50k complete. Barely.

Yesterday, I completed a 50k race!

Not well, but completed.

In fact, I see it far more as a learning experience than anything else.  This is new for me.  When I did my first long distances (half-marathons and marathons), I followed the training plan, did what I was supposed to and finished around where I thought I would finish.  Not so in this case.

I should say that I turned my ankle at 2 miles and while it hurt for a while, I realized that I was fine to run.  This was, of course, the same ankle that I sprained in November.  So I had to walk any sections with roots.  This wasn't too much on this particular course, but it was still a decision that had to be made.  I figured that if I turned my ankle again, that might be the end of my day.

Also, I broke pretty much every race rule ever.  I ate something I don't usually eat for dinner.  I stayed up late watching a movie.  I ate new things on the course.  And you know what?  None of these things were my undoing.

The weather was perfect.  The weather could not have been more perfect, in fact (today is hot again).  The course was great.  Organization was stellar.  Friends wanting to help were incredibly great and I am very grateful.  So all of these things were good.  Even the forest spiders weren't that scary, except maybe when I saw what appeared to be a nest of them.  Ew.

Here is what I learned (and there are so many things):

1) I undertrained.  One of the ultramarathoners came and joined me for my last little stretch, and I grumbled that I undertrained.  He said everyone always feels like they undertrained.  Fair.  But really, I did.  In the future, I will need to set aside more training time if I want to do this distance.

2) I thought of this as a long-ish marathon.  That's silly.  It's not.  It's a whole other thing.  That goes back to undertraining; I missed some runs because I thought, 'It will be okay, it's like a long marathon.'  No.

3) My fueling strategy was not good because do you know what?  By the time you have been on a course for 6-7 hours, you want something other than caffeinated jelly beans.  So next time I will think more carefully about how to fuel and get advice from other ultra runners.

4) I should have started run-walking early.  I started for real on the second of three loops (I mean, I had had sections where I walked earlier, but there wasn't a routine).  No.  Earlier.  Possibly throughout.  Also, I did get advice from a ultra person to learn how to walk more efficiently because it will help save time. 

5) I didn't hate it, I didn't die, and I'm not injured, other than an ouchy ankle.  I would like to do it again, although now is not the time because I have too much happening to put in the training.  But I am not swearing them off.  Someday.

Hills vs. Heat

Holy cow, there are a lot of updates to share regarding running.  Like:

1) I did the 12-mile run in northern Georgia.  At the time, it was, by a lot, the hardest run that I had ever attempted.  At one point, I didn't even want to do downhills any more.  It was that bad.  Also, the whole thing was at 2200 feet and over which (who knew) is really hard if you usually run in flat swamps.  I was third last; the two people behind me hiked the course.  But I finished it!  And believe me, that felt like an enormous achievement.  There were at least two points where I was tempted to go back to the start instead of continuing onward.

2) Then I did the Rattlesnake Run and the 10-mile race of Wildhorse.  Both of these were more challenging than I anticipated.  Rattlesnake was hard because it was a week after the Georgia run and my legs were completed dead.  It didn't help that there are (Florida) hills there, plus it got hot that day.  Wildhorse was hard because the last mile was really hard.  Ever had to climb a hill during a race that was so steep, you needed to use a rope (rope was provided)?  I have!

2.5) I sprained my ankle (not running.  Wearing heels during a night out in Pittsburgh).  Fortunately, it was just a mild sprain and I was back and running in a week.

3) Today, which was a mess.  The plan was to do the 30K that is part of the X-Country Marathon.  However, let me share with you the weather this morning.  As a reminder, it is mid-November:

No.

We started at 7:30am, which as you can see presented pretty challenging conditions (far too close to the Threshold of Ick).  By around 9:30am, I realized that I was done.  Just done.  This race will live in notoriety as my first DNF (did not finish).  It was too hot and there were lots of parts of the course that were not shady.  So you can add ten degrees to those temperatures near the end.  And you know what?  After the fun bouts with heat exhaustion that I have experienced in the past, I didn't want to risk it.  I'm pretty sure that I did have heat exhaustion, but it wasn't as bad as last summer.  Probably the fact that I gobbled down some salty foods right away helped.  Go pretzels.

And I was definitely not alone.  There were at least a dozen other people who dropped out of the 30K race.

If you're curious, all of this is training for my next major challenge: Croom Zoom.  I signed up for the 50K.  Yes I did.  My first ultramarathon.  With any luck, the weather will be more amenable (also we start earlier).

So yeah.  I have not had a great month of racing, that is for sure.  But I am reminding myself that the more you challenge yourself, the more likely it is that you will run into adversity--and the races that I have been doing are challenging ones.  But adversity is not the same as being defeated.  Today was a mess, but that was due to circumstances out of my control.

And we now have the definitive answer: hills > heat