Helvetia 10K Mountain Run Race Report
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Last weekend I had the pleasure of heading down to the Swiss-German community of Helvetia, WV for the 25th edition of the Helvetia 10K Mountain Run. It's clear that race director, Dan Lehmann, is devoted to bringing runners to this top-notch, unique event. He goes above and beyond, generously opening his home and encouraging camping the night prior at his farm just 2 miles from the start line.
We had perfect early fall weather for camping and racing - clear blue skies, low humidity and cool temps. My body was not so perfect, however. Earlier in the week my prey-driven dogs decided during a run that my lumbar spine health was less important than chasing DEER! Fortunately, my wife was kind enough to help me dry needle each day and assisted with a couple joint techniques so I might at least have a chance to race. Alas, that’s life.
Once on course, the first mile was easy-peasy flat pavement, mostly on Helvetia-Adolph Road that paralleled the barely trickling Buckhannon River. I soon found myself in fourth position and hoped patience might sneak me into the top three. This faster road pace was thrilling but short-lived. At the mile mark we swung left to cross a wooden bridge onto a gravel road and then a grassy path akin to your favorite cross country course. I thought, "I love cross country!" and about five seconds later, "well, that didn't last long" as the course became Old Helvetia Road, a chunk of rutty, rocky, narrow, rolling dirt adorned with fall's earliest leaf litter, just to make it a tiny bit sketchy. I couldn't worry long about the footing as it soon reverted to a narrow, paved country road guiding us back into Helvetia to complete the prologue.
Once we were back in town, with two miles down, the *mountain* part of the course began. First, it's the more subtle grade of the two-lane, paved Pickens Road for about a half-mile. I had started to reel in second and third place but noted that Andrew Rhodes had already surged off in first. As we went along the rolling and twisting, yet always ascending gravel of Karlow Road, I was happy to slide up into third place, though three of us stayed close together for a couple minutes. We ticked off a country mile before hitting a more severely steepened section of gravel road near Dan's house for another one-third mile where I'm sure a few people questioned their definition of a having a good time on a Sunday morning.
Image courtesy Allyson O’Conner
Now at mile four, we entered the bear's den, Clay Hill, where weakened legs begged me to walk a few steps but I knew it would only prolong the pain of the bear's bite. While it's only two-thirds of a mile more to the top, the remaining climb seems to progressively steepen and degrade, gaining another ~330 feet. None of it is your grandpappy's idyllic smooth singletrack. This is a butt kicker, taking you up a rocky ditch of a trail because water always erodes surfaces at this pitch. You won't drive most vehicles up such a "road" but maybe an ATV or your screaming legs, if you dare challenge the bear. I caught and passed second place Joel Wolpert near the top and hoped to put a little gap between us because I wasn't confident in descending with a tweaked back.
Once we reached the high point, the wide, flat, gravel surface of Zumbach Road greeted my struggling mind. Surely Zumbach means "Zoom Back" in Swiss. The 1.7 mile descent down to Helvetia is a real humdinger, dropping over 660 feet to the finish. I held off Joel's first attempt to pass, but being an experienced racer, he was patient and surged hard further down the mountain. As competitive as I wanted to be, my frontal lobe thought it seemed silly to risk more back stress flailing down such a descent. I was thrilled to finish out feeling good in third place, earning a nice custom handmade pottery piece and the rare red race t-shirt. Not bad considering I couldn’t even put on my shoes and socks two days ago!
This year there were 73 folks who managed to escape the bear’s grasp. The community makes it special - you won’t find anything else like it. Check it out if you like a challenge!
Cold weather hater’s guide to surviving, and (sometimes) enjoying, indoor winter training
/Short days and frequent precipitation aren’t conducive to the types of outdoor sports that many of us enjoy. So what’s the solution? Move to New Zealand? Hole up like a hibernating black bear? I guess I am kind of fuzzy.
No offense if you have an easy time getting out into the cold consistently, but not everyone loves to train in the rain, hail, sleet, snow, slush, and ice. Is there one best approach to the off-season? Nah. If there’s anything I have learned in most aspects of life, it’s that there is no one best way but many paths toward your version of success.
First, consider one critical goal: be consistently active at a level sustainable for you. It might be a touch less than what you do in the warm months. If you’d like, it can be structured and regimented. But if that distracts you from the real goal of being active overall, my dearest Frozen Elsa, you can let it go. The thing about effective goals is keeping them reasonable and achievable. What did you manage last winter? Three daily episodes of Parks and Rec? Four? Surely you can do better than that. Let’s ride the bike smart trainer while you set a new five episode record of Brooklyn Nine-Nine! Maybe some bodyweight strength training during commercial breaks. You’ll finish feeling like an absolute champion of the day.
Proof that Humans can run outside in the snow and cold
Pick a new activity to try out or revive an old one you lost touch with, partly as a mental challenge, partly as a way to keep life interesting. Now is a great time to be honest with yourself, assess your weaknesses or negative tendencies, and do something about them. For me, it’s a nice time to emphasize more yoga and work on mobility to unwind the months of overuse and poor posture. Lay off of the endurance training and strength train an extra one to two days each week. Try to go a little heavier than you did last time around and feel more alive than ever as the delayed onset muscle soreness kicks in. Similarly, if there was ever a time to introduce other aerobic cross training to your life, now is it. Maybe you’d be more inclined to go outside for something new like cross country skiing, hiking, rucking, or snowshoeing. No? Well, indoor cycling, swimming, water running, water aerobics, rowing, stair climbing, ellipticaling(?) are absolutely fair game for improving and maintaining aerobic fitness.
Watching other sporting events while you train indoors can be a great motivator. My personal preference is college basketball. A roughly two hour block of time will whizz right by when you get caught up in the game. Before Zwift came along to suck $15 from my bank account every month, I’d often change my intensity with the possession of the ball. Easy when your team’s on offense, hard when your team’s on defense. Tempo or snacks during commercial breaks. Whatever. You’re still doing something to stay engaged and move!
Proof that dogs can run outside in the snow and cold
Similarly, movie or event watch parties are an option. If you have the space, invite a friend or two over to exercise with you. Grab your training partner, friend, spouse, or child. Now throw them high into the air. Repeat 10 times every five minutes for an excellent full body power workout far superior to Crossfit. I guess if you don’t like throwing your training partner but have a bike trainer, treadmill, or multiple pieces of exercise equipment, consider alternating turns on each device while complaining about your spouse’s yarn collection taking over the spare bedroom.
A related option is to join an exercise class. This form of social accountability works well for many people. While it can be the deciding factor for some people year-round, it’s even more beneficial under these less ideal weather circumstances, as long as you can get to the class. Seems like Orange Theory is quite popular nowadays, but maybe it’s just a cult. If you’re a real anti-social endurance badass, I look forward to reading your article on how we can all become an anti-social endurance badass soon.
Brick it. Since you admitted to having multiple pieces of indoor equipment just a moment ago and because indoor training can be described best as dull, boring, and monotonous, let’s get more creative. Triathletes thrive on brick workouts, which tend to be bike rides followed by runs. But you could make it whatever activity you wanted. Rules are for sissies. Rotate continuously from the bike, treadmill, elliptical, rower, and body weight/low resistance circuit strengthening for an interval of time, say 10 minutes each, and watch nearly an hour fly by. This is a nice way to do minimal impact, low injury risk steady-state aerobic workouts without excess boredom.
Each brick activity could have its own little mini-progression starting from an easy intensity, ascending to working comfortably hard by the final 1-2 minutes before you switch to the next activity. Heck, you can do intervals this way by hammering one activity and recovering during the second activity. Your heart and lungs absolutely do not care what the mode of exercise is but they do care to be used consistently. Even as a single sport athlete, other muscles in your body do participate in your overall physiology of processing byproducts and contributing stored muscle glycogen, meaning your legs benefit from training up your core and arms.
Don’t you want to go outside in the snow and cold?
Staying fit through winter doesn’t always have to feel like maximal work. Not everything in life constantly needs to be pushed to the limit. This mindset is eventually destructive and unsustainable anyhow. Time is the primary factor that matters. At the end of the day, were you mush in the living room recliner or at least a little active with something, anything. Stay consistent with any movement practice and you are less likely to get hurt when spring rolls around. At the end of the winter, you either averaged 5-10 hours of weekly activity (notice I didn’t specify) or you didn’t. Strive for consistent motivation because a couple hours one week and 12 hours the next isn’t going to cut it, and you’ll probably get hurt in that process.
Lastly, consider and recognize if you simply need some time to recharge. Nobody benefits from being burnt out. Training inside can help you start to miss being outside, but if you’ve lost interest in activity altogether, it’s worth reflecting on why that might be the case.
All information provided here is intended to be of a general educational nature and may not be specific to you and your needs. Unless you have seen me in the office, I am not your physical therapist. Even for the patients that I have seen, we would need to specifically assess these areas to have a full understanding of your individual capabilities. Always seek the guidance and advice of an appropriately licensed medical professional to address whether it is safe for you to perform any exercise like those mentioned here.
Fire on the Mountain 50K Race Report
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How many times have you driven Interstate 68 through Western Maryland and seen the signs for Green Ridge State Forest in Allegheny County but never actually stopped there? I know I’ve moseyed past a number of times and thought “I should go for a run in there - one of these days.” But I never did.
It seems like every fall I arrive at the crossroads of having summertime fitness and an indecisiveness for where to use it. I feel a sense of obligation to get in one more race before winter, whether it’s actually a good idea or not. Fire on the Mountain (FOTM) piques my interest every year, partly because it’s a drivable distance from home on the day of the event. Albeit, I had to roll out of bed at 3:45 to make the 7:00 start, but with the time change, that’s really like an 8:00 start, right?
Judging from the results and folks I’ve chatted with, FOTM is usually a low-key affair. A consistent theme in stories about the race is the numerous creek crossings. It is one thing to talk about and imagine beautiful, serene creek crossings as if they are part of a calm, fall scene in a Bob Ross painting come to life before your very eyes. It is another to actually experience these creek crossings when the air temp is in the 20s with 40 degree water, and now suddenly you haven’t been able to feel your feet, hands, or lips for 30 minutes, you are completely hypothermic, wander just 200 yards off the trail in a brain fog and die before you could get a fire lit directing the sun’s rays through the bottom of a found 1982 glass Pepsi bottle. FOTM 50K: the ultimate test of survival. Since I’m a cold weather wimp and a fair-weather racer, I hemmed and hawed for a few days, waiting around for the most accurate forecast. Wouldn’t you know, the temps would be warmish, so there goes that excuse.
For a few minutes before registering, I debated the 25K course because it involves over 9 miles of gravel road running, which certainly sounds like a safer option and I do love dirt road. But it still has technical trail sections to contend with where I’d be running comparatively faster, so I wisely(?) opted for the slower 50K slog. I hadn’t done an ultra all year, so why not... but then again the time to do a 25K is shorter, so statistically that is less exposure risk time, isn’t it? Oh, the indecisiveness.
The course profile
Despite its original point-to-point design, the 50K course is currently in an out-and-back format, which usually would be less appealing because I like my loops, but when you don’t frequent an area, it all seems new and interesting enough. You’ll just spend it all staring at the ground anyway. The 25K and 50K start together with a roughly 1-mile jaunt on gravel/dirt/paved road, mostly downhill. The 50Kers embark onto the forest’s Red Trail for the next 7.8 miles, then the Green Trail for another 7.4 miles. At that point, you arrive at a beautiful overlook aid station called the Oasis with some lovely fried potatoes, and then reverse course back to almost the same spot where the race started 5 or 10 hours earlier, depending on how good or bad your day is going. For you math wizzes, yes, it ends up longer than the 31 miles of a true 50K, clocking in at 32.5 on my personal GPS device.
There’s over 4800 feet of vertical gain, with some reports surpassing 5000 feet. Aside from the 1 mile start/finish section on Oldtown Orleans Road, a nearly 1 mile gravel stretch on Dug Hill Road, and a 0.3 mile gravel section on Kirk Road at the turnaround, the course confines you to the woods and on varying types of singletrack. So that’s not much more than 4.5 miles to zone out and just run. Otherwise, you must be vigilant. Being November, there’s no shortage of downed leaves and the associated ever-looming threat of tripping, spraining, falling, hollering, cursing, crying, and regretting your life’s decisions.
Honestly, I try to avoid trail races in mid-October to November because of that fluffy leaf litter. Really, I avoid most trail running overall in that time and lean toward rail trails and dirt roads. Why? Because I’ve had multiple nasty ankle sprains thanks to the leaves hiding little rock, root, and debris landmines.
You all think there will be any bears? Photo credit: John Duffy
After milling about at the Point Overlook while listening to race director Adam Lowe’s clear and concise instructions, we were off, accompanied by the unsettling sounds of a seemingly very upset or simply excited dog. By the time we 50Kers entered the woods, road running speedster Jonathan Fogell was already determined to push the pace. I was content to hang back around 4th place for a while because old men require time to warm up their muscles and tendons. At the bottom of the first gnarly descent, roughly mile 4, I got a little excited and drifted up a spot, but three of us remained close together at the first aid station at mile 5.5.
