After Uhwarrie 40 back in February, I really didn’t run a lot.   A decent amount of biking and running combined — but maybe just 4-6 hours per week total.  So why not jump into a 12 hour race on my favorite local trail?  🙂  I was able to get out a couple of weeks before the race and run the 2.9 mile loop 5 times, so it wasn’t all low running.  But other than that, no runs more than an hour to 1:15 or so for 10-11 weeks.

Race started at 7:00 a.m., and since it’s only 15 minutes away, it was an easy morning.  I went with a little ucan + beet root powder + grape juice, rather than hard boiled eggs or plantain pancakes, and it worked fine.

There’s not much to report in this kind of race — lap after lap, so I’ll just share my lap splits.  The race director / timer was able to keep detailed stats:

So that shows I probably went out a little too hard, but that is normal.    There were a few relay teams running, and I let the two lead runners go off, but I did want to be a bit towards the front to avoid any bottle necks.  There were 40+ runners all starting about 30 yards from the single track, so it was good to get in front and avoid the conga lines.

Around 5-6 hours in, I was seriously considering calling it a day.   I just wasn’t into it, I guess due to lack of training, and my lower GI was a bit unhappy.   And then I came in to the turn, Kelly and the kids were there ready to run, and I saw I was in 2nd!  That gave me motivation, which you can see a little in loops 11 and 12 that Kelly ran with me.  It didn’t last long, though, and I was soon back to 44 minute loops.

They had taken down the leader board around 8 or 9 hours in, as a storm was heading in, but I was certain Shannon had passed me and I was in third.  As I climbed the last hill before the steep descent to the finish line with just 25 minutes left on the clock, I got passed by Alan, who took third place from me.  I had nothing left to sprint it into the finish and he finished strong.  He and I were one lap down on Shannon and Randy, but at least I won 1st Chatham County Finisher and got a nice piece of pottery out of it.

I finished with 52.8 miles, and I had gone into the race thinking anything over 50 would be pretty good on this tough little single track, so I was happy.  I did have some GI issues in the second half of the run –  I blame it on the trip to Mexico just before this race!  🙂  So maybe I could have gotten one more lap out there.

GPS died about 7.5 hours in but here’s what it captured:

Gear wise not much to report — I still love the Altra Superior 2 and wore them all 52.8 miles…  I’ve switched from Under Armor compression to Nike compression, and that continues to work well.  Go-lite shorts, injinji socks, as normal. No shirt once it warmed up — and boy was it hot in the middle of the day!  I was carrying ice in my buff each loop from 2 – 5 p.m. or so.

Nutrition was vfuels, water+grape juice, MAPs (BCAAs), a couple hard boiled eggs, a bit of fruit.  And the race  brought out sandwiches at noon so I had one quarter of one, and pizza at 5:30 and I had one small slice.  One small bite sized brownie…  And one can of mountain dew spread over the latter six hours, and one small carton of coconut water.  Oh, and a few dates rolled in coconut flakes.

I do hope they run this race in the future – I still love the course!

(Photo courtesy Shannon — hope to add more over the coming days!)

I was lucky enough to get a spot in the Uhwarrie 40 miler, after missing out last year.  It’s one of my all time favorite races, so I was quite happy.  Training went well, and after battling a relatively minor head cold/sinus issue for a week to 10 days prior, I was ready to run.  Or as ready as you can be, for Uhwarrie!

Kelly and I had to get up at 3:45 a.m., make coffee, and head out the door to pick up Heather by 4:30, and drive to the check in point.  (We already had everything packed and breakfast made, all ready to go.)  Check-in was once again at Eldorado Outpost, a short 15 minute shuttle ride to the start.  I checked in, got my number, put my gear together, and rode over.  I had just enough time to hit the port-o-pot one last time, take off my warm clothes, and be ready to go.

Uhwarrie starts with a killer climb in the 1st mile, and there’s a balance to be found in going out just hard enough to get in front of enough people so that you are not stuck in a congo-line for the 1st few miles, having to expend excess energy in passing there, or going out too hard and blowing up on the 1st hill.  This year I was fortunate to not go out in the top 10 and get sucked into running too much of the 1st hill, but being up front enough to not get behind the pack.  In fact, there seemed to be a split in the top 10-12 runners and the next pack, and I was in the front of the 2nd pack, and all of us where happy to power hike quite a bit.

Beyond that, I’ll cut to the chase.   I felt really good all day, though more so after the 1st 5-7 miles.  Early on, I felt good but not great.  By mile 16 or 17, just after Dennis,  and all the way  through 22 or 23, I felt great and was ready to go!  But I was wise enough to hold back, because I knew what was to come.

