This is my first blog post...ever. Funny that it took the singular act of running 50 miles to motivate the transition from overly-facile facebook blather to blog blather. Welcome to this particular medium of blather. I hope I'll do more posts in the future on subjects ranging from running to non-running, but hopefully always with a modicum of logical consistency.
This story begins sometime in October of 2010, when Matt Broaddus, Bill Pelton, and I sat down at the Biergarten Haus on H Street in WDC, and decided we were going to become an ultra triumvirate. That is, we would train together and generally support one another as we endeavored to go long. Fittingly, I had dubbed 2010 the year of "length over strength" -- a bridge term that, to me, also conveyed the principles of breadth over depth and patience over immediate satisfaction. And so it was that we began our adventure by drinking huge steins of German beer, eating a mammoth sandwich of ham and cheese, and deciding to spend the next few years burning off the calories we consumed that night.
Fast forward about a year and Matt and I had developed a fairly consistent weekly regiment of running between 25 and 40 miles at a time. We set our sites on the Tussey mOUnTaiN-BACK (their pun, not mine), which is a fairly challenging 50-miler running on the hills (er, mountains) around Penn State college. Last weekend, on October 23, 2011, Matt and I ran this great race.
Joining Matt and I was my wife, Martha, and Matt's father, Greg. A more efficient, supportive, and honest support crew one would be hard-pressed to assemble. The four of us drove to State College on Saturday afternoon, enjoying the wonderful autumn foilage, which was peak aluminum foilage in our minds. After packet pickup at the hotel, we joined the all-you-can-eat pasta dinner associated with the race at the hotel. (Q: how many calories are in the estimated three pounds of pasta I ate? A: somewhere around 3000.) After dinner we listened to someone I'll refer to as Andy Rooney lecture us on what a soppy bunch of milquetoast wimps we modern runners are. I knew we were in for a steaming heap of condescension when Rooney started with the question, "how many of you run with a water bottle?" The lecture proceeded to berate us for running with camelbacks, GPS watches, legs and other extravagant nonsense. Channeling Rooney's voice, "Why is it that runner's today feel like they have to breathe so hard? Back when I ran, we held our breath for hours at a time, only respiring when absolutely necessary." Thanks for the pep talk, Andy.
Back at our room, we made some conscientious preparations for the morning and all four of us got a good night's sleep.
The night before Bill had surprised us by saying he might make it out to the race, but that morning we found out that he wouldn't be able to make it. I'm frankly inspired by anyone willing to travel 4 hours in each direction to watch someone else run at the pace of molasses. Thanks Bill.
Race day began somewhat uneventfully, which is probably a good thing. After Martha and Greg got their caffeine fix, we made it to the race site on time and stayed warm in the car until we were forced to brave the 40 degree chill. Matt and I spent time at the start line back-to-back which was a really effective way to warm up, although I will note that having another man's shivering ass jiggling up against your own constitutes necessary cause for deeper self-examination .
The gun goes off. I can't speak for Matt, but I hadn't been very nervous prior to the race, and for some reason, it still seemed like we were so ready, so focused that this was simply what we had to be doing at that moment. Plus, unlike a 10K, where you get this adrenaline rush from going out with all 6 cylinders pumping, in an ultra, the beginning is a tortoise-like anticlimax of shuffling and put-putting. In that vein, we moved cautiously at about 10 minutes per mile pace up the first hill which is about 2 miles long and goes up about 800 feet. Many runners were in front of us at this point. I found that reassuring. We were newbies to this sport, so going out fast on the first hill sounds like about the worst idea since sliced bread.
The next 7 miles were completely downhill. I can only describe the amount of elevation loss as instilling in you the certain knowledge that you're in the earth's mantle by the end of it. The pace here was probably in the low 8's or high 7's. Shirley it was a little fast, but comfortable nevertheless. Martha rang the cowbell for us at the rest stops; Greg gave us good cheer and offered gels. Always, they both had their cameras at the ready. The four of us were hitting our stride.