I did enjoy the next section of quicker gravel road though it didn’t take long to reach the technical goat trails this portion is known for. If you don’t like to use your hands when you “run” up and down things, this might not be the race for you. I love scrambling and used this evergreen-laden, cliffed-out section of course to gap the guys I was running with.
It wasn’t too long and I spotted the neon yellow jacket of J. Fogell again higher up the climb. This, of course, provided a little motivation and I pushed the intensity more than an intelligent runner would have. It didn’t take too long and I found myself hitting the second aid station at mile 8.8 in unison with Mr. Fogell.
Alone we are slow. together we can run much faster than we should. PHoto Credit: Mitch HawBAker
At this point we began the Green Trail portion of the course, which I can’t say I like as much because it’s where I eventually became hypothermic and died a mere 200 yards off trail despite the rescuers search attempts spanning four days and five nights. This is where the bajillion stream crossings of Deep Run happen. All 800 of them. Perhaps one day my children can run this event in my honor to see them all.
Anyway, my feet were numb, my hands were no better, and the sun hadn’t come over the ridge into the valley yet. I knew I really needed to get in more calories, but opening packages took a bit of effort from my incisors. There isn’t much terrain fluctuation for well over 4 miles here as the trail trends upward, constantly criss-crossing the same cold-ass creek over and over again. Fogell and I chatted through labored breathing (mostly mine) with both of us tripping and stumbling with unfortunate regularity.
Eventually, as the terrain steepened, Fogell surged to put a good 30 second gap on me by around mile 14. Then, just as I started drifting back up to him, my right leg stepped into a concealed, two foot wide, leaf-filled hole, which led to my right ankle rolling enough to get my attention but not enough to do any damage. Good thing I can’t feel pain as a dead person. We ended up ascending to the turnaround aid station at mile 16.2 together. I tried to take in the overlook view while shoveling in a handful of potato chips and some tasty fried potatoes. It wasn’t long and another runner came into the aid station, and then another, which I found super surprising considering the speed with which we worked through much of the Green Trail. I also took that as my cue to get the heck out of Dodge as a couple more strolled on up.
Exiting back down the dirt road, I began running and chatting with the highly experienced ultrarunner Michael Hoffman. But he, too, was running strong, and put a small gap on me within a couple miles as we climbed upward to mile 18. He easily had a 20-30 second gap as we began the gradual descent with the creek back toward the Red Trail.
The nice thing about cooler temps is that my sometimes fragile tummy tends to be more cooperative. Even though my hands are numb and it’s harder to open packages to actually eat anything, once it’s in there, it’s usually better tolerated. But in this case, it felt like all of the food from the prior aid station was just sitting on top of my diaphragm and I struggled with breathing normally. It was definitely a lot of food to begin a longer climb and try to chase. It would have been best to back off the intensity for a couple minutes and get the breathing under control, but I am a wonderful mix of stubborn and stupid.
As boring as I find this section, it was nice to regularly encounter the cheers of the other 50K runners on their way to the turnaround. I try to muster a thankful grunt or wave, depending on the breathing. The lower half of the Green Trail certainly has more creek crossings, and I was definitely taking them slower now that my reaction time was becoming sluggish along with every other physiologic process. At one point, I stepped on a silt covered rock only to do a full 360 degree pirouette in the middle of the creek before righting myself. And you wonder why the mile split times are so slow?
One of my favorite mental strategies is to get thrilled about counting down miles once the halfway mark passes. By the time I’d come to the next aid station at mile 23.6, I was glad to be in the home stretch of single digits but knew we had some tough singletrack and really hard climbs lying ahead. Another variant of fried potato was still somehow appealing, though I couldn’t tolerate much volume… of the Dug Hill Road Men’s Choir volunteers serenading me at the aid station with their rendition of Queen’s “Don’t Stop Me Now.”
Now that that damn song is stuck in my head, the goat trails from this point back to Dug Hill Road are a lot of fun, unless of course your calves are cramping, which mine definitely were. I had adopted a new climbing style of full-on Daffy Duck flat footed on the left side and tippy toe forefoot on the right side. Some bad thoughts of being caught crept into my brain, but the key was to always come back to what I could control: myself and my bowel movements. Awesome, my spinal cord was still intact. The reality is that everyone is slowing down at this point, some might be pooping themselves, and everyone is hurting. But only I am floating up this trail at this very moment, waiting on Mother Nature to teach me a valuable life lesson that I could eventually share with three people in a moderately silly blog post. My goal was to always feel like I was averaging a consistent pace as this time ticked away. It helped to appreciate the surroundings as this is the most aesthetically interesting part of the course with more spruce trees and interesting rock formations, though not the goatback ride that I was promised.
Back up on Dug Hill Road, a random couple cheered as they rolled past on a motorcycle. Striding into the final aid station, the volunteers tell me I’m in first place. It turns out that Michael had taken the Blue Trail just past the last aid station or he had also died of hypothermia. (This race has a remarkably low finisher rate of 12% and those were all rumored to have cut the course to avoid the frigid creek). I methodically plucked a couple gnats out of a cup of pickle juice, drank a little Coke and hoped to hang on to the placing despite the ever-looming threat of calf cramps. The next climb would be formidable on any day, thanks to its rooty scrambling and 400 feet of gain in just 0.4 miles. It was actually the very reasonable descent off the other side of the mountain that needed a few choice words as it cramped my calves enough to force the legs into an awkward speed walk.
Once I regained a semi-normal run stride on the flat, the goal became to move patiently and consistently. Two miles is still a very long way if you lock up into rigor mortis prematurely. It wasn’t bad to be going slightly up again but I was forced to avoid all of my normally explosive Parkour-like flips and basically every acrobatic move I ever used in my brief career as a stunt double on Walker, Texas Ranger. But I sure did power hike the hell out of that final 0.25 miles of Red Trail. Yeah, sure. Strava says a blazing 26:38 minutes per mile, but it’s probably off by two or three seconds.
Hitting the road, there’s only one option and it’s more uphill gradient, which becomes annoyingly steep for a few hundred yards. The good thing about such climbing is that it would be very difficult for anyone to catch up because running and walking paces just wouldn’t vary that much when you are basically ascending the face of El Capitan. Nevermind the fact that I’d probably hear and smell them coming.
So far this season, CJ Donaldson has rushed for 755 yards. Photo credit: John Duffy
Approaching the finish line, it probably became evident to onlookers that I was just too good at staring at the ground and zoning out. I almost failed to grab the Official Fire on the Mountain Finisher Log™ and then nearly missed the “finish chute” made of small saplings despite yells of “between the trees you friggin’ idiot!” I briefly debated on how to carry such an unwieldy object and wasn’t sad to still have my gloves on to protect my delicate hands. Should I shove this into the fire with a coyote’s yelp? Maybe lift it overhead and spike it forcefully downward with a core muscle-engaging wood chopper and a hyper-masculine grunt because the log obviously represents all of life’s collected frustrations that you’d love to ignite in a massive blaze? Each racer must make this decision when the time is right for them. Ultimately, I settled for a gentle toss and just fell on top of said fire, making the cremation process super convenient.
It was an honor to have a sizable group of onlookers toast my finish with shots of Fireball. Certainly the first time I’ve experienced that. Thank you, Adam and Katie Lowe, volunteers, and especially the Dug Hill Road Men’s Choir.
Four spooky facts about skeletal health and bone stress injuries
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Bone stress injuries are a terrifying problem. On one hand it’s not the most likely issue to creep up on an athlete, but when it does, you’ll scream in fright as this silent terror unleashes its killing blow onto your training program.
“What is a bone stress injury?” you ask as you begin to quiver in your seat. Simply put, it’s bone tissue FAILURE due to repetitive mechanical loading. Initially, it could be recognized as swelling in the outer periosteal layer or in the marrow. Eventually, it can progress to a legitimate stress fracture.
Perhaps the scariest part about bone stress injuries isn’t the annoying fitness losses, it’s that bone stress injuries tend to be HIGHLY predictive of future bone stress injuries (600% increased risk in females, 700% in males) that ultimately result in further horrific setbacks. This is particularly the case in the 6-12 months following the first bone stress injury.
In an ideal world, prevention of bone stress injuries comes through proper dietary intake and appropriate rates of activity increase with intermittent blocks of decreased training. In reality, people tend to under-fuel and ramp their training loads up far too quickly without taking rest days, rest weeks, and rest months, which really means that all bone stress injuries are due to training errors and you’ve brought about your own terrible demise! Bwahahahahaha! Suffer now, you will!
And this, unfortunately, leads me to the first, and most critical, spooky fact:
Distance running does not build the best quality bone structure!
Nooooo! Now that you’re covered in goosebumps and absolutely frozen in fear, let’s talk about the misconception that all the repetition of running must surely lead to strong bones because at least it’s weight bearing and you’re relentlessly smacking your skeleton into the ground a bunch.
Unfortunately, endurance running is not the best activity to create the stresses that optimize bone metabolism or build the highest bone density. Some really smart researchers have determined that we benefit best from high loads that are moved quickly to create the bending stresses and strains that stimulate bone turnover. While the forces of slow running are fairly large, it doesn’t involve sufficiently rapid or intense enough forces to encourage maximal mechanosensitivity in the bone. More specifically, for the real nerds, bone responds best to greater than a 3.5x bodyweight ground reaction force delivered in under 0.1 second. Slow distance running tends to induce under 3x bodyweight ground reaction force in a more prolonged 0.15 to 0.3 seconds.
In addition, the bone essentially becomes bored with the highly repetitious, mostly single-plane nature of long distance running after a shockingly short span of time. The best period of mechanosensitivity to get the bone’s attention occurs from 1-20 reps, diminishes between 21-60 reps, and becomes quite poor past this point. Last I checked, 60 steps would be a really short run. Have you considered becoming a 100 meter specialist for the sake of your skeleton? Oh God, anything but that!
Ideally, areas of ongoing bone damage are resolved at the same rate as new bone formation. Distance running creates a conundrum because it demands thousands of mildly stressful repetitions that aren’t necessarily going to create an equal magnitude of response in bone growth, thus there’s a tendency for the tissue to fail faster than it can repair.
So how do we get around this bony boredom debacle and save your scrawny skeleton? One option is by performing plyometrics and weight training at a separate time of day, preferably 4 to 8 hours ahead of or after a run. But it might be more reasonable to emphasize this plyo and strength work on days when you distance run less or skip running entirely, which would be optimal for muscle strength gains too. It really doesn’t take much of a dose if you encourage heavy lifts. Ideally, the spine, torso, arms, and legs are loaded with exercises like back squats, front squats, and deadlifts, 2-3 times each week for 2-4 sets of a very challenging 3-5 reps. Remember that 1-20 total reps range?
Another option relates to the fact that athletes with the strongest skeletal structures tend to come from sports that require rapid directional changes, jumping, and sprinting, which all induce more desirable multi-planar bony stresses. Consider entertaining those bored bones with regular soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis, aerobics, or volleyball, especially if you have less desire to strength train or simply like to mix up the week’s activities.
Early sports specialization, especially in endurance sport, is the devil’s work
Wow, that’s the most dramatically terrifying title yet, but for good reason. There’s a limited time frame during puberty to lay down the main structural components of a bone in large quantities. Based on what I just mentioned about endurance activities not doing a great job of stimulating bone production, you should realize that youngster’s skeletons very much benefit from the explosive sprinting, cutting, and jumping that are mainly performed in activities outside of endurance running. With appropriately varied long-term demands, youthful bones can even increase in size, but this is not known to happen in adulthood.
I’ll use this opportunity to also mention that many of the highest level elite athletes have exposure to other sports through childhood and puberty before they ever specialize. (Tiger Woods specialized early and you can see how unhappy that guy is now). This emphasis on variety is particularly important for movement skill development. These factors are one of many reasons the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends delaying sport specialization until ages 15-16.
To be clear, you aren’t doing your kid’s performance, skills, bones, muscles, and tendons any favors by trying to specialize them, especially before age 9, or force them into year-round single sport training. They absolutely need variety. They need to play and have fun because that’s when they learn to move their body best. And they need periods of rest every month and every year to let the growth of their body take priority. Professional athletes rely on 2-3 month off-seasons so why wouldn’t an immature human need the same thing, if not even more?
Location of a bone stress injury may indicate darker truths
Can you feel that deep, searing pain in your spine, almost like you are being stabbed with a dull, rusty butter knife? According to University of Montana PT professor and well-known running injury researcher Rich Willy, bone stress injuries that are closer to or at the body’s core (pelvis, sacrum, spine, upper femur) have a greater tendency to indicate Relative Energy Deficiency in Sport (RED-S), which is essentially the metabolic result of an insufficient intake of calories over a prolonged period of time.
Even with the world’s worst running form, excessively stressful loads should have had a chance to be filtered out and dampened by the lower leg and thigh muscles before they ever reach areas like the spine and pelvis. These central sites tend to have more metabolically active, vascularized, but less mineralized, trabecular (spongy) bone content, which heals and adapts slower than the hard cortical bone that we think of when somebody says the word “bone.”
To the contrary, the further you move away from the core (eg. tibia, calcaneus, metatarsals), the more likely a person’s biomechanics are to play a role in the onset of a bone stress injury. These folks can respond well to gait retraining, especially one of the more common interventions – a cadence increase.
