Fools 50k - Recipe for the day was Mud Cakes with a Second Helping of Mud

      I raced the Fools 50k in 2018 and only two weeks after racing the True Grit 100. The conditions last year were muddy and the worse trail conditions I had ever run in at the time so, of course, my ITBand issues cropped up about 3-4 miles to the finish and I lost 3rd place overall (still took home 1st place for my age group 45-49).  This year I did not want to let that happen again, but trail conditions and weather would certainly be the determining factor.  They moved the race from the end of March to the third weekend of April so what was not playing into my favor is that I just finished a 5-day stage race, the Pisgah Stage Race just one week prior. I knew I was not going to be fully recovered but I sure as heck tried to pull out all the tricks in my recovery-bag; two massages, light cycling, a couple of easier runs, and daily foam-rolling/stretching/compression-boot sessions. 

Heading into the race it had been raining, quite a bit actually but it is Spring in Ohio after all so this was to be expected. After a quick Strava-chat with the RD (BTW, Vincent is friggin awesome!! This guy is what all RDs should strive for. Badass runner and he owns/operates Vertical Runner shop in Hudson, OH), he assured me that the trail conditions were in better shape than last year. Well ... at least at the time that he was marking the course. After he had posted, it rained ... like ... all night long with a soaking sort of rain. I was still optimistic that the trail conditions in no way could be worse than last year. #epicfail

Not a great outlook, but ... whatever.

Woke up around 5:20 and grabbed a light breakfast with a couple of small bananas, fake peanut butter, and a small slice of sourdough bread and of course COFFEE from Christopher Bean. LOVE THEIR COFFEE!! All the while I could hear the rain hitting the skylights in the family room as I honed in on the news and listened to the Cleveland, OH forecasters say how the rain would clear out .... seriously?!?! Like ... how soon?!?!  At this point it didn't really matter, it was raining and I was going to at least start this race no matter what. Got dressed, filled up a couple of hand bottles with my favorite Infinit Nutrition custom blend, threw a change of clothes and selection of gels into my dropbox, said y goodbye's to my BFF and I was off. Into the rain, that still had not subsided. #someh

The race this year, as it was last year, was held at Camp Manatoc, a Boy Scout Camp located in the Cuyahoga National Park (CVNP) and fortunately for me only short 15-minute drive from my home. Unlike last year, when I pulled in around 7am the parking lot was rather desolate. I knew that wouldn't last long because the Ohio-based trail runners that I know love these sort of conditions. Mountain Bikers ... not so much and for good reason because they close the trails. Once settled, I placed my dropbox near the start/finish line and decided that I would run the first loop sans any fluids only carrying a couple gels with me in case I was low on energy. I wanted to see just how muddy the conditions were because if I needed my hands to grab trees and my arms to balance myself then I just did not want to be carrying around a hand bottle. Made a few necessary bathroom stops, chatted with a fellow trail runner JoNathan (super cool guy and just down to earth. I really enjoy chatting with JoNathan and was stoked that he was going to take on this run today with me.), and then headed out for a quick 8-minute warm-up run to get my legs moving and check out the first bit of the course to see how the conditions were. Annnnnnnnnd .... there's a ton of mud. This could be either a VERY long day if my ITBand pain stays in check or a VERY short day if my ITBand pain comes at me with a vengeance. Only time would tell.

Race Course - Counter Clockwise Loops
25k - two loops of a 7.75-mile loop
50k - four loops of a 7.75-mile loop
1200'+ of vert/loop (it's punchy)

The trails are interconnected with a couple of very short gravel road climbs and a short pavement bit (less than .25-mile) and everything else is single track. I would say roughly 90% of the course is trail which is awesome!

The race started right on time at 8am but not without a couple of comical statements to lighten the mood, like "the trails are hero dirt. dry and dusty so this is going to be a very fast day" or "don't follow the guy in front of you but follow the pink ribbons and pink arrows otherwise ... this could be a very long day for you" and then ... GO!! In trail races, I try to stay near the front pack as much as possible at the start. Why I am unable to do this for a mountain bike race I do not know ... but this seems to work out better for me in trail races. When we hit the trails, they were muddy, wet, and slippery/greasy and so very much off-camber. Most of these trails are off-camber. I was in roughly 7-8 place after the first couple of miles and I was ok with that as it would be a long day and I tend to pick up the pace the longer the race. I also knew full well that as more and more runners plowed through the trails that the conditions would continue to deteriorate throughout the day so what I was seeing for the first lap and being in the lead pack would likely be the best trail conditions all day. Frankly, they were not all that wonderful. The 25k race would start at 8:45am and so after that group trounced through the rails dancing the mud-ballet the conditions were going to be a proverbial slip-and-slide for sure. I managed to keep a good pace and picked off a runner or two on the gravel road climbs so I was thinking to myself that I was in roughly 5-6 place overall. Not bad given the conditions but on the back of my mind I could only wonder if my ITBacn pain would give me grief. I did my best to run "smart" and keep everything in check. By that I mean when running thru the dense mud I took short, quick strides instead of longer strides. This technique certainly has me at a disadvantage from runners that are able to use their normal stride thru the muddy sections, but what I wanted to do was to ensure that my body would hold up for the duration of the race, unlike the previous year.

