Start to Antelope Mesa (0–7.7)

This stretch does have some le­git­i­mate­ly smooth part­s! You go around the track, down the street, on some nice packed dirt for a while, and then even­tu­al­ly hit trail­s. I hit this aid sta­tion about 12 min­utes up on the sub­-10 goal.

In my head, I jus­ti­fied the pace as I bare­ly felt that sec­tion. It was smooth, I felt right at home in this pace, and I was ready to spend all day there.

Do­ing this over again, I’d prob­a­bly back off here but on­ly slight­ly. I ran this sec­tion at 8:01/mi, but I think if I do this clos­er to 8:30/­mi I’m al­right. No need to go out too hard as it’s a long day ahead, but it’s a com­par­i­tive­ly easy sec­tion so I think it’s rea­son­able to move through here a lit­tle faster.

I did­n’t stop at An­te­lope Mesa. It’s on­ly 5.2 to the next aid from there, and I hit the aid sta­tion in al­most ex­act­ly an hour so it co­in­cid­ed with tak­ing my own GUs that I al­ready had on me.

To Hidden Treasure (7.7–12.9)

There’s a lot of that down­hill in here, pos­si­bly the most of any sec­tion, but al­so a lot of those tiny up­hill­s! I ran this sec­tion just a hair slow­er at 8:04/­mi and was still feel­ing re­al­ly good, and still main­tain­ing a pace that would put me un­der my goal. I even had a lit­tle card that showed the nec­es­sary elapsed time at each aid sta­tion to main­tain the A and B goal­s.

I made a 1:07 stop at Hid­den Trea­sure to fill up both bot­tles and then I was of­f.

Next time I’d back off con­sid­er­ably here, prob­a­bly a minute per mile. I was let­ting my car­dio­vas­cu­lar ef­fort dic­tate keep­ing up the pace (I don’t do heart rate, but this felt ok from an RPE per­spec­tive), but the wear and tear from con­stant ups and downs de­served more rep­sec­t. Plus, as I would find out, they were not end­ing any time soon.

To Bumble Bee (12.9–19.4)

This is where I start­ed to back off a bit. Com­ing out of Hid­den Trea­sure is a rel­a­tive­ly flat spot that I prob­a­bly stayed on the gas through ~8:00/mi, which then leads to a good stretch of un­du­lat­ing sin­gle­track. It’s al­so—­to use a word from my wife—ser­pen­tine.

This sec­tion snakes around a lot to where you’re not run­ning straight for very long. Lots of tight curves amongst these lit­tle up and down dip­s. I ran this sec­tion at 8:56/mi, which I’d di­al back maybe slight­ly over­al­l. The first half of it is de­cent­ly runnable, but I should have slowed down a bit through those dips and swoop­s.

Head­ing in­to Bum­ble Bee is a nice smooth down­hill on a packed dirt road, so you can ease back on it a lit­tle bit there, but don’t try to make up any time there. It’s ear­ly.

I fumbled my watch here and I see a 27 second lap (I usually hit lap when entering and lap when exiting), but I got both bottles filled up here. This was probably a ~60 second stop.

BONUS: My wife was watch­ing the live stream and saw me come in­to the aid sta­tion. She said I looked strong!

To Gloriana Mine (19.4–24.0)

This was a tough sec­tion for me. Com­ing out of Bum­ble Bee brings you to the first sus­tained climb. It al­so brought you to the wind. It al­so re­al­ly re­in­forced un­du­lat­ing.

That climb com­ing out of aid gains maybe 350–400’, and with my hips start­ing to feel the wear from all of the un­du­la­tion, I hiked this one. That just lead to more un­du­lat­ing. Once you’re up top, there’s a big val­ley off to the right and you’re carv­ing the in­side of this moun­tain, just go­ing up and down and up and down, in and out of slot­s, and then up and down.

I took this stretch around 10:36/mi, for a 47:32 trip to Glo­ri­ana. Once there, I stopped for 2:06 to re­fill bot­tles and grab a cup of GU Roc­tane.

At this point my hips and glutes were re­al­ly feel­ing it. I’ve had some TFL/g­lute medius im­bal­ance is­sues on my right side for a few years now, which leads to a me­di­al knee col­lapse, but my knees felt com­par­i­tive­ly fine. My hips were start­ing to get trashed.

