Tahoe Triple 2016 race report.
Oh, geez. Where do I even start? By the time I finished day 2, I'd forgotten most of day 1. I considered making this into three separate race reports, but it really feels like one event, so one race report seems more appropriate. Hopefully I've forgotten so much that it won't end up being so long I can't post it on livejournal. Because I'm so good at brevity.
Okay, so first, what IS this event? It's three marathons in three days, which circumnavigate Lake Tahoe. Friday and Saturday's marathons are fairly small, mostly people doing the Triple, and then Sunday is the big event, the Lake Tahoe Marathon. I knew all of that going in, but didn't really know what "small" and "big" meant until I got there.
Goals-wise.. we didn't really have any other than just completing 3 marathons in 3 days, together. When we first started training, we had to come up with a marathon goal pace for those workouts back in the beginning, when we still did speedwork. Without really discussing it, we both figured we'd aim for 9:30-10 minute miles, moderate long-run pace for me, but really it would just depend on how we felt once we started running. There were so many unknowns.
One of the big unknowns was how Matt would feel. I talked about some of his struggles in this post, so I won't go into that here. But we were hopeful that the low humidity and low temperatures in Lake Tahoe would mean easier running for him, the elevation wouldn't impact him like it did at Collegiate Peaks, and he wouldn't suffer for having missed some of the training runs in the last month.
Our bibs, which we'd have to wear all three days. They would never be this clean or unwrinkled again.
You can click on any picture to embiggen it.
Friday, Lakeside Marathon
Day 1 elevation profile.
I really didn't have any pre-race anxiety, so I slept just fine the night before the first marathon. I was assisted by the fact that we were in Pacific time instead of our normal Central, which meant it was easy to go to sleep at 8pm and wake up at 5am. We're used to waking up at 4am Central, so 5am Pacific felt like 7am.
It was only half a mile to the race start from our hotel (the host hotel), but Russ (our amazing crew for days 1 and 2) was picking up Carolyn (the other person from our group doing the full Triple) to drop her off at the start, and he'd have to go right by our hotel, so we got a free ride out of the deal. That meant we also had a warm van to hide in for the 40 minutes until the race started. Did I mention it was in the low 30s? Which is magical to run in, but very cold to stand around in while wearing shorts.
I wore my blue shoes on day 1.
I mentioned the Friday and Saturday races were small, but this was my first time to really appreciate how small. You would never have guessed any event was about to take place, much less a marathon, based on the number of cars parked at the start line, nor the number of people milling about. Maybe 20 people milling about when we arrived? I decided to hit the portapotty 15 minutes before the race started, and there wasn't a single other person IN the portapotties, much less forming any sort of line. Unheard of before a marathon.
The line for the portapotties, 15 minutes before race start.
With 10 minutes to go before race start, and with still a very tiny group of people gathered, we reluctantly departed the van. We stood around shivering for a few minutes, and then I started to second-guess my decision not to wear gloves. I'm not sure if I just have good circulation or what, but even when it's in the 20s, my hands warm up after a mile such that gloves are too warm. But I knew we'd have a chance to drop our warm clothes with Russ after a few miles, and I was really cold standing around, so I went to the van to grab my gloves. And I'm glad I did, because I glanced at the lake in passing and got to witness THIS.
View from the startline on day 1.
So I busted out my phone real quick, snapped a picture, grabbed my gloves, then met everyone at the start line. Here we all are with a couple minutes left before the start. This is everyone (minus the couple people who did early start because they planned to walk or weren't sure they could make the time cut-off). Not a big event.
That's all of us! I'm front row all the way left, Matt is hidden in the back behind me, in hi-vis stuff. Most of the during-the-race photos in here were taken by Captivating Sports Photos, unless otherwise noted.
A countdown from 5, and then we were off! Marathon 1 of 3!
We started off in California, and after maybe 1/64th of a mile, we crossed the street into Nevada, where we'd spend the rest of this marathon.
Here's where I have good news: I don't really remember much of the first part of this day! We settled into our pace pretty quickly, anyone who was going to pass anyone else did it, and people spread apart into groups or individuals. The weather was great, the scenery was beautiful (mostly just trees and mountains; we'd get lake views later), and it felt good to finally be doing the event. The first 5 miles pretty much flew by effortlessly and without us really noticing.
At 5 miles was our first aid station, which we skipped because right BEFORE the aid station was Russ and Claire, who generously took our long sleeved shirts and gloves, and refilled our water.
Coming into mile 5, taken by Claire; this gives you an idea how big our "shoulder" was in most places.
Oh, that bears mentioning, I suppose. The first two marathons, in addition to being small, are also fairly lightly supported. They had aid stations roughly every 5 miles, with water, sports drink and snacks. That meant if you needed water more frequently than every 5 miles, you either carried water with you (handheld or hydration pack), or had someone crew for you every couple miles in a car. I was carrying a handheld, and Matt had a hydration pack with two water bottles, so we were fine only refilling every 5 miles.
Once we passed by, Russ and Claire went to pick up Andie and Eva (Claire, Andie and Eva were doing the Tahoe Trifecta, which is 3 half marathons in 3 days; those started at mile 13 of the marathon, 2 hours after the marathon started) and take them to the start line, where he would wait until Matt, Carolyn and I had run through to see if we needed anything, and make sure we didn't miss the turn.
Shortly after this, we started climbing. It's net uphill to the halfway point, which ends with a 3 mile nonstop hill. Oof.
In addition to the endless climb, this is where we first really noticed the traffic. These marathons were, for the most part, not on any sort of closed course. That's not entirely uncommon for a race, but usually there's a shoulder to run on. A bike lane. Something. These roads were completely open to traffic, highly-trafficked, and often had a shoulder the width of one runner. As it got later in the day, the traffic got heavier, and now we were running uphill, against traffic, which meant that the cars (and trucks and constructions vehicles, of which there were MANY), were driving very fast, downhill, and (in most cases) trying not to run us over. The good news for US was that we were firmly in the middle of the pack, so by the time cars got to us, they knew there were insane runners on the side of the road, and mostly moved over. There were two lanes each direction, so it was possible to get into the middle lane, and not drive really fast next to the runners. Many people not only did not get into the middle lane, they didn't move over at all. In case your heart rate wasn't already high from running up a non-stop hill, the threat of being run over at any time kept you constantly on edge.
It also wasn't great for communication, because it meant running single file, and the traffic noise was loud enough that you had to yell to be heard. So there were long stints where we didn't even bother to try to talk to each other.
We hadn't really formulated a Hill Plan ahead of time, so once we hit the hills, we just started running slowly up them. We passed a lot of people who were walking, and then eventually, near the top of the hill, Matt said we should power hike rather than run, since we had a lot of days, a lot of hills and a lot of miles remaining.
Unfortunately we learned at Ultraman Canada that Matt can power hike at a pace that means I have to run. He settled into his hike, and I tried to do the same, but kept falling behind. So I'd run to catch up, then try to walk again, fall behind, repeat. Eventually I just ran really, really slowly behind him, to match his pace.
Somewhere during this endless 3 mile uphill, it occurred to me that I was only ~8 miles into a marathon, and there were a LOT of miles left in this marathon, and then my reward if I made it through this marathon was not only to run a marathon the next day, but then to do it again the NEXT day. I began to think maybe I'd made an error in judgment. How in the WORLD was I going to do this?
But then we got to run through a tunnel, which was kinda fun and spooky and FORTUNATELY they'd gotten permission to cone off a lane for us for that part. And so I forgot to dwell on how impossible this whole thing seemed, and just kept running.
Tunnel! And you can see the scale of some of the giant vehicles that were driving by us. Picture by Stephanie.
Eventually we defeated the hill, made it to the top, and had to turn! We turned SO infrequently (3 times total on day 1, I think?) that it was rather exciting when we got to do it. Progress!
Russ was there at the turn, which was also the half marathon start. I handed my bottle to Matt to refill while I hit the portapotty to pee. I'd had to pee basically from the first mile. Cold weather makes me have to pee, which would be weird if google didn't assure me this is normal. Matt had cheated by running off the road to pee on a tree earlier. Stupid boys.
Okay, half done with the first marathon! And one of the selling points of the half marathons is that they were basically all downhill. Most of the uphills in the marathons were purportedly in the first half, and the halfers got to enjoy screaming downhills for their races.
