Kanawha Trace 50k

I signed up for this race on a whim after my friend Rachel told me about it last week. I didn't have anything to do and I thought it would be a fun race, so I decided why not. I hadn't gotten a good long run in awhile so why not a 50k race.

One of the best parts of the race was the facilities at the camp, it was at a boy scout camp. They had a million bathrooms and showers too! No waiting in a long line to a smelly outhouse. There also was boy scout tents that anyone could use with cots, which was nice not having to set up and take down my tent in the morning.

The race started out pretty casually, we were on the road for a good mile and a half before getting on the trail. I was in the lead with a couple of guys right behind me for the first miles which helped with navigation because I had no idea where to go for the most part. After getting to the top of the first climb I made a move on the downhill and soon gapped the field and was running clear. I would soon hit the road again which I didn't understand because the website said it had around 5 miles of country dirt roads but these are definitely  paved. I was a little worried on the road because I knew I didn't have an advantage there. I kept pushing my pace which was mid to high seven minute pace hoping there would be trail soon. Turned out to be around 4 miles of paved road before I got back on the trail, which I gladly welcomed. The only problem was this section wasn't marked, the entire trail itself had its own mark on the trees but these were hard to see while running and not knowing the course. And that's were I got lost...

It was around mile 12 or 13 and I was looking for the trail markings on the trees when I crossed a creek and the trail split into a cornfield and up a mountain. Didn't see any flags so I headed up the short little climb only to realize that I was going the wrong way, I turned around and went out into the field but also saw nothing. I was kinda pissed that I could get lost in the race considering I was working hard on keeping the lead. About two minutes since I crossed the creek, second place comes to the field and we start to try and find the trail and back track a little to the last course markings and went back out into the field when I heard third place but couldn't see them. I yelled out and he was on the trail. Turns out it went through the creek we crossed, go figure, so both me and the other guy hopped a barbed wire fence and crossed the stream and caught up to the other racers. The guy I was with then made a move for the lead but I was tired from navigating through the middle of nowhere so I took a lax approach and let him go off and decided to run my own race and not get caught up in racing after using so much effort for basically nothing.

We soon got back on the roads again, which surprised me the second time as well that there was soo much road in the race. I kept a comfortable pace and wasn't pushing it by any means at this point. I could see that the guy that was in third( who was keeping me going in the right direction) was falling off a little bit. I was worried that I would get lost again so I kept an eye out for markings. The following miles were pretty uneventful until I got to the aid station and got some more gels. Soon after I get caught up by another racer, Madison. He was a super chill dude and we ran basically the rest of the race together until the end.

Madison asked me what place we were in I said second and third and first place is some distance ahead. He said this was his first ultra (congrats!) and asked me if it would be worth it to chase him down, I said go for it... but he never ran too far out of sight. We ended up running together because one of us would get cramps or get lost whenever we pulled ahead of each other.

The second half of the race was really muddy, the first half was a little but the second was super mushy. I also had the worst luck stepping in mud, always finding the ankle deep parts. I mentioned to Madison that I saw fourth place coming into the second to last aid station. Neither of us wanted to be caught so we kept a pretty good pace going into the last aid station. Both of us out of water and hot we finally saw the last aid station and we goofing around a bit going to it, and I slipped on some mud and nearly fell completely upside down. We laughed it off and took our time at the aid station getting some salt pills and drinking water. I thought there was no way the last guy would catch up to us but about a minute at the aid station we see him coming down the trail adn take off.  This didnt last too long becuase their was a good climb right after we left. I had drank too much water at the last aid and felt it in my stomach and knew I had to puke so I told Madison to go on and I puked up some water and then ate some shot blocks and struggled for a bit before I felt good again.

