ApolloRay: Now, when you beat me, you beat me by one [half]… ONE [HALF]… second. Now do you know what something like that does to a man of my intelligence?

RockySteve: I thought you said you got over it.

ApolloRay: I lied.

The race by numbers:

1000 – Exact number of finishers that I beat
663 – Total elevation gain in feet
507 – Number of men I beat
150 – Miles the starting line was from my house
51 – Number of times I got chicked
26 – Number of men 45 – 49 I beat
13.65 – Minutes shaved off my PR
7.77 – Miles I ran on the out-and-back course before I saw the sweep car coming the other way
5 – Hours I spent driving to/from the race site in excess of the hours I spent running
3.xx – Miles I ran on the out-and-back course before I saw the leaders coming the other way
2 – Cheese pizza slices eaten after the race
1.5 – Uphill miles leading up to the finish
1 – Number of kitted-out little kids who blew past me in the last mile

Metro Run & Walk have recently started a series of casual, low-key events with unusual distances and unofficial timing. Today was the “sweatfest 6k” – three laps around the old Lorton prison. One runner really got in the spirit of the race:

The good thing about these races, from the point of view of a duffer like me, is that the more serious runners tend to skip them. No prize money, no official finish times (although they do have a race clock running at the finish), no big deal. So I can generally get up closer to the front than I do in a bigger race.

“Ready, set, go!” Mark called, and we lit out down the road. I was the first runner off the line, and I stayed out front for a hundred yards or so. I was hearing a chorus of heavy breathing behind me, but only one guy passed me, a skinny, youngish dude whom I’d chatted with briefly in the registration line.

I was bracing to get passed again, as usually happens to me repeatedly over the first mile or so. But we rounded a curve and came to a large downhill followed by a foreboding up. I know that I am decent on climbs, so I bombed down the slope, leaned into the up, and cranked up it in high gear.

When I was about halfway through the loop with no change in position I started composing my race report to The Boss (who had chosen to sleep in rather than race): “I was in second place through the first loop, but then people started passing me.” I had the leader in sight for most of that first lap, but he found another gear near the end of it, and I didn’t see him again until the finish.

The second time up that first big hill was the worst – the first time my legs were still fresh, and the third time I was done with it, but on the second ascent there was still one more dispiriting iteration looming. On the other hand, I still had not lost my 2nd place position, so I powered up it as best I could.

“Boss, I was doing well,” I mentally revised my race report, as I pointedly refrained from looking back behind me. “I was in second place through two laps, but then people started passing me.”

I lapped quite a few walkers on the end of their first lap as I was finishing my second. I came back to the start and gratefully accepted a cup of water from the volunteer there.

Then it was back to the big hill. I saw a small knot of kids walking up it and caught them near the top. “That hill was bad enough the first time,” I said, “three times is just torture.” They expressed emphatic agreement.

I kept thinking I heard breathing or footsteps behind me, but I still didn’t want to look back. Around halfway through this loop I started to lap some of the faster walkers and slower runners on their second time through. The dude in the convict outfit said something encouraging as I huffed by him. “I’m about done in, dude!” was all I could manage as a reply, but I was starting to think I might make it.

I wheezed up the last climb, passed a couple people rounding the last corner, and powered down a short hill to the finish. The clock read 31:xx, I don’t remember exactly. Not a blistering pace, but fast enough on this day. I shook the winner’s hand, “Good race, man.” He’d actually improved his pace in the later loops and beaten me by some four minutes.

I shook the hands of more finishers as they came in. “I kept seeing you up around the next bend, but I just couldn’t catch you, man!” I was glad to finally get to experience some of the camaraderie among the top finishers. I hung around and enjoyed cheering some of the other runners in.

After partaking of the decent post-race spread I made my way back through the uncrowded parking lot to my car. “I was,” I texted The Boss, “the 2nd finisher.”

“I changed my mind,” The Boss said as she staggered into the living room, “I think I might want to do that again next year.”

———————————————
TWENTY HOURS EARLIER….

“Omygod. No way am I ever doing that again. I’m done with running, maybe forever. Oh my God. Ow.”

“Meh, I always say the same thing after a long, punishing race. You might change your mind – after a while you’ll forget the pain and just remember how you felt at the finish line. Give it twenty hours or so…”

———————————————
ONE AND A HALF HOURS EARLIER….

———————————————
EIGHT AND A HALF HOURS EARLIER….

“You’re leaving before breakfast?” the desk clerk at the Carnegie Inn asked incredulously. Apparently we were missing out on something special. “We have a race to get to,” The Boss called over my shoulder, and I added “Afraid so”.

The start of the Rothrock Challenge was waiting for us some 12 miles down the road, and we had no time to fool around with brûléed oatmeal and asiago cheese omelets. I tossed the clerk the key, swiped the receipt out of her hand, and set out for the parking lot.

We arrived with plenty of time to spare, although the extra time wound up being consumed by trips back to the car for sunblock, bug spray, a change of shirt, and various other forgotten items. The lines for the portajohns were not bad, but The Boss still wound up getting stranded in one when the starting whistle blew. The race had chip timing, but only at the finish line, so she did lose a few seconds.

