Curtis brought his video camera along on my 50 mile run. I know what you will say, it looks more like a 50 mile walk! Well if you are saying that even when it looks like I am trying to run, you may be right! 
Anyway, the best part to me is the last minute. It was the minute that mattered the most!
The story is long. Find it here.
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
I got one of these:
It should complement the two handhelds that I carry already very well. I wore it on a 12 mile hill run Wednesday morning. I got a little bit of chaffing on my lower back from the big bottle in the rear but I don’t think it will be a problem. It will allow me to carry 67 ounces of water, plus a 10 ounce bottle and a gel flask. I haven’t quite figured out how I am going to use the 10 ounce bottle. I am thinking of either mixing a really heavy concentration of cytomax in it, or just filling it with dry cytomax powder that I would then add to the water bottles.
Suggestions?
Here is a link to the training program my coach wrote for me for the 12 Hours At Cool Night Run.
This morning on my run, I figured something out about “my runner”. After writing yesterdays post, my brain must have been working on this all night because it hit me like a rock in the side of the head this morning when I woke up.
Mountain lion expert, Rich DeSimone wants one of these:
Notice the mountain lion in the center…..
Ok, check this out….
My coach wrote a training plan for me for the 12 Hours at Cool Night Run that will hopefully help me achieve six or more laps around the nine mile course. For the weekend of Western States (WS), he had me doing a 35 mile workout on Saturday and a 10 mile workout on Sunday. When I first saw it, I thought, “Those are going to be some lonely miles since I know where everyone else will be those days.” Then I thought, “How long will that 35 miler take me?” And suddenly I realized maybe those miles wouldn’t have to be so lonely after all.
I contacted my coach and asked if he thought pacing a “slower” WS runner through the night over the last 38 miles of the course was advisable… he gave the idea a thumbs up. So I went to ws100.com and looked at the list of people asking for a pacer. The very last one was a 55 year old guy from Montana named Rich DeSimone. His short bio said Western States will be his first 100 mile run, his time goal is to finish.
In life I have had some experience with Montanans. There is something about living half of every year below zero degrees that seems to have a profound psychological effect. Put another way: I have noticed that the average Montanan has a much higher pain threshold than the average Californian. I have also noticed that when you get a Montanan going at something physically difficult, they usually will be the last one in any group to give up. They start slow, but they go forever…. diesel engines. That’s what I’ve seen, anyway. It seemed like a reasonable gamble that I will be likely to get my mileage for the day if I offered to “pace” him from Foresthill to Auburn.
I sent Mr. DeSimone a brief email suggesting I might be an adequate pacer if his standards were low, and he jumped right on, willing to take me sight unseen… Because I already have plans to go out of town when he will be in town for the Western States Training Weekend over the Memorial Day weekend, we may not be able to meet each other until the moment we take off running together. In order to get an idea of who we each are, he sent me a link to a newspaper article that describes his work as a biologist for Montana Department of Fish and Game.
Of course, I had already noticed he was a biologist for Montana Department of Fish and Game from the automatic signature at the end of his first email. “That would be the life,” I thought. “Getting paid to go fishing or whatever… I bet he goes hiking in the woods all day for work!” I envisioned a guy wearing a big wool shirt, cutting open a massive trout to see what it had been eating, or laying on a ridge line counting elk through binoculars, you know, stuff like that.
Well, what I envisioned was just a little off the mark. What he actually does fits much more squarely with my preconceived stereotype for Montanans: He is the leader of a ten year study on mountain lions at the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Wildlife Genetics Laboratory at the University of Montana. Hmmmm….. That didn’t quite sound like cutting open fish or counting big horn sheep. So I read the article. You can read it here.
When it explained how he hasn’t put collars on all 121 of the mountain lions he has caught during the study, I started to have second thoughts. I’m going to spend 12 hours running on a mountain trail in the dark with a guy who has been close enough to touch 121 mountain lions?
Hmmm… I’m not sure I want to go running… in the dark… on a trail where there is already a monument to a person who was killed by a mountain lion… with a guy who feels that comfortable with mountain lions.
There’s something about the idea that suddenly seemed… ill-advised.
In order to get a better perspective of his expertise, I googled “Rich DeSimone Lions”. The search returned eleven pages worth of hits. About the time I was starting to realize that maybe running with him at night is actually a good idea, I mean, he’s still around to tell the story of 121 mountain lion contacts, I found a great article about what to do if you ever encounter a lion face to face. Check it out here.
And now I am really eager to run with him. We need a friend who works for Montana Fish and Game….
