Mirage Virtual 50k 2020 race report.
About 45 seconds after Trista got home from Spider Mountain, her first 50k, she was signed up for her second 50k, a local (to her) trail race. I looked to see if there was anything in my area that I could do, so as not to suffer from Extreme FOMO, but the closest thing I could find was the Hell's Hills 50k, a few weeks later. Sold! I signed up. Good preparation for the Bryce Canyon 50k we were going to do in late May.
Well, anyone reading this NOW is chuckling to themselves, but hopefully someday this is an unfond memory, so let's just say: Coronavirus happened, everything was canceled. Trista's 50k, Hell's Hills, though oddly enough, NOT Bryce. A decision we don't agree with, and are not supporting or attending. I haven't really left my house in a month, I'm not going to get on a plane and go to another state and hang out around a couple hundred other heavily-breathing people. Anyway. That's a whole other story.
When Hell's Hills canceled, they changed the race to a virtual race called Mirage with three options: You could run at certain times in one of two of the race venues for the canceled races, or you could run your registered distance on your own whenever and wherever you wanted. I SO BADLY wanted to go run on one of the two marked trails. I don't care that it would be self-supported, or that there would be no cheering crowds. I haven't been on a trail since March 1st. I miss trail running. I miss nature. But (a) there's no way to know how many other people would be out running, and the trails are a lot of single track where you can't avoid other people, and (b) I'm doing everything I can right now to avoid injury, to avoid ending up in the hospital. I don't want to drive an hour out of town and end up having to be airlifted out of a trail, once someone even finds me. (I mean, I NEVER want that, but especially in these times.)
So I briefly thought, "Well, I already paid, they can just send me the tshirt and the buff or whatever." But THEN they sent something saying you'd only get stuff if you sent your results! So UGH, I guess I'll RUN the stupid race.
50k self-supported? Not something I've ever done before. Why not during a pandemic?
Okay, so, I'll tell you why. Here are the measures I took to try to do this in a smart way:
- I ran alone, because the only person in my household I could run with wasn't trained up for this distance (I have a lot of friends who are "social distance" running with friends (none of whom are wearing masks, none of whom are running 6-10 feet apart, avoiding each other's droplets). I don't believe that's a thing. I think people can suck it up and run alone until it's a lot safer than it is now. You're not gonna change my mind. Don't @ me.).
- I ran a 3 mile loop. Yes, that means I ran that loop 10 times. I had some options here. I pondered 3 10-mile loops. But in May in Texas, I don't feel good about running 10 miles with no opportunity to refill my water. Especially that last loop. Several people pointed out that I could do 6 5-mile loops, but MAN, I just DID that (for Yeti), and 5 mile loops seemed SO LONG. Too soon. Couldn't stomach doing that again. So 10 3 mile loops seemed doable.
- I started at 3:30am. I actually intended to start at 4am, but I couldn't sleep, so I went ahead and got up and got started. I knew I'd still be out there when the crowds started coming out, but at least I'd have several hours where I didn't have to worry as much about avoiding people.
- I wore a buff around my neck. Ugh. It was warm and humid and the last thing I wanted was a piece of material gathered around my neck, but if I let myself get into worst-case-scenario mode, I see me coming across someone in distress while running, or being in distress myself, and if neither of us have a mask, that's a bad scene. So for all 31 miles, even at 3:30am, I had my mask around my neck.
I never had to wear it over my mouth, as it turned out, thankfully.
Okay, so, the actual run. As mentioned, I couldn't sleep. I went to bed early so I could get up early, but evidently even if a race isn't actually IN ANY WAY a race, my body still has some sort of anxiety reaction, and I couldn't sleep. Finally I rolled out of bed at 2:30am and got ready.
Matt set me up a porch aid station, which I populated with extra water, some mini Cokes, sunglasses, lots of extra GU, and various skin lubes, told the dogs I'd see them soon and often, and headed out into the very, very early morning at 3:28am. Y'know, like normal people do.