This isn’t to say that gait retraining isn’t worth a look for higher fracture sites, but it’s probably not the first hurdle this athlete needs to clear. It also isn’t to say that I’m not going to drill people with questions about nutrition if they have a suspected stress fracture in the lower leg or foot. In the end, your endocrine system needs to stay healthy, which means there’s consistently enough fuel for the body to recover and heal AND perform the sport activity.
If you think carbohydrates are scary, just wait until that stress fracture shows up
The trend of “going low carb” has found popularity among some distance runners and functional fitness fanatics. High-protein people love to ramble on about how early human ancestors relied on few carbs and constantly smelled of blood. Perhaps that’s true. But another likely truth is that people didn’t “train” day in and day out because it would be wasteful to burn energy without actually accomplishing something that contributed to survival. WOOOOOO WEEEEEE WOOOOOO WEEEEEE!
Don’t worry, that’s just the sound of my bullshit alarm. Survival through frequent low intensity daily movement to scavenge and hunt food is not the same as modern intentional fitness training. Ancient people didn’t log 40 to 100+ mile running weeks as a hobby, jamming their daily distance into an hour or two of near-constant high intensity zone 3+ heart rates. They weren’t in a never-ending pursuit of 5K PRs or maxing out their back squat. They were just trying to stay alive by eating enough (which interestingly included far more carbohydrate from plant sources than Mr. Keto wants to admit). And they certainly didn’t plunk down in front of a computer to do nothing for another ten hours of the day while nibbling on their kid’s leftover Halloween candy. Comparing your metabolism and lifestyle to that of a caveman as an argument to eat less sugary crap that you shouldn’t eat anyway seems… questionable.
Much like the brain, bones like carbohydrates. Shifting your dietary habits to avoid carbohydrates before, during, and after prolonged exercise while increasing fat and protein content will alter bone metabolism, most likely in unfavorable ways that haven’t pinged on your radar.
Another time fasting becomes a factor is in the morning exerciser who skips breakfast. One day, no big deal. But weeks of running in a fasted state can have consequences for your bone health. This is especially concerning in those folks that tend to have a suppressed appetite after exercise, so even more hours pass before the body has sufficient nutrients to repair itself.
Interestingly, eating carbohydrates during prolonged running appears to negate some of the acute markers of bony breakdown after exercise. You’ll note I’m not suggesting you eat super sugary junk food all the time as high glycemic carbohydrates may actually be detrimental to bone health. Think whole grains, more fiber and emphasize eating enough calories overall, including fat and protein.
In the end, any dietary restriction creates a risk factor for energy and micronutrient deficiencies, both of which dictate performance and recovery and can lead back to the RED-S mentioned earlier. When your body needs to recover and heal, it doesn’t matter if your nutrition changes were well-intentioned. Heck, they might even be necessary for your basic health (eg. a food allergy) but you may need professional guidance to maneuver around those issues. What matters is whether your body actually has a consistently sufficient supply of macronutrient and micronutrient building blocks to take care of itself, day after day. Your body’s primary goal is sustaining itself as a living organism, not enhanced performance for leisuretime athletic endeavors. If you don’t get down goal #1, #2 definitely isn’t going to go well.
Spookiest of Sources:
Personal notes from University of Virginia Running Medicine Conference 2023
Personal notes from University of Virginia Running Medicine Conference 2020
Biomechanics and Mechanobiology of Trabecular Bone: A Review
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5101038/
Preventing bone stress injuries in runners with optimal workload https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8316280/
Rich Willy’s Bone Stress Injury Masterclass
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bIFh_h7P0c
Doctors of Running Podcast with Rich Willy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQfTkmef_s4&t=16s
Effect of carbohydrate feeding on the bone metabolic response to running
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26251510/
National Geographic, Evolution of Diet
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/foodfeatures/evolution-of-diet/
Stream of consciousness guidance for a stellar Highlands Sky
/For those of you that might be doing West Virginia’s best trail race this weekend, here are some thoughts I sent to one of my coached runners about how they might approach things a little differently this year. It’s specific to them, so YMMV and remember what they say about free advice.
In case you missed it and like to suffer through mediocre race reports, I’ve written about Highlands Sky before, because I love it just that much. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have done it five times so far!
A report filled with grape jelly
And that time I ran easy having Lyme disease but not knowing it yet
And the race I went out way too hard and may or may not have rallied
Rule #1: be ready to Dodge the giant baby bear cubs or be prepared to run using an arm as a leg
The email:
Pacing in the first half is the most critical feature. Looking at your race from last year it looks like you did a really great job of pacing it overall. You negative split the second half (14:00/mi vs. 13:00/mi) and that's great. There's no heart rate or power data so it's a little hard to extrapolate at times. Looking at the GAP paces, I do suspect you could have still slowed down another 30-60 seconds per mile on the first major climb. Over 6 miles that's a measly 6 minutes lost. You'd be fine to slow up even more if you fuel correctly, which is also part of the point of slowing - so you can eat more.
There doesn't need to be any sense of "digging" into higher intensities (mid zone 4 or higher) in the first half, especially not for several consecutive minutes. However, the climbs and excitement make it very easy to get higher than mid zone 4 so you have to emphasize discipline and patience as much as possible - so you can use your fitness in second half. The first half decides if you put yourself in a place to succeed. Seconds per mile gained in the early going become minutes lost in the later miles but it doesn't look like you tanked your pacing at all.
The more you can settle into an aerobic effort and run your own race in the first half, the more likely you will be able to dig a little deeper in the second half. However, that's still with the caveat of having had decent nutrition in that first half. The harder you go early, the more glycogen you deplete that will become critical later on.
I like to think about being proactive and very much in control of the nutrition/hydration and pacing as long as possible instead of needing to become reactive when you start to bonk or feel generally bad. "I'm pacing now to have something left for the final climb up the ski slope." "I'm eating now so I can feel great on the road across the sky." Being proactive usually aligns with being comfortable as long as possible.
That gravel road section is mentally difficult for many people so if you come into the aid at the beginning of road across the sky feeling decent, you can fuel easily for that next stretch and consistently from that point on to Bear Rocks, get a relaxed rhythm through it and pass some people. Same with the last road section - save something for it and you can pass people and cut off more time. It's worth remembering the final part of the gravel road is uphill. It also feels like that last mile or so takes forever as a result but if you expect that feeling as you start it, no big deal, it's normal. Plan to walk a little on the biggest gravel rollers and steepest climbs on the northern *hot ass savannah.*
It's very easy to run that course like it's the "Bear Rocks Marathon" (which I am going to trademark) and while that's a nice distance, Highlands Sky is 40ish miles so 13 miles of distance past Bear Rocks for suffering is really tough. Still, it didn't look like you completely tanked in that open northern section but I would guess probably a little more suffering was had coming down Raven Ridge Trail since your pace slows there. Much of Raven Ridge is non-technical enough that you could make up some serious time if you have the legs left.
And remember you can always bounce back if you start to struggle if you can keep the calories coming and keep your body temp down. If you've bonked or even started to feel that dizzy hypoglycemia, I like to think about getting about double the calories to get back on track and shortening the time frames between eating.
Are your calf muscles even fit enough to run?
/I’ve come to the conclusion that nearly everybody’s calf muscles stink. It’s partly a problem because runners tend to underestimate structural demand and think of the calf as a minor muscle group that doesn’t do much except push them a bit forward. Surely the big hip and thigh muscles are the real workers, right? Pushing is certainly some of the calf’s role during the later part of the running stride, in that brief moment before your foot leaves the ground. But slightly earlier in the stride, which is called mid-stance, as your body is moving forward over your fixed leg, the calf muscles are in full workhorse mode.
This mid-stance timing is actually the moment when the soleus, which is the biggest calf muscle, stealthily receives its peak demands. The soleus provides a major stabilizing effect to the ankle and knee, working synergistically with the thigh’s big quadriceps to keep gravity from crushing you down like Wile E. Coyote getting a boulder dropped on his head. The calf does this by resisting the forward momentum of your shin bone, using the foot as a point of fixation to work through. (Which is great if your foot does its job correctly but that’s a story for another day.)
Stop worrying about the shoe marketing hype around pronation and cushioning and start worrying about getting stronger
In 2012, Dorn et al. calculated that the soleus produced an average peak of 6 times body weight force at a 7:40 min/mile pace (7.8 mph), a pace that’s arguably quicker than many recreational folks run as they trot along. By comparison, the quadriceps were producing a measly 4 times body weight in average peak force at that pace. Doesn’t seem fair that the big thigh muscles produce less force than the smaller calf muscles does it? In that same study, speeding up to 15.7 mph (3:49 min/mile pace), a full blown sprint to most of us, resulted in an average peak of more than 8 times body weight force demands in the soleus. I know what you are thinking. That you never have or never will run that fast. Me either. Because my calf muscles suck, just like yours. (Not true, I will beat you in any calf raise test that you challenge me to as long as it’s on the moon.) The real point is that your calf muscles work ridiculously hard, even at slower paces, and speeding up further elevates their demand.
The researchers stated, “Across all running speeds, soleus, gastrocnemius and quadriceps provided roughly 75% of the total vertical support impulse needed to accelerate the body upward, with soleus contributing as much as 50%.” Notice the word vertical. The calf just wants to keep your leg tall, where your knee is bent just enough to absorb the blow of landing on the earth but not so bent that your quads work overtime or you linger on the ground too long. That’s why knee pain can relate back to less obvious factors like calf muscle function just as much, if not more so than the thigh muscles that are often blamed. And vice versa, Achilles tendon issues and calf strains can relate to poor thigh muscle function.
Older runners, especially men over 35 who make up the masters crowd, are particularly impacted by calf and Achilles tendon injuries. One unfortunate issue with age is that the Achilles tendon reduces in stiffness. I know it sounds counterintuitive at first, but research, like that from Willy in 2019, indicates that older tendons tend to have increased compliance (stretchiness) while stiff tendons do a better job at transmitting force and are less likely to be overstretched in a way that mechanically overstrains the tissue. Would you rather drive across a suspension bridge supported by slightly forgiving but very stiff steel cables or very forgiving and less stiff rubber bands? In 2017 Mahieu et al. recognized a similar situation where weaker calf muscles were even associated with Achilles tendon injury in a group of young, male military officer cadets.
Coupled with weakening calf muscles, an overzealous spring marathon training cycle can quickly turn to a puff of smoke. Once you’ve exceeded the structural capacity of the Achilles tendon and calf muscles, no amount of stretching is going to fix what you broke in that March moment of early season speedwork passion. As a side note, I really wish people would stop trying to stretch out tendon and muscle strain injuries.
Even if a person hasn’t been injured and just laid low all winter to focus on slurping [insert your beer of choice], initially adding small amounts of medium to high speed strides is the safer option for a few weeks versus going out for 2 or more miles of speedwork. In order to keep the structural and neurological capacity at a level to tolerate the highest forces, I like to have athletes perform strides year round, even if they aren’t specifically doing periodized speedwork for a target event. Strides can be short, 5 to 10 second bouts before, during, or after aerobic runs but eventually can become much longer or performed uphill to encourage even more power production while reminding your tissues that they do have a very high stress job to perform. If an endurance athlete has been hurt for a while, getting consistency and volume back are the first priority with short, slow runs. Then we can start to titrate in a little speed with strides. None of these things are appropriate, though, if the calf muscle and Achilles tendon capacity are garbage after prolonged periods of missed runs.
As for the nitty gritty of determining just how much your calf muscles stink? In 2017 Herbert-Losier et al. developed age-based normative values for the number of single leg calf raises that a person should be able to perform. These must be high quality (eg. full ankle motion with control) in order to count. You can see in the chart that the numbers are quite high. If I was still a spry young 30 year old, I should be able to complete 32 reps but now that I’m just about to hit that big 6-0 mark, my number is 23, which seems like a pretty high number to everyone whose last name isn’t Herbert-Losier. I’d estimate that fewer than half the people I see in the clinic are able to achieve their appropriate number. What’s your number?
Data Adapted from Herbert-Losier et al. 2017
If you aren’t making the Herbert-Losier grade but aren’t currently injured, making it a point to isolate the calf for strengthening could pay off for injury prevention. There are no guarantees, because no one is immune to injury, but there is never a penalty for being stronger. For the complete beginner, strengthening doesn’t need to be complicated. A basic double leg calf raise, knees straight, from floor height could suffice for two to three times per week for two to three weeks. The goal is to feel fatigue in the calf muscle, not pain. Once that isn’t challenging, we progress to single leg straight knee calf raises and also start to do bent knee calf raises too. The soleus works hard in both positions so don’t lose any sleep about that. Once your muscles start to come out of their coma, which could still take a few more weeks, we work toward raises on steps and raises with extra weight to further increase the resistive and range of motion demands.
Just for some perspective on how important calf strength generation is to me personally, I did single leg calf raises in straight and bent positions last week with 95# on my back for 15 repetitions in each position and of course on both legs. Sometimes I’ll do more weight, like 110-140# with reduced reps of 5-10 times. This isn’t where most runners can start and that could easily hurt many people so I’m not telling you to jump to what I do. Sometimes I go to failure, sometimes I don’t, often depending on the time of year and proximity to runs of varying stress. Other days I’ll use 20-45# as more of a light active recovery stress but that’s still too much for many beginners to start. Even still, I’ll mix in some occasional hopping and plyometric things (as long as I didn’t go really heavy) and some weighted overhead or farmer carry tip toe walking. The calf is always a point of emphasis!