This is me mailing my entry for 12 Hours at Cool Night Run. It is a 12 hour run around the 9 mile Olmstead Loop equestrian trail in Cool. It starts at 7pm on Saturday, August 12th and ends at 7am on Sunday, August 13th. My goal of goals is 54 miles, which will be 6 laps. Each lap has 900′ of climbing though, so really, I will be happy with 40 miles or more.
Ha, it wasn’t that long ago that I couldn’t even think of going nine miles, much less six times around a nine mile loop with 900′ on each lap!!!!!
We had a great ride to Santa Rosa the Sunday the Tour of California started in San Francisco. On the ride back Tues, we hung out with a Pro from the French Credit Agricole team who is still recovering from a serious injury last season. He’s a very big deal who some believe could win the Tour de France as soon as he’s recovered. Riding next to him I was not only caught on his sponor’s camera but also on someone’s camcorder coming up to the back side of Cardiac Hill.
Read this: 30 Miles with Saul
Steve’s prespective: From Sacramento to Santa Rosa
Watch this: Top of Cardiac Video
See the pics: Sauls pics
Scott McKinney and I collaborated to do the “30 miles with Saul” write-up at cyclefolsom.com. I believe you will find it inspirational in the last days before your next event.
BTW: Happy 39 to Chris.
I swear he told me his goal was to do the Western States 100 before he turned 50, but he claims I miss understood…
=- Curt
Yesterday morning I got on the scale and saw a great thing. I am the lowest weight that I have been in about five years: 185. I think I dropped nearly two full pounds in the seven days since I ran 27 miles. The mitochondria are working hard! Since it is the week before the big race in Cool, my planned mileage was only 10 miles for yesterday (Saturday) and 8 miles for today. I figured we would go to the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby in the morning and then I would run in the afternoon.
The Pinewood Derby was a lot of fun, which is good because both our cars got pretty much dead last in every race. I considered this our red shirt freshman year anyway since it is our first year, and kids can start Cub Scouts so young now. We will have many more Pinewood Derby Races in the future. Here are some pictures… the story continues below:
So you can see we had fun. But I didn’t eat much before we left and I darn sure wasn’t going to eat hotdogs, which is what they were serving at the race, so I just figured it was better to be hungry when I started running after the race than to have nasty food in my stomach. But my plan backfired. Apparently the smokin hot mitchondria that torched two pounds in the last week (while I literally ate like a freight train!) needed fuel worse than I realized. When I went out running, I was pretty much bonked from the first step. I only did seven miles, very easy, and then I came home and ate and ate and ate…. Then we went out to dinner, and I ate and ate and ate…. two appetiser plates, my dinner, and then two desert plates…. and they were huge resturaunt deserts. Since I am still feeling kind of tired today, I am playing it cool and just relaxing. Resting can’t hurt my race at this point, but running too much can.
I went 37 miles this past weekend. It’s just one lifetime PR after another lately.
I did 22 miles between Tuesday / Wednesday / Thursday, that included a 10 mile run on Wednesday that was my life’s fastest 10 miles. 
Saturday, I ran 27 miles in the Middle Fork canyon from Cool… Way Too Cool 50K course minus the start section. I believe I did about 3000′ of verical climbing. I ran this really, really slow, keeping my HR well below Aerobic Threshold. I came across a guy who was hurting bad and used him as an excuse to go slow. He had signed up for Way Too Cool in December, but had not checked out the course until Saturday. I’ll be shocked if he is there on March 10th. He was a very nice guy. I was happy to have someone else with me in case of mountain lion encounter.
Anyway, I got my fueling dialed on this run. Turns out a light mix of Cytomax in one water bottle, water in the other, Perpetuem every so often from the Fuel Belt, and a low HR are a GREAT combination! My body was tired but my head was still very motivated when I finished.
Sunday I ran 10 miles with my wife on a 800′ hill near our house. (Clark Mountain, immediately south of Cronan Ranch across the river if you are in the neighborhood.)
59 miles with 3800′ feet of vertical climbing for the week in about 13 hours. If I had realized I was only one mile from a 60 mile week, I would have run one more on Sunday just so I could say I had a 60 mile week… Just a couple weeks ago, my biggest week to date was only 38 miles.
So now that the hard stuff is over and the taper has begun, I am going to let the cat out of the bag and tell you all that Way Too Cool will be my 39th birthday. Won’t you join me for a run? I have had it on my radar screen since before my 38th birthday, and I have been holding my breath telling people because I just wasn’t sure my body would hold together through the training program.
My wife is calling it my midlife crisis… she doesn’t realize that I am just using my 39th birthday as a shield so she will grant me weekend training passes! She’ll figure it out next year when I tell her I want to run AR50 for my 40th birthday!!! 
Oh yeah, and I picked up some more poison oak this week.
