hitting the trail

Elizabeth and I had a nice (JT and Queer Eye soundtrack infused) drive down to the race site. Arrived with 15 minutes to spare and hit the portapotties while the RD was giving out instructions. I am clearly not an auditory learner, because I forgot (or didn't even hear) half the stuff that he said. I do remember him saying, "Do me a favor and just don't drop, ok?" I once again reiterated the "plan" with Elizabeth. "so. let's finish." "sounds good."

We line up at the starting line. it's really just a mass of people (< 300) in a little clearing in the woods. I see a friend of MoMo's who is doing her first 50 and who I had met the prior weekend at DWD. We went to go say hi and wish her luck, and I promptly call her by the wrong name. oops. The race director yells "GO" and we are off! Evidently the trail was a bit short, because we had to run an out and back to the end of the parking lot, which was amusing. as we came back through the main area, a man named Peanut is totally being a character, waving and blowing kisses to the "crowd". Seriously, there were like 50 people there spectating. that's it. hahaha!

the trail is single track, and very easy to run on. hardy any rocks or ruts. The night before, I was telling Elizabeth about how I was reading some ultrarunning website and they were giving tips for newbies. one of the big tips was, "just do what everyone else is doing." While this seems silly in normal road racing, it turned out to be a really good idea this day, because even if we WANTED to run up the hills, we wouldn't have been able to. about 1 mile in, we start walking up a hill, and it's hilarious to look up and see this single file line of people walking up this big hill. we joke about doing the conga line at a wedding and such. It stayed pretty much single file until we hit the first aid station, and it didn't REALLY start to break up until after the second aid station. somewhere in the first five miles we had the joy of getting behind a man with a German accent who kept yelling up to Peanut. "Peeeeeaaaaanuuuuut! you're slowing us all down!" Peanut would yell something funny back to him and we'd all crack up. German man kept yelling "Jah!" over and over again, and at several points started singing, "I. like. to. run. I. like. to. run." It was absolutely hilarious.

We noticed quickly that taking a break in the woods to relieve ourselves wasn't going to be easy. There were lots of trees, yes, but most of them had no branches on the bottom portions, and there were only ferns scattered about the forest to shield you from the entire line of runners. Elizabeth ran off to find a place to use the bathroom right before the first aid station and I hung out waiting for her for a minute or so, drinking some gatorade. when we started back up, we were with a completely new group of people, so we got new people to talk to for the next 3-4 miles. The next aid station came and we stopped to try some food. I think I had M & Ms at this stop, along with some water and gatorade. I had been breaking out the clif blocks all through the run, so I wasn't eating too much at the aid stations at that point. after we had started off again a man in a TNT shirt started joking that he "hadn't heard us talking for a few minutes" and was "getting worried about us." hahaha! evidently, we chatter a lot. :) I briefly mentioned that I hoped the people in front of us didn't hate us, because we were basically just cooling on their heels, following their lead, and talking the ENTIRE TIME. think about how annoying that would be after a while. yeah. that was us. :) Around this time Peanut came running out of the woods and yelled, "hot pink leopard print? THAT IS HOT." hahaha! the man in front of me yelled back, "you must be wearing one of those skirts. my wife wears those to run in." I got SO many compliments on the hot pink leopard skirt. I LOVE ULTRARUNNERS!

There's not much to say about the course in this area. We didn't hit any more major hills until after the third aid station. But prior to this, we had seen a girl in front of us who looked to be about our age. Elizabeth commented, "I wonder if she's doing the 50 miler," and I laughed and said, "Elizabeeeeeth... I know what you're thinking." We had agreed that this was going to be a training run, so she laughed and said, "well, we'll at least wait until the last 6 miles to get her." hahaha. We passed her before the third aid station, but then she ran through it instead of stopping to eat so she passed us back. mmmm... potato chips.

