North Face 50: Look What We Can Do! (or) Shiny Happy People Holding Hands

Ok here we go. I've had a couple of days to relax and process. And oh, did I need to process. So many. Emotions. Really it was the overwhelming feelings I had about Saturday's race that took longer to absorb that any pain from actually running 50 miles.

So what did running 50 miles feel like?

This is going to sound really weird, but physically it didn't seem that hard.

STOP RIGHT NOW. This is not me bragging about how "easy" it was or how good I am at stuff. I really believe that this was just my training paying off. BIG TIME. And how I worked HARD during training, I can't even begin to tell you. Luckily, Krista was feeling the same way as we ran. We kept saying things like, "The miles/hours keep flying by!" or "I expected to feel soooo much worse by now." We kept waiting for some proverbial wall to come crushing down upon us and reduce us to crawling snail people but it never did. Good training, folks. And a good TAPER. We were so rested and ready for this race it was unreal. At one point we were giggling and shouting "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DOOOO!"

Maybe it was that high five from Dean Karnazes at the starting line? Oooh, there's another idea for a title. "Dean Karnazes is Magic!"

But that's not fair. If anything, Krista and I were magic that day.

Pre-race:




Darkness!




Conditions/Course/Technical Stuff

The course was a little bit of everything and I was happy that we had done a practice run through about a third of it so I had some idea what to expect. The first hour or so in the dark was pretty flat (thankfully!) and it was very serene and calming. The weather was perfect. Like I said before, the early miles seemed to fly by. We chatted, took our gels and salt at the appropriate times and ditched our headlamps after the sun came up. Our pace was very steady and easy and we dutifully remembered to walk the hills. There was a long stretch where we saw our cheering crew at 6 miles but not again until mile 21. We missed them! It was so exciting to round the corner approaching that aid station knowing all our friends were there. And the megaphone Evan brought was an added bonus. Our whole strategy for this 50 miler was to never thing about the distance as a whole. We would break it up into however many miles it was to each aid station and when we got there, hopefully we could erase the previous run from our minds. This would soon become known as "OBLIVIATE". (Thanks be to Harry Potter for that one.)

Anyway, we were clipping along and obliviating all our previous miles as we went. But after mile 21 the trail got significantly more difficult. The route was a 14 mile out and back with an aid station at the turnaround. It. Was. HILLY. This was also the section of the trail that was inaccessible to us the day we came out for a training run. I don't know how it managed to be uphill BOTH ways but it did. Some kind of dark magic was at work here for sure. It seemed like just when we would get a good rhythm going there would be another mountain to climb and we'd be forced to walk again. The good part during this stretch? All the runners ahead of us were doubling back so we got to see a lot of friendly faces. Every person out there was so nice. It didn't matter if someone was passing us or we were passing them. Everyone had kind, encouraging words to say. "Looking good!" "Great job!" or "Keep it up!" I started to make up a song that went, "Evveryyone here is my beeessst friieeeend..." If you want to find the nicest people in the world, run an ultra. Case closed.

The first time I started to feel a little bit sketchy was at the tail end of this hilly section. Somewhere around mile 32 we started to get really quiet and were just concentrating on getting to the next aid station. As we assessed how each other was feeling at this time we quickly decided to dub our situation as Terror Alert Yellow. But light yellow. Although this part was difficult, there were definitely times in my running life where I had felt much worse. Considering we were at mileage in the 30s, things were looking pretty darn peachy.

And then we came up on the mile 35 aid station. We could hear a different voice in the megaphone but were too far away to distinguish who it was. When we came around the bend though we saw Amy was shouting encouragement not only to us but to every other runner on the course. (This is one of the many reasons why Amy is so rad.) And and AND... Rochelle was with her! She had sneakily told me she couldn't make it to the race had been secretly planning to meet us out there the whole time.!

Hugs ensued.

The mile 35 station was such pick-me-up. Not only did we see Ro, but we were picking up our pacer, Evan for the final 15 miles. Final 15! It seemed crazy that we were this far already and feeling this great. I had hoped to get to 35 feeling good-ish but didn't really expect it to happen. Somehow it did. (See again: Training, training, training.)

