Duck-Farm

I got the following response via email from my caoch after yesterday’s post. I think it is relevant for more people to consider so I am sharing it:

Chris:

First of all, congratulations as you still had a successful day and it sounds like you may have found your answer to the knee issue.  Secondly, there is no such thing as “FAILURE” in these situations only lessons learned for success on your next race.  Given the realm of athleticism that you are venturing into with ultra-distance running, you should view every race, no matter what the outcome as success, since it will teach you something for the next race.  These races, as you know are very long and the longer the race the more chances for the body to break down. So any lessons learned will help improve the success rate for future events.  A success rate that I would venture to guess is not as high as any old 10k you may enter.

In addition, within these races you will have success and failures and it will be necessary over the course of time to understand your body, like you did in this last race, to know when a failure means to call it a day and when a failure means “a bad patch” and just keep going as your body will work though it.

I guess the short of it is that success is relative in these types of events since they are very grueling and punishing on the body no matter what your conditioning.  Log your race, start the preparation for your next race, and review your log of this race prior to the next one and your lessons learned will come full circle.  You will have success in your next race.
-John 

I made my first attempt on a fifty mile run Saturday Night. I started at 7PM intending to run until 7AM in the 12 Hours At Cool Night Run. But I ended up calling it quits at 2AM after 7 hours and 27 miles. I was experiencing knee pain and I decided that the chances I could finish 20+ more miles in the five hours I had left were very low, and the chances of coming out with a long term injury from running on and on with knee pain were excessively high. Sometimes when I run long I feel tightness and know I can keep going, but this knee pain was worrisome. 

Calling it quits was a very difficult thing to do. The worst part was that I had energy to keep going. I must be getting old because I never would have paid any attention to something like knee pain in the past!

My training run times showed me that it was going to require everything to be “perfect” in order for me to make 50+. Ultimately, only 6 people out of 75 runners actually went 50+ miles on that course Saturday night, so I had obviously set the bar for myself very high. I think making my first attempt a night run added significantly to the difficulty, but what else are you gonna do in the middle of August around here?

One good thing happened. I won a pair of Innov8 Trail shoes. I get to pick which style. This may be the answer to the problem because Sunday after the race, I determined the shoes I was wearing probably have 600+ miles on them, maybe even 800 miles…. I’m dumb dumb dumb. Those shoes should have been in the trash long ago.

Depending upon this knee thing, I am looking at one of these two races for my next attempt on fifty miles:

http://www.pctrailruns.com/SF_One_Day.htm

http://www.ultrarunner.net/hkmain.html

Chris