Beyond the marathon

Alternate names for this post:

I Have a Cowbell and You Don't

Things That Suck Giant Donkey Balls and Things That Don't
There's More Than One Way to Skin a P... never mind

I've always wanted to do ultramarathons, and the gateway drug into ultramarathon addictions is the 50K. It's technically an ultra, but it's a "soft" ultra, an ultra "light" if you will. Still, 50 kilometers is 31 miles, and since they're usually on trails, the terrain doesn't tend to make it easy for you. Sometime in my Boston marathon taper, (when I thought I was invincible and could do anything), I decided that I could do a 50K NOW. I wrote to a few friends, and they cautioned me that 50K was a long way, that if I wasn't comfortable with marathons, and I don't usually run on trails, then maybe I should put it off until I was better prepared. They think I can't do it! I raged (remember, I was tapering and I was grouchy). That same night I got a flier for the Pineland Farms 50K in the mail, and it seemed like fate. Even still, I didn't tell anyone about my plans. Sure, Gretchen, Mindy, and Cranky knew, but no one else. If too many people told me I shouldn't do it, I might start to believe them. Then I'd be out $40.

And the other reason why I didn't say much about it was just in case I failed, I wouldn't have to tell anyone. I could just pretend like it didn't happen. I realize that I'm a fairly weak runner and I was prepared to walk the last 10 miles if I had to. I was prepared to come in dead stinkin' last. I just wanted to see what was on the other side of that 26.2 mile line. However, since a 50K is about as painless as you can go in the ultramarathon world, at times it was easy to forget that this race was actually longer than a marathon. I was about as keyed up about it as I would be for a fifteen mile run.

I was all ready to wake up at 5:00 to make the 10:00 am start, and that's what I would have done if I hadn't checked the race web site just one more time before bed and seen that my race started at 8:00! Shit! Disaster averted, I set my alarm for 3:45 and went to bed, where I stayed awake for a few hours before finally falling asleep. In the morning I was on target to leave at about 5:00... well, maybe 5:05, until I went to plug the address into the GPS in the car and discovered I'd copied the address down wrong. I had to go back inside, print up new directions, blah, blah, blah. I finally hit the road around 5:15.

I drove right over to my local Starbucks where I could see the Hungarian early morning ladies getting ready for the day, but they were still closed for another 10 minutes. So I got back in the car and headed north, waiting until after 5:30 and pulling off for another Starbucks that I knew was near the highway. I pulled up and... it was also closed. Fuck. Driving north towards the New Hampshire border I kept telling the GPS to find the nearest Starbucks until it found one that was near the highway and wouldn't require any doubling back. It was about 6:00 now, and I knew that all the Starbucks in North America must be open at this point. I pulled off the highway, pissed off the bitchy lady that lives in the GPS who seems so peeved when you don't follow HER rout, and finally managed to find the local Starbucks at about 6:20. To my relief, the lemon-shaped lamps inside were on. To my greater relief I could see two employees behind the counter inside. And to my great surprise, the door was locked. Some cyclists were across the street, and I asked them if they knew what the fuck was up. Starbucks doesn't open until 6:30, neither did this other coffee shop across the street. They would be open in 10 minutes, but I didn't have 10 minutes anymore. "Fuck!" I said. "Fuck, fuck, fuck!" I ran back to my car and noticed that the restaurant that I'd parked at had a giant "Open" flag hanging over the door. I tried the door. Not open. Fuck. And now I had to pee.

Finally I found an open Starbucks at a rest stop in Kittery, went to the bathroom, and dashed out to my car. At the very, very best, now I could only arrive 25 minutes before the start. What if they closed registration? Really, I had nothing to worry about. I wasn't even the last person in the parking lot and made it to the starting line with plenty of time to pee and drop my stuff in the car.

The course was two 25 km loops (15.5 miles) that were impossibly wound-up on themselves, which meant that you were never far from an aid station. The 50 mile runners (who'd left at 6:00 AM) would do a 3.5 mile add-on before doing 3 loops, and the 25K race started at 10:00 to do one loop of the course.

I ran with a camera all day, but this was the only picture I bothered to take. Oops. The rest of the pictures from the course are taken from the photos at last year's race on the web site.

The race director yelled something about the course that I didn't hear, and then a cow bell was rung to send us off (I think), and we went... sort of. That's what I love about trail running, people start running-ish, jogging-ish, but no one's really in a hurry. I'd hardly used my legs all week, so I was feeling really great, but I ran-ish, jogged-ish with everyone else, and when we hit the first hill, I stopped and walked with everyone else. If the person in front of me was going slow, I slowed down rather than going around them. We ran in a big pack for the first several miles until the course finally sifted us out.

