So over the last few weeks as the "OH SHIT" reality of doing a 100 miler in 6 months is starting to settle in. We started out just being really giddy and excited. We knew, logically, that we should also be very serious, but it hasn't started to really hit until the last couple of weeks as we've been talking to experienced people, reading race reports, and seriously working on our training plan.
Kristen Farley, a friend of my co-worker, has been particularly helpful. Her husband Ken is the chair of the Geology department at Caltech and they run 100 milers. Here are a few realizations that we've had.
1) THIS IS REALLY EXTREME. Not that we didn't know... but we didn't feel it in our bones until now. See below. Much more so for only having 6 months to train, with no previous experience running more than 20 miles on trails, and for one of us (me!) only having been a distance runner for 6 months. Not to mention it being one of the hardest hundred milers in the country at average altitude somewhere around 7,000ft, elevation gain of 27,000ft and all that good stuff. I'm sure we'll feel it a lot more as we start doing more 50 milers. Also Kristen recommended volunteering at a mile 80 aid station... to learn what others are doing and just to see what mile 80 looks like.
2) Every run leading up to the race is just another training run. So how does running the LA Marathon (26 miles on a downhill paved road with support every mile and ten thousand other runners) become a training run? Well apparently it does... you just have to do a hard trail run before or after the marathon, to practice running on tired legs. Since I have marathon time ambitions, it'd have to be the day after. Or maybe the evening of, if I'm feeling really ambitious. I can do Mt. Wilson if it's passable by then.
3) Kristen recommends we do "at least a few" 50 mile races. Shit. She says she thinks of races as just more training runs with your food and water taken care of. Makes sense. The idea is not to be a hero, but just put yourself out there for 12 hours at a time to practice nutrition.
4) Even if you do everything right and you're an experienced runner, you can still wind up in the ICU for a week with acute kidney failure. (See point 1). That's what happened to Ken after he successfully finished Western States, a popular 100 miler. He felt good for most of the run except for not having peed since mile 20. Finished in 27 hours, very respectable. Went home and was functioning and going to work, though not feeling good (pale, tired, weird pains). Finally went to ER, and they're like "dude, your kidneys are not working." So he got IV fluids pumped into him getting him to gain 26 pounds... and then, once the kidneys started working, he lost it all in a few days, peeing a pound every hour. Apparently other elite ultrarunners have experienced this, though it's still rare - perhaps 1/1000 runners, according to Ken. What do we say to that? We won't be trying to run hard (Ken was shooting for 24 hours), we'll watch for signs of not peeing.
5) The mantra used to be "Failure is not an option. Period." And now that's changing to "Failure is not an option. But let's have a contingency plan." Being our first 100 miler and having 75-100 people waiting at the finish line along with our wedding rings, the idea is JUST FINISH. Don't be a hero, don't try to run fast. Just finish. I would be beaming with pride if we can do it in under 30, but I won't push for it. This is not about feeling good about ourselves for doing it so fast. It's about completing a ridiculously hard journey together to seal our union for eternity and sharing it with the people we love. If we don't finish because of a bravado attitude of trying to run fast - not only is it terrible on a personal level (getting married at an aid station or worse at a hospital...???), but also terribly inconsiderate to all the people who love us enough to come out all the way to Utah and sit around waiting for us all day. So don't be a hero, JUST FINISH.
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