Journey to Endor

it was pretty damn beautiful out there

California came and went pretty quickly and before I knew it, Christmas - New Years - 2016. So much of the last few months have been consumed with this race I feel like I crammed in a fall/winter's worth of activities in one month. So 2016 is almost  is here. I had a pretty full plate, race wise, in 2015. All of it was capped off with the North Face Endurance Challenge 50 miler December 5.

Obviously I've been struggling writing this post since it is now more than a month post race. I could easily blame the hubbub of the holidays, which is partially true, or I could admit that this post, like this race, was difficult to finish. Running  any distance is a journey and rarely do journeys happen without a hitch or two. The longer the distance, the more chances for these bumps in the road to catch you. Trying to some up 13hours and 42minutes of running in one blog post isn't easy. We laughed, we cried, we talked about Portlandia, and I came to some truths about where I want to go next in my running career.

Waiting for the start!
Not Pictured, Donny cause he was in line for coffee

First and foremost, the race was amazing and my crew was out of this world. I couldn't have done this without Donny, Beth, and Carissa helping me out. We had such a blast the whole weekend there were many times when all the prep and running hardly felt like work. Kudos to all the friends we met out there and especially our hosts who provided me with such a comfy couch and bed to recover on. The race was very well organized, parking situation aside, and all of the aid stations crews went above and beyond making sure you had everything you needed, including a bit of conversation.

In the course description of this race they focus a lot on the "mysterious car wreck" which you run by twice on the trail. Seriously, they bring it up several times and make it sound like a pretty sweet part of the course. Coming from Colorado, it really just looks like any rusty old piece of mining equipment you can see on a 14er or in the middle of Downtown Breckenridge. What I can't believe is the race promoters focused so much on a car and not even one footnote caption on the fact that we ran through ENDOR!

No, not that we ran through forests that reminded you for Endor. We ran through  Endor, A large chunk of the back half of the course was through the Muir woods which is where George Lucas filmed the Ewok parts of Return of the Jedi.

According to Wookieepedia: By the time of the Galactic Civil War, the Ewoks had reached a level of civilization where they engaged in religious, artistic, medical and even political activities. Nevertheless, they still focused most of their energies on the daily provision of food.

What a great segue because I'm sure everyone is wondering, how's your stomach Emily?

Well it's great! I had almost zero food issues during the race and more importantly no major issues after the race. My post race success is largely due to Beth forcing me to "drink this", "eat that", "now drink this again". Front loading calories was huge because I wasn't very interested in eating later on in the race. I managed to get in a good 200 or so calories every hour and mixed it up between Raw Revolution Bars, Honeystinger Waffles and chews, and even a PB&J sandwich. Bringing pickles was also the best decision I've made so far in my 30s, they had NO pickles at any of the aid stations. Are pickles just a Colorado thing?

Now, over a month post race, I'm happy to report I have had no real digestion issues. I did notice a small lack of an appetite initially, but no where near what I felt like after the North Fork 50 in 2014. I could most definitely eat half a sandwich a week post race.

Overall I felt healthy internally and the real struggles came more from the physical difficulty of the race rather than me sabotaging myself.

Stinson Beach - we ran down to it then
back up with zero shark attacks 

The first 26 miles or so were great. I kept promising myself not to "be an asshole" and run conservatively. The challenge was the first half of the race was so runnable. It was hard not to blast through it even if I was trying to play it cool. I will not sit here and try to tell you that running uphill is the easiest part of trail running. It's not, but running downhill can be so much more painful than you can imagine. I first noticed the toll all the downhill running was taking on me as I came into the Mile 27ish aid station, where I would pick up Carissa for pacing. The trail went from flat/mellow rolling to a steep decline into Stinson
Beach.

The climb immediately after the 27 mile aid station was obviously concocted by Satan within the bowels of hell.

It was 3ish miles of this:

Honestly these stairs looked a lot taller in person and
lot more frequent in occurrence then this picture shows. 

Just stairs upon stairs. As an avid "Pro-Stair" person, never in my life have I wished more for an elevator. They just kept going and my legs just kept going and then my legs and I had to go down and suddenly the stairs going up didn't seem so bad.

The race was really rough for me from about Mile 40 until Mile 48.9. I tried to spend enough time at aid stations to get some food, but I knew if I stopped and sat down the likelihood of getting up again wasn't high. I tried my best to just keep moving forward and focused on Beth retelling me an episode of Portlandia and how the same thing happened to Donny when he tried to donate clothes to the thrift store in Crested Butte. The great thing is, despite all the pain I experienced the 9 miles, the thing I remember most about that stretch is the story about the thrift store* not the hurt in my legs or frustration in my head.