May the force be with your calf muscles.
All information provided here is intended to be of a general educational nature and may not be specific to you and your needs. Unless you have seen me in the office, I am not your physical therapist. Even for the patients that I have seen, we would need to specifically assess these areas to have a full understanding of your individual capabilities. Always seek the guidance and advice of an appropriately licensed medical professional to address whether it is safe for you to perform any exercise like those mentioned here.
Resources:
https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article/215/11/1944/10883/Muscular-strategy-shift-in-human-running
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1466853X23000020
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330309803_The_Physiology_and_Biomechanics_of_the_Master_Runner
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315515008_Updated_reliability_and_normative_values_for_the_standing_heel-rise_test_in_healthy_adults
https://www.jospt.org/doi/10.2519/jospt.2015.5885
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0363546505279918?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200pubmed
Celebrating the hard work of a few 2022 Mountain Ridge runners
/It’s well understood that endurance competitions are difficult. In order to find the most enjoyment on race day, it helps to have patience, a learner’s mindset, and a strong desire to appreciate the process of training. There has to be a sustainable willingness to get the work done, but to not overdo and burnout. These individuals who persevere, not just in a single event but across months and years of time, are the ones that are most often rewarded. I’m fortunate to be able to work with many athletes like this. Sometimes as a PT to help them through their particular injuries and sometimes as a coach. Here are a few of the folks I enjoyed coaching in 2022:
Lindsay Rowand
After having a great run at Highlands Sky 40 miler in June, Lindsay leveled up at her second 100-miler on November 8 at the Rim to River 100 in West Virginia’s New River Gorge National Park. This busy mom and Physical Therapist completed the course in 27:10:30 as the 12th woman and earned a very solid new personal record for that distance – all without taking a nap.
image courtesy Lindsay Rowand
Natalie Capito
I haven’t yet convinced running newcomer Natalie to do any trail races but she did already manage to PR and take her first event win with a time of 21:26 at the mixed surface Mothman 5K in September. She followed this up with a great half marathon PR at the Morgantown Running Halloween Half of 1:36:44, 8th woman and 16th overall. Next up, she’ll work toward an improved performance at her second Pittsburgh Marathon in May, hoping for drier weather since last year’s edition proved to be quite soggy!
Image courtesy tristateracer.com
Image Courtesy Natalie Capito
Karl Barth
Karl adopted the triathlon lifestyle back in 2016 because he just wasn’t busy enough being an engineering professor, father of two, and husband. He obviously isn’t afraid to challenge himself and I really appreciate the fact that he has the attitude of a lifelong learner. In the time we’ve worked together, he’s taken on multiple technically challenging, climb-heavy events like the 2017 Stonewall Jackson Triathlon and the 2021 Ironman 70.3 Blue Ridge. This year he qualified for and completed the October 2022 Ironman 70.3 World Championships in gorgeous St. George, UT after crushing it at Ironman 70.3 Musselman in Geneva, NY back on July 10. Next up we are working toward the inaugural Ironman 70.3 Happy Valley in July 2023.
Image courtesy Karl Barth
Image Courtesy Karl Barth
Sara Lunden
Hoping to capitalize on her knowledge from the 2021 Cloudsplitter 50K, Sara completed her first 100K on the same difficult, technical though scenic Cloudsplitter course in the George Washington and Jefferson National Forest near Norton, VA. The course includes seven bonus miles (since it’s actually over 69 miles long instead of 62) and boasts over 16,000 feet of gain, that is, of course, not to be outdone by the 16,000 feet of descending. Adding to the challenge is the fact that on October 16th the leaves are freshly fallen and hide many trail surface defects. In preparation for all of that vertical she started racking up miles early in the year for a muddy March Rabid Raccoon 20 mile trail race near Pittsburgh, PA and then the Thelma and Louise Half Marathon in Moab, UT in May. But to really focus on going uphill she tackled the never ending steep climbs of the Laurel Highlands 50K from Ohiopyle, PA back in June. Sara will start 2023 with a bang: Frozen Sasquatch 25K in Charleston, WV and North Park Half Marathon in Pittsburgh, PA.
Image Courtesy Sara Lunden
Image Courtesy Sara Lunden
Lindsay Britton
Carrying her PR fitness from the 2021 Rehoboth Marathon (3:45!) this busy mother of two ran the thunderstorm soaked Pittsburgh Marathon in May and then demonstrated her trail versatility on the spectacle of red rock and sandy trail terrain at the Thelma and Louise Half Marathon in Moab with Sara. She went on to spend time making me jealous while exploring the trails of Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee. Like so many runners, Lindsay had a new PR goal and lots of fitness for a faster time at her second Greenbrier River Trail Marathon on October 2nd from Cass, WV but Hurricane Ian had other plans. While this flatter course could be considered a faster option in normal cool and dry fall weather, Ian dished out his anger, resulting in a far tougher, rain-soaked, muddy, windy course. Thanks to her trail running skills, Lindsay wasn’t dissuaded, and earned a strong finish as the 6th overall woman in 3:52. Next up she plans to explore the New River Gorge trails and build her winter base at the Cabin Fever 50K in February 2023.
Image Courtesy Lindsay Britton
Image Courtesy Lindsay britton
Tabitha Coffindaffer
Following her personal best marathon at the 2021 Greenbrier River Trail Marathon, Tabitha has been working hard all of 2022 and completing a big variety of events in the process. She did her first ultra-distance run at the June Midnight Squatchapalooza 12-Hour in Colombus, NJ. In the build up to that, she became more trail comfortable while training for the Meeks Mountain Muddy Mutt 15K down in Hurricane, WV and then worked on speed for the Decker’s Creek Half Marathon right here in Morgantown, WV. Like Lindsay, she also dodged the raindrops, mud, and puddles at her second Greenbrier River Trail Marathon in early October. Not to be outdone by that cruddy weather, she used her hard-earned fitness in late October at the challenging Ohio Chessie Trail 10K and nearly broke her personal best road 10K time!
Frog Pond Reflections: The Boston Marathon Race Report Story
/
While Boston may not have initially topped my bucket list of endurance events, I have to admit that it was a really fun run. It’s apparent that the city loves the runners, and runners love the event. There’s a lot of hype from the fanboys/fangirls/fandogs/fancats, but it’s mostly well deserved. Even with the tremendous pain in the gigantic butt that is COVID-19, the Boston Athletic Association put on a memorable and safe event.
A challenge for all the city folk
Getting into the city for packet pickup on Saturday was a little on the stressful side because I don’t love city traffic. City slickers are pretty terrible at driving, which is an understatement. I 100% fully stand behind that statement and will challenge 100% of city slickers to any type of driving contest at any time because I am competitive, and you will 100% definitely lose. I see the dents on your cars and your hunched posture over the steering wheel. I have spoken.
Is this an Ironman triathlon?
Wandering around the finish line area before the race reminded me of how people become obsessed with Ironman triathlon events and get Ironman tattoos and can hardly let themselves be seen in public without Ironman apparel and no conversation can pass by without mention of Ironman. (Not saying I haven’t done this, hence the reason I have earned the authority to poke fun.) In this case, there’s a ridiculous number of Boston Marathon jackets EVERYWHERE.
At the time this seems a bit premature, to assume that you will complete the event. Just about anything can happen on race day, and then won’t you feel silly having celebrated a finish that never came? It’s purely a statistical probability that out of my conservative estimate of 8,000 finisher jackets wandering the streets in those 48 hours prior, at least two of those jackets came down with a crippling case of the shits on race morning and didn’t even make it to the start line.
But maybe I misinterpret the purpose of such jackets.
By the numbers
The evening prior to starting, I realized I hadn’t done a true road race since a turkey trot 5K in 2016, so yeah, I don’t make road racing a priority. I had done 36 other events since then, 35 of which were trail races and 17 of those were ultramarathons from 50K to 100 miles. I’m well aware that I’ve given up exactly 23 seconds per mile of marathon speed to run stupidly long distances in the woods and that’s just fine, hater. I own like three or four pairs of road shoes and have over 20 pairs of trail shoes in rotation at any time. The wonderful race I used to qualify for Boston was a largely flat, crushed limestone rail trail at the Greenbrier River Trail Marathon in 2018, so still not a “road race.” And then there was some sort of pandemic recently that kinda killed off road races so an opportunity to include those in the lead up has unfortunately been lacking.
Why?
Plenty of runners do this Boston race as a celebration of their sport without any intention to kill themselves, which I totally understand because it felt like 26.2 miles of partying. Some runners want the bragging rights of a particular time or PRs. I was somewhere in the middle, where running semi-quickly would be a nice bonus, but I wanted to appreciate the day and take in the surroundings because I don’t have much intention to run Boston again in the near future. Besides, the grey hairs signal that maybe it’s time to savor the process.
Some whining and complaining
I hadn’t had a satisfying running performance all year, which left me putting all my eggs into one road marathon basket. Training for Boston was already off to a rough start thanks to a terrible ankle sprain on July 3 during the Finger Lakes 50K. For over a week I couldn’t run, then I couldn’t run very fast for a couple more weeks, and not very far for about a month, and downhills, especially at speed, were a problem for multiple months. Good thing I enjoy riding the mountain bike.
The ankle would ache, swell, and remind me every time I’d finish a run that was pushing the limits of what it could safely tolerate. And I definitely couldn’t safely do any amount of trail running for about a month and a half so I had to frequently remind myself that it was best to put the time into road-style training anyway. It was surprisingly enjoyable to head back to the rail trail and track for speedwork that I hadn’t tried in years and see the specific adaptations that consistent, fast, anaerobic training brings. Even mixing in those less frequented locations was a fun change. But as the event approached and more work was invested, every passing week became a little more stressful with frequent illnesses amongst my children and near misses with the ever-present cloud of COVID-19.
Then suddenly, it’s race day, baby!
Since we stayed outside of Boston and I had no interest in riding a bus with that whole pandemic thing, Anne dropped me off a little more than a mile from the start line and I walked in on a lovely rural road that was closed to traffic. Instead of the mass start that April’s marathon would have, this super delayed, special fall version of the Boston Marathon was altered to have 20+ minute rolling start windows for groups of runners based on their expected finish time. This was a nice, low stress way to begin whenever the courage came about.
Walking to the start in Hopkinton
This Definitely won’t give anyone nightmares tonight
I won’t reveal much about the course that hasn’t already been said by many other participants over the years. While the whole course averages a downhill gradient from Hopkinton to Boston, the earliest miles are definitely the ones that will trick you, even more so than most races, because there’s such an abrupt drop of elevation in the initial five miles. It’s just too easy to go fast with that combination of excitement, crowds, number of runners, terrain, and highly competitive ostriches. I’m not sure why other race reports hadn’t mentioned the ostrich category but maybe that’s new this year? I was perfectly content with letting myself hold back on these miles by 10-20 seconds per mile and drafting those long, sexy legs though I don’t like the feathery exhaust much.
It wasn’t long into the race that a human runner came close, and I noticed her hard footstrikes (because that’s a normal part of my job and brain function). Maybe a half mile or so down the road she began grunting and hitting the ground even harder on a steeper downhill, to which I was thinking, “isn’t it a little early to be suffering that much?” Her nearby friend asked her multiple times if she was okay and finally she said, “my stress fracture...I have to drop out.” I passed and never saw her again. Rough day. Bone stress injuries are not easy to get around, and hard downhill running is a surefire provocator. I did feel bad for her.
It’s not flat
Moments later, I heard my name yelled from the side of the road and looked up to see a fellow Morgantown-area friend spectating, waiting for his wife to come through. That was an awesome surprise to actually recognize someone. Then I saw a runner spit on his hands and wipe them on his shorts. I assume he wanted to get something off of his hands, VERY BADLY. Gross. I personally would have waited until the next aid station and just used water, because they are literally every mile apart.
And then there was the guy that looked like he had been shot in the back because the chafing of his heart rate monitor strap must have really eaten through some skin and left an 8-inch long fresh blood streak down his shirt. I’d like to imagine he also had super bloody nipples like that 5K fun run scene from The Office.
Can you tell I’m just people watching this whole time?
I’m trying to make sure I get at least two cups in at every aid station because it’s plenty humid and warm already, and I constantly want to inadvertently suck water up my nostrils. The other thing I’m absolutely making sure to do is achieve the most awkward facial expressions possible for the professional marathon photographers so my wife won’t be tempted to buy any photos of me looking terrible once this thing is over. It’s also more entertaining for the other runners who might happen to find one of my awkward race photos in the process of looking for theirs. It’s no wonder they take so many photos. Most of them just make you look like a complete buffoon. They are also a Physical Therapist’s paradise: Look! I can tell from the amount of frontal plane collapse of your pelvis and excessive femur adduction that your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus muscle are less functional than those of my 85-year-old grandmother! And she’s even had a hip replacement that nicked her sciatic nerve!