I found myself running with a guy with a hydration pack. I ran when he ran, walked when he walked, and when everyone else was gone and we were still together, I introduced myself. I would get to know a lot about Jay over the next several hours, as we ran the whole, entire course together. He'd run several 50's of both the metric and English standard variety, although he wasn't a total trail nerd by nature. "These people are crazy," Jay whispered to me after we'd been running together for a few miles. The few other people that I talked to were a bit loopy, and I was glad I'd fallen into step with Jay and not the crazy lady who couldn't stop talking about the black flies in her front yard, or the guy tooting his own horn about his 20 years of ultrarunning experience who still hadn't finished Western States (that's all he talked about).

Jay was in the army and had some unspecified job with the Department of Homeland Security. He'd served in both the Clinton and Bush administration. I was really interested to hear about Jay's experiences with combat, his political opinions, his thoughts about Bush, and his thoughts on war, but there are so many questions that you just can't ask a soldier. "Tell me," I said, "do you miss it?"
"What?" he asked.
"War."
"You must know some people in the military..." he said. I'll admit it, I'm totally intrigued by the military. I have my GI Jane fantasies (no, not that kind of fantasy), and might have wound up in the military if I didn't have to kill anyone, shoot anything, follow orders, or eat meat, and I could walk away whenever I wanted to. I was hoping that Jay would have some great and inspirational stories about intense physical missions, but later in the race when I asked him if he had any, he said, "Nah, nothing like this."
"Well, what about boot camp?" I asked.
"Boot camp isn't as bad as people think it is. If you sat on the couch for 4 years in high school you might have a hard time of it, but if you were an athlete in high school, it's nothing you wouldn't be used to." I was disappointed. If I was going to run with an army guy, I was hoping that he could at least yell insults at me and make me dig deep inside myself to "be all that I could be" or something. He said that the one thing that one of his basic trainees had filed a formal complaint against his unit about was that his drill instructor made the trainee eat cookies until he puked. Hell, I knew people who did that kind of thing for fun! Instead, as time went on, we fell silent, and by the second loop we barely spoke anymore. We just had a tacit agreement that we were going to be in this together, and when one walked, the other walked, when one ran, the other ran, we waited for each other at aid stations, and we paced each other through the whole, entire race.

The race web site describes the course like this: "The trails are wide and non-technical, but very hilly. Although there are no major climbs the rolling terrain is unrelenting." I was afraid that the trails would be like my trails at home that are so rocky, rooty, and steep that I find it hard to average faster than an 11:00 mile, even when I don't walk. However, the "trails" were more like paths: grass-covered paths through the woods, or paths trampled through the tall grass in rolling fields. In fact, the only part that was hard on the joints were the paths through the fields that were slightly banked, and real hard on your uphill ankle. The rolling hills were endless, but the uphills weren't so bad, since we were walking them, and there were only a few knee-busting downhills. Grades tended to stay below the 20% mark, but there were several spots where it reached up to 30% both up and down. We had a cumulative elevation gain and loss of 7,900', which was much less severe than it could have been. I thought ultramarathons had to climb tens of thousands of feet for anyone to sign up. Luckily, I was wrong.

My body felt great, until sometime between miles 7 and 10, all of a sudden, it didn't. My butt started doing that thing that my butt does where it gets tight and sore. I started getting that awful heartburn that I got in the Adirondacks. Jay stopped to use the bathroom and I shuffled on ahead for a few minutes without him. Without Jay to pace me, I felt like I weighed a million pounds. I was running along on a flat with a woman whose shuffle could barely be called "running" in its loosest definition of the word. When Jay caught back up I was able to pick up his pace and trot away. Still, I knew I had to do something, or today was going to "suck giant donkey balls" (Mindy's phrase, not mine). I started hitting my bottle hard, emptying it before every aid station. It was getting hot, and I started drinking a dixie cup or two of Gatorade while they were refilling my bottle. I alternated between Gatorade, plain water, and Nuun at each aid station. I ate potatoes, candy orange slices, Twizzlers, bananas, anything that appealed to me. The aid stations were great, with more food than I've ever seen at any road race or triathlon, even the ones that cost three times as much as this event. "Man, I never thought I'd see the day when I didn't want to eat another Twizzler," I told Jay as I continued chewing on the waxy mess well after the aid station. I'd started chewing on Twizzlers to quit smoking, and kicked the butts, but wound up with a nasty Twizzler habit. Twizzler addiction or not, stuffing my face seemed to work though and whether it was the fluid, the food, the Gatorade, or the Nuun that did it, I started to feel stronger again a couple of miles in to the second loop.

"Stronger" is a relative term. Every time we stopped running I was so relieved at the chance to walk, but after awhile a deep, dull ache would set into all the muscles in my legs and I would NEED to run again to clear it out. And so it went: walk, run, walk, run, walk, run, repeat until you hit an aid station, stuff your face and start over. It was getting pretty damned hot too. The temperatures were in the mid-70's, which is hotter than anything I've gotten to train in this year, and the sun was strong. It wasn't such a problem in the woods where there was shade, but running across those fields it was really beating down.

