Trail Runners

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Woods Ferry Trail Ultra (24 hr) (Read 347 times)


Happy

    YES!!!!!!! I did it!!!!!!! I covered 40 miles of trails in 11 hours and 20 minutes (official); my Garmin says it is 41.26 miles in 11 hours and 22 min; but who cares!

    Wow, what a day - I am quite happy and I had a very good day. I hope to be able to tell you a little more about this when I have gathered myself. Waking up this morning feeling sore almost everywhere from the hips down. I think all is well - I should be feeling sore , I deserve it 


     

    The Garmin says the total ascent was 13080 feet. It was like a roller coaster. Hard clay with horse foot prints and dung. 

    _____


    Jen, where were you??!???!!?!? Not getting to talk to you and give you a hug is my only regret - it almost made me cry when I left yesterday not to have connected with you. I had not anticipated how long it would take to drive to Woods Ferry so I arrived at 7:13 am, two minutes before the trail briefing. I barely had time to pin the number onto my shorts and fill the hydration pack; let alone glance at the map before we were sent off. I was scared that I would get lost/off the course if I didn't stay with other people during the first 10 mile loop. I was lucky to fall in with a group that took it easy - they were planning on running for 24 hours so they were in no hurry. Actually, after the midway aid station I took off before they left. I had another girl in sight whom I tried to get to run with but she did not slow down or wait for me so I basically chased her so I wouldn't loose sight of her back. I managed to make only one wrong turn during the first loop and quickly got back on track when some of the other runners caught up and yelled to us that we were going the wrong way. 

     

    Jen, when I had finished the 40 miles I had already been out there for over 11 hours and I wasn't able to call my husband as there was not cell phone service in the area. My husband expected me to be there for only 10 hours so I knew he was getting anxious and I had to leave and start the long drive back home (1 hr 45 min). It took 45 minutes of driving before I got cell phone coverage.

     

    Not seeing you yesterday is the only regret I have for the day. I look forward to hearing from you.

    5K, 4/28/07 24:16 PR 10K, 5/5/07 49:23 PR 1/2 M, 12/08/07 1:49:34 PR Marathon, 12/09/06 3:57:37 BQ 50K, 10/04/2009 7:27:00 PB 40M, 4/17/2010 11:20:00 PB


    under a rock

      Congrats on your 40!  I can't wait to hear more about it. I've got to live vicariously through you guys since my body is long way away from tolerating that kind of mileage.
        Congratulations, Flower!!  A great accomplishment.  Walk, walk, walk, walk, walk.  That will help with the soreness.

        Leslie
        Living and Running Behind the Redwood Curtain
        -------------

        Trail Runner Nation

        Sally McCrae-Choose Strong

        Bare Performance

         


        Happy

          Thank you Runs and Leslie, - it's a little quiet here isn't it? I wonder if Jen is OK. Has anyone heard from Jen and how she did in Woods Ferry?

           

          I am recovering - slowly getting a little less tired and perhaps a little less sore here and there. Still pretty sore though. It's funny how things don't play out the way you anticipate. I had expected my left achilles/heel to possibly become a big problem during the ultra - however, even though I felt this area from the beginning of the run while slowly warming up and getting into the forest it never became a big problem. It was a pain/sensation I have learned to live with. Some time into the ultra - it may have been around mile 15 I started to feel some relatively bothering soreness in my knees especially the right knee and it became gradually ever more present as the day went on. It was the down hills that were the most difficult part of this event for me. The down hills really stressed the knees. 

           

          At the end of the day, this was during my 4th loop, so it was after 30 miles, I started to feel this pain on the top of my toes, the big toe and the one next to it, it was as if the nails were getting a squeeze from the top of the shoes. I am assuming this was caused by all the down hill running also. It was a pain I wasn't familiar with and it was a pretty tough one to handle. At the end I was glad to be able to take me shoes off. The feet and lower legs were covered in red mud that had caked itself on to my feet and nails so hard that it would be rather difficult to remove it in the bath tub a lot later that night. As I took the shoes and socks of I also noticed that my feet had started to swell a little.


          There were some pains on my feet that I noticed early - I was worried that I would develop some blisters. This turned out not to become a problem. At the end of the day I had only one very small blister on the back of the right heel; I had not even noticed a pain from this blister - it had gone under my radar and did not become a problem.