To Soap Creek (24.0–31.2)

This stretch sucked. It starts off with some flat-ish part­s, and then there’s a long down­hill stretch. A lot of that down­hill is on some harsh rock for­ma­tion. Not want­ing to burn my quads out and al­so not hav­ing a great hip sit­u­a­tion, I took this a bit easy. It was frus­trat­ing to not be tak­ing ad­van­tage of this part, but I al­so did­n’t feel re­al­ly con­fi­dent on that rock. This rock al­so ripped off the back of my left shoe. Damn this rock.

Then you hit the bot­tom, tool around in cir­cles for a while, then come back up to­ward Soap Creek.

In or­der to hit my sub­-10 hour goal I need­ed to hit Soap Creek in 4:57 elapsed. I sort of knew that was out the win­dow based on the last ten miles, but I was still close. I don’t know what dis­tance my watch thought I was at ex­act­ly when I hit aid, but it claims I made a 50K PR at 5:05, so some­where around there.

I stayed here for 4:04, re­fill­ing bot­tles, grab­bing Roc­tane, eat­ing some wa­ter­mel­on, and just tak­ing a sec­ond to breathe and re-frame my­self.

Run­ning near Soap Creek the day be­fore the race

To Black Canyon City (31.2–37.4)

I came here the day be­fore the race to run with Bry­den and we went about 2.5 miles out and then back, just to get some ac­tion on the course and stretch out af­ter a 14 hour drive.

That first 2.5 miles went fair­ly fine. It’s not too un­du­lat­ing, but does have some sec­tions of soft­ball sized rock that I just want­ed to make sure I did­n’t break my an­kles on. Even­tu­al­ly you get to some smooth rolling dirt road, though it’s pret­ty ag­gres­sive­ly rolling. It’s not like a hill in your neigh­bor­hood, but at least it was smooth.

Some­where in here it be­came hard to run. My hips were de­stroyed and it was hard to do much more than hike or shuf­fle, which start­ed to get de­mor­al­iz­ing. Ev­ery­thing else, though, felt pret­ty good! Di­ges­tion was good, en­er­gy was good, and my over­all mood and con­fi­dence were chang­ing but in­tac­t. I just had to keep on mov­ing and I’d be al­right.

I even­tu­al­ly hit the aid sta­tion 1:22 lat­er, slow­ing down to a 12:58/­mi pace through this stretch. It got pret­ty dark head­ing in­to BCC and I briefly thought about drop­ping.

I end­ed up stay­ing in Black Canyon City for 9 min­utes (!), where I had my first drop bag. I re­stocked on my GU Chews, put on more Squir­rel’s Nut But­ter, and read a bunch of notes from my wife. I cried a lit­tle bit be­cause she’s so amaz­ing, and al­so be­cause one of the notes was a list of names we would have to give our (not yet con­ceived) ba­by if I drop any­where af­ter this point. They were all bad names that I don’t want our ba­by to have, so I had to keep go­ing.

I al­so bor­rowed a vol­un­teer’s phone to text her to bring more clothes to Ta­ble Mesa, where I’d get to see her. Know­ing where I was at pace-­wise, I was go­ing to be go­ing on much longer than I ini­tial­ly planned for, and this tiny tank top was not go­ing to cut it as it got cold­er and windi­er. Thank you to this per­son! Nor­mal­ly peo­ple just pre­pare for this, but I was not that per­son. See the Goal Set­ting sec­tion above.

I had al­ready ac­cept­ed the fact that the A and prob­a­bly B goals were gone, was firm­ly plant­ed in em­brac­ing the suck of the up­com­ing stretch, and was ad­dress­ing it by fo­cus­ing on keep­ing what was work­ing well, work­ing well. Let’s go, on to Cot­ton­wood.

To Cottonwood (37.4–46.2)

I felt bet­ter com­ing out of the aid sta­tion, but still not re­al­ly in a runnable state. What­ev­er, let’s just pow­er through and get there, right?

[Nar­ra­tor’s voice] That is not what hap­pened.

Well, I made it be­yond this, so I guess it sort of hap­pened, but this was a bru­tal stretch. I left BCC in the vicin­i­ty of a wom­an I ran slight­ly ahead of since Soap Creek at mile 31.2. I nev­er saw her again. Short­ly af­ter two peo­ple passed me around prob­a­bly mile 39, I would not see an­oth­er per­son be­hind me—as this sec­tion ser­pen­tines around this canyon—un­til prob­a­bly mile 45. I spent those 6 miles slow­ly watch­ing these two guys pull ahead, dis­ap­pear, reap­pear fur­ther away, and ul­ti­mate­ly nev­er see them again.