Even though the post-race coverage indicated that the spectator crowds were smaller than typical years, I didn’t notice. As best as I can recollect, the route had cheering faces and smiling babies nearly the entire distance with only a couple short sections lacking a crowd. The run goes through multiple smaller towns where more people gather to cheer, but the connector roadways in the middle were still busy with onlookers. I’m sure many were asking “Is there some kind of race today?” It was still such an enormous number of people compared to any other “normal” race that I would never complain about a lack of spectators.
Down the line I began wishing/hoping for a way to acquire some real food on the course that wouldn’t be the standard palate-offending Gatorade Endurance or the oddly textured Maurten energy gels. Magically, a lady appeared alongside the road with a banana, which I promptly ate because I couldn’t just ignore that kind of holy gift. Since I was obviously vying for the overall win, I hope no one disqualifies me for outside assistance. Rat me out and I will find you on Strava and make your life a living hell. I noticed this crowdsourced support at several points along the route, especially later on. Amateur road racing on this scale is clearly not about self-sufficiency. It’s about wasting $200+ on carbon plate shoes, $90 finisher jackets, $200+ entry fees, chafed nipples, and trying not to crap yourself in public.
A roar in the distance told me I was nearing the halfway point. The loud ladies of Wellesley College are known for giving random kisses to the runners, but all I’m giving them is a photo because, seriously, COVID-19. It was about this time that Danica Patrick, famed professional NASCAR driver and ostrich racing enthusiast pulled up beside me on her smelly, squawking bird, Olivier. I could tell after about three minutes that I could get this foul French-named beast to redline and started to take the corners extra wide, throwing my elbows out (an old XC trick) to drift them up closer and closer to the crowd control barriers. Racin’ is rubbin’, Danica! Besides, ostriches aren’t known for having the highest VO2 max. You could say I ruffled a few feathers.
Why do all of these people want to hurt me? Hey, that guy has the same shoes as me!
The course has small roller climbs of varying sizes the entire route. The section of bigger climbs that runners fret over is from Newton to the top of Heartbreak Hill, which spans about five miles from roughly 16 to 21. I really like prolonged climbing and it felt better on my stiff, old body (and booty, in case you wondered) to take away the near constant fast descending and make the demand more fitness oriented. Doesn’t mean I was flying, but it was a more enjoyable part of the course. I could actually pass several people midway up the climbs without digging deep and I liked having another movement pattern. Why don’t we all run this course in reverse one year, and I bet people will be far less sore afterward?
I think I started to see runners cracking and starting to walk by the 16th mile, but the course continued to take many casualties from this point onward. It seemed like every couple minutes people were quickly pulling to the side of the road to stretch their calf, hamstrings, or quad cramps. More than I would have ever guessed. Though I felt fine, the thought crossed my mind, “will I be one of them?” Only you can decide if this is foreshadowing.
There was something, or should I say someones, to look forward to just prior to Heartbreak Hill because I knew my wife and son were waiting there. One of my biggest goals as a parent is to demonstrate to my kids that it is possible to do seemingly difficult things and to seek out challenges as a way to make the rest of life seem a bit easier. Maybe it won’t work, but I know running and sport has taught me plenty of coping skills. Even if they just learn to get outside and be active to stay healthy, I’d be happy and consider that a success. I was super glad I got to see them for some high fives, which still makes me a little emotional.
Exiting the High 5 Zone, obviously
Topping out on Heartbreak Hill the course begins to trend downward once again, dropping into Brookline where I swear all I could think about was how it reminded me of a real-life Sesame Street. Doesn’t take much because I’m from the country, after all. Plus, I saw Big Bird getting on the T. Or was that a rogue ostrich? I was extremely disappointed to see that I somehow(!) didn’t get the KOM/CR crown on Strava for Heartbreak Hill. The only plausible explanation is that the satellites must have been overwhelmed with all the unique GPS watch signals pinging from such a tiny area.
It seemed like for every runner dropping like a fly there was a runner who somehow paced well and was hauling ass down this final stretch of road. I wish I had those quads after all that prolonged high speed road descending. I also wish I could survey the motivations of each of these people at this point. Question #1: Do you realize that you are an absolute jerk for passing me? Question #2: On a scale of 0 to 10, how much does it hurt when I stomp on your toes?
The pedestrian control for all the city slickers trying to cross the road (to get to the other side) was a thing of wonder and beauty as these amazingly gifted volunteers would somehow siphon the now easily confused runners down to a three foot wide path with mysteriously alternating giant arrow signs. Was it a single arrow they would flip over along an x, y, or z axis? Did the sign have an arrow on each side? I still haven’t figured out that trigonometry. I would have paid more attention but I was too busy playing a revolving game of “I bet that person is a triathlete/trail runner/pure road runner/fitness enthusiast.”
I don’t understand how the word “chiropractic” is supposed to be a motivator
At this point something bites me hard on the left ass cheek as I detect a vague scent of fried chicken. Dammit Team Olivier/Danica! I thought I’d disposed of these two clowns. I’d obviously have to play my best hand. I tolerated their presence until the next aid station when I repeatedly batted the Dixie cups away from Olivier’s ugly beak, as he tried to poke me in the eyes but it ultimately forced him into an even deeper state of dehydration. Birds are particularly sensitive to dehydration. I know, because my chickens told me.
By mile 22 or 23 I had started to tighten up my neck and shoulders as my quads began to deny their role, causing a slight slowing of pace, until a random runner a few yards behind and beside me yelled, “drop those shoulders” and some other piece of possibly encouraging information. This person may not have even been talking to me, but I tripped him anyway and proceeded to relax my shoulders. I did need to be told that very thing in that moment, so it worked out and I got a little faster for a bit plus that guy won’t be running his mouth at people any time again soon.
This giant Citgo sign appears and everybody starts pushing to empty their tanks, making me feel a bit like a slacker. Then I had an “ah ha” moment: there must be a limited supply 50-cent sale on slushies. The psychological threat of missing out on the sale triggered my chimp brain into causing a couple left calf cramp pings, to which I was thinking, “apparently these stupid super shoes don’t actually let the calves rest that much compared to regular shoes.”
As I looked down at said shoe, I realized, all too late, there’s a tiny gauge on the inside of the heel, registering on “E” and you are supposed to fill the shoes up with “high octane 95% minimum fructose only energy gels” at the start line. To make matters worse, one gauge was slightly above “E” and could explain the awkwardly asymmetric run technique I adopted. It’s 2021 and shoes bonk now, are you kidding me? Agggghhh, I should have known there was a way shoe companies could milk more money from the consumer beyond the already ridiculous $230+ price tag and 150-mile durability threshold. Not surprised these things weren’t equally filled when I drove them off the lot two weeks ago. The things you miss when distracted by that new shoe smell.
But it was probably the fact that my quads died a mile back, so I was trying to rely on my calves more to maintain the same speeds. Maybe. Nah, I bet the shoes were bonking. I was torn between picking up the pace to increase the chances of slushie success while risking full calf lock down, or just ride it out because it was already far from a PR day for me after that meaninglessly intense Heartbreak Hill KOM attempt, even though this lackadaisical approach might just cost me a slushie.
That final section down Boylston Street was great. The crowd was wildly flinging discounted slushies at the runners. I am still not sure if they were maybe just trying to hit me? If so, jokes on them. One quick sip of Chuck’s Cherry Charger is all it took to make me want to sprint hard, and I did pick it up a little, just to pass those runners nearby that I had secretly entered into my own personal highly competitive 0.5-mile event because how dare these amateur schmucks try to pass me. WHERE ARE YOU DANICA PATRICK? I’m beating you SO BADLY right now Danica Patrick! There’s nothing like a sip of corn-syrupy ice granules to boost a man’s ego to superhuman levels. But I honestly didn’t see the point of truly hammering and just tried to be appreciative of those final few strides and savor the spectacularly loud crowds that were obviously cheering for only me.
Now give me that medal! The food bag the kind volunteers with melting faces give you past the finish line was marvelous. What an unbelievable apple that was (no joke). Though I actually wanted the Cheetos and not the plain Lays chips. I briefly developed a kinship with and harassed an older man with a West Virginia University sling bag because you’ll say and do lots of odd things in the 15 minutes after a long effort. As I lie soaking my sore quads and chafed nipples in the Boston Common Frog Pond, I was finally able to reflect on the morning’s 28.4 mile journey.
Frustrated, Danica recounts the barrier incident in a post-race interview, image credit CBS Boston
Look at these cool capes
Frog Pond Reflections
While I had a decent sense of the course structure beforehand, to execute this race optimally for speed, it seems like a marathon that you could do once to fully understand the course and then come back to do it again after having tailored your training specifically to the course layout. Fast downhill road running in the carbon plate cheater shoes would have been a lovely training addition in the couple months prior to Boston, but my ankle wasn’t going to allow that in large or even medium doses. Oh, well.
It definitely didn’t feel as much about cardiorespiratory fitness. I say this because I had far more aerobic fitness than I needed for a marathon from all the long ultra efforts, so that part was oddly easy and I actually felt physically good in the hours immediately afterward. I never really felt like I was breathing hard but just cruising along, albeit more and more stiff legged in those last couple miles from the blown quads. It’s a weird course.
Here Froggy Froggy
It’s borderline humorous how I’ve done events in the past 4-5 years with 10,000 to 20,000 feet of ascending and descending that didn’t ruin my quads because I was moving slower overall, deviating between many paces and terrains, and wasn’t wearing evil carbon plate super shoes. The only time I’ve had that much soreness during a race was from incorrectly executing the Laurel Highlands Ultra when my quads had imploded by 40 miles. Usually in ultramarathons they hurt and get heavy but it’s somehow a manageable, less sharp and less abrupt pain until the next day. The multiple days of systemic soreness from an ultra still takes the cake, though. #ultratrailrunsnob
Back to the woods, away from these beardless, short shorts road runners!
Finger Lakes 50K Race Report
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In the few days prior to traveling up to New York for the Finger Lake 50s, I had checked the weather a few times and noticed the weekend precipitation predictions steadily increasing to a point where I wondered things like, “Why all the rain and cool temperatures? Is it even summer up there? I wonder what texture of mud they have?” Knowing that we would be truck camping in the Finger Lakes National Forest, I even did some updating on my truck’s camper shell to create as much of a water barrier as possible.
When we arrived in the forest Friday evening, clouds hung in a low, white-gray blanket overhead. The forecasted weather was indeed accurate: the temps were cool and rain fell intermittently. To truck camp we parked along the gravel Potomac Road while tent campers packed their stuff a couple hundred yards to a small campground near the finish line.
The rain continued in spurts all night and was sometimes heavy enough to wake me up as it pounded the shell roof. A couple times I awoke to the sound of rednecks driving their unnecessarily loud trucks and vans, at what I suspect was well over the 35 mph national forest speed limit on Potomac Road. I wish I could be that skilled, having the ability to let so many people know just how awesome I am at 1:00 AM on a Friday night of July 4th weekend. Maybe one day.
It didn’t feel like much later, around 5:00 AM, when the cars of non-camping racers began rolling in. It was obviously futile to continue any further sleeping attempts. At least it wasn’t raining when I emerged from the humid shell, which made the initial gear preparation easier, but it didn’t take long for another moderate shower to begin and complicate the breakfast and coffee prep.
After a bit of deliberation regarding the combination of rain and 50-something degrees, I opted for the long sleeve wool shirt. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to stop raining anytime soon. By 6:30 AM, the 50 milers and 50Kers were gathered at the start line. The crowd was laid back and the final race director instruction proved entertaining as they knew the conditions were not exactly optimal. Anne and the other 25K runners would have to wait until 8:30 for their start.
Off we went for the first 16.5 mile loop, beginning with a quick 0.5 mile descent down the gravel road. As usual, I wasn’t surprised to see a small group sprinting to the front. Buh bye, suckas. Lots of hours left to play in the mud, why be in such a rush? The initial singletrack was plenty wet with a couple slick wooden bridges, and it began to quickly climb us right back up. The scent of wet pine needles and mud filled the air. Heaven.
It didn’t take long to start seeing and smelling pasture land and the first cattle field with an infamous cattle gate. “Don’t let the cows out” is a bit of an event slogan. This is fun. It reminds me of the cow pastures I ran as a youngster. And the mother cow that head butted me once when my grandad had me chase its calf to tag it. No cows in sight here but I also couldn’t see particularly far through the dense fog. Nor did I want to take the time to gawk around solely for cows.
We popped out onto the gravel Mark Smith Road at 2.5 miles for more fast descending that led to a climb up the Gorge Trail at mile 3.7. This was mostly runnable, gradual grade climbing so I never felt too bogged down, nor was there much power hiking time. My spine muscles were making themselves known by threatening to spasm after the less than stellar night of sleep combined with the faster descending.
The Interloken Trail comes up next along with a visit to The Beach aid station around mile 5. Nothing looked like a beach, but there was a swampy pond nearby covered in a layer of mist. Too bad I didn’t bring a camera. By the way, it was raining and the trail was a muddy mess with lots of standing water and tree roots aplenty through here. I could be wrong, but I think someone was smoking weed in the woods as I puddle hopped on by.
Back to another short gravel road jaunt. I really enjoyed how this was broken up into such a variety of surfaces even though elevation-wise there’s never a ton of variation all at once. It’s like a combination of various races I’ve done in WV, OH, and PA all rolled into one.
