Blog

The North Face Endurance Challenge (Part 2)

Hopefully you’re read Part 1 of my race report. In Part 1, I described my race and tried to give readers a sense of what it was like to be out there. Part 2 is more thoughts about my training and race performance, including clothing choice and nutrition.

Overall impressions of the race: This was a really well organized race. Check-in was a breeze, morning race logistics were smooth and easy. The course was really well marked and they had volunteers in all the right places to keep racers going. The aid stations were stocked with water, Gatorade, Nuun, gels, soup, cookies, chips, candy, etc. The finish was well organized and the food at the finish was delicious. All the staff and volunteers were really helpful and friendly. The size of the race is nice. I was rarely totally alone on the course, but never felt like it was too crowded.

My only “complaints” about the race were the following:

• The official race shirt is a great tech t-shirt, but I sorta thought that since the race is sponsored by North Face and the packet pick-up was at the store, they would offer a discount to runners on purchases at the store. Nope. Not a big deal, but a strange decision by North Face. I almost certainly would have bought something at the store.
• I don’t need 50 mile markers, but some along the way would have been nice. Particularly towards the end when I was really counting my steps and calculating my hopeful finishing time.
• The space between the aid stations was generally right on, but between miles 39.3 and 44.2 I could have really used a water stop. It’s a hilly section late in the race and the sun was out; I had to conserve water towards the end of this stretch so I wouldn’t run out.

Difficulty of the Course: This was a friggin’ hard course. I knew it from looking at the profile, but sometimes because of scale or whatever, the profile looks “worse” than the race actually is. Not in this case. Those climbs are the real deal. There is no way to compare this course to my only other 50 miler, the JFK 50. They’re both 50 miles, but, at the JFK, after the initial section in the Appalachian Trail, it’s smooth and flat for most of the rest of the race. While that presents its own challenges, coming up to the seventh big climb at mile 40 of a race is really tough on the mind and legs. For the most part, the course isn’t really technical. There are some areas with tricky footing or things to hop over, but those are the exception.

Training: My readers know that I was feeling a little undertrained for this race. My running was going great up until October 24 (six weeks before race day), when my right achilles issues started. From that point until race day, I only ran about 65 miles. And my longest run was only about nine miles. Thankfully, in the months (years) prior to that, I’d built up a pretty strong base. Between the Boston Marathon and Ironman Canada this year, and the last three years of endurance racing, I knew I could lose a few weeks of training and still get through the 50 miles. I was disappointed to have to pull out of the Catalina Eco-Marathon and the PCTR 50K, but knew I had to in order to have any chance of saving the 50 miler. When race day came, I felt confident I would finish the race, but was pretty confident that it would take me at least 10 hours, and that was my “fast” estimate. Although finishing was my goal, I would have been happy with anything under 11 hours. If you read Part 1, then you know I beat even my “fast” estimate by a lot!

That leaves me wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t gotten injured and been forced to take a really long, scaled-back “taper”. There’s an interesting balance between on the one hand, building fitness and managing exhaustion and on the other hand, losing some fitness but being rested and recovered. As Coach John has mentioned to me many times, I seem to respond well to the rested/recovered side of that balance. Had my achilles not flared up, my plan was to have run 26.2 hilly trail miles on November 14 (three weeks out) and 31 hilly trail miles (50K) on November 22 (less than two weeks out). I would have had a 13 day taper. Maybe I would have been in such great shape that I would have killed the 50 miler. But, there’s a chance that I would have been too beat up or burnt to have a good race. Looking back on my performance at Ironman Lake Placid in 2008 (after an injury-filled and light training spring) and this race, Coach John made a joke on Sunday that maybe I should skip training altogether and just race a few big races each year.

That’s not gonna happen, but I’m not sure what any of this means for the future of my training and racing. If nothing else, hopefully I’ll be able to keep it in mind when/if I get sidelined again due to injury. And it does make me confident that taking the next few weeks really easy won’t hurt me (too much) for 2010.

