After having a solid summer of running and feeling like I was back in the trail running game, I began to realize just how little time I had spent on my mountain bike leading up to my biggest race of the year. I felt like I was cramming for a college final exam, ill prepared with all of the anxiety and nerves creeping into my brain. I was fortunate to have two of my favorite teammates, Carey and Lisa, meet me in Ishpeming a month before the race to ride and run the course. This was a make or break trip for me. I was either going to get comfortable riding the trails or I would tuck my tail between my legs and bail. Ohio trails are not nearly as technical as what the MG trails offer, so there are no opportunities for me to quickly regain confidence. All that said, the trip was a success. I was able to get what I needed out of the trip from a riding perspective and got to hang out with two of the best in the business. #winwin
Fast forward one month and I am on the start line for a fifth time, getting ready to run like a fool for the first half mile (so Todd says) Lemans start before jumping on the bike. The weather forecast for the week was perfect with only a small chance of light rain on Friday (which we did get but was barely noticeable) with race day temperatures that every endurance athlete dreams about, mid-60s to low 70's with a low in the high 40's over night. Perfect riding temperatures and perfect running temperatures.
Having worked out support help from Lisa's husband Chris and her father-in-law Rudy, my plan was to try and stay close to or somehow ahead of Lisa and Carey on the bike. This felt like a tall order so I had my work cut out for me. I did not want to become a burden on her support team that would in anyway compromise her and Carey's race. Out of the gate I ran at solid clip that one can run in stiff mountain bike shows, jumped on the bike and quickly spotted Lisa just ahead of me. Within a few miles I pulled ahead so that I didn't feel like I was chasing, I do not do well in that situation. At that point, I just rode my race, trying to limit my efforts and not destroy my legs for the hours of running and hiking that was coming. By the time I finished the first 17.5 miles and had grabbed my bottle hand-up from the support crew, the pack had started to spread out which gave me some breathing room. I do not enjoy riding in big packs, especially on single track. It just makes me nervous that I might do something stupid and take someone else out by mistake. This type of sh** lives in my head all day.
Two of the more technical sections were done and dusted in those first 17.5 miles and due to the congestion, both sections were walked by most, including me. The next few trails are pure joy to ride, Rambling man, Wild Cat, Mild Cat, and Pine Knob. Pine Knob is one of four technical trails on the course that can quickly end your day. As we entered Pine Knob I scrubbed speed to get space between myself and the riders in front of me. I wanted to enter the drop-ins with room to spare and was hoping that no one would be on my wheel. Fortunately it all worked out and I had a clear path to hit all of the gnarly, rocky descents and drilled every one of them. Woo hoo!!
After completing one of the longest climbs, Lowes, I met up with Chris and Rudy for another bottle hand-up and a banana. So far, everything was going better than expected. Stomach was good, I was eating and drinking all the things I have planned and I was ahead of my expected pace. Soon after I met up with Hanna Derby for the first time. Hanna had a small hick-up with her rear derailleur but quickly caught back up and we shared quick a few miles together along with some trail chats. Her company made the miles go by quickly and we both rolled into South Trail Head. To my surprise, there were no Trail Angels in the pavilion. All four years I have raced, there have been picnic tables full of various foods and drinks, like piles of Oreo cookies. Nope, not this year. Just goes to show you that you should never plan on Trail Angels year after year. Be thankful for any of the Trail Angels that take time out of their day to support you and be sure to thank them!