Up another portion of the Interloken Trail. My collapsible water bottle flew out of my waist pack, so I picked it up and carried it in my hand for a bit. Not knowing the trails, I didn’t realize a more gnarly downhill was coming. A downhill of many roots and plenty of water. On the descent, I attempted to put the bottle back into the pack with one hand, at which point I missed and it fell to the ground again, right in front of the runner behind me. Try again, but now with two hands behind my back while still running downhill amongst the rocks and roots.
And then it happened. With my hands still behind my back, as my right foot and ankle entered some deeper water surrounded by roots, I felt something I’d only ever experienced one other time. The feeling of my ankle rolling so far that the joint subluxes and there’s an interesting popping/grinding sensation. At first I didn’t even feel much sharper pain, just a dull pressure and ache that was still enough to make me slow up and limp. Another 50-100 yards of trying to bring myself back to normal-ish running, and I’m right back onto non-technical gravel road at The Library aid station just beyond 10 miles in.
That stupid bottle in my left hand gets dropped about one minute after this moment, image from Trails Collective/Ian Golden
A handful of seconds after spraining, lingering at the aid station, hating life while debating how smart it will be to continue, image from Trails Collective/Ian Golden
It didn’t feel terrible, so I kept going onto the next section of trail. I’m also kind of a stubborn, arrogant fool so unless there’s a bone sticking out or the pain is very severe, it’s unlikely I’d stop though I knew the risks. Was this smart? Probably not. It definitely prolongs the recovery afterward and would be particularly risky because the ankle is more likely to sprain again during any continued attempt to keep running on this day, as well as in the weeks ahead. If it had been my left ankle, I think I would have had no choice but to quit because it is far less forgiving from all of its prior battering. By the way, the ankle is known as “the forgiving joint.” Let’s hope this is true.
Limping quickly onward to a short piece of uphill paved road and to the Backbone Horse Camp. The only pavement in the race that I can recall. I didn’t notice any horses, but at least there were a couple of other runners around to provide a little distraction. This next section rolls nicely along the Backbone Trail, which is mostly grassy overgrown gravel road with plenty of squishy and slippery mud sections. The final aid station, The Outback, comes at the edge of the last cattle field, about 13.5 miles into the loop. That field was super mushy so I was not looking forward to revisiting it on a second loop, expecting it would be magnificently churned up at that point. (Should be great to plant seeds right now though.)
swamp
The course turns southward with another section of the Interloken Trail. There’s a ridiculous number of wooden bridges to cross because the area appears to just stay wet. It was a pretty jaunt through the pine forest with thick fog still in accompaniment. If I had known I would be forced to run slower I really would have brought that darn camera. It felt more like September than July.
I was hoping that I could trust my GPS, the watch time, and my location instinct as 16 miles clicked on by. My priority goal of evenly splitting the loops for a roughly 4:30 finish time wasn’t going to happen given the ankle sprain, so I set my sights on simply finishing and just trying to be careful enough to prevent too much worsening. Maybe if I can’t be the fastest overall 50K runner, I can be the fastest old (masters) 50K runner?
I noticed immediately upon starting up the first climb of the second loop that the course conditions had deteriorated further. This encouraged a quicker turnover because any attempts at creating a long, forceful stride on inches thick mud resulted in a power sucking experience and more ankle pain. Thank goodness the packed gravel roads remained in wonderful shape despite the fact that the rain had started to come down even heavier. These road sections provided a brief but welcome respite from the now thicker and deeper mud.
At this point, I was definitely not sad to have worn the long sleeve wool baselayer because I certainly wasn’t overheating in a downpour. I noticed while being so soaked that the repetitive movement had weirdly generated a foamy layer on my shoulders. This must be what they mean about working yourself into a lather? First time for everything.
Didn’t put my fenders on so mud was flinging everywhere
Every section of trail that was a mess before had become either deeper puddles, deeper mud, or were now fully flowing creeks. I became really paranoid about not being able to see what the heck I was stepping on, which is not an ideal thing you can focus on if you want to go fast. It already gets hard enough to control the stability of your legs once fatigue sets in.
Descending back down toward the Library aid station around mile 27, wouldn’t you know that the same section of rooty creek trail caused my ankle to subtly roll again! Come on. The race director was hanging out at the aid station and wanted to know if I had had any difficulty with the course markings. I said no but that I did really hate that last descent at this point. Hopefully he didn’t take it personally.
The rainy frolick continued and I really hoped that the people driving along that paved road would see me through the fog. Back along the Backbone Trail I tried to consume mostly liquid calories to reach that final super mushy cow pasture because eating solid food always starts to feel like an annoying chore. Some Coca-Cola provided a nice lift, but yeah, I was over it. Close enough to stumble in for a finish to avoid my greatest fear (a DNF) but demotivated from the injury-induced lackluster performance. Limp down the final portion of the Interloken Trail again with the ankle becoming increasingly less reliable and swollen. This had really become a technical mud and water nightmare from all of the foot traffic. Like I said, this section clearly doesn’t drain well anyway, so this time around I was tripping all over the place (though I still refused to succumb to gravity and fall!)
a boy and his cow
I somehow held on to be the first masters runner, thus acquiring the first giant wooden cow trophy of my career. It was really a big old pile of manure to not be able to give full effort considering that I had started out feeling generally good, the temperatures were great for pushing the intensity, and the course layout worked well for my style. I really did enjoy moooving through the course design for much of the first loop. Until I rolled my damn ankle and the priorities changed. Have I whined enough yet? Nope.
Few things are as frustrating to me as not being able to push up to the true fitness, psychological, and strategic barriers that should be the limiters on the day. But this is the way of the trail racing world. It is that greater level of unpredictability and challenge that a trail runner is often seeking. There are always factors that cannot be accounted for and circumstances that will create challenges that are not listed on the race entry web page. And I’m okay with that. So I guess I’m done whining now. I don’t wanna have a cow, man.
puffy in all the wrong places
Promise Land 50K++ Race Report
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The Promise Land 50K++ is a long-standing, well-respected ultra trail run in the Jefferson National Forest near Lynchburg, Bedford, and Roanoke, Virginia. This 2021 version took place on April 24 with plenty of trail runners champing at the bit to race since the 2020 event was cancelled.
At 5:30 AM we started in darkness at about 1300 feet elevation with a roughly three-mile climb up a gravel road from the Promise Land Youth Camp. It was runnable at the bottom but became too steep for anything but hiking by the time the final half-mile rolled around. I was surprised to see how many people were just blasting this entire section. Being a spring event, that felt like a sure way to guarantee an awful experience for me, so I held back.
Then there’s a short section of slightly technical singletrack alongside Onion Mountain where I finally topped out the first climb around 50 minutes for 4.5 miles at an altitude around 3500 feet. Just a measly 2200 feet of gain in less than an hour. Yeesh. This leads to over three miles of gradual grassy service road descent on the side of Apple Orchard Mountain. Fortunately it drops only to 2600 feet and not back to valley levels. Still, so many people were flying on these open, non-technical sections. It was early, so patience felt like the best course of action as I tried to settle into a sustainable rhythm. The view of the sunrise was fantastic.
Around the 8.5 mile point, the trail starts climbing as everyone must reach the top of Apple Orchard Mountain. Before reaching the top, racers have a midway stop at the Reed Creek aid station at 10 miles where I refilled a bottle, took down a cup of Coca-Cola, and some chips, expecting the next aid station to come quickly. There’s more non-technical - but now steeper - grassy, wide service road to climb up to the Blue Ridge Parkway. I’m getting a feeling that this course is different from the types of trail runs I’m accustomed to.
Crossing the parkway, we reached the high point of the course at nearly 4000 feet and began a long, crushed gravel road (still non-technical) descent toward the Sunset Fields aid station. Some people were really rocking the pace as the runners I followed up the climb were drifting further from my sight. I was trying to hold back a bit to save my quads for later.
totally straight and flat
super flat
Now for the biomechanics lesson you didn’t ask for but need to hear. The destructive muscular impact of terrain elevation fluctuation is one of the hardest things to explain to road runners and non-ultrarunners. In ultras, there’s a significant likelihood that your quads will begin to hurt and/or simply have a hard time holding you up, especially on descents. It commonly forces people into walking because running feels untrustworthy. You can thank something called eccentric demand for that failure. A couple things increase the eccentric demand in the quadriceps muscles: 1) longer strides that make the initial point of foot contact further from the body, 2) downhills, especially steep downhills. Eccentric demand is far less with climbing than descending, but climbing gets all the sexy vertical appeal.
The bigger those eccentric demands as the hours pass, the faster your quads will begin to either hurt or straight up experience a reduction in their force generating capacity. So when you see a course elevation profile or some big elevation gain number, it’s just as important to consider the elevation loss and the grades because those are the most muscularly demanding periods of time, even though they might not require the most cardiorespiratory fitness. It’s definitely not free speed like coasting on a bicycle. Across a several hour mountainous ultra, there’s a good chance that hours of time will be spent descending, slowly working the quads toward failure. Could you run the descents faster? Yes, many times. But it’s not a great idea if you want your quads to do their job well, on all terrains, as long as possible.
Anne greeted me at the aid station, and I proceeded to complain a bunch about not being able to do anything with gloves on and being too cold to get rid of my jacket but I did get to eat some bacon!
Now for the descent off the other side of Apple Orchard Mountain. Finally, after 13 miles of waiting, the kind of running that I am accustomed to and half okay at: technical, rocky, singletrack where you have to constantly think about where to put your feet or you’re gonna fall and break your face. Considering that my GPS watch keeps taunting me, telling me that my “fitness age” is that of a 56 year old, I need all the advantages I can find.
The descent down Cornelius Creek Trail has varying degrees of technicity and steepness but unfortunately couldn’t go on forever. High on the westward ridge above is the famous Appalachian Trail, though we never ran on it. A small group of us arrived at the Cornelius Creek aid station around mile 18. I reluctantly refilled a bottle with Tailwind and proceeded down the gravel road that became a paved road while still impressed with the many people moving quickly.
The downward trend finally stops as we exited from the paved road onto an unmarked and seemingly random trail that leads up to the Colon Hollow aid station around mile 21 (after a bit of climbing on a true singletrack, which I really enjoyed). I grabbed part of PB&J and some Coke, but neither felt very uplifting. The next five-mile section proceeding along the side of Pine Mountain was not my favorite. More non-technical grassy forest service road with a few hundred feet of large roller climbing to make you feel sluggish with a sprinkle of poison ivy for good measure.
My stomach wasn’t fantastic. By the time I jostled my way around to the Cornelius Creek aid station for the second time, at mile 26, it really wasn’t cooperating. I asked the volunteer if they had a Porta-John and he said, “nope, but we have the woods and I have some toilet paper.” So I took those six tiny squares and scampered myself off into the brush for a few minutes of alone time leaning against a tree with a rock as a kickstand for my arm, just in case the tired legs gave way, and then continued on with the adventure, knowing the unforgiving terrain that was about to come.
The Apple Orchard Falls Trail is all up. It starts out runnable and a bit technical but becomes increasingly steep and rocky with several impromptu rock staircases. And you know, there’s over a marathon worth of miles on your legs so they hurt a bit. It becomes nearly all power hiking for the uppermost two miles. For one of those miles, the saving grace is that it is pretty. There’s dark green moss covering the boulders throughout the creek and the falls themselves are impressive.
But once you pass the falls, there’s less foliage and fewer flowers that might otherwise distract you from another mile of hard hands-on-knees climbing. Part of this includes several not-so-lovely wooden block stairs rebarred into the ground but that is probably easier to deal with than eroding soil. Eating real food sounded difficult while panting, so I popped a nasty energy gel, which I could tell prevented a full bonk but made me queasy. I could eventually hear cheers at the next aid station, but there was easily another 15-20 minutes of work to do before getting there. Nearing the top, I attempted to run/shuffle a flatter section and caught my left foot on a rock, which promptly threw me to the ground in a heap. It hurt my elbow a little but falling uphill is generally the preferred option if I get to pick.
Another hundred yards and the Sunset Fields volunteers greeted me for the second time along with Anne, who was not loving the day of cold weather. I grabbed a little more bacon from her, more Coke from the volunteers, and a few chips. Upon leaving the aid station and crossing the Blue Ridge Parkway, there was a feeling of relief to be nearly done, and I tried to shove in the chips. Unfortunately, this prompted another feeling: intense nausea. So I ended up hunching over to hurl. Normally if this was to happen, just a couple heaves and I’m good to go but in this case it was more in the neighborhood of 6-8 heaves and left me questioning when or if it was going to stop. I’m blaming the energy gel combined with the Coke.
One of the runners I’d spent some time with earlier, Ben, came by and happened to meet up with his pacer for the final chunk. I figured I should jump on the train, hoping my stomach would settle now that it was theoretically empty. The singletrack was semi-technical and intersected back to a section we’d already climbed up in the earliest part of the course. I was moving fast with 7 to 8 minute miles and actually felt good enough to pass a couple folks. Too bad I didn’t vomit earlier. Then I caught my left foot again on an embedded rock. Thank goodness I was keeping a quick turnover that kept me from going down, but it sure as heck scared me.
