Month: August 2014

Fool’s Gold 50 mile

Pony, MT

August 23, 2014

The Fool’s Gold 50 mile in Pony, Montana was everything RD Alex Papadopoulis had promised: big mountains, sweeping grasslands, open skies.  Only there were a couple things Alex hadn’t mentioned when he came to WUS back in April to tout the race.  First was the fact that temperatures were in the 40s in Pony and in the 30s as you increased elevation on race day.  Second was the driving freezing rain that made it a tad difficult to appreciate the pretty vistas.  And third was the 6-8 inches of snow that had fallen along the highest part of the 50 mile course the night before the race.  Now, of course all of this was way out of RD Alex’s control.  The mountains of Montana sure have way of deciding for themselves whether they feel like being pretty or not.  The good thing was that Aaron and I had come all this way from DC and had to give it a go despite the conditions.  The other good thing was that I had no idea what I was getting into.  The base of the mountain didn’t seem all that terribly cold.  And I was terribly proud of how much gear I had remembered to bring, all slicked out in arm warmers and gaiters and the ultra-lightweight Patagonia shell I had just splurged on.  I had even remembered my little gel heel pads (more on my heel problems later).  I was beginning to fancy myself as a Trail Runner Esperto.

‘So, who here hasn’t studied the map and read all the emails I’ve been sending out?’ Alex queried the wet, cold huddle of pre-race runners in the dark.  My stomach sunk guiltily, but I knew better than to raise my hand.  After all, Alex had showed us the course back at CBPG in April.  I had the gist.  Big climbs.  Big views.  When there’s ten miles to go you can see Pony one mile away, but don’t finish yet, you still have to go run a 10-mile lollipop loop.  Got it.  Besides, I could always just tag along with someone else.  White House Tom was there in his kilt.

Besides, in all likelihood I was going to have to drop out anyway.  Three days earlier Larry the Acupuncturist had refused to even treat my  left heel because he thought that if he inserted needles into that level of inflammation I’d never return for another treatment.  Only after I had absolutely insisted, and accepted full responsibility for what torture was to come, was Larry willing to place the needles.  My body has been a mess since my food poisoning Highland Sky suffer-fest.  Although my IT band held up okay during the Luray Triathlon last week, my right hamstring was shredded, and my left heel had flared up again on the plane.  I had stuffed my drop bag full of warm clothes on the hunch that if I had to drop out mid-way.

By ‘up there’ I mean one of the peaks of the Tobacco Root Mountains we were going to be climbing.  The 50 mile course had 11,000 feet of total elevation gain.  West coast climbs are long, not like the rollers were used to in the East.  The course was essentially a series of consecutive 5 mile climbs up followed by 5 mile descents.  The Fools Gold wasn’t the kind of race we had to do serious altitude training for, hovering mainly between 6,000-8,000 feet and peaking out at about 10,000 feet.

It was still dark and raining when RD Alex Papadopoulis gave his pre-race briefing.  The race was only one year old, so the field was still small.  To boost numbers Alex had added a 50k option that was an out-and-back and started with the 50 mile.   Alex had personally come to WUS last spring to tout the beauty and challenge of the course, which climbed up through the Tobacco Root Mountains in the southwest corner of Montana, near Yellowstone.  We were sold.

There were two VHTRC ‘blue train’ options this summer: Vermont 100 in July or Montana in August. Sean had tried to convince me to go to Vermont, where a large group of VHTRCers were headed and where I could do the 100k. But I balked at the Vermont course description, with its dull gravel roads. At the time of Alex’s visit I still had my first 50 miler at Bull Run looming.  But I promised that if I survived BRR it I’d sign up for what I dubbed the ‘Pony Run’. My Bull Run finish wasn’t entirely convincing, but who could say no to a little August vacation in Yellowstone? Everyone won: Aaron got his challenging 50 miler, I got a couple days tacked on afterwards to go bear-sighting.

