Jason and Evan's Do It Yourself Ultra (50 Kilometers)

12/4/06

Winsted to Plymouth, Minnesota via Luce Line Trail

A friend and I have been talking about running a fun training event together for a while. We've done little running camps in which we did a good bit of mileage over a long weekend before and enjoyed them. Starting in the summer, we started talking about running a long ways on a local trail. This trail, the Luce Line Trail, was one of the first rails to trails projects in the state of Minnesota. It runs for 63 miles from Cosmos, in west central Minnesota to Plymouth, a Twin Cities metro suburb, the town in which I live. I run on parts of the trail, and my running friend, Evan had joined me for several of these runs. It has a nice crushed limestone surface and is relatively flat passing by lakes, farms and a general assortment of scenes familiar to Minnesota.

We started with 2 main ideas for our run. Run the entire trail over the course of 3 days or run half the trail in the fall and the other half in the spring. Due to time commitment of the 3 day project we opted for running half of the trail this fall/winter. We opted to run the closer half first, it is slightly more developed and we would be familiar with the last 7 miles of the run, a nice thing when you're going a long ways. The trail has a nice dividing point in Winsted, Minnesota. This town is almost exactly in the middle of the trail and running from here to the start of the trail in Plymouth would be a little over 30 miles. Now 30 miles is surely a good distance for a run, but we both realized that if we ran a little more, we could go metric and get to log a 50 with the kilometers. So it was decided that we'd park a bit away from the start of the trail to insure that we ran that last little bit to fully get in the 50K. With the choice of getting in the car after 49K or going a bit longer for the full 50, one doesn't know the choice you'll make after being out that long. The 50K was important to both of us, so we gave ourselves no choice, it would be 50K and there was not really any way around that fact.

Run morning
Any run in Minnesota in December is likely to be cold. The question was really how cold and what would the other environmental conditions be like. Since we were running one way, east, the wind could be an issue. The wind overwhelmingly comes from the west at this time of the year in Minnesota so that was not too much of a risk. The other concern was snow on the ground. Now a few inches of snow are not a huge deal for most runs, you go a little slower and all is fine. However, when you're going for a long ways, the sliding and additional issues with wet feet and footing difficulties become more pronounced. Luckily for us, there was virtually no snow on the ground. So, when we started our run, the temperature was in the high 10s, the wind was pretty strong but overwhelmingly out of the west and there was virtually no snow or ice on the ground. In short, it was as good as could be expected for this time of the year.

After Evan's father in law graciously drove us to Winsted, we hoped out of his car and got ready for the challenge of running 50K in one direction. We knew we'd go through a town after 10 miles but aside from that, we'd need to be virtually self supporting. As such, we were both carrying a good bit of gear in addition to fluids and various calorie sources. I learned from Evan that a change of hat can make all the difference for a long run in the cold. So I started this run wearing one hat and carrying 2 spares. I was double layering on my hands so I also had 2 extra sets of inner gloves, a scarf, a change of shirt, a change of socks, water, gels and sport jelly beans in my camelbak.

We started running and it all felt pretty good. I am slower and less fit than Evan so I made sure we kept the pace pretty relaxed early to insure that I was still running at the end. We had done a 21 miler together early in the fall and I had exploded with about a mile to go as I let the pace get a tad too fast for my fitness about early in the run. That was not fun but it was no big deal as it was warm and I was not too far from Evan's house. On a cold December day, exploding early on this run would really be unpleasant and potentially a bit dangerous as I would be sweaty and dressed to run, not walk. Anyway, Evan and I had discussed our pace goals and we did a good job of holding to them early. I think we were running about miles in around 8 and half minutes, though they may have been closer to 8. We took a few walk breaks to drink, get in some calories, and the like, so I would say we were probably averaging in the 9 minute mile range for the first parts of our run.

