My First 50K
I completed my first ultra-marathon a little over a week ago at the Black Canyon Ultras. It was 50 kilometers (which, to answer almost everybody’s first question, is 31 miles) of rocky, dry, rarely flat desert trail. It was hard to finish, it was hard to train, it is hard to express running this race, but I’ll try. For the uninitiated, or the fast, “race” for me, simply means a group run where you pay in advance and get timed. The racing aspect is left to a fairly small group at the front, though all of us may want to beat someone at some point in the race.
I decided to camp at the finish line, where there would be shuttles in the morning to the start. The start is much closer to home, but there was no parking, and my wife is not an early riser, so I thought camping would be the best choice for rest and marital bliss. It wouldn’t be a trip if nothing went wrong… I realized about halfway into the drive, I hard forgotten my earbuds and my e-reader! I had put together more than 12 hours of music and podcasts to get me through the drive and run. I guess I was in for a nature run, and no progress in my book for the long evening of camping. I set up my pop-up camper and went to see if I had any friends hanging around for the 100k runners to come through or picking up their 50k race packets. I found a bunch of friends! We caught up and talked about who was taking a DNF (Did Not Finish) and why. Then I was asked to move my trailer, since it’s a pop-up, I basically have to pack up, like I’m leaving in order to move it the requested 100 yards. A friend helped me with it, thank goodness, I think I may have just gone home if I had been doing it alone, since I really wasn’t feeling great about the whole situation.
It looked like it was going to be a pretty bad night of camping, we were crowded together a bit, and there were no trees or anything around. But, I have been fooled with quiet nights before. This was not one of those nights, the 100k runners were returning to get their vehicles until well after midnight. They were not being obnoxious but they had to open and close doors, and drive the gravel road with their lights on. Then at 4am, a semi truck arrived, kept the engine going and had the lights pointed right into camp. I’m not sure that I got any sleep at all, but I assume there were maybe 3 hours of sweet relief during the night. Shuttles were scheduled to leave shortly after 6, so I “got up” at 5 for coffee and a bagel with avocado. I tried to toast the bagel directly on the propane stove, which worked a little, grilling in a pan with butter would have been ideal. I met with a friend to go to the shuttle, and wait for our start time at Mayer High School. It was windy and cold, yes, it can get cold in Arizona! Waiting for the start is always nerve-racking, and usually cold. Fortunately, conversation with friends always makes the time slip away. We started 15 minutes late, and as always, the excitement of starting had me running faster than my plan, not to mention, I was ready to warm up!
We started on the high school track, which was fun, but I didn’t know there were cameras set up and was paying zero attention and nearly ran into one in the first minute of the run. I made it past that and nearly tripped on a cone warning me about a curb! It turned out that was the most perilous part of the course, the rest was just steep rocky trail. I was able to get into a more reasonable pace and spent much of the first hour or two chatting and ticking off the miles. I am not used to doing long runs with company and was distracted from my usually sipping water and eating schedule. I tried to make up for missed intake and made myself pretty full on ginger snaps and licorice. My friend took off and I fell into my usual solo mode. Now I’m starting to miss my earbuds a bit, but still feeling good. The cutoff for the race was 12 hours, which seemed like plenty, but now I’m hearing there are cutoffs at the aid stations! I am exceptionally bad at math while I’m running, and my head started swimming trying to figure out if I could make it to the first cutoff, finally I decided that the rumors were wrong, there was only one cutoff for the race.
I reached the second to last aid station at Bumblebee Ranch and was absolutely starving, the candy and gels were not cutting it. As I entered I wanted to squash the rumor about the cutoff, so I asked the first volunteer I encountered. The answer was that there was indeed a cutoff, 45 minutes from now! I was very glad to hear it worked out, but I will need to do more homework on future races. I had a vegan quesadilla, a couple of bean roll ups (I think each is a quarter of a tortilla), and a couple of hummus avocado wraps. It felt amazing to get something substantial in my belly, I wanted more, but I was not comfortable with the 45 minute buffer, so I took off. The next section I crossed the mileage of my longest training run and started to feel the fatigue as well as random pain that moved to each of my joints and parts of my feet and legs. I made it to the final aid station with just over an hour to spare. Feeling confident, I emptied the gravel from my shoes and downed an extra cup of Gatorade.
The final segment was 8 miles and I had over 5 hours to complete it, no problem. The clouds were coming and going and it was either perfect or scorching, depending on that. Scorching was my perception, probably 72F was the reality. This last section looks pretty mild on the elevation map, but it’s a series of steep ups and downs, which were starting to really cause some pain in my quads. Going up the hills was difficult, but going down was pure pain. By the time I hit the 26.2 mile mark, the farthest I have gone before, I was seriously ready to be done. I love to watch videos and read about runners reaching their limits and pushing past, consequences be damned, but I am not one of those people, I was not near my limit, and at no point was I concerned about a lasting injury, but I was hurting. My watch battery was at 2% and I felt like maybe my body was at 1%.
After cresting the last big hill, you can see the ranch where the finish is. It’s exhilarating to see it and I felt like picking up the pace and finishing ASAP, my body had other plans. From the moment the uphill turned to downhill, sharp pains in my quads brought me to a near standstill. I tried walking sideways, considered going backwards, even thought about lying down and hoping it would work out somehow. Instead I very slowly picked my way down. Reaching the bottom of the hill, I was now on flat, relatively smooth dirt road. Physically, I didn’t feel like running in the least, but my competitive spirit was firmly against getting passed on this little stretch leading to the line, and it’s always good to have a little pep at the finish. So, I picked up the pace to a ridiculously slow trot and crossed the finish of my first 50k! Hot dogs, beer, nap, pack up the trailer and drive home. Now, I can change my tag-line to “ultra-marathoner”, maybe.