Resurrection Pass 50 miler 2017 race report

I wrote this post the day after the race, but never posted it. I’m not sure why.

Resurrection Pass 50 was my second attempt at a 50 mile race, and I was really feeling hopeful and well prepared. The race starts in Cooper Landing, and follows the trail over the pass to Hope. The trail itself is only 38 miles long, so to make a full 50 miles, at close to the halfway point runners had to go down a side trail (Devil's Pass) for 6 miles, and back up. So this race goes uphill steadily for 16 miles or so, 6 miles downhill, then 6 miles back uphill to the junction, another couple miles to the Resurrection Pass summit, then down, down, down for the last 20 or so miles.
There is not a list of required gear, but to run 50 miles in the mountains unsupported but for one aid station, you sort of have to do a lot of planning, and depending on the weather, take a lot of gear with you.

Cooper Landing is about 3 hours from my house, so I drove to Cooper Landing the night before. I slept in the back of my Jeep Cherokee at the trailhead. I got everything ready to go in my hydration pack before going to sleep, but didn’t actually put it in, because I knew I’d have to get the bladder out in the morning to mix Tailwind in, and it’s harder with stuff in my pack. I made two drop bags. One was for the aid station at Devil’s Pass, allegedly at mile 22, and I put half my food, a baggie of Tailwind, a long sleeved shirt and warm hat, and dry socks in it. The other drop bag was for the finish line in Hope, with a change of dry clothes and another, warmer, hat.

I slept in the car, but didn’t sleep well. I almost bought a sleeping pad when I was at REI, but didn’t.  I should have.  I woke up at 4:30, and ate a nutrition bar right away. Got dressed, long tights, t-shirt. I wore a hoodie until just before race start to stay warm. I packed my new Goretex rain jacket that I had just bought at REI. Overall, I wound up being pretty happy with my clothing choices. Until I got cold. More on that later.

After I got dressed, I ate 2 packets of oatmeal with hot water from my Jetboil. Cleaned my bowl and spoon, mixed my Tailwind, packed my hydration pack. Bathroom x2. Ready to go.

Just barely light at race start at 6:00 am. I knew I would be slow, so I started at the back, to avoid everyone passing me. Trail started going uphill right away. I hate starting off uphill, but it warms you up fast. I followed my running coach’s advice, and started off what was actually fairly slow, but it felt hard because my body wasn’t really happy to be moving yet. Wound up behind a guy for a while who was speed hiking the race. His walk was a slow run for me. Finally passed him once I was warmed up a little, but he was never more than a few minutes behind me.

The trail wound through the woods and gradually uphill. Somewhere around mile 5, it leveled out a lot, and I started picking up my pace. Between miles 5 and 10 were my fastest miles of the whole race, except I had to stop a couple times to take care of biological needs. The trail itself was well maintained and mostly pretty smooth and runnable.

After about mile 10, it got somewhat steep again. I was glad my coach said to walk a lot in this section, because I did. The climb on this trail is so gradual, though, that it mostly doesn’t look steep. There’s 4900+ feet of elevation gain in this race, but it doesn’t seem like it, until you try to run fast.

There was supposed to be a turnoff for Devil’s Pass at mile 16. The Resurrection Pass trail is only 38 or so miles long, so you have to run about 6 miles down Devil’s Pass and back up to make the full 50 miles. My GPS said I was at 16.96 by the time I hit the turnoff for Devil’s Pass. I thought I would be able to make good time going down Devil’s Pass, but the trail was not nearly as runnable as the Resurrection Pass trail. I probably should have pushed harder through this section, though.

All boulder fields should look like this.

The Devil's Pass trail is rocky, muddy, etc. I found it more difficult to run. There were a few boulder fields, and stream crossings on boulders. The aid station was supposed to be mile 22, but was mile 23.5 according to my GPS, and I took about a 10-12 minute stop. Changed socks, grabbed a snickers, and more fuel, refilled water. My 2L bladder was just about empty. The volunteer didn’t fill it all the way back up, only about ¾, which wound up being not enough water. Left the long sleeved shirt and warm hat in my bag. Maybe a mistake, because I did get cold later. Rang the cowbell to officially reach the checkpoint. Speed hiker guy came into and left aid station a few minutes behind me, then passed me when I stopped to pee. I never saw him again. He finished an hour ahead of me.

