Great Southern Endurance Run DNF

Distance: 100 miles (made it to 58)

Date: Saturday, August 15th

It’s almost two months since the DNF and I’m still processing things. I was very excited going into this – a 100 mile journey through Atlanta starting at Kennesaw Mountain, going through downtown, up Stone Mountain, and then back to Atlanta proper. I knew going into it my feet would pose a problem. I keep learning lessons about how my feet react to walking vs running and I seem to get blisters when I walk more than about 7 miles – running 50 has posed no problems, but walking? Blister factory. I am fairly certain shoes are a big part of it and I also think that strategic taping could also help and that’s something I need to solve before Badger 2021.

Though in all honesty, I did not DNF because of my feet. They may have been cause for me to DNF later, maybe even as soon as 5 or 10 miles down the road from where I stopped, but when I stopped at approximately 58 miles, it was because of my mental state and not because of my feet. They were just really good scapegoats for the mental beating I was giving myself.

I’ve heard many people say that running and ultrarunning are very selfish sports. I agree a million percent and one thing I hate to do more than anything is inconvenience people or ask for help. That event involved both. I somehow got my husband and my dad on board to give up time to travel with me up to Atlanta. The plan was to get in to Atlanta midday, relax, go to sleep early, and then start at 3am on the top of Kennesaw. Only that’s not what happened. There were several wrecks on I-75 and a 6 hour drive turned into an 8.5 hour drive.

At 8pm I was attempting to fall asleep and I got the call from Trena – there were going to be protests at Stone Mountain the next day, which meant the entire area would be closed to visitors. In an attempt to be able to do the whole route, we had to push the entire endeavor from a 3am start to a 9am start so we would go near Stone Mountain when hopefully any violence/protests would be finished. This meant that we would be getting no pre-dawn reprieve from the sun and we would be finishing much later on Sunday than anticipated; both my husband and dad had to be at work on Monday morning so the finishing time was important.

I started with that weighing pretty heavy on my head and it only got heavier and heavier as the day went along. Yes, my feet hurt, my pinky toes turned into giant blisters and burst in my shoes around mile 26 – when you have a group of 4 people you only go as fast as your fastest person and I didn’t want to be the one who held us up with a foot problem so early. Also, we basically didn’t run at all after about mile 10 which stamped my ticket into BlisterLand. Going through areas of downtown Atlanta were cool, I really enjoyed the belt line and all of the art along the way, definitely my favorite section of the run. Despite the blisters, I was in a good mood for the most part.

I think my mental state really started to shift when nighttime fell and I started doing the dreaded ultra math. I kept thinking, “We’ve been at this for XX hours and we still have at least XX hours to go if nothing goes wrong and we don’t slow down (not likely). That’ll have us finishing at XX, which means we still have to drive home and then dad and Tom won’t be able to make it to work tomorrow and I did this and I made them come and I bet they hate me for making them hang out and sleep for an hour at a time in a car on random streets. Why did I do this to them? Why am I such a bad person? How could I be so selfish?”

I felt so damn bad that I was doing this to them and slowly wrecking my feet over the miles. Every single step started to hurt. I think my brain amplified my foot pain to be much more unbearable than it actually was (evidenced by the fact that I ran the next day. Although a month and a half later, my blisters were still healing, so my poor feet definitely did take a beating).

Again, even though I had a physical issue, I stopped because my mental game was weak. I didn’t want it bad enough. I couldn’t stand the idea of inconveniencing my people and making them miss work to crew my dumb ass. They never once complained and only wanted to help me finish, they were in a great mood and were having adventures of their own.

I know some people regret races after they DNF them - I’m two months out and I still think I made the right decision, but I made it for the wrong reasons. I saw what I needed to see on the journey and I had a great adventure. Quitting at 58ish miles is okay with me, but I hate the fact that I quit because my mental game wasn’t strong enough and I was too worried about things outside of my control. We started 6 hours later and I let that screw with my head. Now I know I have a huge, gaping hole in my mental game, and I hate it, but glad to know it’s there so I can remedy it in the future!

My Big Fat Virtual Summer (3 of 3)

Part 3 of the dumb shit I did!

TJM Badger Trail Race Muskie Marathon

Date: Friday, July 17th

I was originally signed up to do the Badger 100, but since the official event was cancelled, I deferred my entry to next year and signed up for the Muskie Marathon instead. I’ve decided that I’m going to do all of the distances at Badger, so I figured I’d start with a marathon so it’s different from my medal from last year (the 50k and 50mi both have the tunnel on the medals). I kind of decided out of nowhere to run this one. I could have given myself another week of training and maybe built up some miles, but I said, “ehhh.” I decided on Wednesday that I was going to run a marathon on Friday and I when I told Tom I don’t think he believed I would actually do a whole marathon out of nowhere, especially given the stupid hot weather.