The next section included some pretty big hills. We were in front of a man who happened to live in Ann Arbor and work in Novi, which is really funny if you know where I work and live. :) we also met downhill man, who totally FLEW by us on all the downhills for the rest of the race. We'd pass him on the flats and then, sure enough, next downhill, he'd be flying by us. He had run JFK multiple times, so Elizabeth and he chatted about the course a bit.

we hit the half and stopped to grab our drop bags. Elizabeth called her hubby to give him a "chip update" and I tried calling Rae and Brent to give them a "pip update". unfortunately, in the middle of the forest and with my battery dying, the second call didn't go through. we stopped and tried all kinds of food, talked to the aid workers, filled up the water bottles and took some advil, and then headed back out. by this time, I was already starting to feel really sore in weird places. I knew part of it was from the trails before at DWD, but it didn't make me too excited to think I was going to have to battle the soreness for the next 13 miles. I voiced this to Elizabeth, more as a warning than anything (since she'd have to put up with me) and to my amazement she was feeling the same soreness. we both noted that it could be a long 2.5 hours before we reached the half, but we set off running anyways. I think we spent 10 minutes or something like that at the half aid station! geez!

in this section, we met up with a veteran ultrarunner from Phoenix who had flown in for the event. He was a godsend. We literally ran/walked the next 5 or so miles with him while we caught our second wind. at the aid station in this stretch we also saw a woman come in who looked HORRIBLE - all wobbley and everything, and yet when we all took off running she still was running faster than us! what the hell!

After a bit, we sped up a bit so we had to drop Phoenix man, which was kind of sad because he got us through our worst part of the race. We soon found that both of us had found our second wind. I asked Elizabeth how she and her husband had met, and she got really excited, and her energy was contageous, so I think that helped a LOT. We came into the next station laughing and joking, and everyone pretty much thought we were crazy. We heard a few, "you two are having way too much fun!"s.

Around mile 20 we started hitting some big hills again, so there was much walking, but by this time our energy was restored, even if we both did feel a little battered. Elizabeth was feeling her ITB, and I was feeling... well, everything, but we were having a lot of fun, so we hardly noticed. when we hit the aid station at mile 21 we both thought, "OH NO! only 5 more miles!" WHO SAYS THAT IN A MARATHON?!? At these aid stations we also met up with the men who bit the dust. several men had looked like they hit the ground pretty hard, and told us they were planning on walking the rest of the way. we were SO glad that we didn't have to walk the last 5... it had already taken us long enough to get that far!

Finally, we passed through the last aid station and headed for the fork at the 24.8 mile mark that would tell us that we had to go a different way than the ultrarunners. we were worried about missing the fork, but there was a cute old man there who told us exactly where to go. We yelled our thanks to him and headed off toward the finish. when we passed a woman who told us "less than a mile left!" Elizabeth said, "GREAT! we should be done in, what? 20 minutes?" I started laughing at her and yelled "20 MINUTES!" at this point the trail was pretty flat so we didn't have to worry about being slowed down by the hills and we were cruising pretty well. Elizabeth responded, "I like to overestimate my time for my last mile so that I can say I finished strong." HAHAHAHA! my response? "so what do you say, 'MAN! I HAMMERED THAT LAST MILE! I WAS UNDER 20 MINUTES!'?" for some reason, I could never imagine hearing Elizabeth say that, but i'll have to remember that for my next race. :)

we finished the last mile strong (and well under 20 minutes) and crossed the finish line to retrieve our sweet ass finisher mugs and to grab some BEER from the keg. SELF SERVE KEG! WOOHOO! we ended up both being 2nd (er, maybe third, but who knows) in our age groups, so we both got duffle bags! yay! then we headed over to chow down on some food and drank more beer before watching the first of the 50 milers come in, having some cute guys ask if they could take our pictures, and then heading back to the cabin to watch the rest of the UM v. Notre Dame massacre. I think i scared Elizabeth on the way back because I was cheering so much for Michigan while I was driving. :)

overall? GREAT RACE... good grief. Elizabeth and I decided we SOOOO have to get a group to go camp out in the park parking lot and do it with us next year! HOW FUN WOULD THAT BE?!?