At least theoretically. Somehow the first thing we had to do after we passed the half was run up a hill. What the hell? False advertising. Plus we had been hoping when we turned off that major highway, we'd finally be away from all the cars and construction vehicles that had been so copious for the last 10 miles. But that didn't turn out to be true either.. dump trucks and concrete trucks and cars and more cars.
And then a really eerie experience.. we ran down the other side of that hill, into a little valley area where it looked like deers and other natures should live (but we didn't see any), and.. it was quiet. No cars. No trucks. No other runners. Just me and Matt and a beautiful field of tall yellow grass and peace. You don't realize how pervasive the noise and cars and stress is until it all just suddenly disappears. It was magical.
And it only lasted about 2 minutes, because then we went up ANOTHER hill, an even more painful hill, and the cars and trucks returned.
This picture actually shows where we have a huge shoulder and can run side by side. It is also a pretty awful picture. But we do have a bear crossing sign behind us. We never saw any bears. Spoiler.
We ran through the woods for a few miles, and then emerged to run by the lake again. The good news was the lake views were beautiful. The bad news was we were getting into the section we'd been previously warned about.
The day before, Thursday, the race director sent out mail saying there was a sewer break on the course, around mile 20, and there would likely be delays through there. Like.. we'd have to stop running for some unknown amount of time. He said they were doing what they could, but if the front runners did end up having to stop, they'd determine the winner of the race there, at mile 20.
We really had no idea what to expect, so just tried to accept the whole thing with a good sense of humor, and see what happened. We got to mile 20, and.. nothing. We were obviously approaching some sort of little town, but mostly it was still just a windy road next to the lake. The traffic did get worse, though. And more construction vehicles. This continued for the next couple miles, and finally around mile 22, we got to the real deal. First a sign warning the cars about construction delays of up to 30 minutes (!!). Then more and more construction vehicles. And then we got into the actual problem section. It was one of those deals where they stop traffic in one direction, then a lead vehicle slowly leads a line of cars through the area while the other side is completely stopped. Then they switch off. Hence the up-to-30-minute delays. And we also realized this is why we had that 2 minutes of bliss earlier: traffic had been stopped completely up ahead of us.
The good news for us is that we never had to completely stop. We had a tiny little 1' wide shoulder to run on, and nobody told us to stop and wait.
The bad news for us is that the cars which were going by in that one lane, and were already angry, were right next to us. As were the construction vehicles. The huge, take-up-the-whole-lane vehicles. If I had lifted up my arm, I would have been able to hit the side of these monstrosities. Instead I tried to be as small as possible and not get smushed by traffic or go tumbling off the other side into guardrail or off a cliff.
The extra bad news for Matt was that all of this traffic and construction was producing horrible exhaust, dust and smoke. He already had bad lungs and lung capacity, so this was just miserable for him, and he couldn't breathe.
But it did eventually end. We survived. And we got to make another turn, our third and final turn of the day, into Incline Village where the finish line lived.
Fortunately Incline Village had very few construction vehicles and trucks. It did have a lot of rich people with insanely large houses who didn't seem all that pleased that runners were on their roads, and wouldn't move over to give us any room. It also, despite having a decent number of houses under construction, had zero portapotties. I mention this because poor Matt sure did need one.
And so, after hills and smoke and exhaust and many miles, Matt spent the last 3 seemingly endless miles of the marathon desperately needing a bathroom. It wasn't fun for him. But he gutted it out, and we made it to the finish line of marathon #1!
I know there's a professional finish line photo of us, because we have a hard copy of it, but I can't find it in the online photos, so instead you get this one Claire took of our butts finishing day 1.
Claire, Russ, Andi and Eva were all there to cheer us in, and Carolyn was right behind us.
Our whole crew after day 1, taken by Russ.
After a portapotty trip for Matt, we enjoyed an ice bath in the lake behind Claire and Russ' cabin (for various definitions of "enjoyed", depending on who you ask), and then a much-needed shower.
This is much prettier than actual ice in an actual bathtub. Taken by Claire.
We didn't end up back at the hotel and showered until around 3pm. We'd had our recovery beverages at the finish line, but we obviously needed to get some real food in us. We went across the street to the Irish pub and got some lunch, then back to the hotel to put our legs up the wall and do our daily duolingo to keep our various streaks alive (571 day streak!).
Mulligan Stew for lunch. This kind of food is the reason one runs marathons.
Then we had the question of dinner. We'd just eaten. If the next day were a rest day, like after a normal marathon, maybe that would be sufficient. Or a snack or dessert later that night. But we needed enough calories to get us through 2 more marathons. And I was really tired.. normally I'd nap after a marathon, but I knew if I napped so late, I'd never sleep that night. So we had a relatively small window to eat another meal. It was an odd situation. We ended up getting takeout from an Italian place down the street, and eating dinner around 7 even though we weren't particularly hungry. Then we got all of our stuff laid out for day 2, and I was in bed by 8 again.
One medal achieved!
Saturday - Cal-Neva Marathon
Day 2 elevation profile, the "easy" marathon.
And up again at 5am. And I felt okay. That was a big question: I've never run a single mile the day after running a marathon. I'd never particularly felt like walking was easy the day after a marathon. How would I run at all, much less an entire marathon? Well, the answer evidently is: if you run slow enough, you'll be okay the next day. I was stiff, sure, but felt fine.
The RussBus picked us three marathoners up again and ferried us to the start line, this time at Sand Harbor. The circumference of Lake Tahoe is less than 26.2 * 3, so we had to backtrack and run some of the miles from the previous day again. That actually meant re-running that whole sewer breakage area, and then Incline Village, none of which sounded at ALL appealing after our experience the previous day.
We had two bonus riders for this RussBus journey, because they were under the impression that the last bus left at 5:30am. The race director had sent out mail at ~9:30pm on day 1 saying there had been some confusion about the day 2 bus, and that the last one would run at 5:15am, but they hadn't checked their mail that late. So when our two new friends got there at 5:20am, and no bus arrived by 5:50am, they got scared and started looking for alternate ways to get to the startline. Plenty of room in the RussBus!
Day 2 startline portapotty at sunrise.
Once again, you'd never guess that there was a marathon taking place. We actually had trouble finding the start line, because it was dark, and there weren't any other cars driving around to indicate there was a start area. But we did find it, took a few photos, and then we were off again for day 2.
Another tiny group at the startline for marathon #2! Matt and I are on the right side.
It turned out the first part, which I'd been dreading, was basically a non-issue.
And away we go.
They actually stopped traffic for us through the construction area this time, so we just cruised through that area and got to actually enjoy the lake view rather than constantly fearing for our lives.
See, I wasn't kidding. Having a grand time.
Russ took our warm clothes just after the construction, and then the Incline Village area, which was filled with bad memories from the day before because of the cars and Matt's stomach unhappiness, was just fine. Those 3 miles still seemed suspiciously unending, but we were still fairly high on Early Miles, where things fly by pretty quickly and painlessly.
As a bonus, we knew (or suspected/hoped) that there would be a portapotty where the finish line had been the day before, so we were able to use that and refill our water.
We're still dressed here, so this is in the first 3 miles, but there's a glut of early pictures, so I have to spread them out a bit.
Russ and Carolyn had warned us that there was one big hill, but they couldn't remember exactly what mile. They said maybe 13. We hit a long, fairly steep uphill around mile 9, and thought maybe they'd just been really wrong about the timing. Hoped, because that was a tough hill, and if the bad one was still to come, then it was presumably worse than this one, which hadn't even been worth mentioning. We power hiked up the hill, amusingly ourselves by enjoying the antics of the girl in front of us who REALLY DID NOT WANT US TO PASS HER. We'd just be running a steady pace, and slowly creep up on her. The second we got close enough that she could hear us, she'd TAKE OFF sprinting and pull way ahead of us. This went on for many miles. (Eventually we passed her and she finished fairly far behind us, presumably because she used all her energy not wanting us to pass her for so long.)
Okay, here we are after we'd stripped down. There were a lot of those grates that we either ran through or avoided, depending on who was trying to kill us at the time.
We passed through the half start area, another half marathon done!, and THEN we found the hill Russ and Carolyn had told us about. Very long, fairly steep, but with nice views.
Long hill.
