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Week 252
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A Woefully Late Greetings, 50+ers! Since Friday morning, this is the first waking break I've had to do anything (although I should be currently grading)! Volume-wise, I actually had a pretty good week last week, it did include the trail race that I spoke of. Managed almost 35 miles on 6 runs (3 of which were in the race). The Mileage looks as such:
Sun: 9.0 easy (7:52 avg pace)
Mon: off
Tues: 6.4 (w/ 6 hill repeats, steady hard, still untimed)
Wed: 4.2 easy grass/trail (8:20 pace)
Thur: off
Fri: 3.6 in 29:21, my first leg of the trail race
Sat: 6.8 in 1:05:42 and 4.7 in 44:04 (2nd and 3rd legs, respectively)
Not much to comment on the early part of the week, so let's go straight to the race report.
This was the Ragnar-Ft. Knox Trail Relay. It was held in Otter Creek Park about 40-miles southwest of Louisville along the Ohio River. The trails in the park all pretty much go down into the river valley and back out again (the two longer ones (yellow @4.7 and red @6.8) more so that the shortest one (green @3.6)). Each had their unique features and challenges. We assembled 8 guys from ages 23 to 58 (I was the second oldest), for this adventure. All but one, I would say are fairly serious about their running; the 23 year old was my course TA that I recruited last minute---he enjoys trail running, but isn't a competitive racer. He did bring his hiking, biking, swimming, climbing, kayaking experience to the group (you'd like this bloke, Mo'pak.) With 8 runners, 3 trail loops, and 24 total legs, everyone runs each trail loop once as we cycle through the runners changing loop each time; all the exchanges take place at a common point. Let me say up front that I had hoped that we might have a bit of competition, but it seems we were pretty much racing ourselves. Also, you should know that we had heavy rain Thursday night heading into Friday, so the trails were wet, and the campground had some pretty "swampy" areas (though our site stayed relatively dry.)
These give overviews of the three loops, but they were run oppositely from how these are shown (so read the elevation charts right to left). There were a few other minor changes in the final course layout, which is why the distances in the links don't quite match those stated above.
Green loop:
http://www.hikingproject.com/trail/7012955
Yellow loop:
http://www.hikingproject.com/trail/7013056
Red loop:
http://www.trailrunproject.com/trail/7013057
Ours was the last team (along with a couple others) to depart at 6pm Friday evening (some teams had been out since 11:30 am). We put our two fastest guys first (running green, then yellow), figuring to put the speed in during day light and before the course got too trashed. The third guy (our 23 yo hiker) also got daylight on his red loop, and I went fourth starting out in twilight on the green loop again. The green loop was short, but the first half was all mud and roots. I probably expended too much energy trying to avoid the slop on the descent out of the gate. By 1.5 miles, I was already pretty exhausted, but I managed to climb back out of the loop up the short/steep 20+% grade climb before I slipped and fell just before I entered the common 1/2-mile finishing straighaway. It should be noted that the common finishing 1/2-mile deteriorated significantly over the course of the event. More than half of it became a muddy mess. If you embraced the slop, you could make up time as people gingerly stepping around the huge mud-fields. I managed to keep my pace under 8-minutes/mile for the first leg, so I was really pleased with that....but that was the best I had to offer, too.
I got zero sleep between my first and second legs, so I was back on the course around 2am for the red loop. This was the longest leg, that would also have some challenges down by the river where the trails were on the verge of washing out, and there were a lot of large rocks to navigate. I've not mentioned this before, but in my late 20's I'd developed an eye condition (Fuchs' heterochromic uveitis/iridocyclitis) that culminated in cataract surgery. As a result, my night depth perception is a little questionable (to put it mildly). Away from the river, the course was actually pretty easy to navigate (save a few mud fields), but there was a lot of twisting and turning. Once you got down to the river, it got dicier for a guy with impaired depth perception. At points, I chose prudently to walk through the rock descents, or mud fields next to drop-offs. I figured better to lose a minute or two than risk DNF'ing. The reward of navigating this was a 3/4-mile shot of straight gravel trail that one could make up time on, however, one then had to climb back out of the river bed. I had no strength on the 20% grade and ended up powerwalking for the first time since god-knows-when in a race. The finish was the usual slop. I was glad to finish in under 1:06, but it didn't help the team's cause.
My third leg was the dreaded yellow loop. By this point, there seemed to be consensus that the yellow loop was harder than the other two, mostly because there were lots of stream crossings and some nasty rock fields and a few startling switchbacks to negotiate (which were made all the more treacherous in the dark.) Fortunately, it was past daybreak (8:30am) for me as I set out on this final leg. In daylight, it was my favorite run! The views over the river from the bluffs was spectacular, the footing was good for the first few miles, and it really only got dicey once I descended. But with daylight, I was able to navigate a pretty good line, and made reasonably good time down to the lowest point (I think I passed about 12 teams runners during this time, but lord knows what leg they were on; not ours.) I did choose to walk a couple times where I thought I might easily slip and fall. Once these were all negotiated, the big climb came. This time, it was up a rock field, and it was steep! My lack of winter training, and my extra pounds were no match. There was no way I was running up this thing, so hands to knees I power-walked my way up the steepest portion. There were three more rock-field undulations after the big climb that I somehow managed to stay running along. I entered the final 1/2-mile slog feeling like I'd done about as good as I could under the circumstances finishing my final leg in about 44-flat.
If you take my times and multiply by 8, you get roughly 18-hours, 32-minutes. Our team total time was 17-hours, 46-minutes, showing you that we had some pretty good runners on the team. We had one guy that routinely runs hilly trails for 3-hours both Saturday and Sunday. He killed every one of his legs: running the green leg in 23:33 (daylight), the yellow leg in 36:19 (in the dark) and the red leg in 48:25 (also in the dark) simply unbelievable! Ultimately, the next place team timed in at 20-hours, 56-minutes; more than three hours behind us! Several of the teams had a couple of good runners on them, but we were the only team that brought 8 decent runners. And, by the way, my climber TA more than pulled his weight: 1:03:57 (red, daylight), 50:21 (yellow, night), 36:43 (green, daybreak). For comparison, his pace gives 20-hours, 8-minutes total time, which is still ahead of the time for the second place team.
OK, that's more than enough for one post from this middle-of-the-pack runner. What took so long to post? As soon as the race was over, we had to make an emergency road trip (10+hours driving each way) to deal with some family issues. Didn't get back to Lexington until 1:30pm Monday, and I've been playing catch-up ever since.
Kudos to everyone else, especially those that nailed the Carlsbad race! Get well swiftly those that have fortuitously done themselves in (I know the feeling!) And especially, best regards to dhl, tough diagnosis, but I have faith that you'll come out the other side and be able to do great things!
All the Best!