Midnight Madness 20

We did the Midnight Madness by TATUR.  The race started at 11:59 p.m. on Saturday and ran into Sunday which happens to be my birthday.

We ‘just’ did the 20 mile as the 50 is still way out of my league.  Even the 20 was ridiculously hard for me.  Blame it on the heat, the OMGodly humidity, that we ran a marathon 2 weeks prior or that we had ‘gone keto’ 10 days prior to the race, whatever the reasons it was hard.

So hard that we finished a bit over an hour longer than our last 20 mile run time.

At mile 6, 10 and 14 I had to refill my bladder with ice and a little water and drank the water as the ice melted until the next stop.  So about 4.5 liters of water just from my bladders.   Add in one half liter soft bottle I started with and another half liter water bottle I picked up at mile 10 at the start/finish aid station and almost 6 liters of water was consumed during this run.

I put out a lot of heat, a bladder full of ice melts under these conditions in about 2 to 3 miles tops at which point it’s just cold water.  Another mile and what’s left is just cool water.

The first 10 went okay under the circumstances.  The next 5 was harder.  Note that there was an option to drop from the 20 to the 10 after the first lap but… not an option for us cause ‘we don’t go back’.

The last 5 was harder still.  by mile 18 from the neck down was painful, from the hips down was a virtual horror show.  Glutes, calves, quads, feet, you name it, it was being a whiny little bitch.

Even Bunny was hurting at this point, I could tell by her stride and form, I’ve seen her run well over a 1000 miles and 18 months with me so I have a fair idea of what’s normal and what’s not with her.

As a ‘keto runner’, all in the name of losing weight mind you, I didn’t fuel much at all on this run.  A few mixed nuts, a small piece of keto pound cake over the course of the run although at mile 16 I did have a couple of small cubes of watermelon because watermelon is delicious.

I also did not carb load obviously for the run.  Prior to the run I’d lost about 10 lbs in the 10 days prior.   A fair amount of that, probably 3 to 4 lbs was cherry pick weight, just the water weight you drop by dropping your glycogen stores.  It’s a freebie almost.   The rest is a combination of fat and water weight loss.

I could certainly feel a distinct energy lack over the course of the run.  Again could be the training schedule, the heat and humidity, the keto, your guess is as good as mine as to what was the most significant contributor to the run or lack of running.

But in the end we finished it and with only a couple of exceptions that’s always been my primary goal for a race.   We landed about mid pack in terms of finish times so better than I expected to be honest.  It also gives you some idea of how the race was for other people.

One of our co-workers did the 50, finishing in a little over 13 hours.  She somewhat recently did a 100 mile run and was running with a slower runner or she’d of come in sooner.

Under these conditions a 50K, 100K, 50M, 100M seem all the more daunting.

But we do have on our schedule our 50K in November with last long run of the Bass Pro marathon and we have a 50M planned for February.

Not sure how I’m going to do with those but even if I finish DFL I’ll still do what I can to make sure I finish.  A DNF won’t shatter my ego or kill my pysche but it’s certainly not something I want to do unless there is injury or conditions such that it becomes long term impacting or deadly.