The rest of day 2 was relatively flat. Comparatively, anyway. This was supposedly the "easy" day. At least the course. It was also allegedly the "emotional" day. The one where people struggle more emotionally. I can completely understand that. Day 1 the whole thing is new and exciting, just starting the journey. Day 3 is the last day, the victory lap, and you're almost done. Day 2 is just.. the middle.
The really pretty middle, though.
But our struggles were leaning toward the physical again, not the emotional. Matt's stomach was freaking out again, and there were once again no portapotties to be found. We hit another aid station, and Russ was stationed out on the corner telling us to turn on highway 89. Which was good, because there was no sign. No arrow. No volunteer. Matt says the guy at the aid station a block back had told us to turn, but *I* didn't hear him, and I imagine the many people wearing headphones out there definitely didn't hear him.
I wore my green shoes on day 2.
Fortunately we did turn, and continued our search for a bathroom. We thought we saw one in the woods on the opposite side of the road, but once Matt finally made it across the traffic, we figured out it was just some sort of junction box. Matt was uncomfortable and unhappy and annoyed with my trying to come up with solutions (can't help it, fixer personality) like asking one of the shops we passed if they had a bathroom he could use.
Finally we hit an aid station at mile 18, and I asked if there were any bathrooms around. Fortunately the volunteer pointed over toward the lake and said there were, indeed, bathrooms. Matt ran over to use them while I refilled my water.
As we'd run up to the aid station, we'd passed a woman walking on the shoulder. As I refilled, the woman told the man at the aid station that she didn't see any other runners, and she thought that was it. He said he guessed they'd pack up then. I said, "Uh, there are DEFINITELY people behind us!" And right then, 5 more runners came up over the ridge we'd just come over. He said they'd stay a while longer, but they couldn't stay forever. Yes, you can, sir! People need water, and there are still several hours before the time cut-off for the race! This race, since they had so few aid stations, evidently uses a leap frogging method, where the first aid station packs up at some point and becomes a later aid station. That method can very easily leave the slower people without water, when their aid station closes up and moves forward before they go through. But I'm not even sure WHERE this mile 18 aid station was going to go. Frustrating.
But then Matt was back, and we headed out.
Matt's stomach was a little better at this point, but unfortunately his knee had begun to bother him. And we were in another section of heavy traffic. And we were frustrated with the organization of the race in general, which seemed so haphazard. And the road was heavily cambered. And the sun was out. Even though it was only in the 60s, full sun at elevation can be brutal. We were also forced to switch between running on the road, which was heavily under construction, and a bike path which undulated and added extra distance. So the last few miles were pretty miserable for Matt. I honestly wondered whether he'd be able to run another marathon the next day, based on both his physical and mental state in the last 4 miles of day 2.
We finally slogged our way to a road that was blocked off with a Detour sign, which directed all the cars to turn right. We had no idea what to do. It didn't LOOK like the runners should turn with the cars, but there was no sign telling runners what to do. And no volunteers. There were three police cars parked on the other side of the Detour barricades, but no police officers visible. We lucked out that there was a runner, obviously someone who'd just finished, wearing a medal, walking back through the police cars. I yelled at her, "Where do we go?!" and she yelled back to come through the barricades, that the finish line was just ahead.
2 marathons in 2 days!
And it was! We crossed the finish line of day 2, having completed two marathons in 2 days. We got our medals, rested a bit, drank our recovery drinks, ate a hot dog, then drove to a more hospitable section of the lake for another cold soak.
Day 2 soak. We walked out about 5 minutes and it was STILL about this deep, so we ended up having to get down on our knees to really soak.
Once again, we ended up back at the hotel around 3. Laziness, and the fact that we'd liked the food, sent us across the street to the Irish pub again. This time I ended up ordering something (shepherd pie, yum) that was too big to eat in a single serving, so I ate half and took the other half back to the hotel to eat later for dinner. (Matt ate lunch at the pub, then ate cereal for dinner.)
Matt and I had a heart to heart as we returned to the hotel, about the next day. I said I had concerns. About his health in general. About whether it was a good idea for him to go try to run another marathon when he'd felt so rough at the end of the first two. He said if I honestly thought it was a bad idea, he wouldn't run it. I said I didn't want to have that responsibility on my shoulders, plus I had no idea how he was feeling. Only he knew that. He said he thought he'd be okay, so I went to bed at 8 again that night, feeling a little apprehensive, but also excited about hopefully completing this journey.
2 medals for 2 marathons.
Sunday - Lake Tahoe Marathon
Day 3 elevation profile.
The big day! The big event! The day there would be aid stations every 2 miles, and many more other runners on the course!
No RussBus, because (a) everyone had to take a bus to the start line, and (b) Russ was running the half marathon! So no crew, but none should be needed.
The Sunday race also started an hour later, 8am instead of 7am, but somehow because of the bus situation, we ended up having to wake up at the same time (5am) as the previous two days.
The bus pickup was in the parking lot next to our hotel, so we wandered out and immediately got on a bus, which left very shortly after we got on. It felt like a long drive (26 miles on a bus through curvy mountain passes), but we got to see an amazing sunrise through the smeary bus windows, and cheer for some runners that were either the early marathon starts, or some of the ultramarathon runners, or possibly both.
Matt had read somewhere that the Lake Tahoe Marathon was maybe 1500 or 2000 people, but once the bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere and stopped, it became abundantly clear that that was NOT the case. There were MORE people than days 1 and 2, but we're talking maybe 150 instead of 50.
Carolyn, Matt and Amy about to start their third marathon in three days. I couldn't decide which shoes to wear on day 3, so I wore one blue and one green. It's hard to tell, but one person who wasn't Matt (who already knew) DID independently notice, so it was all worth it.
We were parked directly next to the 6 portapotties, so everyone filed off the bus directly into the portapotty line. With that taken care of, we mostly huddled around shivering and looking at the beautiful lake which was our start line. We were spoiled from having a warm van to hide in the first two days at the race start.
After the obligatory photos, which gave a much clearer idea of how few people were there, and even more so how few people were doing the Triple, we were off! Marathon 3! The last one!
This is all the people who turned up for the "let's take a picture of the Triple folks on day 3" summons. There were more than this, but not all that many more. We were a small, insane group.
And all of my fears, for how Matt would feel and how I would feel, were for naught. We were fine. We were running well, and the first few miles, again, just flew by. I didn't ever suspect that I'd just kinda zone out for the first few miles of my third marathon in three days. I figured I'd be walking/staggering. I mean, we weren't breaking any speed records, but we were definitely running.
The first few miles were mostly forested, and beautiful. We were moved onto and off of a really nice bike path several times, and barely had to deal with any cars. We leap frogged with a fellow Triple participant named Stephanie at the beginning, talking about running and rescue animals (she was running to raise money for Team PAWS Chicago) and walking up the hills. It was almost overwhelming how often the aid stations happened, more than twice as frequently as the previous two days. Fortunately we'd grown so used to aid every 5 miles, we didn't have to stop very often to refill.
I did have a fairly strange experience that's only ever happened to me before at Ultraman, though. Around mile 5, I noticed my stomach felt kinda weird. Eventually I thought maybe I was actually HUNGRY. Then my stomach growled. Audibly. Woah. That's not good. You don't ever want to get to the point where you're actually feeling hunger. Especially not with 20 miles left to run! I'd consistently eaten a Gu every 40 minutes of every day, but I guess that's not enough calories over this much time. The next aid station, I perused their selections and decided to eat three blocks (gelatinous cubes), since that seemed like it would probably sit better in my stomach than cookies or chips. It sat fine, and I felt better, and so I did it again around mile 18, just to make sure I didn't get hungry again.
Partway up the Hill from Hell, taken by Stephanie. The mile markers counted down on day 3. More on that later.
Before we knew it, we were starting the Hill from Hell, a 1.5 mile hill that goes up 520'. It didn't even feel like the worst hill of the weekend, but they play it up big with signs about Hell and Purgatory, and then eventually at the top, Heaven and a guy with bagpipes. After 2 days of trying to match Matt's powerhiking speed, my hips were the only part of me really strongly objecting, so Matt and I agreed that I would run the hills if I needed to, and he'd powerhike, and we'd reconvene at the top. That worked out MUCH better for me, and my body was much happier. (Except those hills where we were both too tired to do anything other than trudge, and then we just trudged together.)