I knew my training was off. I had even briefly considered skipping the race altogether; my right hip had been bothering me since an ill-advised two-half-marathon weekend two weeks prior, and I had already lost months of quality running after breaking a wrist in early February. In the end I decided that 30k was short enough to get through on grit alone, even considering the difficulty of the course

I had decided that five hours was a reasonable ambitious goal given my current level of fitness. I was hoping to take about an hour between each of the four aid stations, giving me an hour to stagger through the final ~2.5 miles. In an all-too-familiar pattern for me at distance events, this plan held together for more than half the race but fell apart in the end.

I set out at a pretty good clip (sub-8:00) along the initial section of road to the trail head. I knew there was a steep, mile-long hill at the start of the trail and I preferred to be the obstacle rather than the obstructed. This turned out to be about right – I was passed by a few ambitious runners, but mostly held my place. When we got to the summit there was a nice stretch of flat single-track, which was an absolute joy to run: the weather was near-perfect, and the trail was sublimely beautiful. It had rained hard the previous night and there were a few areas of mud and standing water, which I fastidiously ran around.

Of course, it wasn’t too long before I realized the futility of trying to keep my feet dry. There were bogs and mud pits throughout the middle 15k of the course that were unavoidable, and I was soon sloshing through them with abandon.

I hit the first aid station around mile 4 in just under an hour. Even with trudging up that mile of hill I was still under 15:00/M pace and feeling good. The second section was challenging as well, with lots of rocks starting to infest the trail, more climbing, plenty of mud, and some technical downhills. Still, I was through the second aid station and past mile 8 in under 2:00:00.

The third segment is more of a blur. I know I was still making OK time but I was starting to tire. Just before the third aid station there was a difficult climb down some rocks. It was dangerous enough that someone had installed ropes in several places for racers to cling to as they picked their way down. In one of these places I lost my footing and had to use the rope to right myself. This startled the lady below me, who was visibly (and audibly) nervous about the descent, and she scolded me for what she perceived as my carelessness.

At the bottom there was a large log, flattened along its top, bridging a sizable stream, followed quickly by AS3. I was just over 3 hours in at this point, and I figured the rocky descent had cost me at least 2 or 3 minutes. I was right on schedule.

But not for long. A few hundred yards past the aid station the path took a sharp left turn. This is where things started to get surreal. There was a young lady, not a racer, seated there at the turn. She had laid out a large pattern of small pink flowers around herself, with part of the pattern forming an arrow pointing the correct direction down the course. I paused briefly to admire the scene and then continued on to the rock scramble.

This was a hard slog. My legs were feeling the lack of training, and the climb was not easy. I found myself worrying about The Boss – how would she manage the rock slide and this crazy scramble? Should I head back to AS3 and wait for her so I could help her up the climb? I was about a third of the way up when I heard a series of shrill yelps and a separate set of harsh barks from far below and well off to my right. Had a dog been injured? Perhaps in a fight with another dog, or by falling off some rocky height? Should I go back down and check? I wasn’t confident I could even locate the source of the sounds. I decided to continue on.

A short time later I saw a dog with a scarf around its neck trotting up the rocks. It caught up to me, sniffed around for a bit, and continued up the scramble. I wasted a few moments in futile envy of its nimble, easy climbing. I don’t know if it was one of the dogs I’d heard.

When I got to the top of the rock climb I knew I was pretty much done. I didn’t have legs to run any more, and my feet were getting kind of blistery and sore. The Hoka Mafates I’d recently acquired had absorbed a lot of the impact, though. I think if the course had been drier my feet would have come through almost unharmed, and they felt fine the day after. My legs were a different story, however. From that point until AS4 I mostly walked in a zombie-like shuffle, although there were several nice, flat sections where I was able to run a couple hundred paces at a time before reverting to a reeling shamble.

After AS4 there was one final climb and then a long downhill stretch. I ran practically none of this. Then there was a long meandering flattish section over which I mostly walked, but occasionally busted out some air. I kept thinking the road was just ahead, but the course kept veering off just before exiting to pavement. Finally, I reached the road and broke into a hopeful, ragged jog. I saw a couple sitting on rock wall by the roadside with a dog, and I thought I heard the man explaining to someone in an aid vehicle that he had found the dog after it had been hit by a car. The dog looked not to be injured too bad, and I hoped it was the one I’d heard yelping earlier.

From the point where I left the trail it was no more than a half mile or so to the finish, but I regret to say I didn’t manage to run all of it. In my memory we’d run uphill all the way from the start to the trail head, but now I was heading up another big hill. If I’d known how close I was to the end I’d’ve probably been able to run it all, but I was demoralized by the unexpected and baffling upslope, and I wound up walking maybe a couple hundred yards or so.

When I recognized the turn to the finish I was able to break into a decent jog, and I crossed the finish line in 5:41:15.8, tossing salutes to the knots of charitably cheering spectators. The last 6.x miles had taken me very nearly as long as the first 12.

