First Triple Weekends

Well it has been an interesting two weeks. This is the first time I have run three races on three consecutive weekends. And that is including a 50K (Earth Day 50K) just two weeks prior to this. It started on May 6th with the Palos Southwest Half-Marathon. I ran 1:46:59 for 116th place out of 658 and 4th out of 17 in my AG (60-64). Next on May 12th was the Starved Rock Marathon which I have finished all 5 years it has been in existence. Again, a pretty successful race in 3:57:37, good for 42nd out of 176 overall and 2nd out of 6 (60-64). The capper was today, May 19th. I had a great day at the Galena Sky 8 Hour at Chestnut Mountain Resort. A fun, but tough course with about 4500 feet of elevation gain. My distance was 42.65 miles in a few minutes under the 8 hours. I ended up 6th out of 86overall and 1st out of 5 AG (60-69). I definitely had a good day. The overall positions aren’t that impressive, but I am 63 years old and being in the top 20 to 25 percent against all this younger competition can’t be all that bad.

Tahoe 200 Mile - September, 2017

 I've been in Tahoe, now (Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) for 3 days trying to get a bit of altitude acclimation for the Tahoe 200 mile that will start in 2 days (Friday). It has been kind of a slow 3 days in that I am here by myself. I will be picking up Mary Lou (wife) at the Reno airport in a couple of hours. I am really looking  forward to being reunited with her. I actually flew into on Saturday night, but stayed at a Motel 6 right by the airport so I wouldn’t have the long drive to Tahoe until the next day. It was not a good night. People on both sides of my room were very noisy and obnoxious. The ones on my right didn’t quiet down until 1:00 am and the ones on the left started at 3:00 am and kept on until 4:00. And it was not a particularly nice room either.

But the place in Tahoe is quite fantastic. It is a full suite at the Lake Tahoe Vacation Resort in South Lake Tahoe. So I have been very comfortable, just a little lonely. Because of the race, I had to be real conservative in any running/hiking I would be doing. Monday was the only day I felt I could get out there for a reasonable amount of time. It was an hour and a 45 minutes climbing and descending Mt. Tallac. The trail was very technical and rocky, but it gave me a great opportunity to practice both uphill and downhill with my poles. It was really great and the  altitude didn’t seem to bother me that much. It gave me a little more confidence that I can handle that kind of terrain.

The rest of the time has been spent doing a little walking up and down the main drag and checking things out and just sitting around the place. Unfortunately, this has given me too much time to think about the race. I keep bouncing from feeling great looking  forward to it to going the opposite direction and being extremely nervous and wondering what am I doing even attempting this thing. I just want to get started.

I signed up for this over nine months ago and it has been my number one focus during these months. I even hired a coach for the months of May, June, July and August. I have gotten a lot of help from my coach, Adam St. Pierre, from CTS and I feel pleased with all my training. I feel fit and strong, and hope that the mental component will match it. I have no doubt it will be tough and long, but I trying very hard to just treat it as a great adventure. Probably the biggest adventure of my life, outside of my daughters being born.

Thursday:

Race check-in was today. It means the start is getting close. Picked up my number (117 – my birthday), goodie bag, bracelet and filled out medical forms. Had a nice pre-race meeting by Candace Burt (RD). But the big item was I met with Adam Kimble, the Adam Kimble of running across America fame and on Discovery Channel’s The Wheel fame. He is going to pace me from mile 140.5 to mile 175.5. That will happen as long as I can make it that far. But if I do, this will be freaking awesome. I am sitting here typing and can hardly believe it. But it will be very cool. He is just incredible.

Friday:

Race start is at 9:00 am. Waiting around for the start, getting my spot tracker and making sure that I have everything I need for the start, I can’t help feel the excitement of everyone around me. But at the same time, I am nervous as hell. I just need to get this thing started so I can settle down. The plan is to start at the back of the pack and be very conservative. I just can’t start out too crazy.

The date is 23 January 2018, four plus months after Tahoe. I have been putting this off for long enough. I think I am finally ready to finish this and get some closure. 

The race started and after about 30 meters we made a left turn and proceeded to head up and up and up to begin this adventure. Although it was a steady long climb, my legs handled it well. As we continued to rise up above Lake Tahoe, every turn gave us another beautiful view of the lake area. Once on top we had a couple of miles of up and down until we finally had one more good climb. Once there we had a terrific view. Then mostly downhill to the first aid station at about 7 miles called Barker Pass. 

