A few weeks ago, coming off the high of a good long run and my first 50 mile week in years, I made what may have been an ill-advised choice: I signed up for a 50k and an 8-hour race a mere week apart.
What can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Or, as another runner so appropriately phrased it: “We’re ultrarunners. We don’t make good decisions.”
I will say in my defense that my goal race (Wild Duluth) had not worked out. I was going to be in another state that day. So I eyed the Hixon 50k, which was the following weekend, as a replacement race. I had just put in one of the better training blocks of my life, running both faster and farther than I had in years, and I didn’t want to waste my fitness.
But then, I didn’t want to miss the Icebox 480, the unofficial end to the midwest ultra calendar, either. It’s always a fun day, and the 7 mile loop really allows you to see more people than you might think. Plus, I could drop out at any time.
And a lot of my trail running friends were planning to be there.
So yes, I had my justifications. The fact remained that I had never done anything remotely like running (potentially) two ultras within seven days of each other. Hixon being on a Sunday, I would only have five full days of rest between the two races.
Naturally, a few days after signing up for these races, I tweaked my ankle during what would have been my last real pre-race tempo run.
At first, that seemed like awful timing, but I quickly realized that it might have been the best possible time to have such a minor injury. I had already gotten through my hardest training block and my biggest mileage. I was just over two weeks out from my first race, and all my substantive training was already behind me. As long as I was smart and didn’t push my ankle too hard, too quickly, the forced taper that little niggling pain started might just be the best thing to happen to me.
I took four days completely off running, foregoing my last longish run, and two other runs besides. I came back that fifth day, on a trip to Madison with my wife, with zero pain. Over the next week, my ankle twinged a couple times but never hurt in any serious way. I proceeded into the land of taper tantrums and over-thinking my gear.
Hixon 50k
What can I say about this race? I controlled what I could control, and those aspects of the race went well. And what I couldn’t control, I managed.
Things I could control:
I treated HIxon as a goal race, meaning primarily that I obsessed over this race to the detriment, or possibly the benefit, of the Icebox. As race day approached, and the weather forecast stayed the same (rainy and windy, with temperatures between 40 and 50 degrees), I went back and forth repeatedly on what to wear.
I decided on a long sleeved New Balance cooling shirt, my capri tights, light gloves, my UMTR buff, and my normal socks and shoes. On top of that, at least for the first part of the race, I would wear my Altra StashJack, the one with the fully open back that’s designed to accommodate a vest. I would be wearing a waist belt, but I figured that the open back would allow better ventilation and keep me from overheating.
I took the race out at a pretty decent clip, but not crazy fast. As usual, I found myself in the not-quite-lead group: two runners took off, and I stayed with the next group for a while. I wanted to run within myself for the first lap, and then see where I was during the second. “Composure, Confidence, Compete.” was my mantra for the day, courtesy of an iRunFar column.
With that in mind, I ran much of the first lap with two other runners, chatting about work, about the course, and just about anything else that came to mind. They would drop me a bit on the hills, I would catch up on the flats and downhills. I saw no reason to push the hills on lap one.
I went through the first of two 25k laps in 2:30 on the nose, feeling good and ready for lap two.
Things I could not control:
Around mile three, I started to feel water running down my back that was more than the rain could account for. I reached for my bottles and, sure enough, the cap had come off of one of my two 10oz water bottles. I’d be stuck with half the water I had planned for during the remainder of the race. Not a huge deal, with the frequency of aid stations on the course, but it meant I ran out of water a couple times on the second lap.
At about the same point in the race, I realized just how wet the trail was. So far, I was still in the top 10 runners, and the trail was in good shape. But there were more than 100 50k runners behind me, and another 350 25k runners would star an hour the 50k. The second loop, I knew, would be a muddy mess.
And so it was. Within the first half mile of the second loop, I had almost fallen twice and I was running almost two minutes per mile slower than my first loop pace. I realized, though, that the rest of the field would be similarly affected, and sure enough, I came close to holding my position in lap two (passed one person, and was passed by two).
Finally, around mile 22, my watch, now four years old and used almost every day, gave a resigned beep and asked me to “please recharge.” I would run the rest of the race with no GPS data, time-of-day only.
Ah well, not that important in the grand scheme of things. I knew generally what the mileage was, and I knew we had started at 7:40AM, so no problems there. All I needed was to keep drinking every ten minutes, and eating my 80 calories every 20.
I came through the second loop and finished the race in around 5:39 elapsed, 11th place over all. That’s good enough for my best place in a 50k. It’s half an hour off my best time, and not the time I had hoped for going into the day, but it was a solid effort and I felt satisfied.
Between Races
I felt better than I expected after my 50k. I was tired, sure, but I did not experience the same beat-down, I-don’t-want-to-run feeling I often have after other, similarly long efforts. I credit my training for that difference.