Running through this part of Western PA in the fall was gorgeous. The sun in the morning lit up the oranges, yellows and reds of the trees, and we had several overlooks that were beautiful enough to distract from the switchback climbs we were doing every half hour or so. Pretty consistently, Matt and I were picking up the pace, and moving into a 8:20 to 8:30 region that we thought was a little aggressive, but probably still a safe risk to be taking. Even with 35 miles ahead of you, we felt good enough to assert that we might be able to maintain for most of it.
Slowly but steadily we passed dozens of runners that had started out ahead of us. We passed one woman in the 20 mileage region, and talked with her enough to learn she was currently in second among the fems. We congratulated her on being so bad-ass that she might just place second. Personally, it made me feel like we were just a tinsy-bit bad-ass ourselves having passed her.
Matt and I communicated well throughout. At mile 25 we discovered we were going sub- 7 hour pace (3 hours and 27 minutes for those keeping track at home). That was about a mega-light year faster than we had expected to run. But, while we were both feeling the effects of those 25, neither of us felt like we were struggling as of yet. I described it as "perhaps I could go another 10 miles at this pace, and I wouldn't mind slowing down afterward." Matt seemed to agree. Several downhills later, we had amped things up to around 7:30 pace; we maintained that for five or so miles. That started to take its toll big time -- at about mile 36 Paulyboy really wasn't feeling his chipper self anymore.
Earlier in the race, particularly on the downhills, I was probably pushing Matt a tad faster than he would normally have run and hopefully for good cause. But, Matt, the eternal Energizer bunny, seemed to be feeling exhilarated at about the time I was falling apart, and thus helped me to dig deep and push ahead. Actual conversation at mile marker 41:
Paul: Matt, I've been really struggling over the last 4 or 5 miles. I'm falling apart.
Matt: Yeah, I think I'm starting to feel it too.
Paul (to himself): "THINK!?" you're "starting" to feel it? This is a fifty miler, broheim. What is your kryptonite, superman? A 600 miler?
I tried my best to maintain pace and I was helped along by that superhero among friends, as well our illustrious support crew. I could see upon their faces that I looked like a mouth-breathing sack of lactic acid at mile 40. But never once did they say, "almost there" or "you look great" (when we obviously weren't or didn't). Martha and Greg's honesty was really important; insincerity at those moments would probably really throw off your mental focus, and I think we both knew we could rely on our support team to be honest brokers with our sometimes not-so-ideal situation.
We climbed two more hills between 40 and 46 and then we were rewarded with the last four miles of the race in another mayhem of downhill mantle-chasing. The downhill felt so good we began rapping to the beat of a Tribe song for a few minutes which was totally confusing to other runners. Matt and I must have picked things up to sub-7 for a good piece of the ending. That was a fun way to finish, and even better was Matt's idea to cross the finish line holding hands, promising each other to come into the end photo-finish-like so that they would be forced to declare us a tie. In the end, I believe what Martha describes as my "schlumpy" posture lead the race officials to declare me the leader of our two-man pack. Honest to goodness, I don't understand how, even with my Egor-like hunch, I could have been 2 seconds ahead of Matt.
The feeling of finishing was nothing short of emotional elation for me, as tends to be the case for races that I spend a lot of time training for. The hugs Matt and I exchanged and those we received from Martha and Greg were the type that make you exuberant and wistful and melt into a better mold of a human form. We had conquered the unthinkable -- not just finishing 50 consecutive miles of running, but finishing strong after making dozens of decent decisions about pace, nutrition, hydration, etc. Numbers mean so much to runners, and I find many of them to be arbitrary cutoffs, inane taxonomies but, for those keeping track at home: 1) we just barely ran negative 25-mile splits (3:27; 3:25); 2) we broke 7 hours (arbitrary, but still sweet, at 6:52); 3) we finished in the top 10 (8th and 9th, closely separated by Egor's schlump); and 4) perhaps most importantly, Matt and I are still both fully convinced we did not compromise a single inch by running side-by-side -- the real power of numbers is in the fact that sometimes the synergy of two people working together creates something greater than any of them individually. Sometimes 1 plus 1 equals 3.
I'll speak for us both by saying that we owed this all to each other and to the loving support of our friends and family, but most of all to Martha and Greg.
Now, if all goes well with recovery, I believe we'll be turning our sites to something a bit longer. Stay tuned.
