100 Miler Training – The last big week
I finished up my last big week of training last weekend. That’s it. I’m in my taper for the race on the 27th. That gives me a 3-week recovery before the race.
The weekend was the biggest mileage and hours on the trail weekend in my life. It also included a all-night long run, which was a first for me. I learned some new things. I survived. It went very well, considering the scope of it all.
The previous week was a down week to recover from the 90+ week I ran the week before that. It gets hard to sort out after a while with some much going on. If I look at just the last 3 weeks of the training cycle, the first week was that big 93 mile week with 50 on Saturday followed by 15 on Sunday. The intervening week was a down or recovery week with only about 30 miles in it. And this last week was the last big week of the cycle.
This last week I topped out around 90 miles and 70 of those were on the weekend. The midweek schedule was 6 on Tuesday, 8 on Wednesday and 6 on Thursday. Then The weekend was to be another 50 on Saturday, followed by 20 on Sunday. All on trails.
We got a hot week so I mixed up the time of day on the midweek runs. I usually get out early in the morning. That is my routine and it is also the coolest time of the day. I tried to get out mid-day or afternoon to get some heat training in.
I also needed to get some night time running practice in. I’m not stranger to running in the trails at night. I have always enjoyed a good headlamp caper in the woods with my buddies. For a 100 miler it’s a bit different. You are running all night in the trails. You are going to be exhausted. I needed to practice that.
Coach said to go out at 10 PM. I looked at the calendar and the math didn’t work. If I went out at 10 PM on Saturday for 50 miles I wouldn’t be done until mid-morning Sunday and would have to turn around and run another 20. That would basically be 70 miles straight on through.
To honor the intent of the training I decide to go out at 10PM on Friday night and run through Saturday morning. Then follow up Sunday with the 20.
This training run was going to be a testing ground for many of the things I’ve been working through on this training cycle. All-night running was a big unknown for me. How would my body and brain react to the sleep deprivation? Would I fall asleep on the trail? Would I fall down and break my head? Would my lights work? Would I get eaten by wild animals?
One of the reasons I’ve avoided the 100-mile distance to this point is I didn’t like the idea of running all night long. That just seemed like an unnecessarily awful way to abuse your body. I’m an 8 hour a night guy. I like my sleep.
Other things I needed to test were my eating and my chaffing. The last couple runs I tried to fuel with gels and my stomach was very rumbly. This time I needed to try some of the common ultra foods and see how my gut processed those. Chaffing-wise my undercarriage was getting seriously chewed up on these long runs and I wasn’t looking forward to doubling and tripling that abuse in the race. I had to figure that out.
Another thing I had come to find out in my last few long runs was that my water pack was a bad idea. For this race, where the aid stations aren’t that far apart, I wouldn’t need all that water on my back. It was chaffing me, and it made my back sore after a while. I would test something different.
On my way home from work Friday I swung by the market to pick up some real food. I grabbed a bag of pretzels, some white bread for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and some yellow potatoes for boiled potatoes. That’s what they serve on the course. They also serve a bunch of candy items but I’m not a big candy eater.
The point of all this is not to somehow replace the thousands of calories you’re burning while you’re out there. That isn’t possible. You’re always going to be in a deficit. The point is to keep your blood sugar levels up and your systems operating so you can burn fat efficiently and not have severe low points in your energy.
You have to eat something to keep the systems running. The challenge of eating strictly gels and/or sports drink is that after a few hours your digestive system starts to rebel. All that sugar gives you a sour stomach. What takes most people out of races, besides foot-care issues, is digestive issues.
You have to find a way to get enough calories down to keep the train running without causing a distressing reaction in your gastro-intestinal track. That’s the trick.
Long story short, I whipped up a bunch of tiny PB&J’s, boiled up some potatoes and filled a few baggies with pretzels. I positioned my cooler on my porch with a big jug of water and all the other gels and lubes I might need through the night. I also lined up a fresh change of clothes for somewhere around the half way point.
