Run Like the Wind 2014 race report (again), this time the 6 hour version.
(Technically I already did Run Like the Wind in 2014, since 2013's edition was postponed until March of 2014. But I decided to do it a second time!)
As mentioned previously, I signed us up for a couple of training races, in preparation for Matt doing the Rocky Raccoon 100 in 2015. I looked at what was available, picked a race in November and one in December and figured that would be perfect. I didn't, however, notice that one race was at the end of November and the other at the beginning of December. Which is how I ended up accidentally running a 50k, then two weeks later, running a 6 hour run. Oops.
Once I realized that was the case, I decided to just go with it. I had no idea how my legs would feel for the 6 hour run, but the way this race is set up, I could bail whenever I wanted or needed to, so I wasn't too concerned.
A little background on the race: The race course is a 1k loop on a mulchy trail, partly forested, partly exposed. You pick a time: 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours, and you run the 1k loop as many times as possible, or as many times as you want to, until that many hours have passed. I've done the 3 hour version twice in the past, and this time I decided to do the 6 hour, since I would have just done a 50k and run around 6 hours anyway. (I just didn't realize at the time HOW recently I would have done that.)
Matt elected to sign up for the 12 hour, before he knew about his impending knee problems. His knee wasn't as bad as it could have been (and as it had been) after Wild Hare, but he ran maybe 2-3 times between Wild Hare and Run Like the Wind (RLtW), and things weren't feeling perfect, or even GOOD, really, so he went in planning to do whatever his body would do. He also finally decided that Rocky just wasn't meant to be this year, so RLtW would be the end of his season. 12 hours of celebratory 1k loops to end the season! That's normal, right?
The race has a late start, 10:30am, so we slept in some, wandered over to the race start, set up our chairs, chatted with Betsy, David, Sharon, Cathy and various Marks, and at 10:28, moseyed over to the start line with the other ~38 people doing the race. That's combined, for the 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours. This is not a big race.
I felt so tremendously underprepared for this race, physically and mentally. I had been trying to balance recovering from Wild Hare with preparing for RLtW (and throwing in a "race" ( Turkey Trot) when I wasn't fully recovered from the former). On the one weekend between the two races, I set out to try to run 9 miles, a distance picked mostly at random, as a recovery/build/taper run. I got to mile 6 and decided that was plenty. My body just wasn't feeling all that great, and it seemed pointless to push through 3 extra miles of misery. My two runs during the week before the race were also pretty flat, but my legs felt a LITTLE better.
Meanwhile I did absolutely nothing to prepare for the actual race itself until race morning. The late start made me lazy, and so I didn't pick out what I was going to wear until I got up. I didn't gather my nutrition. I didn't fill any bottles. I didn't even decide how I was going to deal with water. Or how much I was going to eat, and what I was going to eat. I decided all of that as I dumped a bunch of stuff I'd shoved into a bag onto the camp chair I'd set up, at 10:10am or so on race day. I was kinda treating a 6 hour run like a 5k or something. No, I'd probably prepare better for a 5k. But I did formulate SOME sort of plan in those last 20 minutes.
At 10:30am, we were off! The weather was nice to start: mid 50s and overcast, cool but a little humid. The forecast showed that it was going to get up into the high 60s with full sun, though, so I tried to enjoy the cooler weather while I could.
I started out and fell in beside Mark Lindsey, just like last RLtW! Once again we talked about Ultraman, except last time I was about to do it, and this time I already had. David and Matt were behind us, and we all ran the first loop together. I didn't start with any water, figuring I'd pick up my handheld every few loops and carry it for a loop, then drop it again.
Matt fell back after a while, and I was a little concerned that I was going out too fast, especially since David and Mark were both doing the 3 hour, so should be running faster than I was. But I felt good, I felt comfortable, and I decided it would be nice to have company for as long as possible. Damn the future, I was going to enjoy the present for as long as I could! Mark asked about me potentially going too fast, and I told him my race strategy was to go too fast for the first 3 hours, then completely fall apart for the last 3 hours.
Well, as it turns out, I wasn't entirely correct. About 90 minutes in, Mark asked David what race he was doing, David said he was doing the 3 hour, and they ended up picking up the pace and racing a bit. ("Not that I'm competitive," to quote Mark.) I didn't even consider trying to hang with them, and fell back to run my own pace, on my own.
