Palo Duro 50 Miler 2011 race report, part 1 (pre-race).
In order to make the report a little more manageable, I'm breaking it into two posts: the before and the actual race. What this allows me to do is talk WAY TOO MUCH about the stupid details before the race, before I even begin to provide way too many details about the race itself.
I actually really don't remember when I decided I wanted to run 50 miles, or when I decided I wanted to do it at Palo Duro. I think after running my first 50k there last year, I knew I wanted to go back there and run again, and why not go ahead and ramp up the distance? I think I decided to consider it, which slowly worked its way into saying I was going to do it, which ultimately ended up in me actually signing up.
Matt considered several options for himself: Going and just crewing for me, going and running the 50k easy (since he just did Leadville), and even going and running the 50 miler with me, at my pace. Enter: puppies. We adopted two puppies, and we decided, because we're crazy people, that we wanted to take the puppies with us, which meant Matt's job was easily decided: puppy wrangling.
Let's detail all the ways in which this was a bad idea: These are 4 and 5 month old puppies. Their longest car trip had been to go to the vet, maybe 45 minutes total in the car (the car trip WITHOUT puppies is over 8 hours). The shepherd (Hilda) can't keep her mouth off the greyhound (Enzo), and they constantly puppyplay/fight/tussle. Enzo isn't potty trained. We'd be taking a borrowed (from my sister) car and sleeping in a borrowed (also from my sister) pop-up camper. And most amusingly, the race specifically mentioned several times, emphatically, that dogs were not allowed at the race site.
What about that doesn't scream "good idea"?
So it was not without a bit of trepidation that we set out before the sun came up on Friday, with a goal of making it to Canyon, TX before 7pm, when packet pickup ended.
And y'know what? The puppies were fantastic. It was unreal. They mostly slept. Hilda would wake up and stick her head out the window for a while. They'd chew on a toy. They'd chew on some rawhide curlybones. They ate their lunch at a roadside picnic area, then climbed back in the car to sleep some more.
Completely sacked out greyhound, with tongue
No fighting. No whining. No peeing. (No, really. Enzo, Capt'n NotPottyTrained, didn't pee for HOURS. He's used to peeing in his back yard, and it took him a long, long, long time to realize that one can pee elsewhere. When he finally peed, many hours into our trip, he peed for like 5 minutes straight.)
Completely sacked out shepherd
So lots of stops to let the puppies out and buy gas and stretch the legs, a late lunch in Lubbock (first real city we encountered, and I was stalking its Chipotle, since I knew my stomach was tolerate that well as pre-race lunch), then one last press into Canyon, making it there in about 10 hours, pretty much entirely without incident. We were both stunned at how good the dogs had been, but with another full day and then another 10 hours drive back home, neither of us was willing to voice how awed and impressed we were, lest we jinx it.
These puppies would like to selflessly help Matt eat his Snickers bar
Got in the huge line at packet pickup, only to have Tall Brenda, five people in front of me in line, inform me that this was the line for the 20k. The line for the 50 miler was over there, where nobody was. No line! That plus the fact that I was given bib #8 were my first clues that perhaps the 50 miler did not have a very large field.
We couldn't stay for the pre-race carbo-loading dinner, what with a car full of puppies, so after picking up my packet and finding Matt romping with puppies in a grassy field, we headed back into the car for the short drive to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where the race would be, and where we'd be spending the next two nights in a pop-up camper.
Pre-pop
We managed to make it to our camp spot and decipher the pop-up camper (which we'd never assembled or seen assembled until that very night, so it was an adventure) before we completely lost the sun, and filled it with gear and puppies. Not knowing exactly what cooking facilities we'd have, and knowing Canyon had no Italian food places (but like 5 Thai food restaurants, randomly), I cooked up some pasta and brought it along in a cooler, so we dined on cold spaghetti with meat sauce in a dark pop-up camper in the middle of beautiful nature.
After eating, I spent some time making many piles of things I'd need for my run the next day, feeling a little panic over the fact that I finally had a few moments to realize that I was running 50 miles in a few hours, and then it was time for sleep! Our setup was such that I had my own bed on one side, then on the other side was Matt's bed, and right next to his bed, a couch with dog beds on it full of dogs. It actually worked out perfectly. And I actually managed to sleep. At least until the coyotes showed up and started crying. At first we could just hear them fairly far away. I heard them and then fell back asleep. When I woke up again, I thought I was dreaming at first, because it sounded like there was a pack of coyotes in our camper. There were maybe a dozen of them, and they were maybe two camp sites away. Very loud, very shrill/yippy. It was really neat, and oddly, the dogs were more bothered by random wind hitting our camper than they were by Close Coyotes.