I had hopes of a sub 8, which will always be a super SUPER stretch for me, and while I did it once, it would have to be a truly special day to do it again.  I hit the turn in 3:49, after saying to Pinto that 3:45 was necessary to keep our shot at sub 8 alive.  Turns out I ran 8:05 so just about right…  What is a little odd is that my PR is 7:57, and I actually felt better on this 8:05 than on that run.    Then I had a stretch from 18-26 or so that was pretty rough, and while I came out of it strong, I still don’t know how I pulled off the sub 8.  I’m going to give credit to Spadie, who ran behind me for a good 7 or 8 miles from 30 on or so that year, whereas this year, I was pretty much all alone the last 12 -14 miles, other than passing just one runner.  (I was also worried about Hughes catching me, who had passed me just before the turn, when I was struggling, but whom I passed at 28 or 29…)

Finish line photo:

I’m with AC who wrote this:

It only took 5 attempts, but I understand how to run the Uwharrie 40 now.
Don’t fight it. There are more runnable miles on the trail than I am capable of running anyway, so there is no sense trying to run the hard parts.
Slight incline? Walking that.
Pile of rocks? Walking that.
Steep decent? Walking that.

Here it is a couple of days later, and I feel really good.  I of course had some DOMS, but it’s just about gone now on Tuesday, after the Saturday race.

Here’s some interesting data from Strava.  First up, the map, elevation profile, and splits.  I didn’t have auto splits on, so this is the 1st 20, and then less than 2 minutes at the turn around included in the 2nd 20.  About 23 minutes difference if you don’t count the transition time.  AC actually almost pulled off even splits, which is incredible!

Here’s there race analysis, which shows the fastest mile, average mile pace, and slowest mile.  That 16:26 at mile 34 killed me!   But that is a heck of a climb, there, covering nearly the whole mile:

Here are my results over the years:

All in all a great day, with beautiful weather.  And I hope to find that 5 minutes one day!

Gear review:

• Altra Superior 2.0 — I LOVE this shoe!  First time in 5 Uhwarrie’s my feet have not felt totally trashed at the end.
• Injinji toe socks — zero blisters, one single teeny hotspot under my R big toe
• Calf sleeves and arm warmers for warmth at the start – ripped off the arm warmers at the turn but kept the calf sleeves on, mostly for time considerations.
• Nike combat compression shorts – these are doing better than under armor for me these days — just about 0 chafing.
• go-lite shorts — can’t believe this great company is out of business!
• Icebreaker 200 weight short sleeve top — still my favorite clothing brand!
• Icebreaker vest — great vest, dropped at the turn.
• Florida coast to coast buff — still my good luck charm after what, 15 years?
• 10 oz amphipod handheld…  had some leaking on some legs, so ran out of water once or twice, but not too bad
• Had an ipod but never broke it out…

Nutrition review:

• pre-race:  coffee and heavy cream; 1 hard boiled egg, a bit of a plantain pancake I had cooked the night before, but it didn’t turn out very well so I didn’t eat much.  I had brought pemmican to the start but I just didn’t feel hungry and didn’t want to force it down.
• during the race:
  • 4 Vfuel’s — wish I’d had more, these are my go to on hard efforts!
  • 1 Justin Nutbutter, chocolate hazlenut, had 3 more variations on this, but didn’t feel like eating them at all
  • two dates in coconut flakes – quite good!
  • a few white potatoes with salt from the aid stations
  • two 1/4 banana’s from the aid stations
  • MAPS — BCAA’s, save the legs, maybe 4-5 per hour
  • I drank heed at most of the aid stations
  • one half cup of coke, and maybe 3 half cups of mountain dew (unicorn tears)

I think that’s it — I’m estimating maybe 1200 calories over the 8 hours…

Again, if more photo’s show up, I’ll update this post.

Yearly summary from Strava… Which I didn’t switch to exclusively until late July, so some data was lost, though it’s not clear how much… Not sure what the “workouts” are other than something mis categorized, I’d guess… And I’m fairly sure there was more strength work than that, though not nearly enough… Look for more in 2015!

Oh no!  Here is late December and I never wrote anything about my Hinson lake experience!  Since it’s so late, here’s just a few bullet points and a few pictures:

• Great race, great aid stations, great atmosphere, definitely on my list to do again!
• It’s hard to go big in a 24 hour when your weekly mileage is piddly — see my predictions post here…  I had 81 miles at BMM24 in May, had 24 hours on my feet of some running, some hiking, and lots of  bushwhacking at the World Rogaine Championships in August, but not much more than that.  Maybe just one 20 mile run all summer outside of those two events.
• I still had a great time and knocked out 81 miles in about 19 hours, when I crawled into my tent and went to bed
• When I woke with about an hour left, I thought about trying to get a couple more loops — but instead decided to make a nice cup of hot coffee and just spectate — you should have seen the looks I got and heard the comments I received from all the runners.  🙂
• gear:  sport kilt, altra one2, hoka stinson, under armor compression shorts, ice breaker sleeveless, buff, garmin 620 which was not very good!  (gps tracking off and battery died early)
• food:  grape juice water honey mix, vfuels, chips and guac (too spicey!), probably some hard boiled eggs and maybe the sweet potato coconut oil mix I make, but I really don’t recall.  a bit of food from the aid stations…

Ok, photos:

Crazy “tent city” at the start…

Sport Kilt!

