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.

 

01272018 Greenleaf Run

So today we ran the Greenleaf Trail 30K.   It was a lot of fun.  At 19.5(ish) miles it was our longest distance and it took us a looong time.   At our skill levels there was just a lot of trail we couldn’t run without significant risk.  And with our first marathon in 4 weeks we chose to err on the side of caution.

This run was primarily just to have a long weekend run and to push our selves a bit.

We had a great time being outraged at the lack of flat ground, having to go miles on the side of a hill trying to walk on ground sloped at 45 degree angle which is super hard on the ankles.

Around mile 10 we got passed by a 67 year old woman, never did catch her.

Around mile 15-16 we started running into cramping problems with muscles we don’t normally use for due to road running primarily.  For me it was my inside groin muscles, the ones that run down the inside of your thighs.  For my RW it was hamstrings and assorted other places.

I used a GoPro for the first time and filmed some snippets on each mile although mile 18 and 19 got lost although I was able to do a second mile 19.  Battery failure.  That was fun and I learned some things about filming on a run.  I now have a gimbal to help with keeping video steady that I need to learn to use.

When I get around to putting the videos together I’ll post them on the Run Salty channel on Youtube primarily for friends and family to pretend to enjoy watching.  It’s really about having the memories to look back on later on down the road.

All in all it was a good run for multiple reasons, a it was just a lot of fun, b it pushed us a bit in terms of effort both mental and physical, c it was a lot of fun.

Equipment used:

Lone Peak 3.5 from Altra – Held up well, they’re servicable, not my ideal shoe but good enough

Stryd FootPod – Does not work well with a mix of run hike.  Was almost a mile and a half short of the 19.5 run.

Garmin Fenix 5X  – Best option of the watches out there for me for various reasons.

Road ID – So someone can identify the body.

Google Pixel 2 XL – Wonderful camera for taking still images and streaming music.

Saloman Skin 12 – Wonderful vest, highly recommend.  Not perfect but very close.

Ultimate Directiojn Soft Flasks with Extended Nipples – Lets you drink your fuel without having to take the flask out.

Source Hydration Bladder – The Milspec version 2L with insulated hose in Coyote Brown

EFuel – Wonderful drink mix for fueling.  Works very well for me.

EGel – Wonderful gels for fueling.  Works very well for me.

GoPro Hero 4 Silver – Audio sucks while its in it’s case.   Just be aware.  Mounted to a selfie stick of my own design and 3D printed on a MakerWorks MendelMax 3 printer in PLA.

Garmin HR Senson on Polar Chest Belt – HR monitoring sucked for some reason with a metric butt ton of drop outs and missing data.

Underarmor bike shorts, Champion shorts, REI Thin Base Layer shirt, Halo skull cap

 

01 10 2018 Entry

Thought I’d start adding little notes on runs just to have something to look back on when I’m old and feeble (er).

Today the run was intervals, we backed up about 6 weeks in our schedule to have our end date in sync with our first full marathon.  FYI we’re running a full marathon in March.

Anyway this pulled us back a bit in effort level so this was a 15 minute warm up, then 5 repeats of 3 minute sprints + 90 second recovery then a cool down.

At this time both myself and Running Wife #1 (I have 3 now although one isn’t aware of it) have succumbed again to some level of injuries so we’re kind of having to take it easy anyway.

I was also on a conference call for work during this run and it was cold with a pretty bad head wind on top of that.  And I was under-dressed because I expected temps in the 50’s and it was in the 30s’.

Nothing super noteworthy about this run, we went south along Riverparks instead of our usual north as I wanted to try and cut down some of the noise from traffic. But it just caused more noise from wind as there are no wind breaks on that section at all.

In looking at the same run from 5 weeks ago, sadly there wasn’t any real improvement.  But I was distracted during the run due to the conference call and I don’t feel like I was putting 100% into it.  I know my RSS for that other run was probably a 8 or 9 and this was was maybe a 7.

Tomorrow is an easy run of 30 minutes but we’re going to change it to hills because we seriously need hill work.

We’re trying to find the ‘right’ 50K for 2018 to be our first time at that distance and it’s tough.   Between cut off times, total elevation change, scenery/location, expenses, it’s not an easy decision to make.

We have a 30K in 3 weeks and then our first full in 7 weeks.