I’m gradually getting over the disdain for writing that came from writing two term papers at once. I’m transferring the energy into miles. My running has been off the hook the last two weeks by my previous standards. I ran 52 miles last week, and 54 miles this week. The coming week will bring 56 miles, and then the taper begins for Way Too Cool 50K on March 10th.
I am not at all confident that I am ready to run 50 kilometers -31 miles- in hilly terrain. But I’m going to try it anyway. The big hairy goal for 2007 is to run 50K. So this will be my first attempt. If I don’t succeed it won’t be the end of the world, just time to go back to the drawing board… Well, it might suck pretty bad if I don’t succeed, considering it will also be my 39th birthday!
There is another 50K in the neighborhood on September 2nd at Sly Park. It’s called Run On The Sly, and it looks harder than Way Too Cool, so it would be nice to finish Way Too Cool. Then I could decide (or more accurately, Erin could decide) if I will be running the Run On The Sly.
Erin has been very supportive of this effort. But our weekends have been COMPLETELY about running since Christmas. I run long on Saturday and not so long on Sunday. Yesterday was Saturday, and I ran 22 miles. It took the better part of the day. Today I followed that with ten more miles. It is always very hard to get started on Sunday, but pretty much every single Sunday run has left me feeling significantly better afterward than I felt before the run. It’s like a flushing effect or something. All the junk that builds up in the muscles the day before gets washed out. At least it feels that way.
The one thing I learned though is that you cannot follow a 22 mile run with another 10 mile run 16 hours later without having complete respect for both efforts. They are linked. The 10 mile run is merely an extension of the 22 mile run. You have to start hydrating and eating while you run it as if you had already been running for 22 miles, or else you will quickly begin to suffer greatly. Early on, I had to do 16 on Saturday and 8 more on Sunday. I didn’t have this mental link between the two runs established yet. I ended up walking home from the 6.5 mile mark because I was totally wiped… bonked. I did the 8 miles, but the last 1.5 miles were nearly impossible.
Alright, that’s enough text without pictures for now… more later.
I turned in both my term papers and got A’s on them both. I still have one final to take online. I will probably take it tomorrow.
I have been running a lot still. Last week I ran 48 miles. It was the most miles I have ever run in one week. This week I will end up running 38 miles… it is supposed to be an easy week. But 38 miles was my highest mileage ever just a couple weeks ago. My long run today was supposed to be ten miles. If it was supposed to be an easy ten miles, I blew it. I went out for what I thought would be a moderate ten miler but it ended up being a hard 12 miler. I under estimated the distance and the steepness of one hill that climbs 600′ in .8 miles and no, there aren’t any switch backs. It’s like friggin stairs!
Seems like I have been running a lot with Western States 100 Mile Endurance Run runners lately. The trails I have been running lately are all either part of the the Western States Trail or they tie directly into the Western States trail. So alot of these 100 mile runners are out there logging mileage on the trail. Some of them have driven for hours in order to do familiarization runs. It’s kind of luxurious to live ten miles from one of the worlds premire running trail systems!
Interestingly, there seem to be a disproportionate number of “past Marines” engaging in long trail runs. Last week I ran with a guy who was in during the 70’s that I just met at the trailhead and the same thing happened this week, and it was a different guy!
I wish I had some pictures to post. Erin got me a little digital camera for Christmas but I can’t seem to get it to work reliably when I am out on the trail and it is 35 degrees. Today I took a little grocery store box camera, and I took a few pictures, but they will have to be developed. I got a new phone with a two megapixel camera, but I don’t know how to get the picts from the camera to my computer yet ( I think the friggin phone company makes you buy software!), plus there is something less than pure about carrying a phone on a trail run.
I got freaked out running alone this week because there have been some mountain lion sightings in the region lately, and an attack on a Bay Area trail last week. I actually saw my first mountain lion since moving up here a couple weeks ago. It was dead beside Highway 49 in the early morning. So I figured out a hasty jingle bell that I tied on the outside on my running pack…. keys. They made plenty of noise!
OK. That’s enough for now. I have lost six pounds since January first!
Here’s a photo for ya! We don’t catch the smart ones!
I laid low last week. I was a little bit down about the job I ended up with (I really wanted the Criminal Intelligence Job), but I am getting over it. Christmas was chaos. Hopefully I will have some photos from it posted within the next 24 hours.
I did trail runs both Saturday and Sunday, 9 miles Saturday and 5 miles Sunday. I was supposed to go farther but it was a time management thing. I was lucky to go at all. The Saturday run was with a group of people who were all generally faster than me. We ran in the middle fork canyon near Auburn. Their speed may have been at least in part a measure of their sure footedness on some pretty steep and muddy trail. But they did something really unusual, I thought. Despite hardly knowing me at all but for the few minutes we ran together, they stopped and waited for me about every ten minutes or so. When people are that nice, it makes me suspicious!
