Old Man Still running

Amazed at how beat up I felt from that half marathon.  I must be getting old.  Sore calves and I slept over 10 hours last night.  Weird.   Looking at the results, a big field, 73rd overall out of 2443, top 3%.  In my age group, I was 5th, but the top 5 all finished within 2:26 of each other, then there was a gap of 5:30 until the next runner.  I believe I'm closing the gap with those who usually beat me.  If I really cared, I could really train for speed and road foot speed.  But, I don't, so it is back to the trails I go.

FYI, when I consider overall results, I always include women who beat me in those results,  To me, I'm racing against them too.  Good for them.  11 beat me.   In 100-milers and 50-milers, I'm finally getting to the point where only about 2-3 beat me.

Sore calves but feeling better. Too many people asked me today if I did a huge run over the weekend because they can see that I'm walking weird.  Pretty funny to tell them that I only did a half marathon.

New month, still on track for my highest mile year.  December will likely be a 400-mile month with Across the Years race.

Calves getting better but still sore on the downhills and down stairs.  I signed up for the Antelope Island 100K.  Just two days away, hopefully the soreness will be gone.  The danger of doing a very long run with tight calves is shin splints.  I've had that happen before, really bad resulting in internal bleeding/bruising.  Pretty nasty, takes a good month or more to heal.

Spent a half hour blasting the calves with water jets in the hot tub.  That always seems to give them a great deep massage and turn them to mush.  Also swam some laps.  Its been months since I've swam.  Boy, you really lose it if you don't do it often.

Heating pad treatment on the calves overnight.  Seemed to help.  I'll still have some soreness tomorrow.  It could loosen up and not be a problem or could seize up.  If this were a 100-miler, I doubt if I would start.   But this is just a fun 100K.  It would be nice to set a PR at this distance.   The only other 100K I've run is KM100 which is a crazy slow 100K.  At ATY 2007, I reached 100K distance at just under 12 hours.  At Pony Express this year, I would have been close to that mark, but I sat in the car for a rest right before the 100K mark.  So beating 12 hours would be nice.

I'm heading out to the island this afternoon to help Jim set up.

Predictions.   I think two runners from Colorado are the favories, Zach Hermsen and Tim Long.  Zach ran a sub-24 at Leadville this year. Tim ran Bear in 23 hours. I don't believe I can keep up with them.   There are also two swift guys from Wyoming who have run sub-8 50s, Christopher Dingman and Chris Lundberg, but they haven't race over 50 before.  Can they keep up the speed past 50?  Probably.  Then there are about nine others that are about my speed if my legs will work.

Full race report posted here.

My goal was to break 12 hours.   I cut it a wee bit close and really had to push the last ten miles or so.

It was a spectacular, perfect running day on the island.  This new course runs for several miles along the western beach and during loop 2 there was a cool breeze coming off the Great Salt Lake.  It really felt like an ocean breeze, full of salt.  Really neat.

My race went pretty well.  The field was pretty competitive, some speedy runners entered the last couple days.   My sore calves were not a problem, after a couple miles they felt fine.  In fact I was the overall leader as late as mile 12.  It was fun to run with the front-runners, even when we all went off course and went through a muddy march.  We ended up all going in seperate directions to get out of it.  When we finally run back out on the lake bed, Phil Lowry saw us come out with our lights and said we looked like Picket's charge at Gettysburg, all coming down on the lake at different points.  Really funny.

I backed off my pace as usual, sticking with Phil until about mile 20 and then started to struggle with a bad blister, left over from that stupid half marathon last Saturday.  It really slowed me down for the next 20 miles until I stopped, cleaned things out and removed tape that wasn't working. 

I finished the first 50K at 5:15 and reached the 50-mile mark at 9:27.   Around mile 48, I felt fantastic and turned on the jets.  At that point I knew reaching my sub-12 hour goal was in major jeapordy.  But I concentrated very hard and used my Garmin to keep my pace up.  Crossed the finish line at 12:58 to really nice cheers.  Brian Beckstead and others hung around until I finished.  That was nice.  This was a 100K race PR for me, mostly because there are so few 100Ks to run.   I really loved the fast course with the varied trails and the four tough long, but runnable, climbs. I came up two minutes short of my 100K distance PR during a longer race.   At 2008 ATY I reached 100K at 11:54 on a totally flat track..   By my Garmin today I reached 100K at 11:56, the course being a tiny bit long. (my off course adventure and a big detour around some buffalo added a little).

Looking at the Garmin data, my fastest mile was a 7:42 at mile 9 when I took the lead blasting down some switchbacks. Slowest was a 21:00 mile during the 1,000-foot two-mile climb on Loop 2.  During Loop 1, it was a 17:05 mile at this same point.  Looks like we only lost about 3 minutes going off course.  Mile 62 was a 9:24 mile as I "sprinted" to get under 12 hours.

Looks like I only walked about 3.5 miles of the entire 62 miles.