About half way through the second loop Jay and I came up behind a man who was hunched over, and was tipping over so far to the right that his right ear was on his shoulder, and only the left side of his body seemed to be moving. It was a wonder he wasn't just pivoting around in circles. "Great job," I said as we passed him, and that was when I got a good look at his face. It was my old nemesis, GRANDPA! At the time we thought that he was only doing the 25K, but as it turned out, he was in the 50K. The way the course was set up, you had to pass the finishing area each loop, in order to do a smaller 5-mile loop on the other side. As Jay and I came through the finishing area I tried to spot Mindy, who was supposed to be volunteering. It was crowded, so instead I shouted out to the first person I saw on the other side of the tape, "Hey, if you see a girl on crutches, will you tell her Grandpa's here?! She'll know what I mean." Mindy's Grandpa's biggest fan. The stranger at the finish line looked confused, but I figured it was a simple enough instruction: "crutches", "grandpa". He'd find her, and she'd know what I meant.

I finished my second marathon in just over a month in 5:04, hit the lap button, and kept running. Amazingly, that isn't even my slowest marathon of my life. In an exchange of no more than two sentences, Jay and I decided to run more for the last 5 miles. "Let's get this over with," I said.
"Hell yeah," he breathed, and we kept running. I was surprised at one point to look down and see that we were doing about 9:20 miles. It may have only lasted a few seconds, but I was surprised that my body could still go that fast. To be honest, I was tired and sore and ready to get off my feet, but I wasn't feeling as bad as I thought I would be. A few miles back we'd run into a guy (walking backwards up a hill, I know how that feels!) who had said that the loop was half a mile short, meaning we would have to run one fewer mile. When it turned out that he was wrong, I was suprised that I didn't really mind. Maybe it was because Jay was still there. "I don't need to stop at the last aid station," I said. It was less than a mile from the finish.
"I'm going to stop and have one last drink," Jay said. "You can go on without me if you want."
"Hell no! I've been with you for this long, I'm not going to run ahead now to save a measly minute." So we stopped and had one more cup of Gatorade, ate one more handful of candy, and trotted on towards the finish line.

"Are you particular about your finishing photo?" I asked. "Because I'll be more than happy to hang back 10 seconds so you can get a good shot."
"I didn't even look at it last year," he said. "Did YOU really want to be alone in that photo?"
I hadn't run this race alone, why would I want to be alone in the photo? "Jay, I would be honored to cross the finish line with you, and I would be just as honored to cross right behind you." We joked about how preposterous it would be if we had a final sprint in the finishing chute, and how badass it would be if I pushed him, the army guy, out of the way for the win. As the finish line came into view I said, "Jay, it has been a pleasure and an honor. Thank you so much for taking me through this." We didn't join hands, we didn't stick our arms in the air, we didn't yell, or scream, or whoop, we just crossed the finish line together in 6:03:30. There wasn't even a photographer there.
As they tore the tabs off the bottom of our numbers, the volunteers asked, "Do you guys care who comes in first?" We both agreed that it made no difference in the world.

I'm so proud that we managed to actually pick it up at the end!

We began to walk away, when Jay remembered the finisher's prize for the race: a silver cowbell! "Guess what, I got a fever..." Jay said to the volunteer who stared at him blankly. "And the only prescription is..." his face fell. "Do you know what I'm talking about?" She didn't. "More cowbell!" Jay said, a little defeted that she didn't get the reference.

All I wanted to do was sit down and never get up again, but there was a free barbecue, and I decided it would be nice to have a veggie burger when I went to my final resting place, so I got in line behind Jay for the food. I saw Steven there, who had just finished the 50 mile race, and looked like he hadn't totally recovered his faculties. He was sunburned, shoeless, shoving macaroni salad in his face as fast as he could, and full sentences were a challenge. It was Jay who spotted Mindy first. "I see a girl over there on crutches, but she's not blond." Why do I always think Mindy's blond? While I was catching up with Mindy at the condiment table, Jay stole away and I never saw him again. I wished I could have thanked him one more time.

Mindy had to see about her volunteering responsibilities, and I had to see about my veggie burger, so I wandered over to a bale of hay and sat down to watch the crowd. These people didn't look like they'd just run 30-50 miles. After a marathon people look like a bunch of grouchy zombies, but these people were smiling and hugging and laughing. Why, right over there was a chick in an Ironman jersey who looked as fresh as a daisy. It seemed like an odd fashion choice for a trail run, but hell, if you can do an ironman and run something like this looking as fresh as that, you can wear whatever the hell you want. I started to feel like I would never hack it in the ultraendurance world. I'd seen so many Mdot tattoos on the calves of people passing me today. The chick in the ironman jersey was on the move, coming towards me. Then she waved... at me! Oh my god, it was Nitsirk and Dr. Nick, I felt like such an idiot! We talked a bit about running and ironman and how I'm NEVER doing Lake Placid. I mentioned that I might do Coer d'Alene next year, because it looked pretty flat.
"Flat?! That one's as hilly as Placid, if not more!" said Dr. Nick. But... but... I'd looked at the course comparisons online. Coer d'Alene looks flat-ish. Go here, and tell me what you see.