Sunday I ran by myself at Cronan Ranch. 5 miles is one lap around the inside trail loop. That’s all I had time for. There is no such thing as a bad run at Cronan Ranch. It was absolutely wonderful again.
Oh man! I am really sore. I went for a trail run at Cronan Ranch yesterday, planning to do 8 miles EASY. Well, I guess I was rather exuberant because this morning my legs feel like I spent yesterday at the first day of high school football practice without doing anything all summer. Deep Muscle Soreness! It started out simple enough, but then it developed in to jumping over a muddy patch and then another and then I’ll turn here and see what’s down there… and then pretty quickly I was farther than I should be. I ended up doing nine miles in shoes that weighed about 2 pounds each, maybe literally, because they were so caked with mud. It was completely dark when I finished, and I was freezin’!
So, no rest for the weary or the wusses on this training schedule. I had to go six miles right away again today. It’s gonna be a miracle if I am able to avoid injury. Anyway, I would not have even thought about running today if I wasn’t looking at doing the 50K. So I took a couple Motrin and wore my HR monitor. Although it was pretty painful in the beginning, I actually did not have a bad run. My HR was better than I expected. I didn’t do trails but I still got a couple hundred feet of climbing and descending between miles 1.5 and 4.5.
I noticed that the back to back runs seemed to open my lungs like they have not been open in years. We’ll see how this goes.
Oh yeah, one other thing. I saw a little brown coyote today. It was the first time I have seen one in the middle of the day. Usually I see them in the morning really early. This guy had his winter coat. He was all fluffed out and looked real healthy. He didn’t want anything to do with me. He looked at me and jammed into the blackberries.
I am a little bit numb right now. I just registered for the Way Too Cool 50K that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. When I hit the button and saw that I was in, I just sat there for a few mintues contemplating the magnitude of such an undertaking…
What will it feel like to go 50KM in one day? What will it take to get there in a relative state of readiness?
First, I have to get my immune system back on track by getting over the cold that I caught after the CIM. It’s ravaging me right now. My RHR this morning was in the 60’s.
Second, I am hopeful that during this brief period of low activity recovering from the CIM and the cold, my left ankle might do some healing. I torqued it doing some work outside back in late September, and it has been reminding me of that moment ever since. Just when I think it is gone, I’ll go out for a hard run and it will start aching.
Third, hills hills hills. Which I love. As long as I can get my first and second objectives from above in order, I will be happily running a lot of hills very soon.
Way Too Cool 50K is supposed to be quite a social event as well as a race. Which is good because I am going to need some socializing to get me through 31.8 miles.
For me, 2007 will mean turning 39 years old! Oh man, that was hard to write and it is even harder is hard to read. It seems like a good year for a mid life crisis… so here are my goals:
Increase weekly mileage – I have averaged only about 30 miles per week in 2006. Actually, much less than that in the early part of the year. I would like to increase my average weekly mileage with some peak weeks pushing 50 miles. I ran about three days per week this past year. In the first half of 2007, I will increase to four days per week between January and June. In July, I will evaluate my progress and try to go to five days per week. I don’t have it perfectly mapped out, but I’m thinking the four day run week will be Tue/Wed/Thur and one weekend day.
Decrease body fat – I dropped a little bit of body fat in 2006, but only a little. I am carrying about 22 percent right now. And I think I weigh about 192 pounds. I would like to weigh in the 170’s. So my plan is to try to remain even through the holidays and drop one pound per week starting in January. I am not planning on going on a “diet”. I intend to do this by avoiding dietary fat wherever possible, eating plenty of carbs, and a sufficient amount of protein. I don’t think it will be terribly hard to drop some pounds once I get away from fatty foods. They aren’t helping anything anyway. More on fatty foods later…
Relentless Forward Motion for 50 continuous kilometers – At some point in 2007, I want to do a 50KM run. Tomorrow morning, the Way Too Cool 50KM opens registration. The event is March 10th. How convienent for that mid life crisis I mentioned. If I can pull it off in March, I will have it “done” from my list of 2007 goals and that will mean I can do other events in the fall… perhaps things that are more social, like running the Marine Corps Marathon with my wife or something. If I fail to pull it off in March, I will have at least tried and I will have a better persepctive on what it will take to do it in the fall.
What are your goals for 2007? Define them for the whole world to read. I am thinking I will make a page dedicated to the fitness goals of the main contributors to this blog. That way we can remain aware of each others goals and track our progress. We can also look for opportunities to make our goals overlap.
Did you notice I made a page dedicated to Camping Photos a couple weeks ago? You can access it via the sidebar.
This was the title of an interesting article in the New York Times this past week. Check it out.