Very happy to see this sign, taken by Stephanie.
A little downhill and then another uphill, and finally we were up to the part I was really looking forward to: Emerald Bay and Inspiration Point. Matt had his phone in his backpack each day, but we didn't want to stop and take a lot of pictures. Since this was our victory lap day, the day we were making sure we were just out having fun, I did want to take a picture up at the top. The place where the road is narrow and curvy and there is NO guardrail. It was beautiful up there, and they had the road completely closed off to cars, so we felt safe and just sorta.. free. It was amazing.
We'd been hiking up the hill to the top with Stephanie and the 5 hour pacer (who had previously had two people running with her, but was now completely alone, just her and her 5 hour sign), but we lost them when Matt and I stopped to take a picture and they kept going. Matt said he didn't want to stop for long, and I definitely didn't either, so we packed the camera back up and headed on.
Top of the world, no guardrails.
The hill up to that picture, the view from there, and then the downhill back down the other side were my absolute favorite parts of the entire weekend. It was SO amazing. The downhill was relatively steep, but it didn't bother my quads, and it was still closed to cars, so we could just cruise down the road. There were some cyclists out taking advantage of the closed roads, and they cheered for us as we cheered for them. The road was a series of switchbacks going down, so I could cheer down for runners ahead of us, on the next switchback. It was just.. good. I had a big grin on my face the whole time.
Emerald Bay from Inspiration Point, taken by Stephanie. This is the picture that makes most people decide to sign up for the race, and it's even more beautiful in person.
Once we got to the bottom of that hill, we ran a little bit more through the forested areas next to the lake, and then onto a bike path and through neighborhoods. Evidently the race USED to basically end at the bottom of the hill, with a screaming downhill finish. I really wish it still did, because for as much as I loved that part, I really didn't care for the last 6 or so miles.
Bike path in the last few miles.
We moved onto a bike path and ran on that for a while, then onto some roads through a neighborhood, then back onto the bike path, neighborhood, etc. The good news is we continued to not have to deal with cars, for the most part. The bad news is it was a fairly uninteresting stretch where we had to deal with bikes and people who had no idea there was a marathon going on, and during the last 6 miles of the third marathon in three days.. that's a lot to deal with.
The really good news, though, is that we took Carolyn's advice, and wore the Tahoe Triple singlets we'd gotten from the race (even though they were inexplicably cotton). On the bike path, we ran past a lot of people doing just the full or half marathon (as most normal people would do), and we'd cheer for them as we went by. They'd cheer for us in return, then see our shirts and tell us how amazing we were. Their cheers and encouragement helped SO MUCH in those last few miles. It was a good reminder that what we were doing was not normal or easy, and that we were so close to a finish line that had seemed to impossibly far away.
There weren't a lot of these shirts out there, so we were super excited when we'd see other Triplers.
We also passed Stephanie, who was walking on the bike path and looking a little down. As we went by, we told her to keep going, because we were ALMOST THERE. She said she didn't know if she could do it, and she was afraid she'd have to walk the whole rest of the way in. We told her just to keep moving forward. It didn't matter if she walked the rest of the way in, she just had to cross that finish line and she'd have completed the Triple. I felt bad leaving her, but we had to finish our own race, still not a foregone conclusion.
The course dumped us out onto the sidewalk on Lake Tahoe Blvd, which we'd driven up and down many times in the last few days. It wasn't pretty, and having to navigate curbs and sidewalks wasn't fun at that point, but at least we KNEW how close we were. We knew those landmarks. During the first two marathons, there were only mile markers every 5 miles. During this marathon there was a marker every mile, but they counted DOWN. That was frustrating as hell 3 miles in, when you see a mile 23 marker. But now that 3 mile marker means you have 3 miles left. I told Matt we could do anything for 3 miles.
Matt was pretty uncomfortable at this point. The camber. The sidewalks. The exhaust from heavy traffic. It was WARM at this point, full sun. We hadn't really sweat the first two days, with the low humidity and cooler temps, but we were sweaty now. His lungs and knee were bothering him. Oh, and we'd run 2.8 marathons in as many days. That takes its toll, you know.
Inexplicably.. I felt pretty great. I mean, I couldn't have suddenly started running my normal long run pace, probably, but aside from some fatigue, I felt amazing. I didn't feel like I was at the end of even a standalone marathon where I'd run for time. I just felt like I could run forever.
And we were still running! Even though we walked a lot of the hills over the three days, and we stopped to refill our water at the aid stations, I'm not sure we walked a single other time. Which, in hindsite, is kinda crazy and amazing.
In the last few turns, we ran through a Wine Shot station, but opted NOT to stop and drink wine so close to the finish line.
As we ran down the last street, Matt rallied, and we realized what we were about to accomplish. We said how proud we were of each other. Then we discussed the all-important "how do we want to cross the finish line" issue. Those kinds of logistics are hard during your third marathon in three days. We finally settled on holding hands with my water bottle hand, and holding up three fingers on the other hand. And I'd say we nailed it.
We both remembered how many fingers 3 was!
And so we ran 3 marathons in 3 days.
The training was hard, and at times looking at the schedule, it seemed a little ridiculous. That weekend I ran 15 miles of hill repeats on Friday, 22 miles on Saturday, then 10 miles on Sunday for instance. But even then, trying to leap from that to 26.2 x 3 .. that's a big leap. Once we got there and I thought about the reality of what I was attempting, I wasn't sure how likely it was I could do it.
But in the end, it was nearly a non-issue for me. Which is a really weird feeling. I was less sore after marathon 3, and the day after (and the day after) than I've been after standalone marathons. Obviously the big difference is pace: we ran very conservatively, and walked most of the hills. But I would still figure that many miles would take its toll. It's a testament to the effectiveness of the training (thank you, Rogue/Carolyn/Russ).
And of course Stephanie finished! I was just as happy to see Stephanie cross that finish line as I was to cross it myself.
I also ended up with not a single blister and no chafing at all. My right arm wasn't even sore, after carrying a water bottle exclusively in my right hand for 3 marathons! And after a summer of running in stupidly hot and humid Austin, running in cold and dry Lake Tahoe was a complete delight.
Oh, I suppose I should include numbers. I know I said our original goal, before we even started training, was to average 9:30-10s. Once the toll of training through Texas summer hit, we realized we probably wouldn't go that fast, and decided we had no real goals. However, we DID have to give Russ and Co an estimate of what we thought we'd do, so we could organize everyone riding home in the same car, so we settled on 4:30-5:30 as our very open-ended estimate for each marathon.
And we were pretty dead on.
Friday: 4:55:09 (11:16/mile), 33/61 overall
Saturday: 5:16:53 (12:06/mile), 41/58 overall
Sunday: 5:09:24 (11:49/mile), 104/194 overall
Total: 15:21:26, 20/36 overall, 6/9 age group
(Triple results currently have my day 3 time wrong, which means my placement is also wrong; they've said they'll fix it, so hopefully eventually it will be right. What I quote above is correct, though.)
Amusingly, the "easiest" day was our slowest. Also amusingly, while these were obviously significantly slower than my marathon PR (3:42:16), they were all actually FASTER than my first marathon (5:35). Also also those "overall" values give you an idea of how tiny this whole event was.
Our whole crew, successful!
A couple days later, Matt asked if I would do this again. I hadn't even thought about it at that point, but I totally would. The event itself is a bit of a fiasco. The race director is folksy and casual to a fault. The logistics are ill-defined and subject to change with no warning at his whim. The roads are cambered and evidently pretty much always under construction. There is no shoulder for most of the time. There were basically no signs or volunteers indicating the turns on days 1 and 2. With all of that, I wondered, on day 1, why people seem to love this event and keep going back to do it every year. But on day 3, I got it. It helps that day 3 is just beautiful and amazing. But also just the feeling of accomplishment. It was a rush, and I still don't necessarily really believe that I did it. Except I have about 20 lbs of medals that prove it.
3 medals + a finisher's piece, certain to get my bag inspected by TSA on the way home.
I don't think Matt is so inclined to do it again. But maybe I can convince him to go do the Bear Lake Triple with me someday...
To sum up: It was an amazing experience and a fabulous weekend with friends that we already knew and then some new friends, as well. I'm so intensely proud of Matt and of myself. We kinda rocked it. I'm so glad we did this event together. Because seriously, I think most relationships would fall apart if the couple tried to run three marathons in three days together, but ours came out stronger on the other side. <3
Sunset over Lake Tahoe the night before we returned home to the real world.