The one and only Shannon!

R2 really enjoyed it, and ran 3 loops with me.  At this point I was 45+ miles in and he was running circles around me…  Kelly ran a few loops with me too, but as she was the photographer, I have no photos of her!  😦

R1 walked a loop or two with her book…

And then went to the tent to read:

What ultra-runners really do:  Eat!  You can see R2 was raring to go, not wanting to stay too long at the “aid station:” 

Guac was too spicy!  But my normal electrolyte / fuel of grape juice, water, and honey, was soothing…

Oh, and here are my splits:

When my times were consistently approaching 30 minutes and I knew 100 was out of reach, I went to bed.  

This is not the way I would have planned it:

And some of that was walking/hiking, not running.  (Blame Strava.)

Hinson was going to be one of my A races this year, but it just didn’t work out.  Too much travel and general business to get in the mileage needed to go big in a 24.  That “30” down there in late August was the 2014 World Rogaine Championships, and according to route analysis done after I put in the manual Strava entry, it was closer to 50 miles. (Strava doesn’t let you change a manual entry once entered.  :-/)   So there’s that.  24 hours on my feet, but mostly hiking and bushwhacking.  And that 20 miler a couple weeks back?   Nothing to write home about.  Not a confidence boosting run, to say the least!

Going back further I did run just over 80 miles at BMM24 in mid May.  I was never into that run, and decided to take a nap.  A long nap.  And I didn’t care or not whether I woke up to run more, or if I was truly done.  I ended up sleeping 5 hours, which felt great, and got up and ran several more loops.  One of the few times I’ve actually been seen running in the later stages of a 24.  🙂

I only had one other big race this year, the ATT Marathon in March, where I was shooting for a 3:15 and a BQ.  I sorta kinda fell apart (and walked a bit! — maybe 30 seconds) the last couple miles, and finished with a 3:17.  Which was an 11 minute PR (though I’d never trained to run a marathon fast before), but just short of my goals.  Turns out even if I had BQ’d with 3:15:00, I would have needed a 3:13:58 this year.  

After ATT, I needed a break from structured training, so decided to go coach-less (sorry Lucho).  Lucho helped me survive at Leadville last year, and worked me hard to get the fast marathon done in the spring.   I’ve talked to him a bit off and on, as I’ve got this crazy notion to shoot for Leadman in 2016 or 2017, but my biking would need to come a long long ways to have a shot at finishing the 100 bike in 12 hours.

Anyway, all of that leads me to Hinson 2014.  If, and that’s a BIG IF, I had trained, I would have gone for 4 marathons.  Yep, 104.8.  Any chance of that happening now?  Doubtful.  But I’m going to pull out my alter ego, Richard Parker, and see what happens.  (Not one of the infamous Richard Parkers of the 1800’s, none of which survived!, but the Richard Parker in Life of Pi, who most definitely survived.)   But having something to reach for should be much better than having no goal at all like I did at BMM24 — no real goal just made it too easy to crawl into my tent for five hours!

Of course the little doubter on my shoulder will come in and try to convince me that 90 is great, or 75 is good enough, or 50 is fine because it just isn’t my day.  But:

“If Christ spent an anguished night in prayer, if He burst out from the Cross, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ then surely we are also permitted doubt. But we must move on. To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.”  Yann Martel, Life of Pi

Of course, I can follow that up with:

“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise.”  — William Blake

Or maybe it is:

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

Or perhaps what’s most apropos for Hinson:

“Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.”

See you at the lake!

I’m going to be lazy and just use what Ron Eaglin, one of my teammates, wrote shortly after the race.  I will include a couple of my own before and after photos, though!

Here’s the gear on the office floor before I flew out to SD:

It got more organized after that… 🙂

Two days before the race, Brian and I did part of the trial course to try to get familiar with the land, so here are a few shots from that:

Ok, on to the race itself….

Obligatory pre-race selfie:

And now, being lazy, here is what Ron wrote:

Here is a short analysis and recap of the 24 World Rogaine with some course info. I raced with Brian Thompson and Sean Butler – a great race team pairing.

Leg 1 -Shown on map is route choice (not exact) and time on each leg. We elected to go south, which had higher point controls, but a lower point density than the northern sections. A difficult choice since all the area is mapped as white, so any variations in terrain and runability are essentially hidden. We started with a pretty good pace and our navigation was pretty much spot on – though Brian did most of the front navigation during this section and I stayed back but kept a close eye on the map to avoid an big errors.