There were a couple key points from Alex’s race briefing: (a) some of the trail markers for the 50 mile course had been vandalized, (b) the weather sucked, and (c) if anyone signed up for the 50 miler decided to do the 50k instead he would honor that finish.  Very tempting.

The course began with a 5-mile climb up a dirt road from the town of Pony.  Pony had 100 residents and a bunch of historic buildings that were questionably still functioning.  I ran (and mostly walked) with ‘White House’ Tom up the climb.  My hamstring was cranky, but starting uphill is much easier than starting downhill, and I was grateful I had a long climb to warm it up.  It was raining steadily, but I felt  prepared in my arm warmers and fancy Patagonia shell and was comfortable. The one discomfort from the rain was that my wet feet made my heel pads slide forward in my shoe and dig into my arch.  I wanted to stick with Tom as long as I could because conversation always makes the long climb go by so quickly.  But eventually I couldn’t take it and plopped down on a rock to reposition the gel pads.

When I got back I had cooled off quickly, and scurried to catch a man and woman who had just passed by and get my blood flowing again. A main topic of conversation on the trail was sorting out who was running the 50 miler and who was doing the 50k.  The division seemed to segregate by sex, with most of the men around me doing the 50 mile and the women doing the 50k.  I seemed to be the only one who was seriously considering dropping from the 50 mile to the 50k.  The decision point occurred at mile 12.

After we crested the climb the road turned immediately down.  As predicted, my hamstring did not much like running down the road, and I let my companions go ahead.  But when the road turned to trail, I started engaging lateral stability muscles that slowly loosened up the hamstring and I caught up to Tom and the gang. To my great surprise, Aaron was heading towards me up the hill.  As we passed each other he explained that everyone was doing the 50k version now because the 50 mile course had been closed due to snow.  I later found out that 6-8 inches of snow had accumulated that night on the ridge, making it too dangerous to send us up.

Some of the guys around me were planning to do their first 50 mile race and were pretty disappointed.  But I was elated.  I didn’t have to run 50 miles!  I celebrated with little fist dances.  I reassured my poor little hamstring that we were heading home. After visiting the aid station at the bottom of the hill, we headed right back up.  Every time we hit a steep climb (there were some seriously steep mud butt slides) my heel gels would get dislodged and I’d have to do shoe surgery. As the run wore on and I lost fungibility in my fingers the shoe surgeries became more difficult and time-consuming, particularly the initial step of getting the gaiter hook off the bottom lace.  And every time I lost progressively more body heat.

The meanest thing about the course design is that you get to a point where you are a mile from Pony and can see the town, but have to make a hard right turn onto a spur to go run a 10 mile lollipop.  Fortunately, the lollipop was the coolest part of the course, with a gnarly little switchback climb through the forest that dumped you out onto a beautiful set of ridges atop the mountains. Unfortunately, the combination of high elevation, hard rain, exposed tree-less ridges, and very low temperatures (probably low 30s, based on the face that Tom’s kilt froze and chaffed his thighs) made for pretty dismal weather conditions.

I might have been okay if I hadn’t needed to keep stopping to fumble with my shoes to straighten out those pesky heel pads.  Shaking and with chattering teeth, I couldn’t get my fingers to unclasp the hook and in a fit of frustration decided just to run on my toes and let the pad jar into my arch.  My hamstring wasn’t bothering me as much as I had feared, but I had strained some tendons in compensation.  Between the cold and my tweaks, my feet weren’t at the top of my list of concerns.  There was supposed to be a volunteer at the top of the 4-mile climb with some water, so I hatched a plan that I would suck it up until then and then maybe he could help me rid myself of the useless pads entirely.