I went into this undertrained. I'd run a lot of 6s, some 8s, and a 9 miler since Yeti, and sure I ran 31 miles during Yeti, but that was broken up into 6 distinct runs. 31 contiguous miles was a bit of a stretch. But I told myself it didn't have to be fast, and I could walk if I needed or wanted to. If I were doing a trail 50k, I'd absolutely walk at some points, so why not during this? (I'm bad at walking during road runs.)
So I trotted off into the darkness slowly, settling in for a long day.
And it WAS a long day. Somehow that first 3 mile loop just took forever. How can 3 miles feel so long? If this FIRST 3 mile loop felt this long, how in the world was I going to do 10 of them?! PLUS this 3 mile loop turned out to be 3.25 miles, which meant my math got all squirrely. Ohwell, I figured if I ran 9 of these loops, I could do terrible running math at that point and figure out what I needed to do to get to 31 from there.
But it didn't really seem to matter, because how could I ever even possibly get to the end of loop 9 when loop 1 was neverending?
But somehow I did finish my first 3.25 mile loop. I say "loop", but it's really more of a lollipop. Out for just over a mile, then a little loop for ~1.5 miles, then back onto the stick of the lollipop to go back home. I had decided that I could certainly not justify stopping at my aid station after 3.5 miles (unless I needed to go to the bathroom, which so far I didn't), which meant that when I got back to my house, I.. did a u-turn and ran back out the way I'd come. This route sucks. Who came up with this stupid course?
Loop 2 wasn't really any better-feeling. It was warm. It was humid. My legs didn't feel good. There are two significant hills on this 3.25 mile course, and I already hated them, and this gave me lots more opportunity for hate.
Because it was so hot and humid, I was drinking a lot of water, which meant I felt like I needed to stop after 2 loops and refill my water. I probably could have done another loop on the water I had, but stopping sounded nice. Plus I wanted to put more SportShield and BodyGlide on. Both. I had one inner thigh chafing in a way that threatened to be very problematic, and I wanted to get ahead of that early.
Personal aid station.
With a refilled handheld water bottle, a new GU to replace my empty one, a salt pill ingested, and freshly lubricated legs, I headed back out for loop 3. Of 10. 3/10 is not a good percentage. This was feeling a little undoable. But now that I'd refilled, I could bust out another 2 loops before I stopped again. Except on my way back in on loop 3, I had to use the bathroom. I had assessed, and there were no portapotties on my course. (Which is why I was doing this short course in the first place, in case of bathroom emergency.)
So after loop 3, I stopped at home AGAIN. I really hoped this wasn't a sign I was going to be stopping at home after every loop from here on out. I tried to make the most of it, at least. Refilled water again. Drank half a mini-Coke. And changed my shorts. Evidently the amount of thighs I currently have could not be contained by my shorts (thank you, pandemic lifestyle), and the chafing was getting to the point where I was adjusting my shorts every 2 minutes. Not sustainable, and potentially causing some real damage that might jeopardize the rest of my run/ability to ambulate afterward. So while in the bathroom, I switched into compression shorts, and thankfully never had any problems with the thigh chafing after that.
Okay! Back out again. THIS time hopefully I could do 2 loops without stopping. And I did. 4 and 5. At this point, the sun had risen, but was still low in the sky. It was light, but not sunny. People were starting to appear more often around me. Runners, walkers, dog walkers. Still spread out enough that they were easily avoidable, though I was having to switch sides of the street more often to avoid them now.
I had started to walk up the hill by my house at this point, at the end of my loop. This hill and I have a relationship. On a normal run where I'm only doing ONE loop, I will make the out part of my run extra long, just so I can end my run before the hill, stop my watch, and walk up the hill to cool down. I couldn't do that this time, but I knew my hamstring wouldn't tolerate running up that hill all 10 times, so I admitted walking defeat finally.
I don't remember what loops I stopped at after that. I know the two times I went inside for the bathroom were around mile 9 and mile 19, because I sent Trista messages from those miles letting her know where I was, and my phone was inside. I grabbed my sunglasses at some point once it finally got light outside.