Final 15



Everyone kept telling us how we were ahead of our projected pace but we never wanted to get too excited about it since anything can happen in those final miles. Evan then told us that if we kept it up we would break 11 hours. (I had been estimating to get in under 12 hours but really just wanted to make it before the cut off at 13 if everything fell apart.) Hearing this was nuts. I didn't even want to think about it. Plus, the hills kept coming even though we thought we were out of the most treacherous part. Of course, the smallest slope starts to seem gigantic when you're approaching mile 40.

Oooh, mile 40! This aid station was a party. There was no crew here but the volunteers were dancing and we did a little shimmy and I ate some Skittles. I really think I tasted a rainbow. I couldn't stop thinking about getting more Skittles for the rest of the race.


This race report is long.


OBLIVIATE!

The next thing I remember is reaching the final aid station and them telling us we had 3.7 miles to go. I wanted to cry I was so excited. My Garmin battery had died by this point so I had no idea we were so close. It was fantastic news... until I started to feel really crappy about a half mile later. (Terror Alert Orange? I was flirting with it.) I took a serious nosedive at mile 47. I could tell Krista was getting a rush of energy because she was picking up the pace and even running some hills that I definitely would have walked! She was amazing. I started to get worried because I didn't want her to have to slow down for me if she was feeling so good but I really really really wanted to finish together. We hit a big sandy hill (curse you sand!) and I asked her to walk for a minute. I needed a final push but didn't know how I was going to get it.

There were some volunteers at the top of the hill who were cheering for us and shouted "Less than 2 miles to go!". I think this was all I needed to hear. TWO MILES. Two miles is nothing. Whenever I get to the point in a training run where I have two miles to go I know I've got it. This was it. I got my second (or third, or fourth) wind. It helped that we hit a long, sloping downhill that allowed me to just let go and have the momentum take me. It was like I wasn't even running again! *Sigh of relief.*

Somewhere along the last mile we emerged from the trail and had to run along the road. I thought this would hurt but I was just so excited about being done that I wasn't even feeling anything anymore. AND THEN WE COULD HEAR THE FINISH LINE! It was still far away but there is was in the distance glowing like a beacon. A shining pool of water in the middle of a scorching desert. It was the most beautiful thing. We waved our hands wildly hoping our friends would spot us in the distance and I warned Krista a bunch of times that I was going to cry.




Finish Line Stuff

As if our cheering crew wasn't awesome enough already, more of our friends had shown up for the big finish. Jason and the kids were there too and Juliana had the megaphone now and was screaming, "Don't stop Mom! You can do it!"



And they were all doing a power arch for us. Because they are the best people you could ever know.







And then Krista and I got married. Wait what? No. It just looks like it. And Amy threw glitter! Just like I wanted. It was magical. Official time: 10:45:06.



Here's a video of the finish:




So you want to run a 50? What should you do?


1. Train hard.
2. REST well.
3. Have the greatest people in the world supporting you. (But you can't have mine!)


I would totally do this again. It was a much bigger commitment than training for a marathon or a 50K but I know for sure this won't be my last 50 miler. I can't say that I have the desire to do a 100 but I would run this distance again in a heartbeat. Who's with me?

If You Work Hard Enough

I've been meaning to write about my upcoming 50 miler for a couple of weeks now but for some reason it hasn't happened. I've been lucky up until now to not really fret or freak out about it that much so I think subconsciously I felt like writing stuff down would burst my bubble of calm about the whole situation. For months now I've been dutifully training my hardest: logging my miles, eating well (for the most part) and getting lots of rest. But by pretending like it's not really that big a deal I've saved myself from sleepless nights and countless hours of worry. Here's the thing though:

It's kind of a big deal.

When I went to go pick up my packet yesterday the girl at the table asked me which distance I was running. When I heard the words "Fiiiftyyy miiiile" come out of my face it almost felt like some robot entity took over my body and while I recognized the tone of my own voice I wasn't sure who or what was forming the sounds. This is the girl who three years ago just wanted to finish her first 5K. I do remember at the finish of that race thinking, "Yeah, I could do twice that. If I worked hard enough."

