Bull Run 50 Miler

After having such a good time at Holiday Lake I immediately signed up for the Bull Run 50 Miler, an awesome event put on by VHTRC. The event is a double out and back near Clifton VA not too far from where the battle of Bull Run took place. I got some pretty good training in including a 7.5 hour training run near Hawksbill in Shenandoah. However, my training was not as thorough as I had wanted. February through April involved me interviewing for and accepting a job in Tucson Arizona and doing a house hunting trip. Oh and I got called in for jury duty where I spent three days as part of a jury for a trial. This pretty much broke up my training more than I wanted so I had good weeks and bad weeks. My overly confident goal was 9 hours but on the inside I knew it would probably be more like 10...but I figured "hey maybe I'll have a good day". Anyway, I spent the night at the race start at Hemlock overlook and was both excited and nervous when it came time to start at 6:30 on Saturday. The course is a 16 mile out and back followed by a 34 mile out and back. I had been warned that the first 17 or so miles is pretty easy and to not fall in to the trap of going out too hard to soon.

Anyway at 6:30 we all set off using two hand-held bottles for hydration. I settled in to a pace I felt comfortable with and immediately knew my 9 hour goal was out the window. It felt more like a 10 hour kind of day already. Things went pretty well and quick all the way to the first turn around. About 3/4 of a mile before the turn around I saw my friend Snipes and he gave me some quick encouragement before blasting past. There were a few camera guys along the course. As you can see....I was feeling pretty good.

The turn around back to Hemlock Overlook was also pretty quick and painless. I saw my crew at an aid station and they replenished my supply of Hammer Gel. Time flew by and I was climbing the hill into Hemlock Overlook at mile 16. I got some candy and refilled my water bottles and my crew hooked me up with a Big 100 bar which I scarfed down, yum 350 calories! Soon enough I was back on the trails and running through a sea of Blue Bell flowers which was pretty cool. After crossing a soccer field we started into the "harder" part of the course and started hitting some rolling hills. The day was starting to heat up so I was relieved when the hills abated and I arrived at the Bull Run Marina Aid station and saw my crew again. It was really cool that so many people were interested in coming out and spending their day in the sun mainly for the purpose of handing me a box full of Hammer Gel every 60 - 90 minutes.

The Bull Run Marina aid station (mile 21ish) was awesome...and here is why.....this is important stuff!! Bacon....they had bacon and it was amazing. Apparently people had been turning them down on the whole bacon front which at the time I found to be pretty much a crime. The aid station volunteers hooked me up with two slices of salty-protein goodness and I continued out under a bridge through some precarious rocks. At this point you start thinking "Man these rocks are going to really suck in about 25 miles when I hit them again".

Not a good way to start this segment of the course. Things were getting even hotter and the next 5 miles until I hit Wolf Run Shoals was starting to get tough. I hadn't hit the wall yet but I was starting to dread it. Also the thought of still having 25-28 miles to go was starting to REALLY get into my head. I started thinking about a dirty 4 letter word that starts with a "D" .....but luckily I got a hold of myself a little bit and toughed through till I hit the next aid station at mile 26.

Things got a little bit tough for a while

This aid station was good and bad news for me. I refueled and saw a sign that said "2 miles until next aid". This led me to think I'd be at the next aid station in no time! Wrong! 30 minutes later I had navigated a pretty hilly stretch and finally got into the Fountainhead Aid Station (Mile 28). I was right in the middle of hitting a wall at this point so I ditched my shirt with my crew and grabbed about 4 gels (I didn't get to see my crew again for 10 miles). I stalked over to the aid station table where the volunteers helped me refill my water bottles, I ate some food and for good measure took an S-cap to keep my electrolytes up. Then I was out onto the white loop.

The "White Loop" section of the course went much better for me. Things finally started to cool down and the extra time I took to eat at Fountainhead paid some big dividends. I had broken through the wall, was into the second half of the race and feeling good compared to a few hours before. There were some small rolling hills and before I knew it I was coming up on the Do Loop Aid Station (Mile 32).

I ate some fruit and nuts at the aid station as well as some Mountain Dew and then moved out toward the start of the Do Loop. Right as I started the loop my stomach turned on me really bad, so I took a quick bathroom break. After the break I felt really good and made great progress through the Do Loop. I had been warned it was pretty tough but I actually had a lot of fun (and there was a nice breeze off the river).

