Another break-up, another 50K

I apologize for my last post being boring. My housemate has this annoying habit of talking to me constantly whenever I'm awake, whether I'm clearly trying to concentrate on something or not, weather I'm a grumbling bear first thing in the morning or not... I get easily distracted. The result is crappy writing like my last post. Oh well.

This week was a rest week, and while in some ways I'd planned it perfectly (it was rainy and shitty all week and I was on the rag), it also would have been a great week for a crash week. The reason will be clear in a second... If you read only parts of this week, read Monday and Sunday.

Monday: Nothing

Valentines Day. Fuck Valentines Day. Last year Lindsey and I had joked that we were going to break up on Valentines Day. We didn't but she didn't even buy me a card, and broke up with me 2 weeks later. This year, I really did break up on Valentines Day.

Scout had been out of town for almost 2 weeks on a trip to Belize with her brother and his family (they pay for her trip so that she can watch the kids). Since she couldn't be reached by phone, e-mail, or any other means for 10 days, I had all my free time to myself. No having to pack 6 changes of clothes (2 days' worth of working and work-out clothes) and drive around her neighborhood for half an hour looking for parking so that I could stay over her house for the night, going to bed at midnight and waking up at 5 to get to work. No more having to go out to eat when I couldn't even afford gas because she keeps no food in the house. Having my whole weekend free and not having to give up my one precious morning off. No missing an opportunity to race because we never had time together. I realized that I really, desperately didn't want to answer to anyone but myself when it came to my free time.

I had been breaking up with her in my head for a week before she finally came home on Sunday afternoon. When she called, I didn't pick up because I knew that my voice would betray that something was up. When I listened to the message, it was filled with "I've missed you"s and "I can't wait to..."s. I felt so rotten I wanted to disappear. I got in the car and sent her a text to say I was headed into the city and did she have a minute. She didn't respond. I got to her neighborhood, parked and called her. No answer. She's got this annoying habit of turning off her phone when she's not using it that always makes me want to scream at her. It's the only thing that really annoys me about her. I sat around waiting for about 15 minutes, and when she didn't call back I turned my phone to airplane mode so it wouldn't even ring for the rest of the night and drove home. I was so frustrated that I was thinking about doing it in a letter or over text message. In reality, I was just scared and wanted to do it in the most yellow-bellied way I could think of so that I wouldn't have to deal with her pain.

I had some morning appointments, and then a Spin class, and then I was going to have to dump her. It was rainy and ugly out, which put me in an even worse mood. I didn't know how I was going to get all cheery for a Spin class in this state of mind. Then a Valentines Day miracle happened: no one showed up to my Spin class. I packed up, got in the car, and drove to her neighborhood.

I had her meet me in the Starbucks. She came in and smiled when she saw me, giving me a kiss. I immediately dropped my head into my hands and couldn't speak or even look at her. After several minutes she asked, "What is it?" I couldn't get the words out. I shook my head and was silent for several more minutes, at a loss. "Is it cancer?" she asked. Whaaaat? The first thing you come up with is cancer? What the hell is wrong with you? I thought. It was so far off her radar that even cancer seemed more likely. I shook my head. "Are you leaving me?" she asked slowly. I nodded and burst out crying.

There were several uncomfortable parallels between what was happening right now and what happened with Lindsey, so I wasn't taking any of this lightly. I felt terrible for blindsiding her, and it broke my heart to see the waves of realization crashing over her over the next hour or so. One minute she'd be fine and try to change the subject, then she would realize something else and start crying or say something desperate or walk away with her hands in her hair. I wanted to hug her and protect her from anyone ever hurting her again, but I couldn't. "It has nothing to do with you," I promised her, but that means nothing when someone's breaking your heart, I guess.

We walked around for about an hour in the rain talking and not talking. Right before I got in my car to leave she told me, "While I was gone I had a dream that I was trying and trying to call you and I couldn't reach you. I was searching for you frantically in my dream because I thought I'd lost you..." The desperation in the dream and the defeat in her voice broke my heart all over again. I kissed her, told her I loved her (something I'd never told her before, but it was true... but not like that. Whoever coined, "I love you but I'm not in love with you" should be shot) and got in the car. Ever since I've wanted to go back over there and take it all back, but I can't.

