2019 Whiterock Ultra 50 Mile...why is everything so WET!!!!
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| Make sure to check the bottom of the page for more photos |
Most people that know me, know that the Western States 100
is MY Boston Marathon. I dream about it constantly. When I get a dog, I want to
name it Rucky (after Rucky Chucky river crossing) or Robie (after Robie
Point/Wendell Robie). I obsessively check twitter the final weekend in June for
updates every 35-45 seconds. It’s in my blood…and I’ve never even been there.
I bring this up because I love the 100-mile distance. I’m
not any good at it, but I LOVE IT!!!! With the passing of my dad early in the
year, my race schedule has been thrown a little out of sorts, but I think it’s
been a great thing because, for the first time in my ultra running history, I
get the chance to do proper build-up races to a 100 miler in September.
A good friend Mike contacted me early spring and told me
that he and his buddy, Greg, were planning on putting on a race at the
Whiterock Conservancy in Coon Rapids (calling it the Whiterock Ultra) and was interested in picking my brain on
putting on the event. Obviously, I agreed to help and OBVIOUSLY I wanted to run
it. It was going to be really great timing because I was already planning on
running the Booneville Backroads 50k, this was going to be a 50 miler about 8
weeks out from my 100 and I could use it as a great stepping stool in my training.
I ran the Booneville Backroads Ultra 50k. I am also the race
director so my life was PRETTY chaotic leading up to the event day (course
flooding the day before forced us to reroute almost all of the races). I ran on
2 hours of sleep, finished in a little over 6 hours and felt pretty good about
it. It was a warm day, but not anything crazy. I took this as being a really
good step in the right direction. My plan after was to really build on that
fitness… at least that was the plan.
Life has a way though of throwing you for loops. I got sick
with a really nasty cold. I was dealing with a wonky knee. Kids stuff. Work
stuff. Blah, blah, blah. Next thing I know, the race was 2 weeks out and I
hadn’t run a SINGLE run over 15 miles. Ummmm…..
I was bike commuting on my new Cannondale 42 miles a day a couple of days a week, still getting my Monday runs in with my dudes and
getting a couple of runs in the remainder of the week, but my mileage was
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW to run 50 miles. So going into the race I had very low
expectations.
The race format was going to be really neat. 12:01 am start.
5 loops (two on the red course, two on the white course, one on the blue
course). I’d heard that the course was tricky, but “I’m an ultra runner…I’m can
do anything”.
I had planned on putting the kids to bed, driving the hour
to the park, sleeping in my car for a couple of hours, and getting up and ready
right before the gun went off…planning things out is so much fun… The first two
items in that went flawlessly, the latter two did not.
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| View inside the barn |
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| Just gorgeous |
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| The aid station |
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| View inside my car while attempting to sleep |
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| Kristina and I had no idea we were going to run together for nearly 10 hours at this point :) |
When I got to the park, I laid down and there was no way
sleep was happening. So instead, I got dressed, walked around and talked to the
RD’s about some helpful hints, chatted with some of the other runners and
friends and before we knew it a FREAKING CANNON was being shot to send us off.
Yeah…you read that right…they got a cannon 😊
As we headed off into the dark single track, I realized that
I hadn’t run single track in the dark for well over a year. I made the mistake
of wearing the wrong hat because I like to put my headlamp on and then put my
hat on backward (feeding the lamp through the opening in the hat which is a
trick I learned from Speedgoat Karl Meltzer) to help stabilize the headlamp
from bouncing around all over the place. I felt really bad for the guy who was
right in front of me because I’m assuming I was making him sick. Sorry dude.
The trail on the red loop is technical. There were tons of
roots and rocks. I wouldn’t say it was the most technical trail I’ve ever been
on, but for this area, it had some tough footing. I’d gotten the new HOKA ONE
ONE EVO Mafate 2’s a few days before and I’m REALLY glad I wore them. There
were a couple of sections where you’ll have some two-way traffic, but the
markers were spot on. Flour arrows on the ground. Reflective markers. Signs.
