Across the Years 24 Hour Run

Melissa and I took the plunge and signed up to particpate in the Across the Years 24 Hour Run. Ever since completing the Never Summer 100K in July I’ve felt mentally prepared to try a 100 mile race. Sure, 100 miles is much, much longer than 100K, but Never Summer is a brutally difficult course. An easy 100 mile course probably wouldn’t take me a whole lot longer (relatively speaking) than the 16 hours it took me to cover that mountainous 100K.

Well, it didn’t really work out to run a 100 mile race the rest of the year, but there was one more chance at New Years: Across the Years. It’s not a 100 mile race, but rather a 24 hour timed event. The course is easy–a 1.05 mile loop that’s 85% dirt/gravel. I should be able to run 100 miles in 24 hours. I was confident I could.

I know a lot of people who have run 100 miles. They all have the same advice for first timers: start slower than you think you need to. I knew this advice and I was thinking about it in the early hours of the race. The problem is, I really had no frame of reference for slower than I think I need to go. So I started at a comfortable pace–a pace I felt I could maintain all day. My heart rate was super low. But my pace was a bit quicker than I expected. I made a few concerted efforts to slow down, but every time I tried to slow I accidentally sped up instead. After a while I just went with it.

The result of my “comfortable pace” running was that I covered 50 miles in the first 8 hours of the event. This was too fast. I almost certainly wasn’t going to run 100 miles in 16 hours and there was no chance I could possibly run 150 miles in 24 hours. So why was I running so fast? It didn’t feel fast. In retrospect, my running pace was probably okay, but I should have spent more time walking, which would have slowed my average pace and left a little life in my legs. As it happened, I didn’t walk a single step of the first 50 miles. Big mistake.

After 8 hours it was starting to get cold so I put on some warmer clothes and I walked a few miles. My legs were tired now, and I had 16 hours left to go. The sun was setting and I settled into a pattern of running a few miles and walking a mile. As much as my legs hurt, the extreme cold weather was bothering me more by this point. The temperature dropped to 22˚F during the night. I had been training in colder weather at home, but there’s a big difference between 22˚F when you step out your front door and 22˚F after you’ve been running for 12 hours. This was just about the coldest I’ve ever felt in my life. I had to wear my winter coat (on top of my running jacket and long sleeve shirt) when I was walking. All the food and drinks I had sitting out froze solid.

After the initial rough patch with my mileage in the early 50’s I came back to life in the late 50’s. I had another rough patch in the early 60’s before coming back to life. I had another rough patch in the early 70’s and again in the early 80’s. By the mid 80’s I was getting close enough to 100 that I was able to stay motivated to keep going. I was doing more running and less walking. My knees and hips hurt when I ran, but my ankles hurt when I walked. Since it hurt either way I figured I might as well just run.

I feel like I’m a lone survivor
forgotten in a dark and deadly world
and on my own, I walk alone
to see the sun again I’d give anything

I passed the 100 mile mark around 20h30m. Now I had 3h30m for bonus miles. I was moving slow. I hadn’t had a very good idea of my placing all day since the live results I could see all included people who had run previous days. When I passed 108 miles I suddenly moved into 1st place. Well okay then.

I did the math and figured I could finish with 112.33 miles. I reached that mark with 15 minutes to spare, but I really put everything I had into reaching 112. I couldn’t muster the will to cover one more mile, despite having time to do so. My body was done a long time ago, but my mind took over and kept me going. Once my mind was out of it I was done.

Prior to the race my biggest concern was simply staying awake for 24 hours, but that was never really a problem. I did crash pretty hard after the race, dozing off and waking up periodically throughout the next day. Participants can run the 24 hour event on any of six consecutive days. In the later days one man and two women ran farther than me so my final result was 2nd place male. I ran on day two and Melissa ran on day four. She put in an incredible effort and ended up with 100.78 miles. It was a triumph for both of us.

Melissa and I discussed our races more in depth in this interview on the Ultra Ordinary Running podcast.