I don’t think I have quite as much to say about the CIM as Curt did. Having grown up in Sactown, it feels like a very generic 26 miles. The only thing that justifies the expense is that I know it costs a lot to have the roads closed. The shirt and the medal were both very nice this year too.
I finished in 5:12. That should be exciting since it is the “fastest” marathon I have done yet. However, I am not really excited by it. I ran with two friends from work who had never done a marathon before. At the 1/2 way point we were perfectly on pace for a 5 hour run. And we were leaving all the rolling hills behind us. I started to really focus on the idea of finally having a marathon finish time with a “4″ in front of it instead of a “5″! But we just couldn’t pull it off. The rolling hills had already taken a small toll, and so we consequently ran the second half a little slower than the first… another factor may have been the temperature change. The first few hours were under 50 degrees. But it got considerably warmer running in the sun along Fair Oaks Boulevard. It was so much warmer that I ditched my Camelback, handing it off to a friend along the course.
I like knowing what I will feel like at the finish. The first two marathons, I had alot of angst about how bad I would feel at the finish. This time I had a benchmark in my mind and so it wasn’t such a big deal. I felt worse than I felt at the end of the Marine Corps and much better than I felt at the end of last year’s CIM. Last year I thought I would die walking to the car. This year, I embraced that walk as a chance to cool down and stretch a little.
The day after…. I don’t remember feeling anything except horrible after the CIM last year. Conversely, I can say that I felt euphoric the day after the MCM and this years CIM. Full on endorphin burn. Unfortunately, I have a perfect record of getting sick about the third day after every one of them. Last year’s CIM, I caught a cold. After the MCM, I got a really bad stomach flu. This year’s CIM, another cold. I think it may be a matter of catching whatever I get exposed to during a time when my immune system is hammered. Erin had a cold this year. And about two nights after the CIM, I was sleeping like a friggin rock, when I woke up and found my face about six inches from hers, getting the full blast of her cold for who knows how long. By the time I went to bed the next night, I was fully engulfed with the cold. So that is definitely something that I would like to figure out- how to get through the period of reduced immunity without catching anything. Maybe I need to wear a surgical mask!
I ran about 5 hours 11 minutes. I thought I could bust 5 hours but it just didn’t happen. Gotta shed some fat! Much more on how it went tomorrow or later in the week.
Five weeks have passed and it realy is time to run the California International Marathon. Everyone said that I shouldn’t do much in between the two marathons, and so I haven’t. The farthest I have run is twelve miles two weeks ago. I have actually lost weight since the MCM…. don’t know what that means… actually, I know it means one thing. I am really feeling the cold this year like I haven’t felt it in years!
This Sunday at 7am I’ll be standing at the start line in front of Folsom Dam singing that oldee, but goodee…. “Hoo yaa, hoo yaa, hoo yaa, hey! Today’s gonna be another easy day!”
I just read a great article on Active.com. Click here to read it. I could definitely relate. Even though I never weighed 330 pounds, I truly had to find my inner Marine in order to get to the finish line of the California International Marathon last year.
Steve just sent me this picture that was taken in Virginia at the finishers village after the race.
One week after the big event, I am finally able take some time and write about the Marine Corps Marathon. I cannot believe that the day has come and gone. It was like Christmas when I was seven years old, months of anticipation for hours of excitement. After the agony I experienced in the final miles of the California International Marathon last year, I told myself all through training for the Marine Corps Marathon that those last few miles would not be agony this time. Rather, they would be deep pleasure, pure joy, such as you can very rarely achieve in life, the kind of joy that always involves a major milestone and your life’s best friends. And so it was.
Before the race Steve and I decided that we would try to run a 5 hour and 30 minute race. Steve felt that his training indicated he could go that fast, but if we tried to go faster, it might prove regrettable. And I was in complete agreement because I felt like I had spent all that time training and then traveled so far for a run that was fun and filled with camaraderie, not a painful PR. At the start line we found the Cliff Bar 5:30 pacer and made sure we kept her very close for the first five or six miles. With over 30,000 people running, staying close to her was a big deal. She seemed to be going out just a touch faster than 5:30 pace too me, but it wasn’t anything to be concerned about. Plus, I thought she might be factoring in a little time.
At about the six-mile point, I started to realize that I was going to need to hit the bushes, so I told Steve we needed to build a slight lead over the pacer. I thought it would be psychologically easier to have her catch us than to have to catch her. So we put in a little speed, for a little while, and after I hit the bushes we still didn’t see the pace group behind us at all. Around mile 8 or 9, Steve saw them and estimated they were several minutes behind us. We decided to keep that lead as much as we could in order to maintain a potty break factor. At that point, I told Steve we should get it in our heads that if we held the pace group behind us for a long time, they might catch us about mile twenty and then it might be a gut-check to stay with them to the finish.