But that 4-mile stretch was by far the slowest of the race, and I began to doubt whether this volunteer guy actually existed (Aaron shared the same sentiment and doubt).  In a fit of do-or-die determination, I plopped down in the freezing rain and willed my fingers to unhinge my shoes.  The wind blew in my face, and the longer I idled there, the harder it became to maneuver my numbing fingers.  I started to mumble to myself like a kindergarten teacher gone mental: ‘Okay, take the clasp off the shoe.  Good girl!  Untie the shoes, untie the shoes,’ I chanted.  My jaw was shaking uncontrollably.  ‘Tug, tug.  There you go.  Go–od girl.’  I yanked out the gel pad and held it in the air like a trophy.  It flopped in my hand like a fish.  ‘Come on, tie the laces back up.  There you go.  Good job.’   I made a feeble attempt to relatch the metal gaiter clasp, but knew it was futile and let them flap at my ankles.

When I lurched myself up off the rock I could feel how sore and tight my undertrained and overcompensating quads were.  I pulled my hood tighter around my head and retracted my hands within my jacket sleeves, clenching the heel pads in my paw. I ran the next section hard, even most of the uphills.  I couldn’t understand how I could still be so damn cold when I was running my engine so high.  My arm warmers were thick and would have provided good warmth if they hadn’t kept falling down and clumping around my wrists.  I tried to pull them up through my jacket, but my hands had been utterly useless since the final shoe surgery.

I thought about how every race I seem to find a new way to be miserably uncomfortable.  At Bull Run I felt great except for the whole miserable puking thing.  At Highland Sky I managed not to puke but my IT band felt like daggers were splitting it.  Here at the Pony run my stomach was holding out beautifully, I had managed to navigate my minefield of injuries thus far, yet I had found a new way to suffer: numb and chilled to the bone, so cold I was almost hyper-ventilating. I finally came across the ‘aid station in the middle of nowhere’ where they were able to give me some almost-hot water to drink.  More importantly, the aid station marked the end of the exposed frozen tundra stretch of the race, and from there we headed back into the shelter of the woods.  After a couple miles of rolling, it was all downhill to the finish.

It would have been a lot of fun to fly down that descent through the forest, and a healthy version of me would have loved it.  But today, given the state of all my injuries, I played it very conservative.  The prize for first place for the 50 miler was a fatty $300 check, which I figured they would give to us even though we got pushed down to the 50k.  So I had a sliver of competitive drive.  But my overarching goal was to finish in one piece, with nothing too wrecked, so Aaron and I could enjoy our remaining days hiking in Yellowstone.  My injuries started to flare pretty badly during those last two downhill miles on the road, with my IT band howling loudest, but I tried to keep things quiet.

As soon as I finished, Aaron and I jumped in our Kia and blasted the heat until my drop bag arrived with all my warm clothes in it.  All the VHTRCers survived the day, and no one seemed terribly disappointed that the race had been curtailed to 50k.  Aaron had a good race, but noticed the altitude on the climbs (notably, only local men finished ahead of him). There was a nice post-race party held in the school in Pony, with a nice spread of food (pulled pork bbq, pesto potato salad, fruit salad, baked beans) and bottles of local beer.  Overall, I thought the race was extremely well organized, and I hope the event succeeds.  There there were ample friendly volunteers and well-stocked aid stations that were thankfully prepared for the conditions (the tents and hot ramen noodles were particularly welcome).  I’m sure it was a tough call for Alex to make to divert the 50 milers onto the 50k course, but I think it was a good call, as few runners would have been prepared for such conditions.  There seemed to be good community support from the residents of Pony, as well as the main sponsor Mystery Ranch.

The one thing I found perplexing was why I didn’t win the $300 in prize money.  I understand that the prize purse was technically for the winner of the 50 mile race.  But given that the 50 milers were forced to change course to the 50k, it seemed natural that the structure of the prizes would be likewise adjusted.  The money had already been set aside after all.  I wasn’t 100% sure I’d be getting the prize money, but I had promised the gang dinner on me if I did.  It’s a bit blurry, but Gary K snapped a photograph of me looking absolutely perplexed after receiving my first-place prize: a palm-sized piece of wood cut in the shape of Montana.  I know we’re terribly spoiled back East by Horton schwag, the beautiful Uwharrie ceramics, and the Patagonia fleece I got this year at Highland Sky that is the warmest thing in the world.  But this looked like the kind of thing you have have to pretend to love because your kid made it for you at school.