The course finally comes back to the same starting gravel road (Overstreet Creek Road) for a high-speed descent on a broken body. It’s hard to hold back too much knowing that the finish line is now so close and really my quads felt good since the GI system was more of the limiter today. Striding into the finish back down at 1300 feet, I picked up the well-earned finisher’s award of custom Patagonia shorts, taking some pride in beating Anne back to the start on foot thanks to that smoking downhill.
In hindsight, the course was not what I expected. The climbs and descents were long, which I don’t mind, but for the most part, they are too runnable at high speeds for my liking, with the exception of that final climb. The majority of the course felt like a fast grassy forest service road, though there was plenty of gravel road and a little paved road too. It is definitely a real runner’s course and I don’t currently have the turnover for blazing such fast things! That’s ok. It was still challenging and nice to check off a classic event on an early spring day.
You can tell the event has functioned well for a while. It’s a well-oiled machine with great course markings and plenty of volunteers (even a couple at intersections in the woods where people might get confused or attempt to cut the course). Do watch out for ticks. I ended up having one embed itself far into my shin which caused an unfortunate cellulitis in the few days afterward. Would I do it again? Sure. But probably not for a couple years because my mind (and gut) took a beating that might take a little extra time to forget.
Bel Monte 50 Miler Race Report
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Springtime kinks
Over the years of endurance racing, I’ve developed an uncanny ability to enter March events that exceed my comfort threshold. It’s easy to get hyped up for an early spring event after avoiding competition all winter, but then when you’re in the event, the excitement wears thin and early season lackluster fitness punches you in the gut. Most people that smash their finger with a hammer would try not to do it again, but I’m a slow learner so I just keep swinging at the nail. With my eyes closed. You should see my DIY home remodeling.
Denied GPS signal for that first mile!!!! Start and finish are at the same spot.
Coming out of winter, it is so hard to be properly trained for an early season race. Until I move to the Rocky Mountains and can cross-country ski all winter, I’ve given up on the idea of optimal fitness in March or April. I’d rather take a true offseason and ease into the better running weather of spring and summer.
With COVID-19, it’s even easier to enter a race with high hopes and good intentions. You feel an attraction to the days of normalcy when racing was a thing that people did without regret or fear of making others ill or spreading a virus that can kill. But now, you could spend months training for something only to have it cancelled at the last minute. I feel less bad about events now that I’m vaccinated, but it still freaks me out. It’s worth realizing that most trail races aren’t exactly mass superspreader sporting events - you spend much of the time alone, outside, with the only time of true group gathering at the start line for less than a couple minutes, while wearing masks.
Nearing sunrise on the beach
Course
The Bel Monte 50 miler is paired with a 50K and 25K on the same day but with seperate start times for each distance, which further prevents large group gatherings. All distances are on out-and-back courses in George Washington National Forest with lots of climbing, technical rocky sections, singletrack, doubletrack, and jeep road. The 50K and 50 miler are subject to the same rounding error as many other ultramarathons. Both courses are intentionally long, not because the race directors want to mess with you, but because the chosen turnaround points are necessary for safety and ease of volunteer accessibility. Who doesn’t love over two bonus miles in the 50 miler and three bonus miles in the 50K? The answer probably depends on the weather and your blood glucose level at the time.
Start
We became slightly discombobulated on the commute from Wintergreen to the starting line, which resulted in me having about 10 minutes to get ready to run. Despite trying to persuade it into updating my general location the night before, my GPS watch didn’t even have a signal when I hit the start button at 5:30 AM. Fortunately, it sorted itself out within the first mile, which was a gradual vertical loss on the pavement of the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Near the start of the actual singletrack, about 2 miles in, on White Rock Falls Trail, I decided the trail was appropriately named. Because we were doing this portion in the dark with headlamps, the rocks and roots appeared a shade of grayish white. The surprisingly dry, dusty soil seemed a grayish white. Contrast is really helpful for picking precise foot placement and there was none. I don’t recall having this much trouble seeing surface definition before, but my eyes are getting older. I saw two people roll their ankle so I joined them in that celebration by rolling my left ankle as it seemed like a cool club to belong to. One guy tripped, yelped, and nearly fell. White rocks. Falls. Yep. Perfect. I’ll just be extra slow because I can make it up later. It turns out one of the athletes I coach (whose identity I will protect) did fall hard on this trail in the 25K a couple hours later and conked her head so I don’t think I imagined the lack of visual definition.
Sunrise on the beach
More carnage
One runner blasted past me just beyond the first aid station at mile 5: “Can I get around you, sir?” Sir? Either he’s actually polite, or he’s messing with my mind to make me feel old and slow. Now I’m pretty sure this was the same runner I saw doing a number two in the brush down the trail another three or four miles. Well, sonny boy, I guess shit happens.
This slight descent down Turkey Pen Ridge Trail went quickly, though I was trying not to run too fast, too early. After the next aid station at mile 13.6, I saw one of the runners in front of me on Coal Road walk off and hunch over in the ditch. I was a little too far behind him to hear, but I’m going to guess he vomited or came quite close. This gravel road section was nice as it wasn’t so long that it became a boring mental aptitude test but long enough to provide a respite from constantly picking your line.
It’s nice when the weather cooperates
We did have great weather this year. The temperature at this point, in the early morning, was in the 40s and then 50s midday with no precipitation. It was actually a little too warm at times in the valleys, so I’d look forward to climbing back up to the ridges where it was cooler. Except when climbing was difficult, which was too often.
I’m a Cranky Doodle Dandy
The roughly 4 mile climb from the end of Coal Road up to the highest point of Bald Mountain Jeep Trail was less fun. It hurt and took forever multiplied by three. Even after reaching the top, I couldn’t get into a good rhythm across the ridge. My stomach was bloated, which impacted my ability to get full, cleansing breaths. There may have been a little exercise-induced asthma and hyperventilation limitation. I decided it should have been renamed Bald Mountain Jeep *Parts* Trail because there was vehicular shrapnel all over the place from the good ole’ boys gettin’ tipsy and breaking their 4x4s over the years. Brake lights, glass, mufflers, trim plastic, bumpers. You name it and we can find a broken piece of it.
Not singletrack
Across the ridge, there were multiple large mudholes of unknown depths, though I think I saw one of those submarine periscopes sticking out of one. In the process of trying to skirt the edge of a mudhole and cling to some nearby flimsy sapling branches, my feet slid sideways out from under me on the clay mud film, like I was on ice, so my feet and legs ended up in the water and muck anyway. I can’t recall if I laughed, screamed, cursed, or cried at how dumb that was. It didn’t take long to begin descending down the other side of the mountain to the turnaround point at mile 26.2. I finally took in some Coca-Cola, which helped brighten my declining mood.
obviously from a 1996 Pontiac grand prix
Bacon, jerky, ramen, or really any savory food would have been so delightful but COVID-19 has drastically altered the availability of real food at race aid stations. Now race directors want everything to be packaged at aid stations for grab-and-go effect, but the tables look like a vending machine exploded, which is nothing like the old days of grilled cheese, PB and J, fresh strawberries, grapes, jars of pickles, bowls of trail mix, and so on. It definitely makes things a bit harder and will take an adjustment of carrying specific foods from the start or having a crew, which I did not.
No Jeeps on Jeep road
I finally felt like I could settle into a sustainable but slow rhythm climbing back up the jeep trail, but I still had no ability to fly across the ridgetop or take a consistent, deep breath. I picked it up a little on the descent back down to Coal Road, because it just felt right, and I actually could. Near the bottom pine tree section, a person who I’ll call “swim jammer guy,” came flying by me at what I’d use for a 5K or 10K trail pace, not 50 miler. A few seconds later, I heard him yell and looked up to see him in the middle of the trail sitting on his butt, still shouting. He reported he was fine, when I asked, and got up within a few seconds, only to pass me again. Well, then.
Swim jammer guy left the Kennedy Run Trail aid station at mile 35.3 ahead of me, so I chased him the full length of Coal Road and finally passed him in the mid-portion uphill grind back up Turkey Pen Ridge Trail. It didn’t last long because he and another runner caught and passed me on the steepest lower switchbacks of this final major climb. But he must have been hurting, as in bonking or overheating. Near the top he hunched over and stopped. He stood back up, walked a little more and promptly sat down on the trail side. I asked if he needed anything and if he had food. He confirmed having gels, so I encouraged him to at least take in a little of it, though I know it was probably the last thing he wanted to do. At the time I was thinking the next aid station would be nearby.
No coal on Coal Road
My adventure staggered onward with declining quadriceps function and I gradually realized it was a darn long way from the aid station at mile 39 to the next one at mile 48. It didn’t feel as long on the way out because it was more downhill, I was fresh, and moving faster. But this close to the finish, I’m too motivated to get done despite having a rough day. I hadn’t turned my GPS to timer mode for hours because I knew seeing the time would just be a source of frustration and demotivation. At least I wasn’t the only one hurting out there.
Shake shake shake
There were several 50K and maybe one or two 50-mile runners to pass, including the other guy that had passed me on the last climb, so that was at least a reward for not completely slacking. At the final aid station, I struggled with the fine motor coordination necessary to get my hydration bladder out of my pack. It was an inconvenient time to run out of water, this close to the finish, but I wanted to keep using my lone bottle for Coke as bonk prevention since my desire to chew junk food had gone so long ago.
Back the opposite direction on the White Rock Falls Trail, which was still visually tricky in places. I crossed the 50-mile barrier somewhere in there, and upon popping back out onto the Blue Ridge Parkway I caught my wife and her training partner, who were doing the 50K. I reminded them that they had lost the bet of whether I could catch them so I’d expect my $1000 payout the instant they crossed the finish line. I still haven’t received my money, so I’m making it publicly known that I won that bet and they need to pay up before I involve a lawyer.
Even though there were a couple times in this race that I’d think, “you should have entered the 50K,” which is not generally the most positive self-talk that one could employ, I’m glad I did it for the sake of experiencing new trails and views. And it is just the very early spring. In the dark days of next winter, when you’re looking for a challenge, look this one up. Just bring your own bacon.
Rim to River 100 Mile Race Report
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It’s been awhile since I’ve had a reason to write about a running event. I wonder why that would be? I mean, everything in the world is pretty normal right now…
How am I recovering? Three words: maple creme cookies.
Pro tip: It helps to move around often even though the Monday morning stiffness compels you not to do so. At least work on the smelly race laundry, where you might find a collection of many unidentifiable (food?) stains on your clothing.
I enjoy the 50K to 50 mile distances so I don’t usually seek out 100 milers. With the Rim to River 100 being the first race of this length in WV, however, there was enough of a draw for me to buy in. It’s always taking a chance to be a guinea pig in a first-year race of any length, especially at ultra distances. The race director’s leg work had convinced me they could get this done. It was promising to see the registration was on ultrasignup.com. There were UTMB, International Trail Running Association, and American Trail Running Association affiliations. The main website had detailed elevation profiles, lots of maps, and good course descriptions. Many local and some national sponsors were on board. In other words, it looked like an event that had happened before.
About 10,000 feet of Gain but it’s always the descents that get you
I’ve had a contentious relationship with running in the New River Gorge due to the multiple nasty ankle sprains I’ve experienced there. Probably because I keep trying to run there in the fall. The potential for another sprain in the leaves, especially after dark and with heavy fatigue, felt higher than normal. As a result, my anxiety about the situation was higher. The boss, Anne, told me not to be a wimp and sign up anyway.
Race morning kicked off with an immediate slathering of skin lubricant to all of those typical high friction areas, such as the toes, armpits, inner thighs, and low-back waist line. Except I forgot one: the intergluteal cleft, otherwise known to the world as the butt crack. Oops. Deadly levels of chafing ensued by mile 28 when the constant friction heated my skin to 300*F, I collapsed into a screaming heap, went into shock from blood loss, and obviously, DNFd. No mortal can overcome that kind of pain once it has settled in. One emergency helicopter extraction and a $26,000 butt reconstruction later, here I am, face down, writing about the ugly backside of ultrarunning (pun intended).
Alright, you got me. I didn’t need butt reconstruction. Butt, take it from me, lube your intergluteal cleft people. Or you too, will be forced to make critical, life altering decisions at moments that are never convenient to you or your immediate family.
EARLY on in ACE with Bob and JR
Anyway, where was I before that story with about 10% truth in it? Ah, the start. The one and only nice thing about COVID-19 wave starts is the parking situation upon arrival. Despite showing up just 12 minutes before my start time, it was a mere 25 yards from my truck to the starting line. I even walked there twice as a completely and totally necessary warm up.
The bipedal eating contest festivities kicked off at 5:45. It was chilly at the start, but bearable. The weekend forecast seemed unbelievable as the days ticked down prior to the race. Several straight days of sunny, dry weather, and for Race Day, there was a high of 73* and a low near 40*. For weeks, I’d mentally prepared to have lows in the 20s, highs in the 40s or 50s and thick, gray clouds with some rain or snow. But in typical WV fashion, weather is hardly predictable in the fall.
The race begins with various loops around ACE Adventure Resort’s property for roughly 13 “let’s just have a great time frolicking” miles. I went ahead and slightly twisted my right, yet stronger, ankle within the first 5 miles, and then proceeded to roll the weaker left side within the next couple miles. Really off to a good start here. I chatted with Bob Luther about this past summer’s running and the DIY adventure runs that we’ve made up. Matt Baird joined us for the more abrupt descent toward Arbuckle Creek. Matt refused to carry me, or even slightly assist me, across that cold, cold, rapidly flowing creek so he was immediately fired from the job that I had literally just hired him for.
