail was closed at Cottonwood. About a half mile short of Cottonwood there was a stream crossing that a few of the guys decided not to do, so we turned back. Then there was a major stream crossing to get to Ribbon Falls, which I had actually decided not to do, but then saw Hans on the other side, so across 2 of us went, while 2 more headed back to Phantom. The video makes this crossing look really sketchy, and maybe it was — but it was also relatively safe in that if you did slip and fall, you’d end up hitting the shore in short order without the chance of too much damage done. Ribbon was really worth it as you can see in the video. Then it was up South Kaibab, and 3 of us ran the rim trail back to Bright Angel, while 2 took the shuttle back.
I ended up with ~40 miles and ~8500′ of elevation.
I made a video include that here in lieu of photos….
A few more details….
Kelly and I flew out and met our friend Beth at the Airport. Riley and Casey also made the trip, with a slightly different itinerary.
But we saw them the 1st night at a great restaurant in Sedona, Javelina Cafe.
Met up with the guys, some for the 1st time, hung out in the canyon, etc.
Saturday I did a 6 mile hike down Bright Angel, partially scouting the trail to see if there was enough snow/ice to warrant spikes — there wasn’t.
Sunday I was up at 3:50, to get ready for our 4:30 a.m. start. The 1st issue was that our little hotel fridge had frozen my hard boiled eggs, and after one bite, I decided I would just put them in my pack and eat them later!
Riley and Casey had planned on just hiking to Bright Angel to Plateau Point, but when they were there by 9 a.m., and didn’t know what they’d do the rest of the day, they headed on to Phantom Ranch and up South Kaibab, turning a 12 mile day into a 22 mile day! I was shocked to hear Riley calling “Dad, Dad…” when I came in to Phantom Ranch from the north side!
Kelly and Beth planned on down South Kaibab, Phantom Ranch, and up Bright Angel, which they did, though they were both suffering at the end. I had finished up my run and could see them on Life360 not too far down, so decided to run down and hike up with them. While Kelly was surprised to see me, she was grateful I had a handful of potato chip crumbs leftover, just enough to give she and Beth the last bit of energy needed to finish.
I do hope to go back and run the full rim to rim to rim someday, as well as go back and backpack – it would be great to stay in the bottom of the canyon a couple nights someday.
And finally, I re-read this book leading up to, during, and after the trip. One of the all time great adventure books. And it reinforces my desire to some day take a wooden dory down the Canyon. With a guide, of course!
Ok, maybe a small photo gallery after all. Order is reversed — oh well!
Here it is almost 2 months later, so I better write something before I forget it all. This race was three weeks after the Mount Mitchell Challenge 40 miler, and I as I wrote there I was a little disappointed there was so much pavement in that one. So when I heard about this race and saw that it was almost entirely on trail, I signed up — even though it was so soon after the challenge! But I basically ran 5-10 miles per week at most in between, and felt recovered enough.
Tanawha Adventures puts on great races with great course, and this was no exception. The start and finish was at Camp Grier in Old Fort, and I was able to park the van the night before the race, and stay there again the night of the race. There was also great food the night before and at the finish line.
Because it’s been two months, bullet points:
Got sick two nights before, finally catching the crud that had been in the house the week prior, which I thought I had avoided. Still decided to drive up with the hope that I would feel better race day
Slept horribly due to illness, but still decided to start the race, to see how it goes
For the 1st couple miles, really thought I should turn around. But there was an option to drop from 50 miles to 55k at mile 15 (or was it 20?), so I thought I’d give that a go. (There was always the chance to drop at an aid station prior to that decision point, if it came to that.)
Eventually I reached a point where I didn’t feel awful, though I never felt great, nor even good. But I was trudging along making steady progress, albeit slowly.
The course was really hard — some gnarly technical trails with rocks and roots, some steep inclines and declines, and 3 massive climbs.
While the official race info stated 12,000 of climb, my GPS ended up at over 14k! I think that was likely a little high, but it wasn’t too far off.
I finally trudged in at 14 hours, 22 minutes, about 2 hours longer than I thought it would take. I attribute a lot of that to not feeling very well, though some was certainly due to the difficulty of the course.
And now just some photos:
(You may not be able to tell, but it poured in those 1st 3 images!)
This race has been on my bucket list since I ran the marathon back in early 2000’s (maybe 2002 or 2003?). I had either never gotten in via the lottery, or missed it due to Uwharrie being so close, or opted to do the Florida Sea 2 Sea 72 hour adventure race, which is often the same weekend. This year, they changed the lottery process so that everyone starts the marathon, and the 1st 250 runners that get to the marathon turn around point in time, can keep going.
