I figured that some of you may be entertained by my plight, so I’m offering up this race report for your reading pleasure.
This past weekend was David Horton’s Mountain Masochist 50 mile ultramarathon (really more like 54 miles). I decided to enter this race because of the fact that several of my friends were also doing this race, and it would be a reunion of sorts with my good friends from college. The vital stats are that this race is 50+++ miles with 9000’ of elevation and 7000’ of descent in beautiful Lynchburg, Va. Race start was at 530 am with a temp of 22’. The cut-off is approximately 12 hours.
The lead up: Unlike Paulo, my philosophy has always been “less is so much more”. Because of this, and the fact that I hate a structured training schedule, I was only doing up to 35-40 miles a week. My hardest workouts were a 4 hour hike/run with “Sphere” and “Dr. Flinn” on the Art Loeb trail about 4 weeks ago (the pics were posted here awhile back), a 2 hour, 13 mile trail run on flat trail, and a 9 miler at 7:20ish pace with the fellows listed above. Also, keep in mind that I live in Charleston, SC, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself to hill training. As you could imagine by now, I was quite unprepared!!
The race weekend. I rode up Thursday night with some friends and stayed with one of my friends that live up there. Friday was spent laying on the couch just taking it easy (Im in grad school, so those type of days are few and far between) before going to the pre-race dinner. This was a blast, as Dr. Horton is freakin’ hilarious, and I got to catch up with friends that I hadn’t seen in a few months. 6 of us were running, and there were about 12 others to hang out, crew and help pace us. Saturday dawned clear and COLD!! Needless to say, I was SCARED for the undertaking I was about to attempt.
As the “gun” went off, everybody started to shuffle along the road up to the trail head. The first 20ish miles were relatively uneventful until I missed an aid station. This was when it got really interesting. I started to enter a really low period where I had no gas in my legs and not much strength to power up the hills. Around 22 miles, I picked up a friend of mine who was planning to pace me for a bit. She was a HUGE help, as she helped to keep me pushing and got me through some REAL low periods. Mile 20-30 was difficult, but manageable. Essentially the whole course is on logging and 4x4 roads. Nothing too technical, but you definetly had to pay attention. The scenery was absolutely gorgeous as well!
At about mile 30, things got REAL interesting. I was an absolute rollercoaster of emotions. For 5 minutes I would absolutely be hating life and on the verge of tears, when 5 minutes later I could not have been more elated. It kept going on and on like this, except the time between “up” periods got farther and farther apart. Also during this time, I started to slow WAY down. Previously, I had been about 30 minutes ahead of the time cut-offs at each aid station, but at this point I was losing time FAST. Between aid station 13 and 14 (miles 38-41) the wheels feel off like never before. I made the poor decision to lay down in the trail. At this point, all I wanted was a swift and painless death. Luckily, my friend was still with me and she simply stood over me yelling at me to stop being a pussy and that the next aid wasn’t getting any closer. I eventually drug myself to my feet to shuffle into aid station 14.
At this point, I had been timed out. Some other friends met us at the aid station, where I was greeted with hugs and warm clothes. I was on the verge of tears in a friends arm, I had been broken so bad.
Summation: This was an EXCELLENT experience and I learned more about myself than I could have ever imagined. Limits were pushed and broken through, and my perceptions of distance have been totally changed. I’m very disappointed that I got my first DNF, but am happy with how far I actually did get considering the amount of training I did. I think next season will be wholly dedicated to redemption of this race, so that I can come back and do better next year!