For the water I decided to go with a two-bottle solution. This is what I went with when I ran that 50-miler 10 years ago. Two bottles are around 44 ounces of fluid. Even if I’m walking that should get me between aid stations on this course.
I pulled out of retirement my old Go-Lite slant pack. This is a V-shaped waist belt that holds two big bottles on your hips. I’ve run a lot of miles in the old days in this pack, so I knew it would work. I seldom actually put two bottles in the slant pack. I put one bottle in the pack and position it on my hip, so it doesn’t bounce. I carry the other bottle.
The challenge with the slant pack is that they designed it to take special chubby bottles. If you use regular bike bottles they fall out the bottom because there is only one elastic strap to hold them in. I don’t know if this is to make you buy their special bottles but it’s a pain in the ass. I’ve lost one of the two bottles that came with it and I’m not buying more special bottles, so I re-engineered it to take a regular bottle.
I found a needle and thread and sewed another strap across the bottom of the bottle pouches. If this worked it would allow me to hot swap bottles at the exchanges instead of having to stop and refill. This worked great in the run except I blew out the stitches on one side and will have to redo it. Since I only use one of the bottle pouches I may reengineer the other into a pocket for carrying stuff because the slant pack zippered pouch is rather small and oddly shaped.
What about the horrible undercarriage chaffing? Since I talked about it in my last episode I got some key advice from our old friend Alex who you will remember from his running the UTMB episode last fall. He recommended ‘spray plaster’. Which translated to American is ‘liquid bandage’.
This is a remedy you spray or paint on to wounds or scrapes to seal them. It dries to forma solid film barrier. It seems to work. You apply it heavily to the danger areas before you go out. You let it dry for 5 minutes and it gives you a solid, flexible layer of protection.
This sounds reasonable. But in practice it means lying spread eagle naked somewhere to apply and dry. It’s a bit like a gynecological exam position. Based on the smell and consistency it seems like a form of super-glue. Seems a bit of a heavyweight chemistry. I would not spray it directly on sensitive mucous membranes. But for my inner thighs, where I was having the most issues, it worked fabulously.
You still have to lube generously. The plaster is the base layer of a multi-faceted chaffing defense system.
…
Friday night, with all my preparations done, all my stuff queued up on the porch, I got ready to run. My wife casually looked at me and asked, “How long are you going to be?”
I responded “11 or 12 hours probably.”
She did a classic double take as this information as the information sunk in. “What? You’re going to be in the woods all night by yourself? Isn’t that dangerous?”
“There’s nothing in our woods that wants to eat me, I’ll be fine, I’m coming back by the house every 10K or so.”
“Where are you going to be? How will we know if you’re ok?”
“If I don’t show up just follow my normal trail loop and you’ll find me.”
…
A front had rolled through earlier in the day breaking the heat. It was cool, clear and breezy. I started running. I decided not to do the walk every 4 minutes routine I had practiced on the last run. Instead I would practice hiking the uphills and running the rest.
I was in no hurry. I would take my time. This was about being on my feet all night long and not about speed.
I had one of my normal headlamps and a small LED flashlight. It’s much easier to navigate with two lights. With just a headlamp you tend to get a parallax effect and lose your depth perception. Simply said, the hand-held light gives you better perspective.
Even with the two lights it’s hard to run technical trails in the night. You still lose some of that depth perception and you lose the accuracy of your foot placement. What I found was my feet and ankles took more of a beating. I couldn’t really lay in a good line through the obstacles. My foot placement would be off just enough to catch the root or rock sideways with a little twist.
My Achilles ended up being quite sore all week from mincing about all night long.
It was slow going. Especially on the technical bits. You have to slow down to navigate. You have to shorten your stride.
I had my headphones in and was listening to podcasts. Sort of a good news bad news situation. If there was a lion about to spring I’d never hear it coming, but I didn’t have to hear every little bothersome rustle in the underbrush.