Coming back through the Do Loop Aid Station they hooked me up with a fudgesicle it was amazing...until I dropped part of it on the ground (a true injustice after 35 miles of running). The two miles back to Fountainhead went by pretty quickly but I was starting to have trouble keeping pace. It wasn't a matter of my legs being cramped up (they weren't) and it wasn't a matter of being out of breath (I wasn't). It just seems that after running for that long.....sometimes your body just doesn't want to listen to you!

Coming in to Fountainhead (38 miles) I saw my crew again, but I quickly got distracted by the pizza at the aid station. I ate a slice of cheese, it felt really good to have some real food in me. The next section was the tough hilly section. I was having trouble with motivation, I knew I was going to finish but I just couldn't make myself run. Luckily I had been running relatively nearby some girl since entering the white loop. She asked if I wanted to run together for the end of the race which made me feel a lot better. Having someone to run with was an immediate improvement. It's much easier to motivate yourself and conversation beats an Ipod any day of the week. Anyway Siobhan (cool name) ran and chatted about how she and her husband were getting into ultras and my upcoming relocation to the southwest. Once at Wolf Run Shoals I was treated to an ice-cream sandwich  (Wonderful) and the knowledge that there were only 10 miles to go!

The company really really helped in the next section. Siobhan and I took turns taking the lead and pacing (although truth be told I think she led a little more than me). We agreed that so far this was the toughest part of the race since it was hilly and there was still a good distance to go. There were a couple places at the bottom of hills where there was a small stream about a foot deep. This was awesome, while other runners hopped over, I soaked my feet in the cool water and felt a lot better! After what felt like a long time we crossed the crazy rocks again (it was a lot tougher this time) and rolled in to the last aid station at Bull Run Marina (45 miles)

It was really rocky!

I saw my crew again dropped off my ipod and then headed over to the aid station. I drank two cups of Mountain Dew and tried to eat a decent amount. With 5 miles to go I didn't want to crash and burn. We plodded along at a good pace and eventually hit the Blue Bells again. This section seemed to drag on. I was ready to be done, I knew the end was close, I knew once I hit the hill I'd be 0.5 miles from the end. Someone had told us that if we saw a trail sign marked "11 miles" we would be one mile from the finish, so we kept our eyes open. I was pretty happy to see the sign until about 6 minutes later I saw a sign put up by the race people that said "1 Mile to Go!". I cursed pretty loudly but some people nearby assured me that it was way less than that. They were right about 30 seconds later we hit the hill up to Hemlock. In retrospect the "1 mile sign" being about 1/2 a mile away is a good thing. It makes you feel really good when the end pops up! After a quick climb up the hill I decided to run it in to the finish.

In the end I came in at 10 hours 56 minutes. Way slower than my goal. But for my first 50 miler I'll take the finish. Overall, I had a really fun day running out near Bull Run! Great course, great scenery, great running buddy for the last 12 miles, oh and did I mention there was bacon! 

Post race I took my crew out to Matchbox Pizza in Rockville... I may or may not have devoured an entire large Spicy Meatball Pizza.

Dickey Ridge Training Run

Today I did a trail run in order to get some good long hours on my feet on some real terrain. My buddy and fellow VHTRC member David Snipes (aka Sniper) picked out the Dickey Ridge Trail in Shenandoah National Park. The trail runs from Front Royal VA along Skyline Drive for about 10 miles until it dead ends in the Appalachian Trail. I needed some good pre Holiday Lake miles and Sniper had never run this trail in the daylight before so it seemed like a pretty good idea....20 miles no worries!

The more and more I run trails the more I'm convinced that trail running and road running shouldn't even be mentioned in the same train of thought. On flat roads I can run 20 miles in about 2 hours and 40 minutes. This took us a little under five hours ..... ok more like five and a half...but we spent a lot of time talking to people we ran into on the trail so I rounded down.

The run starts of with a climb....then another climb and then some more for about 10 miles. 