Good job guys 😉
The front part of the red loop is a little over 6 miles and
has a couple of small water crossings. During this event, you could easily get
over them without getting your feet wet. As you finish up the front section of
the red loop, you have the opportunity to stop in and get some food from the
aid station (also the start/finish) or just keep moving through and fill up
your bottles as you jump back on to the trail. I decided that I was going to
try and stay up on my eating/drinking, so I did stop to refill with water and
Electroride. I was feeling really good and was hitting splits that felt really
comfortable and manageable.
As I jumped back on to the trail, where I had left off, I
met up with Ms. Kristina Fireball…as most on social media know her. I’ve known
Kristina for a couple of years because of the G.O.A.T.z 24 hour Treadmill
Challenge from 5 years ago. We had talked a little before the race started and
I knew that she was using this race as a training run build-up for a 200 miler
that she was taking on. She was running the pace I was wanting to go and it was
really great to just chat with someone.
The night was SO DARK in those woods. There was little to no
light pollution. It was BEAUTIFUL!!! As we were finishing up the back half of
the 1st red loop we stopped for a very brief second to just look up
at the sky. It was truly breathtaking. The stars were out in full force. As we
got moving again, BANG!!! BOOM!!! CRASH!!! I hit the dust. My gigantic feet
hit, what I thought was a gigantic boulder, that turned out to be a grain of
sand. I was covered in sand. My bottles and hands were covered in sand. There
was sand in the cap of the bottle. It was disgusting. I got up, checked myself
out. No blood. No bones. We’re good.
We came into the aid station after the completion of our
first loop and honestly, I was feeling great. I’d eaten 4 Spring gels in the
first 12+ miles and don’t remember the last time I’d felt that good. I grabbed
some chips, a pickle, filled my bottles, changed my socks…oh yeah…I forgot to
mention that it was 1000% humidity…and we headed back out.
The 2nd loop of red was a lot of the same. Some
great conversations, hiking the hills, running the downs and flats. Both of us
were feeling really good and moving strong, we just couldn’t wait to be done
with our stupid headlamps. Mine was bouncing all over the place. I was
tightening it down, but then it would hurt my head. So instead of dealing with
a bruised forehead, I chose to just deal with the bounce. We were both falling
all over the place and of course, we had to blame it on the headlamps.
As we came into the spot where you have a chance to keep
moving or jump into getting some stuff from the aid station, we stopped for a
few seconds. She was starting to get a little behind on calories and I needed
to change my socks AGAIN!! I dumped my empty gel packs, filled up with water
and Electroride and Kristina handed me some potatoes dunked in salt. Now,
normally, this is a wonderfully tasty treat. Unfortunately, I had taken two S
Caps, had drunk two bottles of Electroride, eaten a pickle, two handfuls of
pretzels and chips and then threw 4 insanely salty potatoes in my gullet over
the course of 18 miles and my body basically started to reject EVERYTHING!!! I
was now in salt overload. As soon as we took off, I knew I might be in trouble.
We got about two miles into the back ½ of the 2nd red loop and my
stomach went south REAL fast. I tried throwing up, but there was nothing. We
slowed way down and I just tried to flush it out with just straight water.
Nothing.
About ½ mile from the end of the loop it got to be nearly
5:00 am. The sky was lighting up. The birds were coming out and we approached
what we coined “Michael Meyer’s Outhouse where the brown recluse spiders live”
and that if we were to enter the outhouse we would die and the coroner's report
would read “Death due to Poop Esfixiation”…we were started to get weird in the
head…We even coined that section the “Poop Esfixiation” section…I don’t
know…just go with it 😊
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| Not me. I wish I was as fast and handsome as Scott 😂😂 |
We stopped in at the start/finish to grab some food, I
changed socks for the 3rd time and see if we could figure out what
was wrong with my stomach. I sip on a ginger beer, ate part of a quesadilla,
had some coffee. Nothing sounded good and I knew that finishing this thing was
going to be a grind.