The first 10 miles I was rather tired. Just didn’t feel like I had a lot of pop in my legs. I stopped by the house every 10K or so, making sure to slam the screen door so my wife knew I was still alive.
I started eating pretzels and the PB&J’s as I got into the run. They were quite good. I tried a salted potato later and that was good too. No stomach issues at all. I took very little gel. Good energy, good stomach.
I carried two bottles. One was plain water and the other was F2C energy. It worked out well. When I felt my blood sugar drop I’d suck down some F2C and it would perk me up.
Nutrition and fluids, check!
…
Running through the first few hours of the night I was wondering whether someone might not report me to the police. I was wondering how that conversation would go. But there was no such confrontation. It was strange to be out running, crossing roads at 2 or 3 in the morning. There was no human activity. Just me and my lights.
I didn’t see any animals or really anything. With the clear sky I could see the stars clearly in the sky when I broke out of the trails into the open field. It was quite pleasant. There was a low, partial moon that gave enough light for me to switch off my flashlight when I hit the road sections.
At one point I looked at my watch and saw I was over 3 hours into the run. Thinking about the math I realized that made it after 1:00 AM and I only had a couple hours before the sun would start brightening the sky. As Homer would say “The rosy fingers of dawn”. I found this quite comforting and realized how short the nights are in the summer. That seemed pretty cool.
…
After 20 miles I had to wander upstairs in the house to grab a long sleeve shirt. The temps had dropped into the 50’s and I was chilled. I wore a pair of running gloves until the sun came up. Partly to stay warm, but also to protect my hands if I started falling a lot in the night.
This was great weather for running. I kept my cadence going. Into the trails, across the road, up over the ridge, down around the lake, back up over the ridge, back to the house. Rinse and repeat.
I took some long breaks at the house. I had to eat my real food. Refill my bottles. About half way through I practiced replacing batteries – which became a comically difficult exercise after a few hours of running.
I had my normal kit on. My Speed Goat Hokas with the Captain America gaiters. Shorts, shirt, slant pack, gloves, running hat and lights. I put my droid in the slant pack so I wouldn’t have to carry it. I had a flask of Hammer Gel which I didn’t use much of.
I took the opportunity to change into dry clothes sometime around the midpoint. Everything was going well. Another key thing I did, while upstairs getting a long sleeve, was to fish out my ice breaker briefs. These are a pair of technical wool (I know)
…
I made a pit stop at 3:43 AM, I remember looking at the clock as I was eating a boiled potato. When I headed back out that time I could see the glow starting to emerge in the eastern sky. At this point a lot of stuff started happening.
It’s funny because even though I’d been awake for close to 24 hours and had been running all night, my body realized it was morning. Funny how these daily rhythms are so ingrained into our systems. I don’t know about your morning routines but mine are fairly predictable and I wasn’t a half mile out before my body said “Hey! It’s morning! Time to poop!” and I had to circle back to the house.
Now it was just after 4:00 AM and the glow was warming in the east. The next part of my morning routine kicked in. As I looked in though the porch door there was Buddy looking back. Wide awake. His attitude was “I don’t know what this is all about, but this is definitely something I want in on! This is totally my jam! It’s the crack of dawn and your running in the woods. I’m in!” Ironically as I was popping he sampled my pretzels.
…
With someone in the heavens slowly turning up the dimmer switch and Buddy in tow I headed back out into the trails. I was about half way done and into full on ‘work’ mode. I wasn’t sleepy at all. I was physically tired, like you tend to get after running a trail marathon or so, but I wasn’t sleepy.
Buddy had no problem hanging with me. It was a good combination. He’s over a hundred years old and I was running like I was a hundred years old. I was glad for the company. Under the tree canopy I still needed the lights but it was getting morning in a hurry. The birds were getting noisy in the trees.
