Notes
Went into this run with a lot of unknowns, but gave it my best. I also went in unprepared for the pace I ran for the first 20 miles.
The first 10 miles seemed to be fairly slow (almost too slow), I went to the lead and slowly ramped up the pace. Three other guys stuck with me for awhile before it was just the eventual winner and myself out too a decent lead. Stayed with or ahead of him until about mile 16 when he started to pull away from me. I also knew at this point that today was going to be a rough day, being just over half way and just not feeling well. Stomach was upset and legs didn't seem to be fully under me. Stopped for the first time a little before 19 and tried to loosen up my hips, which gave Rich about a 4 min lead.
At 20.7 miles I was surprised the first two loops were even splits at around 6:37 pace. Stretched a little more before setting out with Philip for the final 10.3 miles, and quickly crashed resulting in a lot of stops. I had a huge lead on 3rd but that was dwindling quickly with my stretch breaks and walking a little. Philip helped a ton with forcing me to eat and keep going. I held onto second place until around 27-28 miles, but was soon over taken.
With about 2 miles to go while stretching I was passed again and fell into 4th (didn't know it). I slowly caught back up to the guy and as soon as I found out he was ahead of me I somehow put in a huge surge for a little over a mile to gap him and take 3rd by 40 seconds. Philip thought I was close to 6:20-6:30 the last mile, but I really had no concept of pace at that point. I think it was about the only time I really felt competitive all day, and was happy to take 3rd.
Overall I was little disappointed, not really in my race or how I did but more in the preparation over the last few months and mistakes early in the race. I really needed 2-3 more 20+ mile runs (last long run was 6 weeks ago) and should have increased overall weekly mileage. I waited to long into the race to eat, when I finally did about mile 11 it really messed up my stomach for the next 10+ miles, and somehow screwed up the gatorade powder to water combination in one of my water bottles. The overly sugary strong gatorade also seemed to give me stomach cramps. A mile or two into the last loop Philip forced me to eat more, since I was crashing and my muscles were cramping. I was having huge problems with my hips and glutes tightening up which forced me to drive with my quads which took a beating.
It was a big learning experience overall and will have much higher expectations for my next ultra.