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October 07, 2009
My First mOUnTaiNBACK
Back in the summer I decided that I wanted to start getting back into shape, so I decided to start running again. I ran a bit early in the summer, but then fell out of the habit again for the most part until I got back from my visit to Wisconsin & Minnesota. I was usually just doing a little 2-mile loop, and often having difficulty even doing that without taking any walking breaks.
I wanted to get to the point where I could comfortably run 3-5 miles, but I was lacking some motivation to push myself to that point as quickly as I could. So of course the natural thing to do when I was struggling to run 2 miles was to say yes when asked if I wanted to join an 8-person team of people from PSCG for a 50-mile relay race, the Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK, with only 4 weeks to train for it. I thought I'd probably be able to swing a 3-mile leg, but I was assigned a 4.9-mile leg. At that point I knew I had my work cut out for me to get my mileage up in time.
Right after agreeing to do the race, I started to wonder what I was getting myself into. Late that week I decided to start stretching my distance though, and one night I surprised myself by running 3.5 miles without stopping, my longest run since high school. At that point I knew I should be able to work myself up to 5 miles by race time. After another week or two I started doing a 4.1-mile loop, but kept having to stop and walk several times. Shin splints were killing me after every run though. And then when Alex came to visit a couple weekends ago, we went on a run together and I surprised myself by being able to do 5.5 miles with only one walking break (and no pain from shin splints afterward!). It made a huge difference to run with a friend though, as running is as much a mental activity as a physical one. And usually my will isn't enough to overcome my body telling me it wants to stop and walk, so that's something I've been trying to work on too over the last month. I actually have Alex to thank for a lot of encouragement along the way in the weeks leading up to the race.
Anyway, race day was Saturday, and we had to check in at 8:15am, before our relay wave started the race at 9:30am. It was a very foggy early morning, but as the fog was burning off before the start, I got to see a faint fogbow! That was pretty cool, I don't think I've ever seen one before. We really couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day though, by mid-afternoon the temp was in the mid 60s and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. We were sooooo glad it wasn't raining!
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The Tussey mOUnTaiNBACK is a 50-mile relay race, and it's divided into 12 legs, ranging both in difficulty (easy/mostly downhill to moderate to difficult/mostly uphill) and in length (3.2 miles up to 6.4 miles, I believe). It can be run solo as an ultra-marathon (the USA national 50-mile championships are held here every year, in fact), or as a team of anywhere from 2-8 people. Runners have to go in their listed order, though, so you can't just have your best runner do all the hardest legs. Our team name was "So Much Potential, So Little Kinetic" (we had five current or former physicists on the team), and our runners in order were Mindi, Adrienne, David D, Becca, Kerrie, Laurie, me & Isaac (with Mindi, Adrienne, David D & Becca all running the last four legs). When we dropped off Mindi at the start line and then drove up the road to the Transition Zone 1, we all felt really bad for Mindi, because the leg was about 4 miles, and *ALL* uphill with about a 900-ft rise (and two switchbacks). Talk about a tough opening leg! The course was all on roads that snaked through the ridges in Rothrock State Forest (no trails, thankfully, considering how rocky those are in Rothrock), but the forest roads were still open to traffic, in addition to the one support vehicle that each team was allowed to bring along to transport runners from leg to leg. So the basic way everything went was someone starts running, the rest of us pile in the van and drive to the next transition zone, get out, wait for our runner to come and hand off the baton to our next runner, and then we'd all hop back in the van and drive to the next transition zone, repeating this process over and over all day long. It was fun though! The hardest legs were #1 (Mindi), #4 (Becca), #10 (Adrienne) and #11 (David D), though some of the others (like #7, mine) weren't exactly picnics either.
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My run was leg #7, with a length of 4.9 miles and labeled "moderate difficulty." The name of my leg also was "Miles from Nowhere." It started out at mile 25.9 of the course, and I was greeted immediately with a "hill of death," a mile-long uphill section, rising 300 ft. I wanted to stop so badly toward the top, but when I saw the crest of the hill I was able to keep going. For the next third of a mile it was a downhill, descending 100 ft, but then from mile 1.3 to mile 2.5 of my leg, it was a long, gradual uphill slope, rising 100 ft. Between mile 2 and mile 3 I had to stop and walk twice because I got a bad side stitch, I was disappointed in that. I hate those with a passion. I still had the side stitch the whole rest of the run, but I made myself keep going and not walk the last two miles, partly because I knew stopping and starting again would only continue to make the side stitch even worse. Fortunately the last half of my leg was mostly downhill, descending 300 ft, although the last couple tenths of a mile was a gradual uphill slope. Ugh. Even with a couple walking breaks and the side stitch (which really slowed down my running pace), I was still able to do my 4.9-mile leg in 50 minutes. For me, a 10-minute mile pace really wasn't bad at all, especially considering the long uphill portions. I also passed three people, and only got passed by two (one person that I passed on the first hill passed me back on a walking break of mine when I was clutching my side, sigh). I was very glad to be done, but we had to hop in the van pretty much right after I got done to get to the next transition zone because Isaac's leg was pretty short, meaning I didn't get a chance to stretch before having to sit down for about 10 minutes. That was enough to make my legs sore for the next couple days. If I do this again, I think I'll try to stretch at least some immediately upon finishing, and catch my breath while doing that. Live and learn!
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All told, our group did the relay in 7:34:52, which means our group as a whole was averaging a 9-minute mile pace. We were really pleased with that! Stunningly, the fastest ultramarathoner this year completed the course in a jaw-dropping 6:40:01. I don't know how that's even possible, to do 50 miles all by yourself on that hilly a course that quickly. Anyway, after the race there was a free dinner for all the runners, which included tasty barbeque chicken, pasta primavera, and free Yuengling. Gotta love the free beer on the "13th leg" to carb up post-race! :-) Anyway, though we were all rather tired by the end of the day, we all had a blast. I think many of us would like to do it again next year, including myself, and maybe we'll even get enough people together to have two teams from Penn State Christian Grads! Next year we've gotta bring some cowbells or something to make more noise and cheer everyone on, and maybe have some sort of fun themed costume for the race, like the Glenn and the rest of the pirates team had this year.
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I'm very glad I agreed to do this and stuck with it. This provided me the necessary motivation to go running even on days when I wasn't too thrilled to go, and to push myself to increase my mileage when I wasn't doing a good job of doing that on my own. I don't anticipate that I'll continue running three times a week through the winter months, but maybe I'll keep up a once or twice a week running schedule, just to stay in shape a little bit. I want to get rid of my beer belly, after all. ;-)
Posted by Jared at October 7, 2009 12:48 AM