Race report on Across The Years, December 31, 2011-January 1, 2012
This was my second ATY event, the first being the 2010-11 version. That event was chronicled earlier in this blog, with a first line was something like, “I loved this event.” Well, that’s probably the first thought of this entry also.
Briefly, ATY is a “fixed time” event, where the participant simply tries to complete as many miles as possible in the allotted time on a closed course. In this event, the three times were 72, 48 and 24 hours, spread over December 29 through the morning of January 1. For the second time, I selected the 24-hour event beginning on December 31. In this way, I would go “Across the Years” into 2012. Well, maybe, depending on my ailing foot. (More on that below).
This year’s event was moved from last year’s location at Nardini Manor, which featured a 500 meter certified track. I had a great time at that venue, and enjoyed the tight dimensions. With the track just a third of a mile long, it was easy to run / walk a few laps with participants. Aid was always close and it was just a lot of fun. However, the cozy confines also restricted the number of participants, and it was a lottery to get in. This year, the organizers moved it to the spring training facilities shared by the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago White Sox. The result was a home run (pun intended): spacious, clean, lots of parking and camping facilities. The course was just over a mile long, with aid at two separate locations, one at the start/finish area and a smaller station about half way around. One of my partners, Steve Toomey, was also entered in what would be his first ultra. Steve was using the event as a fund raiser, and set a goal of 60 miles.
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I had looked forward to this event since the 2010 version and kept watching the website for entry information. I think I entered the first day that registration opened in the summer. While the organizers said there was no lottery needed, I wasn’t taking any chances. A trip to the desert in December, a great running event, well, I just didn’t want to take a chance on missing it.
Unfortunately, I’d suffered a painful, seemingly serious foot/heel injury in late November. As described in a previous blog entry, it was a sudden pain in my left heel on a gentle recovery run. Since I could barely walk that Sunday, recovery seemed a long ways off…..I really thought I’d torn something. A trip to the podiatrist two days later was pretty worthless. The advice was “RICE,” which I could have administered on my own.
Injuries are incredibly frustrating to a runner, and this was killing me. I had plane and hotel reservations since mid-summer. Then my wife started thinking about coming with me on a road trip. And here I was, in the no-mans-land of injury, unsure if I could even participate. Fortunately, I had a pretty good training base, with a 100 mile effort in late August, a marathon in October and the aborted, botched 82 mile trek at Javelina in mid-November. Post-injury, I spent lots of quality time on the elliptical, including a six hour stint on December 10. The foot got a little better, but never well enough to just go out and run. I logged a total of 12.5 miles (yes, the decimal is in the right place) from late November until ATY. I thought about canceling, but the year-end desert trip was just too attractive. If worst came to worst, I could log a couple of laps and stop. After all, there are no DNFs in a fixed time event.
Kathy, Lola, Maddie and myself (Lola and Maddie being my beloved golden retrievers) took off for Phoenix on December 27. An uneventful two day drive landed us at the Residence Inn in Phoenix on the afternoon of December 28. The desert weather was spectacular, even by Phoenix standards: highs in the 70s, gorgeous sun, just lovely. I really enjoy traveling with my dogs. There’s a certain simplicity about life, with recreation being hanging around outside, going to parks, having a picnic. As a bonus, they’re perfectly happy watching junk football bowl games in the hotel room in the evening.
December 30 in the Surprise, AZ city park, a photo that has nothing to do with running.
A similarly gratuitous picture. That's Lola on the left, Maddie on the right.
Race day was a continuation of the gorgeous weather, with a cool early morning (if you consider 50 degrees or so “cool”) with highs forecast in the 70s. With my physical woes, I had no real goals. I hoped to log a decent distance, but wasn’t going to run through serious pain and make this damn injury worse. Precisely at 9 AM, the 24-hour runners were off, joining the 72-hour group and the 48 hour runners who had started a day earlier. As is my custom, I start out walking, this time a full lap of 1.05 miles. Hell, I didn’t know if I’d be running much at all anyway. Covered my first lap in 14:14, a pretty good walking pace.
Lots of tents for the multi-day (and 24 hour) runners. I was in the local Residence Inn.
