7 + 100% + 12.1 > 10%

The ideal for any athlete is to create the situation where you find yourself facing a challenge 10% out of your upper comfort level. Something more than that (like myself doing an ultra this training year) might still be accomplishable, but it is a tough thing to build upon if it is accomplished and demoralizing if it isn’t.
For me, even though I have done this thing 4 times in a race and many times for training, the 7 Sisters Trail somehow consistently finds a way to be in that 10%.
The YouTube video of the Bear Mountain 50 three weeks back is making the trailblog rounds. Both the winners ~ male (Leigh) and female (Deb) compare the tougher sections to the 7 Sisters. They are both amazing trail runners. I have to trust their opinions.
Even the most experienced cannot overestimate this course because it will provide an appropriate smackdown / ER visit if it chooses. This was evident with the 3 downed athletes on the course that I saw (one on the first climb). I am sure that there were more.
The weather leading up to the event was life in a shower. What wasn’t slick, sharp rocks would be shoe-sucking glop further worsened by the 100 runners ahead of me. It was certainly a day that challenged one’s ability just to get up and out of bed.
Having just completed another one of ‘those’ weeks, I almost called it in. Part illness, part exhaustion. You can’t do this thing with less than 100% effort. I certainly couldn’t muster up that on Sunday. Knowing that Matt was trying this and bringing his brother along was something that did motivate me to get my sorry posterior out of bed.
The course provided more slides and tree-grabs this year than any other. Everything above 900 feet of elevation was socked in with fog and often times the sensation of ‘rain in place’. In addition to no vistas, it also meant that breathing provided less usable fuel. 100% humidity. Ugh.
The legs started giving me some serious concrete at the Low Places even though my time was good. I packed a few extra nuuns in the CamelBack, so I felt very confident that my crap legs wasn’t the result of fluid balance (it wasn’t as my output was cranking throughout the race and I should have noticed that). I nailed a GU every 45 and plugged on.
The returners didn’t hit me until well after the Summit House (the farthest yet) which made me wonder if I was fast, they were slow or both (both). But I began to get those ‘funny feelings’ just before the power lines. Then serious negative thoughts on DNFing came in as I approached the turn around. It was a tough day to be a hero. I felt awful.
Reminder to self: book in a time slot with Dr. Jones the sports psychologist.
Then the turn around time came out.
1:17.
Hmmm. That’s my best time. (?!?!?)
How about just trying to get back to Summit and see how she goes.
But for s&g, I took in more sugar at the stop to see how I would feel.
I got back to Summit in my second best time ever (1:46), but by the time I hit Taylor Notch, the serious thought of DNF came back along with twitching. Thom went by and suggested that one had to be smart to plug on. I took 2 more GUs (two?) and a granola bar and hiked. The target of a 2:47-2:50 went out of my mind. As did a sub-3.
So, I hiked along with a guy named Yaco from South Africa who was also talking to his cramping quads as well.
But, as I went on a funny thing happened ~ I started to feel better with less twitching.
Possibly, just possibly, could the twitching be due to low glycogen and not fluid? By the Low Places, I felt darn good. Good enough to power hike the four steps of Hitchcock.
By Little Bare, we were off and running again.
I hit a 2:56:31 which was my second worst time (next to the year I ran with Scott), but in a way, this was a great time. Considering that my legs felt like wet sacks of concrete from the ¼ point, starting twitching at the 1/3^rd way and were cramping at the 2/3^rd way made me pleased that my time wasn’t much more than 3 hours. The conditions were challenging enough that the lead runners were 5+ minutes off of last year’s pace. Plus, I finally may have found a cause to the 2 hour twitching thing ~ low intramuscular glycogen!
Next up is a week off and then Soapstone and trials with more sugar en route.