The race was late February and I’m writing this in early April, so just bullet points:
I stayed in a boutique type hotel called The Monte Vista, which seemed quite nice. But unfortunately my room had an HVAC system right out side my 2nd story window that was acting up, starting and restarting, every few seconds, that kept me awake for a while. My room was also close enough to the open stairway leading down the lobby, bar, and restaurant, so it was quite noisy. Not good when you are trying to go to sleep early.
I woke up quite early with my bowels in serious distress. :-(. Luckily I had immodium and had to take several to calm things down. I don’t know if it was the Thai food the night before, or something else, but it was not a good start to the day! Luckily, the issue passed by the time l left my room around 6:45. (It was a very short walk to the start line!)
The race started and we headed slightly up on the paved roads to Montreat, before hitting trail around mile 3. I was taking it easy as I had no intentions of pushing having just run Uwharrie 40 miler 3 weeks prior. Nothing exciting here, other than it’s up up up.
About 2 hours and 50 minutes in, I hear a lady say something about “a race to the cut-off.” That was odd, I thought we had 4 hours to get to mile 14, not 3! We were a mile out, so I actually did have to push a little to make it in time. Got there in a group of 4 or 5 stragglers at 2:59! I would have been so upset if I had missed it — I had only come to run the Challenge not the Marathon!
Anyway, from there we headed out on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a bit, and then up the road to the summit. This is all paved, it’s raining a lot, and I thought we were supposed to take the trail to the summit. When I got to the trail, there were no race flags, so now what? I waited a couple minutes for runners behind me, and they didn’t know either. I decided to keep heading up the road. A few minutes later, the lead runners came flying down, and I asked them — they said pavement all the way! What!! I am not a roadie, and this was going to be 12 miles up and down to the summit and back to the trail that leads to town. All in all, of the 37-38 miles in the race, nearly 20 are pavement! (Race description says 40 miles but may Coros, which is usually very accurate, read 37 miles.)
The climb up was brutal weather. Cold, rainy, and windy. On the way down, my hands got really cold, but I knew I just had to keep moving, get to lower elevation, and I’d be fine.
The downs on the trail here are brutal — just lots of loose softball size rocks the whole way, so it can be slow going.
While I was in the last 4-5 runners to make the cut-off, I passed a lot of people from there on, and ended up 49th out of 72 finishers, in 7 hrs and 34 minutes. There were 170 finishers in the marathon. Many of those were there for the marathon, but some were there for the Challenge and didn’t make the cut off.
I ate a couple of hotdogs at the finish line, but walked back to the van, still parked at the hotel, toweled off, and went to My Father’s Pizza where I had a big GF Meat Lovers Pizza, a beer, and ordered the carrot cake to go. Drove the 3 hours home…
I missed Uwharrie in 2022 — dropped out the week before. I had COVID about two weeks out, and while I was feeling fairly recovered, I didn’t think it would be wise to push my body that hard… But I was bummed not to get that 10th finish. And while I was lacking motivation this year when sign up came around, I really wanted that 10th mug! So I signed up and did the training… Well, enough training to get by.
I won’t write much, just update the table:
Year
Time
Place
1st 20
2nd 20
2010
7:57 (short course)
30/71
2011
8:50:22
30/88
2012
7:57:17
27/148
2013
8:49:06
33/90
2015
8:05:07
17/88
3:49:13
4:14:32
2016
7:31:30
7/101
3:33:42
3:57:48
2017
7:43:54
9/94
3:29:04
4:14:18
2018
20 miler….
11/190
3:25:37
2019
Volunteer!
2020
8:10:01
9/73
3:46:30
4:22:07
2021
7:56:17
7/54
3:52:xx
4:04:xx
2023
8:56:23
22/78
4:11::00
4:42:42
I admit I’m a little disappointed in that 2nd 20… Thought I would have held up a bit more. But then again, my current training is 20 mpw (avg over the year, but with some bigger weeks before an ultra like this), so not sure I should have those expectations.
What I have found is that in a race like this, that I have run so many times, it is impossible not to compare my current self to my past self. How much of the slow down is due to age, how much due to how my training has changed, or how much is it something else?
I’m sure it’s a combination…. I know I shouldn’t compare, but it’s not in my nature not to.
(I would note that my total training time per week is likely the same, if not a little more now, but instead of running 40+ mpw, I’ve added a lot of time on the bike, and a lot more time in the gym. I think I’m probably healthier overall, and my current training is more geared towards health span than performance. But I’d still like to perform well!)
Morning after coffee… I now have 11 of the big mugs (volunteered one year), and 1 medium size mug (the one year I ran the 20).