But I did! I did it as an out and back from the house, so that means you HAVE to finish or you’ll never ever get home, EXCEPT – I didn’t plan it that well so my out was not 13.1 miles, it was only 12ish? My plan was to run to Silver Springs State Park, run around the park a little bit, hopefully see some alligators and monkeys (no dice), and then run back home. It was a HOT day, so by the time I got to about 15 miles, I knew it would be a rough type of finish because it was exposed the whole way. Since I had in the back of my mind that I was going to be doing GSER in a few weeks, I decided to get some good “power hiking” (aka fast walking) training in.

I ended up power hiking the last 10 miles of the marathon, stopping at home at mile 24 to go to the bathroom and grab an electrolyte popsicle before I went out to get it finished up. Good experience and the swag was really nice.

Yeti 24hr Challenge #2

Distance: 50 miles

Date: Friday, July 24th

This was the challenge that broke not just the treadmill, but my spirit/will to live. I also realized during the last 30 minutes of the very last run that I had basically been bonking hard all day long.

I had such a fun time with the first Yeti 24 hour challenge (five miles every four hours for a day, not too bad with 30 miles in all), so I thought adding another 3.5 miles to each run would be just fine. I decided to change it up and instead of doing neighborhood runs, I would do two on trails, two on paved surfaces, and two neighborhood or treadmill runs. It goes without saying that it was brutally hot and humid, but oof, I did not manage myself very well during this whole thing.

I did my first run bright and early Friday morning on the Florida Trail, went home to change and then headed over to Silver Springs State Park (the campground area) for the next run. The trails there are pretty exposed, but I suffered through. I drank a lot of water, but basically felt parched the whole run.

The next one was on the Santos paved trail. Even though it was really hot, my dumb brain thought, “It’s only 8.35 miles, just take a handheld.” Well, that was stupid. I had basically been behind on water all day and then not taking enough for the hottest part of the day just screwed me over. I basically did okay for the first few miles, and then fell apart. This was the story for the rest of the runs.

The fourth run I decided to do at Greenway – I did the 5mi loop and the 5k loop. I also had pizza for dinner prior to the run and I thought it didn’t agree with my stomach, but I think it was more of a revolt in general to the lack of enough nutrition throughout the entire day. Heat saps a lot of energy and I was feeling it.

My fifth run was on the treadmill and was essentially the death knell for it About a mile in to the run I heard a loud CRACK and the belt started running weird. I ended up power hiking the rest of that one on the mostly busted treadmill.

The final one was the wooooorst. So awful. My stomach really rebelled during this one, much more so than the previous ones. I went out into the neighborhood, but had to jump into the bushes a couple of times (thank goodness it was 3am) and realized I would be better off to finish it out on the treadmill where I would be close to a bathroom. Unfortunately, when I got onto the treadmill again, the belt would not stay on track, was going faster than it should have been going, and it was making a horrible sound. I didn’t want to be far from a bathroom, so I switched to doing the last 3.5 miles around the cul de sac. That was misery x10. Every half mile I would switch direction. After one of my bathroom breaks I grabbed a piece of pizza leftover from dinner and a cookie. I ate them while continuing to walk around the cul de sac and within 20 minutes my mood and my outlook on life completely changed. It was then that I realized that I had basically underfueled my entire day and I would have had a much better time of it all if I had done better on eating.

I had about a mile where I felt good and then I was DONE. This was much, much tougher than the other challenge and I definitely underestimated it. I also complicated it by driving to different trailheads which reduced the time I could have been resting and eating.  Would I do this one again? HELL NO.

Troubled Raccoon Racing Scavenger's Hunt

Date: All of August

This was a wild month of challenges that had no specific mileage goals, but required fun tasks to be done such as running in the rain, doing squats, taking pictures of animals, and all sorts of fun things! I had a lot of fun with this challenge and my favorite was my Minnie Mouse Beer Mile. In one week there were prompts to do a beer mile and one to run in costume so I combined them! It was a great time!

Oh noooo, it happened to me

PB&J 15k

Date: Saturday, September 19

Last year my sister Laci signed up for the PB&J 10k and asked if I wanted to join her. I saw that they had a 15k challenge where you do the 10k and then come back to the start line in time for the 5k. It seemed like a neat challenge and my preferred running fuel is pb&j, so I was in! It was a really fun race and when I got the email that they moved it to virtual, I decided to sign up and make my route. 

