If having babies is like having ultrababies, sign me up!

(Labor Pain Ultra 12-hour race report)

“People say” that the most entertaining and educational race reports are the ones where all kinds of shit goes wrong. With that in mind, prepare to be bored out of your minds as you read this, suckers! At least one of the times I saw my friend Hillsmash I kept yelling “conditions are perfect!” I was trying to quote The Flight of the Conchords’ “Business Time” and probably failing to convey that, but it also pretty much applied literally. I’d tapered almost perfectly, carb loaded like a glutton/champ, done some nice long runs on trail and worked on yoga/cross training a lot more than usual. The course was suited to my strengths, and though the temperature was a little higher than I prefer, humidity was pretty much nil and there was a lot of tree cover, making things pleasant most of the day. I was also in a good place mentally, as though I was feeling long overdue for a good race, I’d had a couple of very good training weeks leading up to the event and felt prepared. I had recently resolved some personal and professional anxieties, and I was generally in a Good Place. I had packed ALL THE SNACKS (including cut up watermelon I managed to keep cold the whole race). I was wearing my ultimate INKnBURN supersuit. Conditions were perfect.

 

It's business time!

My concerns going into the race were that I wouldn’t do well in the heat (not a problem thanks to the lack of humidity), that I wouldn’t handle the format of a 5-mile loop for 12 hours well (I’d never done a timed event of this nature), and that I had not gotten nearly enough sleep the previous week (I’m feeling that this week, but for the duration of the event, Mountain Dew maintained its sugary, caffeinated efficacy!). I also just NEVER race well at Pretzel City Sports races (though I always have a great time!).

Obviously, friends play a HUGE role in my running obsession. One of the reasons I don’t just stop running for months at a time anymore is because I have so many running friends I would miss if I went MIA. As I like to quote myself (ad nauseam), “running friends are real friends!” And friends have played a role in my races before: most notably, in the Philly Marathon last year, seeing at least one person I knew every mile on the second half of the course absolutely helped motivate me to keep pushing and bag my PR. But I’ve never used any kind of crew or pacers when running an ultra, and I’ve tended to view the presence and support of friends, whether spectators or fellow runners, as a surprising bonus. Point is, I always love seeing friends at races, but this is the strongest I’ve felt their presence in my own racing, and the most grateful I’ve been to have that support and fellowship, even where it might not have looked like I needed it. At the race, we met up with awesome existing and new friends from Trail Whippass and Runderful, but we also rolled up with a more than solid posse of our own. (Special shoutout to Emir, who I saw almost every lap and who always shared encouragement and asked how I was doing!)

Runderful friends John and Alyssa framing ye olde Trailsmash and Hillsmash

Megan (the aforementioned “Hillsmash”), our friend Johanna, and I were all running with very different goals. Johanna wanted to de-stress from racing and training goals and rekindle some love of running on the trails. Megan, who is new to her exploration of longer distance and trail running, wanted to pace herself smart to a 40-mile finish. I wanted at least 50 miles and to feel like I’d actually raced something. We all of us met our goals. I have to talk a little about Hillsmash, because she’s been so, so smart and enthusiastic in how she’s gone about introducing herself to trail running. It’s kind of like an over-enthused 5-year-old who also wrangles for herself a hell of a lot of zen. Those 40 miles she ran were not only her first time “making ultrababies” (in a race environment, anyway), but also, as I kept forgetting, got her to the marathon distance for the first time in a race. Her fiancé David paced her for the lap that comprised miles 25-30, keeping the ultraspawn metaphor going strong! Our friend Lou got bullied into being my first pacer ever, and ran with me from miles 35-45, and then from 50-55. We sang a lot of bits of songs, drank some beers, and determined whether various snacks were vegan. The giddy normalcy of it all definitely helped me suspend the knowledge that I’d been running in a circle for hours and hours with more to go!

“I’m not going back out again unless someone sics a panther on me!”