The next few trails all have their own challenges and might I add that knowing what is ahead is a big- time confidence boost for me because even if I know I will walk a particular section, I prefer to know that upfront than to be surprised and biff it hard. Heading up Gurly I noticed that Hanna was not that far behind me and after hearing her tell me earlier that she loves enduro and downhill riding, I knew I had to keep ahead of her on these trails because she would be most likely be tearing it up no these rocky descents. I walked the one section of Gurly that I ha yet to figure out and picked my way through the rest of trail before hitting Doctors and dumping out onto Marquette Mountain. My plan was to stick it in the big ole'pie plate and grind my way to the top. I could have pushed harder, but I wanted to try and not burn any matches. As I approached Scary (yes, that is the name of the trail and yes ... it is spot on) a rider blew past the trail head. I yelled out to him to turn around and I decided to let him go first. I didn't want someone on my wheel heading into the drop-in but what I didn't think about was me being on someone else's wheel. I was hoping he would make quick work of it which would give me a clear path to pick my own adventure. That was not the case. He was a heck of a strong looking single speeder but picked the same line I had planned. I wanted to take the left hand path (something I did on my pre-ride the day before), but he took that line and was a had tapped his breaks enough for me to make the quick decision to ride the more common line right through the center of two trees that has this nasty root on the other side where if it is wet, would wipe out your front wheel. Whelp, I threw a Hail Mary, took the main line, popped the front wheel on top of the root and as I rolled over it miraculously popped the rear wheel up and to the right of the root so as to not slide out the rear wheel. It was perfection and the best part is the photographer that was siting off trail saw the move and yelled out "nice move"!! Confidence boosted x100. The SSer continued on in front of me and while he had a few small mishaps on the following rock sections he never stopped and I managed to track stand a bit to give us a bigger gap. What a ride! Eventually he ripped through the trails faster than I was going and I never saw him again. After the beat down on Zueg's, a downhill trail that the race directors have us climb, oy vey, I was feeling good that all of the technical trails were done and dusted. Grabbed my last bottle hand-up and a restocking of my top-tube fuel bag and I was off to reach Jackson Park which I reached in roughly 7.5 hours. This was 30-minutes faster than last year (not my overall fastest time though), now the question would be, did I take too much out of the tank for the run.
Got changed as fast as I could out of my riding gear and into my running gear. So many things to remember to do. Grab those "tokens" from the ride and put them in a secure spot in my running vest, make sure to lube all the bits, tape my hammer toe (yeah, so that's been a thing this year), put on the Garmin and start the course route (better safe than sorry), grab the right headset so I have something to listen to (I chose podcasts for the entire run), all while chugging down some nice warm ramen and pounding down a Ginger Ale ... or was it a Coke? I don't freaking remember at this point. Chris and Rudy grabbed by stuff and I was off to the races ... sort of. I purposefully started off slow with a fast paced walk to try and get my legs to now run instead of ride. That takes a minutes for me to switch over and get comfortable running. My legs felt unusually lethargic. Maybe I rode too hard, maybe I was dehydrated although I did not feel like I was dehydrated, but whatever the reason I had 42+ miles to traverse and I had 14 hours to do it in. Seemed manageable at the time.
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| Dum Dums for tokens. Brilliant! |
The run quickly turned into a grind. I am not sure why, but I was struggling from the start of the run. I mean I kind of felt ok, but then I didn't feel like I had the energy I really needed. I knew I wouldn't feel as fresh as a daisy, of course, but I knew I had felt better on several bricks that I did in training. It is what it is and I just pressed on. Lisa was behind me on the bike by maybe 20-minutes and before I knew it she was passing me after only 5-6 miles into the run. She looked like she just going for a nice run in the woods and had not ridden 65+ miles on the mountain bike. I texted Chris that Lisa just passed me, but did not see his response of "where at"? At that point I was already living in my own head just trying to get my body to a better place. Before the first support stop around mile twelve 2-3 more Duathlon runners came along and passed me like I was standing still. The last one started chatting with me to I jumped onto his pace and we made our way through the woods but something wasn't quite right and I pretty quickly figured out that I needed to find a bathroom. I mentioned this to the other runner and he told me that just down Malton Road, less than 1/2 mile, is a Porta John. Sweet!! Decided to take the chance and head off course to find the bathroom. Nope, no bathroom. They must have either moved it or removed it. That cost me a few minutes off the clock, but I guess it was urgent enough for me to at least try. Oh well. It would be another 1.5 miles to reach the support crew and I made pretty quick work of that before meeting up with Chris and Rudy. I am pretty sure I looked miserable and they could tell. Not good. I just could not figure out what was going on. I was eating and I was drinking, getting in the calories. They helped me refill all the fluids and I grabbed the food that had planned out as well as dropping off any trash for the food that I had eaten already and off I went. Still on the hunt for a bathroom although it seemed to be not as urgent as earlier. I had packed baby wipes in case I needed to dart into the woods and in hindsight, perhaps I should have just done that and just maybe that would have reduced the stomach issues that cropped up and stuck with me the rest of the race. I have done that one other time and it has been years and I have some anxiety about doing it again. I really need to just rip off the Band-Aid, but I am fortunate that where I live there are bathrooms along all of the trails, within a few miles apart, so there really has never been a need to "experiment".