Along the way, we saw a couple pretty cool looking aircraft fly over us. There was a myriad of helicopters from several different services, but the coolest was a couple of aircraft that had rotating engines, so they could take of vertically and fly horizontally. They were not Harriers. These things were futuristic by the old-Corps standards of Steve and me.
It was the hip thing to do in this race to write something on your shirt. Many women wrote their names on their shirts. Then, when the young Marines saw them coming, they would start cheering for them by name. We saw one gal who had this written on her shirt: “This 26.2 miles is dedicated to every girl who was ever picked last in gym class.” I loved that one. We ran with her for a while and talked. I suggested that she start an athletic clothing line called Last-Girl-Picked. We took a picture with her. I was carrying one of those little grocery store cameras. But I lost the camera somewhere along the way, so the picture is gone. I really wanted to put it on the blog too! Losing the camera was a serious bummer. We had about a dozen pictures on it and we were just getting to the real Washington DC iconic monuments when I reached back to pull it out and found it was gone. Mile 11 to about mile 15 was right where you see the evening news every night with the capitol buildings in the background, pretty awesome to run through.
Around mile 16 we passed a guy who looked like he had gone down hard. Medics were working on him. I looked purposefully too see if they were doing CPR and it did not appear that they were. I commented to Steve that his skin color looked very bad, but since they weren’t doing CPR, it might not be so bad. Later, after the race, we learned that he was transported by life flight helicopter and pronounced dead at the hospital. By the looks of him when we passed by, he was on his way to heaven before he was ever loaded into the life flight helicopter. ABC NEWS STORY
The guy was down right at the beginning of a little section called Haynes Point, a very windy little strip of land that takes you a couple miles along the Potomac River. Many people were crashing hard in this section. People were throwing up on the grass beside the road. We saw an old guy getting his face taped up after apparently tripping and crashing completely on his face. The wind was blowing so hard through this section that I could actually feel the wind blowing through my shoes between my toes. I have never felt that before. The wind may have slowed some people down, but it would have been hard to slow us even more than we had already slowed ourselves!!!!
At about this point, Steve and I each took a power gel with caffeine. I had been fasting from caffeine since about May so it gave me a solid boost. From there to the finish, I don’t think more than five people passed us. We were just moving through the crowd. The actuality of it was that our pace was pretty even throughout the race and those people were all crashing. But it felt great to be the one with the even pace, even it if it was a slow even pace!
It was at this point that I was truly enjoying the aspect of running the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC with my fellow Marine and life long friend, Steve. I was savoring the last few miles… like Christmas when you are seven, and you see that there are only a couple gifts left under the tree…. I wanted each one to last as long as possible.
We passed through mile twenty and still had not been caught by the 5:30 pace group. At mile twenty-five, I heard yelling behind us. When I looked back and saw the 5:30 pace group coming up on us. The mile 26 marker is at the base of the hill that the Iwo Jima Memorial sits on. The finish line is a few vertical feet up that hill at the memorial. We came across it 5 hours 30 minutes and 40 seconds after we crossed the start line.
I will write about the finish and the post race in another article.
Chris
While not really being a world traveller, I have gotten around. One time when I was much younger I rented a car while staying in NYC. I vowed never to do that again. Public transportation systems are always problematic. One friend describes them as a mode transportation that cost an arm and a leg, and takes you where you do not want to go when you do not want to travel. Another has described it as a mode of transportation that will take you halfway to where you want to be. Personally, excluding the inherent failings, I found the metro to be very easy to use. The trick was what time to use it. During off hours it was reasonably priced. During peak hours the tickets were pretty expensive. In general it would take you pretty close to where you wanted to be and once you knew where to stand in the train it required very little additional walking for transfers. The other catch 22 was that during peak time the transfers went quickly. Outside of the peak time you could wait up to 20 minutes for a transfer. I did not experiment with the buses other than the Washing Flyer which I used to get to and from Dulles and the bus trip Chris organized for us. What was really weird is that I was able to scoot around and did not need a Taxi. The Metro stations were generally clean and busy. There were only a few undesirables that I saw inside the metro stations. They must save a fortune on lighting. The lights were always dim enough not allow you to read, but light enough to see by. You needed to be on a car to be able to read.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