~                   ~                  ~

Now that I had the hard part of the trip out of the way, it was time to enjoy the three days of vacation in Yellowstone we had set aside.  I had made poor Aaron drag about 20 lbs of photography equipment along, because I had a hunch about a new way to vacation: My passion for wildlife + Aaron’s passion for photography = Wildlife photography trips We had already pilot-tested the plan in Canaan Valley with Aaron’s parents.  We seemed to have it down: I’m in charge of (a) route orchestrating, (b) animal spotting, and (c) animal identification (when possible), while Aaron covers the whole camera bit.

On one hand, our Yellowstone trip was a dismal failure: in our two days in the park we never saw a bear, not even a black bear.  But on the other, it was a wild success: we had discovered a fantastic new way to vacation.  In addition to capitalizing on our personal passions, taking pictures of wildlife has several other advantages: (a) the challenge of finding wildlife has all the sporting fun of a hunt (only without harming any poor fluffy animals); (b) it can be done on a hike when wee are feeling vigorous, or alternatively from a car when we are spent; (c) we don’t have to bother with crowds; (d) we don’t have to buy souvenirs, as they’re all on his camera; and, critically, (e) my  knowledge  of wildlife is incomplete, so if we have a photo record of what we see when can consult books, the internet, or my brother Fred, so we learn as we go.

Luray Triathlon, Olympic Distance (1500m swim, 40 km bike, 10km run)

Nifty results analysis by Aaron

August 16, 2014

Luray, VA

When Aaron and I started dating, his ‘TRI GEEK’ vanity plate was almost a deal breaker.  I had known a smattering of triathletes, and by all accounts they were the crazies: the dudes who strutted around in outfits that would hardly fly in a 70s gay bar, and who had enough electronics to make a play for Inspector Gadget.  I objected to everything triathlon: the complexity of gear, the absurdity of costume, the obsession with data, all on top of my complete dismissal of all things swimming and biking.

My hatred of swimming started as a child at a sleep-away camp in the Pennsylvania mountains where the prime torture was a required swim class in a freezing, slimy green algae-filled lake.  Every feline hair in me smoldered.  Bikes were generally my friend as a child tooling around, and it wasn’t until adulthood that the fun of whizzing down hills was superseded by the sores on my ass, the terror of cars side-swiping, and being forced to ride that stupid exercise bike whenever I got injured running in college.

Aaron assured me that TRI GEEK was merely a relic of the past, and he hadn’t done a triathlon since 2008.  His VW died shortly after our first date, and the vanity plate was not carried over to the Jeep Wrangler he bought off Craigslist.  We carried on, under the assurance that I would never be made to bike or swim.

Fast forward a few years to the end of 2013, when I developed a kind of injury I had never had before, that threw my entire world for a loop.  I’ve struggled with all kinds of injuries over the years — IT band, knee issues, plantar fasciitis — but nothing like the fibroma, nothing that was visible — and *permanent*.  I was shaken to the root, and the terror of never being able to run again far exceeded my terror of the bike and the pool.  In no time, I had bought a new Speedo, ear plugs, goggles, a bathing hat, and eventually we retrieved one of his friend’s old Softride road bikes.  The conversion was complete.  Only I stunk.

The biking I took up pretty quickly, at least relative to the swimming.  There was definitely a learning curve — I don’t think Aaron will ever forget the time I got off my road bike and walked it down a hill because I was having trouble getting the brakes to work and didn’t want to risk flying through the trafficky intersection.  Once I got a hang of the brakes and gears and stuff, I quickly got comfortable on the bike, and pretty soon we were doing long (40-50 mile) rides in the mountains.  The swimming was pretty ghastly, though.  There was a lot of clenching of the side of the pool, gasping, half-drowning.  Half the time the goggles didn’t actually keep any water out of my eyeballs.