It was only three miles to the finish but I wasn't feeling great. Forcing myself to run most of the climbs I was feeling pretty weak. I was sure I would be caught by the end. It was about the last 2 miles when I saw a sign that said it was all downhill to the finish I told myself to run as hard as I could. I looked back and saw that I was only a couple hundred feet ahead of the guy behind me. So I took off down the trail as fast as I could. The trail flattened out a bit and I was losing pace and struggling with cramps, we crossed onto a service road and I had to stretch. It wasn't 5 seconds later I head the finish line announcer and knew I had probably less than a mile, so I took off once again. I ran so hard that I missed the trail markings and went the wrong way around the small pond to the finish in 5:13, it was the same distance so it didn't really matter as fourth place ended up around 3 minutes behind me, but I thought it was funny. Crossed the line and immediately laid down as I basically ran threshold intervals for the last 3 miles.

I was really happy with my race, I only wish that I hadn't gotten lost. I was aiming for a 4:45 finish but it was super humid and muddy on the trails so I felt like it was a pretty good time. The top three of us finished less than five minutes apart so it was a good close race. Now that its a couple days later I feel sick again so ill take a day or two off to recuperate.

July 15-21

Monday: 8 (1:03)
Was going to do my usual run from my house to old farm but I was feeling sick adn it was hot so I turned around at the gateway sign and came back. Did not feel that great.
Tuesday: 11.5
SUPER FUN run up the cascades to Barney's Wall and Butt mountain. Felt pretty crappy at the start going uphill so I told Guy I might turn around after we got to Barney's wall but ended up feeling good after we got there so I made it up to the top of Butt. Ran back down and swam in the cascades which felt AMAZING, like seriously I thought I was in a sprite commercial or something. However this was not that smart of a decision to jump into cold water after being hot when I have a cold.
Wednesday: nada
Felt pretty shitty today, realizing yesterdays decision was not the smartest thing to do
Thursday: nothing again
Friday: 5.7
Ran an easy loop with Rudy before a big day tomorrow
Saturday: 16 (long ass time)
Well I was hoping my cold wouldn't rear its ugly head today but it did unfortunately. I was feeling better everyday so I thought I could do 26 miles and let Rudy and Jordan go for the next two hours while I wait at the car but things didnt go as planned, The plan was to go from Craig's creek along the AT to dragons tooth then turn around and run another 5-10 miles on the other side for an 8 hour run. I died at mile 9 and hiked up to dragons tooth and ran down to the parking lot where Kristen picked me up (thank you SOOO MUCH!!). It was a beautiful day outside though which made my slow hike much more enjoyable.
Sunday: off
Didn't want to do any amount of running today

Total
Running: 41.2 miles
Wow! I was really humbled by what a cold can do to you this week. Did not expect to shutdown on a run but I guess thats how it goes sometimes. Decent amount of miles though surprisingly this week. I don't really need to be putting in a huge amount of training so it feels good not to be disappointed that I didn't get a certain amount of miles in or time this week.

July 8-14

Monday: Biking (2:15ish)
Didn't feel like running so I went for a 30ish mile bike ride to the river, didn't bring my watch but it was around 2:15 I think. It was really fun ride, first time in Blacksburg, New River was REALLY high, good thing I decided not to go tubing there Sunday
Tuesday: 6.7 (59:09)
Ran poverty to Jacobs to horse, I was tired of running slow so I picked it up a bit but the climb up Jacobs ladder was really slow, washed out trail and pretty muddy. Other than the climb up I felt pretty fast without giving it a real hard effort.
Wednesday: 10 (1:25:22)
Ran from my house up Old farm and back down. Really good run with about 1,500 ft of gain thrown in there trying to run this more often as it spares me the use of my car and allows for some good turnover.
Thursday: 10.6 (1:32:49)
Same as yesterday except I ran back through the bike path at the Old farm parking lot.I was pretty dehydrated for the last couple of miles and had a sore ankle coming down OF. Really like this run though, plenty of ways to add variation to it.
Friday: 14 (2:15:18)
Ran from my house up OF and down beast and up snake and back. Really fun run, deliberately slowed down and hiked up parts of OF and snake root to keep an easy effort for the day. Ankle felt better and I had a water bottle with me for the run. I was hoping it would be an extra mile longer but I suppose I need to go Beauty and the Beast hook up for that. This is what I envision will be my mid week long run, adding some extra miles on to it though, as its half road and half trail. My NB 890's are almost perfect road to trail, plenty of cush for the roads and enough grip and protection on the trail. The only thing I don't like about them is the drop (8mm) and the sort of sloppy fit going downhill. Good day out running though.
Saturday: nothing
Someone broke my car window Friday night which prevents me from driving places until Monday when the repair shops open. I was planning on running the triple crown section (Tinkers-McAffes-Dragonstooth) of the Catawba runaround loop with Guy and Jordan but had no way of getting there. Didn't feel much like running today after that letdown so I didn't.
Sunday:  Biking 2:45ish
Didn't feel like running again today plus I couldn't get to the trails I wanted to anyways, biked up Tabor down Blacksburg/Harding. Easy off day but bonked right as I hit Harding, which made the climb up a little more exciting than I was planning on.