Back up Devil’s Pass. I slipped on a stream crossing, got the fresh socks wet, landed on my hands and knees on the rocks, almost face planted in the stream, but caught myself. That sort of hurt. Took a few minutes to shake it off. Stupid Salomon Speedcross trail shoes are great for most things, but really suck on wet rock.

This is where I fell. This was also my last picture, haha.

I was starting to get tired and walked a lot. I ate a Snickers bar, in two halves, half an hour apart. (Much later I wondered if the elevation could have had something to do with how quickly I tired in this race.)

The summit of Res Pass was supposed to be at mile 30, but was at mile 32 by my GPS. Coach said to push hard approaching the summit. I felt like I had no push. Tired, but still mostly enjoying the race. Around mile 30 or 31 the rain started. Just sprinkles at first, then more. By mile 33 or 34, it was pouring. Puddles everywhere. Wet, slippery trail. Wet feet. Then wet legs, wet, cold hands. I had my new Goretex rain jacket, thank goodness, so my core was dry, but I got chilled. The last 20 miles were mostly downhill, and I had planned to try to run them fast, but I was miserable, cold, wet, sore, tired and just creeping along. I kept telling myself to run faster, and I just couldn’t do it. Trail turned into a stream or huge, ankle deep puddles in most places. I wanted the race to be over so bad and I felt like I would never finish. Ate a king sized Nutrageous bar in 3 sections. That was delicious.

I ate either Skratch or Honeystinger chews every 30 minutes religiously, except when I had the candy bars instead. No major stomach issues or intolerance. Got pretty sick of the chews, but not to the point that I couldn’t force myself to eat them.
Ran out of water/Tailwind at what I thought was 3 miles from the finish, but turned out to be 5 miles. Was too cold and too close to want to stop to filter more water, so I just kept going. Tried catching some rain in my hands, but it didn’t work very well. 
I think the biggest thing slowing me down was my head. I get into a negative thought cycle when I get tired and/or sore, and let myself focus on all the bad things, and it puts me in a downward spiral. I get discouraged, and lose all my energy and motivation. Somewhere around mile 40 I swore I was never running again. By mile 50 by my GPS, I was convinced I was never going to be able to finish the race, even at a walk.

My GPS said 52.5 when I finally reached the trailhead at about 8:40 PM, to find no finish line. I stood there for a few minutes, wondering if I was done, and the RD finally hopped out of his warm, dry car, and asked if I was finishing. I said, “Am I finished?” I was.

I changed into warm dry clothes, and got a ride back to my car. I heated some water in my Jetboil stove and had some dehydrated pad thai that was delicious, and a Hershey bar with almonds. Crawled into my sleeping bag. Slept terribly, because I couldn’t stretch my legs out all the way in my car, and my legs hurt all night. Was awake by 7 am, and heading home.

My legs hurt really bad all day on Sunday, and I ran my one mile pretty painfully at something like a 16:30 mile. And really, it was more of a shuffle than a run.  The next day, they were still really sore, but I felt like I could actually run, slowly, at about a 13:30 pace. By the third day, I was feeling much better and my legs only have a small amount of residual soreness.

I’m really excited to be running this race again this August, and I am hoping I can perform better in the second half than I did last year. I know what to expect, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot about keeping my mind more focused and positive, even when I’m tired. Plus, I’m running it with a friend, Michele, who is always good company and has a sarcastic mouth when she’s struggling, which makes it easier to bear somehow. So we will do fine, I’m sure. LOL.

I've Got This

So, in my last post,  clear back in January, I talked about our trip to Hawaii. I haven’t posted since then, because of a couple of things. First the obvious: life gets hectic and blogging doesn’t get done. I’ve said that before. But seriously, for the last 6 months, my husband and I have been grappling with some pretty big potential changes. I wasn’t ready to talk about them on the blog, but I had a hard time even thinking of anything else. So I didn’t write. 

