American River 50 mile.

Saturday I participated in the American River 50 mile endurance race. We ran from Sacramento, CA, near the Cal State Sacramento campus, up stream along the American River, past Folsom lake and on to finish at the Auburn Dam Overlook in Auburn, CA.

The weather wasn't all that kind to us. Although it was nowhere near as bad as they're going to have in Boston today for their marathon.

The rain, cold, and wind just added to the extreme endurance thrill of the event. Of course, the slippery mud which caused me to fall during a moment of lapsed concentration, around mile 35, causing me to tweak my left knee, requiring that I walk the last 6 miles, really added to the experience, too. ;-)

Since I had to walk so much I didn't break my previous time for the course, so I'll have to come back again next year, I suppose. I completed the distance in 11hrs 52 minutes, and I have the blue fleece jacket to prove it. ;-)

No I have to rest my knee so that I can run the Mt. Diablo Marathon in two weeks.

The advantage to walking the last 6 miles is that my quads feel like I did a long run, but aren't shot like they normally would be from a 50 miler. ;-)

Things that worked well:

Eating enough -- cookies, chips, m&m's, melon, pb&j, gu, brownies, chicken noodle soup. All good stuff to keep my energy up and not mess with my stomach. I had no stomach issues related to food.

Changing shirt and jacket half way through the 12 hr run was a good idea. I was able to warm up a little from that and get a little more comfortable. At least for a while.

The choice to wear Brooks Adreneline Trail shoes was a good one. These shoes have good motion control support, so I was able to wear them on the asphalt portion of the race, as well as the dirt/mud trail section. This saved time at the half-way point, in that I didn't need to switch from road shoes to a pair of dedicated trail shoes.


Things I could improve on:

Pre-Race Carbo-unloading -- a good friend of mine tells a tale of how he goes for a short half-mile run before heading off to the race. It serves multiple purposes. It provides a preview of the weather conditions, provides a little warmup in preparation for pre-race stretching, and the big one is that it fools his body into thinking that he's on his run and that it's time to dump those undigested food materials. Since he's coming back to the house before really heading to the race, he has that last chance to make use of his own facilities, as opposed to the shared, gross, ones available at the starting line, or along the race course.

Since I didn't take this to heart on Saturday, I found myself in need of a restroom around mile 5. I managed to find one at mile 16.5. By which time my bowels were in an uproar. Fortunately, one quick visit left me feeling *much* better. ;-)

Don't lose concentration! So, the next thing to note is that you shouldn't move along a muddy, slippery course with your head held high, looking at the sky, while drinking, because when you do that you slip and fall and tweak ligaments that will stop you from running the last 6 miles of the course and completely screw up your finish time.

Even if the weather seems OK, if it's been raining, take your gloves with you when you change clothes at the half-way point. My hands were freezing by the end, especially as I had to do so much walking. I could hardly hold anything in those last few miles.

Know that your iPod Nano is going to rollover the time at 10hrs, so it thinks your 50 mile run only took 1hr 51 minutes and therefore won't upload to NikePlus.com because their server won't validate the run data. Ugh! I could have reset and started a new workout at the halfway point, but I wanted to get the 50 mile as a new "longest" run record. There goes 50 miles of my challenge accumulation for the month. I'll never catch up with everyone else now.