Category: Running Sucks

What It Was Like to Run 100 Miles

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(FYI, this was the 2017 Pine Creek Challenge in Pennsylvania.)

0: Okay, I guess we’re really doing this then. Six AM – we start running.

1: It sounds really cliche to say ‘you don’t run a hundred miles, you run one mile a hundred times’, or that ‘a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’, so to hell with that noise.

The first mile of any race, for me, is like jumping into cold water – kinda panicky and I have to remind myself, it’s okay, you’ve got this, just relax and get going. Keep going. Just not too fast.

2: Still paranoid about every step, every breath. There’s a long way to go. There’s no way to win an ultramarathon in the first five, ten, maybe twenty miles, but there are a helluva lotta ways to lose one. We’re obviously not in this to win it, but we do have a goal of a day (i.e., we want to be back at the finish line and finished [since it’s a sorta-loop/sorta-out-and-back course] by six AM tomorrow), and it would be hellaciously embarrassing to twist an ankle on, like, mile three.

3: Did not twist my ankle!

4: Did not gas myself, either. Kept to a nice and steady pace alongside my brother.

5: First aid station, wheeling around and heading back. Not much more to say – I don’t eat or drink that much this early in a race and I started with snacks in my vest so I don’t need to refuel, and it’s not a landmark on this visit – we’re just running to cover distance right now. Later on we’ll be running aid station to aid station, but right now it’s just mile, mile, mile.

6: I eat cookies, I think. Maybe?

7: Becoming properly morning. We joke about how we’ll be able to say “good morning”, “good afternoon”, “good evening”, “good night”, and “good morning” again during the course of one run.

8: Pace stays the same. It’s slow. (“Start slow, then taper off.”) A couple minutes slower than my normal to- and from-workout pace. Feels like we could keep it up forever. Forever, however, will slip into the rearview mirror fifty miles from now…

9: The 100k race started later, so we’ve been passing runners coming towards us on the first outbound leg for a while now. No difference in bib color or attire, which makes it kinda nice that the two distances being run on the trail today are so similar (relatively speaking, I mean…) and their starting times so close, given the difference in cut-off.

Nothing like sharing mile 22 of a marathon course with mile 5 of the half…

10: Hit the bridge again, and joke that it accounts for probably 50% of the total course elevation. (My brother specifically looked for the flattest 100-miler that was logistically feasible. Next year, however, we’ve signed up for the Old Dominion 100. 14,000 feet of gain vs… about 900, here.)

Continue reading “What It Was Like to Run 100 Miles” →

UROC 100K (2017) // Ranger Beads, I Wuv U!

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Race was good and fun. New personal-record distance! Beat my stretch goal by almost half an hour. Got new and deliciously obnoxious hardware:

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Ate at least a whole pizza afterwards. Curled up by the firepit, at one point trying to reheat cold pizza over the grate.

Single-legged stepped-up onto the podium, hopped down, and didn’t blow a quad.

No new toenails for the collection, but a couple of wicked blisters.

Best of all, though, I managed to bust through my usual mid-ultra doldrums and disheartenments and keep up a nice and steady pace instead of crashing and crapping out in the last ten miles like at Bel Monte.

Thus, ranger beads – I wuv u.

Given that, like, 90% of the tiny amount of traffic here is due to a comparison between LaRue and GORUCK rifle cases, you’re probably familiar with ranger beads. If not, here are a few links.

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Every ten (10) four-count steps (so, “left, right, left, one; left, right, left, two…”) move a little bead over. After moving all nine beads, next time move one of the big beads. Then start moving the little beads back. When all nine big beads are moved, the next time a big bead would be moved, switch directions on those, and you’ve got a thousand counted out.

Of course, I do wear a GPS watch, so I wasn’t worried about distance, per se. But ~2 miles (1,000 counts per cycle, 4 steps per count, 2’6″ to 3′ per step) is enough of a chunk to seem like a chunk, but still short enough (<30 minutes, usually, unless it’s hella uphill) not to turn into a drag.

Bottom line, it’s an instantiation of the old saw “How do you run a thousand miles hundred kilometers? One step at a time.”

  1. Something to focus on other than legs, stomach, feet, chafing, etc.
  2. Kept the cadence up. Even when I walked a stretch, keeping up with “one, two, three, one; one, two, three, two…” kept the pace brisk.
  3. Built-in timing. Some of the slightly uphill sections I’d run 80/90, walk 20/10, repeat. Was practically automatic with the beads instead of having to look at my watch. Also a good way to keep up a steady eating and drinking pace. E.g., drink every 100, eat every 1000.