There were definitely "some hills"

Most of the trail is "run-able" this means that there aren't a ton of rocks and roots slowing you up. Overall the run was pretty good we made decent time on the hills, took a few breaks to chat with hiker's we ran in to, and met some guy with some a few bears....ok apparently they were dogs. Black Russian Terrier's are apparently some kind of giant Soviet Russia dog that is the size of a bear....luckily they were very nice even keeled dogs and just wanted lots of pats!

Like I said "Bear"

 After the bear sighting we finally made it to the top of the route and to "Indian Run Spring" I used the "" here because it was less of a spring and more of a trickle.....but oh well we were 10 miles in...time to turn around.... So the first half was all up hill, that had to mean we had 10 miles of nice fast descent....well not really....there seemed to be plenty of small short hills left for us to go up....not a lot...but just enough to break things up. Finally around mile 15 we passed a SNP visitors center refilled on some water and started the real down hill section. This part was awesome! Sniper and I bombed our way down the last 5 miles and ended up at the cars. Running was followed by Mexican food.

Oh and side bar, at one of the really great overlooks we saw an American Bald Eagle....Never seen one before....they are awesome

A Bald Eagle....not the one we saw but similar in coolness.

Overall I had a good training run. I want to do Holiday Lake in 5-5.5 hours and I was on my feet for that long today so I would say this was good practice. Luckily Holiday Lake doesn't have all the hills. But hills are good training so I'm going to continue to do them.

New Blog and Antarctica

So I've decided to start blogging about my running activities. What better way to start out than with my latest adventure.

Antarctica! Let me say that again. Antarctica!

So the last few weeks I have spent at McMurdo Station in Antarctica working on some satellite communications stuff for work. But that is boring engineer stuff which I don't want to talk about. So on to the running part. Wow so two things about Antarctica.

1. In January, its always light outside....always....this can really mess with your head
2. While its not warm its also not freezing. The temperature hovered between 20-30 F the entire time I was on the ice. This made running slightly more difficult.

I did several different routes and runs while I was on the ice followed by a kind of 'grand tour' of sorts the last few days I was there. So I am going to go in order

Ob Hill/Loop

The hike up and down Observation Hill is only about 0.8 miles total. Don't let this fool you into thinking its easy! Ob hill is about 600 ft high which makes this only slightly easier than running up Waterfall Mountain (for those of you who've run out in the Massanutten Mountain area). So first day down there we get off the extremely uncomfortable C17 flight around 4 am followed by a 30 minute drive across the sea ice in a snow storm to McMurdo. Now normal people would say 'hey we just went through 5 hours in a ridiculously small jump seat with little or no sleep....why don't we check in to our dorms and get a couple hours shuteye'. Instead of that we started working right away and basically pulled a 12 hour day. We finished up and grabbed a bite to eat at which point we were all pretty tired. Perfect time to go for a little jaunt to the top of Observation Hill! Luckily for me I did this excursion with my team, there were four of us total: 

1. Crazy ultrarunner in-training 
2. Greg, a marathoner but not as quick as me 
3. Pete, not a runner
4. Philip, not a runner

This allowed me to take a slower plod up there hill with several breaks. The climb itself is pretty straight forward with few switch backs. Basically you start at McMurdo station and go straight up ridge line on the north side of the hill. There's lots of small lose rocks and scree just to make things a little difficult, but the path is well worn from frequent attempts.

 Up towards the top there is a very easy rock scramble and then you reach the summit where you get to chill by Scott's Memorial Cross and get some great views of Mt Erebus to the north and the trans-antarctic range to the southwest.

Altogether it took us about an hour and forty minutes to do the whole thing. I would later run/walk up this alone in about thirty minutes. I also did an add on of the "Ob Hill Loop" which circumnavigates the hill and goes right out along the sea ice. The cool thing about the loop is its all pretty solid single track and you can get going at a pretty good speed. The uncool thing is usually on one side of you there is a 200 ft slope down to the sea ice.