Totals
Bike: 75 miles (5ish hours)
Run: 41.3 miles (6:12)
I was expecting to do a lot more miles this week but things happen, like getting your window broken... Anyways I got a good amount of biking in, which is always nice, to mix things up. I wanted to get around 80 miles this week but only got around half since I couldn't do anything on the weekend. Next week Ill have my car fixed and am trying to get around 80-90 miles so that should be fun!

Back in Blacksburg: Summer part 2

I was going to post a race report from Pocatello 50, but I was traveling around after and generally being super lazy (as usual over the summer). Basically my race went exactly as planned... until mile 17, and then I died a slow, long, painful death multiple times until mile 32 when some awesome runner gave me pepto pills at the aid station, I had been trying to calm my stomach down for a long time, nothing really worked. Then my legs felt shot, so I took some advil and felt great for the last 10 miles. Finished in 12:58, by far longest, and hardest race I've ever done. Didn't really want to stay around in the mountains afterwards so I headed home the next day, stopping in Colorado Springs and Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and stayed home for about a week and headed back to Blacksburg.

While back home I finally bought a road bike (I've always wanted to) and just today took it on my first real ride around in Blacksburg. It's a really good way to get an exercise in when I don't feel to great about running, mainly after a big mileage day.

Anyways, since I've been back I have done one real long run with Guy on Craigs creek going south, which I ran out of water which reminded me that summer is HOT. Besides that humbling experience I've been doing a couple of runs up craigs creek, both north and south on the AT. I really like the 3-4 mile or longer climbs that I got used to in Colorado. These extended climbs have really increased my ability to run uphill efficiently, so faster and easier, a win win. Unfortunately, I still suck at hiking, I'll have to work on that for Mountain Masochist, but I'm definitely trying to do more extended climbs and descents to work on getting better. My next race is Iron Mountain 30 which i'll be trying to race fast and not really use as a training run for my next race after Mountain Masochist 50, because I never really got to race at Pocatello. I'll also try to blog more,maybe once a week, I feel like I miss a lot of stuff because I never really get around to posting things.


I'm going to post some things that I see around the web that I can share to people. I don't really like using facebook or twitter for this type of thing I guess.

Music
Shakey Graves: one man band from Austin, love his unique style of music, reminds me of home, also plays killer live. He plays a couple of different styles sometimes it seems like, this was the first song I heard from him, Roll the bones.

I really like this song as well

I can't post my favorite video of him for whatever reason so i'll just post the link here,

Late July

Random Awesome Videos

I can't embed this video either but it's Mt Marathon that happened this last weekend which shows how awesome and gnarly this trail race is. Video here

On the topic on awesome gnarly trail here's Anton doing his thing, I think pretty much everyone that runs trails has seen this but it's worth showing again, cause well, its awesome.

Also you can see photo's when I was in Colorado and Idaho on my facebook here. I don't have anything else to post for now but I'm really going to try to keep this blog more up to date because I'm sure I missed like a million things already.

Spring Updates: Transitioning to the Summer

So I figured I’m wayy over due for an update to my blog considering I ran two races since my last entry, didn't start another two and am about to do my second 50 mile race. So here is a short summery of everything that has happened so far since my first ultra in December (Warning: this is probably going to be a long post).