About 1:45 in, I found myself stumbling more and more. The trail was less mulchy this year than in years past, but still had big, branchy mulch and roots and sawed off stumps a-plenty. And I started catching my toes on them. My legs just felt really heavy. And kept feeling worse. And about 2 hours in, I questioned how in the world I was going to keep running for FOUR MORE HOURS, based on how crappy I already felt.
But geez, I wasn't even 3 hours in yet. If I'd signed up for the 3 hour, I'd still have another hour to run, so surely I could keep going. So I did. Having learned from the past couple races that I needed to eat more often, I was eating a gel every 30 minutes, and that seemed to be working out well. I had picked up my handheld after 3-4 1k loops, and I had decided that I would just keep carrying it, because I like having water whenever I want it. Plus the sun finally came out about 2 hours in, and it got uncomfortably warm. I was mildly concerned about how salty I already was so early in the day, so I started taking salt pills, too.
After 3 hours, the 3 hour folks were done, which removed ~15 of the runners from the loop, making it even more sparse and lonely out there. There were enough people at enough different speeds that I was never completely alone for more than, say, 4 minutes, but it was definitely the sort of run where you spend a lot of time in your own head. And a lot of the people were wearing headphones, so even if you said encouraging things to them as they passed you or you passed them, they didn't hear and didn't respond.
And then.. I ran for a lot of hours. Right around 3 hours, Matt passed me, and I told him I hurt. And he said he did, too. I honestly didn't know how I was going to keep my legs moving for another 3 hours. I assume I had slowed way down at this point, but my watch only showed total time, and I wasn't keeping track of my loops, so I had no idea how far I had run or how fast I was doing each loop. I just kept my feet moving.
At some point, I passed the start/finish line, where our chairs were, and Matt was sitting in his chair. I asked if he was okay, and he said that was yet to be determined, and that he was sitting for a little while to assess. Well, that was moderately concerning, but I was happy he was figuring it out rather than just pushing through it, so I kept going. And by the time I got back to the chairs, he wasn't there anymore. I figured that was a good (?) sign. I didn't see him again for quite some time (it's strange how you can fall into the same pace as someone else, but they're on the other side of the loop, so you never, ever see them; I saw a guy 5.5 hours in that I hadn't seen the entire race up until then, despite sharing a 1k loop with him for so many hours), and when I did, he said his knee was hurting, and he was probably going to drop down to the 6 hour. Whether running another 2 or so hours on a hurt knee was wise or not is up for debate, but only he knew how he felt, and I wanted him to be as satisfied as he could be with his last race of the season. We ran together briefly, but his knee wanted to run slightly faster than my body wanted to run, so he slowly pulled away from me. But not before I got to watch his only fall of the entire day, which was a well-executed tuck and roll. He was fine.
And then.. more running. More eating. Taking salt pills. Got some Coke once from the aid station. Refilled my handheld 3 times. And actually, those brief stops to drink Coke, refill my bottle, and restock my gels in my handheld, were the only times I stopped. One of the problems with this course is that it's basically flat the entire 1k loop. I mean, there are a few areas where there's a mild rise or fall, but it's completely insignificant (I say, having only run 6 hours out there; it's possible after 24 hours, those become mountains). Which means that there's no logical place to walk. I usually try to run as much as I'm able, according to the terrain. At Wild Hare, the hills are mostly runnable if there's not a horrible deluge and resulting mudslide, but by the last loops, there's a few of those steeper uphills that I'd probably fast hike up no matter what. But here.. there's no time that the terrain dictates you walk. So I didn't. Yes, I could have just walked on a flat part, but I didn't. And it really started to wear on me after a while. I'd tell myself to just WALK. My body obviously wanted to. But my brain wouldn't cooperate. It said run unless you can't. And I could. So I did. For all 6 hours. Even when my pace must have been ridiculously slow.
Some time during those 6 hours, when I happened to be just behind David. Photo from Deborah Scharpff Sexton, though obviously not taken by her since she's right beside me in the picture.
I did have plenty of hours to sort out what probably happened, though. Which is what tends to happen after all long endurance races. I ran 31 muddy miles, and then I had two weeks to recover. My body did as much recovery as it could in 2 weeks, and my gas tank had refilled some amount by the time I started RLtW. I started out feeling good, and I ran normally, and then after 90 minutes, I had burned through all of that gas I'd recovered in those 2 weeks, and I was left with 4.5 hours of running on empty.