Tuesday: Nothing

Every moment that I wasn't working, I was in bed. I'm a rotten piece of shit. I didn't want to work out, I didn't want to work, I just wanted to curl up in bed and be comatose.

Wednesday: Swim 2100 yd and Spin class

I can't avoid workouts when I'm being paid to be there. After teaching my corporate bootcamp class outside the city, I could have gone home and taken another nap, but that's what I'd done all morning. I could have done some work, but making my head work seemed even more painful than making my body work, so I went to the pool before my spin class.

To be honest, I wasn't all that depressed over the break-up. I was mostly depressed because the sun was gone and because no matter what happens, money doesn't grow on trees and everything always feels like a fight. Suddenly I wanted to curl up with anyone and everyone just so that someone would give me some attention. I swam lots and lots of drill, and for the first time since I started swimming again in December I felt like I was "swimming on my side" again. Maybe, just maybe I'd be able to swim again someday.

The Spin class had grown even more than last week, and I had designed a workout to explode everyone's hearts in the room. When I want to do that, I alternate between accelerations and higher-resistance high cadence sets that somewhat approximate outdoor climbing. It turns everyone's ears off and means I don't have to talk much during the class. So that's what we did.

Whenever I do really high-cadence pedaling in my classes (at a cadence fast enough that the "official" Spinning literature tells you not to use because someone might get hurt), I always take a minute to explain safety. "If you're a beginner, go as fast as you can without your butt bouncing and keep your pedals in control. Intermediate, try to hit 120 rpm..." (we've got electronic consoles on our bikes). "If you've been riding for at least six months, try to make that top number on your console disappear..." (which happens at 140). "If your feet come off the pedals, hold your legs out to the side and use your resistance knob as a brake like this."

I had given that talk, but that was before 3 teenagers came into the class 12 minutes late and sat in the opposite corner of the class from everyone else. I usually scan back and forth, but I guess I hadn't looked at them in awhile, until I saw that the girl was off her bike and limping around. Aw fuck. I went over and made sure that she was okay, helped her stretch out the charlie horse, and told her to take it easy. Then I gave the safety speech again. Next acceleration set you know what happened? Another one of them bashed himself in the leg. His damned basketball shoes were too big to fit into the toe clips and he'd ramped his pedals up to about 150 rpm. Idiot. I hate teenagers.

Thursday: Spin

This time there were no accelerations and everyone survived.

Friday: Swim 1900 yd

With the weather alternating between hail, cats, dogs, and cold winds, I wasn't in much of a mood to do anything outdoors with my 8-hour break between clients. I still had some 1900 yards to swim to meet my quota for the week, so I went to the high school pool in Pacifica. This is a real 50x25 yd pool with at least a dozen lanes, diving boards, and blocks. It's also not a salt water pool like the one I swim in at the Y, so it feels like I'm swimming through corn syrup. I wasn't really in the mood to have to fight through another workout where everything feels harder than it should be. I know that the best way to get back to where I have been is just to be patient with my body and not compare myself to where I have been in the past. But there are days when you don't want the adjectives "patient" or "forgiving" describing your workout. I wanted something "punishing" that would squeeze out anything yucky still buzzing around inside my head. If I tried to swim some fast hard freestyle sets I knew I'd just be more frustrated with myself than ever before.

So what to do? These lanes are nice and wide, and I felt like doing something that involved a lot of thrashing and kicking: butterfly!

This is what I used to think about butterfly: there is absolutely no rational reason to do butterfly. It's the most inefficient stroke, taking massive amounts of energy to cover a distance that you could cover much easier with any other stroke. It's not the fastest stroke either. It's a short axis stroke, deriving its power from bending rather than twisting in the water, giving it almost no carryover to freestyle. Unless you are a specialist or an IM swimmer, there is no reason to swim butterfly. This is why I swim butterfly: because it creates a lot of waves and you are likely to get smacked if you try to share a lane with someone doing a fly workout. I felt like smacking someone today. And it makes me look cool.

After a couple of 50's, I had the lane to myself. I bobbed at the end of the pool until some old lady thought that she might want to share the lane with me, and then I would do another 50 and by the time I got back to the wall, she'd be gone. I did a total of 625 yards of twitchy, sloppy, gasping, thrashing butterfly before I'd hit the number of yards I wanted to swim that day (1900). Then I went into the locker room and I looked into the eyes of each one of those water aerobics ladies thinking, You wanna fuck with me? I'll fucking eat you. You better tell your friends that any lane that I'm in from now on is off limits! Then I went home and shirked more busy work to climb into bed and make the world go away for a few more hours before I had to return to work.

