I don't know my official time yet, I think it was 10:10:something. Met my goals for my first 50 miler: 1) I finished, and 2) I finished between 10 and 12 hours. Thankfully it was closer to 10 hours. I won't bore you with the minutiae, suffice it to say my prowess for slowness continues to degrade me. But I'm not at all disappointed with the day. I got a good long run in, which will benefit my overall training, and I made a goal and saw it through. I also had a lot of fun. Chatted with Jun and Kelli before the start, and saw Dorsimus on the course as he was running his 50k, met Lily for the first time, she was volunteering at the white bay aid station, and of course got to see Ultrajim do his thing. He puts on a great race! About a 1/4 mile from the finish Kelli cheered me on, which was a nice boost. Then in the distance I saw (and heard) Lysa (on the blog) and her husband Scott, and of all people, my wife, all cheering me in! It was an awesome surprise and it really put a nice finishing touch to my day to have them there. Thank you so much Lysa - and thanks for the thoughtful gift, of which I am currently imbibing at this very moment. :-) I keep a paper log at home of my running, and it was really weird to log the number "50" for the miles... WT 66.2 miles I forgot to mention at the finish I threw in a little heel click, in honor of Nevels. Thanks for the inspiration bro. Next day edit: okay, maybe just a little minutiae... I started cramping up pretty badly about half way through. My knees and ITB, on both sides but mostly my right leg. I briefly entertained the idea of a DNF at this point because I knew that this would be painful for the remaining 25 miles. But I've had experience running long with this pain before, and decided to just keep plugging along. A DNF was never a question after that. I ended up running with a girl for the first 33 miles, to the Ranch aid station. It was awesome, kind of like having a pacer. She really helped me get through the first 20 miles back to White Bay, then we swapped pacing duties out to the Ranch. She was having some stomach issues about mile 28. I got to the ranch just ahead of her, ate some noodles and pbj and was ready to leave when she got in. She had great family support along the way, and she was picking up a pacer at this aid station, so I chose to continue on without her. Turns out her stomach issues became severe and she was vomiting and dropped out. I had no idea until I ran into one of her friends at the finish. I had just one drop bag, at Lower Fraery (?). Fortunately, my pacer buddy let me drop my hat and gloves in her bag at elephant head after we got through the split rock loop. As we ran past the parking lot after leaving white bay (mile 20 ish), I ran over to my car and dropped my jacket. I was thankful for that jacket in the cold windy run through split rock. At lower fraery, I changed from my sweaty black long sleeve shirt to a dry white long sleeve shirt. I also exchanged my eyeglasses for a pair of sunglasses. By the time I got back to fraery it was cloudy again so I changed back to my eyeglasses. I didn't bring my headlamp. I figured it would be light in less than an hour after the start, so I just had to make sure and not get separated from people on the climb up to elephant head. Fortunately it was plenty light by the time I got there for the out and back section. I didn't carry any gu's with me. After a couple of hours I realized I hadn't eaten anything yet. My pacer pal gave me a roctane which helped a lot. At elephant head on the way back, I had some pbj and took a couple of gu's with me for later. Throughout the day I ate 4 gu's, 7 or so "quarters" of pbj, a cup of ramen, a couple of banana halfs, a chocolate chip cookie, one potato chip, and a boiled potato. I really liked the pbj's, great running food. I drank a whole bunch of water throughout the day, and a couple of bottle fulls of whatever the drink was they had at the aid stations. I also mixed in a couple of emergen-c's throughout the day. I'm not pleased with how my legs performed. I think it slowed me down significantly over the 50 miles. However, I'm really pleased that I had no breathing - lung issues, and my energy level was pretty high throughout the day. The last ten miles were extremely slow as I stopped several times to try and stretch, and took many walking breaks. I got as close as I ever want to get to a buffalo around mile 46 right before the last aid station. There was a herd of 5 crossing the running path. I ended up walking calmly and slowly between them, two on my right and three on my left. One of the buffalo on my right stopped and took note of me, turning my direction and snorting a couple of times. I'm not familiar enough with buffalo to know if this was some kind of a challenge/warning, or if it was just trying to encourage me on my effort to finish the race. Either way, I was glad to get beyond them. More fun facts: my fastest mile was mile 10 @ 9:18, my slowest was mile 28 @ 16:43 (lower fraery aid/drop bag stuff). My garmin still has two bars on the batter life indicator, so there's still 2 - 3 hrs of battery life after over 10 hours for the race. This garmin is 2 1/2 years old. I take great pride in the fact that I read the owners manual when I bought this watch, and have followed the battery recharging instructions as written.
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