Cheyenne Cyclocross Series #1

Cross season started for me with a very low-key event up in Cheyenne, WY.  The first race of the Cheyenne Cyclocross Series had about 15 people total show up for beginner/intermediate/advanced men/women/junior races.  The organizer decided to just have everyone race at the same time.

One guy started fast.  I caught up to him and passed him after half a lap or so, then I was alone at the front for the rest of the 35 minute race.  One guy finished half a lap behind me, while everyone else finished more than a full lap behind me.

So, reasonably good start to the season.

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New Belgium Cyclocross #1

This was a much bigger race than the last one.  It takes place on a very rough (made for mountain bikes) course.  I flatted out of the race after a quarter of a lap.  Nobody there was the slightest bit interested in helping me out.  I’ve never felt so unwelcome amongst a group of cyclists.  This was a horrible experience.

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Cross of the North – Friday

Cross of the North came week after the Blue Sky Marathon.  I did well at this race last year on a different course.  This course didn’t suit me quite as well (bumpy, loose dirt, off-camber, few straightaways), but it was fun nonetheless.  I started in the last row (which precluded any chance I could have had at a good result).  I rode hard.  I passed people the entire race.  I worked my way up to 9th place.

Photo by Melissa

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Cross of the North – Sunday

I actually had a really good start for a change, and moved up a lot during the first part of the first lap.  Then somebody rode right into me, knocked me off my bike, and dropped my chain.  By the time I had fixed my bike and remounted 22 people had passed me and I was even farther back than I was at the start.  I rode hard.  I passed people the entire race.  I finished 22nd (the exact number of people who passed me after I got knocked off my bike).

Photo by Melissa

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New Belgium Cyclocross #2

This race went much better than my first attempt at New Belgium, which is to say I finished.  But it wasn’t without incident.  I was very far back at the start and I was stuck behind people the entire race.  This is a course that is not well suited to, you know, passing people (or peddling, for that matter).  I had moved up quite a bit then on the very last lap I tripped over the barriers and fell flat on my face.  I got up quickly and didn’t lose any places between there and the finish line.  It was embarassing.

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Indy Cross

I was visiting the midwest in late October and a friend of mine talked me into a cross race in Indianapolis (then he didn’t show up).  The race was fun.  It was raining and the all-grass course was super-slippery (everyone went down at some point during the race).  At the risk of sounding like a broken record, A bad start left me far back in the field, I passed people the entire race, I finished unremarkably.

Loveland Marathon

What are we doing this weekend? I just saw in the newspaper that the Loveland marathon is on Sunday. Maybe I’ll do it.

It was a typical Friday afternoon at Casa de Ragfield. My last road marathon I decided to run three days before the race. This time I left myself 36 hours. What could possibly go wrong?

36 hours is totally enough time to train for a marathon, right? pic.twitter.com/lEzNdK8tRj

— Rob Raguet-Schofield (@ragfield) September 12, 2015

I was feeling good coming off my first decent race of the year at the Black Squirrel Half Marathon the previous weekend. This race has been in the back of my mind for a while, but I’m not sure I ever really seriously considered it. It’s downhill. And I don’t mean it’s 400 ft of drop like the famous Boston Marathon, it’s almost 3,000 ft downhill. The course starts in Estes Park and follows US-34 down the entire Big Thompson River Canyon before the final 5 miles of rolling hills going into Loveland. The finish line is a 15 minute drive from my house.

There are two things to keep in mind about running downhill:

1. You can go really fast.
2. You will completely destroy your quadriceps muscles.

I think the longest continuous downhill I had ever run is about 9 miles. I think the longest continuous downhill I’ve ever raced is 6.5 miles. This race had 19 miles of continuous downhill, and about 23-24 total.

I tried on various costumes on Saturday, but the potential of really warm weather by the end frightened me a bit into staying pretty conservative.

It was still dark when the race began at 6:00 AM on Sunday. I didn’t wear a headlamp–nobody did. The first few miles out of Estes Park were a bit dodgy. The first uphill mile was 7:24–my slowest mile of the day. The second downhill mile was 6:10. There were three guys way off the front (I couldn’t even see them), and by the time we reached the start of the canyon I had caught up to and passed the rest of the fast starters. So I was in 4th place, where I would remain for the rest of the race. I didn’t see another competitor for nearly three hours.