Saturday: Trainer 1.5h

It was pouring with rain, but I had about 20-25 miles to make up. I was feeling droopy on the inside from all the rain, and for once I didn't want to watch crappy reruns on hulu, so I did something that I judge other people for doing at the gym. I brought a book.

I set up Mark Allen's Fit Soul, Fit Body on the handlebars and I read that book for the next 90 minutes. The book isn't wonderfully written, and having a rather low opinion of both of the writers' personalities, I wanted to think that I was better than them. But my head's been my biggest rival lately, and my newest project is to end the constant state of crisis in my life, so I read. What I read about will become relevant in the race report to follow.

Sunday: Run 29.25 miles

I had a problem. I had a big black hole in my thoughts and I had a marathon of running to make up this week-- a rest week. Swimming isn't tiring enough to have an effect on a rest week, I was already ahead on my cycling and the Spin classes would take care of the rest, but what about the running? The Claire answer: a 50K.

We will go through the first part of this race report with a focus on clothes:

It was cold as I drove out to the East Bay for my race. It being February, I suppose that I should admit that "cold" is a relative term. It wasn't mid-winter Boston prep series cold where your snot freezes to your face at 19 degrees, it was a California 'should I or should I not have worn shorts' 36 degrees. I'd gone for the shorts and a tank top, with a light jacket to go over it. As we started running, the jacket got warm, and when the sleeves started sticking to my arms like shrink wrap, I peeled it off. Then the shade came back and my nipples and goose bumps were hard enough to poke your eye out. It would be like this for the rest of the day, too warm for a jacket but too cold for a tank top. There are worse things in life than being moderately too hot or too cold, but this was a long day to be uncomfortable for any reason other than running.

I tried to get this pic without anyone in the frame, but it looks like I just caught this guy red-handed coming out of the wrong bathroom or something.

It had rained all week, turning the trails into slippery sludge. It wasn't as muddy as the last time I'd tried to moon walk up these hills, but the back portion of the first loop brought us through some fields. We kept having to open and close these heavy gates where the springs on the latches were all rusty and I had trouble opening them. On about the third gate I noticed the sign; something about cows. Then I realized what I'd been seeing. In the past half mile I'd seen as much volume of shit as three entire horses. And not that straw-y dry horse shit that I was used to seeing, it was this wet, black shit that looked like horse diarrhea and the horse had been eating Odwalla Superfood bars. And it was everywhere. I wondered what they were feeding their horses out here, and now I realized that this was cow shit, over the trail so much that you almost couldn't avoid stepping in it between the puddles.

The fields were sopping wet, and right before the nine mile mark I lost it. SQUELCH! Suddenly I was ankle deep in mud. No fighting it now. Squelch, slurp, squelch, slurp, squelch, I got to the other end of the puddle and felt the water sloshing around inside my shoes. Fuck! Only 9 miles in and my dry socks were a thing of the past. Twenty-two miles is a long way to go in wet socks. I hadn't been so covered in cow shit since my parents took me to a dairy farm when I was 5 and a cow lifted up its tail and projectile shit on me from head to toe (I didn't even get to eat an ice cream cone that day because my parents thought my hands were dirty). I got to the next gate and there was a giant mud puddle several inches deep right in front of the gate. I stood in the solid-ish mud at the hinge end of the gate and tried to pull on the latch. I couldn't get the leverage on it to move it, because every time I leaned my weight against it my feet would slip in the mud. I sighed. Splash!

Finally I managed to pull the gate open and started climbing the small hill on the other side. I was walking the hill, staring at the ground like you do when you're feeling sorry for yourself when I noticed my shoe. As I came up over the ridge there were three cheerleaders yelling and ringing cowbells. "WOOOOOOOOO! You can do it!" they yelled.

"Fuck that, I'm just wondering what the hell is on my shoe?" I said, pulling out my phone to take a picture. A minute later I got to the aid station, "I mean, what the hell is that?!"