Leg 2 – This leg contained a very interesting long no road or trail section from 103 to 93, this was an interesting and enjoyable leg and did not pose any real navigation challenges. Our pace slowed slightly during this section – but much of that was due to terrain.

Leg 3 – The essentially flat and open terrain made the route through 74 pretty straightforward, and our time reflected that. I was starting to feel overheated with some stomach issues around 74, but was still able to keep the pace.

Leg 4 – It was on the approach to 92 that the bottom fell out for me. Brian and Sean were doing well and pushing the pace. By the time I got back to the road from 92 I was stumbling and ended up vomiting the contents of my stomach on the road north of 92. My physical condition reflected the pace from 92 to 81 and the fact that we skipped 56. At this point I wanted to get the team back to the hash house for recovery, but that was not an option as we were a solid 12K as the crow flies from the hash house – so we stuck with the original course plan skipping 56.

Leg 5 – I was essentially useless this leg, delirious and sick. I know I vomited again somewhere along here. It was dark and I was just following. I am not sure how Brian found 46, I do remember stopping a few times and then he gave a reassuring – “I know it is this way” and then I was punching the control. We never found 63 – I simply remember searching for a while and there being a lot of re-entrants. The team did let me rest here and I even think I slept for maybe 5-10 minutes. The total time from 46 to 106 was nearly 130 minutes. When we came out to the road at the stream road intersection – I felt better and even navigated the 106, which I did overshoot – but easily corrected from the backstop. The road section north and the water stop gave me even more recovery, but my strength was definitely near gone – and I had no food or water in my system.

Leg 6 – The potential climb(200 meters) to 48 was near impossible in my condition, so we re-routed and headed to 42 and 70. There was a little bit of debate as to route, but Brian mad some corrections and I was at least in good enough condition as the sun started to come up to actually navigate.

Leg 7 – Some good route choices by Brian and a bit easier terrain was helping my physical condition, though I really wanted to be done here – the team was supporting me well, carrying my pack and even getting some food into me. I had been able to hold down a 12 ounce water bottle, so I was a lot less dehydrated. Brian and Sean looked very strong and were keeping me moving.

Leg 8 – A lot of road here – which was good. I think Brian went down hard at 73, I heard something, but he was back up and moving as we left there. I wanted to contour around toward 104 from here – but we instead went down to the road. I did note some other teams did successfully contour this section. We attacked 104 across the saddle – and that was probably my favorite section. The entire course had deadfall, and it was bad here – but there was no point in complaining about something that was pervasive all through the course. After 82 I wanted to head back the the HH, but the team talked me into 61, 51 – which turned out to be a good call.

Final leg – We probably could have optimized this a bit better – but we managed to get 51, 32, 23 and make it back with plenty of time to spare.

Overall assessment – Brian and Sean both were physically stronger than me, and having that assessment at the start could have helped as we distributed the weight of food, water, and gear. The point density to the north was higher, and it possibly could have yielded more points had we started that way. But – I really liked Brian’s strategy if hitting the high point controls – even if we did not get as many points overall, the high pointers were much more interesting legs – and added to the overall enjoyment of the race.

I would definitely do more Rogaine races – and overall the race was well organized. The maps did lack some details I think they could have had – especially with unmapped roads, which made some route choices a gamble. Brian and Sean were great team-mates, understanding and supportive when I was sick – but encouraging enough to keep me going.

Post race the RD had some serious issues with the electronic controls and scoring, but eventually the results were published and we were 64th out of 175 teams.  Not bad considering how sick Ron was.  I really thought that we’d have to quit about 10 hours in, when Ron started dry heaving and acting all discombobulated.  But we decided to just walk back towards the start, which was 12km away by road, and pick up some controls on the way.  While Ron never fully recovered, he did get to the point where we were able to continue on and get more controls, for just about the full 24 hours.

I had guessed we covered maybe 30-35 miles.   We did lots of bushwhacking, and the terrain was pretty rough with a tremendous amount of deadfall.  So not very speedy.  But route analysis by the RD says we did a little over 50 miles.

I’d definitely like to do more Rogaine’s, and envision a world championship in my future.  🙂  (Probably not, we did finish 25th in the 40+ age group, so have a long ways to go!)

A few post race photos:

Somewhere around 4 hours in, I noticed a hole forming in my Altra Superior.  This may be the 1st race in 10 years I didn’t have any duct tape, and I really worried about how long the shoe would last.  But somehow it made it the full 24 hours.

Here’s what the feet looked like under those shoes:

Kelly and the kids flew out after the race, and we got to see and do cool things in SD like visit Mt. Rushmore:

Visit the Badlands:

Hike up to Harney’s Peak at 7200′:

And go to Jewel cave, 3rd largest cave in the world.

Ok, see you at the next adventure… Hinson Lake 24 hour run in just a few weeks!