After loop 5, I started to think maybe I could do this. Less than half to go. When I got to mile 20, that felt like a major achievement, because 20 is a significant number of miles, especially when your longest run in a month was 9 miles. (Oh, I did literally high five myself, one hand high fiving the other, when I got to mile 9, because I'd passed my longest run recently. Things get weird in the early morning in the dark when you're running alone.)
But as awesome as running 20 miles is, I still had ELEVEN MILES TO GO at that point. 20 miles didn't even get me 2/3 of the way through this "race". Ugh.
For loop 8, the sun finally came out and up enough to be a problematic force. And it stayed out for the rest of my run. My buff was soaking wet around my neck. Everything was soaking wet. I'm sure my shuffling self looked ridiculous to all the people who had just gotten up and were starting their mornings, and I just wanted to yell at everyone I passed, "I'VE BEEN RUNNING SINCE THREE THIRTY A M." I managed to not.
I decided to stop and refill my water at the end of loop 8, and that would be it. I wouldn't stop again until I was done. I was a little late for eating a GU at that point (I was eating a GU every 40 minutes the whole run, plus I'd had that mini Coke over two stops), but I decided that maybe it might make me feel more satiated if I had some Clif Bloks instead (which were at my aid station, not on my person), so I waited until the end of loop 8, and then had a snack. I intended to eat 3 of them (same number of calories as a GU), but I didn't feel like running again yet, so I drank more water and had one more blok. And then shoved the last 2 bloks into my handheld, so I didn't eat them, too, and end up vomiting so close to the end.
And then back out again for loop 9. At this point I realized I was gonna do this. I was just over a marathon into my run. A marathon is significant! Good job, Amy! Except somehow, even having run a marathon, I still had FIVE MORE FUCKING MILES to go. I still had more than one loop! HOW. How was I going to go back to my house and then out AGAIN, even if it wouldn't be for a full loop the last time.
Which I had now realized would be the case. My loop was long enough that even my bad math could figure it out. A 3.25 mile loop 10 times = 32.5 miles! Genius! If I had been having a spectacular run, I would have just run 10 loops. Why not?! Pandemic times! Nothing has meaning anymore! Why can't a 50k run be 32.5 miles?! I'll tell you why. Because I was not running a single mile over 31 miles. Once I got my 50k, I was DONE. I had to promise myself that, in order to keep going. So I knew lap 10 could just be an out and back for whatever I had left.
At this point, I was also letting myself walk up the OTHER hill on the course. A longer, but not quite as steep, hill. I got up that somehow and started running again, and saw Trevor coming toward me. I wanted to tell him how tired I was. That I was almost at mile 27. That I'd been out there since 3:30am. But then he turned off to a side street, and we only got close enough to yell hi at each other. I'm fairly sure I looked and sounded like I was dying, and he probably wondered what the hell was wrong with me. And I was sad that I hadn't gotten to vent, even from a safe distance.
I was in full shuffle mode at this point. Any hope that I would eventually "warm up" and feel comfortable and natural was long gone. My legs just had nothing left in them except "keep moving forward". Unfortunately the shuffling really drove home the fact that evidently my shoes had enough miles on them that the heels were wearing out a bit, and some rubber bits had separated and were dragging on the ground. I kept glaring at my feet accusatorily when they would make a scraping noise as the rubber dragged against the road.
I tried to make myself feel better by having one of the two bloks from my handheld, but it reminded me why I don't eat solid food while I run. I was chewing that thing for like 5 minutes, and drank about half my water just washing it down. I realized if I was going to eat that very last blok, I was going to have to walk to do it, and I wasn't willing to walk just to get a little mental boost for something that would be too late to give me any sort of physical benefit. Sorry, last uneaten blok.
On my way back in from loop 9, I made a decision. And that decision was "FUCK that last hill to my house". I was fairly sure I was going to hit mile 29 before that hill, and I decided when I did, I was going to turn around and run out 1 mile, then run back, and that would be 31 miles. And sure, I'd still have to run up that hill again, but there was NO need to do it this time, and no need to get close to my house and potentially collapse in the yard and not finish the last 2 miles.
