Potawatomi 50 Mile Ultra Finished!

Finished 22 of 98. 16 DNS and 16 DNF. Was really hoping for sub 12 hour but it was a great time.
Ultrasignup Results and Strava track.

I actually forgot to write anything about this race in the days afterwards, which is unusual because I enjoy writing the highlights so I don't forget them. And now its 66 days since the race, and I literally don't remember much at all about it.

How screwy do you have to be to run a double marathon and not really remember that. It's also a good indicator of the fact that I've become comfortable with a typical 50 miler... I don't really need to train or prepare for it beyond making sure I run a few 20-25mi training runs in the month prior.

And that brings me to the next race on the calendar. I've tried to continually increase the overall difficulty over the years, incremental steps of ever longer and more difficult races.

July 6th is Cry Me A River (CMAR), which has a Half Marathon, 50k, 100k, and 100 miler. I ran the 50k (which was actually 35 miles) in 2017, and I had never been there until race day. I was a bit stunned by the beauty of the three parks through which the 20 mile loop runs. But even moreso, how much more vertical climb it has than any other course in this region. So this year, I've committed to the 100 mile race, five loops with a total 23,500ft of climb! For comparison, the Pot100 race had only 16kft of climb, and was in freezing cold temps.

I don't run well in the heat, and July typically has both heat and humidity. Heat plus a brutal amount of climb and a reasonably tight time limit (34 hours) will certainly make the hardest challenge yet.

Clinton 30 Mile Ultra Finished!

Ultrasignup Results 26 DNS, 22 DNF.  I fell to 57th of 81 finishers this year.

The course was in ideal condition and the weather was great. I, however, didn't do much endurance training or even run much the last 4 months. And in the year since I was last on the Clinton trails, I forgot how hilly the course is. So yeah, underestimating the place doesn't help anything. The Strava track shows the story.

I really had it in my head that I wanted to finish around 6h or less, which would be a major PR for me by at least half an hour.  I started out on track, finished the first loop in under 2 hours. The second loop was harder and I wasn't feeling so well because I'm not accustomed to that pace on that terrain. So it was about 2h 15min for the second loop, still not bad. I actually had a severe calf cramp at mile 15... not something I usually experience until mile 45 or so when not managing salt intake well enough.

But heading out for the final loop, I could tell my legs had very little power left. Uphills were at times a slow shuffle with lots of burning muscle, downhills aren't much of a reprieve because you're still spending effort to control descent.

The last five miles, I finally got enough sugars and salt in me, things picked up. I just wanted to be done. And I really wanted to finish under 7 hours. And according to my Garmin, I did finish in 6:59:18... just barely! Somehow, the chip timing in the race had been having some issues all day, and it registered the finish as 7:00:29. But I have GPS proof otherwise :P

So... despite ideal course conditions, this year was far slower than last year. Of course, I had been heavily training last year for the Potawatomi 100 miler, so I was in far better shape.

I'm only running 50 at Pot this year... and its currently 9days out. I've been last min training up and I'm fairly confident I can pull off a decent run, if the weather is favorable!