Injury

After Table Rock I had a bad case of IT band tendinitis, I could hardly walk for 3 days after the race. This continued for my entire winter break back home. This caused me to not start my second ultra that I signed up for, Bandera 50k. My symptoms lingered on for about a month and a half, I kept making it worse by trying to run on it too soon. This basically left me coming back to school with no training. The first run I did was a run up McAfee's Knob which was an easy 8 mile out and back. The next weekend I ran the first lap of the VT fatass Ultra in pandapas which was something like 18 miles. This was all leading up to the Holiday Lake 50k++ that I signed up for over winter break. Not wanting another DNS I was making sure I wouldn't be injured and that I could just finish. 

Holiday Lake 50k++

The race was pretty uneventful to be honest. It's a fairly tame (by ultra standards) race, 32 miles and not much gain. My race plan was to set out to run the first lap(16 miles) in around 2:15 or 8:30 pace and see how I felt after that. Having only 3 weeks of training before the race had me a little worried but I knew I would finish at the least. I executed my plan I set out with, I ran the first lap in around 2:16 and left the aid station in 2:17, it was not a little bit later that things started going downhill. Around mile 20 I was trying to get a gel out of my handheld and took some extra effort so the guys I was with all passed me as I stopped to get the gel out. trying to play catch up I soon was feeling pretty bad. Basically I bonked pretty bad and was running shuffling for a couple miles while the guys on my team took off. The next aid station I came to had some chex mix which made me feel great and soon enough I was running back at 8:30 pace and passed Darren and Dmack who seemed to be struggling at the time. With about 8 or so miles to go I figured I could get in under 5 hours so I began to push the pace with two other guys who had the same goal as me. I wasn't sure we would make it under 5 until the last mile at 4:48. One of the guys took off for the last mile downhill, I let him go considering I was feeling pretty bad and I only had 3 weeks back from running. but about a quarter mile from the finish I heard the second guy I was running with come storming down the road, I wasn’t going to let him beat me, so we sprinted to the finish of a 50k, not my favorite way to finish but glad I got under 5 hours. My time was 4:55:48 and finished 61st place. Overall a good effort considering I had only 3 weeks of running prior to the race.

Terrapin (Injuries again)

I was planning on running the Terrapin Mountain 50k and to complete the Lynchburg Ultra Series. Unfortunately Thursday before the race I developed tendonitis again in the same place as I did following Table Rock. I was doing a taper run of about 6 miles and had a mile to go when I started feeling my IT get tight. I thought to myself "oh no, not this again" So I stretched and stared running and BAM! MY leg locked up with pain and I fell down. "SHIT!!" I screamed out loud. “Not this again, not soo close to my race, not another month of rehabbing my leg.” I sat on the ground for about 20 minutes contemplating what just happened before I got up again. This was by far the last thing that I wanted to happen. I painfully walked back a mile to my car. I told my friends that I wasn’t going out because I don't like to drink the week of my races, but since I wasn't racing I told them I was down to go out now (I might as well have fun some way). Well I went out Thursday and Friday and noticed Friday night that I could walk down stairs again (without hobbling). The next day I tried out my leg with a little run and sure enough it was fine. I was thinking to myself "this is awesome I can run again" while also thinking "What the HELL!! I just got jipped out of a race that I paid money for!" Ultimately I was more psyched about the first thought than I was angry about the second; I guess that's the way it goes. 

Promise Land 50k

My last race was Promise Land; this was my favorite course so far. My plan going into this race was to treat it as a training race for my upcoming 50 mile race in June, so I planned on taking it pretty easy. Leading up to the race I had just done my largest volume week yet, 83 miles, about two weeks prior to the race, so I knew I would be in good shape for the race. Promise Land is a hard course, its 34 miles and around 7,500 feet of elevation gain; I was going to post this as its own post but figured I needed to include everything else that has happened up until now as well so here is my race report.

I woke up about an hour and a half before the start at 4 o'clock in the morning to get ready to go, had some coffee and a cliff bar for breakfast. My goals coming into this race were

• Use this as a training run, so take it easy
• DO NOT get caught up in racing anyone
• Steady effort on the uphill’s and hammer the downhill’s
• HAVE FUN!!!