           

          When the group of runners started to break up after the first mile or so I found myself in the company of some wonderful people. A group of 3 women that traveled together to run ultras in many different states. I think they were from Wisconsin. They had slept in a tent on the camp ground the night before the race and they were going to run for 24 hours - WOW!! They were totally laid back and a lot of fun; cracking jokes and being social. They were Marrit, Kelsey, and Susan. I hope one of them reads this and contacts me - one of them took a picture of a group of us when we stopped at the first aid station at about mile 5.6. I would love to see the picture as I did not bring a camera or a friend with a camera. In our small social group there was also Larry, who was wearing a t-shirt that said he had run a marathon in all 50 states. He was going to go on to run another ultra the next day and then the Boston Marathon Monday. Larry, good luck to you!! Later Thomas, who was only 16 years old, joined our group as well. His mother was there to crew for him as he was working on breaking his precvious mileage record - I forget what the numbers were but I think his goal was to do 40 miles. His mother is ultrarunningmom, she has a blog that you may be familiar with? She said she was there in support of her son only. She was proud of him - as his 16 year birthday he had asked her to crew him for this ultra as his birthday gift. I felt this was very special and I think she should be very proud of her son.


           The high reached 86F in the afternoon and it was sunny. My third loop was probably the slowest of the day as I walked at least 5 miles of this loop - I had company; it was Dave? I have forgotten his name but he is a West Point Graduate and had done multiple marathons and ultras in his 47 year old life. He was very nice to walk this part of the course with me. After that loop he was going to leave. I went on to do my last loop of the day. I started the loop by myself.

          5K, 4/28/07 24:16 PR 10K, 5/5/07 49:23 PR 1/2 M, 12/08/07 1:49:34 PR Marathon, 12/09/06 3:57:37 BQ 50K, 10/04/2009 7:27:00 PB 40M, 4/17/2010 11:20:00 PB
          wanderingoutlaw


            Congratulations, flower, on your new running distance and time PR.  I thought of you as I was running my measly 10k (also coincidentally enough, in a forest bordering the Broad River) on Saturday morning and I'm glad to see you did so well.

            John

            Buzzie


            Bacon Party!

              Nice run Flower!

              I know you've had your share of misery trials going into this. Way to gut it out and reach that 40-mile goal.

              Liz

              pace sera, sera


              Happy

                Congratulations, flower, on your new running distance and time PR.  I thought of you as I was running my measly 10k (also coincidentally enough, in a forest bordering the Broad River) on Saturday morning and I'm glad to see you did so well.

                 

                Thank you so much for your kind words. I vaguely imagined that I could do something like this if I were able to figure out how to train properly for it - that's how this adventure began in my mind a long time ago; just kind of day dreaming a little. I have been working on how to figure out the training part for a couple of years now and it is beginning to pay off; I am not severely injured and not complusively trying to hit a higher and higher weekly mileage every week - I have become a little more patient and a little wiser about how my body reacts to certain things in training; I am still a rookie and it is sometimes difficult to be a rookie at the tender age of 50 - but I find that on the trails and in the ultra environment there is room for all of us. The Woods Ferry event in Sumter National Park was a mind blowing experience in many ways. I was surprised by how far away this place was - how far into the woods and how vast the expanses of this section of the Sumter National Forest are. South Carolina is such a small state yet offers such great nature for us to enjoy - it was humbling to be there. I would have been lost w/o the color coded trees. It took 45 minutes of driving away from there before I had cell phone service......

                 There is nothing measly about a 10K - don't put yourself down (let us do that for you ). 

                5K, 4/28/07 24:16 PR 10K, 5/5/07 49:23 PR 1/2 M, 12/08/07 1:49:34 PR Marathon, 12/09/06 3:57:37 BQ 50K, 10/04/2009 7:27:00 PB 40M, 4/17/2010 11:20:00 PB


                Happy

                  Nice run Flower!

                  I know you've had your share of misery trials going into this. Way to gut it out and reach that 40-mile goal.

                   

                  Buzzie, Thanks so much! You are right, there were problems and challenges (misery) along the course of the training for this event. I am amazed at how well my body handled the event - it wasn't easy and there is room for improvement. For example, I didn't reach my time goal of being able to complete 40 miles in 10 hours. However, this event itself will now serve as a training run for my next ultra, which is a 34 mile trail run in the same general area of South Carolina - Buncomb Trail.