Arrival Heights

The arrival heights loop is on the northern side of mcmurdo. Starting out at the base you run out to one of the huts from the early Antarctic expeditions and then immediately begin a 700 ft climb up to the Kiwi's communication's dome. The route was entirely single track or dirt road (there isn't any pavement in Antarctica) and was quite easy to run on. Luckily the climbs are broken up with several small flat sections and down hills. Throughout the climb there are great views of the trans-antarctic range and of the sea ice to the north. The very top of the route is protected by the antarctic conservation treaty so I had to double back about a quarter mile to pick up the rest of the trail. The final 2 miles of the trail is all on the roads and at the very end I was treated to a nice half mile 300 foot descent which I bombed down. I ended up running this route twice. Once with some of my co-workers, this occasion was marked by me saying something like "Hey I'm going to go run up that hill...get a picture!"....Not doing a good job of making co-workers think I'm not crazy.

Death March

In addition to the other runs I did we were doing work in an area called "T-Site" which was on top of a big hill and I had a chance to visit the Kiwi base which is a good distance from McMurdo. After about a week in Antarctica I began to get a little on edge, I signed up for my first 50k but hadn't really run hard since early December (the holidays and wisdom teeth extraction had really screwed me up). At this point I decided to make the hardest run I could on base. My route was as follows:

McMurdo -> Scott Base -> T Site -> Ob Hill climb -> Ob Hill Loop -> Arrival Heights Loop (including the kiwi dome climb) -> Back to McMurdo

In all the run would turn out to be 13-14 miles with probably about 2000 ft of climbing involved. I was hoping for about a 2 hour completion time which in retrospect was optimistic considering the elevation change. I started out after work one night. The weather was cold (obviously) so I was wearing my jacket, a cap, and some knit gloves. The run out to Scott Base was great, it felt good to be running for real again and the cold air wasn't an issue. On top of that the last part of this leg is down hill so I cruised into Scott Base making great time. Turning around I felt how the month off had taken its toll the climb from scott base to T-Site is probably 400 ft or so in elevation over two miles but it was painful. I passed a couple runners on the way up and shot them each a wave and reached T-Site feeling pretty beat. Luckily I had a nice down hill to make me feel better and reaching the bottom of Ob Hill I was feeling a lot better. I did Ob/Hill as quickly as possible but it still took me about 35 minutes to get done. On the way down I passed a hiker and chitchatted for about a minute at which point she asked me how much longer I thought I'd be out for. At this point I was 1:10 into the 

ordeal so optimistically I said "oh maybe 45 more minutes" ......not the case...in the end it was a lot longer. I didn't realize it but at this point I still had 7+ miles to go and a lot of climbing. I shot around the Ob Hill Loop pretty quickly there are a few small climbs but nothing major, in all I was about 1:55 in and I knew I had way underestimated the difficulty in this course. At this point I could have wimped out and just made a quick 1/4 jog back to a nice warm shower....but that would be pretty lame so instead I chomped down a few Cliff Shot Blocks and kept running. The arrival heights loop was way more fun than the early part of the course. As I started uphill a few Skua (some really annoying Antarctic birds) started circling near me and sqwaking at me. This continued for about 10 minutes at which point they finally settled on some rocks about 400 feet in front of me. I was pretty annoyed at this point and wanted them to leave so I started waving my arms around and making some noise. The Skua really didn't care and just sat there and sqwaked at me as it went by. This incident along with numerous stories of Skua swooping in and stealing cookies out of peoples hands near the cafeteria left me to declare that Skua are the "Honey Badgers of Antarctica" because "Skua don't care it just takes what it wants". I continued up to the Kiwi dome and about the point where I turned around I was starting to get an awesome runners high and for better or worse the only thing I could think of is Dave Chapelle's R-Kelly parody......this was pretty amusing to me so I laughed and sang a couple of the lines as I ran down the hill. The rest of the run was the easy part and I jogged into base at 2:30 into the run. Overall the run was way harder than I expected but was good none the less. I think I'm going to contact McMurdo's recreation director and suggest that they add it to their yearly list of runs. I would have liked to run 20+ since I'm getting ready for my first 50k but there really isn't a lot of space unless you run on the sea ice. With all the elevation change I ended up settling for 14.

Unfortunately I missed the annual McMurdo marathon by just a few days. It would have been epic if I could have gotten in on that...but oh well.... Anyway I'm back safe in the states and have a awesome 20+ mile trail run planned as my final long run before the Holiday Lake 50k++ on Feb 11.

Most posts won't be this long unless they are race reports :)