Beth and I at the finish, all I wanted to
do was sit down but I had to take this picture

I'm really excited to have finished this race. It was a lot more challenging terrain wise then I had
anticipated (Rocky Mountain Hubris). It was also a lot more beautiful than I could have pictured. The first half of the course is really fast and awesome. The only real disappointing part of the course was the section by the "famous wrecked car". It was beautiful running, overlooking the ocean, but it was also two way traffic on the most single-tracky parts of the course. The perks of being a faster runner were seen in that section since return traffic had the right of way. I got real good at balancing on the slope side of the trail.

As I finished the last few miles of this race I realized I still have a long way to go before attempting a 100 miler. With that in mind I chose not to enter the Leadville 100 lottery for 2016 and instead focus on improving my 50 mile running and give a go at a 100k.

I may make a return trip for this race. Whenever you have a less then amazing race performance there is always the drive to return to the scene of the crime and do better. I think I can give this course another shot now that I know what to expect trail and terrain wise.

Physical prowess aside, mental toughness is the biggest asset you can have when ultra running. The sheer desire to finish and finish under the cut-off can overcome some of the worst quad aches you can imagine. I knew I could do it, even when I felt the absolute worst, the concept of not finishing didn't take up much real estate in my brain. People usually say I'm crazy for doing this and that there is no way they could ever do a race that long. You totally can, if I can, you can. But you have to go into it knowing you can overcome all the stuff/hitches/roadblocks/demons that will most certainly try and root themselves in your brain. Training for this race I wrote about Doubt and how dangerous that thought can be. Knowing I have the mental toughness to not even let doubt in for 50 miles reminds me that I can do this again and I will.

*Bonus the thrift store rejects became that nights Rocky Horror Picture Show outfit if only I had a picture. 

Getting rid of setbacks, it's ok to divert

Life is full of things that get in the way of the plan, or sometimes even things that completely blow your plan up into little pieces. Thankfully for me my most recent occurrence is the former and not the latter, but it can still be frustrating.

Against my better judgment, as the start of any good story begins, I played ultimate last week. I was at a tryout for a team called Mesteno and stupidly rolled my ankle.

I say "stupidly" because I didn't roll it doing something awesome. I did it after I stopped and went to turn around to go back in line. I have pretty loose ankles, but I felt a pop as it happened. I immediately felt pain, hobbled over to the sideline and put it up with ice. The ice in this case was an ice block and a Tecate compliments of Tower. Tower made me drink the Tecate that was on my foot later, which I was ok with.

I rested a bit and then my next stupid decision was to go out and play more. It actually felt ok. I could "feel" it, but it wasn't hurting me to do normal frisbee motions. I iced more when I got home and did the typical athelete self diagnosis of looking up "how to treat a rolled ankle" on the internet. From my research I think I have a mild sprain. There wasn't significant swelling, but there's a little bruising. So ice, arnica, and rest. I'm not going to lie, it hurt the next day, but at least it didn't really look any worse.

It's been almost a week now and I'm happy to report that things are doing better in the ankle department. I purchased a beefy ankle brace for future ultimate endeavors which, if anything, puts my mind at ease. I went on a long training run on Saturday (22miles) at the race course and it felt fine. There were little pains here and there, but nothing more than the usual. The run allowed me lots of time to think about what happened is I realized that I hate the term "setback".

I don't like the word setback. On face value it oozes negativity. Hearing setback makes me immediately think,  "it's going to set you back and that's bad". In reality, training is full of things that divert you from the exact plan; weather, sickness, injury, or forgetting your shoes. When something happens that disrupts training it's too easy to focus on the negative and what happened. It's most important to focus on what you can do in the moment and in the future. On Molly Brown we talked a lot about relevance/irrelevance, or things we have control over and things we don't. Being able to separate it out and realign your focus into what you can do in that moment means you're thinking with a forward motion in mind. It's irrelevant to focus on rolling my ankle, it is relevant for me to focus on how to protect it in the future and how I can heal myself to get out and start running again. Dwelling on it as a setback only focuses on what happened. I would rather focus on what can I do next.

The word setback immediately sounds like focusing on the past, or focusing on something I cannot change. Even saying the word implies the past. I can't change that I hurt my ankle, but I can focus on what to do today and tomorrow to continue to prepare for my race. So I took a day off, I kept icing, I bought a brace, then I put socks on, laced up my shoes, and ran.

Rolling my ankle caused me to modify my training for a few days, but there are countless other things that have done that throughout the course of my running career. Saying setback means I can't move forward, but acknowledging that sometimes things disrupt your training gives you the control to keep moving forward. Therefore I don't see this as a setback, I just see it as training. Just as a thunderstorm keeping you inside for the afternoon, or a deadline at work that has to get done when you're training for a race it's all part of the package. Maybe that's why training programs are so long, because we all know that at least once or twice you're week plan is going to get thrown and you have to adapt.

*I'm less than a month out from race day!

Salida recap

I didn't realize he took the picture until it was too late.