Once I realized I was keeping my pace fairly well, I kept wavering as to whether or not I wanted to stop at 55 miles or to push on to 60. I really didn’t want to compromise my marathon training by doing more than I could fairly quickly recover from, but 60 seemed like such the nicest number, and it was looking like I had time. During the race, I basically tied my 2^nd fastest 50k time (around 5:40), and thanks to a completely maniacal 10^th lap beat my 50-mile PR by about 5 minutes (I came in at 9:27-8). After that I started to sag a bit, but my goals never slipped out of sight, which definitely helped keep my spirits up. Since I finished the 60 miles in 11:42, there was obviously some thought that I could have/should have gone for the 100k milestone. I’ll just say that 60 miles felt ambitious enough, and I’m glad I took time to refuel and chat with friends after most laps because it meant I had the energy left to enjoy the experience of finishing well and engage in suspicious celebratory rituals postrace.

Megan, myself, Lou, and David, doing what we do.

I ended up 3^rd overall female, 7^th overall finisher, and 1^st in my age group. Pretty solidly the best I've done in a race since I raced the 1600m in middle school! Congrats also to Johanna and new Runderful friend Alyssa who also scored age group swag, or, as I was calling it during the race, “prizes” :)

Prizes!

 

Transition to Marathon Training

After Laurel Highlands Ultra, I gave myself three weeks of really easy recovery, only running as much as I felt like. Three weeks not only because that sounded reasonable, but also because I'd pulled up a marathon training plan I'm roughly following for Marine Corps Marathon that had me starting training three weeks after LH.

The mileage, of course, has not been a problem. The first week of the plan called for 27 miles total, and I'd hit 70+ multiple times in my training this spring, rarely going under 50 miles. But the speed work and pacing recommendations. Whew! That's another story. Apart from training to break 4 hours (which I did for the first time at the Gettysburg North-South marathon last spring), I've never trained to run a marathon at a specific pace. And honestly, this early in training, I'm having a difficult time settling on what my goals for this race really are. My A goal is to Boston Qualify (I'm fine with anything under 3:35 - this may sound weird, but I'm kind of more interested in besting that number than I am in actually running Boston), but my paces running outside this summer aren't quite promising that. My training plan is actually for a runner hoping to break 3:30, which is definitely a stretch. I keep saying I'd be happy just to PR, but after missing my goals at Laurel Highlands, I kind of really want to put in an awesome performance here, if at all possible. I'm not sure how much of my trouble hitting times is due to the fact that my speed just isn't there (because I basically didn't do ANY speed work this spring, just logging lots and lots of slow miles), and how much is due to summer heat and humidity which, suffice to say, I do NOT thrive in. I have been doing at least one run per week at a faster pace on the treadmill at the gym though, and on those runs I can stick to my paces successfully.

Because I knew I needed to get myself into the habit of doing speed work regularly, I signed up for a month of GoalsFit "Track Attack" for July. For some reason it feels like just about every Tuesday in Philadelphia is hot, humid, and, at some point, stormy. After the first two of these speed work sessions (which were butt-kicking in a very awesome way), I ended feeling weak and dizzy, a sensation that lasted 30-60 minutes after the run. My times were absolute crud too. The third time I made sure to liberally salt my pre-run snack of almond butter toast AND to eat some salty margarita shot blocks right before the workout. My times were still depressingly slow, but at least I had no cause to be paranoid that I had some mysterious wasting disease.

The humidity is definitely a huge factor. One Thursday my friend Megan and I went out to Temple Track and ran 6x800, I think at around 3:40-3:45 for most of our splits, one closer to 4 minutes, the last one at just over 3:30. Maybe a little slower than ideal, but damn was that a psychological boost - I can do this speedwork thing and actually complete a workout more or less as planned! We ran around 4pm, and it was ~85 degrees with a magical, magical lack of humidity. Go figure.

Afterward we jumped!

Then we slurped!

