Once again, I finished in 8th place!
Look over the elevation from this run, while there are some flat runable parts to this course, much of it is continuous climb and descend 50 to 150ft at a time. I'm used to briskly hiking hills like this, but running them in the cold is a real effort.
Last year it was warm and sunny for this event. This year it was about 35F, windy, overcast, and drizzling. The Start/Finish area was on high ground with a lot of wind, so it was cold standing around waiting for it to begin. I wore Altra shoes, shorts, a running t-shirt, a pullover, and a windbreaker and gloves. I meant to ditch the windbreaker but got caught up talking and then it was suddenly go time!
I ditched the gloves in just 10 minutes, unzipped the windbreaker in 20min, then tied it behind me. By the end of the first 10 mile loop, I was soaked from rain and sweat and overheating. I ran to my car and tore it all off me, heading out for loop 2 in just shoes and shorts. The race director hollered to me, "Rob, put damn clothes on!" in slightly stronger words than that. Made me laugh but I kept on running.
This was the second experiment in running an Ultra at faster pace, and with using strategic fueling to maintain sufficient glycogen to run the hills that fast. I went in 12 hours fasted, as usual. Ran the first 90 min with just some salt water at the aid station. Then I had a 100 calorie Honeystinger gel every 45 min until the end, 5 total. So gels were 500 cal (approx 15%) of the Garmin estimated 3500 cal spent, with the remaining 85% from my own body fat, ketones, and glycogen.
Running 4.5 hours shirtless in these conditions was probably a record for me. It was interesting to note that I felt fine. My hands, arms, upper chest, neck, face, and legs were all moderately warm to the touch, even soaked with rain and running into the wind. My belly, in contrast, felt cold... nearly ambient cold. Even so, the skin only mildly tingles and doens't hurt at all. At times, actually, it felt great to press my wrists/hands to my abs to cool them off. Nonetheless, quite a few warmly dressed bystanders and aid station volunteers thought I was completely batshit to be running that way. After the race I stood around the windy finish line, eating pulled pork and chatting. After 20 minutes I had finally cooled to the point that I was feeling uncomfortably cold so I threw on the new (dry) pullover from this race and hung out by the fire for a bit.
For me, this was a great race. This was a course PR for me, and a 30M PR, and another great experiment in cold exposure tolerance and fueling strategy. Lots of win.
I'm honestly humbled and awed by the 5 people that finished this run vastly faster than I did (like 2 hours faster). I did make a wrong turn on my 3rd loop that cost me 3-4 minutes, and I know I could've trimmed another 15-20 minutes if I'd spent less time at aid stations and hadn't had some serious cramping in the 3rd loop. But running this course in 4.5-5.5 hours with slick mud and wet leaves and cold rain/sleet... you people are amazing.
But I'm not conceding just yet... I've only been at this Ultra thing for a couple years, and only 2 months of working on increasing speed. Can't wait to see how next year goes ;)
Nice work!
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