3-digit club!

I completed the Weymouth Woods 100K yesterday.

Firstly, before I get distracted: I have to thank Marie (race director) and all of the volunteers.  Their support was incredible.  The food was super--there were more than enough gluten-free options.  During the race, I ate two or three kinds of vegetable stew with beans or lentils, and two servings of grits.  During my last ultra, I was fine with just frankenfood (mix, gels) and bananas and coke, but this time, my stomach was less tolerant. I needed real food, and fortunately there was a lot that I could eat at the race.  Even better, I got a massage after about 45 miles--this was the first time I had a massage at a race, and it really helped.  Finally, numerous volunteers and runners helped me with words of encouragement.  This was especially important because I'd missed a bunch of training (thanks, sciatica?).  Once it got dark, I was mostly walking and I felt guilty about that, but people convinced me to finish the final bit.  And my husband and the dog joined me to walk the last lap, and then I got a pretty pottery bowl as a finisher's prize.  I'm so grateful for everyone's help. 

Doing this race wasn't the wisest decision.  However, I didn't spend much time deliberating once I received Marie's email that a spot had opened up.   It's loops on my home turf--can't ask for a better situation--and I'm not sure if we'll be posted somewhere else by next year.  It was now or potentially never.   So what if I wasn't in shape?  There are other reasons for running an ultra.  Novelty, pain management, sociability...I don't think I've ever chatted so much with other runners as I did during this race.  I don't remember most of their names, unfortunately, but it was fun meeting everyone.

The weather was perfect during the day, sunny with a high of about 4 C, but then it got dark and colder.  More on that later.  At any rate, I was grateful for the weather because the last time I had a race that wasn't too warm was in 2011.  My few races since then all been above 20 C, which is just too warm.  I have run only one race that was perhaps too cold, but it was still ok until I stopped moving.

I apologize for the self-referential hyperlinks--maybe tomorrow I'll edit to link to some of the music I listened to last night.  It's so hard to choose!  EDIT: aw, heck, since I'm already posting stuff I've posted already...but at least this is a different video.

During my last ultra, I'd dropped a gear around mile 30.  This time, I elected to walk up the largest hills right from the beginning, in the hope that I could maintain that level of effort past than six or so hours.  I wanted to keep each loop under an hour for the first ten loops. 

Nope!

The first 7 loops, half of the race, remained comfortable and my pace remained consistent.   There isn't much to say about this 50K, surprisingly.  My left leg glitch (sciatica?) kind of almost approached sometime during the 2nd or 3rd loop, but I kept fiddling with my form and taking opportunities to loosen up--the short boardwalk sections were great for this--and eventually the threat passed.  And so did the time.  I chatted, ate, watched for roots, but mainly drifted along with tunes. It's funny how music, as temporal as it is, nevertheless squashes time into some sort of changeless formless entity.  Hours and minutes, and miles, became simply Trail, a constant state seemingly without beginning or end.   Ticket out of Flatland? Amazingly, I didn't look at my watch once during this race; all I did was look at the race clock after each lap but those numbers became sort of abstract after a while.

However, after about thirty miles, my thighs became mutinous.  Not a surprise, but definitely a disappointment.  I could still run down gentle slopes and on the flat, but running uphill was going to Mars, and the steeper downhills were snake pits.  However, I have improved: after my first 30ish mile trail run, I felt like I was being gutted alive; after my second 30ish mile trail run, I felt like my knees were bending backwards; after my third 30ish mile trail run (yesterday), walking remained relatively normal for a good while afterward. 

So, onto plan B: add a few more sections of walking, but try to keep the loops as close to an hour as possible.  This was mostly successful.  On loop ten, my legs were stiffer and I had to cut back the running again.  Onto Plan C, whatever that was, and it was getting dark.  The retreat of the sun was surprisingly daunting.  I was losing heart.  My stomach was saying No! to gels.  The rest of me was getting cold.  I went into the nearby building (this race had access to heated washrooms and an auditorium!) to change my socks and shoes, and I got a massage too.  I told Denise, the massage therapist, that I was thinking of doing just 12 loops, and she told me that if I felt tight after that, she'd get me back out there.  I shouldn't quit.