A fairly quick refresh here and out we went and quickly met a whole group of runners coming back at us claiming that they could not find any course markings and figuring that they were heading the wrong way. As they and a pretty large group with me kind of just stood around trying to figure which way to go. After consulting several GPS watches we all decided to head out another way, which also turned out to not be quite right. But after about a mile of stopping and starting we finally got back on the course. It was after this that I had my first fall and did something to my right hand. I continued on into the section called the Rubicon which consisted of a bunch of very Rocky jeep trails. This was not only a very tough section it was also hard to follow at times. It was about halfway through this section that I discovered that when I fell back when, I actually split a GU pack and realized I had sticky slop all over the right side of my pack. I stopped for about 10 miles trying to clean it up, but really didn’t have much luck. Overall, it was very long stretch, but I finally reached the second aid station, Loon Lake. 

Surprisingly, I was actually ahead of my estimated time by about an hour. I spent about 10 minutes here. By this time, the rain was starting and continued for about the next hour and a half. This next section had a lot of single track that was in many places overgrown and with the rain tended to become small streams. Fortunately, it wasn’t too cold yet. By the time I hit the 3rd aid station (31 miles), the rain had stopped, but I was pretty well soaked through, and it was twilight. Now during all day, I was feeling the hernias off and on, starting with the first three hours and then most of the times I when I would take a kind of misstep, the pain would be back. In particular, the technical downhills tended to hurt with every step. So by the time I got to the 3rd aid station, Tell’s Creek, even though I was making good time, I had been through a lot of pain and was down a bit mentally. I was afraid I was possibly doing some more damage in the hernia area and I really had doubts about continuing. The next 31 miles would be even more technical.

But here is where I’ve been having trouble coming to terms with. Although the hernias were a part of the reason that I dropped at this point, it was not the whole reason. A very large part of the reason I dropped was something else. It had to do with an irrational fear of trying to handle the technical downhills in the dark. 

This was something that had happened once before at the Black Hills 100. Mile. I had reached the 50 mile mark which was the turnaround point in about 11 and half hours and felt pretty good. But this fear came over me that I would I was going to fall on the downhills in the dark and truly hurt myself. After sitting there for about an hour or so, I finally decided that I could not go on and dropped. 

This is what happened at Tell’s Creek. As much as I wanted to continue, I just couldn’t overcome this fear of really hurting myself. I really don’t know where this came from, because I have run through the night a number of times, but the last was three years earlier, but it was on a fairly flat non-technical course. The last time I ran through the night with some real downhills and technical trails was probably a good twelve to thirteen years ago. My guess is that this fear has something to do with my aging and feeling vulnerable, but I don’t really know. All I do know is that I have it, and I can’t seem to overcome it.

So I dropped. This aid station was really out in the middle of nowhere and I was so fortunate that the station captain was willing to take me to where there was cell service to call my wife, but as we went we realized real quick that my wife would never be able to find this aid station in the dark. It was a good half hour just to reach cell service. It turned out one of the aid station workers was going to be leaving within about an hour and heading to the 62 mile aid station. So when I called my wife it was to meet her and my daughter at this aid station. It was easily an hour ride to this aid station, but finally we got there and my wife and daughter were there and back to the motel we went. We finally got back there about 1:00 am.

Although it was an extremely shortened adventure of about 10 hours of running/hiking, it was definitely an experience. I just wish I could have made it to at least the halfway point. But I don’t regret trying it. What I do regret is not having the chance to run with Adam Kimble while out there. (I did get to have lunch with him and his wife a couple of days later before heading back home.) And I don’t know that if I would not have had the hernia problem, if I might have been able to actually have a chance to overcome the fear. By the way, I was diagnosed originally with two hernias, but when I went into surgery a couple of weeks later, it turned out I had four. Did I get the two extra ones from Tahoe? Who knows.

After the hernia surgery, it took about a month to be back running on a regular basis and before 2017 was over I did get in a 25K trail race and a 4 mile Turkey Trot which both went pretty well. Now it is the last part of January, and I am back running pretty well, but a bit slower. I do get a pain in the hernia areas once in awhile, but overall I am feeling pretty good. I do think the slower part has been the winter though. It has been a cold one and I am wearing a lot of clothes these days. Looking forward to spring.