I've been trying to do yoga pretty regularly, 2-3 times per week. Usually I take classes at my gym (some of the instructors are very good!), and I've occasionally been doing free and donation-based outdoor yoga (including with Yoga Peach, who teaches awesome yoga for runners classes and also just had great success racing Ironman Lake Placid and fundraising for the MMRF). I've been enjoying this more regular practice, and after the first extremely sluggish and dispiriting few weeks of marathon training, the middle of week 3 I finally started to feel a lot more like myself as a runner. Speed work is hard, but I feel like I'm actually recovering from it rather than living with constantly aching quads. This weekend I ran a 13-mile "long run" on the road at 8:50 pace followed by an 11-mile trail run the next day. The road run was much faster than I would have run while ultra training, but I recovered well enough that the hilly trail run the next morning was far more fun than torture.

IN OTHER NEWS, I did sign up for my first 100-miler, and it's NOT Rocky Raccoon, but rather Zion! I'm both incredibly excited and a bit relieved it's not till April. Though because it's so far off I have no excuse not to concentrate fully on Marine Corps in the meantime....

Laurel Highlands 70.5 mile ultra

June 3rd, on the very last leg of my return trip from Flagstaff to Philadelphia, I listened to a Trail Runner Nation podcast that was basically an awesome lovefest between Ann Trason and Sally McRae. Ann said something to the effect that while she was never the fastest runner on the trail, her success came from her ability to troubleshoot, to problem solve. I took those words to heart during my race at Laurel Highlands last weekend, and though they didn’t propel me to the sub-20 that would qualify me to enter the Western States lottery, they did help me finish safely within the race’s own 22-hour limit, exhausted but uninjured besides my trademark bloody knee. I’m interpreting Ann’s words widely as well, using them to guide my post-race assessment and plans for future training.

This race report is not going to be a mile-by-mile / hour-by-hour / aid station-by-aid station breakdown. That’s not really my style, and there are other reports out there that give a pretty thorough overview of the race in that respect.

In my previous post I mentioned that my “A-goal” was an 18-hour finish, with the States-qualifying 20 hours my “B-goal”. I realized pretty quickly during the race that the “A-goal” was almost certainly not going to happen. I also spent a lot of time reassessing the labels I had given these goals and about how the phrase “A-goal” was really more appropriate to the achievement of a sub 20 finish. I mean, I just cared about it so much more. I had thought, well, I’ll aim high with a time that sounds achievable on an optimal day and then if things go wrong what I have to fall back on will still leave me ecstatic. But I think it would have been a better idea to place the goal that truly compelled me forefront in my mind, and forefront in my planning. Of course, it’s hard to set goals and make plans for a race on terrain you’ve never run and that’s 20 miles farther than you’ve ever run. And while I don’t go into races stupid, I don’t study race reports and elevation charts for hours and hours either (though I do sometimes leave them pulled up in neglected browser tabs for weeks at a time, sparing them barely a glance!). 

My race bib answers the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Flat Clare (taken before I picked up my race bib)

I think my morning nutrition plan was pretty spot-on, if a tad ridiculous: banana and Clif bar at ass-o’-clock in the morning at the EconoLodge of Johnstown (possibly the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at, mainly because to say the toilet barely worked would be generous indeed), some blackberry MamaChia on the bus to the start, and TastyCake Butterscotch Krimpets and hot coffee shortly before the race. I walked the three early nasty hills, and got passed by what felt like absolutely everyone on the big one. I wasn’t worried about time at that point, but I did feel kind of ashamed. Climbing isn’t a strong point for me. That had been reinforced at The North Face 50M at Bear Mountain, but I didn’t make significant changes in my training plan to reflect that, even knowing what I was in for the first 10 miles or so of this race. The most convenient place for me to practice climbing is the stairs and bleachers at Franklin Field. Unfortunately, right about the time I felt recovered from Bear Mountain, Penn held graduation ceremonies there, then closed the facilities for summer for repairs and the installation of a new track. There are other options for hill and even stair training, of course, but that was by far the most convenient and effective, and I didn’t really do much to compensate for that change in plans.