I apologized to Kristina a thousand times and told her that
she could just go on without me, but she insisted that the walk/run that we
were doing were really good for her 200-mile training. I still don’t believe
that she meant it, but whatevs 😊
It was at this point she gave me the suggestion of maybe throwing some sugar at
my sour stomach to see if that was the problem. Try to counteract the effects
of too much salt. I grabbed one of my Spring gels and BAM…sour stomach was gone
instantly…unfortunately, I was still really low on calories. We were probably
going to need to walk A LOT of the rest of the race.
The White loop (which apparently they are using Barkley
mapping with their “7.66 miles” which was closer to 9) was a beautiful part of
the course. We finally got to ditch our headlamps and it was really foggy out.
A lot of the first part of this loop is run on crushed limestone and horse
poop. SO MUCH POOP!!!! It was deep into the forest and was really green. I said
a couple of times that it reminded me a lot of the trails in Seattle. Super
cool. After you’re on the double track for a while, you pop on a short gravel
road section and onto a jeep road that splits corn and bean fields. You could
see FOREVER!!!
When we got out of the trees and onto the jeep road, it was
starting to warm up PRETTY significantly. The humidity hadn’t died down at all
and we were both just soaking wet…and we smelled like death warmed over. We
were also really low on calories, sleep-deprived and covered in bug spray. We
had some really weird conversation during this section and if there would have
been a film crew with us, people would have sworn we were drunk.
After you come off of the jeep trail, you pop back on to the
single track where the White and the Blue trail meet for a stretch. This was
where we started cussing the RD’s because that “7.66 miles” was definitely not
“7.66 miles”. We weren’t mad at all and all of the swearing was said in good
humor…and mostly done in calorie deficit…but that was probably the longest
stretch of the course. It was a downhill screamer and we tried to do our best
to run it. It was also at this point where we realized that we hadn’t gotten
passed by anyone in a long time. Where we in last place? We made the blood
oath…well not really blood oath…that if we were last, I was going to fight her
for the DFL (Dead F***ing Last) award. Then, we realized that she was in first
female. We hadn’t heard or seen any females in hours. Could the other 2 females
have dropped? What if she was first female…and last female. Then we got the brilliant
idea that if that were the case she would take the DFL so she could be the
#FFDFL…again…we hadn’t been drinking I swear.
Once we finally figured out where the heck we were, we got a
little spring in our step and ran in for the end of this loop. Apparently, we
were so boisterous in our conversation and laughter we could be heard from ½ of
a mile away 😊
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| Apparently our voices traveled a mile away 😂 |
I changed socks…again…and felt what was a little bit of a
blister on my big toe. I attempted to pop it and nothing came out. Which was
weird. We taped it, grabbed some food, filled fluids and headed back out.
The 2nd loop of white was a lot of the same. I
was trying to keep my wits, but I was just plain exhausted from being awake for
so many hours. I didn’t tell Kristina, but I was seeing some PRETTY weird stuff
during this loop. There were a lot of trees that were burned, not sure the
reason why, but they were transforming into things like Spiderman (in the black
suit), I saw Darth Vader, a weird dragon, one of the trees looked like a
Panchero’s burrito…not sure why on that one…and some other things. I had told
her that I had hallucinated previously but didn’t what her to know how deep
into the well I had gone.
All we kept thinking about was getting on to the Blue loop.
She had driven part of the course the day before and knew a little more about
what was in store for us. We started making our way down a steep decline, which
also turned out to be the first part of the blue loop, and I made the comment
“Is it weird that we haven’t gotten passed by any 50k runners yet?” and
literally 30 seconds later here comes a dude that was CRUISING. I knew that we
had to be close, but that climb out of that section was going to be A BEAR!
Coming into the closing of the white loop, my hunger had
definitely come back and knew that I needed to get as many calories as I
possibly could in because the next segment had some big climbs and was
LOOOOONG. Another sock change, I shoved as much food down my throat as I could
get and we were off. We had some time goals…that had been adjusted pretty
heavily due to my stomach…that we wanted to hit and we had to move or we
weren’t going to even come close to making them.
