Caumsett Park 50K 2010

So for the first two months of 2010 I ran 333.3 miles.  This is 8 miles ahead of schedule.  I had been feeling good until the last week of February, when my legs finally started breaking down.  It was a combination of muscle fatigue and shin splints.  There was nothing to do about this than other than to rest, which I was forced to do last week when I pulled my back out by sitting down on my bed.  Yes, I hurt my back with the simple motion of turning to the side while sitting down and something went dreadfully wrong.  I was wracked with a pain in my lower back that rendered me completely immobile for about 5 minutes, while I tried to figure out how to move without causing the most supreme agony.

Anyway, I suppose it was the best thing that could have happened to me.  It forced me to take the next 5 days off from training.  During that time my legs has a chance to recover (as well as atrophy) while I concentrated on healing my back.  I went to my Chiropractor – Dr. Fenster in Manhattan, and underwent therapy (electro stimulation) and adjustments for the next 4 days.  I also went for a massage that concentrated on my lower back.  By Friday afternoon I was about 80 percent better and had high hope for running this weekend’s Caumsett Park 50K. 

On Saturday before the race, I still wasn’t 100 percent better, but I decided to go for the race anyway.  I got to bed early, ate well and woke up feeling refreshed and only slightly stiff in my lower back.  I didn’t think it would be a problem for the race.  I was more worried about my legs, which had barely ran in the last two weeks, with nothing during the last 5 days.

My friend @aristorat drove to the race and we arrived with only 10 minutes to spare.  There was no stretching, no warm-up run and not even a bathroom break.  It was straight from the car, to the baggage area and then to the start.  I had no running in 6 days with a miserly 10 miles in the past 8 days, but here I was starting a 50K (31.07 miles) completely cold.  Stretching is overrated anyway and who needs to warm up when you are running 31 miles?  It would be interesting to see how my legs would fare.

I tried to run with @aristorat, but he was running a pace I could not keep, so I settled in for a long solo run.  However, soon into the race, a firefighter from Danbury CT named Seth caught up to me and we began to talk.  We were running compatible paces so I ran almost the entire race with him.  We discussed the various races that we’ve done, but in truth, I listened more to all the races that he did.  Seth is under 30, single with no kids and a girlfriend that races with him all over the country.  I can’t even begin to remember the names of all of the races he mentioned.   I always thought it would be great to have a GF/Wife that liked to run with you, or at a minimum show an interest.   Seth is a lucky fellow.

In the beginning of the run I had high hopes of breaking 5 hours and possibly my 50K PR.  I discovered early on into the race that this was clearly not going to happen.  I went into survival mode early and just hoped that I would have multiple second winds.  For the most part, my body cooperated and didn’t give me too much trouble.  I was glad to be running with Seth however, as he definitely kept me moving.  I have no doubt that without him next to me I would have slowed down and probably walked.  After the race, Seth mentioned the same thing to me.  It’s amazing how when you put two people together in a race, that the two of them are able to do better than they could individually.  It’s not like we were drafting off each other.  It has to do with the competitive nature of putting two humans together.

There is not much more to describe about this race.  It’s a 3.1 mile loop course, so you get to see the same things 10 times over.  Not much changed except for the direction of the sun and the amount of miles remaining as the day wore on.  The miles seemed to tick away, except for the 26^th mile which seemed to take forever.  Possibly because that marks marathon distance, but I attribute the slowness of that mile passing more to my Polar GPS missing it’s signal for a time and therefore making the miles between 25 – 26 take forever.

People think it is amazing that I can run such distances.  However, what I am doing is nothing compared to the real ultrarunners out there.  I am a little concerned with how sore I am with running this distance considering all of the miles I’ve put in lately.  I figured I would have been able to run it faster and come out in better shape.  I was beat up after the run and just wanted to rest.  I am not sure what this all means as I train for the Vermont 100.