Bel Monte 50M (2017) // An Arbitrary Number of Awesome Things Thereabout

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  1. People cheering and cowbelling a random dog that happened to trot down the finish chute.
  2. Getting asked how I was doing as I was passed around mile 40+ and replying “Tip-top!”.
  3. Realizing that it was totally true.
  4. Also realizing that morning that this would be five (5) ultramarathons in five (5) months. (For context, up until November 2015, the longest race I’d ever run was a 10-miler, and that was one of my ‘long’ runs.)
  5. The wolflike howling that filled the valley at about mile 49.9 and stopped the second I threw up a quick Rocky pose at 50.0.
  6. Not getting any weird looks when asking the lady manning the grub table to, quote, “Nutella up these Oreos”…
  7. … not even when I went back for seconds. So delicious.
  8. Reading in the paper the next day about the local 10 Miler and the “seemingly endless straightaway along Main Street, from mile 7.4 to mile 8.1″…

Burn as many calories as rucking – without a ruck!

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(To be fair, last Saturday I did a ~10 mile ruck carrying 50# dry, the last two-and-a-half miles with an additional 40+# sandbag, and the weekend before that I was setting up free weights in my basement, so I’m not completely converted to the cult of cardio.)

JFK 50-Miler Takeaways:

  1. Saw another GRT, with a challenge-spec carabiner & reflector setup on a 10L Bullet, OG status confirmed by the Count ZFG patch. (I ran with a 10L Bullet myself for the middle portion of the race, switching between that and a Salomon 12 Set at the first and last crew access points.)
  2. Aid station food was a bit boring. Potato chips, store-brand Oreos, pretzels, bananas, repeat. A bit of variety on top of that base and especially at the sponsored stations (“Miracle at Mile 34”, “Mile 38 Special”, etc.) but part of the awesomeness of ultramarathons is eating all of the horrible junk food (personal accomplishment #2 on the day: ate thirty (30) Oreos!) that is made suddenly and magically delicious after about mile 30. (Pickles & a PB&J & sugar cookies & a banana & a steaming cup of bouillon & peanut M&Ms…) If the spread’s going to be chosen purely for maximum glucose & electrolyte delivery per unit cost, I’d prefer salt tablets and shots of sugar water. I’m like a cow crossed with a hummingbird.
  3. It ended up being warm enough that VFFs would have been A-Ok. Probably better, in fact. Not much blistering, but I’m on track to lose both big toenails, and a couple of the little guys aren’t looking too good, either.
  4. If I had a reason to, it would have been totally doable in a suit. Given the wind and sleet at the end, it might even have been more comfortable, on the whole…
  5. Leg day Friday made the last ten/fifteen miles significantly less comfortable than they could have been.

Challenge: Accepted

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I don’t run. At least, I didn’t run, apart from a few 5Ks here and there, the Charlottesville 10-Miler a couple of times because a bunch of people from morning workout were running in it, that sort of thing.

But, and this is important, I do stupid things. Admittedly, less “Of course I can chug that!” stupid and more “12 overnight hours and 20+ miles of cross-country log-carrying tactical-movement with a rucksack full of bricks? With another one the next afternoon? Why not!” stupid.

(In fairness, however, it was only a Challenge-Light, not a Challenge-Challenge or HCL. I may do stupid things, but I am not a moron.)

So I decided to run the Richmond Marathon last year on a whim. And I accepted my brother’s challenge that if I could get out of bed the next morning (loft bed with railings and a ladder, so trickier than just rolling to one side) I’d sign up for the Seashore State Park 50K that December.

Unfortunately, the 50K was full up by the time of the marathon. Darn. Still, with a rucksack full of food, water, and a pre-race outer layer that I was too stubborn and Norwegian-Lutheran to actually discard and so got stuffed in on top of the 3L hydration bladder, I finished.

(I had covered this distance before [more or less, and spread out over between the Challenge-Light…] and I was used to moving with a rucksack, to be fair.

[And I sweat… profusely, so dehydration was a concern for me.])

A while after that, some guy made the internet for running a half-marathon in a suit, and right after that the cofounder of Ministry of Supply ran a much faster half-marathon in one of their just-released Aviator 2 suits.

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