Talk about sensory overload. Thank god we went on Friday, not Saturday. I was not prepared for all the activity and people. Chris bought a set of white cotton throw away gloves for each of us. The Erin and Chris disappeared for a bit. I went around and saw all the technology and wizbang stuff for running. Chris kept trying to have me get a fuel belt. I kept resisting. I figured if I trained one way I should go to the race that way as well. That meant carrying one bottle of Hammergel and one bottle of water. The problem here was that I left the water bottle at home. I finally warmed up a bit and started talking to these two young ladies at the Ultima sports drink booth. They gave me a sample asked what I used to rehydrate. With a big grin I answered water. I got two looks as if I had just said Ugh na ennem halwka ini. Google this location, it is not far from where I live. 51°13′34.54″N 6°56′57.49″E. So a brief discussion ensued, properly humbled I bought a few for their drink packages. It actually tastes decent. It is light and some what sweet. My real purpose there was to buy a water bottle from them. They said I could just take one. Mission accomplished. I am not much of loiterer. So, I ended going two booths over and buying a hand full of GU packages. The guys started off on caffeine and which ones had it and which ones did not. I tried to poke fun at it but once again I was made to feel very ‘behind the times’. He started going on about these caffeine strips that work like the nicotine patches. My quatsch meter had not gone off yet, but my leg definitely felt longer. Also looking around, I managed to buy a black running jersey with the eagle globe and anchor on it. I also managed to exchange $5 in quarters that the metro had dumped on me for a crisp $5 bill. By his point I was done and thankfully so was Chris and Erin. Next time I will have a better idea on what to expect and what will work for me. I am still not sold on the fuel belts etc. But, the Gu and Caffeine will have my business again.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’
Since my time in Washington D.C. was limited to 2 days before and one morning after the Marine Corps Marathon, excluding jet lag I think we should have been a bit more organized about our tourism. One thing I really wish we had planned better was a tour of the white house. After reviewing the pages at whitehouse.gov I found if we had arranged for a tour about 3 months out we probably could have a tour of the white house. Unfortunately, a night in the Lincoln bedroom was outside my budget plans. The first day of sight seeing was spent at the Expo and we tried to get around and see a few things on the Mall. The Lincoln memorial and some of the Vietnam memorial are about all we got to before the rain forced us inside. On the second day we tried to do some organized sight seeing with the ‘trolley’. This was a somewhat guided tour with about 15 stopping points where you could get out and prowl around most of the major monuments. Although not a designated stop, it did stop at the Arlington Cemetery. You can take another tour there for a few buck that will cruse you over to the tomb of the unknown soldier. I could really recommend this tour. You sit when you want and get out and stretch when you want. I just wish we had started earlier as it was very interesting with loads of fun facts. I will do this tour again sometime in the future. It made the sights more interesting. I would also consider making the Arlington Cemetery adventure in the morning (it gets crowded in the afternoon) and doing something else in the afternoon. Maybe a tour of Georgetown. There is also a night tour of the monuments that sounded nice, but impracticable as we were trying to get as much rest as possible. I saved my shopping for the Monday. There is a large in Pentagon City. I managed to pick up a few things, but it was a mall and there few discounts.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
As I mentioned before, I stayed at the Marriot Residence Inn at Pentagon City. While this may not be for everyone, I give my whole hearted recommendation to the hotel. The room was large, clean, recently refurbished and had a both a kitchen and living room. An all you can eat breakfast buffet was also included in the price. This may not be a big selling point to everyone, but for me a buffet with eggs, sausage, pancakes, donuts and just about everything you can imagine put me in heaven. In Europe it common to get a roll with some jelly and a cup of coffee for breakfast. Welcome home. The hotel did not have a restaurant for dinner, but did all kind of take-out and would ‘shuttle’ you to some local restaurants in Crystal City. It was also a short walk to the Pentagon (starting point MCM) and three metro stops from Roslyn (the finish line MCM). The check out time was 1200, nice. By chance I stumbled on to something. If you stay over a Saturday night for a duration of no more than four days you can qualify for the ‘weekend rate’, which is substantially less than normal daily rate.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
Not knowing anything when I started this adventure and basically planning in the dark; I booked a flight to Washington DC on the Thursday before the race and returning the Monday after the race. There were some good points to this. When I landed at Dulles I was tired but not wiped out like when I fly to California. So, a 10pm arrival at the hotel worked out. However, I was up at 0500 the next morning. The hotel I booked was the Marriot Residence Inn at Pentagon City. Their shuttle was only good for a 1 mile radius; apparently this is standard for DC. I was able to get from the airport via the Washington Flyer Bus to the metro and get off at the closest stop. I walked the rest. The reverse trip was how I left. It cost about $12 each way, which is cheaper than the estimated $40 cab fare. Now, after speaking with a few people and seeing that I would have to make a stop anyway, if I were to replay this adventure I would try to arrange things so I could fly into Regan national airport. It is much closer and all the hotels in Arlington offer a shuttle service to this hotel. This would about 90 minutes in lost ‘travel’ time to and from the Airport.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
Wow! I actually did it. It seems unbelievable but I can actually verify it. I ran 42.2 KM last weekend. In all honestly I think my last long training run was harder then the MCM. But, on my last training run I jumped up 5KM in distance and did not have Chris coaching me, holding me back so I had something left at the end. Thank You Chris (AKA Runs with Elk, Runs with Turkeys, Stalking Deer) for pushing me to this and guiding me through it. I would not have done it with out you. I also need to thank my family; they could not be there, but they supported me through all the training.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
Hi All,
Things have been pretty busy since I arrived. I have not had time to put together a coherent set of thoughts. As most of you know, this may take a while. I hope to share some of my thoughts over the experience in the next few days.