Start/finish aid station with all the goodies.

I grabbed a quarter of a PB&J sandwich as I rounded past one of the aid stations and kept on trucking, feeling really good. Finished my first last in 1:18:57 (pace of 10:10) and at that time I was holding the 5th place position at that time (of course I didn't know that at the time ... I just pulled the lap times from the race results). The plan was to grab one of my bottles of Infinit Nutrition as I headed into lap two ... ummm ... that didn't happen. Not because I forgot ... I'm not that old (yet) ... but I felt good and with how muddy the trails were I knew I would need full use of my hands and landing in the mud with a hand bottle would essentially leave me with an unusable bottle that I would have to lug around. The new plan was to grab cubs of fluid at the aid stations as needed. Snagged a pickle and a vanilla Oreo cookie as I passed through the start/finish aid station and kept motoring. This is where I started to mentally breakdown a bit. The slipping around on the mud, not being able to gain any sort of purchase with my shoes was having its way with me mentally. When I go running I like to actually run and this was a lot of ... aggressive hiking?!?! I mean I ran what I could but sliding around on the off-camber trails was frustrating me so mentally I was bagging this race and just wanted to finish the second loop and go home. Somewhere along the trail another runner, in my age group caught me and passed me.

The new strategy, aim for ALL of the puddles/lakes.

HOW THE FREAK IS THIS GUY RUNNING IN THIS CRAP?? I actually asked him and he gave me a pointer ... run through all the puddles. It cleans off your shoes (not like I wasn't soaked anyway) and gives you some traction back. Brilliant! I thanked up, gave him props for the stellar job he was going, and he was out of sight before I knew it. Along the trail, there are several bridges and anyone that trail runs or rides MTBs across wet bridges knows that these things can be a death trap. Add mud to the mix and you've got a recipe for calling 911. There were at least two of these bridge crossings that were not only wet and muddy but ... off-camber which meant that even if you tried to stick to the high-side you would slide down, possibly off the bridge, after the first footstep. The plan of attack that seemed to work was to use the edge of the shoe on the high-side of the bridge to try and use the "traction" on the bottom of the shoe to dig into the edge of the bridge. This mostly worked but what I also had to do was to cross the bridge side-ways, bending my body over and grabbing the high-side of the bridge and hobble across in that fashion. I am sure it looked flipping stupid but I will tell you that I was NOT the only one to use this technique and during one of the bridge crossings I encountered runners that were on all fours crawling across the bridge so as to not slip off. Yes, it was that muddy and wet and slippery. CRAZY conditions out there today. OMGosh!! As I closed in on one of the last aid stations during the second loop I heard a bunch of yelling and hollering ... that kind you hear when you are around a bunch of red-necks (I seriously do not mean to a offend anyone  but its just what comes to mind) and one says to the other ... "Hey, hold my beer and watch this". I turned around only to see these two guys literally slide down one of the steepest descents (I had just barely made it down in one piece) on their butts. They were laughing and hollering ... the only thing I could think of was ... crap ... there go two more spots. Well, sure enough, they passed me (they were both younger so I thought I was still ok for my age group) and I gave them props for such great work. I mentioned to one of them that I had to be careful due to the possible ITBand flair up and he yelled back to me "mines on fire already". Hmmm ... I thought to myself that maybe he won't get too far away from me. He didn't. Within a half mile, I took back both of the positions and never saw those two runners again. See ... sometimes it pays to know your body and play it on the safe side so that you are able to push when you can and be smart in the rough sections.

Falls near the end of the loop. Just beautiful!

The rest of loop two went fairly well and I started to come to peace with the nasty trail conditions. Actually, the Mohican MTB Race of 2010 came to mind regarding the trail conditions that I was running through. I would say that they were on par with that particular Mohican race because it was thick, chunky, peanut butter all day long. The good thing with this race is that I did not have to haul a bike with me. #winning #butnotreally Without anyone else passing me and my body still holding up I finished loop two, albeit slower than the first loop, in a time of 1:37:24 (pace of 12:32) and was in 10th place. At least that is what the final results say, but I honestly do not know who else would have passed me. How did I move from 5th to 10th?? I do not recall that many runners getting passed me. I rounded the start/finish line, grabbed a couple of Oreo cookies (they were just tasting good for some reason), a couple of pickles and off I went onto loop three.

Lap three was fairly uneventful, but I will point out a couple things that happened. First, remember the runner that gave me the tip about running through the water to clean off one's shoes? Well, I caught and passed him. He gave me props for figuring things out and doing so well. I thanked him for the great tip and just told him I was just trying to hang on and not die. Pretty much the truth with how slippery the trail conditions had become and with the descents that required one to essentially slide down on their butt to get safely to the bottom ... it was all I could do to not start laughing at how comical some of the descents had become.