After the treadmill died after the Yeti challenge, Tom and I decided to get a semi-fancy nordictrack one that had a built in mapping feature that utilizes Google street view, so I decided to run the actual route (plus a little on the end so it'd be 15k). I had a great time and the swag was awesome, I'll definitely be doing it again next year. 

 

My Big Fat Virtual Summer (2 of 3)

This is part 2 of all of the dumb shit I did this summer!

Possum’s Revenge 69mi

Finish Time: 19:32:00

Date: Friday, June 19th

(DNF, Friday June 5th)

This one took two tries, but I got it done! I had long admired the buckle, but thought it would be years before I could work it into my race calendar, but COVID changed that! I signed up for the virtual as soon as it went live and started plotting my route and how I was going to manage it. I did the Sugar Badger 50mi as a training run for this. I did SB50 on the road, but I wanted to do Possum’s Revenge on the trail. One really, really cool thing is that of the trails I run on regularly, if I did an out and back on all of them, it’s 70 miles. So I would be 100% familiar with the trails and what I would need.

Attempt #1

I really hate asking for help, so my plan was to be fully self-supported. I placed a water drop at mile 25 and planned to refill my food at mile 50 (where I parked) before heading out for the last 19 miles. It did not go great. It was an oppressively humid day and at mile 13 I stopped to take off my socks to wring them out. I was soaked from head to toe and didn’t think about bringing a sock change since I didn’t think I would want it until after mile 50.

I got to my turn around point where my water drop was and I had already been running out of water miles before I got to the next water source, so I couldn’t fathom the idea of leaving behind my jug of water after refilling. And it’s exactly where I screwed up – I took the water jug with me. So now I was having to run with a water jug in my hands. By the time it was empty, the damage was done, my running had fallen apart completely, I had pains I’d never felt before (likely from the imbalance of carrying the water) and decided to quit when I was still 3 or so miles from the car so I still had to hobble my way back to it. I was sick of being soaking wet all day and just OVER the whole thing. I went home knowing that if I wanted to finish I would have to ask for help.

Attempt #2:

At the end of my first attempt, I thought I had injured myself, but the next day I was basically fine. It was a relief for sure. I went back and forth on whether I would try again, but when I did, I was prepared. Instead of doing a single water drop and being fully self-supported, I would be partially self-supported with the same water fountains as before and with my truck, but have two crew points in the first 50 miles where there is no water at the trailhead and then pacer help in the last 15 miles.

My brother agreed to meet me at the Pruitt Trailhead, the 25 mile point, with a cooler with cold water, uncrustables, and pedialyte popsicles as well as a full change of clothes. Knowing that I was going to get out of the wet clothing made it much more bearable. I actually beat my brother to the trailhead by about 10 minutes, so I took the time to air out my feet in an attempt to get them dry before wiping them, applying trail toes, and getting changed. The pedialyte pops were the shit! I first heard of them through some ultrarunning friends, and I will use them for hot runs when I can.

I headed on back the way I came from and knew I’d be seeing my brother at the 49th Ave Trailhead (around 35ish miles). Since he had a few hours before seeing me, he went to the grocery store and to grab lunch, so when I saw him I ate a couple of his fries and stole a baggie of frozen strawberries from the giant package he’d purchased. The frozen strawberries were so good and juicy.

I got back to the truck still feeling good and moving pretty well, but as I walked into the bathroom at the trailhead to change my clothes, the weather hit. Not only was it a torrential downpour (the kind that soaks you in two seconds flat and you can’t see more than a couple feet in front of you), the skies opened up with huge cracks of very close lightning. Unfortunately, the rest of the trail was more open than the previous sections. Yes, there are tall trees, but it was going to be a lot of fear. I stayed in the bathroom for about 30 or so minutes trying to figure out my options and looking at the radar.

I decided that instead of being soaking wet, afraid of lightning strikes, and dragging my sister and husband through hours of sogging misery, I would change up the plan and finish my miles on the treadmill in our shed at home. I drove home, changed clothes, socks, got into some road shoes, and set up everything out in the shed. My sister, who was going to pace me, brought a pizza and we happily chatted and ate for about an hour and a half while I walked on the treadmill.

SIDENOTE: #CryClub – so I basically always cry at some point during an ultra. I thought it would be funny if I posted in the TJM Nation facebook group for people to guess what mile I cried at. Well, it happened while we were eating pizza. Laci handed me a slice of pizza, I was hungry, but heat screws with my stomach so I was eating in very slowly and no one brought me a plate. I cried because of that. Mile 54 – cried because I didn’t have a plate for my slice of pizza.