So when my watch beeped 29 miles, I swung around and ran out again. This time instead of turning onto my loop, I just ran all the way up to Mesa. And still hadn't hit a mile. So I turned onto Mesa, and still hadn't hit a mile. So I ran a little bit more, but then there were 3 different sets of people ahead of me, and avoiding people while also navigating driveways and curbs and whatnot was DEFINITELY more than I could handle at that point, so I decided that maybe I had gone out far ahead, and that little bit at the end that I would add on to get home might get me to 31.
Shortly after I turned around, I hit 30 miles. 1 mile to go. And a downhill mile! And a breeze! It was a fairly good part of my run, really. A nice way to end, I suppose. Until I got to that fucking hill again. But I walked up aggressively(ish), knowing it would be my last time up for the day. And I triumphantly ran up to my house! ... and then kept going, because my watch hadn't beeped yet. But only like 3 more driveways, and then it beeped, and I had run 50k! YAY!
It was a rough run. I would have loved to set out on a lark to run 31 miles and have it be magical. That wasn't what I got when I started running. I gave it time. I gave it a chance to improve. It didn't. But I got through it. And that's a victory, too. I'm never going to take a 50k for granted. I'm proud of myself. Especially for having carried on when everything was just sort of terrible.
I think this the longest it's ever told me to recover! Also Garmin Connect told me I was "overreaching" in this workout. I'm well aware, Garmin, thanks.
My final running time was 5:43:25, 11:03/mile pace. Total elapsed time from start to finish was 6:11:03, so 30 minutes of dithering at the aid station or in the bathroom. It didn't feel that long, but I have no trouble believing it.
Stupid hills are not my friends.
The good news is, even for as rough as I felt at the end, this is probably the best I've ever felt the day after a 50k. Usually I feel like I've run a fast marathon, and my quads are so trashed the next day that it takes me 4 days to even walk down stairs somewhat normally. I was navigating stairs and sitting down onto toilets and carrying greyhounds up flights of stairs without a care in the world the next day. I mean, I'm missing a lot of skin from chafing, thank you Texas summer (one could argue it's spring, but it's not), and a few of my toe tips are angry, but otherwise I'm good to keep running.
I didn't even feel this until I got in the shower afterward. Then I definitely felt it.
Which is good, because we've already moved on to our NEXT pandemic bad idea..
Well, anyone reading this NOW is chuckling to themselves, but hopefully someday this is an unfond memory, so let's just say: Coronavirus happened, everything was canceled. Trista's 50k, Hell's Hills, though oddly enough, NOT Bryce. A decision we don't agree with, and are not supporting or attending. I haven't really left my house in a month, I'm not going to get on a plane and go to another state and hang out around a couple hundred other heavily-breathing people. Anyway. That's a whole other story.
When Hell's Hills canceled, they changed the race to a virtual race called Mirage with three options: You could run at certain times in one of two of the race venues for the canceled races, or you could run your registered distance on your own whenever and wherever you wanted. I SO BADLY wanted to go run on one of the two marked trails. I don't care that it would be self-supported, or that there would be no cheering crowds. I haven't been on a trail since March 1st. I miss trail running. I miss nature. But (a) there's no way to know how many other people would be out running, and the trails are a lot of single track where you can't avoid other people, and (b) I'm doing everything I can right now to avoid injury, to avoid ending up in the hospital. I don't want to drive an hour out of town and end up having to be airlifted out of a trail, once someone even finds me. (I mean, I NEVER want that, but especially in these times.)
So I briefly thought, "Well, I already paid, they can just send me the tshirt and the buff or whatever." But THEN they sent something saying you'd only get stuff if you sent your results! So UGH, I guess I'll RUN the stupid race.
50k self-supported? Not something I've ever done before. Why not during a pandemic?
Okay, so, I'll tell you why. Here are the measures I took to try to do this in a smart way:
- I ran alone, because the only person in my household I could run with wasn't trained up for this distance (I have a lot of friends who are "social distance" running with friends (none of whom are wearing masks, none of whom are running 6-10 feet apart, avoiding each other's droplets). I don't believe that's a thing. I think people can suck it up and run alone until it's a lot safer than it is now. You're not gonna change my mind. Don't @ me.).
