Notes
Actual mileage 100.97
Shoes - wore Nimbus (Lemonade and grey) for the first 80 miles, then switched into Mizunos #4 as a last resort for the remaining 20
Clothing - athleta black shorts, white l/s UA shirt, neck ice bandana, white had and blue head bandana. At night - orange columbia shirt and turquoise athleta shorts. Drymax (orange) socks for most of the run
Lube - run goo on feet, two toms on body and aquaphor/A&D
https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/1749544240
This race was a beast! I knew it would be hard going into it - but I had no idea how I would react (mentally or physically). I owe so much to my crew – they have truly seen me at my worst. Typically I am not a whiner or complainer – but they got it with both barrels and handled it like champs! I could not have put together a better group of ladies to get me to the finish line. All said and done my pacers/crew logged over 110 miles in this 100 mile race – they truly experienced their own version of the Keys relay
Sally – I owe you about 20 foot rubs and so so so much more – thank you for putting up with my BS and not letting me quit. Tina – thank you for singing and dancing along the road for miles and miles, how could I not continue? I had to see what you were going to do next! Melinda – thank you for juggling everything we threw at you with grace and for being on top of the administrative stuff when it counted. You are going to crush it next year! Also – a huge thank you to the race marshals (Tim and Heather in particular) you did your best to bring a smile to my face whenever you had the opportunity.
The start of the race was uneventful and I stuck to my plan which was to walk for 3 minutes each and every mile from the very beginning aiming to get as close as possible to 14 min miles. For hydration I planned on drinking water from my hydration pack and supplementing that by picking up a hand held filled with Tailwind from my crew every 2 hours or so. I also planned to take a Gu every hour along with a salt tab and then a glutamine tablet every 2 hours. This had worked for me in training and I stuck to this plan until my body decided to change things up on me.
I was having severe cramping in my left calf around mile 32, so much so that I couldn't run at all. I had under estimated my fluid and salt intake needs and was in a bad spot. My crew got me turned around forcing fluids on me and rolling out my calfs. They then somehow managed to get my legs into calf sleeves and sent me on my way. The calf sleeves were a huge help and I was able to dig out of the hole I had gotten myself into by drinking coconut water / tailwind (sometimes mixed – I wouldn’t suggest it) and pickle juice. Luckily my stomach kept up its end of the bargain and I didn’t have too many issues there.
Then at around mile 50 I had blisters like I have never had before. I had myself convinced that if I could at least make it until 100k that I could stop and I would be happy with being able to achieve a new distance. Of course my crew would have none of that nonsense and spent the next 8 or so hours (good grief I had no idea it was that long until I just did the math) convincing me otherwise.
I spent about 35 minutes at about mile 67 lying in a gravel parking lot while my crew went to work on my feet popping blisters, taping toes, changing shoes and socks and plying me with any food that sounded good at the moment. Something else kept me going as well - since it was the middle of the night and we couldn't check into our hotel until Sun afternoon, I couldn't reconcile having to find someplace for all of us to sleep . So I just kept going while I worked on a solution to that problem. Then the sun finally started to come up and I barely made the 75 mile cutoff (I was within seconds). After making the cutoff it lit a fire under me. I just wanted to be finished and the only way to do that was to gut it out and get there as fast as possible.
The second day turned out to be hotter than the first but I was so focused on getting finished I didn’t realize it at the time. My average pace for the race overall was around 19:00 min/mi. My ave pace for the last 10 miles or so was 16:00. That might not sound like much, but the feels like temperature was somewhere around 95* during that time and I was giving it all I had to give for the last 3.5 hours of the run. By then all of the keys tend to blur together and one bridge looks like the last 15 or so you have crossed over. We were actually on Key West for awhile before I realized we were really there. During the last few hours my crew was meeting me every mile to mile and a half. They barely had time to take care of their own needs before I was passing through like a NASCAR pit stop (ice in the hat, ice in the bra, swap out the ice bandanna around my neck, hand me some gels all while I kept moving. Rinse and repeat… We finally made it to the finish line 31 hours and 39 minutes after we started