As far as Psycho Wyco goes, I think it's safe to say that I had a terrible day. I started off at what felt like a mellow pace. The course conditions were better than I had expected them to be early on. I was running with Mark Koester for about the first five miles. I felt a bit off, but I thought I would loosen up a bit as the race progressed. I felt like I wasn't warmed up even after an hour. Like when you start a run and your breathing is a bit labored and you're muscles are still a little tight. Not really what I had in mind. So I dropped my pace a bit to see if I could work it out. I couldn't. My first loop was about a 1:52 and change. That wasn't a horrible time, but I seriously considered dropping at this point because I felt as if I'd already done two loops instead of one.
Brandy was helping at the aid station and told me to just keep going so I started walking across goose flats to begin the second loop. Burger caught up to me here and we started talking about feeling sorry for ourselves because we weren't doing as well as we'd hoped. I decided to just suck it up and do the second loop. So Greg and I ran together and actually passed a few people back. When we got to Fester's Wander I started to feel pretty crappy again and that was the last I saw of Greg. I caught up to Keith Dowell around this time. He was favoring one leg and said he was going to drop after this loop. I had some of James Barker's kickass chicken noodle soup at the shelter 10 aid station and that made me feel a little better. I did realize that this was the first time I'd bothered to stop and eat any soup during the three times that I've done the 50k here. I trudged onward and came in with a lap time of around 2:18? which put me at around 4:10 cumulative time for two loops. A bit depressing because last year I was way ahead of that ime and actually still felt pretty good- with similar training leading up to the race.
I drank a little coffee and ate a bit while at the aid station. I think I was joking at the time because knew what he would say, but I asked BadBen if I should just take a 20 mile finish and call it a day. I'm not sure if I would have quit if he would have told me it was okay.
So on to the third loop. I was actually feeling decent until my IT band in my right leg started to tighten up like a sonovagun. I actually had to walk DOWN a couple of hills. I stopped a couple of times to try and stretch it, which did help a bit. Once I got through Fester's Slip-and-Slide for the third time I could smell the finish and was able to lift my pace a bit for the last few miles and pass a few people, which feels good no matter how bad of a race you've had. The unofficial results have my finish time as 6:40, which gave me a 3rd loop split of around 2:27. Almost an hour slower than last year. Doh! I thought the MUD would slow everyone down, but I guess I was wrong. A bunch of people ran fast times and Caleb's course record was broken so what do I know.
I am happy that I finished though. It was a real mental struggle because I knew during the first hour of the race that I was definitely OFF and was going to have a crappy time, but I stuck it out and I have to give Greg a lot of credit for the company and encouragement on that second loop.
As far as nutrition I ate gels and Clif BLoks. The bloks always seem to taste good. I used Endurolytes on a time schedule and took a couple of S-caps late in the race when I started to feel a little cramping coming on. Also the soup was good!
I'm also very proud of my son Jackson, who ran the 10 mile event, my high school football teammate Steve King, who ran 20 miles and all of the Trail Nerds who ran their first ultra. You know who you are.
A final thanks goes out to RD Bad Ben, everyone who helped with course work, all of the race day volunteers and everyone else who came out to run in the MUD!