Run the flats and downs, hike the hills for as long as we
can. That was the plan for the remaining 13ish miles. With some food in our
bellies and some caffeine in our systems, we did a pretty dang good job for
about 5 miles. You come out of the start/finish area with some really nice
single track and some jeep road. There is a MONSTER climb, the one I mentioned
earlier, which leads up to a path through some pasture. This goes for quite a
while before you meet up with a very short road section, which is deceptive
because you think you’re going to have this big climb on the gravel before the
flags sneakily show up and lead you back on the double track and connect to a
section of crushed limestone. You are SUPER exposed during this and if the sun
is out…you will get cooked. I forgot sunscreen and it was a HUGE MISTAKE.
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| Heading out for the Blue (final) loop. Man I'm slow :) |
The limestone leads to a paved bike path which goes into
town. This section was great because there was some significant tree cover to
take away some of the glaring sun. I was still sipping water like crazy and
couldn’t wait to get to the aid station to just sit for a little bit. My legs
were smoked. My brain was fried. My shoulders were burned to a crisp…forgot to
put sunscreen on…but the aid station seemed like an oasis. It seemed the longer
we hoped to see it, the further away it got.
Alas, as we crossed under the highway we saw it. With it’s
glorious ice cold coke and comfortable chairs. Amber and the Turkey’s were
there to greet us with a smile. That was a LONG damn 6 ½ miles. As we sat for a
second, David P and Joanne came in. We’d been seesawing with David all day and
Joanna was running the 50k. She told us that she ran with 2nd place
50 mile female for a little bit, but she was a ways back. Her exact statement
was “you’ve got some cushion, but you might want to get moving” and so we did.
As Joanne passed us after we left the aid station, I
couldn’t believe how amazing her stride was 20 some odd miles into the race.
Foot strike, posture, everything. I got a little teary-eyed because I knew that
she was in 2nd place and looking as strong as she did, there was
nobody that was going to catch her.
The stretch from the final aid station, not going to lie,
sucked major ass. Mike and Greg are sadistic a-holes for taking us on some
climbs that gained roughly 200 feet in about ½ mile. There were two of them in the
last 3 miles…rat bastards…but the top of them brought some of the most
spectacular views of any that we’d seen all day. You could literally see for
miles and miles. It was incredibly beautiful.
There was no run left in either one of us. I was completely
exhausted. Kristina was limping, turns out she felt something not great REALLY
early in the race but never told me. We had pretty much stopped talking because
it was using up energy…that neither one of us had…Because both of our watches
were off due to the extra mileage that was on the course somewhere, we kept
thinking we were hearing the finish line or seeing clearings that would lead to
the finish line, but we had no freaking idea where we were at. The one thing
that kept coming back to us though was, “where was 2nd place
female?”. How far back was she? What was she wearing? Do you think she had any
food that we could steal from her?
As we peaked our last climb, I turned behind us and saw
someone behind us. What was she wearing? Joanne had told us that 2nd
place female was wearing pink. Was that being dressed in pink? There was long
hair bouncing. It’s more than likely a female as we didn’t see any dudes with
long hair. I looked at Kristina and said “F***!!! YOU GOTTA GO!!!” and just
like someone had lit the biggest roman candle in our butts, we take off. Keep
in mind that we hadn’t “run” in more than 5 miles, but our best guesses were
that we had less than a mile to go and we hadn’t come this far for her to get
passed in the last mile. The thought had even crossed my mind that if she
caught us, I was going to tackle her so that Kristina wouldn’t get passed. Full-on WWE style!!! But we were HAULING ASS!!! There was no possible way she was
going to catch us.
The finish line was in sight, we turned on to the road and I
backed off the gas to let Kristina have her moment…and for my heart to actually
join its natural state not exiting my body. As I crossed the finish line, it
was finally over. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t stand. All I wanted was a beer
and a hug. I was bawling. I was elated. I was exhausted. Hey, look…a Mountain
Dew…I wonder if anyone is drinking this?....
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| YIKES WE WERE FLYING!!!!! |
I told Mike that when I crossed the finish line, I just
wanted a hug. As sweaty as I was, he obliged. I may have called him some very
not nice names. I was an emotional wreck. This was the first really long-distance race I’d done since my dad passed away. I didn’t know how I was going
to handle myself. I did the best I could to keep it together, but I was a mess. Finishing time 12:40 and good enough for 9th place overall. Super excited about that!!!