As noted in last year’s ATY blog entry, these fixed time events are fabulous for an accountant. Precisely measured, lap time and number logged on each trip, a numbers guy can really focus on pace and extrapolated distances through the whole event. The second lap I went with an approximate 50/50 walk-run mix, with that 1.05 mile loop taking 11:51. My general strategy in 100 mile (or 24 hour) events is to hit a 12 minute / mile pace for the first 50 miles or so (a 10 hour target for that distance), then hang on. Early on, that seemed doable. Better yet, I felt good! Maybe I was back after all!
The timing tent at the start/finish area.
The lack of pain in my foot lasted an hour and a half. Then it started creeping back. Not debilitating, but just annoying. I decided I’d see how long I could go, without serious discomfort indicating a worsening of the injury.
The first few hours went pretty well. As I’ve repeated many times, I really like this event and the logistics. A guy can get a good steady pace without worrying about aid. I sort of adopted the second, smaller aid station as my primary source of hydration. The main station was always pretty crowded, and this one had water and sports drink, along with chocolate cupcakes, potato chips and other essentials. I really appreciated the aid station workers sitting out in the sun for a bunch of scruffy runners.
The secondary aid station. As the afternoon wore on, I told the workers they were our guardian angels.
Warm desert weather, which I enjoy greatly, is sort of the nemesis of my stomach. The warmer it gets, the less likely I’ll want to eat anything. True to form, and despite modest temps in the 70s, I lost my desire for food. This was despite the smorgasbord provided by the race organizers. My 12-minute pace began to be a bit of a struggle as the afternoon wore on.
Baseball facilities all around us. The venue was truly a "home run."
I’d told my wife that I might be back for lunch on the 31st, or dinner, or I might be back the morning of the 1st.…just depended on my ailing foot. I sent a text message at 35 miles that things were not great, but passable, and I was going to hang on for a while. And that pretty much explained it. I’d developed sort of a shuffle that kept me from landing on the painful heel, although I could still feel some discomfort. But it wasn’t enough to make me quit, at least not yet.
By 7 PM, (10 hours) I’d completed 46 laps, or about 48 miles, just short of my 50 mile interim goal. As the sun went down, the temperatures cooled and my appetite came back. My first solid food in hours was combination pizza….not normally my ideal running food, but it seemed like it was going to stay down. I developed the practice of a standard run / walk for three laps, then a fourth lap for food and hydration at a slower pace.
Ultra runner humor.
During the evening hours, I spent four walking laps with “the most interesting man in the world.” I know that’s a Dos Equis commercial but this guy was really fascinating. A physicist by education and occupation, he’d dropped out of the work world to build a cabin on a small patch of private land in the national forest outside of Flagstaff. And I mean, he built it himself with basically no help on land so remote you had to ski in during the winter months. Meanwhile, his wife continued to work in the “real world.” A casual hour-long conversation made it clear that this guy was really smart in a whole bunch of subjects.
At 10 PM, I pulled out the distance runner’s secret weapon—NoDoz! I was getting sleepy, my pace was dragging and caffeine was just what I needed. The effect was immediate, and I clicked off a number of 12 minute miles as midnight approached. As with last year, I felt too good to stop for any New Year’s celebrations, logging lap 68 (71 miles) as the fireworks and noisemakers went off around us. I did locate some cold pizza for fuel, however. My foot continued to nag, but never seemed to get much worse.
The overnight hours were uneventful, other than a bit of paranoia. At one point, I couldn’t find my gear bag and became convinced that someone had moved it on me. More NoDoz around 3 AM or so and my bag was…uhhh… right where I’d left it. The caffeine again helped to keep awake and to pick up the pace a bit.
As in last year’s ATY, I didn’t make it the full 24 hours. I hit the 100 mile mark around 6:35 AM and logged an extra loop for safety, hitting a total of about 102 miles. My foot was nagging, I was tired and we had a seven hour drive ahead of us during the day. I called it quits around 6:50 AM, just before sunup.
ATY was again just a helluva good time. I was very happy to hit the 100 mile mark and partially redeem myself for the November meltdown at Javelina. Running with an injured foot was certainly not ideal, but it didn’t seem much worse for the wear after the event. Health permitting, I’d like to try some more fixed time events during 2012 and come back to ATY for the next version. After all, what could be better than cold pizza, NoDoz and a 100 mile run for for New Year’s?
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