All the while it’s cloudy and the sun is go­ing down, and no one is any­where be­hind me. In re­al­i­ty they were prob­a­bly there, just dis­ap­pear­ing around the curves just like the guys in front of me were. It was this, cou­pled with my di­min­ish­ing in­abil­i­ty to run more than a few step­s, that caused me to start pan­ick­ing a bit.

It would take me 2:10 to get the 8.8 miles to the Cot­ton­wood aid sta­tion, and dur­ing that time I made up my mind that I had to be done. All my “ac­cep­t, em­brace, ad­dress” stuff was not work­ing. I start­ed to wor­ry that if I keep go­ing this slow the rains that I knew were com­ing and the cold winds that were al­ready blow­ing as the sun was prac­ti­cal­ly down (rather, be­hind what ap­peared to be two hours worth of cloud­s) were go­ing to leave me cold and wet and out in the mid­dle of nowhere un­able to help my­self. Un­re­al­is­tic? Yeah, prob­a­bly, but that’s what think­ing you’re the last per­son out there will do to you.

The oth­er thing I start­ed think­ing was that when I get to Cot­ton­wood, can I even drop there? I’m nor­mal­ly good with spa­tial aware­ness and hav­ing a ref­er­ence of where I’m at, but I was to­tal­ly clue­less. I had­n’t seen an ac­tu­al road in two hours. Noth­ing ahead looks like it’s head­ing to­wards a road, and those jeeps I could hear off in the dis­tance are the kind you drive up rock wall­s. They’re not pas­sen­ger ve­hi­cles; they’re out here be­cause they’re built to be. They’re built for the un­du­la­tion.

Thanks to my nifty card, I knew that if I could­n’t drop at Cot­ton­wood, it’s on­ly 4.7 miles to Ta­ble Mesa, where my wife was wait­ing to send me off to the fin­ish (prob­a­bly for two hours, since I was way be­hind). Plus, if I could drop there I would­n’t just be chauf­fered to wher­ev­er I’d like to go (Table Mesa), and where my wife was (Table Mesa) does not have good cell re­cep­tion any­way. We were there the day be­fore so she’d know where to go1. I had to get my­self to Ta­ble Mesa.

Prob­a­bly a mile from Cot­ton­wood, two guys pass me. I hit the aid sta­tion af­ter drop­ping to a 14:38/­mi pace through­out the near­ly 9 mile stretch, and then two peo­ple come in a minute be­hind me. Where the hell were these peo­ple for two hours? Hid­ing?

I grabbed some wa­ter and gin­ger ale for a 3:52 stop with the fine folks at Cot­ton­wood and head­ed on my way. I did­n’t even both­er ask­ing about drop­ping. It was go­ing to be a has­sle and I just had to pro­pel my­self. I was still feel­ing good in all oth­er ways ex­cept my legs, so maybe just get­ting there would do the trick. Plus, that’d get me over 50 miles, so at least I’d have that.

To Table Mesa (46.2–50.9)

This sec­tion had some rel­a­tive­ly flat parts that I could shuf­fle-jog with­out a lot of pain, and with the sun set­ting I tried to do that as much as I could. Be­cause I had made peace with this be­ing the fi­nal stretch, it was ac­tu­al­ly kind of fun. Slow, but fun.

At prob­a­bly mile 48 I saw a fa­mil­iar or­ange shirt be­hind me, and about a minute lat­er he caught up. We start­ed in the same wave and ran a lot of the first half to­geth­er, and I moved aside to wave him on since I was just walk­ing at that point. He stopped briefly to catch up and see how I was do­ing since it had been a while, and he’s the one who ran an ex­tra ~5 miles due to miss­ing the Black Canyon City out­-and-back. We chat­ted briefly about how our days were go­ing, then hiked a bit to­geth­er up a lit­tle climb.

It turns out we live near each oth­er and he’s some­one I no­ticed in my wave as­sign­ment that I thought, “he­h, I won­der if I’ll end up run­ning with that guy.” It was­n’t un­til the very end that we ac­tu­al­ly talked to each oth­er, but I let him get on with it and run ahead as I was still most­ly walk­ing. I’d see him leav­ing Ta­ble Mesa and told him to go on and get that buck­le, which he did in 12:28, rough­ly 2:30 af­ter leav­ing the aid sta­tion.

Af­ter that I was fair­ly close and the sun was set­ting, so I picked up the pace a lit­tle bit as I heard the com­mo­tion of the aid sta­tion. As I en­tered, who was stand­ing there all alone ready to help me out? My wife. It was­n’t even like she was stand­ing with a group of peo­ple cheer­ing on run­ners as they came in, she was just stand­ing out in the mid­dle of nowhere, prob­a­bly for a very long time.