But now, the hard decisions have been made, and it’s just a matter of planning and execution now. 

So, in January we went to Hawaii. Like I said in my last post, we wound up having long discussions about whether we could live in Hawaii. What I didn’t talk about in that post was what happened when we got home. On January 14, we came home to Alaska, from Hawaii. Thanks to Jeep Uconnect, I was able to start my Jeep as soon as we touched down in Anchorage and I took my phone out of airplane mode. That way, it was nice and warm by the time I got my luggage and we got out to the parking lot. But wait. I'm getting ahead of myself.

I walked out of the airport, fresh from the warm air of Hawaii, into the cold of an Alaskan winter:

This is not the parking lot at the airport. But it is winter.

 took one breath, and that’s when I knew. I didn’t want to live here anymore. I immediately, desperately wanted to turn around and go back. And 6 months later, even in the midst of an Alaskan summer, I haven’t changed my mind.

All winter long, when I would say how much I want to move to Hawaii,  James would say “let’s see if you say that in the summer.” The thing is, sometimes Alaskan summers are pretty freaking awesome. The warm, but not hot, sunny summers, that is. Not the cloudy, chilly rainy summers. Those suck. I was sitting outside the other day, and I had to admit that if Alaska was like this all year long, I probably wouldn’t want to move.

I also totally love that it stays light all night here in the summer time.

(Pic taken at 1:54 am)

But Alaska isn’t like that all year.  Summer in Alaska is mercilessly short, which leads me to the other thing that happened, one that was very sad. A friend and coworker, Jeanni, was in a car accident and killed one Saturday. At her memorial, and also on Facebook, one of our mutual friends told a story about the last time she had seen Jeanni before she passed away.  Jeanni absolutely loved unicorns, and she had come across some fancy unicorn bubble gum. Our other friend encouraged her to open it and have a piece, but Jeanni decided she would save that gum for a special occasion, and settled for chewing some “normal" gum instead. A few days later, she was gone, the gum she was saving for a special occasion,  still unopened. Our mutual friend ended the story by saying “Just chew the damn gum." 

Um, mind blown. Such a simple story about a pack of gum that didn’t matter in the big scheme of things at all, probably not even to Jeanni. But oh boy, it resonated with me. Big time. (Thanks, Amber). At that point, James and I had about figured out that we “eventually” wanted to move to Hawaii, but who knew what eventually meant. Maybe in 3 years when my youngest graduates from high school and we don’t have any more kids at home? Maybe never, and just vacation there every couple years? Who knew?

But seriously. Coming home shifted my mindset. Then hearing that story made it impossible for me to ignore it. I really started thinking, long and hard, about what I really wanted. Alaska has warm weather at most 1/3 of the year. The rest of the time, I just wait for it to come back.  And when the weather is warm, there’s an almost frantic feeling in me that I have to wring out every possible second of enjoyment because it goes by so fast. I’m done with that.

I’m 48 years old, and I’ll be 49 in a few months. I’ll be 50 soon. Right now, I can run, and hike, swim, and snorkel, and I can probably learn to paddle board. I have some health problems that may or may not affect my mobility in the future. I have no idea how long I can enjoy this lifestyle. But I know that I want to enjoy it as much as I can while I can, and I want to make it last as long as possible.  I know that I don’t want to spend 2/3 of the rest of my life (the winters) waiting for the other 1/3 (the summers). That’s just not a good use of my time. Is this what they call a mid-life crisis?

Now that I know what I want, I’m not going to wait any longer than I have to.  And luckily, haha, my husband, while not as downright obsessive about it as I am, is at least ok with it, and willing to go along with my impulsive decisions.

So there it is. What all this talk boils down to is, we are moving to Hawaii:

 as soon as we can make it happen. We still have to get the house ready to sell,  and we don’t want to move our youngest in the middle of a school year, so we are planning for next summer. A lot of things can happen between now and next summer, so nothing is set in stone yet, but preparations have begun. Lists have been made. We've started selling things we aren’t taking with us. It’s going to be a busy, hectic year, but what’s new? I excel at busy and hectic. I’ve got this.