- I ran a 3 mile loop. Yes, that means I ran that loop 10 times. I had some options here. I pondered 3 10-mile loops. But in May in Texas, I don't feel good about running 10 miles with no opportunity to refill my water. Especially that last loop. Several people pointed out that I could do 6 5-mile loops, but MAN, I just DID that (for Yeti), and 5 mile loops seemed SO LONG. Too soon. Couldn't stomach doing that again. So 10 3 mile loops seemed doable.
- I started at 3:30am. I actually intended to start at 4am, but I couldn't sleep, so I went ahead and got up and got started. I knew I'd still be out there when the crowds started coming out, but at least I'd have several hours where I didn't have to worry as much about avoiding people.
- I wore a buff around my neck. Ugh. It was warm and humid and the last thing I wanted was a piece of material gathered around my neck, but if I let myself get into worst-case-scenario mode, I see me coming across someone in distress while running, or being in distress myself, and if neither of us have a mask, that's a bad scene. So for all 31 miles, even at 3:30am, I had my mask around my neck.
I never had to wear it over my mouth, as it turned out, thankfully.
Okay, so, the actual run. As mentioned, I couldn't sleep. I went to bed early so I could get up early, but evidently even if a race isn't actually IN ANY WAY a race, my body still has some sort of anxiety reaction, and I couldn't sleep. Finally I rolled out of bed at 2:30am and got ready.
Matt set me up a porch aid station, which I populated with extra water, some mini Cokes, sunglasses, lots of extra GU, and various skin lubes, told the dogs I'd see them soon and often, and headed out into the very, very early morning at 3:28am. Y'know, like normal people do.
I went into this undertrained. I'd run a lot of 6s, some 8s, and a 9 miler since Yeti, and sure I ran 31 miles during Yeti, but that was broken up into 6 distinct runs. 31 contiguous miles was a bit of a stretch. But I told myself it didn't have to be fast, and I could walk if I needed or wanted to. If I were doing a trail 50k, I'd absolutely walk at some points, so why not during this? (I'm bad at walking during road runs.)
So I trotted off into the darkness slowly, settling in for a long day.
And it WAS a long day. Somehow that first 3 mile loop just took forever. How can 3 miles feel so long? If this FIRST 3 mile loop felt this long, how in the world was I going to do 10 of them?! PLUS this 3 mile loop turned out to be 3.25 miles, which meant my math got all squirrely. Ohwell, I figured if I ran 9 of these loops, I could do terrible running math at that point and figure out what I needed to do to get to 31 from there.
But it didn't really seem to matter, because how could I ever even possibly get to the end of loop 9 when loop 1 was neverending?
But somehow I did finish my first 3.25 mile loop. I say "loop", but it's really more of a lollipop. Out for just over a mile, then a little loop for ~1.5 miles, then back onto the stick of the lollipop to go back home. I had decided that I could certainly not justify stopping at my aid station after 3.5 miles (unless I needed to go to the bathroom, which so far I didn't), which meant that when I got back to my house, I.. did a u-turn and ran back out the way I'd come. This route sucks. Who came up with this stupid course?
Loop 2 wasn't really any better-feeling. It was warm. It was humid. My legs didn't feel good. There are two significant hills on this 3.25 mile course, and I already hated them, and this gave me lots more opportunity for hate.
Because it was so hot and humid, I was drinking a lot of water, which meant I felt like I needed to stop after 2 loops and refill my water. I probably could have done another loop on the water I had, but stopping sounded nice. Plus I wanted to put more SportShield and BodyGlide on. Both. I had one inner thigh chafing in a way that threatened to be very problematic, and I wanted to get ahead of that early.
Personal aid station.
With a refilled handheld water bottle, a new GU to replace my empty one, a salt pill ingested, and freshly lubricated legs, I headed back out for loop 3. Of 10. 3/10 is not a good percentage. This was feeling a little undoable. But now that I'd refilled, I could bust out another 2 loops before I stopped again. Except on my way back in on loop 3, I had to use the bathroom. I had assessed, and there were no portapotties on my course. (Which is why I was doing this short course in the first place, in case of bathroom emergency.)