"I've seen mud before, but I've never seen it foaming," the aid station guy said. It looked like sea foam was on my shoe, only it was cow shit foam and it took the next five miles to finally melt away into my socks.

Right around the time I covered myself in cow shit, I was starting to feel a pre-bonk wooziness. I had felt kind of hungry at the start, but had chalked it up to the caffeine. I was only drinking water, and when I ran out, all they had was more water. At the first aid station I'd been trying to keep up with a New Friend, so I'd just grabbed 3 Shot Blocks and 1/3 of a Payday bar and tried to shove them in my face as I trailed my New Friend up a hill. And I still couldn't keep up with my New Friend and wound up alone. At the cow shit foam aid station I could see nothing that I really wanted to eat: no cookies, no potatoes, no peanut butter sandwiches, so I just grabbed 3 more shot blocks and kept going. About half a mile later I figured out that I might be in a bit of trouble and thought about turning around, but I really didn't want to tack on an extra mile to what would already be a really long day.


I was all by myself now, not a soul in sight and I was starting to get the headache, irritability, and wooziness of a low-grade bonk. This was no good at all, I was only about 10 miles in, and there wouldn't be another aid station for miles. I tried to draw on the lessons that Mark Allen and The Voice had taught me in the book yesterday. I tried to concentrate on the sunlight and the nature around me, but all I could think concentrate on was how I wasn't quite warm and wasn't quite cold and how I wished they wouldn't put shooting ranges right out in the middle of my nature like this. I tried to concentrate on the bubble of my life force out in front of me, extending out from my heart. It drew me forward for a minute, but then it popped. I tried to feel lucky for being able to do what I was doing today, and give thanks to the Universe, God, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster for my body and my life, but the "Poor Me" was just too loud. I concentrated on how I would yell at the volunteers at the next aid station for not having enough food or any sports drink.


Fifteen miles in and I did lay into the aid station volunteers, but with a smile on my face and in that 'shucks this is hard, why in tar-nation did I sign up for this' way that aid station volunteers love. "Only 4.2 miles to go!" a volunteer told a guy that came up behind me while I was drinking Coke and eating as many cookies as I could shove into my face. He was doing the 30K.

"It's the .2 that'll kill you," said the other volunteer.

"So get the .2 out of the way first," I said around a mouthful of peanut butter and jelly, like it was the most normal suggestion in the world. The 30K SMOF (straight man over 40) and I set off together, and I even managed to hold it together for the next .2 miles or so, but when he began running up a short, steep hill I had to walk and I was alone again. I would be alone until mile 28.5.

I finished the 30K loop and at the finish line aid station I stopped again to get as much food into my face as I could. "It's just 10 miles to the finish, a short 20K." I must have been hearing things. I looked at him, confused. This was too good to be true, surely I was doing the math wrong. "The course is a couple miles shorter than we thought," he explained. I tried to do the math in my head, but all the numbers had already fallen out of my brain.

I felt so low, so tired. Ten miles was so far to go. I'm such a weak, pathetic loser. What the hell is wrong with me? My knees hurt so much, my legs were aching, my ankles hurt, I couldn't take another step. I felt like those terrible last 10K of a marathon when someone puts industrial strength magnets in your shoes and turns up the electromagnet in the ground. You're so weak! You're fucked! I told myself. What the hell were you doing signing up for this thing? Don't you realize that you're not in the same shape you used to be in? If you feel this way after... I looked at my watch. ...after 20 miles...

Twenty miles. It sunk in. I'd been so absorbed in the next 11 miles that I'd completely forgotten about the 20 behind me. Hang on a sec, this is how you're supposed to feel after 20 miles. This is how you've always felt after 20 miles. Do you realize that you just did it again, you rocked up on no training to speak of and you peelled another one of these things out of your ass? It set me to thinking, and I definitely had time to think. I started thinking about how everyone gets all worried about overtraining, but what is overtraining anyway? I mean, in some corners of the sport the only competition lies in getting to that uncomfortable state and being able to stay there. This was not a new thought to me, but one I hadn't thought in awhile. Fuck everyone who called this overtraining. I can be uncomfortable. I don't want to do these attrition races forever, but dammit, I was darned good at being uncomfortable and no one could stop me.

