Notes
Steep climbs, mud, sand, torrential downpour and rivers of storm runnoff. That about sums it up. More to come.
Let's start with, I had a really shitty week. Hit the tipping point at work and not in a good way. Sophie having to have another eye surgery and she's only 6. All this going through my head 2 hours before the race and not really wanting to race at all. 30 minutes before the race, I figure out what I'm going to wear and have a backup plan to bring a racing vest that I can staff a t-shirt in just in case I get too hot. At 11 PM 50 degrees feels cold...
Get to the line and the RD gives the usual pre-race speech, look for the flags, follow the arrows, say hi to the hundred milers, the course will be tough. It's a loop course about 17 miles per loop so the good news is you know what to expect after the first loop. The race starts and Jake immediately is out in front and almost out of sight in a quarter mile. The chase pack is about 4 guys and running a decent pace. About a mile in we already hit a steep climb that forces us to walk and I change into a t-shirt as I'm already sweating. After about two miles the chase pack has slowed down and I pass. After another mile or so I realize I'm getting too fatigued up these hills and I slow again.
The chase pack passes me and at this point I'm thinking either I'll see them all later or I'm going to finish a lot worse in the rankings then I wanted. I'm only slightly worried because the last few races most if not all of the chase pack slows down before 10 miles in. After that first hill there are just a bunch of relatively tame ascents/descents until around 7 miles and then there are three brutal ascents/descents in a row. Somewhere in between 2nd and 3rd of these I had a pretty nice wipeout then another. On the last descent (about 13 miles in) I pass 3 of the 4 chase pack and they are already hurting, one guy complaining about falling and how technical the course is. I just say, yeah I wiped out twice already, just getting it out of the way early. That downhill was pretty tough with all the loose rocks and slippery footing but I tried to make it look effortless.
After the downhill there is a stretch about a mile long on a gravel road. I use that as an opportunity to press the pace and put a lead on the three behind me. I get back to the start and the 2nd place guy is taking off a few seconds before me. I catch up to him and he asks me if I've done this before. I say no and he says he didn't expect the course to be this technical. After a few minutes he says pass at anytime and I do saying hang in there.
The next few miles are pretty uneventful but there are these few stretches of sand that are maybe a quarter mile long and really a mess. You sink a few inches in every step (after the race I dumped a quarter inch of sand out of my shoe), never have I hated sand so much. Finally get to the stretch of brutal climbs and it is harder than last time. My hammy started hurting pretty bad around 14 and halfway through the second loop it is starting to scare me. I make it through this part onto the gravel road and it is a fight with the hammy just to run a decent pace.
I get to the start at the end of the second lap and I see Jake's buddy (Michael Borst) who ran the 100 miler looking closely at me as I grab some water. I start to wonder what that is about and I get this hope that maybe Jake is not doing so great. I have 17 miles left and I actually feel pretty darn good. Hammy has stopped barking and I know daylight is coming soon. I press on as the rain starts. First pretty light, but the muddy section in the first 3 miles of the loop are definitely worse. Then around 6:30 AM we get our first downpour. The trail is getting really slick and now the technical parts are hard to run fast on. More like tree skiing with shoes on but no control.
I press on through and around 42 miles (I really have no idea as it was all a blur) in I see a guy that looks like Jake. As I come up next to him he asks if I'm running the 50. I say yeah, and he's like, didn't you run Marquette? I say, yeah, are you Jake and he shakes my hand. I tell him I was surprised that my 25 mile split was a 4:15 because I checked out his time from last year and it was a 8:58 and ask if the course was a lot worse last year. He says yeah, it was really muddy. He says good luck, and I say I fully expect him to race me to the finish. He says he is toast, not enough training (25 miles per week) and good luck. As I accelerate, he yells, go get that course record.
The rest of the race I'm thinking two things - course record and don't lose. The last five miles were my fastest and it hurt bad but in a good way. The last 3 miles it started a torrential downpour with lots of lightning, and dropped probably 10 degrees. It was crazy with what seemed like rivers of runoff coming down the trails, huge cracks of lighting in the sky and the wind whipping up. There was this stretch where it was if I was running upstream. I am starting to freeze but less than a mile left. I am really feeling sorry for those runners that are going to be out there another 1, 2, or even six hours in this nightmare. Finally, I'm in the finishing stretch and my watch beeps my last 5 split. Time to "sprint" to the finish.
When I'm done the volunteers and RD are amazing. They get all my drop bags for me, hot coffee, help me take off my shirt stuck to my back for gods sake. Make sure I'm not going to get hypothermia and one of the volunteer offers to take everything to my car in the pouring rain. I may not be back to Zumbro next year because of Boston, but I will be back for another of the RSR series races. I can't say enough about the organization of the race and how awesome the volunteers were the whole race. Once again I felt like I had my own personal crew out there.