Okay, so first, what IS this event? It's three marathons in three days, which circumnavigate Lake Tahoe. Friday and Saturday's marathons are fairly small, mostly people doing the Triple, and then Sunday is the big event, the Lake Tahoe Marathon. I knew all of that going in, but didn't really know what "small" and "big" meant until I got there.
Goals-wise.. we didn't really have any other than just completing 3 marathons in 3 days, together. When we first started training, we had to come up with a marathon goal pace for those workouts back in the beginning, when we still did speedwork. Without really discussing it, we both figured we'd aim for 9:30-10 minute miles, moderate long-run pace for me, but really it would just depend on how we felt once we started running. There were so many unknowns.
One of the big unknowns was how Matt would feel. I talked about some of his struggles in this post, so I won't go into that here. But we were hopeful that the low humidity and low temperatures in Lake Tahoe would mean easier running for him, the elevation wouldn't impact him like it did at Collegiate Peaks, and he wouldn't suffer for having missed some of the training runs in the last month.
Our bibs, which we'd have to wear all three days. They would never be this clean or unwrinkled again.
You can click on any picture to embiggen it.
Friday, Lakeside Marathon
Day 1 elevation profile.
I really didn't have any pre-race anxiety, so I slept just fine the night before the first marathon. I was assisted by the fact that we were in Pacific time instead of our normal Central, which meant it was easy to go to sleep at 8pm and wake up at 5am. We're used to waking up at 4am Central, so 5am Pacific felt like 7am.
It was only half a mile to the race start from our hotel (the host hotel), but Russ (our amazing crew for days 1 and 2) was picking up Carolyn (the other person from our group doing the full Triple) to drop her off at the start, and he'd have to go right by our hotel, so we got a free ride out of the deal. That meant we also had a warm van to hide in for the 40 minutes until the race started. Did I mention it was in the low 30s? Which is magical to run in, but very cold to stand around in while wearing shorts.
I wore my blue shoes on day 1.
I mentioned the Friday and Saturday races were small, but this was my first time to really appreciate how small. You would never have guessed any event was about to take place, much less a marathon, based on the number of cars parked at the start line, nor the number of people milling about. Maybe 20 people milling about when we arrived? I decided to hit the portapotty 15 minutes before the race started, and there wasn't a single other person IN the portapotties, much less forming any sort of line. Unheard of before a marathon.
The line for the portapotties, 15 minutes before race start.
With 10 minutes to go before race start, and with still a very tiny group of people gathered, we reluctantly departed the van. We stood around shivering for a few minutes, and then I started to second-guess my decision not to wear gloves. I'm not sure if I just have good circulation or what, but even when it's in the 20s, my hands warm up after a mile such that gloves are too warm. But I knew we'd have a chance to drop our warm clothes with Russ after a few miles, and I was really cold standing around, so I went to the van to grab my gloves. And I'm glad I did, because I glanced at the lake in passing and got to witness THIS.
View from the startline on day 1.
So I busted out my phone real quick, snapped a picture, grabbed my gloves, then met everyone at the start line. Here we all are with a couple minutes left before the start. This is everyone (minus the couple people who did early start because they planned to walk or weren't sure they could make the time cut-off). Not a big event.
That's all of us! I'm front row all the way left, Matt is hidden in the back behind me, in hi-vis stuff. Most of the during-the-race photos in here were taken by Captivating Sports Photos, unless otherwise noted.
A countdown from 5, and then we were off! Marathon 1 of 3!
We started off in California, and after maybe 1/64th of a mile, we crossed the street into Nevada, where we'd spend the rest of this marathon.
Here's where I have good news: I don't really remember much of the first part of this day! We settled into our pace pretty quickly, anyone who was going to pass anyone else did it, and people spread apart into groups or individuals. The weather was great, the scenery was beautiful (mostly just trees and mountains; we'd get lake views later), and it felt good to finally be doing the event. The first 5 miles pretty much flew by effortlessly and without us really noticing.
At 5 miles was our first aid station, which we skipped because right BEFORE the aid station was Russ and Claire, who generously took our long sleeved shirts and gloves, and refilled our water.
Coming into mile 5, taken by Claire; this gives you an idea how big our "shoulder" was in most places.
Oh, that bears mentioning, I suppose. The first two marathons, in addition to being small, are also fairly lightly supported. They had aid stations roughly every 5 miles, with water, sports drink and snacks. That meant if you needed water more frequently than every 5 miles, you either carried water with you (handheld or hydration pack), or had someone crew for you every couple miles in a car. I was carrying a handheld, and Matt had a hydration pack with two water bottles, so we were fine only refilling every 5 miles.
Once we passed by, Russ and Claire went to pick up Andie and Eva (Claire, Andie and Eva were doing the Tahoe Trifecta, which is 3 half marathons in 3 days; those started at mile 13 of the marathon, 2 hours after the marathon started) and take them to the start line, where he would wait until Matt, Carolyn and I had run through to see if we needed anything, and make sure we didn't miss the turn.
Shortly after this, we started climbing. It's net uphill to the halfway point, which ends with a 3 mile nonstop hill. Oof.
In addition to the endless climb, this is where we first really noticed the traffic. These marathons were, for the most part, not on any sort of closed course. That's not entirely uncommon for a race, but usually there's a shoulder to run on. A bike lane. Something. These roads were completely open to traffic, highly-trafficked, and often had a shoulder the width of one runner. As it got later in the day, the traffic got heavier, and now we were running uphill, against traffic, which meant that the cars (and trucks and constructions vehicles, of which there were MANY), were driving very fast, downhill, and (in most cases) trying not to run us over. The good news for US was that we were firmly in the middle of the pack, so by the time cars got to us, they knew there were insane runners on the side of the road, and mostly moved over. There were two lanes each direction, so it was possible to get into the middle lane, and not drive really fast next to the runners. Many people not only did not get into the middle lane, they didn't move over at all. In case your heart rate wasn't already high from running up a non-stop hill, the threat of being run over at any time kept you constantly on edge.
It also wasn't great for communication, because it meant running single file, and the traffic noise was loud enough that you had to yell to be heard. So there were long stints where we didn't even bother to try to talk to each other.
We hadn't really formulated a Hill Plan ahead of time, so once we hit the hills, we just started running slowly up them. We passed a lot of people who were walking, and then eventually, near the top of the hill, Matt said we should power hike rather than run, since we had a lot of days, a lot of hills and a lot of miles remaining.
Unfortunately we learned at Ultraman Canada that Matt can power hike at a pace that means I have to run. He settled into his hike, and I tried to do the same, but kept falling behind. So I'd run to catch up, then try to walk again, fall behind, repeat. Eventually I just ran really, really slowly behind him, to match his pace.
Somewhere during this endless 3 mile uphill, it occurred to me that I was only ~8 miles into a marathon, and there were a LOT of miles left in this marathon, and then my reward if I made it through this marathon was not only to run a marathon the next day, but then to do it again the NEXT day. I began to think maybe I'd made an error in judgment. How in the WORLD was I going to do this?
But then we got to run through a tunnel, which was kinda fun and spooky and FORTUNATELY they'd gotten permission to cone off a lane for us for that part. And so I forgot to dwell on how impossible this whole thing seemed, and just kept running.
Tunnel! And you can see the scale of some of the giant vehicles that were driving by us. Picture by Stephanie.
Eventually we defeated the hill, made it to the top, and had to turn! We turned SO infrequently (3 times total on day 1, I think?) that it was rather exciting when we got to do it. Progress!
Russ was there at the turn, which was also the half marathon start. I handed my bottle to Matt to refill while I hit the portapotty to pee. I'd had to pee basically from the first mile. Cold weather makes me have to pee, which would be weird if google didn't assure me this is normal. Matt had cheated by running off the road to pee on a tree earlier. Stupid boys.
Okay, half done with the first marathon! And one of the selling points of the half marathons is that they were basically all downhill. Most of the uphills in the marathons were purportedly in the first half, and the halfers got to enjoy screaming downhills for their races.