Another year has come and gone, so it’s time to write a little about it. Last year, I shared that I only had 3 races planned, Uhwarrie 40, Florida Sea to Sea, and Barkley Fall Classic. Well, a couple weeks before Uhwarrie, I got sick, and while a week out I was feeling ok, I thought it wasn’t really wise to push the body as much as a 40 mile race would take. And I knew there was no way I could go to a race and not push. So I ended up racing just two events: Florida Sea to Sea and BFC. S2S was good — 73 hours across Florida on foot, bike, and boat, with lots of navigation, but the navigation can be frustrating due to the quality of the maps. And BFC was a great day for me — started pretty slow, but worked my way up to 28th overall out of 400 starters! I was very happy about that. Very tough course this year, too!
Last year I shared that I was keeping the same goals, so I’ll just share the graphs here which show again that I missed on most of them!
First up, elevation, and this was the lowest in 3 years! I still want to hit 365,000 one day, but that day likely will wait until we live in the mountains full time.
Next up, total time. Pretty close to 500 (though the goal was 550), and more than I’ve done the past couple years, but all in the same ballpark:
Running was basically in the middle of the past couple years, but still not even 1000 miles:
And next biking, my lowest in a while:
And next, strength training, which I had mentioned last year was going to be a focus going forward. And it certainly was this year, as you can see in the graph. I surpassed most of my strength goals (though not all of them) and find myself stronger now than I was back in Weightlifting 101 at NCSU in 1990!
And next just a couple more summaries from Strava:
Next year will be more of the same — running, biking, strength training as the focus, but always looking for outdoor activities like hiking and paddling. As of right now, I only have two races: Uhwarrie 40 and Mt Mitchell Challenge. The latter is a race I’ve tried to get into for years with no luck. This year they’ve changed it, so everyone can run the Black Mountain Marathon (which I did in 2002 or so), but if the Mt Mitchell Summit is open, the 1st 250 runners are allowed to go up. The rangers normally don’t give an indication of whether the summit will be open or not until just a day or two before, and I have to admit, I’m not that interested in running the marathon. So if the summit isn’t open, I may skip this. I am on the waitlist for BFC and do hope to run that again. And apparently I’m joining the Knight Crawlers for the Blue Ridge Relay again this year, but the “mountain goat hard legs,” that I got to run last year, are going to the ladies.
I do have at least one adventure planned — plane tickets and hotel room booked for Rim 2 Rim 2 Rim across the Grand Canyon with a group of friends that I’m really looking forward to in April. (This is something like 48 miles and 10,000’+ of elevation change). I still want to run the Grand Loop of the Linville Gorge (34 miles). Weather permitting, I may do the little loop (23 miles) there in a few weeks, but the Grand Loop is going to have to wait until after the February races.
I still have a couple crazy ideas I’d like to attempt, like an Everesting attempt either on bike or foot (or both!), maybe even a vEveresting attempt on Zwift. On a bike I’m looking at 12-15 hours, and on foot, probably 28-30, so they are serious undertakings. I also saw someone do a marathon (42k’) on a Concept 2, so that would be a challenge.
I’m still extremely focused on strength. While the extra muscle is a pain to carry around the mountain, I think it is much healthier going forward into my mid 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s! I’m intrigued by Peter Attia’s “Centurion Olympics,” where you backcast from goals you have in your marginal decade… Let’s just call that 80-90, or even 90-100, and what you want to be able to do then. (Examples: Load your own luggage on an airplane, hike 3 mph, get down on the floor to play with your great grandkids..) And then you work backwards. Things like VO2Max look good for me (though I need to continue to train both zone 2 and VO2Max!), but some of the strength goals were pretty far off. And I definitely need some mobility work! 🙂
Two benchmarks that he has mentioned are a dead hang for 120s and being able to farmers carry your body weight for 2 minutes. I’m up to 90s on the dead hang, but farmers carry is just at 2×35 and I need to get to 2×75! (I’ve not tried the latter at the start of a weigh training session, only at the end, so it’s a little unfair. I will do one of these at the start with 40 lbs and see how it goes. I have carried 75 for 45-60s but it recked me for the rest of the workout!)
I also created a table of strength benchmarks based on both my weight and age, and looked at what intermediate lifters can do. Then I set my target at the lower of those two numbers. Upper body strength is in-line or very close for pull-ups, bench press, overhead press, and bar row. But lower body strength for squats and dead lifts has some serious work to put in this year. (Note, if I don’t have a measured 1 rep max, I use 120% of my best 5×5. This worked out well for most of the lifts for me where I have both, so I think it’s a decent approximation.)
