***
So last weekend (haha, May 31-June 1, actually), for the third year in a row, I ran the 24 hour Alaska Endurance Trail Run (AETR) in Fairbanks Alaska. The last 2 years, the weather was sunny and warm, which is pretty typical for Fairbanks in June, so I was hopeful that trend would repeat itself.
Going into this race, I felt pretty confident, because I have run it twice before and I had a good idea of what to expect, I thought. I made sure to have enough electrolyte replacement on hand. I had extra Camelbak parts. I had extra shoes. I had my sleeping bag, and even a tent and pad. Fuel, both gels and nut butter. Extra socks, Lots of bandaids. I had it all. I was READY. The beautiful thing about a loop course is that you can have as many extra supplies as you can haul at the start/finish/aid station area.
I had a training plan leading up to this race. Although there were plenty of times that life got in the way, and the plan was certainly not executed perfectly, I did get a few really good long runs in, and was feeling pretty solid.
In addition, I have been really micromanaging my nutrition since the beginning of April, and by the time of the race I was down 15 pounds from my weight at the end of March. By the time of the race, I was only 10 or 11 pounds from my goal weight, and the reduction was having a noticeable and favorable impact on my running. I felt lighter and was running a little faster. My pie in the sky goal was to do 1 loop every other hour, non-stop, which would net me 72 miles. My more realistic goal was to just keep moving the entire time, no matter what, and to run the race smarter than the last two times.
I had to be in Fairbanks for work the week leading up to the race, which began on Friday night at 8 pm. When I left my house, the weather forecast was for temps in the 60's and 70's during the day, and 50's at night, and sunny. SUNNY. I packed my rain jacket and a hat, but not my waterproof pants or extra sets of clothes. It wasn't supposed to rain, In hindsight, I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was, LOL. I was not prepared for what actually happened.
As the week went on, every single time I looked at the weather forecast for the weekend, it got worse and worse and my sense of foreboding increased. You see, I am TOTALLY a fair weather runner. I HATE running in the cold and I HATE running in the rain, and I ESPECIALLY HATE running in cold rain. The day before the race, which went from 8 pm Friday to 8 pm Saturday, the forecast looked like this:
Yep, you see that right. It was supposed to start raining Friday evening, and rain until Saturday evening. Like, only when I was going to be running. I knew I was doomed. LOL. Long story short, the weather forecast was 100% accurate. It started raining at about 6 pm, and rained and rained and rained. All night, all day. It just rained. Sometimes it was an absolute downpour, sometimes just a drizzle, but it never stopped until maybe an hour or two before the end of the race Saturday night.
I had discussed this race with my coach, and come up with a plan. Since my goal was to maximize my time on my feet and keep moving the entire 24 hours, we decided that it was a smart idea to use a run/walk interval the entire race, from the very start. We settled on 3 minutes running/2 minutes walking, and I was able to set an alert on my Garmin to tell me when to run and when to walk. The only exception to this timing was that I ran down hills even if I was supposed to be walking, and I walked up hills even if I was supposed to be running. It sounds complicated, but it actually worked out really well. Walking the up hills saved energy for later in the race, and running the down hills let me squeeze some advantages from gravity. This strategy worked really well for the first 40 or so miles.
I lined up at the start line with all the other runners, including my friends Michele and Chris. Chris had his GoPro out and recording and Michele and I made sarcastic comments about it. The race would not have been the same without Michele's sarcastic attitude. We all counted down the last 10 seconds to the start, and we were off. I ran with the rest of the group for the first 3 minutes, joking and laughing about how ultrarunning is just like a party with running. And pain. But the pain came later. 3 minutes into the race, my watch beeped and I slowed to a walk for 2 minutes, just long enough for the rest of the runners to disappear from sight and leave me alone on the trail.
That was kind of a weird moment. Even though I knew I was slowing to a walk for a reason, a big part of me wanted to stay with the group. It's really hard to overcome that urge to stay with everyone else, and I felt sort of lonely the first few minutes. As I got into the groove, however, the loneliness disappeared and I got sucked into the joy of trail running.