This was repeated by several other people, including the volunteers (sadly, I forget their names) running the 2nd aid station, and a couple of the other runners.  I shouldn't quit.  One guy told me that I could take a nap and then spend two hours on each remaining lap, if I had to. But I shouldn't quit.

I fished out my flashlight and went into the darkness.  I wasn't scared of it, but I was worried that it would be depressing.  Devoid of light and visible life, and 18 miles left to go.  I estimated that it would take me about an hour and a half to walk each loop...this meant six hours.

Actually--and I should've remembered this from the other nighttime forest runs I've done--a forest after dark is simply a different, more mysterious, place, and usually interesting.   At least it's a change of scene, plus this forest doesn't have bears.  The blackness was cozier than my clothing, and so I changed the latter after the 11th lap because one of the volunteers told me that dry clothes would give me a different perspective.   At the very least, this would broaden my experience, I supposed, which is often a worthy endeavour.  Score!

My husband met me between loops 11 and 12, and once I told him I was reduced to walking, he offered to accompany me for my last loop.  This was a huge sacrifice: he had surgery (a tympanoplasty) a few days ago.  I told him to reconsider, but the prospect of his company helped the 13th loop seem less grim.  Up until that point, I was managing alright--I was losing time eating and chatting and changing my clothing and getting massaged, and I suppose nothing less than a bear could have coaxed even a light jog out of me, but I wasn't getting any slower at walking. 

Until the 13th loop.  I started noticing little pains in my feet and ankles, which in turn pinpointed just how uneven the trail surface was.  Downhills were worse than uphills.  And I was becoming almost sleepy--this would have been fine and perhaps even preferable on a smooth road, but these trails demanded wakefulness.  Worse still, I was starting to get annoyed with my music and bored with the view.  Black black black, bits of underbrush casting black shadows over sand and roots, black black.  The lights of the aid stations were a welcome relief (the little fire pit at the 2nd station was a raw beacon in the dark, a delightful primeval atmos), as were the lights of the other runners, but these were diminishing in number, if not lumens (near the end, I was questioning the freshness of  the 'new' batteries in my flashlight).  At this point, even the approaching gleam of an overtaking runner was heartening.  And now, as I write this, I'm finally thinking of the final runner left on the course.  4.5 miles reduced to one solitary point of light.  How incredibly lonely.  However, this race's congeniality extends especially to that hapless individual: there is an award for DFL.

When I got to the end of the 13th lap, my husband wasn't there.  I waited for about ten minutes (and ate more delicious soup!) and finally I set out--but then I heard my name!  Thank goodness.  He'd also brought more clothing for me, so I put that on, and then we set out with the dog.

A forest after dark in the company of a dog is another place still.  So many smells.  The run/race/experience devolved into a stroll with a break for more grits, and smaller breaks for doggie pitstops and for human root-shaming.  There are so many roots on this course, and some of them have tripped me on other occasions, but I didn't trip once during this race.  Victory!  There were a few roots that I was especially worried about, and I mocked them on my final lap.  However, I didn't feel too much of a thrill until a few minutes before the end.  Going up the final rooty hill felt almost effortless.

How to tap into this masking of pain throughout?  Ignoring pain or pushing past it is one thing (that I'm not good at), but removing it altogether is a biochemical step up.  How to mentally trick the body into releasing more of the applicable neurotransmitters? I did a decent job of loosening up throughout the race, holding the poor sciatica(?)-causing biomechanics at bay, but I wasn't as accepting of discomfort as I could've been.

At least, I got a taste of extending a run into the next day.  I ascended that final hill about twenty minutes past midnight.  My race was s-l-o-w, over sixteen hours on my feet.  Fortunately, I'm not exactly ambitious about trails and ultras; I've mainly been enjoying the local scene.  The thought of doing an even longer ultra, unless it's conveniently close, is not attractive at this point.  I'm not sure I'd even want to attempt another 100K apart from this one again.   However, I would like to try a 24 hour race someday because I've read that dawn sometimes ushers a surge of energy. 

At any rate, Weymouth Woods was a lovely spot with a bunch of lovely people yesterday!