The last 10 miles were brutal. It was a slow death plod with feet barely clearing the ground, but slowly, glacially the miles started to spread out behind me. I thought I would never hit the "4.2 miles to go" aid station. When I finally did I asked, "Am I the last one? I haven't seen another soul for hours." It was okay for me to be last, but I at least wanted to be prepared for it. If you're going to be DFL, then you have to start preparing yourself for a different kind of victory when you're still out on the course. DFL is a very different thing when you don't find out until after you've finished.

"No, there are still people behind you," she told me.

Every time I started walking up a hill, my hips would seize up. Every time I ran downhill my knees and ankles would feel like they were being beat to dust. When I hit the last 1.75 miles paved road, I descended to another ring of hell. I started to trudge at a slow walk up another short roller when two older women came around me. I rallied and caught up with them. "How are you guys doing? How's your race going?" I asked.

"Great, really great. We aren't as trained as we like to be, but we got lots of leg up time yesterday, so things couldn't be better. How are you?"

"Having a tough day, to be honest. It hasn't gone as well today as I hoped and I'm hurting pretty bad," I admitted. I could draw myself out of my pity party, but only if someone was there to tell me that they were hurting too.

"Well you're almost done," she said. "Look, only .75 miles to go!" She pulled the pace up to 8:30 min/miles. Really? I thought. But if I wanted the company I was going to have to keep up and I was going to have to think of positive things to talk about.

"My depth perception is all off," I said as we came up on yet another family taking up the whole road and I had to figure out a way to get around them (very difficult). "I've been convinced that every cyclist on this road has been aiming right at me. Does that ever happen to you?"

"No, can't say that it has," The Cheery One said.

"Maybe it's just that I know that my reaction time is slowed..." I said. "If you hit a grown-up you're alright because you just bounce right off. You've gotta watch out for the kids, because if you trip over them they'll send you ass over teakettle." She pulled away from me after that, and then so did her friend. And I was alone again.

I crossed the finish line about 50 yards behind the Silent Cheery One in about 5:47. Wait a sec! 5:47?! My best 50K time on a flat course was 6:01:03. I probably couldn't have run the 1.75 miles to a full 50K in under 14 minutes, but with all the hills and stopping that I'd done, this was probably the strongest 50K I'd ever done! Sure, I'd finished 31st out of 40 overall and 11th out of 14 women, but hey I was there at the end and I'd done better than your average Claire.

Because I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me!

After last week's terrible disappointment/failure, I've done some major soul-searching. I dug around deep in there and I couldn't find a single reason to press on with my goal of running a 50 miler in November, other than that it had been on the schedule for almost a year. How did it get on the damned schedule in the first place? I was looking on Cool Running one day, the day after my untrained marathon run on nothing but piss and vinegar, and I thought I was capable of anything. That day I saw the listing for a trail marathon the next week, gave about 2 seconds' thought to signing up at that very moment, and then decided not to press my luck. I decided that rather than running the marathon in 2007, I'd run the 50 miler in 2008. Not very dramatic. It was a whim, and I'm stubborn, and this is how I get myself into trouble. Now, for the second year in a row, I've made the adult decision to leave the 50 milers to the REAL runners.

Running is stupid. Ultrarunning is stupider.

This year I feel like I've proven a lot of things to myself and to other people. I'm pretty sure that if you're reading this, no matter what your opinion of me, you probably don't think I'm a softie. Even admitting that other people might not think I'm a loser is a big step for me personally this year. Tick off another reason that I don't have to run 50 miles.

BUT me taking the mature, adult approach to things ended there.

If I was going to give up on a goal that I had broadcast to the world, then the very least I could do to not look like a total loser would be not to have my first and only step towards said goal be a DNF. So what did I do? I got right on the internet and found the web page for my next scheduled race: a 50K near Syracuse, NY.

But registration had closed.

I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I got mad at myself for giving up so easily. I clicked on the "Contact Us" button and wrote to the race director begging him to let me in. Of course I thought he would say no and that I would be off the hook. I forgot that trail runners are the nicest people in the world.

"Claire, call me immediately. I think we can work something out." Oh fuck.

Here are all the reasons why this was a bad idea:
~Syracuse is over 5 hours away.
~I didn't have a place to stay.
~I did an ironman 3 weeks ago, and I was pretty sure that a 50K was on the list of things you're NOT supposed to do while you're recovering.
~I really didn't want to run this race.