And THAT my friends, is how things can begin to spiral out of control.

Jason keeps asking me if I'm done at 50 or if I will ever get the bug to run 100 after this. Although he is supportive and proud of the things I've accomplished I can tell that this time it's asked with trepidation. As in, "You're done after this distance... right?" Although I don't see myself being done running ultras, I also don't feel like I'm going to need to keep going farther and farther after this point. I know that I really love the 50K distance. I love running marathons. I also really enjoy running half marathons. Hey, I could even see myself going back to 5Ks and trying to PR there. There's just so much out there to do, so many trails to run, so many things to see. I'm excited to see where this journey takes me from here.

But first I have to run fifty miles.

I leave you with this:




Thanks to Krista for this one. Looking forward to hugs and glitter at the finish line!

Since We're Taking Trips Down Memory Lane...

This was the video I made on Juliana's 2nd birthday. Today she turns 11. Yes, I know it's ridiculous.



After she turned 10 we decided to retire the video tradition. It just got too hard to gather enough material now that she's older. Still, it makes me a little sad that I didn't make one this year. When Ava outgrows it I don't know what I'll do. Maybe I'll start following Jason around and make videos of him.

Someday I will compile them all. And then watch them in succession while I sob like a baby.

Year One:







Happy Birthday, Julibean.

August 24, 1997

On Growing Up

Lately I'm not sure what is harder: growing up yourself, or watching your children grow out of being children. I'm kind of a clinger. I'm a homebody at heart and as much as I like to challenge myself in some areas, I really don't like things to change that much overall. One very big change for me and my family took place about five years ago now when we moved from the Chicago suburbs up here to Milwaukee. It really was one of the best changes we've made so far. However, that transition has also come to signify something else for me. It was the time when I stopped being a mom of babies.

Sure, Ava had only just turned two when we moved out of our cookie cutter townhouse in Bartlett and into our "new" 100-year old Bay View home. But something about the way we had always lived was shifting. I had spent the previous four years in a quiet suburb with at least one baby in a stroller at any given time. My days were filled with Mommy and Me classes, walks to the park, and multiple viewings of Elmo's World. Now Juliana was starting school, and although I still had Ava with me during the day we had ditched the stroller by the time summer came around. We finally found babysitters that allowed Jason and I to get out on date nights on a regular basis- in a town where we actually had places we wanted to go and things to do! It felt like a whole new world was opening. I realized that this meant that my previous world was also ending but I didn't fully internalize the meaning of it until much later.

Two years passed and Ava started K4. I took up running and began meeting all the wonderful people that fill out the circle of friends that I have today. Holy cow, it had been so long since I'd had a circle of friends! By now Juliana and Ava were starting to build friendship circles of their own- outside of friend's children that I had set up play dates with. They started becoming their own people with likes, dislikes and personalities all of their own. They began talking about things they had learned from other kids at school- computer games, catch phrases from tv shows I hadn't seen, and oh, all the YouTube videos. They knew how to work the universal tv remote and all it's options and I didn't. I needed a lesson from Juliana on how to use my phone.

Last week did something I wasn't sure I had the emotional fortitude to do. I put the old Little Tykes plastic car the girls used to ride around out in the alley by the trash. I wrote about it last year because I didn't think I'd ever be able to let it go and what it symbolized. Part of me still can't believe I actually let it go but I set it out by the trash bins and ran away before I could change my mind. An hour later I checked to see if it was still there (and possibly drag it back into the garage) but it was already gone. I spent so many afternoons in our driveway watching one (or both) of them toddling around in that car. First Juli, then Juli pushing Ava, and finally Ava by herself. That $1 garage sale car represented a time where people still came up to me in the grocery store to ask how old my baby was. It was a time when little girls in my house still said words like "bookee" (spooky), "gubs" (gloves) and "swimsoop" (swimsuit). It represented something I didn't have anymore.