Which brings me to the other point I want to mention about loop three. There was a particularly nasty STEEP descent just before hitting the final aid station as you make your way back to the start/finish line (remember that red-neck comment?), maybe 3-miles from the start/finish line. As I said, the trail conditions continued to deteriorate and by this time. If you can visualize this, the descent quite literally looked like someone had laid down a sheet of plastic (yes, like a slip-and-slide) poured mud down that sheet of plastic and pointed the arrows down that sheet of plastic as the race course. Holy crap batman, I think we are going to need some repelling gear to get down this thing. Well ... a couple steps and I was on my ass sliding down to the bottom of the hill. I wasn't laughing ... I was quite pissed off. I can joke about it now, but at the time I was not a happy camper. At this point, I looked like all of the other runners with half my body covered in mud. In hindsight, the landing was soft, like all of the other times that I began to fall during the third and fourth loops, and I was not hurt. I suppose I just need to count my blessing for that anyway. The last comical bit on the third loop was when shortly after my muddy adventure on the downhill I wrapped around to the last aid station before the start/finish and wanted another quarter piece of PB&J.

Gloves weighted ~10lbs.

By this time my gloves were so muddy that there was no way, I was going to grab any food so I politely requested one of the volunteers to shove one in my pie hole. He started to put on rubber gloves, which was awfully nice and the right thing to do but I said quite literally ... "Dude, that's the least of my concerns at this point. I probably have contracted a staph infection with what I have been running through at this point". They all busted out laughing and he quickly crammed a piece of PB&J in my mouth. I headed off and once I got a few feet away and had the sandwich in my mouth I yelled out a generous THANK YOU and went on to complete lap three. I finished lap three in 1:42:36 (pace of 13:13) and was in 6th place at this time. Ummm ... but I only recall passing one person ... other than a bunch of 25k runners. Huh.

At this point, I was telling myself, ONE MORE LAP!! I know I can do this even if it would be at a pathetically slow pace compared what I am used to running in good conditions. While passing through the start/finish aid station I grabbed a couple pickles and a couple of chocolate Oreos (YUMMY) and headed out to finish this race. Now I had three thoughts floating through my head, other than the mud that was flowing through my shoes; 1) don't hurt yourself, namely your ITBand, 2) #dohardthings and 3) do not give up any positions on the final lap like I did last year. The body was holding up much to my surprise given the terrible conditions. I just do not do well trying to run in off-camber muddy, greasy, slippery conditions (skills work I suppose) and I was extremely pleased that I was still holding up. No, I wasn't killing it by any means but that is most likely the reason why my body was holding up for me. This was definitely a HARD THING, at least for me. Ultra Marathons are no easy task, especially for someone who splits their training time across two disciplines and with my coming off of a 5-day stage race one week earlier. As for not letting anyone pass me, I succeeded in that. Towards the end of the fourth loop, I had a glimpse of the runner who I thought was the guy that had given me the advice about running through the water puddles (more like small rivers and lakes by this time) but after a few switchbacks and climbs, I never saw him again. I did attempt to pick up my pace out of fear of being caught and passed, one of those oh-crap moments, so I either successfully increased the gap on him or perhaps that wasn't even him at all. Entering the final mile I never let off the gas however I did start to feel a twinge of ITBand pain in my left leg. I knew all I had left was about a 1/2 mile to the finish and these things usually do not get terribly painful for a good few miles after they first start. Punched it for the finish, as much as one can punch it up a muddy set of stairs, and I finished in a total time of 6:25:08. My longest time running EVER! My lap time for the fourth lap was 1:46:12 and I held onto 6th place overall and much to my surprise I managed to take the W for the 40-49 age group. I will say that one other 40+-year-old did beat me, and handily, but because he was second overall he took the second overall award and I earned the award for age group. I'm good with that.

Naaaaasssty!!!!

I have yet to clean my muddy duds and it will likely be the case where I dump them out onto the driveway and hose them off, and then soak them in a bucket of warm soapy water for days. I have never been this muddy finishing any event. Break out the Shout-It-Out!! When I pulled off my soaks after the race I had mud caked inside both soaks and shoes. Yuck!! I will say that my feet were awfully soft from the 6+ hour mud-bath. LOL

My good friend Jacob Gordon, after having the OMBC Mohican race canceled due to weather conditions, decided to jump in on the fun and race the 25k. He did awesome !! It was great to see him on the course and chat with him about the race afterwards.

Special thanks to Christopher Bean Coffee for fueling my morning and race! Infinit Nutrition for their custom blends that keep me running strong (and no I didn't use it this time around but knowing it is there should I need it is VERY comforting). Finally, props to Chamois Butt'r for their GoStik that keeps my toes in good shape and prevents blisters. Great stuff!!

Happy trails and keep the rubber side down.