Those were 4.5 hard hours. But I got through it, and finished out the full 6 hours successfully! If you'd asked me 2 hours in, I would have said it might not happen. In fact, if I had run by the chairs at any point and Matt was obviously done with the race, I might have run over and said, "Ooh, are we DNFing? Yay, let's go get a hamburger!" But I gutted it out.
It did give me PLENTY of time to consider what's next, though. And I realized that I think I'm done testing my mental strength for a while. 6 months of Ultraman training, 3 days of Ultraman, then a 50k followed immediately by a 6 hour run. That's a lot of time spent convincing my brain to keep pushing my body forward. I know that with another month of training, and a good taper, I'd do just fine at the Rocky Raccoon 50 miler, but I also know that the last 20 miles would be really hard. Could I find the mental strength to push through them? Probably. Do I WANT to? I don't think I do. I think I need to rest my brain for a while. Let it remember runs where it only has to step in and be mentally strong for an hour or so, instead of 6-12. So no Rocky for me! (Probably.) (Almost definitely.)
And so both Matt and I ended our seasons with 6 hours of 1k loops at Run Like the Wind! And then we went and got a hamburger.
I ended up running exactly 50 1k loops, which means I ended up doing 2 50ks 2 weeks apart! I actually had hoped to do more than 50 loops, based on what I've done at the 3 hour runs in the past, but I didn't anticipate how much I'd fall apart (or how early). So I'm perfectly pleased with 50k, and the flatness and lack of mud meant I did this 50k 45 minutes faster than my last. And despite doing it so much faster, I've recovered SO MUCH BETTER. I was marathon-level crippled for 3-4 days after Wild Hare. I was walking practically normally a day and a half after RLtW.
As a bonus, I ended up second woman (of 6) in the 6 hour race. If I'd had any legs left, I would have gone for one last loop, and it would have gotten me CLOSER to first, but I definitely didn't have enough left to push for first, even if I'd known who else was doing the 6 hour race and how many loops they'd done. The mystery is part of the fun.
Results:
PlaceNameTimeLoopsDistance
1Lauren Medieros05:58:525131.6914
2Amy Bush05:53:535031.07
3Christine McCown05:55:174628.5844
And now for some shorter stuff, and maybe eventually I'll try to do a speed workout again, and see if I can find the speed I used to have!
Oh, and the next day, I finally went and got that banana split I'd promised myself for finishing Wild Hare!
As mentioned previously, I signed us up for a couple of training races, in preparation for Matt doing the Rocky Raccoon 100 in 2015. I looked at what was available, picked a race in November and one in December and figured that would be perfect. I didn't, however, notice that one race was at the end of November and the other at the beginning of December. Which is how I ended up accidentally running a 50k, then two weeks later, running a 6 hour run. Oops.
Once I realized that was the case, I decided to just go with it. I had no idea how my legs would feel for the 6 hour run, but the way this race is set up, I could bail whenever I wanted or needed to, so I wasn't too concerned.
A little background on the race: The race course is a 1k loop on a mulchy trail, partly forested, partly exposed. You pick a time: 3 hours, 6 hours, 12 hours or 24 hours, and you run the 1k loop as many times as possible, or as many times as you want to, until that many hours have passed. I've done the 3 hour version twice in the past, and this time I decided to do the 6 hour, since I would have just done a 50k and run around 6 hours anyway. (I just didn't realize at the time HOW recently I would have done that.)
Matt elected to sign up for the 12 hour, before he knew about his impending knee problems. His knee wasn't as bad as it could have been (and as it had been) after Wild Hare, but he ran maybe 2-3 times between Wild Hare and Run Like the Wind (RLtW), and things weren't feeling perfect, or even GOOD, really, so he went in planning to do whatever his body would do. He also finally decided that Rocky just wasn't meant to be this year, so RLtW would be the end of his season. 12 hours of celebratory 1k loops to end the season! That's normal, right?
The race has a late start, 10:30am, so we slept in some, wandered over to the race start, set up our chairs, chatted with Betsy, David, Sharon, Cathy and various Marks, and at 10:28, moseyed over to the start line with the other ~38 people doing the race. That's combined, for the 3, 6, 12 and 24 hours. This is not a big race.
I felt so tremendously underprepared for this race, physically and mentally. I had been trying to balance recovering from Wild Hare with preparing for RLtW (and throwing in a "race" ( Turkey Trot) when I wasn't fully recovered from the former). On the one weekend between the two races, I set out to try to run 9 miles, a distance picked mostly at random, as a recovery/build/taper run. I got to mile 6 and decided that was plenty. My body just wasn't feeling all that great, and it seemed pointless to push through 3 extra miles of misery. My two runs during the week before the race were also pretty flat, but my legs felt a LITTLE better.