Final time: 5:32:53

Well the first marathon of the season is in the bag and my body is telling the tale and likely will be for awhile. There's no getting around it, this was the toughest marathon I've done. I experienced a lot more discomfort and pain during this race then in any of my other races - the 50k included. Here's my assessment on specific parts of the race for me:

Nutrition

I actually feel like I did pretty well on the nutrition front. I think that played a big part in me being able to finish semi-strong and keep my time similar to last year. I ate a lot more gu then I have in the past. Largely to do with the Honeystinger fruit smoothie gu, it was so delicious! That aside, I felt like I had good energy, it was other parts of my body that broke down. I kept my salt pill intake up, but could have probably done a bit more near the end. As the tendency in races, you start to forget about good nutrition intake near the end because you rationalize that you just need to get to the end and it's so close. In retrospect, I think I should have kept my gu/salt pill intake going in the last 7 miles. My water intake was good and I was fully hydrated using a mix of water and Acclimate. On a final note, the M&Ms at the last aid station helped me power through the last two miles of downhill and for whatever reason I saved a cookie in my pocket from mile 8ish until later in the afternoon while watching TV. Tower was jealous.

Training

Yeah, I didn't train enough for this race. I did train enough to finish the race and power through some pretty painful moments. But I did not do enough long runs to keep the pain monsters at bay after about 3 hours. Which, coincidentally, was the longest duration of running I did leading up to the race. I'm pleased that my past experiences and overall badassness overcame this deficiency enough to keep me in the same time bracket as last year. However I would like to see what I can do next year combining all of that with dedicated training.

Pain threshold

They say women have a higher pain threshold than men. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. But I learned a lot about my pain threshold over 5 and a half hours and I passed a couple dudes in the last 3 miles so maybe that says something. Here is a run down of what hurt:

• Ankles/Achilles/shins. This felt more like an impact related pain response. Which makes sense, when you are pounding on your legs for that long things get sore. I am surprised that I haven't felt that more in the Quad Rock race which has way more punishing descents. I do think more overall running will strengthen this area up over the next few months and I'm not too worried about it.
• Hamstrings/Quads. Pretty obvious that these things hurt. Just your typical soreness, but I definitely felt them for a lot longer during this race then in previous races. Again I point to not enough long run training. I also experienced a lot of Quad fatigue and that made other muscle groups work a lot harder throughout the race.
• IT Bands. Holy cow, I have not experienced this level of pain in a race before. Usually after a race or a hard frisbee tournament I get the usual tightness/soreness. But this go around I felt them starting at mile 13 and pretty much on and off the rest of the race. It was physically difficult to move my legs forward because of the pain. I actually think a contributing factor to this was playing ultimate the Thursday before the race. Although I wasn't playing 100%, there was some sprinting, and quick changes of direction which are all the things that contribute to my IT Bands hurting. So in the future...no ultimate 2 days before a race.
• Knee. Ugh, my knee gives me trouble in every race. It's something that I've just gotten used to, but it still hurts just the same. I don't know much more that I can do about it except for just dealing with it. It hasn't hurt so badly that I've been sidelined in either running or ultimate so I'm calling it a symptom of being old.
• Pelvis. (Insert some lame sexual innuendo joke here). This was a new one. I have never had my pelvis hurt while running and it didn't hurt so much during the run, but after and through the next day. My theory on this pain is related to the IT Band and Hamstring/Quad pain. Because of the fatigue in my muscles and the tightness in my IT Bands, other muscle groups were working to keep my legs powering forward. I feel like I've gotten a stronger core over the last few weeks, but this race required me to activate muscle groups I haven't had to depend on as much in the past and I felt it.

Mental toughness

There are a few things that contribute to finishing a race and Mental Toughness is just as important as physical ability and proper nutrition. I was feeling pretty bummed near the end and had to give myself several pep talks to keep going. Thankfully, when those pep talks were not working, Abby (an amazing ultra runner) came bounding past me and kept me going through the hardest part of the race. She's been having her own running woes and to see her push through it and encourage me to keep going helped me climb out of the abyss of miles 20-24 and let gravity do the rest for the final 2 miles. 

I'm proud of myself for pushing through the pain and frustration to finish the race. Realistically my time is much better than it probably should have been, and for that I have been physically paying the price for the last few days.

Conclusion

Marathons are hard. If they were easy they'd call them 5ks (am I right? hahahaha). Anyways, long distance racing is tough and there are a lot of factors in play that lead to success. I'm really proud of the other runners who were out there running and killing it. There were some PRs and that's awesome. When you feel good you feel good and just rip it. I'm thankful that I had to survive this challenge because it's only going to make me that much stronger when I tackle 50 miles in a few months. It's almost guaranteed that at some part of a 50 miler you're body is going to want to break down and quit and I'm thankful to know that I can at least get through 13ish miles of body breakdown to finish a race. So it's onward and upward. I predict many long training runs in the next month and a half as I prepare for Quad Rock.