The first several loops passed pleasantly except for the rain, and without incident. I stayed warm enough even with the rain, and I ate almond butter and aid station snacks, and drank Gatorade Zero, and did a pretty good job of staying on top of my nutrition and hydration. My feet and legs quickly got soaking wet and stayed that way throughout the race. I had my Goretex rain jacket, so my upper body stayed dry, I thought. As I said, my goal was to do at least one loop every 2 hours, and I quickly built up a 1 hour cushion during the first few loops. I maintained a pretty consistent pace for the first several loops, and felt good. I even did a Facebook Live video at 1:30 am, since so many of my friends wanted to know what a 24 hour race was like.
My friend Travis lent me his trekking poles to use if I wanted, and to see if I liked using them enough to buy a pair. I only used them for one loop. I found running with them very awkward, But because of the cloud cover, it actually got pretty dim out for a couple of hours, and it was pretty dark under the trees, making roots hard to see and dramatically increasing the risk of tripping on one and falling. I used the poles to help steer me through the roots, and found them fairly helpful there. I wound up walking a good chunk of that loop just because I was worried about tripping. Of course I didn't have my headlamp because everyone knows you don't need a headlamp in Alaska in June.
It was maybe after this loop, or it might have been the one after that, when I entered the aid station area at the start/finish, and my friend Bruce had arrived to volunteer and feed us runners. He made me a grilled cheese sandwich with 2 slices of pepper jack cheese and it was SO GOOD. Hot, buttery, cheesy, and just a bit spicy, it was PERFECT.
I set off on loop #6 at about 5:30 am. I knew Travis was going to show up around 6 to run a loop with me, but I didn't want to sit still long enough to wait for him to get there, so I asked the race director to send Travis around the loop in the opposite direction so he had to meet me somewhere out on the loop. He did, and it worked great. When Travis found me, he turned around and ran the rest of that loop and all of the next with me.
In between loops, I changed my socks and shoes, which may have been a mistake. My toenails were already feeling sore and wiggly, and when I went to put my dry shoes on, I realized that my feet had swollen. I was barely able to force my feet into the dry shoes, and my toes had no room to move at all. In hindsight, I probably should have put my wet, stretched out shoes back on. At the time, I thought, "oh good. The tight shoes will keep my toenails from wiggling around". Umm, yeah, they did do that.
By the time we were into loop 7, my pace had begun to slow significantly, as I was getting tired. I was already about 40 miles in, and those miles were beginning to take their toll. Travis helped get me back in gear and worked on helping me keep my running form fairly efficient. He was a really good pacer, because he paid attention to things that I had quit focusing on, and kept me moving fairly well. By the time we finished that loop, Travis had to leave, but said he would try to make it back later in the afternoon.
After Travis left, I got something to eat (maybe that was when I had the cup of noodles, but I'm not sure), and sat down to evaluate my feet and figure out what else I needed before going out on another loop. I sat too long however, and soon was very chilled and shivering. When I took my pack off, I discovered that although the Goretex of the rain jacket was doing it's job overall, where ever my pack had pressed the jacket against my clothes, the water had soaked in, and so my shirt was wet, in the shape of my pack. Wet clothes, chilly air, no activity to generate body heat. I got really cold, really fast. I decided to take a break and go warm up in my Jeep. Chris had come back to the aid station by that time as well, and was going to take a nap before going out on another loop, but he would have to walk because of his injury. I told Chris if he wanted to go back out, to text me and I would walk a loop with him. He agreed and I went to the Jeep. I got in, turned the heat all the way up, turned my seat heaters on, snuggled up under my Rumpl, and relaxed for a few minutes. The seat heater never felt so good!
The next thing I knew, Chris was knocking on the window of my Jeep. He had texted me, but I had fallen asleep and didn't hear it, so he came to get me. He asked me if I wanted to go out on a loop with him, and for a split second, I wanted to say NO so bad!!! But I was there to race, not sleep, so reluctantly I shut the Jeep off and got out. Chris said he could see in my face that I wanted to tell him no, lol.