Meanwhile I did absolutely nothing to prepare for the actual race itself until race morning. The late start made me lazy, and so I didn't pick out what I was going to wear until I got up. I didn't gather my nutrition. I didn't fill any bottles. I didn't even decide how I was going to deal with water. Or how much I was going to eat, and what I was going to eat. I decided all of that as I dumped a bunch of stuff I'd shoved into a bag onto the camp chair I'd set up, at 10:10am or so on race day. I was kinda treating a 6 hour run like a 5k or something. No, I'd probably prepare better for a 5k. But I did formulate SOME sort of plan in those last 20 minutes.
At 10:30am, we were off! The weather was nice to start: mid 50s and overcast, cool but a little humid. The forecast showed that it was going to get up into the high 60s with full sun, though, so I tried to enjoy the cooler weather while I could.
I started out and fell in beside Mark Lindsey, just like last RLtW! Once again we talked about Ultraman, except last time I was about to do it, and this time I already had. David and Matt were behind us, and we all ran the first loop together. I didn't start with any water, figuring I'd pick up my handheld every few loops and carry it for a loop, then drop it again.
Matt fell back after a while, and I was a little concerned that I was going out too fast, especially since David and Mark were both doing the 3 hour, so should be running faster than I was. But I felt good, I felt comfortable, and I decided it would be nice to have company for as long as possible. Damn the future, I was going to enjoy the present for as long as I could! Mark asked about me potentially going too fast, and I told him my race strategy was to go too fast for the first 3 hours, then completely fall apart for the last 3 hours.
Well, as it turns out, I wasn't entirely correct. About 90 minutes in, Mark asked David what race he was doing, David said he was doing the 3 hour, and they ended up picking up the pace and racing a bit. ("Not that I'm competitive," to quote Mark.) I didn't even consider trying to hang with them, and fell back to run my own pace, on my own.
About 1:45 in, I found myself stumbling more and more. The trail was less mulchy this year than in years past, but still had big, branchy mulch and roots and sawed off stumps a-plenty. And I started catching my toes on them. My legs just felt really heavy. And kept feeling worse. And about 2 hours in, I questioned how in the world I was going to keep running for FOUR MORE HOURS, based on how crappy I already felt.
But geez, I wasn't even 3 hours in yet. If I'd signed up for the 3 hour, I'd still have another hour to run, so surely I could keep going. So I did. Having learned from the past couple races that I needed to eat more often, I was eating a gel every 30 minutes, and that seemed to be working out well. I had picked up my handheld after 3-4 1k loops, and I had decided that I would just keep carrying it, because I like having water whenever I want it. Plus the sun finally came out about 2 hours in, and it got uncomfortably warm. I was mildly concerned about how salty I already was so early in the day, so I started taking salt pills, too.
After 3 hours, the 3 hour folks were done, which removed ~15 of the runners from the loop, making it even more sparse and lonely out there. There were enough people at enough different speeds that I was never completely alone for more than, say, 4 minutes, but it was definitely the sort of run where you spend a lot of time in your own head. And a lot of the people were wearing headphones, so even if you said encouraging things to them as they passed you or you passed them, they didn't hear and didn't respond.
And then.. I ran for a lot of hours. Right around 3 hours, Matt passed me, and I told him I hurt. And he said he did, too. I honestly didn't know how I was going to keep my legs moving for another 3 hours. I assume I had slowed way down at this point, but my watch only showed total time, and I wasn't keeping track of my loops, so I had no idea how far I had run or how fast I was doing each loop. I just kept my feet moving.
At some point, I passed the start/finish line, where our chairs were, and Matt was sitting in his chair. I asked if he was okay, and he said that was yet to be determined, and that he was sitting for a little while to assess. Well, that was moderately concerning, but I was happy he was figuring it out rather than just pushing through it, so I kept going. And by the time I got back to the chairs, he wasn't there anymore. I figured that was a good (?) sign. I didn't see him again for quite some time (it's strange how you can fall into the same pace as someone else, but they're on the other side of the loop, so you never, ever see them; I saw a guy 5.5 hours in that I hadn't seen the entire race up until then, despite sharing a 1k loop with him for so many hours), and when I did, he said his knee was hurting, and he was probably going to drop down to the 6 hour. Whether running another 2 or so hours on a hurt knee was wise or not is up for debate, but only he knew how he felt, and I wanted him to be as satisfied as he could be with his last race of the season. We ran together briefly, but his knee wanted to run slightly faster than my body wanted to run, so he slowly pulled away from me. But not before I got to watch his only fall of the entire day, which was a well-executed tuck and roll. He was fine.
