Ok, so if you scroll down and bit and read the end of my race report from the Longhorn 70.3 you'll see that I had planned to only run the 20k or the 50k at this event. I left the door open in terms of my final decision come race week, but I was about 99.9% sure that my legs were only doing 1 loop of this course 12.5 mile route. Well, so much for my ability to hold back and so much for the actual training I should have done for this 50 mile race...but in the end it all worked out and I had a great day.

I had actually backed off my training volume well in advance of Longhorn (race day Oct. 5) since my mind and body were telling me to. My level of fatigue and some GI issues had been plaguing me for weeks, so I made the call to dial back all my volume and try to focus purely on some quality work. No filler workouts or garbage mileage at all. Anything I did in terms of training was solely focused on keeping my body moving and my fitness level up. My longest run prior to this race, within the window of "actually counting towards this race" was a mere 2 hours, and that run was weeks ago. I was going to count on years of multisport training and my mental capacity to deal with events that took a "very long time" to finsh.

Jamie and I arrived at the park on Thursday evening, prior to race weekend. This gave us a chance to chill out on Friday and try to get some good sleep. It was actually great to see friends that were racing as well, plus we had a bunch of Texas Iron athletes there doing their first 50 mile and 50k events. We may not be able to see much of each other out on the course during race day, but the camaraderie of knowing your friends were out there too made the distance a little more bearable.

Our race started at 7:00 a.m. in the dark. I walked up to the front pack and asked a couple other runners if this was the start line for the 5k? Either I'm not as funny as I think I am or these guys needed to lighten up a bit! The look of death they shot me wasn't what I was expecting. Oh well, get over it dudes. There was a breif countdown and then we took off into the dark. I got up near the front because I've learned I need to do this. I've got more speed in my legs then the majority of the runners so being trapped behind people on single track trail, at the start of the race, isn't where I want to be. I got into my groove as I've come to love running in the dark with my headlamp. The temperature at the start of the race was 43 F and I was quite chilly! I wore my long sleeve HCRC tech shirt and had some old throw away gloves to keep my hands warm.

After about an hour I was able to turn off my headlamp and the sun was starting to peak over the edge of the canyon. I was still feeling groovy and wondering when my body and legs were going to start revolting on me. I've come to break down long trail races into a series of 5 body phases. Here's my scientific breakdown:

Phase 1 - Feeling groovy

Phase 2 - Moving great but starting to feel a little stiff

Phase 3 - Stiff as crap and really starting to hurt

Phase 4 - HURTING REALLY BAD AND STARTING TO CRAMP!!!!!!

Phase 5 - Numb

All I want to do is move as quickly as I can from Phase 1 to Phase 5. Sometimes this can take hours, and sometimes it happens pretty quick. I was praying that today was one of those "pretty quick days" as I seriously had no business trying to attempt my first 50 miler on my lack of preparation. I also began to get a feel for the difficulty of the race route. It was relentless in terms of up and down, and up and down, and side to side, and more up and down. Uh oh!. I came in from loop 1 in just over 1 hr and 50 minutes, grabbed what I needed from my special needs box and headed out on to loop 2. About 2 miles into the 2nd loop it hit and I was now getting stiff and starting to feel the distance. Crap, I still had almost 3 loops to go!

I made it thru the next loop and then on loop 3 I was stuck in Phase 4. It was also starting to heat up and temperatures were into the high 80's out in sections of the course. "Please, please little legs just go numb!!!!! Please just stop talking to me and let me run and not feel anything anymore!!!! I'll slow down and bit and you can stop talking to me!!!!!" Somehow my body and legs started to listen and by the start of the last loop I was finally numb. Now given numb isn't all that it's cracked up to be...I tend to loose motor skills when I'm in this state. I can actually send thoughts from my brain to my legs and they don't react. Thoughts of "lift leg up to step up on rock" and the leg doesn't go. It's quite interesting, at least on my part, to try and keep turnover going (good running form) but have a lack of motor skills at the same time. I always think I'm running slower then I actually tend to be at this time, but at least I was still moving along.

I did fall off a tiny bit in terms of my pace as I progressed thru 4 loops of the course, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't as much as I had originally thought. If you took my special needs stops out of the equation, and my nutrition/hydration/pee-pee stops out on the course, I was clocking around 6 miles an hour. Not bad for my first 50 miler and I was pretty stoked. I came into the finish in 8 hrs 25 min and just under 1 hour infront of the next woman. I'm so clueless on who I am racing at these events so I just go pretty brisk from the start and hope they don't catch me. I think I'm gonna stick to that plan and hope it plays out well for me in January (I'll be attempting my first 100k race at Bandera and I plan to finish in under 11 hours...obviously weather permitting!!!!!)

Post race I am now feeling my lack of run miles prior to this race. My recovery is slow going and I'm still dreading the thought of getting out of bed every morning. I did a small run with my husband and dogs this morning, but the duration of these runs are going to stay VERY short this week. I won't be racing at Ironman Florida in a couple weeks as I plan to take my off season now. Off season for me will be some long distance trail running and races. I'll get back into the triathlon swing of things after Bandera in January, 2009 and I'm planning to do my first half Ironman either in April or May. I'm thinking I need to make a trip back out to Wildflower in May since my first and only race there was way back in 1997! However, I'll make that call come January of next year.

Oh, and by the way my husband kick booty in the men's race. He was 7 hr and 23 minutes and rocked! It was actually pretty cool to take both the mens and womens title at a race in the same event. We are both planning to continue the winning streak in January again (Jamie and I have both won, during the same race and same distance, the Bandera 50k in record times and now the Palo Duro Canyon 50 miler).

Stay warm over the winter and remember to make time for an off season!!! It's just as important as the race season.

Cheers,
Fish