After spending the 4 days post 50k trying to figure out if I should run the 12 hour or not (see prior post), I decided literally at the last minute to not run solo but to run a relay with Kelly and Leslie Ann.   Registration closed at midnight Thursday and we were signing up around 10 p.m.

Running on a team would give me the ability to push the individual loops if I felt like it, but also back off my loops if needed.  And really, as we weren’t going to be competitive, to stop running all together if necessary.

I’d never run a relay before, and wasn’t sure I’d enjoy it.  I really like being out there solo all day!  However, I must say I did enjoy the day.  And who wouldn’t with a base camp like this:

And a support crew like this:

and a team like this:

In the end one of the most fun things was watching the top two teams compete.  One team was a group of young ladies (two 12 year olds and a 13 year old), and the other was a team of seasoned veterans.  (Aka old guys and gal.  🙂  )

The girls were fantastic — all of them ran 9 loops of the 2.93 mile course, to complete their first “marathon.”  They literally pushed the veterans all day and in fact had the lead in the last two hours or so of the race.  In the end the veterans had just a bit too much… They came in ahead by just a few minutes on the 27th loop, and the girls opted to quite at 9 each, while the winning team went out for one more loop.  79.11 vs. 82.03 was the final tally, but again the girls could have gotten in one more loop, they just would not have made up the time difference.

Here’s a shot of all 3 teams:

My team ended up with 67.39 miles and here’s my strava data — I opted to treat each loop as it’s own run:

I did run a double as my last outing so we could eek in one more loop before time expired.  I’m trying to track down my individual splits and will update this post if I can find them…

MST 50K was a bit of a strange race for me… The 1st half, I was pretty down on myself, but in the end I turned it around and had a great result.  I tried to capture my thoughts in an email to Lucho so I’ll just include those here:

First half negative thoughts:

• this effort is to hard for the pace I see on my GPS
• this course is too runnable — I need hills where I can power hike!
• I’m much more suited to Uhwarrie
• the turn around was actually a lollipop so i couldn’t see where the front runners were nor how I was doing

Second half turn around

• I put on music which may have helped distract me from negative thoughts
• someone finally yelled out I was 15th, and I realized I wasn’t doing as poorly as I felt
• I started passing a couple of runners and started gaining confidence
• my avg pace on my GPS was not going down

I ended up passing 8 runners on the way in and finished in 7th overall…  With almost an even split.  Strava race analysis:

Results:

More people ran negative/near even splits than I expected — at least compared to Uhwarrie 40!  I’m quite happy with just the 4 minute difference…

Food:  4 vfuels, 4 date rolls, 1 small cup (2 oz?) of Mountain Dew, for a grand total of < 500 calories in just under 5 hours

Gear — nearly the same set up as Uhwarrie…

In that same email to Lucho I also outlined my dilemma on running the Jordan Lake 12 hour 6 days later:

Jordan Lake 12 hour

PROs

1. it’s on what I consider “my trail” – my favorite that is close by
2. Last year I was leading up to maybe hour 8, even though I was fighting a painful stomach (I had been in Mexico right up until Monday of the Saturday race!
3. Last year’s data:  https://www.strava.com/activities/288073632
4. Great training for the 100 — though this race only does the front half of the trail which is not nearly has hill as the back half
5. It’s a loop course so it’s easy to stop running any time…
6. I’ll be in Europe next week (PRO and CON) but the PRO is that this trip is likely to have little to no time to run as I’m in London a day and a half then fly to Munich a day and a half then back to London one night at the airport before flying back home!

CONs

1. Is my body ready?  Is it too risky?  (injury/fatigue)
2. Risk of mental burn out — 3 big runs in 3 weeks, though the 1st two have been good so far, even with the negative 1st half of the 50k I turned it around…
3. The race would be over at 7 p.m. and I have to be on a flight to London all night, 23 hours later
4. Time away from family the day before I fly to Europe for the week  
   1. (Though my wife may run on a relay team and the kids would be out for part of the race most likely and maybe my son would even do a lap with me later in the race now that he has his cast off.)

Lucho and I discussed on the phone and we decided to see how the week played out.  I ran three miles each on Wednesday and Thursday, and the Thursday run I was starting to feel good, but stated I didn’t feel ready to run 2 or 3 hours at MAF come Saturday.   Lucho responded, but you’ll have to read the next post to see how that panned out.  🙂

My friend Jason Tischer asked me to pace the last two loops of the Umstead 100 for him (a race with eight 12.5 mile loops).  I was worried because Jason is FAST, and I didn’t want him to have to drop me because I was slowing him down!  But I agreed to it and I’m glad I did.

It was a bit complicated because Kelly, the kids and I were up in the mountains the day the 100 started, and we had to pack up, clean up, and get home.  Umstead started at 6 a.m. and I had signed up to receive text alerts for Jason’s splits at the start/finish and halfway points of each of the eight 12.5 mile loops.   They started rolling in while we were still in the mountains, and I began to worry that he was going so fast that I’d have trouble getting there in time!

On the drive home the kids wanted to eat Chipotle, and while I was worried about the time, we made a quick pit stop, then went on to home.  I had just enough time to unpack the car, grab my lights (which needed to be charged!) and other gear, and drive the 45-60 minutes over to the park.  Alerts kept coming in keeping me up to date, and I figured I had just enough time to grab and iced americano outside the park to “fuel up” and get to the start.  I ended up with about 40-45 minutes to spare, which was good.

While waiting, I discovered that Jason was in 1st!  Now the pressure was really on.   We headed out on the 1st loop but his lead had been cut in half by the 2nd place runner — the 1st place female.  We’d be watching the splits the rest of the way.

Jason was hurting after 75 miles but still strong enough to run everything, and there are roughly 1000′ of elevation gain per loop!  I’m the kind of ultra runner that power hikes all the hills, but I ran them all with Jason.  The pace was such that I was able to run ahead and refill his bottles, etc.

Jason slowed on the 2nd half of the 1st loop, but when we got back to the start/finish to start the final loop and heard his lead was down to single digits, he got some umph back and we picked up the pace.  In the end Jason would win the race in 15 hrs 31 minutes by 11 or 12 minutes!  It was great to be a part of that and I’m glad I was able to help Jason out.