By that point, all I had in me was a walk. Though I think if I was outside I could have motivated myself to run in fits and starts (like from one tree or blaze or the next), but on the dreadmill I was simply slogging through as best I could. I listened to podcasts, watched some shows, and generally suffered until I was done. But then I was DONE and it was great! I was very pumped to earn my lovely buckle!

Troubled Raccoon’s Untrained Ultra Challenge

Distance: 52.7k total (13.1, 15k, 10k, 5k, 1mi)

Dates: July 1 through July 4th

Wednesday 1 mile, Thursday 5k, Friday morning 10k, Friday afternoon 15k, Saturday evening half-marathon

So I had originally planned this to be a big old PR fest and I hoped to smash a couple of my own times on these distances, but the fact of the matter is – the weather was just brutal and I haven’t done speed work in months. I was less than 3 seconds off of my mile time, but all of the other distances I decided to take it easy. I am going to revisit this challenge and/or smashing some PRs next year or during the winter when it is more conducive to running fast.

I like the format of the challenge. All five distances must be done in the span of 5 days or less. Some people chose to do the whole thing in one day, some people spread it out over all five days. You can do it in whatever order you like, too, so there’s so many variations on how to tackle this challenge. I think my most memorable run was my half marathon. I did it on the 4th in the evening after helping Tom complete his Battle Miles virtual race earlier in the day. The weather was gross hot and humid, so I decided to keep it around the 1.8 mile loop around the neighborhood so I could refill my handled with water/electrolytes every loop. It was so rough that that is exactly what I did for the entire half marathon; drinking a full 16oz every 2 miles. The worst parts about that run were that someone threw a firework at me and it was extremely smoky near the end. The best part was that my victory in finishing the challenge was celebrated by everyone in the neighborhood setting of pretty fireworks.

Troubled Raccoon’s 24/7 Challenge

Distance: 24 miles

Dates: Thursday July 9th – Friday July 10th

The 24/7 challenge is to run at least a mile during every hour of the day (24 hours) during the month of July (the 7th month, hence 24/7). Additional challenges were to do it all in the span of a week or a day.

A few weeks before taking this on, I had watched a race play out online that was called the Little Dog, Front Yard Race, and like Big’s Backyard, it is a last person standing style event. Unlike Big’s, which requires participants to go 4.167 miles every hour on the hour, this event was one mile on the hour every hour. I was very intrigued by it and was amazed that the event went on for over 10 days. More of a sleep and self-management challenge than a run challenge for sure. I thought I might be interested in trying something like that in the future, so I figured I would do my 24/7 challenge this way. Some people did the 24/7 challenge where they did two miles with one at the end of an hour and the beginning of another so they had more rest time, but I wanted the Little Dog style challenge.

I started at 11am on Thursday. It was pretty hot and I was sweating a ton by the end of each mile and by about mile/hour 4 or 5 I knew I needed to revise my strategy in how I was dressed. I realized I was going inside and just sitting in a wet shirt for 45-50 mins and it was unbearable. I showered after the 8th hour and then started rotating between two shirts. I would wear shirt 1 for a mile, immediately take it off and then put on shirt 2 right before going out for the next mile. Because of the humidity here in Florida, they never got dry, but they did get slightly less wet.

Through the wee hours of the night I struggled to stay awake and would set my alarm for five minutes before the hour just in case I fell asleep (anytime I did nod off, I would immediately spring back up thinking I had slept through the beginning of the hour). In the last 8 hours the chafing got pretty bad. I had been taking off my shirt, but not my pants, so for the last several hours, I had to air stuff out and I applied desitin to deal with the pain of the chafe.

Since I was only doing one mile in each of the runs and the weather stayed great all night, I was able to do all of them outside around my neighborhood and none on the treadmill. I also kept up a pretty brisk pace for me and my very last mile was my fastest mile. All in all, a really great challenge, but it showed me that I will definitely NOT be participating in a Little Dog Front Yard challenge in the future.

My Big Fat Virtual Summer (1 of 3)

So with all of the race cancellations and everything that has gone along with this crazy global pandemic, I did a LOT more stuff than I thought I would. I did three different 24hr challenges, an “Untrained Ultra”, a marathon, a 50k, a 50m, and a 69m (where I got my first virtual DNF that I chased away with a virtual finish!), a DNF that I’m still processing, and a fun month-long scavenger hunt. I’m going to go in chronological order and discuss all the dumb stuff I did!

