White River 50 mile

Sitting on my desk at work is a souvenir from my recent Ragnar Northwest Passage experience .... a magnet (each team prints a bunch of magnets that they use to "tag" the other teams' vehicles) with the image of a sloth riding the unicorn, and the phrase "onwards at a reasonable pace" at the top. I am obsessed with this magnet. I feel like it is a life lesson I need to keep reminding myself of ... yes, relentless forward motion, but not too fast, not too slow ... and always with a bit of magic. I bring this up because it is a lesson I completely forgot during last weekend's White River 50 miler.

I was really looking forward to White River. This race has been on my bucket list for a long time. Since the race consistently pulls in a bunch of speedy people, I didn't expect to be as competitive as I have in my past few races, but I still thought I'd do pretty well and was just generally looking forward to running for several hours on forested trails in the shadow of Mount Rainier.

My training had generally gone pretty well, and I was feeling pretty good until a week before the race. My legs felt really sluggish during my fairly short taper runs; it felt as if I wasn't tapering at all. We were under air quality warnings that week, thanks to smoke from fires in British Columbia settling over our area, but since my runs were short and in the relatively clearer morning, I didn't think that could be the issue. That said, I was also worried - I've had asthma all my life, and while I've gotten a lot better at managing it, I had an attack bad enough after last year's Waldo 100km to pop a rib out of place.

Camp Oly Trail Runners (pictured: Ollie, Craig, Ross, me and Dave)

Despite the bit of worry and doubt, I was still very much looking forward to the race. Ross and Ollie joined me on the adventure and we headed up to the Buck Creek campground near Crystal Mountain Friday afternoon. We met up with Herb, Craig, and Dave (Rick would join us later), then headed to the pre-race briefing. I loved watching the short movie from the race several years ago. Our gear has improved so much since then (the days of the waist belt water-bottle holders) - and at the same time, a few of the runners who were competitive then are still competitive now (e.g. Krissy Moehl).

The only major glitch of the evening was Ollie. Our pup is a pretty vigilant/anxious dog and as we settled in for the night, he tried to bark at every small noise outside the tent. I say "tried" because he was wearing his bark collar, which keeps him from fully barking, but he's figured out a level at which he can bark, but not set off the shock. Not only was the barking keeping me awake, but I was stressing out that it would wake up the other runners trying to get a few hours of sleep. I eventually got him to settle down, but the night was a lot less restful than I had hoped it'd be.

Dave, Rick, Herb and I - we all look so happy and fresh!

All too soon it was race morning! I woke up at 4, went through my routine, and all seemed good. The race started, and I was able to comfortably keep my pace about 1/4 through the pack .... until I wasn't. It's a bit hard to describe how I felt, but the closest word to it is I simply felt tired. Why was I so tired? I've gotten less sleep the night before a race and felt fine. I started my mental triage - food? No, I ate well in the morning, and although I didn't eat as soon as I probably should have, that was because I still felt super full; I started "sipping" on a packet of Jason's hazelnut-chocolate nut butter after about 45 minutes, so was taking in calories, and had calories in the Skratch drink in my pack. I should be fine calorie-wise. Water? nope, drinking well. Perhaps elevation? I've now lost all of my altitude benefits from living in Boulder. Maybe? but nothing I could do about that, so, I just kept going.

I was hoping to get into a nice cruise on the downhill from Corral Pass, but had a hard time finding a rhythm. Craig passed me about half-way down; I didn't dare try to catch him; I've fallen one too many times trying to keep up with the guys on runs this year. Finally I came to the half-way point, the Buck Creek aid station, which was essentially at the start/finish line. I had told Ross to not worry about meeting me at any of the aid stations, and I'm actually glad he didn't. If he'd been at Buck Creek, there's a good chance I would have talked myself into quitting. I just really wanted to stop running and hang out with my husband and dog. Instead, I changed into a cotton t-shirt (I seriously love wearing cotton when it's hot), grabbed another Nathan's nut-butter packet, and headed back down the trail.

This is where things really went down hill for me. As I made the slow climb up to Sun Top, instead of accepting that it was a tough climb and I was simply having a rough day, I let myself go down a very negative spiral. By the time I hit the top of the peak, I was in full pitty-party. I had talked myself into not running any more races this year (namely my Western States qualifier, Pine to Palm next month). In fact, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to do any more races longer than 50km in the future. The few high-points - picking ripe huckleberries as I neared the top, then eating some amazingly delicious wood-fired pizza on the peak - weren't enough to pull me out of my mental cave. As I headed down the long gravel road, I could see Craig just ahead of me, and briefly entertained the idea of trying to catch up with him. But again, the desire to not open up any of my recently scabbed wounds took over and I just tried to settle into a pace that felt speedy but reasonable.

Trying to smile for Rick and Herb

After a very long hour, I finally got to the last aid station. Herb and Rick were there, having decided to call it a day at Buck Creek. It was great to see some familiar faces. They encouraged me to catch up with Craig who was "only 3 minutes ahead" ...but I was really enjoying my graham cracker/nutella 'sandwich' and coke. With some reluctance, I headed down the trail. The last 7 miles were rolling through the forest along the river. I should have really enjoyed this. I should have been able to at least jog with flats and downhills. Instead, for two hours, I shuffle-jogged a few steps, walked a few more, then repeated. I had nothing left.

Finally I made the turn off the trail onto the road, then into the campground. Ross and Ollie were there to cheer me in, and I made one last feeble push into the finish. 11 hours, 37 minutes, 44 seconds.

In hind-sight, I should have stopped at the first aid station, waited for Craig or Dave, and gone on and run with them the rest of the day - I would have at least enjoyed myself a lot more. I've done these things enough now to have a pretty good sense of where the race went wrong, and in this case, the best answer I can come up for the day is that I simply wasn't getting enough oxygen thanks to the combo of asthmatic lungs (I took a ridiculous number of hits off my inhaler) and smoke.

A week, some perspective, and some good runs (in clear air!) later, and I've reversed my decision to not run any more races this year. If anything, my experience at White River has just reinforced my belief that so much of succeeding at these long distances is in the head. Here's hoping that my next race is filled with a bit more magic as make my way down the trail at a reasonable speed

Picture credits to Herb and Dave! and huge kudos to Squirrel Nut Butter for helping me stay chafe-free despite being drenched most of the day. ...and thanks to Coach Meghan for making sure I was able to cross the finish line even if my lungs and head weren't in the same place my legs were.