The early miles were great. I was running fast, though still holding back as I wanted to make absolutely sure I didn’t blow up too early. The temperature was cool, I almost wished I had worn gloves. The traffic on the highway was very light at that time of day.

Mile 7 I accidentally ran in 6:02. This was faster than the 2nd mile of my recent 5K race. I got to thinking, Wouldn’t it be wild if I ran a sub-6:00 mile during a marathon? How crazy would that be? Well the grade became steeper and mile 10 I ran in 5:58, followed by 5:58 for mile 11, and 6:02 for mile 12. I had just run a sub-18:00 3 mile stretch in the middle of the marathon.

Now, it wasn’t all kittens and rainbows. It was around mile 10 that I started to notice my quads were beginning to hurt. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen until at least mile 16-18. The road soon became more shallow and I backed off the pace a bit, though I was still running most miles around 6:10-6:20. I passed the half marathon mark at 1:22:00. This was a new half marathon PR for me.

Somewhere around this time I heard some noises up above me. I looked up and saw three bighorn sheep climbing the canyon wall.

It was around mile 16 when the noticeable pain in my quads turned into full blown serious pain. My legs were killing me. With 10 miles still left to run I felt like I was 40 miles into a hard 50 mile race. I began to dread every step as each one just brought more pain. The canyon became less steep and I began to slow a bit, creeping up to 6:25 pace.

Once I reached the bottom of the canyon I was faced with the dreaded mile 20, which contained the first significant uphill after an awful lot of quad-crushing downhill. I had to work hard for that 6:56 mile. I was so not enjoying this.

The downhills hurt and I was slowing down. The uphills hurt and I was slowing down more. After a few miles of rolling-to-slightly-downhill terrain, mile 25 had another big uphill. I had completely broken by that point, running another 7:24–this one much more painful than the first.

As soon as I crested the hill I saw another runner about 50-100 meters ahead of me. That’s strange, I didn’t see that person on the way up the hill. I actually lifted the pace to try to catch up, even though I figured it was a long shot. Then the person stopped to walk, and it slowly dawned on me, this person was not in my race. After passing a few more people I realized these were people finishing the 10K run that was taking place simultaneously. So I wasn’t going to move up any more positions.

Will and Melissa were at the finish line to cheer me on. I finished in 2:48:46 (2:48:43 chip time). This was an 8 minute PR on what was a very fast and incredibly painful course. I finished in 4th place (there were cash prizes for the top three finishers, so I was out of the money).

2:48:46. That's about an 8 minute PR. 4th place overall. pic.twitter.com/aQhoRIqKb6

— Melissa Ⓥ (@melissa_raguet) September 13, 2015

The obvious question about this race is how much faster is this course than a flat course? The answer is a little complicated.

My average heart rate for the entire race was 151. I wasn’t running hard. At all. I’m still burning fat (as opposed to carbs) until 148-150. I could have done the entire thing breathing through my nose. Yet I still ran a faster time than ever before. So, on one axis, this course is significantly faster than a flat course–upwards of 15-20 minutes.

My legs, on the other hand, were hurting by mile 10 and were completely trashed by mile 16. I had to run through so much more pain and discomfort than I typically would in a marathon. For example, my last road marathon I ran 2:56. In that race my legs felt comparable at mile 22 as they did at mile 10 in this race, and at 24 where they did at 16 in this race. I spent a lot of time out there suffering. This absolutely slowed me down.

Finally, there’s the small matter that this race takes place at high elevation, starting around 8,000 ft. That will further slow things down compared to a race near sea level.

Weighing these factors I’d estimate that for me (a runner a fairly strong cardiovascular system, and slightly weaker leg muscles) this course was probably 10 minutes faster than a flat course near sea level. If you have strong legs this course could be even faster for you.

My Strava records only cover my time living in Colorado, but still it was pretty cool to completely sweep the PR boards with this race.