But what DO I have? I have two wonderfully imaginative, intelligent, creative, (and yes, a bit nerdy) young ladies. This makes me happy beyond all measure. But I'm also sad for what I no longer have. People always tell you when you have a baby that children grow up in a blink of an eye. When you're up in the middle of the night feeding a baby who won't go back to sleep it feels like words like these are a joke. Little milestones pass one by one though, and everything is so exciting that you never realize the quickness of it all until your almost-eleven-year-old is talking about Twilight and wants to get a Facebook account.

I can remember being in sixth grade so clearly. My friends, what I worried about, what I wore, how I wanted people to see me… all if it remains so vivid to me that sometimes I can't believe that I have a CHILD who is now that same age and living through those same feelings. Middle school was also the time in my life that I started seeing my own mom as a "person" and not as someone who just was there to take care of me. It blows my mind sometimes that I'm now in that role, still, after eleven years of being a parent. Maybe it's because my role keeps shifting. Instead of being the one to spoon carrots into my child's mouth or wipe boogers off their face I'm now here to give advice, check their homework (when I understand it) and guide them down the path to being good human beings.

Life goes by so fast.

Getting There.

Sometimes I think I’m invincible. Well not really immortal, but I have this “thing” where when it comes to something physical, I see no reason why I can’t learn to defeat it. I always tell people that I became a long distance runner partly because I once tried to jog around the park and failed miserably. It gave me something to focus on and conquer. But truthfully my desire to destroy goes back further than that.
I auditioned to be on the pom squad in 7th grade and didn’t make it. I was crushed. However, I was so determined to make it on the team that over the next year I taped every cheerleading and and dance team championship on ESPN I could find. I spent countless hours studying moves and choreographing routines in my basement and in 8th grade not only did I make the squad but I also choreographed the routine that won us first place in a regional competition.

I decided to study dance in college despite never having taken a ballet class. Sure I was a cheerleader. I also went to an arts-based school and participated in musical theatre, but I didn’t TRAIN at a studio for years the way many of my college classmates did. Even so I wanted to transform myself into a modern dancer in the likes of the great Martha Graham. Because I started training much later than others I struggled with technique. However I was natural performer so I used this to my advantage. I soaked up every performance I could attend, read every book on modern dance I could find in the library and stayed late in the studio at night to practice. (I know, cue the Flashdance music!) On an open stage night my freshman year, I choreographed and performed a solo in an attempt to draw attention to myself. It worked. After that I clawed my way from a very beginner class to being asked to perform in concert after concert by my junior and senior years.

I do not give up.

So when I find myself faced with a daunting task like running 26, 31, or even 50 miles, I don’t see any reason why I can’t do it. Maybe it’s crazy to think like that or maybe, just maybe, it’s something amazing. Part of it is just being stubborn but really, barring major injury I never see any reason why I can’t at least finish a race. I’m not talking about winning or even setting personal records- there have been many races where I’ve tried to beat a certain time and fallen short. But I never once thought I couldn’t finish. When I ran Dances with Dirt this past weekend on a treacherous, hilly course, it took us nearly seven hours. The night before? I was excited but not nervous. “We’ll get there when we get there,” was our attitude.

So as I dive into 50 mile training and I stare at training runs of 28, 30 and 32 on my calendar am I scared? That’s not the right word for it. I am ecstatic. I cannot wait to focus, tackle and defeat this latest distance. I know that if I train right and am smart about it, that 50 is just another number. It may take me all darn day but I’ll get there when I get there.

What about you? Do you have a story of determination?

Tracey Takes Part in Something Crazy: Part 756

Oh hey, I did something wild. As if running regular marathons aren’t hard enough I have to seek out new ways in which to torture-- I mean challenge myself. Like maybe run a marathon on wooded trails, climb rocky bluffs, and sweat through scorching prairies. Maybe run through areas where said “trail” is only ever-so-slightly implied. The mere idea of a trail. Yeah, that’s what I wanna do. I wanna cover nearly 3000 feet in elevation. (Like whoa. Thanks for that detail, Krista!)

And I wanna do it with four of my bestest running buddies.