Nutrition: I’m getting pretty good at this nutrition stuff. I pretty much nailed it at the 50. Race morning, I had a big bowl of oatmeal with a banana and some peanut butter. Standing around prior to the start, I ate most of a Clif Bar. My plan for the race had been to use Infinit for as much of the race as possible, supplementing with gels and Nuun, when I needed to between drop bag stations. I started with one serving of Infinit (~250 calories) and had another five servings split up into two or three serving baggies in my drop bags. If that was all the calories I had and the race took me 10 hours, I would be at about 150 calories per hour, which would not meet my goal of ~200-225 calories per hour. In the end, I used all the Infinit (except a little I poured out when I overfilled my bottle) and only had to supplement with two gels, one banana and a couple handfuls of these chopped up gummy fruit candies. I added a couple Nuun tablets to my water when I was between drop bags and out of Infinit. I still think I was a little short of my calorie goal, but I had enough to run strong, feel great and still avoided any stomach issues.

I’ve said it here before, but I love that Infinit stuff. It works great for me. I’ve never had any stomach issues when using it and, if I could have figured out an easy way to have it available to me for the entire race, wouldn’t have had to supplement with anything else. I’ve tried a lot of products and haven’t found anything even close to as good – for performance or taste or drinkability. (p.s. I pay full price (minus publicly available discounts) for the Infinit. They don’t pay me to talk them up or probably even know I’m doing it. I just love the stuff and want to help other people have great races.)

Clothing choice: My two biggest decisions coming into the race were what to wear on my feet and my upper body. I ended up running in my Brooks Defyance (trainers) instead of my Brooks Cascadias (trail shoes). I love both shoes and have done at least 80% of my running for the past two years in Brooks shoes. I am actually still running in the original Defyance shoes. I bought up a bunch of pairs when the Defyance 2 came out last year and am finally on my last pair. Now the Defyance 3 has come out and I bought a pair of them the other day. I’ll start trying those out in the coming weeks. The Cascadia has better traction and a tougher sole to protect my toes and the bottom of my foot from rocks. The Defyance is about 1.5 ounces lighter (that might sound like an insignificant amount, but is over 10%) and is slightly more comfortable for longer runs. In the end, I decided that since the course wasn’t supposed to be too technical, the Defyance was the way to roll. And it was the right choice. A lot of people were out there in trail shoes, but on this course of mostly fire roads and non-technical single track, road trainers are just fine. The bottoms of my feet did get a little sore – probably from stepping on some sharp rocks – but nothing that limited me. For someone with sensitive feet, trail shoes would be the right call, otherwise trainers are fine. Also, if it had been raining or if the course had been muddy, trail shoes would have been a good idea.

At the last minute, I threw on arm warmers and gloves. I’m happy I wore them. Starting temps were in the mid-40’s I think and it probably got into the mid/high-50’s during the middle of the day. I ended up wearing the arm warmers until mile 30.4 (around 10:45) and kept the gloves on for another couple hours after that. I didn’t need a long sleeve shirt or anything warmer than what I had on. My official race photos are here (choose the San Francisco race, my bib number was 216). I don’t think they came out particularly great, but you can see what I was wearing when I started.

My performance: As I mentioned, I’m really pleased with how I raced. I never had any breakdowns and was able to generally keep moving throughout. My pace obviously slowed down a lot as the day progressed, but those hills in the middle of the course were killer and walking the long-ish hills at mile 21 and again between miles 40 and 47 really killed my average pace. There’s an opportunity to make up some time on the final 2-3 miles of the race, which is mostly downhill, but my legs weren’t having any of that.

Approximate splits, with aggregate time, split time (from previous marker) and overall average pace:
Mile 8.9 – 1:21:48 (9:11/mile)
Mile 13.1 – 1:59:43 (37:55) (9:03/mile)
Mile 18.4 – 2:58:22 (58:39) (9:40/mile)
Mile 21.3 – 3:25:36 (27:13) (9:39/mile)
Mile 26 – 4:36:17 (1:10:41) (10:37/mile)
Mile 39.3 – 6:52:53 (2:16:36) (10:30/mile)
Mile 44.2 – 8:27:53 (1:35:00) (11:30/mile)
Mile 50 – 9:33:47 (1:06:02) (11:29/mile)

Other race reports:

Uli Steidel won the race in a course record and wrote a great, very detailed report of his exciting win. He thinks the race was about a mile short.

Caitlin Smith was the first place woman, with a blazing fast, course record 7:38.

Bryon at iRunFar.com didn’t run, but has a great recap (and a blog well worth reading in general). He also has links to a couple other race reports and some great photos.

Rick didn’t run, but has a fun video of a friend of his running the race.