But I kept it up through the months, and by spring of 2014 I was game for signing up for the Luray Triathlon in August.  I was still a pretty crap swimmer, but I figured I could at least cover the distance and then the bike and run would be okay.  My biggest concern was the darn goggles.  It was going to be a challenge enough to swim the 1500 meters with functioning vision, but I couldn’t imagine how I was going to get through the swim half-blind and dumping the water out every couple minutes.  I threatened to do the swim without goggles entirely.  Aaron did not disguise what a terrible idea he thought this was.

We drove out to Luray early on Friday to get a test swim in.  There were many bits of the triathlon that I had never experienced before, including the open-water lake swim, the ‘bric’ (where you do a little jog after you bike to simulate what happens on race day), and the transition zones.  On Thursday night Aaron and I practiced transition zones and organizing all the stuff.  I typically hate this kind of thing, but Aaron made it fun by laying it all out on a towel as if it was a little picnic.  My bike handling skills are lacking, and it’s not easy for me to eat and drink while riding, so we concocted a strategy for getting calories in during T1 and T2 that centered around Ensure drinks.  Now the last time I had an Ensure was when I was puking two days from food poisoning back in June (the Ensure had gone down and then right back up), so I was banking on my stomach to not recall that experience on race day.

The results of the test swim were mixed.  On one hand, I loved everything about swimming in the lake, compared to the pool.  The water was fresh and clean, I loved seeing the sky and trees and mountains.  But the goggles were filling up with water no matter how I fiddled with them (tighter, looser, higher on the face, lower, over the hat, under the hat…).  The RD of the race, Dave Glover, is an old friend of Aaron’s from his Reston days, so we said hi to him after the swim.  Aaron introduced me, and I immediately launched into, ‘Do you think it’s crazy to swim in the race without goggles?’  There was a group of people clustered around Dave (Aaron thought they were lifeguards, but it turned out they were the pro athletes) who started whipping out extra pairs of goggles and offering them up.  I was overwhelmed and speechless by the outpouring of kindness, but one of the pairs from a woman seemed like it might be a real good contender, so I thanked her profusely and promised to find her after the race to return them.

We spent the night at Portobella, which Doug and Kerry have seriously spiffed up over the last year, and drove back to Luray the morning of the race.  We were one of the last cars to arrive and had to park in the far corner.  Given that this was my first triathlon and I didn’t know any of the drill, we should have given ourselves plenty of extra time for all the required set-up.  But good luck with that.  The pre-race set-up was entirely chaotic — there was no room for my bike on the rack, I didn’t know I had to get my number written on my arm, I never had a chance to pee, and when Aaron and I finally thought we were in the clear and approaching the start on the beach, we realized that both of us had forgotten to put on our ankle chips.  We streaked back up the stairs to retrieve the chips, and I barely made the start with my age-group.   The morning was chilly (in the 50s), so at least all the dashing around had warmed up me.  But my goggles had also entirely fogged up.

On my way into the water, I splashed the goggles to defog them, squatted and peed, and managed to start with my wave.  The never-before-tested pair of borrowed goggles performed far better than any of the previous pairs I had tried, so that was extremely fortunate.  What was not so fortunate was that my wave was the 3rd out of 8 waves (set only 2 minutes apart).  So my game plan of ‘swim real slow and don’t drown’ was met with the clawing hands and karate-kicking feet of the hundreds of swimmers advancing on me.  The first ten or so times I got mowed over were jarring and I’d swallow at lot of water and have to tread a bit to get re-oriented.  But eventually I got used to the sensation of being dragged under water, knocked in the head, and otherwise abused.  I tried to just focus on staying on course and not hyperventilating.  I gave one dude a sharp kick in the gut when he over-groped.

I managed to stay collected, and crawled along at my snail’s pace.  I breathed every stroke, and just kicked weakly, with a main goal of not going too far off course.  My right side is my strongly dominant side, and I’ve only recently begun to learn to swim on the left side.  But didn’t want my dominant arm to get too tired, so I breathed left occasionally.  Out of the 33 women in my 30-34 age group, I came out of the water dead last.  It had been irksome to spend much of the swim getting mowed over and mauled and knocked, but I had found the swim effort itself not to be difficult or tiring.  And I really loved swimming in the fresh open water in the sunshine.