But a 5-minute phone call later, Todd, the world's nicest race director had opened registration back up for me, and I was signed up for the Green Lakes 50K in Fayetteville, NY.

I took a Tylenol PM at midday Saturday and went back to bed at about 3:00. At 10:45 I woke up, packed up my stuff, and hit the road at midnight. God, this was a stupid idea. Every car I passed I thought, "Are you going to be the drunkard that kills me?" It seems that in a stupid decision like this, Fate should intervene to let you know that you're on the wrong track. But I made it to Fayetteville with no problems at about 5:30 in the morning.

This was the only trail event that I had ever done that was chip timed. A group of trail runners always looks a lot like a bunch of hobos fresh out of the Salvation Army, so I couldn't really tell if it was a very competitive field, but the chip on my ankle didn't bode well. I wondered if I would finish in last place (which would be okay) and have to be alone for the next 31 miles (which would not be okay). Luckily a woman named Rosemary, who was a nervous chatterer struck up a conversation. She said that this was her first ultra (and first marathon for that matter), and that she'd read all the blogs and race reports about this race, and she was just so excited to be running. I made 2 mental notes: 1. Only say nice things about other runners, because they are all nice people, and they all use the same internet that I do (right, Damon?), and 2. I was probably the only person in this crowd that really, truly didn't want to be here, so out of respect I should fake like I was happy to be out here half way to fucking Cleveland running 31 miles in the woods.

The course was 4 7.7-mile loops, each of which was broken into 2 sub-loops: the Green Lakes loop (which was flat) comprising the first and last 2 miles, and the Serengeti loop (which was hilly) making up the middle 4 miles. The course was absolutely stunning. Really. I'm not one to be taken by scenery, but by the end of the first loop, I was glad I had made the phone call and the drive. The Green Lakes are actually green, not because of pond scum, but because of some sort of chemistry or fairies. Or chemistry fairies. The water was crystal clear. (It really looks like the picture below). On the Serengeti loop you ran up a hill and then through grassy fields. One was filled with purple flowers, another with yellow flowers (not actually the pictures above, but my stupid camera phone couldn't handle the colors). At one point about half way through the loop you run around a corner and can see the whole countryside laid out below you.


I was surprised that most of the people around me had a slight Midwestern twang in their accents. I'd only driven 5 hours due west, was the Midwest really this close to home? I talked to a couple from Michigan after the finish whose drive had only been about an hour longer than mine, and they'd come through Canada to get here. "Michigan, I've never been to Michigan," I said. "That sounds so exotic!" And then, "Canada, that REALLY sounds exotic." I was serious about Canada, I lied about Michigan. It's hard to say something nice about Michigan without lying.

By the end of the first loop, it was pretty obvious that it was going to be a hot one. The humidity in the air was brutal even before it got hot. It was a sunny day, and nearly the entire Serengeti loop was exposed. The high temperatures of the day were pushing 90*, and that was the main complaint of everyone I talked to. Goddamn, it was hot! It was the kind of heat where your sweat just can't evaporate. Blech. But I've been getting used to the heat, I guess. Not so much that my body's been acclimating, but that I've finally realized that there's nothing that my complaining is going to do about the situation, so it's best not to dwell on it.

I spoke with a few women on the run: Rosemary (from the start), whose longest run up until this point was a 25K; Brooke, who was only 18, running with her mom, and starting college tomorrow (she made me feel old because I talked to her like someone more grown up than she was, and she let me); the woman in the grey sports bra with the Midwestern accent whose name I never caught; and Susan, who I was only with briefly at the end. But mostly I talked to my usual demographic: straight men over 40. My first 2 laps I was in an endless leap-frog game with a man in red shorts (Mark, I later found out). My second loop I picked up Ray, and ran 3/4 of the second half of the race with him.

Having Ray around really helped the time go by. What sucked about the 4-loop course was the fact that by the fourth loop, you know the whole entire course (except that they kept moving the aid stations farther and farther apart). And the real kicker is that when you start the fourth loop you're already at about mile 23 and ready to call it a day. Ray was a chatty, upbeat guy, and the perfect person to keep around on the last loop. He stayed with me to make sure that he went slow enough (I'm good for that!). This was his first 50K, so he didn't want to go too hard, but when I wanted to pick up the pace, he was right there with me. Talking to him made the miles go faster.