So after loop 3, I stopped at home AGAIN. I really hoped this wasn't a sign I was going to be stopping at home after every loop from here on out. I tried to make the most of it, at least. Refilled water again. Drank half a mini-Coke. And changed my shorts. Evidently the amount of thighs I currently have could not be contained by my shorts (thank you, pandemic lifestyle), and the chafing was getting to the point where I was adjusting my shorts every 2 minutes. Not sustainable, and potentially causing some real damage that might jeopardize the rest of my run/ability to ambulate afterward. So while in the bathroom, I switched into compression shorts, and thankfully never had any problems with the thigh chafing after that.
Okay! Back out again. THIS time hopefully I could do 2 loops without stopping. And I did. 4 and 5. At this point, the sun had risen, but was still low in the sky. It was light, but not sunny. People were starting to appear more often around me. Runners, walkers, dog walkers. Still spread out enough that they were easily avoidable, though I was having to switch sides of the street more often to avoid them now.
I had started to walk up the hill by my house at this point, at the end of my loop. This hill and I have a relationship. On a normal run where I'm only doing ONE loop, I will make the out part of my run extra long, just so I can end my run before the hill, stop my watch, and walk up the hill to cool down. I couldn't do that this time, but I knew my hamstring wouldn't tolerate running up that hill all 10 times, so I admitted walking defeat finally.
I don't remember what loops I stopped at after that. I know the two times I went inside for the bathroom were around mile 9 and mile 19, because I sent Trista messages from those miles letting her know where I was, and my phone was inside. I grabbed my sunglasses at some point once it finally got light outside.
After loop 5, I started to think maybe I could do this. Less than half to go. When I got to mile 20, that felt like a major achievement, because 20 is a significant number of miles, especially when your longest run in a month was 9 miles. (Oh, I did literally high five myself, one hand high fiving the other, when I got to mile 9, because I'd passed my longest run recently. Things get weird in the early morning in the dark when you're running alone.)
But as awesome as running 20 miles is, I still had ELEVEN MILES TO GO at that point. 20 miles didn't even get me 2/3 of the way through this "race". Ugh.
For loop 8, the sun finally came out and up enough to be a problematic force. And it stayed out for the rest of my run. My buff was soaking wet around my neck. Everything was soaking wet. I'm sure my shuffling self looked ridiculous to all the people who had just gotten up and were starting their mornings, and I just wanted to yell at everyone I passed, "I'VE BEEN RUNNING SINCE THREE THIRTY A M." I managed to not.
I decided to stop and refill my water at the end of loop 8, and that would be it. I wouldn't stop again until I was done. I was a little late for eating a GU at that point (I was eating a GU every 40 minutes the whole run, plus I'd had that mini Coke over two stops), but I decided that maybe it might make me feel more satiated if I had some Clif Bloks instead (which were at my aid station, not on my person), so I waited until the end of loop 8, and then had a snack. I intended to eat 3 of them (same number of calories as a GU), but I didn't feel like running again yet, so I drank more water and had one more blok. And then shoved the last 2 bloks into my handheld, so I didn't eat them, too, and end up vomiting so close to the end.
And then back out again for loop 9. At this point I realized I was gonna do this. I was just over a marathon into my run. A marathon is significant! Good job, Amy! Except somehow, even having run a marathon, I still had FIVE MORE FUCKING MILES to go. I still had more than one loop! HOW. How was I going to go back to my house and then out AGAIN, even if it wouldn't be for a full loop the last time.
Which I had now realized would be the case. My loop was long enough that even my bad math could figure it out. A 3.25 mile loop 10 times = 32.5 miles! Genius! If I had been having a spectacular run, I would have just run 10 loops. Why not?! Pandemic times! Nothing has meaning anymore! Why can't a 50k run be 32.5 miles?! I'll tell you why. Because I was not running a single mile over 31 miles. Once I got my 50k, I was DONE. I had to promise myself that, in order to keep going. So I knew lap 10 could just be an out and back for whatever I had left.