Buddy and I crested a hill into a field and there was a big deer standing there looking at us. Less than 50 feet away. Right in the middle of the field. I tried to get Buddy’s attention, but the deaf old dog couldn’t be bothered. He was more interested in the smell of a startled skunk nearby. The deer and I had our moment and then it bounded off. Buddy never noticed.
When I got back to the driveway to drop Buddy off at the house he realized I wasn’t carrying a leash for him. He trotted off into the neighborhood to go exploring with me trailing behind trying to catch up. At this point we were an even match and it took me a few hundred feet to catch him and drag him back to the house.
I sat down to change into a new pair of shoes. While I was sitting my wife was waking up and poked her head in. It was nice to talk to someone. I had her unhook the gaiters for me because I wasn’t having the best hand to eye coordination. I asked her to bring me the coffee that was left over in the pot from yesterday.
Again with the morning routines. I wasn’t sleepy, but the cold coffee was awesome. I drank it with some more pretzels. I joked that I like my coffee like I like my women…”Strong and bitter”, she didn’t think that was funny, certainly not as funny as I thought it was.
By now my JayBird X3 headphones had died and my JayBird Run headphones wouldn’t sync so I flipped the droid to play music and stuck it back in the slant pack. For the next few hours I would be that strange old guy filling the woods with Grateful Dead and Ska as I motored around in circles in the trails.
Even though it was a new day, thanks to my long breaks and my long run I was still 5 ish hours away from being done. I didn’t feel much like hiking up and over the ridge any more so I did the last 10 miles or so in 2-mile-loop circles near my house.
As the morning brightened into day I started passing people out walking their dogs. I always like to meet dogs. I say ‘hi’. Even exhausted and sleep deprived dogs love me. It was a weird perspective thought. These people were out for an early morning walk. I was 40+ miles into an all-night run.
I passed one lady and, I don’t know about you, but my sense of smell gets heightened on these long trail runs. Must be some feral gene switching on. She smelled of Ivory Soap and morning showers. Like an olfactory Saturday Evening Post cover by Norman Rockwell. So good, so pure, so fresh.
Then it occurred to me that she was also being treated to my olfactory cloud. And what do we suppose that was? Dead goat. And not just a random, hit by a car, oh so sad, dead goat. I’m talking 3 days old, lying in the sun, bloated, with its intestines out dead goat. That’s what she got. Not much of a trade.
My Garmin gave up the ghost just over 11 hours in. It was ok because I knew where I was, and I know how long all these trail segments are. I was still thinking straight and running well. I was very much thankful to have my droid lilting out Dead tunes and I was singing along.
Then it started playing something that sounded like a single note repeated over and over. I thought is must be one of those space jam segments that the Dead play sometimes in concert. I was too tried to dig my droid out of the pack and switch ahead a song so I decided to wait it out. For 30 minutes I was cursing avante garde musicians everywhere. Turns out it was s segment of beta wave study music that I had somehow downloaded.
It was a slow night. I got my 50 miles or more done. I ran strong though the end of it and never felt weak or sleepy or sick. I was running for around 12 hours, including long breaks. I ate real food. I stayed well hydrated and had good energy. I was awake for over 28 hours. I would call that a successful mental toughness training session and it makes me confident.
I only fell a couple times and only once hard. The stigmata on my palms have healed over now. I’ll no longer be mistaken for the risen messiah.
I took a shower and crawled into bed for a few hours of sleep. My chaffing with the spray-plaster strategy was minimal. I made sure not to sleep too much so I didn’t throw off my patterns. I got up and did my Saturday errands. I felt creaky, and tired, but mobile.
The next day, Sunday, I rolled out of bed and ran 20 more miles in 4 or so hours. I felt fine. I had plenty of energy and again used the slant pack to stay hydrated with two bottles per 10-mile loop. All good.
I spent the rest of the day cutting down a few trees in the yard and stacking up the logs.
All in all a good, confidence building weekend. I was a bit sore and a bit sleepy and super-hungry all week, but all lights a green for the race at this point.