I trotted up to the bikes and completed the routine we’d practiced, including downing the whole Ensure.  The vast majority of bikes were long gone, giving me an indication of how far behind I was from the rest of the field.  But I was really looking forward to getting on my bike and not have to worry about anyone’s foot colliding with my head.

The bike ride was the ultimate highlight of the race.  I enjoyed it end to end.  And I was way too newbie to be able to push myself, for fear that I’d blow up (I’ve done about ten long bike rides in my life).  So I just tooled along as the course rolled through the beautiful valley, lined with horses, cows, and goats in the morning light.  I relaxed, ate my snacks, drank my drink, let myself speed down the hills.  The course was two loops, so there were a lot of people doing their second loop while I did my first, and then my second loop was pretty darn lonely, as there were only the real stragglers left.

Aaron had warned me that the first mile and half of the run would suck after being on the bike.  He did not lie.  But he had prepared me for it, and I was able to push through and have an awesome run.  The course wasn’t ideal — a double out-and-back that was all downhill on the way out and all uphill on the way back, and mostly exposed in the hot sun.

But it sure was good to be in my element on my feet again.  I ran the 10th overall fastest time of the day (38:25 for the 10k).  Aaron was the only non-elite who ran faster.  Ironically, the run was the only event of the day where I had any real discomfort or suffering, because it was the only event where I knew how to push myself.  The road was hot and exposed, and my chronically tendonitisy right hamstring squealed and groaned.

Aaron was waiting for me at the finish line, having had a fine day himself.  He was very relieved to hear that I had thoroughly enjoyed the triathlon and was game to do another some day.  As we wandered around the finish area, we ran into a whole bunch of Aaron’s old Reston triathlon buddies, who were awfully glad to see him back in action after his six-year hiatus.  It was a bit of a Homecoming for him.  We tracked down Calah, who had given us the goggles, and she was very relieved that the pair had worked well for me and told me to keep them.  We insisted on giving her money for them, and she said she could find her at the awards ceremony.  In fact, it turned out she’d broken the course record that day and finished 6th overall, beating many of the elite men!  She was a total rockstar.  Her down-to-earth friendliness somersaulted by entire impression of the Triathlete.  Maybe the Luray event, with its low-key, homespun feel attracts the triathletes that are super-friendly and relaxed.  Luray was a great first triathlon: a great blend of being small and friendly but extra well-organized and filled with volunteers.

On the way home to DC we made a little pit-stop to have DQ with Sean in Leesburg.  Afterwards Sean was game enough to sit down for our first podcast recording for NECTR (Neglected East Coast Trail Running).  There was some major doubting of my whole podcast idea going down, but I was determined and made them sit and do it.  In the end, everyone agreed after the session that it was a lot of fun and accomplished what we set out to do.   We need to get some technical upgrades (GarageBand would stop recording after a certain song length and sometimes we didn’t notice and kept talking).  But proof of concept was a success, so stay tuned for the first episode of NECTR!

 

 

 

 

 

Aaron and I decided that his parents’ visit with us in Canaan Valley would be a perfect opportunity to try out the Aaron’s big lens for detailed nature photography. At a nearby marsh, nature cooperated beautifully, and we were inundated with goldfinches, green herons, cedar waxwings, bobolinks, bluebirds, what we believe was a northern harrier, and a variety of colorful butterflies.

If you’re petrified of getting old, hanging out for a day with Aaron’s parents should cure that.  Aaron’s dad is turning 80 next May, but was totally down for the 3.5-mile hike to the Freeland Road wildlife refuge, and up for the walk to feed the ponies later in the evening.  Aaron’s mom did a tough 4+ mile hike the next day through the Sodds with us, navigating those rocky trails with billy goat aplomb.  When they weren’t adventuring, they were trying to sell us on joining them on upcoming winter ski trips to Colorado, Oregon, and Austria.