Nevertheless, I only ran once in the five days between Hixon and Icebox. I wanted to run at least once, since that would give me an indication of how I was recovering, but I didn’t want to let myself push the pace at all, so I ran with the Thirsty Thursdays at Theo group. Every Thursday, they run around five miles around Theo Wirth park in Minneapolis, taking about an hour to do so, and follow that up with a beer or two at Utepils.
My legs felt tired, but not beat up, giving me more confidence going into Icebox.
I had a few goals for Icebox. First and foremost: have fun. Icebox is the unofficial end of the trail racing season in the Twin Cities area, and it tends to be as much of a party in the woods as a race. I wanted to treat it as such. Second: I wanted to run an ultra-distance. With the approximately seven mile loop, that would be a minimum of four loops. However, and third, I didn’t want to push too hard. I wasn’t sure how my body would react, so I told myself to do whatever I could on the day, and not worry too much about time or distance.
Icebox 480
Despite forecasts of light rain, Saturday dawned dry and chilly (35 degrees or so) as I drove the 30 minutes from my door to Whitetail Ridge in River Falls. In other words: it was perfect trail racing weather. I got to the start area about 30 minutes before the race was supposed to start, collected my trucker hat, and set up my drop box in the start/finish/lap area.
I was taking this race much less seriously than the Hixon, so I decided to just go out with a group and see how I felt after each lap.
The first lap I shared with what must have been the second group of guys (the lead group went out far faster than I wanted to), and the lead woman. I knew a couple people in the group already, so the lap was almost exactly what I hoped for: an easy-ish run in a beautiful area with some friends. Even feeling relatively easy, though, we went through the first ~6.8 mile lap in under an hour. I had thought ~1:05 per lap would be an easy, sustainable pace for me. But my legs wanted to go for hour pace, so that’s what I ran.
I say the pace was easy, but that’s not quite accurate. At no point during the day did my legs feel good. From the first few steps, I could tell viscerally that I had raced a difficult 50k the week before and that I was not fully recovered. Despite that, I found that I was still able to travel at a good clip. I had less power on the uphills than I often did, but the only hill I walked during the whole race was the steepest hill on the course, at the one mile mark. I decided before I started the run that I would always walk the steeper part of that hill, and I stuck to my plan.
I noticed something else in laps one through three as well: I am not sure why, but I was much stronger relative to other runners in the second half of the lap than the first. I would consistently catch people about 40-50 minutes into my hour-long laps (and laps 1-3 were all just under an hour, not counting my stops at the beginning/end to use the restroom, top off my water bottle, and grab some more calories), and would remain ahead of them until the start/finish area.
Laps two and three were much like the first. My legs never felt good, exactly, but I could keep a good pace regardless. While the pack I ran with the first loop quickly disintegrated on the second, I started to catch and lap slower runners on these loops, each time getting a little mental boost from interacting with them. I continued with my very successful fueling strategy (drink at least once every 10 minutes, eat 80 calories every 20), and had comfortably settled into the day.
I briefly considered calling it a day at three laps, but opted to head out on lap four any way, knowing that I had enough in me to finish that, at least. Lap four was a different beast. I was really feeling the fatigue now, both from the day but more, I think, from the previous Sunday. I took one spill in the Hixon that just mildly torqued my left knee, and that started to make itself known late in lap three. I slowed down considerably on lap four, opting to walk while I ate instead of running.
Mentally, I was still there and thinking that I might do lap five and see whether I might be up for more after that. Again, though, I had already decided that I would pull the plug when the day ceased to be fun. This was not a goal race for me, just a chance to see what I could do. Simply put: I was ready to have fun, but not to enter the pain cave.
So when I pulled into the start/finish area again after 1:15, almost 15 minutes slower than my prior laps, I checked in with myself. My form had started slipping (inevitably). My knee was hurting (see above form note). I had run around 28 miles, a week after racing 31.
I gave myself some time to change my mind, and even called my parents about my brother’s birthday present. After that assessment, though, I decided that this was not the day to try and break my own distance record, but a day to celebrate just how well my training had gone this cycle, and look ahead to what I am sure will be a remarkable 2019.
Self Assessment:
In all, I’d raced nearly 60 miles over two weekends, separated by just five days. That’s something I would not have even considered a couple years ago. More importantly, I finished the season without the malaise that sometimes settles in: there was no voice in my head saying I just didn’t want to run any more.
Two weeks out from Icebox, I ran the UMTR Fall Fatass Frolic yesterday: 9.3 miles in 1:06 and change. I also bought a skate-ski setup, something I have meant to do for years. And this week, I think I might just start my own local version of Rickey Gates’s “every single street” challenge.
Also, somebody did the Border Route in 25 hours, and I think I want to lower that mark.
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