I gave her a hug and just broke down. That was it. She was ready to get me go­ing for the next seg­ment but I could­n’t. Thank­ful­ly she brought some ex­tra stuff based on the text I sent from Black Canyon City, but I was still not pre­pared enough to do it and I wor­ried that I’d be out fin­ish­ing those fi­nal 12 miles stum­bling around in the dark for 5 hours. Should I have pre­pared bet­ter in or­der to get that done? Ab­so­lute­ly. But I failed even the ba­sic prepa­ra­tion to make sure I could do last pos­si­ble thing to get my­self across the line. It re­al­ly suck­s.

From there we sat in the car for a bit warm­ing up and telling her about the day, then went to the fin­ish line to grab my bag. Then we ate some cal­zones, tried to get some rest, then drove an­oth­er 14 hours home.

Attainable Goals and Supporting Them

This seems pret­ty ob­vi­ous, but I al­so thought I had pre­pared well enough that I was do­ing the right thing. I know what paces I should fall back to in cer­tain sec­tion­s, and I think my over­all time goals are not too far off of what I’m ca­pa­ble of. I might go slight­ly more con­ser­va­tive but still want it to be a true chal­lenge.

“Just fin­ish” will be the back­up goal, and putting to­geth­er the nec­es­sary gear to sup­port that is go­ing to be a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er pri­or­i­ty next time. It was ba­si­cal­ly an af­ter-thought this time, which means it re­al­ly was­n’t a goal if I was­n’t re­al­ly work­ing to­wards it and pre­par­ing for it.

Wear a Vest

In sup­port­ing the goal­s, hav­ing what I need on the course is some­thing that will need to im­prove. Even some of the ac­tu­al­ly fast guys who just do hand­helds ac­tu­al­ly start­ed this race with a vest and dropped it at some point.

50K is prob­a­bly my new lim­it for get­ting away with no vest.

Strength Work

The way to get bet­ter and faster at run­ning is to run more, not lift weight­s, but the sus­tain­abil­i­ty prob­lem I had was less with be­ing able to hold the pace but more with the im­pact that the ter­rain had on me. Car­dio­vas­cu­lar­ly I felt re­al­ly good through­out this, so I’m do­ing some­thing right there. Slow­ing down would help slight­ly, but ul­ti­mate­ly that makes for more steps and more time which makes for a lot more im­pact to be tak­en.

Build­ing up the pos­te­ri­or chain, es­pe­cial­ly with the known im­bal­ance that I have, is go­ing to be key to build­ing a body that can keep up with the paces that the rest of my body can put down. Hip thrust­s, good morn­ings, RDL­s, squat­s, etc. are on the menu. Band­ed ex­er­cis­es like clamshells to build up the ad­duc­tors are some­thing I’ve done in the past that need to come back. Prob­a­bly some an­kle strength­en­ing stuff as well.

Hard days should be hard, so I’ll start mix­ing some of this in af­ter work­out­s.

Keep the Mental Game Up

Matt Fitzger­ald’s “The Come­back Quo­tient” is a pret­ty good read about be­ing an “ul­tra­real­ist” and how to “ac­cep­t, em­brace, and ad­dress” things that come up in en­durance events. Af­ter hav­ing too many rough runs dur­ing my post-in­jury come­back where I was just a men­tal wreck, I had to do some­thing about it. I’m al­most done with it, but it’s prob­a­bly worth a re­vis­it be­fore races as it’s a fair­ly quick read and a good boost.

Ad­die Bra­cy, who got fifth at this race, has a book com­ing out in a few months called “Men­tal Train­ing for Ul­tra­run­ning” that I’m look­ing for­ward to read­ing.

The End

0

I fin­ished Way Too Cool 50K in March 2020 just sec­onds un­der my 4:30 goal, and ap­par­ent­ly did so with a bro­ken foot. I felt it a lit­tle bit while run­ning but thought it was just a mi­nor tweak and noth­ing sig­nif­i­can­t. A few hours af­ter the race it was ex­treme­ly painful, and end­ed up be­ing a stress frac­ture of my sec­ond metatarsal. I spent prob­a­bly two months in a plas­tic air­cast and then about a month of reg­u­lar shoes but no run­ning, then eased back in­to train­ing around Ju­ly.

1

I mapped where to go and then drove there, and guess who was wrong? Me. She was like “do you think it’s that big tent over there?” (it was) and I said some­thing like “this is what the web­site says” as I drove to this emp­ty dirt road hav­ing none of the fea­tures I de­scribed.