"Well, we should get going, and you should take a shower," Nitsirk said. "You're kind of... salty..."
I set off on the long walk back towards my car and they went to get their bikes. When they came up behind me, Dr. Nick said, "You're walking kinda' bow-legged..."
"Yeah, I've got some personal chafing issues," I admitted. Think of the worst place to possibly chafe, and I was cut up pretty bad there.
Is it your nipples? Noooo. Not even close.
Is it your... inner thighs? Noooo. But you're getting warmer.
Is it... between your butt cheeks? Nooooo. But you're getting even warmer.
Gasp! Is it your... you know, your.... Yes. I had worn a hole in my "no-no place" and I was going to walk like I'd just gotten off a horse, no matter who could see me. It had been bugging me the whole second loop.
"Oh my god, be careful in the shower!" was Nitsirk's parting advice.
Peeling off my clothes was interesting. My feet looked like hell. I had dark rings of dirt around my ankles, my chest was all chafed up, I had salt all over me, and once again, for the second week in a row, I had bled into my shorts (this time from the chafing). When you're chafed, a shower can be torture as the water washes all the sweat from your skin into the wound. When I went to wash my no-no place, I almost screamed out loud. When I was dressed (and wearing clean underwear) I waddled out to meet Mindy.

Mindy was crutching around the finishing area handing out gold cowbells, pint glasses, and gators to the 50 mile finishers, and I stuck around for a couple of hours to help her out. Really, after seeing her hobbling around trying to unload glasses and cowbells out of boxes while on crutches, you couldn't help but help her. The only shirt I had with me was a dark, long-sleeved t-shirt that definitely wasn't going to cut it in this heat, so I swallowed my pride and helped hand out cowbells in nothing but jeans and a sports bra. I felt naked as the day I was born, but it beat the hell out of walking all the way back to my car to get a short sleeved t-shirt. God, I wish I had a 6-pack!

People crossed the finish line looking alright or looking like hell, but everyone said please and thank you. No one yelled at the volunteers. I wasn't the only one who'd come back from my shower to help out, either. "Everyone's just so nice!" Mindy gushed over and over. I really love the trail crowd. Everyone helps everyone else, even if it means losing a couple of seconds. They're cheap races in beautiful places, and everyone is just so supportive and kind. It makes me wonder why people would do triathlons at all, where the athletes think it's their prerogative to yell at the aid station volunteers whenever they want, and it's standard procedure to push the cheating envelope for a 2-second advantage. God forbid it take you an extra second to get a bottle.

It was getting late, but Grandpa was still on the course. I wanted to see him finish, but there was talk of a cut-off time. The course cut-off was at 7:00 pm, 11 hours after the 50K start. Grandpa finished his first loop when I was already finished (I think). I wanted him to finish so badly. I couldn't say that I beat him if he never finished. There were two 50K guys out still there, both in their 70's. Both were experienced runners that had hundreds of marathons between them, but both were s l o w. At this point, there were about 8 1/2 hours on the clock. As I tried to imagine what it would be like to run 31 miles in 11 hours, I couldn't. Can you imagine the mental toughness it would take to drag your old ass 30 miles at a 20-minute mile? Especially with the horrible posture that Grandpa had. Can you imagine how heartbreaking it would be if someone came up on a 4x4 after 25 miles and told you you had to quit? My heart went out to Grandpa. I couldn't stick around to see him finish but, God I hope he did. I came home with a new respect for Grandpa. Grandpa is the baddest assest mofo of them all. I still beat him though.

By the time I had a couple of veggie burgers in me, I felt a lot better. I was having no problems moving around, and I was able to stand up and sit down with ease. Stairs weren't a problem. When I'd finished I'd felt like I could have gone one more mile... and then one more... and then one more... After Boston last month I felt like I'd been beat up for 2 days afterwards. Today I don't feel half as bad as I did after the marathon, despite the extra 5 miles and endless hills. I guess what they say about the pounding on the road and the virtues of the walk/run really is true. Watching all those people finish the 50 miler really made me feel like there was so much farther to go, so much more left to do. Maine Runner (who's training for Western States) had me practically drooling with jealousy as he talked about his training and fitness. Could I have run one more loop? One of the purposes of this race was to figure out if I wanted to attempt my first 50-mile race in November. Before I even left Maine, I had my answer.