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| Love the banana lady!! (Stephanie) |
Between North 2nd Street and the second passing of Malton Road I started to come around. I felt like I could run more, my legs started understanding what was going on and my stomach was not bothering me as much. Perhaps it was firing off some air bagels? Regardless, I was feeling better. I made my way around the western side of the course and came back into the town of Ishpeming where you pass within a few blocks of the finish line. It wasn't as demoralizing as in the past because it was still day light and I had yet to pull out my headlamp. I passed a few 50-mile (more like 100k) runners and chatted with them as we made our way through town, back onto the Iron Heritage trail, and back into the woods. This section was fairly uneventful and I was finally feeling good. I was surprised that I made it to the second planned support drop at the second Malton Road crossing before I needed my headlamp. I saw the support truck and they had left out a chair and my nutrition for me. I thought they just left the truck and had taken my vehicle to go meet up with Lisa at the second time through Jackson Park, so I txt'd them that I was at the truck, figured they were no where around. Funny enough, they were actually sitting in the truck and popped out after Chris received my text. Surprised and happy to see them, hey assisted me with grabbing more of my nutrition, taking my trash, handing me another mini-coke and made sure I had my headlamp ready to go, because this time heading into the woods it would be dark. Rudy mentioned that I looked better and that he felt I was picking up my pace. That felt really good to hear, although I am not sure how true it was, I really appreciated the positive words.
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| Beautiful sunset five miles to Jackson Park 2 around 8pm. |
The five miles left before reaching Jackson Park the second time have some fairly steep up climbs, Sissy Pants and the Hamptons and at the pace I was moving I was trying to figuring out how much time I would have left to finish in under 22-hours. I was calculating that if I could get to Jackson Park by 10pm and had a quick turn-around, that would give me 7.5 hours to reach the finish line for 19-miles. While that seems quite possible, if my pace continued to slow down I wouldn't make it in time. I was also trying to figure out what my pace would be and I kept coming up with somewhere between 2-3 miles per hour. That sounded miserable but possible. As I reached Sissy Pants just off the Iron Heritage trail I managed to capture a cool picture of the sun finally going down behind the wood line. I knew the next time I would see the sun I would be, hopefully, finished, showered, and hopefully getting up from a well-deserved nap in my warm, and comfortable Airbnb. The temperatures continued to be perfect with a nice cool breeze and I could just barely see my breath in the beam of my headlamp. The mountain bikers had thinned out at this point I would see one every 20-30 minutes either just ahead of my pushing their rigs up the climbs or coming up behind me which meant I would have to step aside to let them continue their journey. They were always appreciative and having been where they are, I knew what they were feeling and going through, so I made darn sure to tell them to keep moving and that they will get to that finish line. I must have had a really good podcast that I was listening to because before I knew it I was on Cheese Grater which is the final trail section before popping out onto the Iron Heritage Trail back to Jackson Park for the second time. I could still run fairly well at a 11-minute pace and I did just that back to JP where I quickly found Chris and Rudy waiting for me. I was feeling bad that I was holding them up from Lisa, but they informed me she has just left maybe 15-20 minutes ahead of me which meant I was still moving pretty good. It was just before 9:30 so I had plenty of time to refuel and head back out well before 10pm.
One thing that I knew I needed to take care of before heading back out for another 20 miles was to reapply the lube. Last year I made the mistake of telling myself, it'll be ok. It definitely was NOT ok. The shower told me the real story last year on all the private bits, so I was not going to make that same mistake this year and I could already tell that I needed to take care of things. Downed my second container of warm ramen, drank the rest of a half used coke that Chris and Rudy saved for me and I jogged to the porta john to lube all the bits. Not sure how much time I lost doing this, but it was well worth it! Chris and Rudy had refilled by vest with plan water, I just had no stomach for the pre-made Skratch that I had on-hand, I switched over my headset for some more podcast, and I was off into the night on the final section. The really nice thing about the next 10-12 miles is that the racers pop in and out of Cliff Drive 5-6 times which makes it really nice for the support crew to attend to their racers.