                   

                  I found two blog entries from some of the elite runners that ran Woods Ferry with me; I loved reading their entries and their thoughts and experiences since they came into it with a very different perspective from mine:

                  http://ncultrarunner.blogspot.com/2010/04/woods-ferry-24-hour-run-unexpected.html

                   

                  and

                   http://run100miles.com/blog/still-not-quite-sure-what-that-was/

                   enjoy the read!

                  5K, 4/28/07 24:16 PR 10K, 5/5/07 49:23 PR 1/2 M, 12/08/07 1:49:34 PR Marathon, 12/09/06 3:57:37 BQ 50K, 10/04/2009 7:27:00 PB 40M, 4/17/2010 11:20:00 PB

                    _____


                    Jen, where were you??!???!!?!? Not getting to talk to you and give you a hug is my only regret - it almost made me cry when I left yesterday not to have connected with you. I had not anticipated how long it would take to drive to Woods Ferry so I arrived at 7:13 am, two minutes before the trail briefing. I barely had time to pin the number onto my shorts and fill the hydration pack; let alone glance at the map before we were sent off. I was scared that I would get lost/off the course if I didn't stay with other people during the first 10 mile loop. I was lucky to fall in with a group that took it easy - they were planning on running for 24 hours so they were in no hurry. Actually, after the midway aid station I took off before they left. I had another girl in sight whom I tried to get to run with but she did not slow down or wait for me so I basically chased her so I wouldn't loose sight of her back. I managed to make only one wrong turn during the first loop and quickly got back on track when some of the other runners caught up and yelled to us that we were going the wrong way. 

                     

                    Jen, when I had finished the 40 miles I had already been out there for over 11 hours and I wasn't able to call my husband as there was not cell phone service in the area. My husband expected me to be there for only 10 hours so I knew he was getting anxious and I had to leave and start the long drive back home (1 hr 45 min). It took 45 minutes of driving before I got cell phone coverage.

                     

                    Not seeing you yesterday is the only regret I have for the day. I look forward to hearing from you.

                     

                    Flower, I freel so bad that I didn't get to connect with you as well!  I'm sure that we saw each other but didn't know it!!  I should have posted on here before I left what I was planning to wear so you could pick me out, but I didn't think about it and I had absolutely no cell or data at the Woods Ferry campground and didn't have time before the race began to talk to many folks.  I am SO GLAD your race went so well!!!  That's fantastic!!!

                     

                    I just got back to my house in AL.  We left on Friday morning and camped on-site on Friday night.  I don't know if you read Christian's race report (http://run100miles.com/) but on Friday night we had some worry that the race wouldn't go on as planned the next morning and I tucked into the tent about 10 PM worrying a bit about that and generally distracted throughout the night by our slightly downhill slanted sleeping arrangements and the sound of cars driving in throughout the night.  It was my first camping experience ever too, which was not the best plan ever.

                     

                    I decided to wear my purple Nike running skirt and black tank top and started off with my Brooks Cascadias, with the plan to change shoes about every 3 laps.  I got to the pavillion right as the race briefing was beginning and wasn't really mentally all there by the time things got started.  

                     

                    The first couple of laps went off pretty much without a hitch at about 2 hours a pop, but the course was way, way harder than I had expected (I thought timed courses were usually flat-ish) so I knew that the pace I was going was entirely unsustainable.  I was basically walking the really big hills, jogging whatever was close to being flat, and blasting down the hills as fast as my legs would carry me.  Greg, my crew who was also volunteering at the main aid station, ran the 3rd lap with me and my time dropped to about 2:20 and about 2 miles out from finishing the 3rd lap I wanted to take my shoes off and throw them into the woods.  It was time for my usual ultra mini-meltdown.  Since it was still just early afternoon, I knew I needed to get my mood improved and change shoes and generally get my act together or things would not go well for the rest of the time.  The 4th and 5th laps went more slowly but I did manage to improve my mood, and with the Asics my feet completely stopped hurting. 

                     

                    I started the 6th lap just as it was getting dark, and even with my headlamp and handheld, I didn't feel like I could run on the technical trails so I just walked the lap.  I was walking as fast as my legs would carry me and I passed a ton of people out in the woods, but it still took about 3:30 to do the loop. 