And then.. more running. More eating. Taking salt pills. Got some Coke once from the aid station. Refilled my handheld 3 times. And actually, those brief stops to drink Coke, refill my bottle, and restock my gels in my handheld, were the only times I stopped. One of the problems with this course is that it's basically flat the entire 1k loop. I mean, there are a few areas where there's a mild rise or fall, but it's completely insignificant (I say, having only run 6 hours out there; it's possible after 24 hours, those become mountains). Which means that there's no logical place to walk. I usually try to run as much as I'm able, according to the terrain. At Wild Hare, the hills are mostly runnable if there's not a horrible deluge and resulting mudslide, but by the last loops, there's a few of those steeper uphills that I'd probably fast hike up no matter what. But here.. there's no time that the terrain dictates you walk. So I didn't. Yes, I could have just walked on a flat part, but I didn't. And it really started to wear on me after a while. I'd tell myself to just WALK. My body obviously wanted to. But my brain wouldn't cooperate. It said run unless you can't. And I could. So I did. For all 6 hours. Even when my pace must have been ridiculously slow.
Some time during those 6 hours, when I happened to be just behind David. Photo from Deborah Scharpff Sexton, though obviously not taken by her since she's right beside me in the picture.
I did have plenty of hours to sort out what probably happened, though. Which is what tends to happen after all long endurance races. I ran 31 muddy miles, and then I had two weeks to recover. My body did as much recovery as it could in 2 weeks, and my gas tank had refilled some amount by the time I started RLtW. I started out feeling good, and I ran normally, and then after 90 minutes, I had burned through all of that gas I'd recovered in those 2 weeks, and I was left with 4.5 hours of running on empty.
Those were 4.5 hard hours. But I got through it, and finished out the full 6 hours successfully! If you'd asked me 2 hours in, I would have said it might not happen. In fact, if I had run by the chairs at any point and Matt was obviously done with the race, I might have run over and said, "Ooh, are we DNFing? Yay, let's go get a hamburger!" But I gutted it out.
It did give me PLENTY of time to consider what's next, though. And I realized that I think I'm done testing my mental strength for a while. 6 months of Ultraman training, 3 days of Ultraman, then a 50k followed immediately by a 6 hour run. That's a lot of time spent convincing my brain to keep pushing my body forward. I know that with another month of training, and a good taper, I'd do just fine at the Rocky Raccoon 50 miler, but I also know that the last 20 miles would be really hard. Could I find the mental strength to push through them? Probably. Do I WANT to? I don't think I do. I think I need to rest my brain for a while. Let it remember runs where it only has to step in and be mentally strong for an hour or so, instead of 6-12. So no Rocky for me! (Probably.) (Almost definitely.)
And so both Matt and I ended our seasons with 6 hours of 1k loops at Run Like the Wind! And then we went and got a hamburger.
I ended up running exactly 50 1k loops, which means I ended up doing 2 50ks 2 weeks apart! I actually had hoped to do more than 50 loops, based on what I've done at the 3 hour runs in the past, but I didn't anticipate how much I'd fall apart (or how early). So I'm perfectly pleased with 50k, and the flatness and lack of mud meant I did this 50k 45 minutes faster than my last. And despite doing it so much faster, I've recovered SO MUCH BETTER. I was marathon-level crippled for 3-4 days after Wild Hare. I was walking practically normally a day and a half after RLtW.
As a bonus, I ended up second woman (of 6) in the 6 hour race. If I'd had any legs left, I would have gone for one last loop, and it would have gotten me CLOSER to first, but I definitely didn't have enough left to push for first, even if I'd known who else was doing the 6 hour race and how many loops they'd done. The mystery is part of the fun.
Results:
PlaceNameTimeLoopsDistance
1Lauren Medieros05:58:525131.6914
2Amy Bush05:53:535031.07
3Christine McCown05:55:174628.5844
And now for some shorter stuff, and maybe eventually I'll try to do a speed workout again, and see if I can find the speed I used to have!
Oh, and the next day, I finally went and got that banana split I'd promised myself for finishing Wild Hare!