We did a tough little climb up to the Rend Trail and then continued to descend toward the New River on a paved road to Thurmond for the second aid station at mile 17. The elastic cord that holds a chest pocket of my running vest closed would decide that NOW was a good time to break despite a couple years of reliable use. Annoying, but nothing to stress over.
There’s a significant downward elevation trend over the first 25% of the course, which means it’s easy to be deceived by your pace and split times. There’s no better fool’s trap in an ultramarathon than self-talk like “I’m flying, but it feels so easy!” Or even worse, “I’m going to have a great day!” Yeah. No. You won’t. Reality check, my ultrarunning friend. You’ll either roll an ankle because you are running too fast for the conditions, or you’ll just crush yourself so early that a DNF is too tempting or inevitable because your butt skin overheats and kills you anyway. The thing about running any ultramarathon, but especially 100 miles, is that EVERYONE is going to slow down. Whatever time you think you are “banking” early can nearly always be made up in the second half by slowing down less than the suckers who started too hard or died during a semi-tragic friction-induced butt explosion.
Hey Bob!
There’s a bit of road climbing back up to Rend Trail but then we drop down beside the New River again around mile 20 for a 6 mile long stretch of the Southside/Brooklyn Trail. I watched Bob roll his ankle, but fortunately it wasn’t a race ender. The sun was high in the sky now, and made any brief glimpses at the river temporarily blinding. Bob and I continued to chat when we were surprised from behind by a rapidly approaching JR Luyster who had apparently taken a wrong turn.
The trail eventually becomes a gravel road before reaching the Cunard aid station at mile 26. Anne was supposed to be here but I was ahead of my predicted arrival since the trails just weren’t that technical and there’s so much early descending. (Actually, I WAS JUST BANKING TIME!) Always assume your crew won’t show up and you’ll always be absolutely delighted when they actually do! Lie to yourself. Say, “as long as there’s an aid station then the crew just isn’t that critical.” It also pays to carry some extra food if you are afraid of the aid station food.
It got a little too warm as Bob and I climbed up the steep paved road from Cunard. JR had pulled away from us up the climb. Anne finally appears on the horizon, driving like a 90-year-old grandmother down the switchbacks, one of the frontrunners stuck to the grill, while she’s happily warping the brake rotors on my truck and now completely unable to perform any actual crewing efforts, lest we would be breaking the race rules.
Once finally on top, the trail surface returns with a gradual descent toward Kaymoor. Part of this was familiar: I’d seen it a couple times in the Canary in the Cave 25K++. The climb up the Kaymoor Miners Trail is steep and rocky but just not long enough to worry about this early. The Trail Sisters were manning (?) the Arrowhead aid station at mile 35. They were informed that Trail Sister Anne should be immediately exiled from their well-respected group for failure to comply with several of the 49 specific goals clearly outlined in the mission manual, entitled Operation Bear Crawl, which I emailed to Anne just last night at 11:36 p.m. All in favor said “aye.”
Bob, JR, and I stayed close together as we rounded the rolling loop around Arrowhead trails. The leaf coverage seemed plenty thick in places but the trails were quite smooth. Onward to Long Point overlook, which was super busy with day hikers at this time of day, especially with the abnormally warm weather. I just wanted to get away from them. I have no love of crowds, and I was starting to become hypersensitive to smells of deodorant, perfume, and whatever other nasty odors they were expelling.
Out to the Long Point aid station at mile 43 and then an intermittently more technical descent toward Fayette Station. The views of the underside of the New River Gorge Bridge were fantastic midway down. It’s such a huge structure that you can run for minutes and still feel like it’s so close you can touch it. But you can’t. Unless you have one of those sweet Mandalorian jetpacks. I’ve been a good boy this year so Santa should be sending mine in time for Christmas.
The Fayette Station aid volunteers at mile 48 greeted me with cheers and their bacon was not only a welcome sight but a welcome taste. Shortly after leaving there, I crossed the Tunney Hunsaker bridge and had to wait at the railroad tracks on river right for a train to finish its passage. Up another sizable paved climb to a gravel road that becomes a very long gradual descent toward Hawks Nest State Park. Train after train could be heard below, drowning out the river sounds. Hitting the crushed gravel climb up the Hawks Nest Rail Trail to Ansted felt like one of the toughest parts of the entire course. It seemed so consistently steep for an old rail grade. It’s about 300 feet of gain in 2 miles, which I calculate as a 92% grade. (Somebody check my math).
My favorite pic from the whole race
Nearing the top, I think this was one of two places where I heard crazy loud crowd noise and thought, surely that’s not all the people at the aid station. It must have been a local football game. Anne and Aaron Watkins took such good care of me at the turnaround that I didn’t even need the aid station. (They offer crewing services for other events but you can make the check directly out to me for $500 and I’ll see that they get their fair share.) I swapped into a long sleeve baselayer for the cool night ahead, switched out my socks, and emptied my shoes of the last 55 miles worth of accumulated debris. My brain function was clearly starting to deteriorate as I left because a volunteer stopped me from going up some other path or road instead of the place that I had literally just come from. It’s an out and back, you dummy.
Darn tree fell across both sides of the switchback on the Hawks Nest Connector Trail
Small tasks require big concentration
Bob and JR passed me as they headed up about a minute later. Now that awful grade up the rail trail becomes a terrible 2 mile downhill for the quads. The longer I spend not moving at an aid station, the longer it takes to find my legs again. Now a lengthy singletrack ascent up the Hawks Nest Connector Trail. Chris Pabian flew past me as the darkness began to fall, and JR came along shortly after with his pacer. He didn’t have a headlamp so I gave him my backup to get back to Fayette Station. They bombed the paved descent and I tried, unsuccessfully, to stay in contact.
think i forgot to stop running
There was no train to wait on this time, but I experienced a moment of panic when the volunteers at Fayette Station told me to take the road to get to Ansted and they’d see me again in 14 miles. I said I didn’t remember that part of the map, thinking there must be another road section now? Fortunately, I mentioned I’d already been to Ansted where I saw Miss Muffett sitting on a tuffet, at which point they realized I was clearly bonking just like the last idiot and must be making a return trip, now at mile 62. A volunteer here had made sushi rice cakes with egg, which I used to rely on religiously for calories, so I had to engulf one of those like a macrophage alongside even more delicious bacon. A little known rule for success (in life) is that you can never, ever eat enough bacon.
More trotting and shuffling in the dark back on the pavement to the challenging climb up Fayetteville Trail. It was pleasantly distracting to have other runners coming down to encourage when I wasn’t huffing and puffing like a tired, old steam locomotive. Sometimes they would unintentionally blind me as they focused their headlamps in my eyes, since I was now dressed in an ultra fuzzy and convincingly real black bear suit. My ramen noodle intake ramped up 300% when hitting the Long Point aid at mile 67. At this point sweet foods are just not appealing to a bear like me.
I don’t remember much of any excitement before getting back over to the Arrowhead loop and accompanying aid at mile 74. It’s dark. You’re tired. You stare at the ground and try to zone out a lot. I’m supposed to be hibernating, but it was unseasonably warm. It felt long, but at least Anne would be there to give me the full spa retreat session that she had agreed to, in writing as well as verbally, as part of the reconciliation package we negotiated upon her not meeting the terms set forth in Operation Bear Crawl. I did not and have not since received said session and am currently interested in pursuing legal action if anyone can recommend a good lawyer for suing your spouse? I’d like to keep it as cordial as possible so she’s not bitter about it.
Let me say this: the descent back down Kaymoor Miners Trail at mile 74.xx absolutely sucked. Use your hands, get a sherpa, rappel. Just get down. And, oh my god the climbing from the bottom of Kaymoor Miners Trail back up to the top of Cunard. It’s pretty runnable but that’s also a problem. I could settle into a nice rhythm but never imagined it would feel so long in this direction. Continuing our theme from the past 6-8 hours, I passed JR up the climb and he destroyed me descending down the steep pavement into the Cunard aid at mile 82. But then I never saw him again after that. Anne somehow perfectly timed her arrival to this crew point! She brought along a spectacular Sheetz bacon cheeseburger, probably in an attempt to avoid the legal case that was rapidly mounting against her. However, while basking in her self-administered praise, she forgot my other nice headlamp at Arrowhead and tried to use volunteering there as an excuse. Blah blah blah. Funny. I don’t hear any other members of Operation Bear Crawl making excuses. (Full disclosure: there are no other members of Operation Bear Crawl). No biggie as long as the one on my head keeps working for a while.
Trail Sisters Aid station courtesy Sara Lunden
And my headlamp decided to go to crap shortly after leaving the Cunard aid station. It wouldn’t shut off, wouldn’t leave its red light mode but wouldn’t turn on to a normal white light of any intensity. Better than complete failure, I guess? Perfect lighting if I was camping, trying to cook a meal, or in a tent reading the latest issue of Bear Packer magazine. This is another reason why I keep a cheap backup light in my pack, but I had no idea how long it would last and it was still a long, lonely stretch from mile 84 to 100. I had no choice but to use the backup light, though on a dim setting to conserve its battery. “Who’s the dork wearing two headlamps and a bear suit!?” no one shouted. Shuffling my feet through the crunchy leaves felt safer with that limited visibility. I would have struggled to do that if the surface had been more technical. My left big piggie ended up bashed hard against some rocks as it was. An ever-present roar of the impressive New River was my only companion along this stretch of the Southside Trail, though I did catch one racer and his pacer.
Actual footage of Me at a road crossing
I never wanted to obsess over my time too closely because there’s enough to worry about in just finishing 100 miles. I figured it better to shuffle cautiously and come in under 23 hours than to attempt pushing with limited visibility and really bust up my toes, foot, or ankle for a chance at coming in closer or under to 22 hours. Hey, that’s still a PR for me, which hardly matters in the trail running world anyway.
At mile 88.5 the ACE Beach volunteers had so many fires going I thought they were having some sort of satanic ritual, but I think they were just mostly bored young men waiting for runners to come through. They had batteries so I felt better about bringing the backup light up to fuller brightness when I left there to cross that damn freezing Arbuckle Creek. Next time I’m bringing my Gore-Tex bear suit. The climb back up to the ACE Resort trails felt like it took forever. My bear suit was absolutely soaked and full of wet leaves. Pretty sure I saw the race director out there in the middle of nowhere around mile 89-90. I dropped a banana from the last aid station somewhere so I hope a bonking runner found it and was so desperate that they ate it before those ungrateful raccoons I talked to at mile 91.
My brain was frying (as if you can’t tell). Everything felt like a climb but I think that’s because most of it was a climb. Paranoia of missing a turn increased ten-fold. I saw lights approaching from behind and picked it up because there is nothing more demoralizing than being passed by a runner in the final 10 miles of a 100 mile race. Or maybe there were aliens chasing me. Either way, I figured it was keeping me honest a.k.a not slacking. I made it a point not to linger at the 95.5 mile Concho Rim aid where I hear they brought out Nutella pancakes later. Come on! What’s a bear gotta do to get a Nutella pancake around here? Maybe I should have lingered.
In what I’m sure is intentionally tortuous course design, you shuffle right past the start/finish area at mile 96. Stare at the ground. Do not think. Do not look around. Just go out through the woods once more. I managed to make one wrong turn during mile 98 by creating a loop around a little pond, then heading back on the trail I had just taken. The actual trail was hidden behind an uprooted tree - but at least I knew it quickly and got back on within a minute.
The final couple miles took FOREVER. I wanted to run a little quicker but was still just afraid of rolling an ankle for no good reason so I stuck with a comfy shuffle. Even the final paved descent that felt like 2 minutes of uphill at the start of the course seemed to take 10 minutes now. Down, down, down to the finish line and super happy with my finishing time of 22 hours and 26 minutes. Not bad for a guy in a bear suit who had been blinded numerous times, using partially working lights, and denied Nutella pancakes. I crawled into the back of the truck to lie down while Anne drove me back to the cabin. However, mysteriously, she “forgot” how to get to the cabin 2 minutes away for at least 10 minutes as she proceeded to drive around on all of the bumpy ass dirt roads of the resort. Like she was tired or something. Pffft. I’m going to go scream in the shower now once I bear crawl up these steps.
Just as spry and fresh as 23 hours earlier, image courtesy APtiming
In the future, the November timing of this race would be good to finish out a typical competitive season, though this year we take what we can get, when we can get it, and we try not to whine too much, right? The course has a really nice ratio and distribution of dirt road, trail, and paved road. The volunteers were great. The quesadillas were delectable. What more do you need to know? Check it out next year!
https://www.adventureappalachia.org/rim-to-river-endurance-races
https://www.strava.com/activities/4307610305/overview
Mountain Ridge Physical Therapy
Morgantown Physical Therapist - Morgantown Physical Therapy - Manual Therapist Treating Neck Pain, Back Pain, Knee Pain, Hip Pain, Ankle Pain
Mountain Ridge Physical Therapy
6000 Coombs Farm Dr, Ste 202B
Morgantown, WV 26508
304-685-6064
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