Hilda thinks she's people
Woke up before my 5am alarm, which our completely silent, all-asleep neighbors probably appreciated. 5am felt sinfully late, and was possible only because we were staying in the park and the start line was just a short drive down the road. Ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and supervised some puppies while Matt filled my Nathan packs with water and stocked them with water and gu.
It was chilly outside, in the mid-40s (which is 20-30 degrees colder than the mornings I'd been training in for months), so I was bundled up in way too many clothes as I walked over to the bathroom for one last use of the facilities before headed to the start line, figuring I'd sort out what I was actually going to wear when the start got closer. On my way back to the car to head out, I coughed, and felt a sharp pain in my back.
Oh, I should back up a little.
3 weeks before on my Saturday run, I'd started coughing. Just a little at first, then a lot. I didn't figure it was anything, but so close to my race, I went ahead and went to my doctor. He said there was something going around, but mine sounded like it was on its way out. But just in case, he prescribed me a z-pack with a refill, and said if I woke up the next day and felt worse, I should fill the prescription and take it. Otherwise I should rest and hydrate.
I translated "rest and hydrate" to mean "get up and run 20 miles the next day", and after that run, I coughed. And coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed.
I finished my z-pack. I was still coughing. I refilled it and took the second one. I was still coughing. All told, my cough lasted about 2.5 weeks of really bad coughing. I skipped several runs, trying to get things to calm down. I was pretty much symptom-free ASIDE from the cough, but the cough was dry and painful and neverending. The good news was, mostly the coughing happened AFTER I ran, and stayed away while I was actively running. I had no idea what this spelled for my 50 miler. And then a few days before the race, I was able to finally sleep without at least one coughing fit waking me up. Yay!
So I was feeling pretty okay. A little over-tapered having missed several runs to the cough. A little sore in all my usual places that've been bothering me. And my back a little tweaked ever since my pre-race massage (which was not the fault of the masseuse, because she worked only on my legs at my request, but I think I must have been tensing up funny during the massage, and tweaked my back a bit), which was just annoying, but nothing notable.
So I was walking back from the bathroom, and I coughed. The coughing wasn't notable, since even though the cough had faded a lot, it was pretty normal for me to cough every few minutes still. But evidently I coughed strangely, because I felt a sharp pain in my back.
I'm not the kind of person who has back problems. I almost never do. So this felt really unfair, to suddenly have sharp back pain 1.5 hours before running 50 miles for the first time.
I calmly informed Matt. I could still walk fine. Twisting in certain ways was painful. I had no idea how it would feel to run. But I'm actually pretty darn proud of myself for holding my shit together through that. I was a little scared that I would start running and discover that it was too painful, and my race would be over before it began. Or I'd run one loop and my back would seize up so badly I had to stop. But I hadn't come all this way to just give up, so there were no tears, no panic, no falling apart. Just continued getting ready, being careful not to turn too abruptly or suddenly, and a resignation that whatever was going to be was going to be. If I ran for 5 minutes and that's all I could do, there's nothing I could do about that now.
So we drove to the start line and left the puppies in the car while Matt helped me carry all my crap down to the start/finish line and set up my chair and gear. The plan was to switch water packs each loop, so I had the one I would wear, and then on the chair was a full one to pick up next loop. Matt would go take care of the puppies and feed himself and all of that, then after enough time had passed that I had dropped off an empty pack, he'd swoop in and refill it so it would be ready to go, full of water and fresh gu and salt, the next time I finished a loop. So even though puppycare meant he couldn't crew quite as actively, he still did a great job of taking care of me, AND it meant he didn't have to sit around bored for 3 hours each time waiting for me.
He wished me well, then headed off to feed the pups, and I finished up getting ready. Another bathroom trip, a check-in with the 50 mile tent, and finally stripping down to my race wear, one sleeveless shirt with a long-sleeve over it, losing the warm shirt, the pants and the gloves. Brr. I put on my water pack, fearing how it would treat my back, and it seemed to feel just fine. Twisting was still painful, but at least things were boding well so far for running in a straight line.
Ready to try to run 50 miles!
With 5 minutes to go, I lined up with my fellow runners in the dark, under the bright, bright moon and many visible stars, to the sounds of a guy playing the bagpipes (?!), not too close to the front, but not as far back as last year.