Step one to doing a race like this: Ignore the waiver. After we had already signed our lives away we went back and read the fine print: “I realize that my participation in this event entails the risk of injury, or even death.” Sounds reasonable for a race with a dancing devil as their mascot. Let’s see... insect bites, poison ivy, broken bones, potential death...where do I sign?





Anyway, so after spending the night at Hotel 1972 (otherwise known as the Devil’s Head Resort), me, Annie and Rochelle met up with Marty, Krista, Amy, Matt and Evan at the campground by the start. (I don’t camp. Ever. Especially the night before a marathon so we roughed it with outdated decor and a broken air conditioner.) But what I wimped out on the night before we totally made up for on the race course. Five of us were running the full marathon, Matt and Evan ran the half and Amy ran the 10K.

The details:

Right from the start I could tell this was going to be a long ride. The first four miles were painfullly slow as we climbed hill after neverending hill. Where on earth did all these Wisconsin hills come from and why didn’t I know about them before? The runners were very bunched up which made for a very slow pace and we did a lot of walk/running. The people who ran the hills in the race are my heroes, for real. I didn’t have a time goal for this race since we all planned to run together and simply enjoy the experience so the pace didn’t really bother me that much. It felt very freeing to run with an “I’ll get there whenever I get there” attitude. We were stopping at every aid station for drinks and snacks (Pretzel M&Ms! Wut!) and taking photos as well. Everyone we saw was so supportive as well. I lost count of how many times I said, “Good job!” to runners we passed or to those who passed us.

And then there were the bluffs. The Rockies. My dad had warned me about the bluffs around Devils Lake because he had been fishing there in the past. However, my dad like to warn me about EVERYTHING so I usually let stuff like that roll right off and don't pay much attention. (This is the man who asked if they hand out maps at marathons and chastises me for running alone without pepper spray in Bay View.) Who knew he would be right about this? The hills I thought were difficult in the beginning paled in comparison to these. It was like scaling a rocky mountainside. We were like the Von Trapp Family Singers climbing over the Alps but without the cute Austrian outfits and I don’t think Captain Von Trapp ever called anyone “bitches.” (We love you too Marty!) There were jokes about potential cliff diving taking place once we reached the top and lo and behold when we arrived there were rock climbers rappelling down from the highest point! Really.



I don’t think I ever hit a serious “low” point in this race, which was good. My least favorite part was on a very gravelly path where the pieces of rock were so large and pointy that they felt like they were stabbing through the soles of my shoes. I was the most uncomfortable at this point but I didn’t feel like I was going to die or anything. Win! I kept setting the goal of just getting to the next aid station and never really thought about more than that. Baby steps to the elevator. It wasn’t until we passed through the final water stop (around mile 22) that I started to dream about the finish line. It was then that I think we all got a little bit loopy. At one point we passed through a particular sunny area surrounded by tall grasses and I started picturing myself as Laura Ingalls running through the prairie. It was kind of surreal. Did I miss the part where we all got high? Ah, the joys of running-induced delirium.




The last two miles were kind of a blur. We re-entered the woods and I probably kicked my toe on every stinking rock and root in my path. I didn’t feel like my legs were that heavy but apparently my body was desperately trying to tell my mind that it had enough. As we neared the end we had decided we would link arms and cross “Red Rover” style so we joined up as we came out on to the grass toward the finish area. The first thing I saw was Matt cheering for us and pumping his fist in the air! We turned the corner and saw Amy and Evan at the finish line and we all got a big cheer from the crowd as we crossed! I heard someone say they were impressed that we had all stayed together for the entire race.



Then there was the magical outdoor shower that was like a sweet, sweet waterfall.



And of course, beer! What else? The rest of the afternoon was full of ponies and unicorns as we collected our age group awards and ate piles of food. (To be fair, there was only one other girl besides us in the 30-34 age group but I still drink from my prize mug with pride.)

We basked in the afterglow that is post-race festivities and washed away the memory of how hard the past six hours and forty-three minutes were. Would anyone ever do another race if it wasn’t for the post-race amnesia? Something to ponder.




Nine and a half weeks until my 50 Miler.