{"id":9594,"date":"2010-06-07T08:37:38","date_gmt":"2010-06-07T12:37:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/?p=9594"},"modified":"2020-02-27T16:44:20","modified_gmt":"2020-02-27T21:44:20","slug":"north-face-50-mile-recap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nomeatathlete.com\/north-face-50-mile-recap\/","title":{"rendered":"Running 50 Miles: Not Just For Superheroes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Granted, there’s a reason it’s not called the North Face Endurance Fun Run.<\/p>\n

Ninety-degree heat, extreme humidity, and three mile-long passes along a cliff so rocky it required more tiptoeing than running helped to ensure that my first 50-miler, part of the North Face Endurance Challenge<\/a>, lived up to the name.<\/p>\n

\"MattLet me tell you: This race, which ran through the woods and along the cliffs of the Potomac river, was really hard.<\/p>\n

But—believe it or not—it wasn’t that<\/em> hard.<\/p>\n

Why It Wasn’t So Bad<\/h3>\n

Maybe it was that I ran a smart race and paced myself well, staying with a more experienced ultrarunner (thanks Seth!) for the first 20 miles or so.\u00a0 Perhaps it was seeing a familiar face, either my family or someone I’d met online, at 11 of the 13 aid stops.\u00a0 Maybe it was good hydration, salt intake, and a solid eating plan.\u00a0 It could have even been the Coke and Mountain Dew, which I had never tried in training but that I finally came to understand why ultrarunners love so much.<\/p>\n

More than any of these, though, I think it was having a good friend pace me for the last 15 miles of the race.<\/p>\n

Everyone told me that miles 30-40 would be the part where I’d want to quit.\u00a0 But after 30 miles, about as far as I’d ever run in training, the anticipation of meeting my friend and moving onto the final section of the course kept me going.\u00a0 And once we met up at mile 35, the adrenaline rush made the next five a breeze, probably my fastest miles of the race.<\/p>\n

Only after 40 miles did things start to hurt, and by that point, knowing I was 10 miles from such a huge accomplishment made it bearable.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong—it hurt.\u00a0 Running for ten and a half hours in the brutal heat will do that to you.<\/p>\n

But it was doable.\u00a0 That’s what I hope you take from this recap, if you’ve never considered running an ultra because it seems almost superhuman.<\/p>\n

It’s not superhuman.\u00a0 Normal people like me—and like you<\/strong>—can do this.<\/p>\n

Miles 1-15: Soaking Wet from the Start<\/h3>\n

\"ErinWhen I stepped out of my hotel at 3:30 in the morning, it was already humid.\u00a0 By 5:30, having been running for only half an hour in the dark, I was drenched in sweat.<\/p>\n

My biggest fear going into this race was that I’d start out too fast and realize I was in big trouble with 20 or 30 miles still to go.\u00a0 Thankfully, I was there with a far more experienced ultrarunner.\u00a0 This guy has run not just several 50-milers, but a 100-miler.\u00a0 (Yes, you read that right: 100 miles, over the course of 26 hours.)<\/p>\n

\"MattKnowing he’d run a smart pace (11-12 minutes per mile), I stayed with Seth for the entire first leg of the race.\u00a0 These miles were uneventful, with the exception of a blister that I felt developing on my right foot.\u00a0 As we ran some quiet trails in the early morning along the river, I counted down the miles until 15, when I knew I’d see my wife and my dad and be able to change out of my trail shoes into my more-comfortable road shoes.<\/p>\n

Miles 16-35: The Loop (and Some Scary Cliffs)<\/h3>\n

\"RockyThe signature section of the race was a seven-mile loop that took us right along the Potomac river, where we literally had to jump from rock to rock, about five feet from the edge of a hundred-foot cliff that dropped straight down to the Potomac river.<\/p>\n

It was beautiful, challenging, and fun—the first time.<\/p>\n

The second two times, this “marquee section” became “those f’ing rocks in the blazing heat where a single false step could quite literally kill me.”\u00a0 Seriously, I had to step close enough to the edge that when I saw Erin again, I didn’t tell her just how close it was, because I knew she’d worry about me losing my mental faculties and ending up in the river going over the Great Falls the third time around.<\/p>\n

