3 Race Reports, and Yes, I'm Still Alive.

So, it's been a little while since my last post. Fear not, I'm still adhering to my normal diet and training (hopefully, I'll have a post on that shortly!). But life's been a little busy, what with our little girl Eleanor, my wife, Sarah, and my business, One Line Coffee, taking up quite a bit of time!

Anyway, I thought I'd give a quick rundown of my three races spanning February to May. None of these could really be termed a “success”, but I thought it would be good to share, nonetheless.

First, I ran the Run For Regis 50K back in February. I was really excited for this race, especially coming off my Rocks and Roots win back in January. Unfortunately, it just wasn't meant to be. I caught a flu bug about six days before the race. The good news? It forced me to taper a bit going into the race. The bad news? Definitely not recovered by the time the race started. I was really looking forward to “racing” this one, but once out on the course, I just found I couldn't push at all. I could run comfortably, but it seemed that anytime I tried to push (ie, run up a hill, push to stay with another runner), my body just shut down. In addition, I just didn't feel good. The course has a 8 mile loop done twice, and a 5 mile loop done three times. I came back to the start/finish with the intention of dropping out after 13 miles, as it just wasn't much fun. Well, Sarah sort of yelled at me to get out there, and pretty much ignored my quibbling. So I trudged forward. I ended up hiking all the uphills, and running to a 3^rd place finish at 5:02:xx. I was happy I could manage that time without pushing, but disappointed that I couldn't run the race I wanted to. Ah well. Such is life. I am glad Sarah didn't let me quit, as I did get some confidence from the finish.

Second, I ran the Forget the PR 50K at Mohican State Park in April. I was again really excited for this race. I've always heard good things about this race, and I've run many times at Mohican, and enjoy the trails. Prior to this race, I had really started focusing on my 24 hour training, so I had pretty much stopped running trails. I knew I was really undertrained on hills going into this, so I went into this with the idea to compete as best I could, but to not beat myself up too much if I couldn't hang at the front.

The race started off pretty good (other than the fact I completely forgot to grab my Garmin and my S-Caps! Oh, well, just another hurdle to deal with). I let a few faster guys go ahead, and latched on to a good runner I know from Granville, Kevin Motsch. I stayed maybe 50 meters behind, just taking my time and running comfortably. After a few miles, I came up on Vince Rucci, another good runner I know, and ran with him for a while, still with Kevin in my sights. Unfortunately, disaster struck.

I do have a slight history of missing course markings, and it happened again. This one I felt bad about, because I really took Vince with me. Sorry, Vince! We crossed a river, and on the other side, instead of going left, we went right. Unfortunately, after about 50 meters, we met up with a part of the course we had already run, so we started seeing course markings again. I thought we were still doing great, until I came to a distinct turn that I recognized. I stopped for a minute, let Vince catch up, and we decided that we had taken a wrong turn. We decided to continue forward, and just follow the course. Since I didn't have my watch, I don't really know how much further we ran, but I talked to Vince after the race, and he seemed to think we added on around 3 miles.

Well, after I got lost, I picked up the pace, and started pushing. I got to run some great trails, and enjoyed the course immensely. The aid stations were great, and I decided I just needed to not be angry at myself, enjoy the day, and try to have as much fun as I could. I ended up finishing somewhere around 13^th, in 5:26:xx. I definitely crashed a bit in the last 3-4 miles, and was probably running 12:00 miles at the end. Knowing this, I really feel I could have run around 4:50, maybe faster with some competition. I was pretty happy knowing this, especially given my lack of hill training. I definitely will be back next year for this race, hopefully with a bit more course specific training!

My last race was 50's For Yo Momma, in May. I was going for the 50 miler, and again, I was feeling pretty good going into this race. My training, while not perfect, had been going pretty well. I'd been averaging around 45-50 miles a week, and felt pretty good going into it. Again, I was definitely undertrained on hills, but I knew this course was a bit flatter than Mohican, so I was hoping I'd be OK. Well, I wasn't.

Basically, I crashed. Hard.

Immediately after the race, I just thought I might have gone out too fast, but looking back now, I think it was a combination of things that caused me to suffer my first ever DNF. Here's what happened:

First, my fueling might have been fine with adequate training, but not for the effort I was putting out. I decided to try Vespa for the second time (I used it at Mohican), in combination with Generation UCAN. My energy levels were pretty good, until I ran through my glycogen stores. Let's list out the specific mistakes I made:

1. I think I was a little overambitious thinking that I was ready for a 50 miler on only 45-50 miles a week, even with several 30 milers and 50K's over the past few months. I really needed to be around 60-70 miles a week to be comfortable here.
2. The course definitely had more hills than I realized, and I ran far too many of them over the first 30 miles. I ended up going though 50k in under 5 hours, and as I got to the end of loop 4 of 6, I was having problems with just keeping running, even though I was sitting comfortably in 3^rd place with a pretty large gap between me and 4^th. I had burned through my glycogen stores, and I blew up.
3. When I came around to the main aid station at the Start/Finish, I knew I needed to eat some carbs. I walked over to the table, but nothing looked good. In addition, I still was so dedicated to my ketogenic diet that I disregarded common sense, and decided to take another Vespa and UCAN instead. Of course, this wasn't nearly enough carbs to get me going again, and I ended up walking a mile out, then walking back to the Start/Finish, and dropping out.

At first, I was wondering whether I just wasn't tough enough to finish, and whether I really just needed to suck it up. After all, I hadn't run anything over 50K since Old Dominion nearly 2 years before, so maybe I just forgot how hard it was. But now, 3 months later, I think I DNF'ed simply because I was sort of an idiot. If I had just eaten a bunch of cookies, or chips, or anything, really, I probably would have gotten a second wind, and had been able to finish. So, I learned the important lesson that it's more important to be pragmatic in a situation, than to be stubborn as hell regarding diet.

Since May, I've taken time off from racing, and just focused on (mostly) steady training. The NorthCoast 24 is coming up in a few weeks, and I'm starting to feel ready for it! My next post should be coming up in a few days to talk about the last couple months of training, my fueling strategy for the race, and what my goals are.

Until then!

-Dave