The race director counted down, and then I set off on my first attempt to run 50 miles.
Click here for part 2, the actual race!
I actually really don't remember when I decided I wanted to run 50 miles, or when I decided I wanted to do it at Palo Duro. I think after running my first 50k there last year, I knew I wanted to go back there and run again, and why not go ahead and ramp up the distance? I think I decided to consider it, which slowly worked its way into saying I was going to do it, which ultimately ended up in me actually signing up.
Matt considered several options for himself: Going and just crewing for me, going and running the 50k easy (since he just did Leadville), and even going and running the 50 miler with me, at my pace. Enter: puppies. We adopted two puppies, and we decided, because we're crazy people, that we wanted to take the puppies with us, which meant Matt's job was easily decided: puppy wrangling.
Let's detail all the ways in which this was a bad idea: These are 4 and 5 month old puppies. Their longest car trip had been to go to the vet, maybe 45 minutes total in the car (the car trip WITHOUT puppies is over 8 hours). The shepherd (Hilda) can't keep her mouth off the greyhound (Enzo), and they constantly puppyplay/fight/tussle. Enzo isn't potty trained. We'd be taking a borrowed (from my sister) car and sleeping in a borrowed (also from my sister) pop-up camper. And most amusingly, the race specifically mentioned several times, emphatically, that dogs were not allowed at the race site.
What about that doesn't scream "good idea"?
So it was not without a bit of trepidation that we set out before the sun came up on Friday, with a goal of making it to Canyon, TX before 7pm, when packet pickup ended.
And y'know what? The puppies were fantastic. It was unreal. They mostly slept. Hilda would wake up and stick her head out the window for a while. They'd chew on a toy. They'd chew on some rawhide curlybones. They ate their lunch at a roadside picnic area, then climbed back in the car to sleep some more.
Completely sacked out greyhound, with tongue
No fighting. No whining. No peeing. (No, really. Enzo, Capt'n NotPottyTrained, didn't pee for HOURS. He's used to peeing in his back yard, and it took him a long, long, long time to realize that one can pee elsewhere. When he finally peed, many hours into our trip, he peed for like 5 minutes straight.)
Completely sacked out shepherd
So lots of stops to let the puppies out and buy gas and stretch the legs, a late lunch in Lubbock (first real city we encountered, and I was stalking its Chipotle, since I knew my stomach was tolerate that well as pre-race lunch), then one last press into Canyon, making it there in about 10 hours, pretty much entirely without incident. We were both stunned at how good the dogs had been, but with another full day and then another 10 hours drive back home, neither of us was willing to voice how awed and impressed we were, lest we jinx it.
These puppies would like to selflessly help Matt eat his Snickers bar
Got in the huge line at packet pickup, only to have Tall Brenda, five people in front of me in line, inform me that this was the line for the 20k. The line for the 50 miler was over there, where nobody was. No line! That plus the fact that I was given bib #8 were my first clues that perhaps the 50 miler did not have a very large field.
We couldn't stay for the pre-race carbo-loading dinner, what with a car full of puppies, so after picking up my packet and finding Matt romping with puppies in a grassy field, we headed back into the car for the short drive to Palo Duro Canyon State Park, where the race would be, and where we'd be spending the next two nights in a pop-up camper.
Pre-pop
We managed to make it to our camp spot and decipher the pop-up camper (which we'd never assembled or seen assembled until that very night, so it was an adventure) before we completely lost the sun, and filled it with gear and puppies. Not knowing exactly what cooking facilities we'd have, and knowing Canyon had no Italian food places (but like 5 Thai food restaurants, randomly), I cooked up some pasta and brought it along in a cooler, so we dined on cold spaghetti with meat sauce in a dark pop-up camper in the middle of beautiful nature.
After eating, I spent some time making many piles of things I'd need for my run the next day, feeling a little panic over the fact that I finally had a few moments to realize that I was running 50 miles in a few hours, and then it was time for sleep! Our setup was such that I had my own bed on one side, then on the other side was Matt's bed, and right next to his bed, a couch with dog beds on it full of dogs. It actually worked out perfectly. And I actually managed to sleep. At least until the coyotes showed up and started crying. At first we could just hear them fairly far away. I heard them and then fell back asleep. When I woke up again, I thought I was dreaming at first, because it sounded like there was a pack of coyotes in our camper. There were maybe a dozen of them, and they were maybe two camp sites away. Very loud, very shrill/yippy. It was really neat, and oddly, the dogs were more bothered by random wind hitting our camper than they were by Close Coyotes.
