You'd be surprised how much you can cuss when you trip on a root and the ice so wonderfully chilling your head, held tight by your running hat, falls off only a minute after you put it on. I assure you, it's a lot. Last July, in Kansas City, it was averaging high temperatures of about 95*F with jungle like humidity and a dire lack of clouds. Let's go running you sadists! While I normally pick my races at least a few months in advance, something about running races at Wyandotte County Lake Park just nibbles on my brain. It's my home course, it's where I fell in love with trail running, it's where my dog has set records, it's where I found peace. So, after seeing a buddy of mine mention he was not running it last Saturday, I thought, "I'm in shape, I could at least run the ten." That's really all it took. Going on Strava, giving some proverbial kudos to my internet running friends, and seeing that there was some action going down at the park. I'm in.
Let's talk for a second about the trail. Knowing that it hadn't rained in a few weeks and due to the drying out capacity with the furnace like temps in the area, I figured it was all runable. It was. Second, it's a ten mile loop when you add in an area known as the triangle but the Summer addition of this race takes you inside the main park road where the trails are less steep and you can push it a little harder than you otherwise would in the Winter version. All of that does not sacrifice the first two miles and the last two miles of the bridle trail, which are very rocky with some large gullies where you have to run Ninja Warrior style, bounding left and right and left and right to navigate the trail. The Stinging Nettles, while sounding very much like an angry punk band, had been thankfully trimmed but that is not to say that numerous other ivies, and tree limbs, green plants that just look itchy, and overhead branches had all been removed. They hadn't. Shade though, is a thankful part of this course due to nearly 85% of it being in the woods, primarily single track. Oh but wouldn't you know, when you are running through the woods you don't feel the breeze, so while you are thankful that the hell blazing sun isn't beating you down, the woods turn into a bit of a dry sauna. Mother nature giveth and taketh away.
"I'm 40! I'm a man!"
I hear those words in my head every time I see the 40 next to my name at races and when filling out forms expressing my understanding that what I am doing is probably dangerous. 40. That also means I have entered the world of the Masters. I wear this one proudly. I mean I made it this far, didn't die from many previous poor life choices, and I'm still racing. Not just running but racing. Wisdom is gained from doing, reflecting, and doing again. Failure, DNF's, hospitalization for dehydration, falls, disappointing results are only temporary unless you choose to allow them to permanently own you. After over a decades worth of highs of achieving a goal, to a lows of calling your wife on the trail and telling her you need help, preparation and practice have expressed themselves to me and taught me how to run. For this race, my prior humblings at the hands of the Psycho Psummer, made me a believer in preparedness.
The first time I ran this race was in 2009 and I signed up for the 50K version, which ran the opposite way than we do now on the trail, used a rope to get a up hill, and was only two fifteen mile loops. It was hot as balls and I managed to make twenty miles, got to an aide station and laid down on a picnic bench and pretty much thought I was done. I remember getting into a someone's Jeep, they took me back to the start/finish area, and I cried thinking I was pretty much a loser. If my memory serves correct, my Dad was there and drove me home. Alas, I lived to run another day but my lack of truly understanding what it takes to run in near 100*F temperatures, the fantasy world in which I assumed I'd be impervious to the conditions, straight pimp slapped me down to a rather deep demoralization. The illusion that I had built in my brain of the sinewy trail runner, gliding effortlessly up and down the trail, arms raised in victory as I cross the finish line was squashed in the dirt leaving an imprint of this failure on my soul. Never fear though my friends, I have a good forgetter and after what was probably a period of months, I was right back at it, slowly learning my lesson. Slowly, because I needed a DNF at my first Boston, practically dying at the Steamboat Springs Series 50K, a DNF at the Leadville 50 miler, all making me feel like the Coyote whom repeatedly gets the anvil dropped on him by the illusive Roadrunner. I was swimming in the waters of failure but I didn't drown.
Race time.
When I first get to a race I look for a few things, first, how many Kansas City Smoke runners are here. For those unfamiliar with that group, it's one of the sanctioned USA Track & Field Elite Development Clubs where you have to hit a qualifying standard to join. Needless to say, when you see the yellow and black tanks, you know you are going to have to hustle. Yes, I'm envious but also happy that we have a community that can support that level of dedication.These men and women are also super nice and more than willing to share beta and give you feedback, talk race prep and strategy and post their workouts to Strava so it's not as if they are hiding some secrets. We need to smash the illusion that becoming elite at anything is some genetic predisposition that blesses them with some otherworldly ability that us mere mortals will never achieve. Rubbish. The secret is they work their asses off everyday. They deliberately practice the stuff they aren't best at, refine, get feedback, work some more and repeat. It's not magic and we disrespect their hard work when we dismiss their mental toughness by saying things like, "oh but you have a great body for this or you are just naturally fast." I give no quarter to that mindset, especially in the kids I coach. Yes, some kids are early bloomers and overwhelm others their same age with physical differences but that only lasts so long. It's what you do with those talents that reveals what you are really made of.