At this point, I was also letting myself walk up the OTHER hill on the course. A longer, but not quite as steep, hill. I got up that somehow and started running again, and saw Trevor coming toward me. I wanted to tell him how tired I was. That I was almost at mile 27. That I'd been out there since 3:30am. But then he turned off to a side street, and we only got close enough to yell hi at each other. I'm fairly sure I looked and sounded like I was dying, and he probably wondered what the hell was wrong with me. And I was sad that I hadn't gotten to vent, even from a safe distance.
I was in full shuffle mode at this point. Any hope that I would eventually "warm up" and feel comfortable and natural was long gone. My legs just had nothing left in them except "keep moving forward". Unfortunately the shuffling really drove home the fact that evidently my shoes had enough miles on them that the heels were wearing out a bit, and some rubber bits had separated and were dragging on the ground. I kept glaring at my feet accusatorily when they would make a scraping noise as the rubber dragged against the road.
I tried to make myself feel better by having one of the two bloks from my handheld, but it reminded me why I don't eat solid food while I run. I was chewing that thing for like 5 minutes, and drank about half my water just washing it down. I realized if I was going to eat that very last blok, I was going to have to walk to do it, and I wasn't willing to walk just to get a little mental boost for something that would be too late to give me any sort of physical benefit. Sorry, last uneaten blok.
On my way back in from loop 9, I made a decision. And that decision was "FUCK that last hill to my house". I was fairly sure I was going to hit mile 29 before that hill, and I decided when I did, I was going to turn around and run out 1 mile, then run back, and that would be 31 miles. And sure, I'd still have to run up that hill again, but there was NO need to do it this time, and no need to get close to my house and potentially collapse in the yard and not finish the last 2 miles.
So when my watch beeped 29 miles, I swung around and ran out again. This time instead of turning onto my loop, I just ran all the way up to Mesa. And still hadn't hit a mile. So I turned onto Mesa, and still hadn't hit a mile. So I ran a little bit more, but then there were 3 different sets of people ahead of me, and avoiding people while also navigating driveways and curbs and whatnot was DEFINITELY more than I could handle at that point, so I decided that maybe I had gone out far ahead, and that little bit at the end that I would add on to get home might get me to 31.
Shortly after I turned around, I hit 30 miles. 1 mile to go. And a downhill mile! And a breeze! It was a fairly good part of my run, really. A nice way to end, I suppose. Until I got to that fucking hill again. But I walked up aggressively(ish), knowing it would be my last time up for the day. And I triumphantly ran up to my house! ... and then kept going, because my watch hadn't beeped yet. But only like 3 more driveways, and then it beeped, and I had run 50k! YAY!
It was a rough run. I would have loved to set out on a lark to run 31 miles and have it be magical. That wasn't what I got when I started running. I gave it time. I gave it a chance to improve. It didn't. But I got through it. And that's a victory, too. I'm never going to take a 50k for granted. I'm proud of myself. Especially for having carried on when everything was just sort of terrible.
I think this the longest it's ever told me to recover! Also Garmin Connect told me I was "overreaching" in this workout. I'm well aware, Garmin, thanks.
My final running time was 5:43:25, 11:03/mile pace. Total elapsed time from start to finish was 6:11:03, so 30 minutes of dithering at the aid station or in the bathroom. It didn't feel that long, but I have no trouble believing it.
Stupid hills are not my friends.
The good news is, even for as rough as I felt at the end, this is probably the best I've ever felt the day after a 50k. Usually I feel like I've run a fast marathon, and my quads are so trashed the next day that it takes me 4 days to even walk down stairs somewhat normally. I was navigating stairs and sitting down onto toilets and carrying greyhounds up flights of stairs without a care in the world the next day. I mean, I'm missing a lot of skin from chafing, thank you Texas summer (one could argue it's spring, but it's not), and a few of my toe tips are angry, but otherwise I'm good to keep running.
I didn't even feel this until I got in the shower afterward. Then I definitely felt it.
Which is good, because we've already moved on to our NEXT pandemic bad idea..