I wish this picture had come out. You should have seen the course first thing in the morning.

At the beginning of the second loop a clump of us were running together and a younger guy ran through us repeating, "Look out, 100K winner coming through!". Then an old guy came through right on his heels. The 100K runners had only started 30 minutes before us, so this guy couldn't have been on more than his third loop (of eight). Wasn't it a bit early to be calling the winner? And having a pacer in a low-key race like this? That's obnoxious. He never lapped me again. I was unimpressed.

But the cool thing about this race was that we DID get to see the winners running on their last lap. When you're as slow as I am, you don't get to see much of the action. The first guy lapped us early in our third (his final) loop, and actually APOLOGIZED for lapping us. Clearly, he was way more gracious than Mr. 100K Champion, and had an endearing, high-pitched laugh. We passed him back a few miles later. He was walking and blowing up pretty hard. But still, I get to say that I passed the race leader (okay, a lap behind him, but the fact remains that for a few moments in time I was moving faster than he was). When he started running again and passed us back I called after him, "Now don't let me see you on this trail again!" I hoped he won.
A couple more guys lapped us, and coming out of the far aid station the volunteers yelled after one of them, "He's bonking pretty bad. You can catch him, no problem!"
Oh no! We passed him again about a mile later. He was walking and shaking his muscles out as best he could. It was pretty clear he was going to walk it in the rest of the way. "Are you alright?" I asked. Had this been a road race I would have been met with a snarl if the likes of me passed the likes of him and acted concerned. Instead, he let out that easygoing high-pitched laugh again. "Do you want some gumdrops or something?" I asked. It was the best I could offer. I'd gone for the cheap nutrition option in this race.
"Nah, I'll get there," he said. "Just not as fast as I thought."

When I got to the finish line a few hours later he was there, talking to the other fast guys. "Hey! You made it! Congratulations!" I said.
He gave me a gigantic smile. "You were great out there!" he said, for all the cool kids to hear. "What did you offer me? Gum drops?!" And then he let out that great laugh again. I'm telling you, I could not have received a bigger compliment than to be talked to as an equal by the cool kids. But that was later, at this point he was still falling apart at mile 27, and I was still feeling sorry for myself a full loop behind him at mile 20.

On the second loop my socks had started to slip into my shoes and by now I'd worn holes in the backs of my ankles. At the end of each loop I sat down to re-adjust the socks, but they were really stinging badly. Of course there was the fatigue too, and that stabbing pain in my ass that everyone seems to think is sciatica. With Ray there, though, I seemed to be doing okay. We talked about old war stories, and I told him about Chrissy, and Anne (who I'll tell you guys about soon), Cunt on a pink bike, and Grandpa. "You tell these stories about wanting to trip people and then kick dirt in their face," Ray said to me, "but you seem like such a sweet, angelic little thing."
"Angelic?!" I said. "I don't think anyone who knows me would describe me as SWEET, but thanks."


We came up the hill and there was a group of people there to cheer us on. "I'm finishing this lap, and then I'm never running another step in my life!" I said.
"Aw, you'll be out here again next week!" one of the guys said. They always think they know fucking everything, don't they? What are they? Psychics? What if I never DO run again, huh? Why do they think that NOW is the time to remind me that I will ever have to run again?
"Never again!" I said.
"You'll be back!" a woman said.
"Screw you!" I called over my shoulder. I said it with a big smile and they all laughed.
"See? You can get away with saying things like that," Ray said. "It's that angelic little face of yours."
"Believe me, angelic or not, I don't always get away with it," I said.

The truth was that I knew that I was never, ever going to have to do this again for as long as I lived if I didn't want to, and that made it bearable. If I had known that this was all a step towards another, longer race then I would have hated every second of it. But as it was, I was... surprisingly... in my happy place. Okay, maybe not my happy place, but I didn't wish I was dead. That was huge.

Ray and I passed the marathon mark in just over 5 hours on the clock, which was about 4:45 of real running time. I was aware that this was only a couple of minutes off my old marathon PR. God, I really HAD come a long way since Cape Cod 10 months ago. Right around then Ray started flagging, right when I got my second wind that would take me to the finish. We had picked up Susan at that point, so I didn't feel so bad pulling ahead on a slight uphill when they decided to walk.