Now it remained only to scarf as many calories as possible and wait for The Boss. I did manage to totter back to the car and grab my phone in order to capture her finish. The post-race spread consisted of pizza and Subway and barbecue and baked beans and potato salad and cole slaw and chocolatey, peanut-buttery “recovery bars” and sodas and water and powerade, and I consumed near ’bout one of everything.

I was still somewhat worried about The Boss. She was even more undertrained than I was. Had she managed the rock slide and climb? Had she fallen and brained herself on some stony outcropping? Had she lost a shoe in a bog? Had her legs given out on the final uphill? I was tense and concerned, but I knew she’d conquered a similar course last year in worse weather.

I don’t mind admitting that my eyes were less than completely dry as I saw her coming down to the finish. I normally have to scold her for walking with the end in sight, but she ran it all the way in this time. She swapped her chip for a finisher’s medal, and a hearty embrace ensued. Her time was measured at 7:21:39.9, only some 5 minutes slower than her time at the 5k shorter Hyner View Trail Challenge last year, and ahead of 20 finishers (and, I assume, some number of DNFs).

They had run out of plates and most of the food. The Boss managed to get a paltry amount of barbecue on a bun, and a cup full of side dishes. It turns out that a generous runner had provided her with some kind of electrolyte concentrate when she’d had cramping issues in the latter part of the course. She introduced him and I shook his hand. We waited to see the finish of a woman we’d chatted with before the race. We weren’t sure when she’d be coming in, and we almost decided to leave, but finally The Boss sighted her rounding the turn to the finish and we cheered her in. We limped back to the car, changed our clothes and shoes, luxuriated in the glow of our achievement for a few moments…

…and The Boss and I set out through the Pennsylvania hills towards home.

“Sorry about that, bud,” I said to the guy behind me in the chow line after stumbling into him. “I’m feeling a little unsteady on my pins.”

“Understandable,” he said.

* * *

The threatened rain had held off, but the air was as cold as forecast. “There are reports of snow on top of the mountain!” the announcer called out to some thousand or so shivering nutjobs awaiting the start of the 2010 Hyner View Trail Challenge.

I had a liter and a half of water on my back, a GPS-enabled training watch on my wrist and a sour dread in my gut as we listened to the countdown. A final check of my gear, a last wave of encouragement from The Boss, and we were off.

It was a mile or so over road to the trail head. I had seeded myself some two-thirds of the way back in the pack starting out, which turned out to be a bad miscalculation. Once we hit the trail there was no room at all to pass, and I was stuck behind a bunch of lollygagging hikers, oohing and aahing over the trees and river. For the next mile or so we proceeded at a slothlike shuffle, and at times came to a dead stop. Finally hit the first real hill, and though it opened up a little bit, it was hard to get enough momentum to get around the shufflers.

That hill just didn’t want to end. Every time I thought I was near to the top, another 100 yard stretch would somehow open up past what I thought was the crest. My calves were on fire, but when the trail widened out near the actual last 100 yards I had plenty of juice to hump it around some of the tourists. I sprinted up to the aid station, chugged a cup of water, and took off down the trail.

I felt great over the next 9 miles or so – two long downhills, some flat meandering through the valley with several stream crossings, a couple moderate ups, and even the dreaded S.O.B., which was much steeper in person.

Passing was still a challenge, as the trail rarely got wider than a foot and a half or so. Had to wait for open areas to the left or right. At one point I saw a chance to blow by a line of 5 or 6 people and I took off through the scrub just to the left of the trail. I had about a three foot gap to get back on the trail before braining myself on a tree, and I realized that my momentum was going to carry me off the other side. Where there happened to be 50-odd foot drop down to the river.

I managed to grab the tree, swing around onto the path losing less than 10% of the skin off my left hand, and keep on rolling.

After the aid station at the top of S.O.B. I started to fade a little. I was reduced to walking even some of the milder ups. And then came the final indignity: a quad-shredding downhill stretch that just went on and on. I pulled aside a time or two to let some columns of stronger finishers past me. I was still keeping a pretty good pace, so I was a little puzzled as to why these people were behind me if they were fit enough to be blowing by me at the end. Maybe they’d taken some rest at the last aid station, but I’d expect people at this position in the race to be more concerned about their finishing time.

When we finally made back to the road I was determined to run the last mile or so back to the finish line. I was pretty much all in at this point, and I was still dropping places to runners who’d marshalled their energy better, but I stayed above a walk back to the final hill leading up to the finish:

The Boss was a sublime sight at the finish line. Some dude shook my hand and collected my chip. Somebody dropped a finisher’s medal in my hand. Within a minute after I stopped moving my legs were solid blocks of marble, and I could barely stagger through the chow line. I managed to down some bread, a single ladleful of ziti, and some chocolate cake with peanut butter flavored icing. The walk back to the car was excruciating and slow. It felt like it took me a minute and a half to lower myself into the passenger seat. I showered up at the B&B, and The Boss and I set out through the Pennsylvania hills towards home.