Hilda thinks she's people
Woke up before my 5am alarm, which our completely silent, all-asleep neighbors probably appreciated. 5am felt sinfully late, and was possible only because we were staying in the park and the start line was just a short drive down the road. Ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and supervised some puppies while Matt filled my Nathan packs with water and stocked them with water and gu.
It was chilly outside, in the mid-40s (which is 20-30 degrees colder than the mornings I'd been training in for months), so I was bundled up in way too many clothes as I walked over to the bathroom for one last use of the facilities before headed to the start line, figuring I'd sort out what I was actually going to wear when the start got closer. On my way back to the car to head out, I coughed, and felt a sharp pain in my back.
Oh, I should back up a little.
3 weeks before on my Saturday run, I'd started coughing. Just a little at first, then a lot. I didn't figure it was anything, but so close to my race, I went ahead and went to my doctor. He said there was something going around, but mine sounded like it was on its way out. But just in case, he prescribed me a z-pack with a refill, and said if I woke up the next day and felt worse, I should fill the prescription and take it. Otherwise I should rest and hydrate.
I translated "rest and hydrate" to mean "get up and run 20 miles the next day", and after that run, I coughed. And coughed and coughed and coughed and coughed.
I finished my z-pack. I was still coughing. I refilled it and took the second one. I was still coughing. All told, my cough lasted about 2.5 weeks of really bad coughing. I skipped several runs, trying to get things to calm down. I was pretty much symptom-free ASIDE from the cough, but the cough was dry and painful and neverending. The good news was, mostly the coughing happened AFTER I ran, and stayed away while I was actively running. I had no idea what this spelled for my 50 miler. And then a few days before the race, I was able to finally sleep without at least one coughing fit waking me up. Yay!
So I was feeling pretty okay. A little over-tapered having missed several runs to the cough. A little sore in all my usual places that've been bothering me. And my back a little tweaked ever since my pre-race massage (which was not the fault of the masseuse, because she worked only on my legs at my request, but I think I must have been tensing up funny during the massage, and tweaked my back a bit), which was just annoying, but nothing notable.
So I was walking back from the bathroom, and I coughed. The coughing wasn't notable, since even though the cough had faded a lot, it was pretty normal for me to cough every few minutes still. But evidently I coughed strangely, because I felt a sharp pain in my back.
I'm not the kind of person who has back problems. I almost never do. So this felt really unfair, to suddenly have sharp back pain 1.5 hours before running 50 miles for the first time.
I calmly informed Matt. I could still walk fine. Twisting in certain ways was painful. I had no idea how it would feel to run. But I'm actually pretty darn proud of myself for holding my shit together through that. I was a little scared that I would start running and discover that it was too painful, and my race would be over before it began. Or I'd run one loop and my back would seize up so badly I had to stop. But I hadn't come all this way to just give up, so there were no tears, no panic, no falling apart. Just continued getting ready, being careful not to turn too abruptly or suddenly, and a resignation that whatever was going to be was going to be. If I ran for 5 minutes and that's all I could do, there's nothing I could do about that now.
So we drove to the start line and left the puppies in the car while Matt helped me carry all my crap down to the start/finish line and set up my chair and gear. The plan was to switch water packs each loop, so I had the one I would wear, and then on the chair was a full one to pick up next loop. Matt would go take care of the puppies and feed himself and all of that, then after enough time had passed that I had dropped off an empty pack, he'd swoop in and refill it so it would be ready to go, full of water and fresh gu and salt, the next time I finished a loop. So even though puppycare meant he couldn't crew quite as actively, he still did a great job of taking care of me, AND it meant he didn't have to sit around bored for 3 hours each time waiting for me.
He wished me well, then headed off to feed the pups, and I finished up getting ready. Another bathroom trip, a check-in with the 50 mile tent, and finally stripping down to my race wear, one sleeveless shirt with a long-sleeve over it, losing the warm shirt, the pants and the gloves. Brr. I put on my water pack, fearing how it would treat my back, and it seemed to feel just fine. Twisting was still painful, but at least things were boding well so far for running in a straight line.
Ready to try to run 50 miles!
With 5 minutes to go, I lined up with my fellow runners in the dark, under the bright, bright moon and many visible stars, to the sounds of a guy playing the bagpipes (?!), not too close to the front, but not as far back as last year.
The race director counted down, and then I set off on my first attempt to run 50 miles.
Click here for part 2, the actual race!