At least theoretically. Somehow the first thing we had to do after we passed the half was run up a hill. What the hell? False advertising. Plus we had been hoping when we turned off that major highway, we'd finally be away from all the cars and construction vehicles that had been so copious for the last 10 miles. But that didn't turn out to be true either.. dump trucks and concrete trucks and cars and more cars.
And then a really eerie experience.. we ran down the other side of that hill, into a little valley area where it looked like deers and other natures should live (but we didn't see any), and.. it was quiet. No cars. No trucks. No other runners. Just me and Matt and a beautiful field of tall yellow grass and peace. You don't realize how pervasive the noise and cars and stress is until it all just suddenly disappears. It was magical.
And it only lasted about 2 minutes, because then we went up ANOTHER hill, an even more painful hill, and the cars and trucks returned.
This picture actually shows where we have a huge shoulder and can run side by side. It is also a pretty awful picture. But we do have a bear crossing sign behind us. We never saw any bears. Spoiler.
We ran through the woods for a few miles, and then emerged to run by the lake again. The good news was the lake views were beautiful. The bad news was we were getting into the section we'd been previously warned about.
The day before, Thursday, the race director sent out mail saying there was a sewer break on the course, around mile 20, and there would likely be delays through there. Like.. we'd have to stop running for some unknown amount of time. He said they were doing what they could, but if the front runners did end up having to stop, they'd determine the winner of the race there, at mile 20.
We really had no idea what to expect, so just tried to accept the whole thing with a good sense of humor, and see what happened. We got to mile 20, and.. nothing. We were obviously approaching some sort of little town, but mostly it was still just a windy road next to the lake. The traffic did get worse, though. And more construction vehicles. This continued for the next couple miles, and finally around mile 22, we got to the real deal. First a sign warning the cars about construction delays of up to 30 minutes (!!). Then more and more construction vehicles. And then we got into the actual problem section. It was one of those deals where they stop traffic in one direction, then a lead vehicle slowly leads a line of cars through the area while the other side is completely stopped. Then they switch off. Hence the up-to-30-minute delays. And we also realized this is why we had that 2 minutes of bliss earlier: traffic had been stopped completely up ahead of us.
The good news for us is that we never had to completely stop. We had a tiny little 1' wide shoulder to run on, and nobody told us to stop and wait.
The bad news for us is that the cars which were going by in that one lane, and were already angry, were right next to us. As were the construction vehicles. The huge, take-up-the-whole-lane vehicles. If I had lifted up my arm, I would have been able to hit the side of these monstrosities. Instead I tried to be as small as possible and not get smushed by traffic or go tumbling off the other side into guardrail or off a cliff.
The extra bad news for Matt was that all of this traffic and construction was producing horrible exhaust, dust and smoke. He already had bad lungs and lung capacity, so this was just miserable for him, and he couldn't breathe.
But it did eventually end. We survived. And we got to make another turn, our third and final turn of the day, into Incline Village where the finish line lived.
Fortunately Incline Village had very few construction vehicles and trucks. It did have a lot of rich people with insanely large houses who didn't seem all that pleased that runners were on their roads, and wouldn't move over to give us any room. It also, despite having a decent number of houses under construction, had zero portapotties. I mention this because poor Matt sure did need one.
And so, after hills and smoke and exhaust and many miles, Matt spent the last 3 seemingly endless miles of the marathon desperately needing a bathroom. It wasn't fun for him. But he gutted it out, and we made it to the finish line of marathon #1!
I know there's a professional finish line photo of us, because we have a hard copy of it, but I can't find it in the online photos, so instead you get this one Claire took of our butts finishing day 1.
Claire, Russ, Andi and Eva were all there to cheer us in, and Carolyn was right behind us.
Our whole crew after day 1, taken by Russ.
After a portapotty trip for Matt, we enjoyed an ice bath in the lake behind Claire and Russ' cabin (for various definitions of "enjoyed", depending on who you ask), and then a much-needed shower.
This is much prettier than actual ice in an actual bathtub. Taken by Claire.
We didn't end up back at the hotel and showered until around 3pm. We'd had our recovery beverages at the finish line, but we obviously needed to get some real food in us. We went across the street to the Irish pub and got some lunch, then back to the hotel to put our legs up the wall and do our daily duolingo to keep our various streaks alive (571 day streak!).
Mulligan Stew for lunch. This kind of food is the reason one runs marathons.
Then we had the question of dinner. We'd just eaten. If the next day were a rest day, like after a normal marathon, maybe that would be sufficient. Or a snack or dessert later that night. But we needed enough calories to get us through 2 more marathons. And I was really tired.. normally I'd nap after a marathon, but I knew if I napped so late, I'd never sleep that night. So we had a relatively small window to eat another meal. It was an odd situation. We ended up getting takeout from an Italian place down the street, and eating dinner around 7 even though we weren't particularly hungry. Then we got all of our stuff laid out for day 2, and I was in bed by 8 again.
One medal achieved!
Saturday - Cal-Neva Marathon
Day 2 elevation profile, the "easy" marathon.
And up again at 5am. And I felt okay. That was a big question: I've never run a single mile the day after running a marathon. I'd never particularly felt like walking was easy the day after a marathon. How would I run at all, much less an entire marathon? Well, the answer evidently is: if you run slow enough, you'll be okay the next day. I was stiff, sure, but felt fine.
The RussBus picked us three marathoners up again and ferried us to the start line, this time at Sand Harbor. The circumference of Lake Tahoe is less than 26.2 * 3, so we had to backtrack and run some of the miles from the previous day again. That actually meant re-running that whole sewer breakage area, and then Incline Village, none of which sounded at ALL appealing after our experience the previous day.
We had two bonus riders for this RussBus journey, because they were under the impression that the last bus left at 5:30am. The race director had sent out mail at ~9:30pm on day 1 saying there had been some confusion about the day 2 bus, and that the last one would run at 5:15am, but they hadn't checked their mail that late. So when our two new friends got there at 5:20am, and no bus arrived by 5:50am, they got scared and started looking for alternate ways to get to the startline. Plenty of room in the RussBus!
Day 2 startline portapotty at sunrise.
Once again, you'd never guess that there was a marathon taking place. We actually had trouble finding the start line, because it was dark, and there weren't any other cars driving around to indicate there was a start area. But we did find it, took a few photos, and then we were off again for day 2.
Another tiny group at the startline for marathon #2! Matt and I are on the right side.
It turned out the first part, which I'd been dreading, was basically a non-issue.
And away we go.
They actually stopped traffic for us through the construction area this time, so we just cruised through that area and got to actually enjoy the lake view rather than constantly fearing for our lives.
See, I wasn't kidding. Having a grand time.
Russ took our warm clothes just after the construction, and then the Incline Village area, which was filled with bad memories from the day before because of the cars and Matt's stomach unhappiness, was just fine. Those 3 miles still seemed suspiciously unending, but we were still fairly high on Early Miles, where things fly by pretty quickly and painlessly.
As a bonus, we knew (or suspected/hoped) that there would be a portapotty where the finish line had been the day before, so we were able to use that and refill our water.
We're still dressed here, so this is in the first 3 miles, but there's a glut of early pictures, so I have to spread them out a bit.
Russ and Carolyn had warned us that there was one big hill, but they couldn't remember exactly what mile. They said maybe 13. We hit a long, fairly steep uphill around mile 9, and thought maybe they'd just been really wrong about the timing. Hoped, because that was a tough hill, and if the bad one was still to come, then it was presumably worse than this one, which hadn't even been worth mentioning. We power hiked up the hill, amusingly ourselves by enjoying the antics of the girl in front of us who REALLY DID NOT WANT US TO PASS HER. We'd just be running a steady pace, and slowly creep up on her. The second we got close enough that she could hear us, she'd TAKE OFF sprinting and pull way ahead of us. This went on for many miles. (Eventually we passed her and she finished fairly far behind us, presumably because she used all her energy not wanting us to pass her for so long.)
Okay, here we are after we'd stripped down. There were a lot of those grates that we either ran through or avoided, depending on who was trying to kill us at the time.
We passed through the half start area, another half marathon done!, and THEN we found the hill Russ and Carolyn had told us about. Very long, fairly steep, but with nice views.
Long hill.
The rest of day 2 was relatively flat. Comparatively, anyway. This was supposedly the "easy" day. At least the course. It was also allegedly the "emotional" day. The one where people struggle more emotionally. I can completely understand that. Day 1 the whole thing is new and exciting, just starting the journey. Day 3 is the last day, the victory lap, and you're almost done. Day 2 is just.. the middle.