The goals for the race went exactly as planned (which wasn't too hard to do).

At the start I was with freshmen Darren and Steve on the first climb, I soon figured they were going too fast of pace for me to feel comfortable with so I let them go and continued on my own race (they went on to finish 12th and 15th!!). Right about the top of the first climb I caught up to Wyatt, who seemed to be struggling a tad bit in the first part. As soon as I passed him he told me to hammer the downhill, which I did of course. Hitting a couple of low 6 miles on the grassy road/trail I passed a lot of people, including AJW. I soon got passed by a couple of the runners I had passed on the climb going to aid station 2 (which wasn't even there!). I saw AJW coming up at chatted with him a bit, he complimented me on my downhill skills (I told him that was my plan to hammer the downhill’s) which got me pretty psyched, before passing me. Going to aid station 3 I got passed by a couple more runners on the climb up but soon passed them on the little downhill into the aid station by hitting another couple of low 6's. I took a little bit longer at each aid station than most people around me figuring I would just catch them on the downhills anyways. Leaving the aid station we heading down to my favorite section of the race called the dark side. It’s a technical downhill section leading to the lowest point of the course. I soon passed everyone that left the aid station before me; I love this type of downhill and thrive on it. Bounding off rocks taking risks jumping over obstacles, basically a delicate kamikaze down the trail; I look back and see no one at the next aid station. Taking my sweet time again it was about a minute or two before the guys I passed come to the aid station which I when I left. The next couple of miles were the only bad point of my race. My calf was cramping pretty bad and my pace actually slowed down on the slightly downhill road by about a minute per mile. I figured I hadn’t been getting enough salt or hydrating enough so I got some salt and potatoes and the next aid station and drank more, no of this seemed to work well. As soon as I got to the next section of single track I was hurting a good bit. A guy that I had passed offered me his salt pills, which I gladly accepted. About a mile later I was feeling a lot better and my cramp went away. Throughout this section I was just biding my time, conserving energy for the climb up apple orchard falls. When I got to the climb I knew it was going to be tough and steep for a good time. So I just kept a constant effort all the way and didn't worry about anyone passing me and left the last downhill section of the race to be the point where I actually race. Getting to the top I was chatting with a guy who said that I could make it in less than 6 hours if I push the last section, I had 40 minutes and around 5 miles so about 8 minutes per mile. Easy I thought, so I took off, but I didn't expect any more uphill sections, feeling a little discouraged I hiked up these until the last one when I heard someone call my name. It was Wyatt; he caught up to me with about 4 miles to go, passing a lot of people on apple orchard apparently. This spurred me on to race the last 4 miles downhill even faster. Soon Wyatt and I were passing people left and right bombing down the hill. Passing the last aid station to go with 2.5 miles left Wyatt was right behind me, and then I turned up the effort. The last section is a long downhill dirt road, determined to pass as many people as possible I soon jumped my paced to sub 6 minute. The only person I could not catch was the third place female who also turned up the pace as soon as I got near her. With about half a mile left I eased up a bit and ran in easy to a 33rd place with a time of 5:55:20. Solid effort for a training run, Wyatt soon behind I congratulated everyone that I talked to on my run at the finish line, especially the guy who gave me his salt pills.  Everything went according to plan on my run and I was pretty happy with the effort (and the whole team as well!! 5 Hokies in the top 15!!). 

Post Promise Land Pre Pocatello

After Promise Land I rested a couple of days and resumed training for Pocatello. I was just trying to get a couple of 60-70 mile weeks in before finals interrupted my training. After finishing school I went up to Colorado to acclimate at Darren’s house in Colorado Springs and do some training runs. I ran a couple of 12 milers here with about 3k feet of gain and did the incline twice before starting my taper. Now all that’s left is to race. I’m super psyched about racing, I going to race hard and fast before I go into my off season for a month or two. I feel pretty prepared, my legs feel good, and I'm definitely acclimated to the elevation by now so all that’s left is for me to race.