Here’s the chart as of today, a little small but this is the best way to share it.
I don’t know if I can make all those green by the end of the year, but I’m going to work towards it!
(I probably won’t post this for another week, after more photos are gathered, but wanted to at least write a little while everything is still fresh in my mind.)
(Still no photos so I think I’ll post now and either update later with photos or make a 2nd post instead!)
It’s six days later, and I’m still shocked and elated at my BFC performance this year! Even when I’ve not struggled at this race, my best finishes have been in the “top” 30-40%. Spoiler alert – this year I finished 28th out of ~400 starters for a top 7%!
2018 I was well trained but started cramping within the 1st two hours. Cramps moved from my feet, slowly up the body, to some muscles I didn’t even know existed, to my fingers cramping on my poles climbing Chimney Top. I think the only thing that didn’t cramp was my face! Despite the issues, I still somehow suffered through to a 50k finish, but learned my lesson — don’t burn too many candles too soon, especially in the heat and humidity. (It was a very HOT year!). Finished 108 out of 400+
2019 I was barely trained — I had taken off 6 months from running *completely*, from November 2018 to May of 2019, with ZERO running due to a sacrum/groin issue. (I had been on the bike and in the gym, though.) When I got the call to BFC in late August, I had run less than 200 miles all year, but could not resist saying “yes.” I had a more sane pacing strategy, but the lack of run volume caught up to me later in the race and my feet were shot. Finished 86th out of 400+
2020 was the covid year, when only ~120 runners started, and most of them had to have had a prior 50k finish.. It was a similar story to 2019 – lack of run volume caught up to me, but I probably felt the best I have at BFC, mainly due to an “easier” course, but also due to much color temperatures with a low dew point. Finished 37th out of 120+.
2021 – I got an invite 3 days out but had already made family plans to go to parent’s weekend at App State, including football tickets, etc. So I declined the invite. Laz made fun of me for going to parents weekend, saying:
i still remember my days in college ridiculing the students whose parents came to parents weekend.
Ha!
2022 — I ended up 29th out of roughly 400 starters! I’m still not running many miles, in fact my yearly totals to the start of BFC have been:
2018 – 1322
2019 – 200
2020 -737
2021 – 443 (did not run BFC)
2022 – 608
But I have been much more serious about strength training in 2022, and am still getting out on the bike (or “getting in,” on the bike trainer!) a fair bit.
Now, to back up. I had planned to stay with my friend Carey who had moved to Oak Ridge recently, but the week before I’d be driving to TN, I got an email from TN state parks saying “we look forward to seeing you!” I had totally forgotten I had booked a primitive camp site in Flat Fork nearly a year ago. (Big Cove had already sold out! So I decided to drive the van over and camp. I wasn’t 100% sure if I’d be allowed to sleep in the van, so I did take the time to set up my tent:
Beautiful camp site along the creek
After setting up I headed over to the football game to meet Carey and hang out. The runners got called out on to the field at half time, which ended up being a Coalfield blow out. I had not yet had dinner so I left after halftime and had a late Mexican dinner.
Friday morning I rode my bike around camp a little, and stumbled across Laz and crew at the start/finish area, so I jumped off and helped set up the barriers and helped hang the flags. After that it was off to packet pick up to get the maps, and then to the Prison to have lunch with a big group, study the maps more, reminisce, etc. After that I went to Starbucks to catch up on some work, grabbed some sushi from Kroger and headed back to camp, to put my gear together now that I knew the course:
It gets really dark early in Flat Fork, so I was probably sleeping by 9 p.m. I did wake up a couple times to check the time, but all in all, it was good sleep. I had set my alarm for 5:30 but when I woke up at 5:00, I decided I might as well get up and have a leisurely morning and enjoy my coffee:
Soon enough it was time to head to the start. I had decided to ride my bike the ~1.5 miles to the start rather than drive the van and have to park it in the crowded parking area, so I left Flat Fork pretty late, maybe 6:40. Got to the start at 6:50, locked up the bike, and started heading to the start line. I was probably in the front fifth of the pack when I realized I couldn’t see very well — I didn’t have my glasses on, and couldn’t find them!! Oh no! A little panic, but I went back to the bike to look around. They weren’t right at the bike, but about 15′ away where I had stopped to make some kind of adjustment to my pack or gear. Thank goodness — it would have been a VERY long day without my prescription sun glasses! I headed back to the start and ran into Carey. We were further back than I had been, but that was fine by me.