I came into the first official checkpoint just over 30 minutes before cutoff. I gained time at all subsequent checkpoints, but because the first two (of four) checkpoints were the most stringent, making time up against the race’s cutoff clock still meant barely clinging to 20 hour pace (I didn’t make a pace chart for that, but it was pretty easy to keep track because I needed just a little faster than 3.5 MPH). I drank a shitton of water, Gatorade, and soda, filling my pack at every aid station. It wasn’t as hot as I’d expected, thanks to clouds and tree cover, but it was exceedingly humid, so I wasn’t peeing, even with good fluid intake. Most food just didn’t sound good though. I usually want things like PBJ sandwiches and fig newtons, but that day I really only wanted fruit and salty potatoes (and potato chips). I definitely wasn’t eating enough. At the very last aid station I had one whole strawberry! 

 Fairly early on, a rare flat section!

Troubles came starting probably around mile 30. My quads were pretty dead (which doesn’t usually happen to me – it didn’t happen at Bear Mountain, for instance), so downhill’s were hard, and when I did hit easy grades, I kept getting nasty side cramps. Finally, a little before mile 35 I remembered I had both “vitamin I” (Ibuprofen) and the extra salty margarita shot bloks in my pack. That turned my race around entirely for about the next 20 miles. My quads felt GREAT. My teeth felt disgusting, but my cramp disappeared, and when it tried to reemerge later, more salty shot blocks quelled it again. As evening approached, I knew it wasn’t going to get any hotter. I had also heard tell from multiple sources that around mile 50 the terrain got much easier, and if you had anything left in your legs at that point, you could make up some time. I was still barely clinging to 20 hour pace. I felt great. I was ridiculously optimistic. I was an idiot. 

I dubbed this "buttlog", though "crotch log" is probably more accurate :P

Running at night is hard. I have very little experience with it (apart from in the city, which is obviously not the same thing – you know, pavement, street lights, tipsy confidence). One fairly short full moon towpath run with RVRR back before I’d ever done a real trail run, I think. A little over one 20 mile loop pacing at Rocky Raccoon, mostly hiking. Nothing where I myself was racing. To add to the difficulties, for something like two full hours starting probably around 7pm (honestly I have no idea for sure), it thunderstormed like woah. This was a little unsettling, as I was mostly alone on the trail at that point, but also kind of refreshing and I was willing to embrace the drama of it. Plus, it kept the evening bugs away! I was a little less willing to embrace what it left behind when full night fell: mud. Mud and fog. Fog that made it hard to see where the mud was especially slippery and would slide you straight into a rock if you tried to do anything resembling running. Fog that made it hard to look for blazes (I’ll admit, I was probably a bit paranoid in constantly checking for them but damn did I not want to get lost at that point in the race!) while stepping carefully, even using both a headlamp and a small handheld flashlight. And with the dark came some darker thoughts as well, definitely worse than anything I’ve experienced before during a race. The time over which 20 hours definitively slipped away was the worst, as it was so hard to tell whether or not I was giving up prematurely. I remember very clearly thinking, even if I could speed up and turn things around, I don’t deserve it. I could have made up some time trusting the trail and not continuously verifying the presence of blazes, but it wouldn’t have been enough time. My legs might have been able to take speeding up as much as was required, but I absolutely would have fallen and hurt myself. I just didn’t have nearly good enough vision or coordination at that point – I was jumping at fireflies and weird shadows, too – and the trail conditions were genuinely treacherous. And I DID fall and bloody up my knee a bit with three miles to go.

Finish area (taken the evening before the race)

The final 5 miles were just LONG. Over 20 minutes each, even with mostly downhill. At that point I knew I would miss 20 hours but also knew that only a nasty fall would keep me from coming in under 22, so I just tried to keep going steady, hurrying only because I wanted to be DONE.

At the end there was a trophy, a patch, friends, wet wipes, and vegetarian chili. Official finish time was 20:37:12.