Dirty Mary, Lucy Luge, and Flannel Shirt, these trails were never ending. For me they are very difficult to into any sort of rhythm with their undulating nature and off-camber, narrow single track for miles. All I remember is that I couldn't wait to get these trail over with so that I could meet up with my support crew the first time along Cliff drive. After 5-6 miles of this mental torture I popped out onto Cliff drive and discovered Rudy waiting for me with my food and drinks all ready. I refilled on plain water, drank more Ginger Ale, downed some cold ramen (that wasn't so tasty), and I was off to head up the Grandview loop. This is how the next 8 to 10 miles would go. Up Grandview running where I could, but mostly hiking due to an upset stomach, and pop out onto Cliff Drive to meet up with Rudy. Tackle the sort of quick AM/FM, a trail that apparently many like to "skip" but this year I hear they had someone monitoring it, not to mention they had a token stop along the trail. Well played Danny and Todd, well played indeed. I would never consider cutting any part of the course and it makes me sad that others ever consider that "fair play". Popped out after AM/FM, met Rudy, didn't take anything but chatted with him for a few minutes, and then I was headed over to the Carroll Jackson out and back. AS I got back onto Cliff Drive I must have missed Rudy. Actually I started to head in the wrong direction but quickly figured out my mistake and got back on track as I began to make my way up the Ski Jump climb. Thinking I missed Rudy, I texted Chris to let him know so they were not stopped in the wrong place and I figured at this point I was on my own to the finish line. The Si Jump climb is a pretty nasty climb regardless if my foot or bike. I runner blasted past me moving really well with trekking poles. Hmmm ... makes me think that perhaps I need to give trekking poles a fair shot. As I finished making my way back down to Cliff Drive I was pleasantly surprised to see Rudy again. Woo hoo!! One more chance to get food, water, or whatever I needed. Just so happens that I didn't need anything but he sure did put a smile on my face when I saw him. It was at that time that he told me they missed Lisa and Chris had run off to catch her, which he did, and that I would be seeing Chris as I began the final mile to the finish line.
These last 10-12 miles are hard. Stupid hard. Sally (which runs along the lake), Angel Line, .38 Special, Old 56, and the trail that turns every adult into a sniveling Cry Baby, yeah .. that's the trail name, Cry Baby. Rightfully named. The one section that I was looking forward to reaching was right after Sally, near the lake. Last year the Trail Angels were out in full force with easy ups, lights, and music. It was a fun little party scene they had going on and this year was no different. I didn't know what I wanted but it was just refreshing for the mind and soul to see these wonderful people, late in the wee hours of the morning, to help all of us Dum Dums Doing Hard Things. I really couldn't stomach much of anything but I grabbed a cold coke and some tums. I do not recall if the tums actually helped, but I never got sick so apparently it didn't hurt. Ever trail I ran or hiked I found myself checking the map on my Garmin. Like the finish line would get there faster the more I looked at the map. Heavy fatigue had set in, but my legs felt ok. I cannot begin to say how many times I kicked rocks and roots with both of my feet. Man that sh** HURTS!!! My stomach was the thing slowing me down. Mountain Bikers would role past me, I would continue to encourage them, and they did the same for me. The worst part was the last mile or so of Cry Baby. This was a new section added due to road construction that in years past we popped out on. The last section was miserable. I just wanted out of the woods and onto the road that would take me to the climb to Jaspers Knob. Cry Baby was like a train with no caboose. It just never came, until it finally came. As I ascended Jasper's Knob that sense of relief finally began to come over me. That feeling that I was going to finish my fifth Marji. I actually love the Jaspers Knob climb because to me it means victory. After allowing more mountain bikers fly past me down Jaspers Knob I reached the top and grabbed that final token making darn sure to secure it. One mile left. Only one freaking mile left. Once down off Jasper Knob I was able to run all the way to the finish line. Stomach wasn't happy, but I didn't care. As in year's past, there were still people cheering for the finishers. Amazing.
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