Pacing strategy was to take it easy to start — no more sprinting up Flat Fork road to get to Bird Mountain early to avoid the conga lines — especially this year when we wouldn’t go up the single track but would instead take Quitters Road up a few miles before hitting trails. I probably got to the yellow gate in 200-250th. I still took it easy up the climb, employing a 7-11 strategy — run 11 breaths, walk 7 — but only when the terrain wasn’t too steep. Too steep was all power hiking. I did pass a few here, but maybe 25 – 35 tops. Got to the 1st aid and just topped water and headed out as quickly as possible, probably passing another 15-20 folks who spent more time there than I did.
On the next two single track mountain sections, both up and down, I really started passing a lot of people. It’s a balance of not wasting energy, but also not losing too much time. I’m still glad I had started slowly, but a little bit of me wonders if perhaps the extra energy spent passing would have been better spent going just a touch faster at the start? At one point I was near some guys talking about their projected ultra-sign up finish times, and one was 13:21 (1 minute past cut-off), and another was even slower! I used that opportunity to say “I better get moving” and passed a few more. (Further conversation from those guys and one of them was a 7 for 7 50k finisher, but I felt good and wanted to keep moving.)
I don’t think there’s much need to do a play by play of the course, but will share a few photos:
Dropping into Rat going down, and coming off the bottom of Rat, bottleneck at the prison.
And I will share my splits here, which show the story — slow to start, and fairly steady climbing up the rankings after that.
The anomaly is 80th on Prison ->Tub , which includes the prison on going up Rat. About half way up Rat I was really suffering and on the edge of nauseuosness — due to a mistake I had made at the Prison aid station. I knew heading back after the difficult out and back section, I really needed calories and salt. So I took a little more time than normal there, putting in two tailwinds in one bottle and an LMNT electrolyte packet in the other. My mistake — really laziness — was not getting out my bladder and filing it with plain water. And due to the heat and effort climbing rat, I really really needed plain water! So I had to slow and take some breaks on the climb, find a little shade from the relentless heat. It is odd that the numbers show me in 80th on that section, but only lost 3 spots overall?? Maybe a lot of those 80 missed the cut-off there or at the next one?
Once the climb was over, including the fire tower, I slowly head down to Tub and got a lot of fresh plain water in me, as well as a little more food, before taking it slowly down SOM so I could recover. After that recovery (48th) I got back in the mid 20s (place per section) for the last leg and an overall finish of 28th.
Here’s another view pacing and placement that someone on FB put together that I thought was cool:
This shows the. drops per aid station as well as 50k finisher times per split and where I was.
I would add here that when I got the map on Friday, I wasn’t intimidated by anything, I had seen everything on the course other than part of the 50k finishing loop, but in talking to others, that wouldn’t be too bad. In hindsight, I was wrong about the Tub to Tub section — it was a really difficult out and back section covering all of the hard, out of park hills, in both directions. I had never been down Rat or up Meth before. As I was climbing Rat, I realized that it was going to do in a lot of people vying for the 50k finish, and I was right.
A couple of anecdotes. Love this Facebook post by Laz:
I can say for sure, the one part of the course I thought would be hard was going up Meth, and I was right! Really takes a lot of energy to crawl up the side of a “wall” that is really loose scree and sand!
The main interaction I had with Laz was as follows… I got the the Decision Point about 10 hrs 15 minutes into the race, and came in solo with not anyone I could see in front or behind. I see Laz up ahead and he yells:
“Marathon or 50k?”
I say “Be honest with me, if I go left, will I win the marathon?”
Laz: “Yes you sure would! You’d get that elusive 100% on ultra sign up, what’s it gonna be?”
Of course, there was only one answer. I came for the 50k finish, so a right turn it was, for another ~ 6 miles and 2500′ of up and down! 🙂
Showing he Croix with 3 stars and trying to show the cuts on my arms and legs….
Finished in 12:02 and some change, for 28th place, and my 4th 50k finish!
Gear: nike dry fit shorts, XO skin thin tight under neath, Stio Eddie button down (which I took off for the bushwhack sections — didn’t want to snag the shirt or get blood all over it!), injinji toe socks, bucket hat used only in the sun, Ultimate Direction middle size pack, goat skin gloves, naked running belt, Hoka Speedgoat 5.
Food: six packs (1200 cal) Tailwind; 500 cal Vfuel (gel, in a flask); 4 or 6 LMNT packs (electrolytes); 4 date rolls, half bar from the aid station at Tub, one Justin’s peanut butter cup at Tub outbound, as my “reward” for getting to my mental half way point. So maybe 2000 cal, or just over, for 12 hours. Overall I think I was fine on calories — the nausea on Rat was due more to not having plain water.
2sparrows 