After the first pass through the rocks, I felt my legs tiring for the first time.\u00a0 With 28 miles still to go, this scared me a little.\u00a0 But I bounced back, running the second loop in an hour and 22 minutes, four minutes faster than I had done it the first time around.\u00a0\u00a0 And the third loop was on par with the first, the fatigue starting to set in as I realized I had been running for seven straight hours<\/em>—a full hour and change more than I had ever run in my life.<\/p>\n

Still, I felt great, considering the circumstances.\u00a0 I had expected that at this point, with 15 miles to go, I would hate running and be cursing myself for being so idiotic as to do this, voluntarily no less.<\/p>\n

And yet I didn’t hate running.\u00a0 Somehow, I was still having fun.<\/p>\n

Miles 36-50: The Hard Part<\/h3>\n

\"MattAt the mile 35 aid station, I picked up my friend and pacer, Pat.\u00a0 Pat was my roommate in college, and one of three guys in the ill-fated crack-squad who back in 2002 decided we’d pick up and run our first marathon<\/a>.\u00a0 That race wasn’t pretty for any of us, but Pat keeps in shape and is the type of guy you can count for this kind of stuff, as well as for world-class entertainment along the way.<\/p>\n

So when all the sudden I had someone to run with—Seth and I had separated when I took my sweet time at an aid station—I got a major boost.\u00a0 Pat and I flew through about five miles of trail with the idea that we might be able to make it back in under 10 hours.<\/p>\n

Right around the 40-mile mark, though, I started to feel as if—well, as if I had been running for 40 miles.\u00a0 Mostly it was my legs that wanted to quit; everything else, including my mind, felt pretty good.\u00a0 But as we hit the hills that I had barely noticed on the way out (even the downhills sucked, by this point), I started to realize that 10 hours wasn’t in the cards on this hot day.<\/p>\n

This was solidified when, during a seven mile stretch before the aid station at mile 42, we came upon a guy who was staggering back and forth, ready to fall into the head-high grass on the side of the trail.\u00a0 It was obvious he was in trouble; the heat and distance between aid stations had gotten to him.\u00a0 While someone else ran ahead to the next aid station to send help, we and some other runners waited with him and gave him water, salt, and food.\u00a0 Help came in time, and we were surprised to see the guy eventually cross the finish line.<\/p>\n

10 hours was officially out the window.\u00a0 But it probably would have been anyway.<\/p>\n

At least seeing someone in such rough shape taught me a lesson: Be prepared for the worst.<\/em> When we got to the aid station, even though I was sure I could make it to the next without filling up my hydration pack, I refilled anyway.\u00a0 As this guy had shown, you never know how quickly things might go south.<\/p>\n

With eight miles to go and only a flat section of the course remaining, I did everything I could to soak in the moment and enjoy the certainty that I was going to finish this thing.\u00a0 My legs did their best to temper my enthusiasm, but we ran almost the entire remaining distance, stopping only three or four times to walk, when I absolutely needed to.<\/p>\n

Finally, we hit the aid station that marked 1.7 miles to go.\u00a0 I had run 48.3 miles, and that felt pretty damn good (no matter what my legs were saying).\u00a0 The moments just before you achieve something pretty spectacular that you’ve been working at for a long time, when it’s a near certainty, are surreal and indescribable.\u00a0 The closest thing I’ve felt to this was the final .2 miles of the Wineglass Marathon<\/a>, when knew I had qualified for Boston.<\/p>\n

\"MattAs we turned the final corner and could hear the music and the crowd cheering, I told Pat that he had better not try to drop back at the last minute to let me cross the finish line alone.\u00a0 And even though I didn’t mention it at the time, for fear of having my man-card revoked, I got a little choked up as I told him that he had better stay with me as I crossed the finish line.<\/p>\n

And then I heard Erin yelling, even before I could see her.\u00a0 I crossed the line, where my mom and dad were standing taking pictures and cheering, and it was over.\u00a0 Fifty freaking miles, in just under ten and a half hours.<\/p>\n

What I Ate<\/h3>\n

I did my best to keep track of what I ate during the race, in hopes of being more scientific than in the past about what works and what doesn’t.<\/p>\n

My strategy was to eat slower-digesting starchy carbs and fats early on when my stomach was in good shape, and to shift toward simple sugars for a kick as I neared the end of the race.\u00a0 I must say it worked pretty well; the only hitch was that the heat made almost everything but water unappetizing, so I ate less solid food than I had planned to.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I ate before and during the race:<\/p>\n

Pre-race:<\/em><\/p>\n