On December 5th, I was in St. George, Utah for my 50K Trail race. That day started off fine, even the first lap (there were going to be 5 laps) went well. Unfortunately the day did not work out for me in a few ways and I ended up having to pull out of the race in the middle of lap 3. I was pretty bummed, and tried not to let it get me down for the duration of my time in St. George.
I knew however that I had some unfinished business I needed to attend to. I needed to get another 50K back on my schedule as soon as possible. I even tried to get it in the very next weekend. After chatting with my coach and coming down off my frustration horse, I was okay with scheduling it for December 27th. That gave me 3 more weeks to prepare, after not completing the first.
**Here is a short video of the St. George, Utah race location. Take on lap 2 of 5 in the counter clockwise direction.**Those last 3 weeks leading up to my second attempt, my main focus points were on keeping stress low, getting enough sleep and plenty of good healthy foods. Ugh that's hard around the holidays, but I managed. For sleep I was making sure to get 8 hours, which for me is normal, but I was extra careful not to stay up even 5 minutes later than planned. When it came to nutrition I cut out all alcohol, except on Christmas day, and made sure to get plenty of healthy proteins and veggies. Plus cannot forget my carbohydrates in the form of sweet potatoes, gluten free bread, and oatmeal.
The day of my event I had already packed most of my food the night before, but still had to fill my water bottles and eat breakfast. At 6am I sat down to eat my breakfast which consisted of homemade oatmeal (I usually use steel cut oats, but we only had rolled oats left) with cinnamon, raisins and maple syrup, a cup of coffee with oat milk, and a blueberry fig bar. For the food I would eat during my run I packed 4 blueberry fig bars (420 calories), 1.5 packages of Clif Blocks (135 calories plus caffeine), 2 homemade energy balls (440 calories), and 12 chicken nuggets (220 calories). Then for my fluids I took 1.5 liters of water plus Clif Hydration powder in each water bottle, this was to help my body absorb the water better than just plain water. If you want more information on hydration for the endurance athlete, read my blog on Hydration, How Much is Enough.
I packed myself some dry cloths for after the run, and also a second pair of shoes and socks just in case it was wet and my feet needed to dry off. In addition to the cloths, I also packed my GoPro for a little extra fun while out on the trail. Now it was time to head off to the park.
Upon arrival at the park, I noticed there were less than half the parking spaces left and was a bit nervous about how many people I would come in contact with. So, I grabbed my handheld face covering (it's a chammy cloth the size of a washcloth) that I can easily hold in my hand to cover my nose and mouth while close to people but then take away from my face just as easily.
It's now go time, I've got my backpack filled with everything I will need for my first 2 laps and my Garmin is on and ready to go. I pass through the gate at the parking lot to the start of the trail hit my start button and off I go. My plan is to start slow, as is always the case, and start by running around the small loop first then head off into the Lisa-Cottle Loop for my repeats. As I'm heading toward the first gate which is only a quarter mile from the car park, I notice a bunch of cows on the other side. Yay I pull out my GoPro for a little distraction and then off I go.
While making my way around the short loop I start running through my head my plan for the day. This plan involved several key items, pace, nutrition, fluids, fun, family. Pace needed to be kept slow, nutrition and fluid plan was to eat/drink early and often. I've had a few runs in the past that I started eating and drinking too late and ended up feeling exhausted, or getting leg cramps. I needed to stay ahead of it if I wanted to finish this run on my feet.
The hills at Rancho San Vicente are not steep so my pace doesn't slow down much on the up hills, but my goal was to not go faster than a nine minute per mile pace, on the flats to keep it no faster than 8:20 pace, and on the down hills no faster than 7:20 pace. With my excitement of finally getting back out to give this distance another go, I kept going over my paces in the first lap. However I was much better at controlling my speed in lap two.
Along the course this time I came across several cows on the trail. As I had never been so close to them before I did not know how to approach or pass them. Admittedly I was a bit afraid. I stopped, said hello to them and slowly, very slowly walked toward them. One by one they all started moving slowly off the trail until it was safe for me to pass. I had to do this 3 times in the first lap, once in the second lap and by the third lap they had all made their way up the trail to higher grazing ground.
In my first and second lap I drank 300 milliliters of hydration fluids, and 250 calories of food each lap. This then allowed me to hop off the look and head back to my car after the second lap to refuel. I swapped out my water bottles, emptied my empty food wrappers, and grabbed more food. It was now time for some savory bites of yummy chicken nuggets, along with more homemade energy bites.
By the time I got back out to the start of the third lap I could feel my body getting tired, and it should be I was at mile 17 now. When I ate my first chicken nugget I noticed my mouth was not watering as much as it had earlier, this told me I hadn't had enough to drink, so I slowed down to a walk and got some hydration in me. At this point I knew I was going to need to step up my hydration game so now instead of drinking every 20 minutes I was sipping water every mile. This helped tremendously, because at mile 22 it was time to eat another energy bite and I was able to eat it without feeling like it was a dry rock in my mouth.
Mile 24 was where I was starting to feel my legs getting very tired, I was having trouble lifting my toes or getting a good toe off. My hamstrings were starting to get irritated, and my calves were rocks attached to my tibias. I was able to keep the hamstring issue under control by focusing on the position of my pelvis as I was running. I noticed every time I would feel the hamstring straining that I was rolling into anterior rotation of my pelvis. This told me I was allowing my abdominals to get lazy and my lumbar muscles to tighten up, thus putting my hamstrings on stretch. Glad I knew what to do for that.
I hit the wall at mile 27. My whole body just said no more. I felt my heart rate go up for no reason, I was on the flats at that point. My legs wanted to seize, and it was taking all my might to not stop. Up to this point I have only ever run 26.2 miles at my longest. I think my body was saying hey, woman, what are you doing, you're all done now. Because it took all my energy to keep going I told myself I could walk for 3 to 5 minutes, then it's go time again. After 3 minutes I felt good enough to push on. After this point my pace had slowed down quite a lot, but I was just focused on finishing the mileage.
With 0.9 miles to go to complete my 50k (31.1 miles), I realized I still had a little over two miles left to get back to the end of the trail. Ugh! The trail was mostly flat and about to start heading downhill to the finish so with a quick last swig of hydration, I shut out the pain and started running again. Those last 15 minutes seemed to fly by and before I knew it I hit mile 31.1 and was still running. With only 0.75 miles to go I'm headed downhill and can hear my coach shouting to me. Oh wow what a wonderful sound. He rode down to the finish where my wonderful wife and niece and nephew were waiting with a finishing tape. I think that last three quarter miles was my fastest on the day as all I wanted to do was be done.
As I crossed the finish line, to the amazing cheers of my loved ones and my coach, I hit my stop watch and saw that I had completed 32.2 miles in 5 hours and 16 minutes. This felt so good to have finally completed my first 50K trail run. And I can now say I'm an Ultra Runner.
**Here is my recap video from my completed 50k at Calero Reservoir.**
Thank you to my coach for all the amazing training you put me through to get me ready to run that distance. Thank you to the unwavering support of my wife, and thank you to my niece and nephew for your cheers.
This whole experience from the beginning of the training through to the completed event was so much work, and fun, but worth every moment. I've already decided that wasn't long enough and am planning on doing a 44 mile run for my birthday in 2021, and a 50 mile run by December 2021. Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed as much as I did.