Planning has already begun.
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Buford (AKA ‘the Pachyderm’)
Steve and I completed the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington DC this past weekend. I was an EPIC adventure. We had a truly great time.
Unfortunately, I seem to have caught a bit of bug or something that is keeping me from writing all about it. My stomach went sour around mile 17 and it has not recovered. I never threw up but I sure have felt like I might. I had been telling myself it was just a dehydration thing, but then last night I awoke to the sound of my wife throwing up in the bathroom. Now I think I may have actually caught something, maybe on the plane ride, and passed it to her. Maybe Steve will post about our adventure when he recovers from the jet lag!
Chris
After last weeks stupid little trail run that left me really sore (at least I enjoyed every single step while I was doing it!), I have been laying low. I ran 6 on Tuesday, took two days off, and went 9 on Friday. I intended to run again today (Tuesday) but I have been sleeping so hard and feeling pretty tired still so I layed off completely. I will take tomorrow off and then run on Tuesday with my running group. Gotta play it cool becausr the kids have a cold and it would be disastrous to cath that dang thing now. Knock on wood, but I had been illness free the entire training period for MCM. That is pretty amazing for me. The one caveat though is that I haven’t lost any weight either. However, I think I have all the different parts of the equation figured out well enough now that I will be able to bring the puzzle together after MCM for a nice period of solid weight loss.
Chris
I woke up this morning before sunrise and headed over to Cronan Ranch. I got to the parking lot right at 7am and I think sunrise was about 7:05am. There was already a small truck there so I touched the hood to see if it was warm and it was. Whoever was in it had just gotten there before me. As I took off on the trail, the sun came up and I was disappointed to see that the sky was overcast. The ridgetops were shrouded much like you would see at the coast. The light was very flat.
I checked out some new trails and had the erie feeling that a mountain lion could be dang close by so I sang really loud! At one point, I came around a corner right by the river and found about five deer grazing on the greens growing by the river. All appeared to be females except for one very young spike, probably born this past spring. I wondered if it was good to see the deer or bad, as far as personal safety from a mountin lion. I thought it might be good that there were so many deer because that would indicate plenty of other prey besides me! But it might also be bad to see the deer ‘cuz they could be getting stalked, and since I am slower, maybe a lazy lion might take the easy one!
As I was nearly done, I was running through a draw back to the car when I saw movement in the grass uphill and too my left. Nothing scary, I immediately thought it was human and figured it might be whoever was in the car that got there before me. When the trails converged, I found that I was right. It was two guys with shoulder-slung deer rifles wearing full camo walking back to the parking lot. I told them I hadn’t seen anything worth the trouble and they agreed. They said they watched a fmaily of deer eat greens by the river and then wade into the river to pee in it. They said it looked like the deer were intentionally going into the river to pee. Rather interesting. I wonder if the deer were trying to be tactical with their scent? It also indicates I may have been between those rifles and those deer without realizing it was hunting season.
Chris
I know you boyz have your plans laid out. I just figured I would mention a warning that you only have 2 weeks to your main event. Now is not the time to cram in any extra workouts. Nothing should be more than half distance and take plenty of rest in between.
Keep in mind how long it took for you to feel totally recovered after your first 13-18 mile run. (About 8-10 days for me.) This week will really help the training soak in and make you feel strong next week. At the main event you’ll be saying “It couldn’t have been any Mo-Better”.
Curt
I woke up this morning to the lowest resting heart rate that I have ever recorded on myself: 53 beats per minute. My normal “good” resting heart rate is 56. I use a monitor so I believe it is reliable. This is really great considering how hammered I felt after Saturday’s run. Perhaps improved fitness is part of it. But as I was running this morning, I was thinking about it and I realized an additional potential cause. About ten days ago, I bought a book at fleet feet about nutrition. (I have many books about nutrition, but it never hurts to refocus on the basics.) Since I started reading it, I think I have been pretty good about reducing the amount of fat I eat everyday and increasing the amount of fiber, fruits and vegetables…. I wonder if this might not be playing a solid role in my recovery and my lower HR this morning.
Chris