The really pretty middle, though.
But our struggles were leaning toward the physical again, not the emotional. Matt's stomach was freaking out again, and there were once again no portapotties to be found. We hit another aid station, and Russ was stationed out on the corner telling us to turn on highway 89. Which was good, because there was no sign. No arrow. No volunteer. Matt says the guy at the aid station a block back had told us to turn, but *I* didn't hear him, and I imagine the many people wearing headphones out there definitely didn't hear him.
I wore my green shoes on day 2.
Fortunately we did turn, and continued our search for a bathroom. We thought we saw one in the woods on the opposite side of the road, but once Matt finally made it across the traffic, we figured out it was just some sort of junction box. Matt was uncomfortable and unhappy and annoyed with my trying to come up with solutions (can't help it, fixer personality) like asking one of the shops we passed if they had a bathroom he could use.
Finally we hit an aid station at mile 18, and I asked if there were any bathrooms around. Fortunately the volunteer pointed over toward the lake and said there were, indeed, bathrooms. Matt ran over to use them while I refilled my water.
As we'd run up to the aid station, we'd passed a woman walking on the shoulder. As I refilled, the woman told the man at the aid station that she didn't see any other runners, and she thought that was it. He said he guessed they'd pack up then. I said, "Uh, there are DEFINITELY people behind us!" And right then, 5 more runners came up over the ridge we'd just come over. He said they'd stay a while longer, but they couldn't stay forever. Yes, you can, sir! People need water, and there are still several hours before the time cut-off for the race! This race, since they had so few aid stations, evidently uses a leap frogging method, where the first aid station packs up at some point and becomes a later aid station. That method can very easily leave the slower people without water, when their aid station closes up and moves forward before they go through. But I'm not even sure WHERE this mile 18 aid station was going to go. Frustrating.
But then Matt was back, and we headed out.
Matt's stomach was a little better at this point, but unfortunately his knee had begun to bother him. And we were in another section of heavy traffic. And we were frustrated with the organization of the race in general, which seemed so haphazard. And the road was heavily cambered. And the sun was out. Even though it was only in the 60s, full sun at elevation can be brutal. We were also forced to switch between running on the road, which was heavily under construction, and a bike path which undulated and added extra distance. So the last few miles were pretty miserable for Matt. I honestly wondered whether he'd be able to run another marathon the next day, based on both his physical and mental state in the last 4 miles of day 2.
We finally slogged our way to a road that was blocked off with a Detour sign, which directed all the cars to turn right. We had no idea what to do. It didn't LOOK like the runners should turn with the cars, but there was no sign telling runners what to do. And no volunteers. There were three police cars parked on the other side of the Detour barricades, but no police officers visible. We lucked out that there was a runner, obviously someone who'd just finished, wearing a medal, walking back through the police cars. I yelled at her, "Where do we go?!" and she yelled back to come through the barricades, that the finish line was just ahead.
2 marathons in 2 days!
And it was! We crossed the finish line of day 2, having completed two marathons in 2 days. We got our medals, rested a bit, drank our recovery drinks, ate a hot dog, then drove to a more hospitable section of the lake for another cold soak.
Day 2 soak. We walked out about 5 minutes and it was STILL about this deep, so we ended up having to get down on our knees to really soak.
Once again, we ended up back at the hotel around 3. Laziness, and the fact that we'd liked the food, sent us across the street to the Irish pub again. This time I ended up ordering something (shepherd pie, yum) that was too big to eat in a single serving, so I ate half and took the other half back to the hotel to eat later for dinner. (Matt ate lunch at the pub, then ate cereal for dinner.)
Matt and I had a heart to heart as we returned to the hotel, about the next day. I said I had concerns. About his health in general. About whether it was a good idea for him to go try to run another marathon when he'd felt so rough at the end of the first two. He said if I honestly thought it was a bad idea, he wouldn't run it. I said I didn't want to have that responsibility on my shoulders, plus I had no idea how he was feeling. Only he knew that. He said he thought he'd be okay, so I went to bed at 8 again that night, feeling a little apprehensive, but also excited about hopefully completing this journey.
2 medals for 2 marathons.
Sunday - Lake Tahoe Marathon
Day 3 elevation profile.
The big day! The big event! The day there would be aid stations every 2 miles, and many more other runners on the course!
No RussBus, because (a) everyone had to take a bus to the start line, and (b) Russ was running the half marathon! So no crew, but none should be needed.
The Sunday race also started an hour later, 8am instead of 7am, but somehow because of the bus situation, we ended up having to wake up at the same time (5am) as the previous two days.
The bus pickup was in the parking lot next to our hotel, so we wandered out and immediately got on a bus, which left very shortly after we got on. It felt like a long drive (26 miles on a bus through curvy mountain passes), but we got to see an amazing sunrise through the smeary bus windows, and cheer for some runners that were either the early marathon starts, or some of the ultramarathon runners, or possibly both.
Matt had read somewhere that the Lake Tahoe Marathon was maybe 1500 or 2000 people, but once the bus pulled up in the middle of nowhere and stopped, it became abundantly clear that that was NOT the case. There were MORE people than days 1 and 2, but we're talking maybe 150 instead of 50.
Carolyn, Matt and Amy about to start their third marathon in three days. I couldn't decide which shoes to wear on day 3, so I wore one blue and one green. It's hard to tell, but one person who wasn't Matt (who already knew) DID independently notice, so it was all worth it.
We were parked directly next to the 6 portapotties, so everyone filed off the bus directly into the portapotty line. With that taken care of, we mostly huddled around shivering and looking at the beautiful lake which was our start line. We were spoiled from having a warm van to hide in the first two days at the race start.
After the obligatory photos, which gave a much clearer idea of how few people were there, and even more so how few people were doing the Triple, we were off! Marathon 3! The last one!
This is all the people who turned up for the "let's take a picture of the Triple folks on day 3" summons. There were more than this, but not all that many more. We were a small, insane group.
And all of my fears, for how Matt would feel and how I would feel, were for naught. We were fine. We were running well, and the first few miles, again, just flew by. I didn't ever suspect that I'd just kinda zone out for the first few miles of my third marathon in three days. I figured I'd be walking/staggering. I mean, we weren't breaking any speed records, but we were definitely running.
The first few miles were mostly forested, and beautiful. We were moved onto and off of a really nice bike path several times, and barely had to deal with any cars. We leap frogged with a fellow Triple participant named Stephanie at the beginning, talking about running and rescue animals (she was running to raise money for Team PAWS Chicago) and walking up the hills. It was almost overwhelming how often the aid stations happened, more than twice as frequently as the previous two days. Fortunately we'd grown so used to aid every 5 miles, we didn't have to stop very often to refill.
I did have a fairly strange experience that's only ever happened to me before at Ultraman, though. Around mile 5, I noticed my stomach felt kinda weird. Eventually I thought maybe I was actually HUNGRY. Then my stomach growled. Audibly. Woah. That's not good. You don't ever want to get to the point where you're actually feeling hunger. Especially not with 20 miles left to run! I'd consistently eaten a Gu every 40 minutes of every day, but I guess that's not enough calories over this much time. The next aid station, I perused their selections and decided to eat three blocks (gelatinous cubes), since that seemed like it would probably sit better in my stomach than cookies or chips. It sat fine, and I felt better, and so I did it again around mile 18, just to make sure I didn't get hungry again.
Partway up the Hill from Hell, taken by Stephanie. The mile markers counted down on day 3. More on that later.
Before we knew it, we were starting the Hill from Hell, a 1.5 mile hill that goes up 520'. It didn't even feel like the worst hill of the weekend, but they play it up big with signs about Hell and Purgatory, and then eventually at the top, Heaven and a guy with bagpipes. After 2 days of trying to match Matt's powerhiking speed, my hips were the only part of me really strongly objecting, so Matt and I agreed that I would run the hills if I needed to, and he'd powerhike, and we'd reconvene at the top. That worked out MUCH better for me, and my body was much happier. (Except those hills where we were both too tired to do anything other than trudge, and then we just trudged together.)
Very happy to see this sign, taken by Stephanie.
