Everglades Trail Run

When I first started running, I got in the habit of setting three goals before I did a race.  The reason for this is that I am very goal-orientated, and I realized pretty quickly that if I just set one goal and didn't succeed, I would get frustrated with myself and angry.  Fortunately, I had sufficient self-awareness to also realize that if I kept this up, I wouldn't keep running for very long, because who wants to do a sport where you are always feeling frustrated and angry?  And sometimes the goals were good and noble, like when I PRed my 5k time.  Goal 1 was to finish in under 30:00.  Goal 2 was to finish with a 10 minute/mile split.  Goal 3 was to PR.  I PRed with a 10:06 mile split, so I will take that, since it was awfully close to Goal 2.

I'm not sure when I got out of the habit of setting three goals for races, but it probably was around the time that I started doing many more of them and my main goal was simply to get out there and run.  For some reason, I think I brought it back when I did the Philly Marathon in 2012, but honestly I can't remember what the three goals were (probably PR, run the whole course, and finished.  In that case, I PRed).  More often now, I might set one goal; for instance, my one goal for the 50k was finish the 50k, which I did.  I wasn't really worried about anything else, which is good, because I sure didn't accomplish much else with that particular race!

Today, though, I kind of brought back the three goals thing for the Everglades trail run.  This is maybe slightly misleading, since I switched goals during the race, then kind of decided that they were goals 1, 2 and 3.  My first goal, when I started, was to keep a run/walk pattern for the whole thing.  That was abandoned as it got hot, when I started switching goals to try and accommodate a run/walk thing, but then realized that I couldn't keep up any running at all and had to walk the whole remaining course (at around Mile 10 of the 16-mile course).  Then I came up with one goal and one goal alone:

1) Don't get heat exhaustion

And I accomplished that goal.  Heck, I even finished the race.

Lemme tell you, that finishing was no mean feat.  The temperature was unseasonably high today in south Florida, to the tune of 85F in the shade, so around 95F in the sun.  And the last four miles of this course were pretty much entirely in the sun at around 1pm.  This was almost my complete and utter undoing, except for this guy, Norm:

Norm was kind enough to walk me through those last four miles

I am not usually very talky when I run, but I think I am learning to be a more social person.  Although my opening remark to Norm was something along the lines of, 'Has anyone read Stephen King's 'The Long Walk'?  Because this would be good footage if they make a film.'  (Plot summary).  Because that is effectively how most of us looked for the end of the race: walking along at a relatively good pace because no one could run because it was really freaking hot.  Fortunately, no one was shot for dropping below a certain pace.  Whoo!

I do have to say that I thought I was awfully near heat exhaustion, but fortunately that does not seem to have happened.  Trust me, walking for 4 miles with no shade was very tough.  There was a part on the prairie early in the race which was beautiful but warm:

Everglades grass prairie

Some parts were nice and shady:

However, the real killer was the sun and there was an awful lot of it near the end of the race.  The path was nice, but by the time it got to around noon, there was no escaping the power of Mr. Florida Sun.  In fact, I had some pretty choice words for Mr. Florida Sun by the end.

Do you see any shade there?  No, not really

The race itself was well-organized and I plan to keep my ceremonial anti-gator whistle for a good long time.  Aid stations were totally stocked.  One trick that I learned was to add ice to your Camelbak when it is hot because it will cool off your water/beverage for an extended amount of time.  Also, this race had pretty sweet swag in the form of a great bag:

You might be wondering if I saw any fun nature on the trail.  For most of the race, all that I saw was buzzards circling, which seemed quite appropriate.  But there was a bit of fun after a while:

Take a close look

Then this happened (no zoom with this photo):

My theory is that the alligator hit the wall, tried some Powerade, and decided to take a nap instead.

So I definitely got my money's worth!

Bonk

I done bonked in a race today.  'Bonking' is the same as hitting the wall, it is where you just don't have the energy to keep going, although somehow you find minute amounts of energy to keep going but the whole thing is just a world of bad, and then you are last.  Okay, the being last part is not mandatory, but it is a likely eventuality when you are a slow and steady runner in the first place.  Bonk.

I have bonked before, although never in a race.  In fact, I once had what I termed a double-bonk in training, where I was both dehydrated and out of energy.  Bonks usually happen because you didn't fuel correctly and I can attest to that today.  Last night, I didn't really have dinner (long story), then today I decided not to take my caffeinated jellybeans with me, which was a huge mistake on a 10-mile race.  Part of me was thinking, '10 miles is not that long.'  That same part of me needs a crash course in distance.

I think that the bigger problem is that I don't have time like I usually do to keep track of everything and as a result, my nutrition and training has suffered--that being said, I don't feel like today was necessarily a training fail, since I felt pretty strong through the first 6 or so miles and my legs aren't in agonizing pain or anything now.  So I would chalk this up more to a bonk, but one that was in part due to not having enough time to cook/prepare food like I normally do.  In fact, I came up with a few percentages while out there today:

Normal percentages
Work: 40%
Running: 20%
Cooking: 20%
Other stuff: 20%

These days
Work: 60%
Major life-changing events that need to be dealt with: 30%
Everything else: 10%

So as you can see from this highly scientific study, I am much busier than normal with stuff, and as a result sometimes I don't have healthy, nutritious dinners.

I made a conscious effort not to get too upset about today.  It was only one race and I can pretty much guarantee that it was a nutritional bonk.  So I will just try and avoid that in the future. Next week is the Everglades race, which is 16 miles, so I will eat dinner the night before.  Learning.  It's all learning.  Even when you thought you had already learned that lesson, still learning.