This is part three in my attempt to recap my 100 mile odyssey:
Part III: The Physical Challenge (this post)
Part IV: The Mental Challenge
“Running 100 miles nonstop is not twice as demanding as running 50 miles;
it’s four or five times more difficult.”
-Dean Karnazes
Training:
One of the most frequent questions I was asked leading up to the 100 mile race was “What’s the farthest you’ve ever run?” Not wanting to let the secret out of the bag, I eventually started replying with something to the effect of, “I’m not disclosing that information until after the race.” My reasoning – I was grossly undertrained to tackle 100 miles, and I knew it. I didn’t want to fail at the 100 miler and have people be able to say, “Of course he didn’t finish, the longest he ever ran was XX miles.”
So, now that the race is over, and I successfully completed the distance, I feel like I can openly talk about my lack of training. Not saying anyone would, but if someone were to start talking smack about my training for the race, I can point to the 30lb boulder sitting in my living room as proof that what I did was sufficient. Ok, enough disclaimers, I’ll just get to the numbers.
Since 16 weeks is the length of the standard marathon training schedule, I’ll use it as a reference. In the 16 weeks leading up to the 100 miler, I ran a total of 355 miles. Yup, averaged a pitiful 22 miles per week – which is far less than leading up to either of my two marathon finishes. Between work and a difficult final semester of university, I just didn’t have make enough time for proper training. I had one seven day period where I ran a total of 86 miles, including two rest days in there. I completed two 30+ mile long runs, with the longest being 36 miles. There, I said it. The longest I had ever run before the race was 36 miles.
I’m obviously not proud of my training, but I’m proud of my finish. Had I been “properly” trained for the race, I can only imagine how much better I would have done, or how much less pain I would have been in.
The Race:
It shouldn’t take a genius to figure out that a race which calls itself “The Toughest Race On The Prairies” is going to be difficult. I arrogantly underestimated the difficulty. At one point during the race, I mentioned that if I were to do this race again, I would train on a stair-master instead of running (at another point, I may have said to my wife that I would rather give birth through my penis than keep running). The relentless hills took their toll early on in the race. About 9.5 hours in was when my quads really started to hurt, and it got progressively more painful as the race went on.
Eventually, the uphills became my friends, and the downhills my enemies. Stepping down onto a lower slope sent a large amount of pain through my quad, each and every time I put my foot down. Stepping up, while taking more energy, didn’t come with the same painful reminder of how many miles I had already covered. In the early stages of the race, I did my best to not run the downhills too fast as I knew that doing so would trash my quads early on. But, the miles took their toll on me anyway.
The temperatures on race day(s) proved to be a big problem for most runners. I felt fortunate that I had “trained” through the Missouri summer, and I was well prepared for the heat. In the valley, the temps reached 44C/111F. About 25 miles into my first loop, I came across a runner floating in the river. Startled at first, when I saw his shoes neatly placed on the bank, I knew that he intentionally went in. I asked him if he was ok, and he said he was just trying to cool off. I later heard that he dropped from the race.
One of my biggest challenges in the heat is always getting enough food down. When I’m running in high temperatures, nothing sounds good to me. My wife did an amazing job of bringing me anything and everything to try to get down during the aid station stops. Countless times she would hand me a plate of something, I’d take some and then spit it right back out on to the plate, hand it back to her, and just say “No.” Of all the things we tried, the only things that were successful were salted potatoes (only in small quantities), vegetable soup that my wife made, and oatmeal cookies. Everything else that I tried made me feel like vomiting (although I managed to keep everything down throughout the race!)
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At the finish line. I sent this photo to Silk, hoping to
get some sort of sponsorship, but all they said was that
this was the “burliest endorsement” they’ve ever
received. Thanks. I think. |
I had taken Clif bars, licorice, swedish fish, Sharkies, cookies, and some homemade bars to eat while I was running. But in the heat, I struggled to eat anything between aid stations. I eventually resorted to mostly liquid calories – Silk Chocolate Soy Milk and ginger-ale. That led to its own problems, namely having to stop to pee every quarter mile. But, at least I knew I was hydrated! I also made sure to take in lots of salt caps throughout the race, in an attempt to keep my electrolytes in check.
Because of my inability to eat much on the trail, I spent a lot more time in the aid stations than I had wanted. All told, I “wasted” three and a half hours not making forward progress. But, I knew that I needed that time to refuel, or I wouldn’t have finished the race. I sat down to eat at every aid station, with the exception of the very last one. Most stops lasted between 10 and 15 minutes, although one of them was almost 30 minutes. Getting back up after sitting down was a challenge, and my legs took a good solid 1/2 mile to loosen up again once I started moving.
Like nearly everyone else in the race, I did a decent amount of walking – sometimes because the terrain forced it, sometimes because fatigue forced it. I had incorporated walking into my “training”, and even in the later stages of the race I was still able to walk a little slower than 16min/mile. My running pace at that point wasn’t much better!
I wasn’t nearly as sleepy as I thought I would be. I remember yawning once, around 9am on the second day, and that was it. I didn’t start taking in caffeine until about 10am on the second day. In the middle of the night, I ran into one girl out on the course who I think was pretty close to sleep walking, but I’m glad that I didn’t get that sleepy!
My feet held up remarkably well during the race. I had to stop twice on the trail to remove stuff from my shoes (a catcus thorn at one point, and a bunch of silt at another). I didn’t change my socks until mile 70, and I kept the same shoes the entire time. I prescribed to the belief that if it wasn’t broken, I wasn’t going to fix it. I had taped my feet prior to the race, and that seemed to save me a lot of problems (more on that in a later post). I also experienced minimal chaffing during the race, and only once had to stop to apply more bodyglide (although I should have stopped again around mile 90, but just kept going). I feel incredibly fortunate that I didn’t have to deal with problems like blisters or chaffing – the pain in my legs was enough for me to deal with!
Next update: the mental challenge
I had decided that since our wives, who were long time friends, were planning onvisiting there that weekend, I should bring the kids and cheer him on. I figured who knows, I may get a first hand look and feel for the kind of madness involved in a 100 mile race. Three weeks before the race date I got an unexpected email. Jesse’s pacer wasn’t going to be able to do the race and he wondered if I would like to do it. The pacers could join in on the last of the three laps, which was 50k, to give the runner moral support. This obviously sent waves of panic through my being. He assured me that if I joined him on the race, Jesse would only be doing a jog/walk pace. Thoughts like “I can’t run that far”, “he’s way faster then me” and “but what about my IT band” bombarded my mind. Can I commit to help someone run 50k when I haven’t been able to do 21k properly myself? So I did what any individual with common sense would do, I said yes.