By this time, Michele had been dealing with nausea. She had come in from a loop, but had gone to lay down and try to settle her stomach, so Chris and I got ready and set out. We walked all of loop 8, but kept a decent pace. We chatted the whole loop, and the company was nice. But clearly sleep deprivation was taking hold, and we were pretty punchy. Chris told me that while he had been napping, a mosquito had landed on his crotch, and he did what you do with mosquitos, and swatted it. A bad choice, considering its placement, but the subject of lots of giggles and bad jokes. As we approached the finish line for the loop, one of the volunteers was standing in the middle of the path watching us, in a manner that seemed impatient, Chris remarked that if he told us to "run it in" or anything of the sort, he would put a mosquito on the guy's junk. I said "and I will smack it" and we both laughed and laughed. Definitely sleep deprivation at work.
By the time we finished that loop, Michele was up and about but still not feeling great, and so the three of us walked loops 9 and 10. We told her the story about the mosquito and we all laughed some more. We were to the point where we probably had the sense of humor of an 8 year old boy. Sometime during those loops, Travis found us, and then we shared the mosquito story with him. He tried to get us to run, but we were all at the point where walking was as much effort as we were willing to give, so he walked with us. He had fresh legs, and had not been up all night running in the cold and rain, and was very cheerful. Cheerful enough that at times, we wanted to kill him, haha.
Sometime during loop 10, my feet had just had enough. They had been sore for hours. I had had blisters and bruised toenails for hours. But sometime during loop 10, they started feeling like they were just on fire. Like they were raw and the skin was peeling away. This made even walking just misery. I was afraid to take my shoes off again to look at them.
By the time we finished what was loop 10 for Michele and I, and loop 11 for Chris, the rain had pretty much stopped, finally, and there was less than 2 hours left on the clock. This meant that if we weren't sure we could do another 6 mile loop and finish before 8 pm, we could do half mile loops instead. Michele and I had decided that since the end of loop 10 put us at 60 official miles, that we wanted to do 4 of the mini loops, to get a full 62 miles or 100k. But my feet were hurting so bad by that point that I was not sure if I really wanted to do the mini loops or call it at 60. Michele and Travis did a mini loop while I rested with my feet up for 10 minutes or so, and reported that there was only one really wet spot, and I decided I was going to keep going. Michele and I did 3 mini loops together, and then she left. I did one more loop after she left, so that we were both at 62 official miles, then called it. We wound up tying for 4th place female. This was my first 100k finish, so I was thrilled. The run/walk strategy I used the first 2/3 of the race had definitely paid off.
They had a BBQ and awards after the race, and even though I had been starving, I suddenly was not hungry at all. Also, my legs were starting to cramp up, and get really stiff, so I decided to just pack up my gear and go to my hotel. I went through the McDonald's drivethrough next door to my hotel and got a Quarter Pounder with cheese, a small fry and an apple pie to take to my room and eat. I was only able to eat maybe half of it.
I finally checked out my feet and found several blisters on my heels and ankles, and maybe some trench foot, but nothing a couple of bandaids couldn't manage. My toes, however, were a different story. Pretty much all of my toes had brusing and blisters under the toenails, and also on the bottoms of the toes. Oddly, my right foot also had some chafing on the tops of my toes.
I drained some of the fluid from the blisters under my toes, liberally applied neosporin and bandaids, and went to bed. I slept terribly, with weird dreams.
The next morning, when I woke up, my chest felt sore under my sternum, like I had a gas bubble stuck. I also had no appetite, and eating made the pain in my chest worse. I drove the 5 hours home from Fairbanks, stopping to run a slow, painful mile at the rest area in Denali National Park.
I also stopped at the southern Denali viewpoint along the highway, to see if the mountain was out. It was:
By the next morning (Monday), my chest was still hurting so I went to urgent care, After an EKG and some lab tests, it appears that I somehow strained my diaphragm during the race. Not sure how that happened, but there you go. I didn't run Monday, or the next several days. I decided to not run for a few days, to let my diaphragm heal, because I can't risk aggravating it. I have Angel Creek 50 coming up in a month and a half.
This race, as usual, was very well organized. The course was well marked, there were lots of volunteers, lots of food, and lots of smiles and encouragement. It has a very friendly, laid back atmosphere with runners being greeted like they are friends or family. I love this race, and had a good time, despite the conditions this year. Maybe next year it will be sunny again. I can only hope.
