Catch up time!

Catching up for me means actually paying attention to my own running again! The overuse injury from last season kind of put me into a mindset where I focused on everything BUT my own running. I volunteered at the Ranch Aid Station for the Buffalo 100, and then spent a ton of energy working on organizing this year's Salt Flats 100 (report in the next blog post). That said, I'm plugging away again, putting miles in wherever I can squeeze them in. This last Saturday I joined Davy Crockett entering as solo runners in a local 50 mile relay race (patterned after the Ragnar Relays) that roughly followed the Denver/Rio Grande rail trail, Legacy Parkway trail, and Jordan River Parkway trail from Roy, UT, to West Jordan, UT. The two of us stood at the start rigged to pretty much self-support the entire 50 miles, surround by people in costumes, team shirts, and carrying a hand-bottle if anything at all. To say we were conspicuous would be an understatement. Davy has already had an amazing running year and it was only May 4th. I on the other hand had only had a few decent runs, and was mainly relying on short-ish lunch runs as my main training body. We queued up at the start and walked forward until the guy with the clock entered our bib number and yelled "Go!". Davy held back for the first mile and we chatted about the last couple of weeks (where he'd run a 104 mile 24hr race on the west coast, then run my Salt Flats 100, and was now running this 50 miler), but after realizing I was at an entirely different level of training, he excused himself and opened it up. He ended up beating about 1/2 of the relay teams. I on the other hand, plodded along slowly, hanging with the slowest of the relay teams, and pretty much enjoying the fact that I was on my first real long run. The first "exchange" for the relay at 6.5 miles had water right at the exchange (as expected), and I filled up all my bottles, pulled a PB&J slice out of my pack, and headed out again. They had volunteers posted at several key, and quite odd intersections/course deviations where we literally ran through some parking lots, up alley's behind manufacturing plants, and then joined the formal trail again. After another 6 miles or so, the next exchange appeared, but no water was in sight... I still had about half of my water, so I chose to head out for the next section. Of course this is when the morning coolness started to wane and I really started drinking. With still two or so miles to go, I was bone dry. By the time I hit the third exchange at about 20.5 miles, I was parched. I refilled there (thanks to Davy who had arrived there to no water, after passing through #2 like I did without filling up and pretty much demanded they get some water there) grabbed more food from my pack, and headed out again. I was pounding the water, and I'd finished my main bottle after only a mile and a half, so I started looking for options. I saw a soccer park with a pavilion off the side of the trail, so I ran to that and found a drinking fountain! I topped off and headed out again. By the 4th exchange at 27 miles, I was starting to feel hydrated again despite finishing all my water before arriving, but was also noticing that my legs were losing energy. After refilling and refueling, I set off for the next section which ran through the Rose Park section of Salt Lake City. This area has a reputation for being a not-so-nice area of town, and the ever increasing spray paint "art" seemed to be confirming that. The course had been marked with yellow spray-chalk up to this point, and as I ran the trail "ended" and became sidewalk with a couple direction options. No chalk marking here, so I chose the largest of the sidewalk options, and continued running that, passing over several roads, and then was spit out into a parking lot behind a trailer park. This seemed a bit odd, so I back tracked for a mile or so looking for where I'd missed the markings... but to no avail. I then decided to try another direction at the previous "large" intersection, but this simply spit me out into a neighborhood after less than a 1/2 mile. Back again, and tried the other direction, which ended on the far side of a baseball park and amidst the parking lot full of little-leaguers... nope. I retraced and again followed my original route to see if I'd somehow missed some markings, but after arriving again at the parking lot behind the trailer park without seeing any markings, I figured I must be thoroughly lost. I decided to follow the fence line on the other side of the parking lot as it looked like it had a gate... which sure enough had a chalk marking pointing the opposite direction I was going! Doh! At this point my GPS was showing 36.5 miles (I should have been at the next exchange by now). My legs were increasingly tightening up, and even my old injury was starting to make itself known, so I decided to call it a day. All in all, it was my first real long run of the year, and it definitely felt good for most of those miles, so I'll call it a successful Saturday run!