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| Your female champion!!! |
As I sat and cried there began to be a lot of commotion.
Someone was coming in. It was that bouncing hair figure that was behind us. It
was a female…but it was 3rd place in the 50k…of course it was…
The post-race vibe was great. Super low key. Lots of food. A
lot of people waiting for their runners to come in. It was a lot of fun, but I
was 2 hours later than what I had anticipated so the hour drive home was not
going to be fun.
I typically don’t run inaugural events. They tend to be plagued
by mistakes or errors in something. Not to the fault of the organizers, but
just learning the lay of the course with people on it, but I can tell you that
this course, this race, the volunteers, the other runners…this was the
exception. Food and aid were on point. Volunteers were awesome. The course was
incredibly marked. The route was an ass-kicker. I think they saw roughly 50% finish rate in teh 50 mile. The grounds were well
maintained. It is seriously poised to be a hallmark in the Iowa ultrarunning
scene.
My takeaways? I still have some work to do when it comes to
nutrition. Those potatoes about did me in. It was a dumb mistake, but Spring
did pull me out of it, but it took a long time to come out and by that point, I
was too far gone. I learned that if I know my salt intake was too much, to
start loading up the sweet and try to come out of it faster. I’ve got
somethings to figure out with socks when it’s humid or wet like it was. I still
am a firm believer in Injinji and Smartwool, but for some reason, they didn’t
work this time. I obviously need to get more miles on my legs. I think that was
the biggest thing that hurt me. I’d lost some of my mojo leading up to the race
and I need to get that back to get ready for Hallucination 100.
I’m really excited about the build-up though. I’ve got a fast
½ marathon a couple of weeks before Hallucination that will get the legs
turning over. I need to get my climbing legs ready though. It’s going to be a
lot of fun.
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| My beautiful dinner date...I'm talking about my wife...not my beer |
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| I need CALORIES!!! |
As always, I thank God for giving me the body to do these
stupid things. He has given me the opportunity to push my body further than I
ever thought was possible to show people that crazy things can be done if you
just keep moving. Thanks to my lovely wife and children for allowing me the
time away from them to do these. I think as they get older they are starting to
understand why I need to do these. To show them that working hard is a key
component to success in life. Thanks to Kristina Fireball for being by my side
for 44 miles. I had a lot of fun getting to know you better and am really
excited for the things you have planned. Thanks to HOKA ONE ONE for making the
most badass shoes a dude could ever wear and believing in me. Thanks to Spring
Energy for making “gels” that aren’t made from chemicals. Thanks to RaceDots,
Suunto, Fitness Sports and Active Endeavors for believing in me and in the
power of the human spirit to inspire those around us. Thanks to Mike, Greg,
their spouses, the crew, and the volunteers for making this a BEAUTIFUL
experience. Your hard work didn’t go unnoticed. And to all of you, thanks for
reading.
Items I used in the 2019 Whiterock Ultra
HOKA ONE ONE EVO Mafate 2 – These may be the most badass
shoes I’ve ever worn. The grip was incredible. The upper is insane. I wore them
the whole race essentially out of the box (got one 10 mile run done in them
prior to the race)
Spring Energy Gels – I primarily stuck with Power Rush,
Long Haul and Canaberry. They really brought me back out of a VERY dark placer
Black Diamond Storm headlamp - By far my favorite headlamp
rabbit/HOKA branded Daisy Duke shorts – These shorts are freaking awesome!!! Great
pockets. Didn’t sag even though they were wet the whole day. Held up really
nicely.
rabbit “Welcome to the gun show” tank – What can I say, it
is a tank top 😊
Who knows how many Smartwool PhD Run Ultra Light Crew and
injinji Run Lightweight socks
Nathan VaporKrar Waistpack (first 24 miles)
Nathan VaporKrar 12l Vest (final 28 miles)
S Caps
Quesadillas, pickles, chips, cookies, bacon, etc
Some sweet photos of the course
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