Finisher swag.

 Yesterday I ran a little over a mile total with Back on my Feet. My calves are very easily fatigued – quads too, but less so. My feet, however, are magically pristine. Only new black toenails were temporary, from mud. I wore Altra Superior 2.0s, injinji toe socks, and a liberal gooping of Trail Toes (a sample Maggie gave me after the Phunt 50k way back in January). My big toes busted through my socks, but my biggest problems were merely prune feet and just a bit of rubbing – not even a real blister. Shoes didn’t grip the slick rocks quite as well as I wanted, but they kept my feet happy and got me through the race.

On the drive home, I shed a fat, solitary tear for my failed Western States goals… and then promptly busted out in maniacal laughter, and that was that. The thing is, I know it’s something like a 5-year timeline once you start entering the lottery. I don’t WANT to get in next year, and I’m not even sure about the year after. Mentally, adding a year to a 5-year timeline doesn’t really change a whole lot about my outlook. I still want it just as much. It’s still very far away.

I did think about trying for another qualifying race – I’d had my eye on Rio Del Lago at one point anyway – but I’m 99% sure now that I’m going to wait and run my first hundred at Rocky Raccoon in February. From my experience earlier this year pacing the hundred and racing the fifty, I know that it’s a race I can get excited about and I feel like it’s one that plays to my strengths, such as they are, and that I can train for effectively and potentially do well at. Who wants to come with me to Texas?

Running blog! Taper plan! Laurel Highlands Goals!

Starting a blog seems like a good thing to do during a taper week, right? Laurel Highlands is on Saturday, and it's not only twenty miles longer than anything I've run before, but it's also a race that allows you to enter the Western States lottery.

I think I have a good taper plan. Saturday I ran down to the Linc and participated in a pop-up November Project workout (a bit over 6 miles total including some stairs, partner push-ups, and leg throws).

Then was on my feet all day volunteering at the ODDyssey half marathon expo.

Except for some floor snuggles with adoptable Shelby!

Yesterday I didn't run but walked probably around 8 miles and carb loaded with generous quantities of IPA. This morning I worked out with Back on my Feet: due to my recent trip to Arizona, I hadn't run with the group in over a week, and it was great to be back. This evening I'm heading up to Bryn Mawr for an Altra run and Q&A - I'm looking forward to testing out The One 2.5 and, since I just got paid on Friday, chances are high that I'll buy some new shoes! Tomorrow I'm hoping to do a Monster Milers dogjog - always a great choice for a taper week, because runs with adoptable dogs tend to be not only immensely satisfying but also fairly slow and short. Wednesday will be a morning double-header of Back on my Feet followed by November Project. And I probably won't run at all Thursday and Friday! My thought is it might be fun to take Woody for an easy hike in the Wissahickon on Thursday morning. I want to take him to "the spot" and down to the stream that leads to Devil's Pool to see if I can coax him to splash in the water, muahahaha. Lots of fun, easy stuff! Volunteering at the ODDyssey expo Saturday was definitely a good call because it allowed me to hang out with runners all day and not miss my usual long run too much. Plus, it's a super fun race put on by great people: I'm sad I can't run it this year, but I'm not sure I'd make it back from Laurel Highlands in time for the start, even if I am by some miracle still able to run at that point!

I'll wrap up with a quick account of my goals for Laurel Highlands. My A goal is to finish under 18 hours. I chose this goal mainly because after finishing the ECSNY 50-Miler at the beginning of May in just over 15 hours, I spent a couple weeks terrified because I had misremembered Laurel Highlands as having an 18-hour cutoff. My B goal is to finish in under 20, as that's what Western States says you need to use the race as a qualifier. I'll be honest, I'll be pretty upset if I finish the race but can't use it to enter the lottery. I'm definitely interested in the race itself, not only in its status as a qualifier, but qualifying is my primary running goal for this year, and I really don't  want to mess with my fall race calendar and try to get in a November hundred.