Okay, now here's the crazy part: every single person that I'd talked to along the course had ultimately wound up behind me: Rosemary, Mark, Brooke, Susan, Ray, the woman with the Midwestern accent... Even the fast guy with the easy laugh had wound up falling back in a sense. That NEVER happens, I am always the one that is left behind. I've come to expect it. When I passed Brooke's mom in the final 5K (she had been ahead of me the whole race), I couldn't believe it. I was finishing strong! I knew I had a slight chance of breaking 6 hours. It wouldn't be a PR by much, only 3 and a half minutes faster than the last time, but it was something to shoot for.

At Pineland Farms 50K I'd been paced every step of the way by Jay. Now it felt pretty significant that I was doing this on my own. I was going to have to average sub-10-minute miles for the last 5K to break 6 hours, so I dug deep. My body wasn't really cooperating, but I thought about how running a 9:50 mile now was a hell of a lot better than running 7-minute miles behind Michelle as I peed my pants. So I sucked it up and ran hard.

In the last mile (which was flat), I tried to push the pace even more, and was surprised to find that it hurt to breathe. Was I... out of breath? Was I running hard enough to ACTUALLY be pushing my threshold?! I looked at my wrist, I was only running in the high 9's. My body and lungs were just SO tired, that keeping me at below a 10-minute pace right now was as hard as running 2 minutes faster under normal circumstances. Then again, it kind of hurt all over, so it was hard to tell. I wanted to let up so badly, but I also just wanted to be DONE.

The expression "gone-burger" popped into my head. That's how I felt. I don't even know where I heard it, but there it was bouncing around in my mind as I waddled up the final rise to the finish as fast as I could in 6:01:03 (sprinting at 9:05 pace). One minute and three seconds. Oh well.

I tended to some immediate needs: water, pretzels, taking my shoes off, and then I limped down to the beach to sit in the water for a few minutes before I showered. When I got back, fully dressed but not moving any faster, I got a gigantic plate of pasta and set about eating whatever the hell I wanted. When I went up for my second plate, Mark (the man in the red shorts from my first two laps), who was done by now, called me a pig. Whatever, dude. Today I could eat whatever the fuck I wanted.

As I got up to go and thank all the volunteers a man walked up to me. "Are you one of the women that didn't get her prize?" he asked.
"What? I got my finisher's patch," I said. This is a running race. Claires don't win prizes at running races. Claires don't even bother to check the results.
"What's your name?"
"Claire Badas..."
"Claire?! From Boston?!" This was Todd, the race director who had been so patient with me!
I gave him a hug. He looked so happy to see me, that it seemed like the appropriate reaction. "Thank you so much for bending the rules for me..."
He cut me off and put his finger to his lips. "Ssssshhhhhh!"
"Okay, well thank you for all you've done. This really has been such an enjoyable... no, that's not the word... This has been such a positive experience!"
He looked down at his clipboard. "You got second in your category!" he said.
"WHAT?!?!?! Where were the other women?! Did they die?!?!?!" Like I said, Claires don't win running races.
"Don't say that," another volunteer said. "We already found one guy on the ground today." I wonder what the story was with that.
"Is this one of those things where there were only 2 people in my division?" I asked.
Nope. I was the second of 5 women under 35, and 4th of 14 women overall. True, it wasn't a very deep field, but I repeat, Claires don't win running races. Okay, I didn't win, but I placed. Claires don't place in running races.

I won a backpack!

Todd, the world's kindest race director congratulated me, and even printed up google directions for me to get back to the highway. You might think that this story is leading to the conclusion that I'm going to keep going with this ultrarunning business. Nope. I had a really great day, everything seemed to go right, and I felt like it was enough to make up for my DNF. I'd pushed hard, I'd gone long, I'd even done well in the overall standings. And this was exactly the high note I wanted to leave off on. I won't say I'm never running longer than 26.2 miles again. I'm just saying that there'll be plenty of time for that when I'm old and slow and suck at EVERYTHING as much as I suck at running. For now, I'm going to pursue the stuff that I like.

The traffic sucked on the way home, which sucked my whole good mood. What was a 5-hour drive on the way out turned out to be a 7-hour drive on the way back and my legs totally cramped up. Today I am one hurt unit. I'll have more to say about accomplishment soon, I think. But for today, I'm TRYING to keep it short.

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.