A little downhill and then another uphill, and finally we were up to the part I was really looking forward to: Emerald Bay and Inspiration Point. Matt had his phone in his backpack each day, but we didn't want to stop and take a lot of pictures. Since this was our victory lap day, the day we were making sure we were just out having fun, I did want to take a picture up at the top. The place where the road is narrow and curvy and there is NO guardrail. It was beautiful up there, and they had the road completely closed off to cars, so we felt safe and just sorta.. free. It was amazing.
We'd been hiking up the hill to the top with Stephanie and the 5 hour pacer (who had previously had two people running with her, but was now completely alone, just her and her 5 hour sign), but we lost them when Matt and I stopped to take a picture and they kept going. Matt said he didn't want to stop for long, and I definitely didn't either, so we packed the camera back up and headed on.
Top of the world, no guardrails.
The hill up to that picture, the view from there, and then the downhill back down the other side were my absolute favorite parts of the entire weekend. It was SO amazing. The downhill was relatively steep, but it didn't bother my quads, and it was still closed to cars, so we could just cruise down the road. There were some cyclists out taking advantage of the closed roads, and they cheered for us as we cheered for them. The road was a series of switchbacks going down, so I could cheer down for runners ahead of us, on the next switchback. It was just.. good. I had a big grin on my face the whole time.
Emerald Bay from Inspiration Point, taken by Stephanie. This is the picture that makes most people decide to sign up for the race, and it's even more beautiful in person.
Once we got to the bottom of that hill, we ran a little bit more through the forested areas next to the lake, and then onto a bike path and through neighborhoods. Evidently the race USED to basically end at the bottom of the hill, with a screaming downhill finish. I really wish it still did, because for as much as I loved that part, I really didn't care for the last 6 or so miles.
Bike path in the last few miles.
We moved onto a bike path and ran on that for a while, then onto some roads through a neighborhood, then back onto the bike path, neighborhood, etc. The good news is we continued to not have to deal with cars, for the most part. The bad news is it was a fairly uninteresting stretch where we had to deal with bikes and people who had no idea there was a marathon going on, and during the last 6 miles of the third marathon in three days.. that's a lot to deal with.
The really good news, though, is that we took Carolyn's advice, and wore the Tahoe Triple singlets we'd gotten from the race (even though they were inexplicably cotton). On the bike path, we ran past a lot of people doing just the full or half marathon (as most normal people would do), and we'd cheer for them as we went by. They'd cheer for us in return, then see our shirts and tell us how amazing we were. Their cheers and encouragement helped SO MUCH in those last few miles. It was a good reminder that what we were doing was not normal or easy, and that we were so close to a finish line that had seemed to impossibly far away.
There weren't a lot of these shirts out there, so we were super excited when we'd see other Triplers.
We also passed Stephanie, who was walking on the bike path and looking a little down. As we went by, we told her to keep going, because we were ALMOST THERE. She said she didn't know if she could do it, and she was afraid she'd have to walk the whole rest of the way in. We told her just to keep moving forward. It didn't matter if she walked the rest of the way in, she just had to cross that finish line and she'd have completed the Triple. I felt bad leaving her, but we had to finish our own race, still not a foregone conclusion.
The course dumped us out onto the sidewalk on Lake Tahoe Blvd, which we'd driven up and down many times in the last few days. It wasn't pretty, and having to navigate curbs and sidewalks wasn't fun at that point, but at least we KNEW how close we were. We knew those landmarks. During the first two marathons, there were only mile markers every 5 miles. During this marathon there was a marker every mile, but they counted DOWN. That was frustrating as hell 3 miles in, when you see a mile 23 marker. But now that 3 mile marker means you have 3 miles left. I told Matt we could do anything for 3 miles.
Matt was pretty uncomfortable at this point. The camber. The sidewalks. The exhaust from heavy traffic. It was WARM at this point, full sun. We hadn't really sweat the first two days, with the low humidity and cooler temps, but we were sweaty now. His lungs and knee were bothering him. Oh, and we'd run 2.8 marathons in as many days. That takes its toll, you know.
Inexplicably.. I felt pretty great. I mean, I couldn't have suddenly started running my normal long run pace, probably, but aside from some fatigue, I felt amazing. I didn't feel like I was at the end of even a standalone marathon where I'd run for time. I just felt like I could run forever.
And we were still running! Even though we walked a lot of the hills over the three days, and we stopped to refill our water at the aid stations, I'm not sure we walked a single other time. Which, in hindsite, is kinda crazy and amazing.
In the last few turns, we ran through a Wine Shot station, but opted NOT to stop and drink wine so close to the finish line.
As we ran down the last street, Matt rallied, and we realized what we were about to accomplish. We said how proud we were of each other. Then we discussed the all-important "how do we want to cross the finish line" issue. Those kinds of logistics are hard during your third marathon in three days. We finally settled on holding hands with my water bottle hand, and holding up three fingers on the other hand. And I'd say we nailed it.
We both remembered how many fingers 3 was!
And so we ran 3 marathons in 3 days.
The training was hard, and at times looking at the schedule, it seemed a little ridiculous. That weekend I ran 15 miles of hill repeats on Friday, 22 miles on Saturday, then 10 miles on Sunday for instance. But even then, trying to leap from that to 26.2 x 3 .. that's a big leap. Once we got there and I thought about the reality of what I was attempting, I wasn't sure how likely it was I could do it.
But in the end, it was nearly a non-issue for me. Which is a really weird feeling. I was less sore after marathon 3, and the day after (and the day after) than I've been after standalone marathons. Obviously the big difference is pace: we ran very conservatively, and walked most of the hills. But I would still figure that many miles would take its toll. It's a testament to the effectiveness of the training (thank you, Rogue/Carolyn/Russ).
And of course Stephanie finished! I was just as happy to see Stephanie cross that finish line as I was to cross it myself.
I also ended up with not a single blister and no chafing at all. My right arm wasn't even sore, after carrying a water bottle exclusively in my right hand for 3 marathons! And after a summer of running in stupidly hot and humid Austin, running in cold and dry Lake Tahoe was a complete delight.
Oh, I suppose I should include numbers. I know I said our original goal, before we even started training, was to average 9:30-10s. Once the toll of training through Texas summer hit, we realized we probably wouldn't go that fast, and decided we had no real goals. However, we DID have to give Russ and Co an estimate of what we thought we'd do, so we could organize everyone riding home in the same car, so we settled on 4:30-5:30 as our very open-ended estimate for each marathon.
And we were pretty dead on.
Friday: 4:55:09 (11:16/mile), 33/61 overall
Saturday: 5:16:53 (12:06/mile), 41/58 overall
Sunday: 5:09:24 (11:49/mile), 104/194 overall
Total: 15:21:26, 20/36 overall, 6/9 age group
(Triple results currently have my day 3 time wrong, which means my placement is also wrong; they've said they'll fix it, so hopefully eventually it will be right. What I quote above is correct, though.)
Amusingly, the "easiest" day was our slowest. Also amusingly, while these were obviously significantly slower than my marathon PR (3:42:16), they were all actually FASTER than my first marathon (5:35). Also also those "overall" values give you an idea of how tiny this whole event was.
Our whole crew, successful!
A couple days later, Matt asked if I would do this again. I hadn't even thought about it at that point, but I totally would. The event itself is a bit of a fiasco. The race director is folksy and casual to a fault. The logistics are ill-defined and subject to change with no warning at his whim. The roads are cambered and evidently pretty much always under construction. There is no shoulder for most of the time. There were basically no signs or volunteers indicating the turns on days 1 and 2. With all of that, I wondered, on day 1, why people seem to love this event and keep going back to do it every year. But on day 3, I got it. It helps that day 3 is just beautiful and amazing. But also just the feeling of accomplishment. It was a rush, and I still don't necessarily really believe that I did it. Except I have about 20 lbs of medals that prove it.
3 medals + a finisher's piece, certain to get my bag inspected by TSA on the way home.
I don't think Matt is so inclined to do it again. But maybe I can convince him to go do the Bear Lake Triple with me someday...
To sum up: It was an amazing experience and a fabulous weekend with friends that we already knew and then some new friends, as well. I'm so intensely proud of Matt and of myself. We kinda rocked it. I'm so glad we did this event together. Because seriously, I think most relationships would fall apart if the couple tried to run three marathons in three days together, but ours came out stronger on the other side. <3
Sunset over Lake Tahoe the night before we returned home to the real world.