Notes
Jackalope Jam 24 hours (6/12 hours also along the same course started at the same time)
Course is out-and-back 0.5 miles (1 mile total) on mostly flat asphalt in the park. Aid station at start line.
Perfect weather. Started at 66F Sat morning and peaked at 77F in the day, and dropped to 71 when I dropped out at night.
Ate 1 gel on 1st loop, drank water on 2nd loop, repeat. Ate 32 packs of gel. Also ate 1 cup of ramen. 2 salt tabs every 20 miles.
Started out running easy with 1 walk break every loop. Slowly turned into 2, 3, and 4 walk breaks every loop.
Early hint that my endurance/fitness was not in best shape when I felt that I was not as fresh as I should (or wanted to be) at around 20 miles.
Sometime early in the race I tried to pass a bunch of walkers by going around on the grass, and stepped into a pothole with my right foot, I almost lost balance and tripped over but caught myself with my left foot. It didn't feel like a big deal at the time, but I don't know if that caused my foot problem later.
There is a section of asphalt that is very uneven, all buckled and warped due to grass patches growing out of large cracks on it. The length of it is about 1/4 mile every loop. Not sure if it affected my foot, but I did not like this section.
Sometime before mile 50 I felt slight pain on top front of my left foot near the ankle. It felt almost like I had tied my shoelace too tight and the top edge of my shoe was hitting my foot on a tendon or something. It felt like a bruising kind of pain, not chafing kind of pain. I loosened my laces twice in the next 15 miles but that didn't help. The pain gradually got worse. In the beginning it felt worse if I walked but went away if I ran, but later it was painful whatever I did. My lap pace became very uneven trying to deal with this. My gait and posture probably got affected. Quads started to hurt around mile 60, but at least I'm familiar with that issue and it didn't bother me too much, just had to bear with it, but my left hip flexor had started to rebel. My right leg was fine. The left ankle pain got to a point where I could hardly put my weight on it, and I tried to walk it off but that didn't help. Finally on mile 65 I decided to completely walk the lap and hoped to recover, but it didn't improve. So I decided to sit down and rest, figured that I would still have 10 hours left to walk, and at 3 miles per hour or slower I could still get above 90 miles. I could not recover once I sat down. Soon I started shivering, had to put on a jacket. When I tried to get back up to get some hot food (mashed potato) I found out my left hip flexor just stopped working. I could not lift my left knee up at all, and with my left ankle still too painful to bear weight, my left leg was basically useless, and walking another 10 hours was not going to happen. So that was it, the end of my race.
When I got back to the hotel to check my foot I could see swelling, but it didn't look too bad, although it hurt if I press even lightly on it. The next day, 24 hours later, the swelling look a lot worse, but it felt better. Still hurts if I press on it but I could actually walk and slow jog on it, as long as I don't turn the ankle (lean forward/sideways) too much. Quads were very sore as expected.