no problems. Only challenges.

“Imaginary obstacles are insurmountable. Real ones aren't. But you can't tell the difference when you have no real information.”
-- Barbara Sher

soapstone's magic mojo numbers

I didn’t really get to prep any better for this year’s race than last and haven’t done any long training runs except for races since Northern Nipmuck. I got a 2:19 last year (2:16:18 is my PR) and was happy with that then, but I want to break a PR somewhere this season.
Unfortunately, May is when all heck breaks loose in my life, and just getting the energy to train short distances can be a challenge ~ especially with the Penguins still in the playoffs and me taking on more than a few new clients.
It started out as a very humid day but with a nice breeze in the morning. If the race was run later in the day, it would look like a triage unit out there.
So, I drove with my whole series of fears in the back of my head and realized I was already giving myself reasons to fail (it is too humid, I am not fit enough, my teeth itch, my hair throbs…)

So, when I got bib #724 (wow – Carolyn’s / Gary’s number and my personal mojo number - how cool is that?) I committed fully to believe in the 3 part plan: 1) the blood sugar strategy (more nuun and GU every 20-30 minutes), 2) attack all hills except Killer Hill, the climb after the river and the ramps up to Quarry, and to 3) *stay positive* no matter what.
And the strategy paid off.
Ran much more of the course and perceptually faster with power hiking only on the very steeps and NO cramping. One calf twitch in each calf running around the pond in the last mile. It has to be the blood sugar and the mindset. Maybe these two are related?
I've got a TOTALLY new confidence in the 2-3 hour runs now.
Scary part of the day: After hitting checkpoint #1 and before the swampy gauntlet, I missed the cutback left down the steep hill, but got back and tried to push the down to make up time. Lost my footing and my right foot slid right into a shin-high rock with a sharp edge.
The kind of rock that breaks your leg.
But not today (wearing all lucky numbers).
Just a big bruise on leg that I’ll really feel tomorrow.
Turns out that many people took wrong turns today – even the RD herself. She passed me right before checkpoint #2 ~ OK, there is something *really* wrong with that ~ and later I heard from another runner that some mountain bikers had placed a second set of flags for their ride that may have confused many runners. Couldn't figure out why there were so many mountain bikers on the course this year.
As for the stream bed, this was possibly the best creek conditions ever: 2-3” of water – perfect for running through!
Made up more time this year coming back up after the creek, running the roller coaster (stubbing my left foot four times) and back to checkpoint #3.
Finished in 2:17:09 ~ 51 seconds slower than PR and my second best time on this course.
Scott and his brother Chris made a strategic adjustment, opting for the Sampler in lieu of the 14.5 miler (good choice). They finished solidly in the middle of the pack, but their ages are against them finishing high.
Carolyn finished the Sampler in 8th place after the Dispea adjustment ~ which is her best finish yet. She promises me that she'll update the blog with her story.
Now, only one question: where is Richard Busa?

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.

race update 4 May 08

Finished 2:56 and change for 114 / 241. Only got 60.75 Grand Tree points.
Six minutes off of my worst time, but actually, I'm kind of not unhappy with this result.
Exceptionally humid (essentially, we ran in 100% humidity) and the trail conditions were slick on the rock and muddy where there was no rocks. Saw a few significant injuries out there. As unfortunate as it was for those that got hurt, I've got nothing but some generalized muscle soreness and a few good bruises.
REALLY felt bad even from the Low Places on the way out. Talked myself out of DNF-ing three times.
No Shawn D, but Matt and his brother Mike ran.
Full story later.