Across the Years 24 hr Ultra Run

With my main party friends either working or out of town for New Year’s Eve, I decided to end 2011 and begin 2012 by making the drive to Arizona with my friends for a 24 hr ultra run with the goal of hitting 100 miles.

The race began Saturday the 31st at 9am and would end Sunday January the 1st at 9am.  The course was a 1.05 mile loop around the beautiful Camelback Park which was basically all flat so I was very confident I could get 100 miles as long as my body held up.

When the race began at 9am I was off at a fast pace but slowed myself down. In addition to getting 100 miles, I wanted to correct the mistakes that had made my past three ultras a disaster. The past three ultra races I went in with the mentality that I had a 50k, 50 mile, and 100 mile race under my belt so I no longer needed to worry about salt tablets, running conservatively, and pacing myself. Some of us have to learn the hard way and I did so when I noticed myself running too fast at the start, I slowed down and took myself back to February when I was doing my first 100 mile race and how cautious I was with my pace and tried to capture that mindset so I could stay in that cautious mentality.

The first 5 hours of the race were great as I was getting my body in a groove and picking spots I would stop to momentarily walk just to preserve my body and legs for later in the day around hour 15 and after. I’d done the calculation and all I needed to do was average 4 laps an hour to hit 100 miles in 24 hours. Those first 5 hours I was doing around an 11-12 minute pace which put me at 5 miles/hr with about a min or two to get in a quick stretch and take my salt tablets all within an hour. At 5 hours I hit 25.25 miles. Things were looking good and I was ahead of schedule.

I started to slow down however and didn’t hit the 50km distance until 6.5 hours into the race. Granted, I’d stopped at mile 15 for a bit for a true break but now the urgency to keep up with the mileage was starting to creep into my mind.

I was feeling fine and with urgency in my mind, I wanted to go into beast mode but I kept telling myself I needed to save myself for the night portion of the race so I continued my routine of walking about 1/4 of each lap and running 3/4 of it.

Around 5:30pm (hour 8.5) my family that lived in Arizona came to visit me so I stopped to talk to them for a bit. After they’d left, I started running again and after finishing that lap, I couldn’t stop thinking about lots of lost time I’d wasted. Although my body felt completely fine, I was beating myself up mentally and having negative thoughts about not being able to hit 100 miles in 24 hours. I went into the coulda, woulda, shoulda mentality and was thinking how dumb I was to sit around for so long during my breaks and why was I walking so much? I kept beating myself up until I stopped and walked a bit with my friend Ed Ettinghausen who told me I really had to pick my battles with the speed and walking but that it was still possible to reach 100 in 24 hours. That simple reassurance was all I needed to change my mentality back to positiveness.

I kept my normal routine except I was reducing the amount of walking I was doing and even ran a few miles without walking. My goal was to have at least 50 miles by the halfway point at the 12 hour mark. I felt myself slowing down again but luckily I talked to a fellow runner on the course and he basically told me that if I really wanted to hit my goal, I’d have to go into beast mode and go balls to the wall. I was still feeling really fresh and had been running fine but I’d just been running too conservative. That’s when I realized my conservative strategy was good for finishing 100 miles but it was too conservative for a 24 hr race so I took off running determined to only stop if I really felt I had to.

Miles 43-64 were probably the greatest of my entire running career because I was in a zone that I never thought would ever be possible. Not only was I at a high mileage point but I was actually running almost all of it! My confidence was back and I was on a high from this realization of the new level of fitness my body had reached.

Heading into the 58 mile mark, I was still on pace to hit 100 miles but I would have to have a pace no slower than 15 min miles because I was starting to slow down even more. I was at around a 13:50-14 minute miles and if I could get my pace back to sub 13 I had a chance of finishing around at 23.5 hours. I kept slowing down but surprisingly, my body was still holding up with just back soreness and I was still running with very little walking. The times I would stop, I would talk to other runners and getting words of encouragement from them and wishing them good luck on their goals as well.

At Miles 62 and 63 I got another jolt of energy  and hit a 12:40 and 13.30 mile and was feeling confident again that I might be able to start cranking out more miles to make up for lost time. However at mile 64, my body finally hit the wall and I was forced to walk the entire mile. I walked and talked to a runner who was running to raise money for a charity. Since I’m big on charity, we had a great conversation and it was the first time all day that I was feeling no pressure from reaching my overall goal of 100 miles. I told him I might stop at this next lap because I might not make it by 24 hours.

Sure enough, when I crossed the line to make it 65 miles, the screen said that my last lap had just taken me 25 minutes to do. I was crushed but at the same time, I was proud of how well my body had held up. I realized that all my strategies and training had prepared my body for 100 miles and if I’d had more than 24 hours, I easily would have finished 100 miles. Except maybe it would have taken me 26-27 hours at the rate I was going. At that point, I decided to stop and ring in the New Year because it was 11:55 ending my race with 65 miles in 15 hours.

So overall, I was proud of my performance and newfound level of endurance. Taking salt tablets did their job as I thought they would. I kept my core cool by putting water on my neck and ice in my bandanna. I ate plenty and found new race foods for future races such as pumpkin pie and pizza bagel bites. Although I didn’t reach my goal, I know my body was in excellent shape to have finished 100 miles if I’d been given more time and I was able to fix all the problems that had plagued me through the past three ultra races which will carry over to finishing future 50 and 100 mile races!