Anyway, after sizing up the competition with nothing more than what people look like, how they warm up, and what they are wearing, I like to get ready myself. One of the things that is so great about following other athlete's workouts, is the best ones do real warm ups. What do I mean real warm ups? If you are going to run something and want to run it fast, striding up the start line cold and taking off like your being chased by a bear is not particularly advantageous for success. Instead, going for a mile or two jog, followed by some dynamic stretching (thing leg swings, ice cream scoops), going through some sprints and form drills and then heading to the line, seems to lead to better results. You would think this is pretty common sense stuff but I saw a dude holding what appeared to be a Visine bottle as his hydration devise. Yeah left turn here, the Race Director, Bad Ben Holmes, requires you to run and finish the race with a hydration device. If you cross the finish line without one, you will get a DNF and be shamed by probably no one, but if I ran anywhere from ten to thirty one miles in 100 degree heat, finished, and then was DNF'd because I didn't listen to simple race instructions, I'd feel pretty dumb. The advantage gained by shaving a few ounces of weight off what you carry is outweighed by the prospect of heat stroke and in general, death.
The other side of getting ready is having a plan. I ran the Leadville 50 mile once and did not finish and quit around mile 25 at the turnaround. I remember plain as day, my brother in law telling me that the guys he knows who have ran that race usually had a plan for everything, including the race. At the time, I thought that was a pretty novel idea and discarded his advise with unfounded arrogance. I'll just use my superior fitness and mental toughness to overcome the 13,000ft peaks and training as a flatlander. Needless to say, when I ate a peanut butter and jelly around mile twelve, having never done that once during training or a race, my stomach decided to reissue that sandwich to me via violent vomiting over the next five or so miles. I'm good people, I just make poor choices.
So, for this hot Summer ten miler, I came in with a plan. Hydration plan, check. Nutrition plan, check. Cooling plan, check. Clothing plan, check and racing plan, check. I know it's only ten miles. For some of us ten miles is your fifty miles, it's all relative and a good plan is better than a no plan any day. I carry a waist hydration pack that keeps my water bottle at an angle on the small of my back. I have tried handhelds, and backpacks, and after trial and lots of errors, I found what works best for me. I made sure the bottle was stuffed full of ice and surrounded by water. Next, after eating a light meal the night before consisting of mainly carbs and a plain chicken breast that Oprah would be ashamed of, I awoke and ate a half of a banana and a bit of sugar free Rockstar mixed with water for breakfast and that made for a happy belly. Again, you do you but log it, keep a running journal, or an excel file, or whatever but you need to learn from your mistakes and if you are in this game long enough, you will have plenty of them documented with which you can learn to avoid those hazards in the future. For this race, I wore shorts that would have embarrassed my kids, a blue tank representing my home running shop, my white race hat, some merino wool socks, and an ice bandana. Oh the wonders of an ice banana. Imagine, you take a normal bandana, fold it into a triangle, sew up the edges, or in this case I used a stapler, until all you have is an opening by one of the corners where you can shove the ice in like you are filling a sock with nickels. I took the aforementioned ice bandana and tied it around my next before the race even started while simultaneously layering ice into my hat and putting that on as well. It was well into the 90's by the time the race even began so starting cool, rather than trying to get cool, was a big part of my plan. One of the things I learned from reading The Run Walk Run Method by Jeff Galloway, was that if you wait to walk until you are tired, it's too late. I spun that advise into my method for keeping cool. If you wait until you are hot to try to cool off, it's too late. I have no idea if that actually works but the logic makes me smile and I feel sort of a warm smugness as I write this now. My old man used that method to run his first and only marathon when he was 69 years old. He wanted to run one before he turned seventy and he bought Jeff's book, we did it as a family, and he nailed it. I liken the ice bandana to a torso air conditioner that as it melts, it's heavenly goodness of ice water trickling down your back and neck, little rivulets meandering down your chest, and a little shock at first and that little gasp you get when you step in the shower and the water was is cold. I love it.
After the RD gave us his final instructions he pressed down the button, the air horn blew, and we were off. The first thirty meters leads to a little bridge that then opens up to a fairly wide field where if you got caught a little behind on the bridge you can get into your preferred position before you hit the trail. My plan was to get out in the top ten before we hit the steep uphill single track that starts as soon as you enter the woods. Within that first flat opening section I was positioned in the top ten right where I thought I should be. The bonus of website signups are that many of these allow you to see who has already entered and ultra signup even gives you an idea of where these runners should finish. Holy computer science! The program most likely takes any previous races you have run where the results have been uploaded into their database, compares that to the results of other runners in similar distances and races and then assigns certain values for those variables and presto-chango, it gives you an idea of where you might end up finishing. Unless of course, they have some sort of automated robot scripting that scowers the web and looks for race results from a list of predetermined sites, aggregates them and then pumps out some predictive analytics and proceeds to make you feel bad because it tells you, you are going to finish twentieth. What a bunch of dicks.
