Archive for February 13, 2017
Salem Lakeshore Frosty 50k race report
::tap tap:: Hello…. hello? Is, is this thing still on? Mic check. Hello? ::tap tap::
I think it’s been said that the journey of 1,000 words begins with a single letter. Or something to that effect. Now that we have my corny dad joke out of the way, perhaps I can get started…
It’s been quite a while since I wrote anything of substance on here. And there have been more than a few times, often around the turn of a new year, when I have gotten on this blog and wrote some sort of impassioned proclamation that this time, THIS TIME(!), will be different. That things have been… less than spectacular, and I intend to change that and I have a plan and I intend to write and record how this masterful plan is going and all the success along the way. Then I get like, maybe a month or two, if that, and everything goes awry. I get busy, I get lazy, and this gets put aside.
What does this have to do with a race? Not much, and everything. Things have decidedly NOT been great, for far longer than I would really like to ruminate on. And a dream without a plan is just a wish, and if wishes were fishes, I’d have a witty sounding end to this incredibly pointless sentence. I intend to write here, possibly often, but who knows. I am loathe to talk about myself, but I enjoy writing, and I like to write down some mental notes from races I’ve done; so, I’m stuck with this. I suppose I could just write them privately, but what would the handful of you who read this do then?! So, hello again dear readers. I am not going to talk about past failures and successes (well, not much at least). For now, I’m going to recap a race I ran and then take it from there.
So, a few weeks ago, Ari and I traveled to Winston-Salem to run the Salem Lakeshore Frosty 50k (well, she ran the 25k, but you get the idea). It was my first long (read: marathon or longer) race in months and the first race I didn’t completely dread in a lot more than just a few months. Fortunately, the weather cooperated (this had been rescheduled from two week’s prior thanks to NC’s one winter storm of the season), and heading to the race, I was more thinking about how humid it was than how cold I was.
In typical Mark fashion, we had to hustle from the parking lot to the starting line and got there with mere minutes to spare. Just enough time to use the port-a-potty, put our bags by the bag check tent, and get to the start line, where I saw Shannon and Kelly Bruno. I gave Ari a good luck kiss and got ready to maybe not suck so much this time. When we finally started, I kept mentally telling myself to relax and run easy. The 50k consists of four 7.75 mile loops of Salem Lake, mostly flat with some easy undulations, and almost all of it hard-packed gravel surface, much like the Umstead bridle trails I love so much. In the first mile, it felt like a lot of people just blitzed out by me and were gone. My competitive instincts were easy to quell, as the thought of blowing up and having to trundle around the lake for hours and hours did not strike me as any sort of fun, so that first mile I was content to let people literally run away from me and settle in to what felt like a sustainable rhythm. I was a bit surprised when I saw the first split was right around 8:00, followed by another. My effort felt more in line with what I’d been running of late, which was decidedly closer to 9:00 or slower.
Not one to argue with my body, I decided that if it truly felt comfortable, I was going to stick with it. The lake on the first lap was pretty cool. With the humidity, there was a fairly dense fog lingering on the surface and making it sort of spooky. The loop had a lot of twists and turns and you could see runners ahead and behind you at various junctures which was cool, although I was somewhat disappointed that I never managed to spy Ari through the trees. At the end of the loop, there’s a fairly steep, but short, uphill leading to one last significantish downhill. At the top of the hill, I pulled off to the side and peed, which would be the only time I needed to do that all race. As a result of that pit stop, I came in just over an hour, happy and still running well.
The second lap is a bit of a wash mentally. I ran. I think I caught some people who had been ahead of me. I continued to click off pretty consistent miles. My legs felt good, and I was grateful for that. I was sweating more than usual for this time of year, but I think I was doing a good job of staying hydrated to counteract it. I hit halfway at just over two hours, thinking to myself that even if the wheels totally fell off at this point, I wouldn’t have to suffer too too long. The third loop, I expected things to thin out some as the 25k runners would be finishing, but a decent amount of traffic remained on the trail. I enjoyed it because it gave me a short-term focus pretty much the entire way around, which helped distract me from the accumulating fatigue. As I came toward the end of the third lap, I was excited because I figured I would get to see Ari and then only have one loop to go. I tried my best to be in and out efficiently, but I couldn’t find some stuff that I had, in my infinite brilliance, left in the car. In the parking lot. A half mile away. It took me a good thirty seconds for this to sink in before I said fuck it and got on with more important stuff, like ya know, finishing the race.
As I started the last loop, I allowed myself to feel some degree of excitement, as I was fairly certain that I was going to 1) finish the race and 2) finish the race significantly better than I had anticipated or hoped. Hitting the marathon mark a few miles into the loop in a time I haven’t seen in a marathon in almost a year and a time that just a month or so ago seemed about as attainable as time travel was a nice boost. I was certainly feeling a bit more tired, but my early restraint was paying off in the form of legs that still felt like they had some juice. I definitely didn’t (and couldn’t) pick it up or kick it in or anything, but I was able to maintain and grind out the last few miles. Coming down the hill for the last time, crossing the finish line, I was certainly ready to be done with this nonsense, but I was not DONE, if that makes any sense. More importantly than finishing place or time (which I was quite pleased with) was how I managed to not fall apart and run almost the entire race evenly. But if you’re the type of person who needs to know, feel free to peruse the results here. My splits for all four laps were within two minutes of one another (one minute, if you factor out the minute I spent watering trees before the end of the first loop). That level of consistency over such a long distance leads me to believe I had a bit more in the tank and that with some actual training, I might not suck at this stuff in the not-so-far-off future.
Post-script: Ari ran a strong 25k and carried on to finish her first 20 mile run and thusly missed me finishing. I appreciate a girlfriend who skips me finishing my race so she can get her shit done. I appreciate more that she didn’t make a big deal out of it, because, ultimately, it’s not. It’s a baby step in the right direction. Check back say in August and see if there have been several more steps that way. I’ve got a busy year planned out, ambitious too. But back to wishes and fishes and all that crap, and now it’s time for bed.
Mark, out.
Ultrahobbyjogger 