We hit the 10 mile mark at the refueling stop in Watertown, Minnesota right about the time we had expected. After a stop for water at a grocery store in Watertown, we headed back out of the trail. I was feeling pretty good, I knew I'd been running for 1.5 hours but I was pleased by how well I was feeling. Nothing too eventful happened over the next miles. This was going to be the most deserted part of the run as we were in rural areas outside of the Twin Cities metro area. There weren't any towns around. It was just us on the trail looking around and having a great conversation. We kept up a good pace and all was well. We both had dressed appropriately and were not too cold or hot.

At around the 2 hour mark, we hit what appeared to be the half way point, there was a mile marker on the trail that said 15. We weren't sure these were totally accurate but it was a little odd to think that we had been out for a bit over 2 hours and still had 15 miles to go. I knew I was a little tired and it was an interesting mental exercise to keep myself focused on the immediate. It is perfectly natural to think about the whole task, but that can be overwhelming. I also tried to keep myself from worrying too much about how much we still had to go and just to keep in tune with the moment by moment running.

Around the 3 hour mark I started to feel a bit tired. We were on pace for a total run time in the neighborhood of 4:30 if all went well. A bit tired might be too generous, at around 3 hours completed, I could now feel my legs getting stiff with most of my strides. Surprisingly, it was not my quads, calves or hamstrings that were causing me problems. My glutes were the first to get tight, I guess from the changes in my stride due to the camelbak and the slower than normal pace. We kept plugging along and although I was getting tired we kept up the progress. I was really happy to see the 5 mile mark, which we hit around 3:30 into the run. I don't exactly know when I started to slow down, around here I think but the next bit was a pretty hard. I new we were relatively close, at least compared to what we'd already done, but I was pretty tired and the thought of running5 more miles was a bit much. There really wasn't much choice, and I kept telling myself that challenges aren't easy by definition. You don't put yourself out there to test your limits and expect it to be a good experience all the time. I knew that I was doing well and while I was proud of what I was doing, the pride couldn't make my legs feel better. I was doing okay until around the 4 hour mark.

I am not exactly sure what changed, but around 4 hours into the run, my face started to get really cold. I was loosing the feeling in my face. Not only was I tired and sore, I was growing concerned with the status of exposed skin on my face. I had to stop to try and bring my face back under control as I was afraid I was on the way to frostbite. We walked a bit and I struggled to get my scarf to stay around my face. After that pretty much failed, Evan was nice enough to lend me his face mask. That made all the difference and a few minutes later my face was well on its way to be happy, always a good thing. We got back to running and we were now on parts of the trail that I was real familiar. It was good to know that we were close to being done but it was also kind of hard because the trail includes distance markers every tenth of a mile. While I appreciate markers I can match my sense of distance and pace with reality, the markers ever 160 meters are a bit much. I tried not to look as I really didn't want to get into a countdown of the tenths of a mile, which was just too many little steps to being done. I had to ask Evan to slow down or leave me behind at 4:15 and he graciously stayed with me and we started a full fledged shuffle.

The last mile or 2 was actually not as bad as I thought it could have been. After having been on limestone for all but about a quarter of a mile, with ѕ of a mile to go, the trail switches to asphalt and I was dreading this transition as I fully expected it to put the full fledged hurting on my legs. Since my legs were pretty much already shot, it was not too bad. There is a little downhill with a half mile to go and that hurt pretty nicely but we kept on it. We both knew that while we were pretty tired of running, if we hadn't parked the car at the 50K mark, there was no way we'd have run that last kilometer. As we circled the Parker's Lake in Plymouth in the last half mile of our run, I was proud to have done what we accomplished. Our final time for the run was 4:50 or so. We finished up and promptly got into Evan's car. As he got in, I asked "no warm down?" I was proud of that one.

Post Run
I still can't quite believe that I went out and ran 50K yesterday. I have more fitness than I give myself credit for and I also have more ability to manage discomfort than I always appreciate. I am pretty sore today but it isn't too bad. I am a tad disappointed that I dragged the average pace down a good deal in the last 4 miles, but all things considered, I am quite happy that I passed a pretty hard test of myself. Yesterday was a challenge and I took it on and did well. You can do it too!

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