Familiarity can bread both confidence and a touch of arrogance and the lesson for me here was to use the knowledge of this trail to know where to push it and where to save it. I mentioned previously that this trail is a lot of single track. That's true in a sense that there really is a best line to take on nearly all of it. Occasionally, the beginning for instance, it's a more wide open, but that lasts at best for a quarter mile and then it's a conga line, single file style with passing only happening when you shout "on your left" and you accelerate hard around them. 8th place is roughly where I settled into after the first mile. That's with three Smoke runner ahead of me, so realistically, five I was really racing. Anyone can have a bad day, I've seen elites fall hard and have to walk off the trail so anything is possible but I'm trying to focus on what I can control and that's being close with a group of five. I power hiked, really it's just fast walking, on two short but steep hills prior to the first aid station around mile three. I planned on walking those spots but dammit if it's not hard to have people pass you when you feel like you could be running. Stick to the plan is what I kept telling myself. People talk during races when you find someone your pace it's nice to run together for a bit. I met a young man named Brian, he was twenty years my junior, and he passed me on the ups nearly every time and at one point stretched it out a bit. I told him I would see him again but figured he was young and it might be his day. He did give me one advantage though when he mentioned it was his first time running here. This race gets really, really hard over the last mile and a half and I figured if I could possibly see him during that stretch, I could catch him. I got him quite a bit before that though.
As we switched to the inside mountain bike trails for two miles, this was a section you can push it on. It's ups and downs are not quite as steep and you can drink easier and motor a little faster. When you break out of this section, you come to the mile five aid station that sits on the only part of the race that goes on road. It's this stretch that runs on top of the damn hill and provides a flat section where you can get yourself together. I refilled both my ice bandana and my water bottle, said a few words of thanks to the volunteers who were also braving the heat, and took off. I saw Brian up ahead on the road and thought I'd might catch him sooner than I thought. I did. When we got into the next single track section, I got him on the first steep section. I knew it was going to be a series of short ups and downs and I was feeling really good. Once, I got a little space on him, I walked the next steep and bombed the rests of the downs until the next aid station appears at shelter fourteen. I took water and more ice in my hat and neck banana and managed to fall as soon as I got back in the woods. I lost all the hat ice and was momentarily feeling sorry for myself. The last three miles are hard. The hills are longer and steeper; you are more tired, hotter. Knowing that the three sisters were coming, politically incorrect but also known affectionately as the three bitches, this part of the race is a good point to gauge what you have left. My plan was to walk the steeps early, run a few in the middle, and then run all three of the sisters. The second and third sister are just plain mean, super steep, longer than nearly all the hills you have raced earlier on the trail and they are in the last mile.
The last bit of planning I had done was what my pace could be if I went under 1:30:00. That's a little under a nine minutes mile. Many people who run both road and trails would tell you that you can take about two minutes per mile and add that to your marathon pace and that's what you will probably run at Wyco. I run about a 6:50 per mile marathon so that's about spot on. At that point, I was right on that pace, slightly under, and believed I could do it. I got a little lucky here. I saw a guy ahead of me entering a slight clearing between the woods. That was nice pick me up. It's fun to pass people and I was down for a good race to the finish. He led up the first sister but he walked it, I ran it. He kept his lead as he crested the hill first but I had closed the gap. On the second sister, he walked again and I got right behind him but he got a little burst of energy and put about a ten to fifteen feet gap on me at the top. I knew at this point, we had that final huge sister and then one rocky downhill, a tiny road crossing, a short but steep uphill, and then a downhill fifty meter finish. I got right on his heels down the rocks and passed him on the steep uphill and then just flew home. Seven seconds is what I ended up beating him by to finish sixth overall, 1st overall Master, and first in my age group. 1:28:59
After the race, he said to me he didn't realize we were so close to the finish when I passed him. I said, "I did."
I caught up with my new race friend, Brian, who was there with his Mom, which is awesome by the way, and he said he thought he learned a lot of lessons. Like maybe not working so hard early so he would have some left for the end and maybe carrying more water or an ice bandana. He will probably smoke me next time we race but that's cool. I like learning for my mistakes and I like being involved in a community where we can learn from each other's as well.
Racing is a way to take a little trip inside that dark hallway of a mind and come out into the light just a little bit.