Aravaipa Strong 50k

Date: Friday, April 17th

Finish Time: 6:23:07

Compared to many of these challenges, this one was one of the easiest. It was still relatively early into the ‘rona, barely into the hot season, so it was a pleasure cruise compared to some of the later challenges. This was one of my first really long runs where I would be leaving from home and being self-supported the whole time. There was also sidewalk pretty much the whole way except for about a mile of it. I used gas stations to support myself and had a nice time. Nothing super interesting to report. I had a pretty good finish time considering not being very efficient when I stopped to restock at various gas stations.

Yeti 24hr Challenge

Distance: 30 miles

Date: Thursday-Friday, April 23rd-24th

This challenge was an interesting one, but the thing I was most interested in was the super cool shirt design and the fact that it was providing work to The Opportunity Center. So I signed up and decided to keep it to my normal neighborhood routes and a couple runs on the treadmill if the weather was bad.

This was a LOT of fun. I started after work on Thursday and no run lasted more than an hour, there was plenty of time between each run, so it wasn’t like I felt pressure on the time and I could rest. I also realized that it really doesn’t take much time to get ready for a run. The first few times I was standing on the corner of the block just waiting for the time to tick over to the top of the hour, but by the end I knew that it really only took me one minute to get my things together and another minute to walk to the end of the street to begin. It was like I was just going out for a short run each time and I never felt the cumulative effect of all of the miles. I would 100% recommend this challenge to anyone and everyone.

Sugar Badger 50 mile

Finish Time: 11:07:06

Date: Friday, May 1st

I had grand plans for this and well, they didn’t pan out. My original plan going into it was going to be to “Put the sugar in Sugar Badger” by stopping at several dessert places along the way as my method of fueling. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen and I was basically miserable for 35 miles of the run, but hold up, I’ll get there.

I first stopped at an Ocala classic – Tas-T-O Donuts for a glazed cake doughnut and had a very weird encounter. I bought my doughnut and I wanted to take a picture in front of the iconic sign. After I took my picture a guy who was ordering at the window said something along the lines of, “Oh that’s original, taking a picture of the fat man buying doughnuts.” I didn’t hear him at first and asked him to repeat it, so he did, and I was just flabbergasted. How is this dude so self-involved and self-conscious about his own behaviors that he would call out a total stranger for taking a picture of their food and a sign with a phone that clearly wasn’t even pointed at him (it was pointed UP at the SIGN and the ordering window wasn’t visible because I was holding up a doughnut). I waited until he left, got a new pic, and then went off down the sidewalk.

My next stop was about 4ish miles away at another doughnut shop. It was a place I had never tried before, so I asked the person working there what their recommendation was and I ended up with an amazing cheesecake doughnut. It was about a mile later that I realized I wasn’t feeling so hot. I wasn’t sure if it was the doughnuts (I do not eat doughnuts on the regular) or what, but I kept on going. My next stop wasn’t for another 10 or so miles, so I thought I’d be better by then.

By the time I got to the Wawa about 2 miles from the next stop (mile 25ish), I knew I wouldn’t be getting a dessert at the next stop. Instead I got some gingerale and kept going towards the place and turned around instead of going in (because I had planned my route very efficiently and I didn’t want to have to add mileage at the end).

My next stop was a racetrack where I got some water and a blue slushie. I very briefly considered calling someone to come and get me, but by that point I was about 30 miles in, realized my pain and nausea was due to my uterus, and figured I may as well keep going and get it done. I had already been majorly suffering for 15 miles, so what was another 20 miles?

I headed to downtown Ocala to stop by Stella’s where I got a baklava and another gingerale. I sat on a park bench in the shade just off the square to eat my treat and drink the gingerale. I was in the final 15 miles of the run and decided to skip the last planned dessert stop. It was going to either be a place that made fancy cake or an ice cream shop, but I was so nauseous that neither option sounded appealing.

By the time I got to about the 40 mile mark, I was over it. I wanted to be home, I felt like crap, it was hot, and I was just done. I was drinking my water like crazy at this point and I ran out of water with about 5 miles to go and there were no convenience stores or anything else like that between there and home unless I backtracked a couple miles and I didn’t want to do that. Luckily, my husband was home from work by then so I called him and he met me about 3 miles from the house to do a full refill on my water.

Finishing the run where I started it over 11 hours before was a great feeling. I’d had a bad day, but I made the best of it and still think I had a pretty fun time, even though a lot of it sucked. But the Sugar Badger swag was worth it! I love that medal and shirt design!