                     

                    After that loop, Greg told me all that was going on...there was a near forest fire that he and one of the other runners had helped to put out on the side of the road (that might have taken out the whole race), the fire and forestry folks were also called in to help the police take care of several not-so-savory folks right near the midway aid station, and there was some local guy roaming the trails who claimed to be looking for his runaway horse.  If I was going out again, Greg was going to come with me since I'm sure I didn't have all my wits about me at this point.  I put on a long-sleeved shirt and was preparing to go out again between about 11:30 and midnight for my 7th lap and I just couldn't do it.  I had this tremendous feeling of dread at the prospect of going out for probably 4 hours to walk in the dark. 

                     

                    I thought I'd be disappointed at myself, so I thought, maybe I'll just nap for an hour.  And then, maybe I'll sleep until 6:30 and then just do 1 more out and back on purple to make it 100K even.  But no, I just couldn't do it.  I officially pulled out at 7 AM the next morning with my 60 miles.   I thought by now with all the focus I'd put on this race that I'd be so mad at myself, but I still can't imagine going out and doing another lap in the dark. 

                     

                    I looooooved the course at the start of the race but as the day went out, it wore me down.  Maybe if I'd actually trained as I'd planned since the 12 hour, I'd have been more prepared.  As it was, I'm not thrilled with my results but I learned some good stuff: about camping before races and being out in the woods at night.  What I need to work on next is spending less time goofing off at aid stations, and most of all, getting the mental toughness to continue when the going gets tough if I ever want to do anything longer.

                     

                    Flower, please tell me you'll be out at Chattooga and we can meet up then?


                    Happy

                      Hi Jen,


                      I am so glad to hear from you - and you covered 60 miles; what an amazing accomplishment 

                      I don't think I saw you there - remember nobody in purple shorts and black top. I looked for you - didn't see anyone who looked like what I imagine you look like; I have seen a small picture of you on RA.

                       Yes, I intend to run Chattooga also if this body is up to the task. Buncomb trail comes first - are you not doing Buncomb? It is a 34 mile run. Someone in Woods Ferry told me it is a much easier course - not as hilly and with more runnable trails. I never allowed myself to feel intimidated by the trail conditions or the hills while I was in Woods Ferry - taking one step at the time and staying patient were the ingredients that kept me from having a melt-down. Also, I allowed myself to put my MP3player on when I went out for the 3rd loop. I listened to music and blocked most of my self-talk out. And then I had company who convinced me that walking was OK. 

                       

                      I didn't know anything about the worries some of you had the night before of the event possibly being shot down. Ignorance is bliss. Also hadn't heard of the forest fire until you mentioned it.

                       

                       I was glad to leave before it turned dark. I am not ready for night running yet. Woods Ferry was my second completed Ultra and I felt very good about sticking to my goal as far as mileage is concerned. 

                       

                      Not quite knowing what to say about it after the "race" - I guess I am kind of overwhelmed and a little surprised at what I've done. My husband thinks it is a form of insanity (he says it with a wink); I kind of agree with him but I still wish he shared my insanity so we could do it together and I felt very happy to be among so many people in Woods Ferry that share my passion and don't think it is crazy to want to keep going.

                       

                      I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts and reading a race report from you, Jen. I don't think I can produce a race report - it's as if I have nothing left to say; the run speaks for itself. I gave all I had out there on the trails and received something in return. I have questions on my mind.

                      5K, 4/28/07 24:16 PR 10K, 5/5/07 49:23 PR 1/2 M, 12/08/07 1:49:34 PR Marathon, 12/09/06 3:57:37 BQ 50K, 10/04/2009 7:27:00 PB 40M, 4/17/2010 11:20:00 PB

                        I don't have much more to add either, flower!  I guess the only thing I left out of my other posting was that I had a crazy fall on the third loop.  It was right on the purple trail, maybe midway.  I thought I had lifted my foot up enough to go over a root, but I did not.  Greg says I hit the ground "still in the running position", but my mouth hit first and the twop! sound carried ahead maybe 40 yards where the next set of runners stopped and turned around!  My teeth kind of cut my lip and my lip swelled for the next couple of laps.  I fall a lot, but this is the first time I've landed mouth-first!

                         

                        I decided not to do Buncombe (or I guess, Enoree, now).  These SC races take me about 7 hours to get to so it's not as easy to get to as races in AL, GA or TN.  I will definitely be there for Chattooga, though.  It was my first 50K and I want to do it better this year Smile  My birthday is near there so that's going to be my birthday run.

                         

                        Hopefully I will see you there!  I hope your recovery goes well Smile