Don't let comparison be the thief of joy

Recently I decided to stop posting the data from my runs on social media. It's not because I'm ashamed or embarrassed of my paces (even though my fast pace right now is slower than what many claim to be their easy pace) I did it because I think so many people, myself included, get too caught up in pace. Pace should not does not define a runner.

I follow many faster runners on social media, sometimes I would see the paces they are hitting and get down on myself. My problem wasn't just me comparing myself to other runners, but also comparing myself to the runner that I was over 2 years ago when I had my marathon PR. I'm not other runners, and I'm not the same runner I was when I was hitting a sub 3:30 marathon. My goals right now are completely different from what I was doing when I was "faster". Trying to compare 2 entirely different things is a complete waste of my time.  

Transitioning from a road marathoner to a trail ultra runner and letting go of speed is sometimes hard on the ego. I'm learning how to embrace the fact that pace will vary from a slow jog to crawling uphill with some actual running mixed in. I'm trying to be proud of runs with an overall pace that often resemble a fast walk. My focus is shifting to quality time on the trail and enjoying the journey often in the company of great people. I'm becoming much less concerned about running a "good" time and more about having a good time running. If you don't enjoy it, then what's the point?

Comparison is the thief of joy. Running is my joy and I refuse to let anything or anyone (including my stubborn self) steal that from me! I may be slow AF, but right now I don't give a F*#k!

Surf the Murph 50k recap

On Saturday October 22, 2016 I became an ultramarathoner!

Here is my account of as many of the details as I remember, probably way more than anyone else wants to read but A) I like to get as much as I can written down for my own record to reference back to for future events B) I'm not sure that anyone else even reads this, if you are reading this, thank you, and please bear with me! 

I signed up for Surf the Murph 50k just 3 weeks prior to race day. I knew I wanted to run a 50k and had been putting in the miles, but wasn't following any sort of training plan. Although this would be my longest run to date, I went into it with a much more relaxed attitude then I have for any other race. The week leading up to the race I didn't even get my usual taper/pre-race anxiety & mood swings like I've had going into all my marathons. Maybe because I broke out in a terrible poison oak rash on Monday which occupied my mind instead!

my entire left forearm covered in poison oak rash!

Friday night I ate spaghetti and a salad for dinner, packed my drop bag and got everything set out and organized for the morning. I was in bed just after 9:00 p.m. but didn't fall asleep right away. Once I did fall asleep I slept better than I usually do before a race. I had set 2 alarms for 4:00 a.m. but ended up waking up on my own at 3:30 and got out of bed at 3:45.

Travis came with me since it was my first ultra, but this would be the last race he plans on coming to. (I think I've heard this before, but this time I believe him!) We arrived at the start/packet pickup about 6:25 so I had just the right amount of time to get ready and not enough time to sit around and get nervous. This is a smaller race so even with 3 different distances (50 mile, 50k and 25k) there were no huge crowds or lines to deal with. It was a very laid back atmosphere which I loved.
Start time for the 50k was 7:00 so about 6:55 we all headed to the start area for a briefing and then it was time to go. It felt a little chilly, around 38 degrees, so I started with a fleece sweatshirt that I knew I would drop.

Just before starting

Miles 1- 5.5: It was dark at the start so a headlamp was necessary and I started off easy because I didn't want to trip and fall. I began near the back of the pack then after the first half mile I settled in somewhere between the lead runners and the middle of the pack. The 1st Aid Station came quickly at about mile 2.9, I didn't need anything yet, but I couldn't wait to drop my sweatshirt here. I didn't see anyone else, except for one deer, for quite awhile until I neared the Horse Camp Aid Station. I had a drop bag at Horse Camp (which is mile 5.5, 13, 22.5 & 29.5) so I ditched my headlamp here since it was now full daylight. I topped off my water and was back on course.

Miles 5.5- 13: After Horse Camp it seemed to be pretty flat for a long time, these were my fastest miles of the day. During this stretch I started passing a few other runners along the way, including a woman running the 50 mile in full costume dressed as a witch! The next Aid Station was at mile 9.9 where I grabbed 1/4 banana and added some caffeinated Tailwind to my water bottle. I rolled into the Aid Station at Horse Camp at about 9:05 where I felt like I should eat something but nothing sounded good. I topped off my water bottle and grabbed 3 pretzels, which I had to choke down as they were way too dry to be eating on the run!

Around mile 12
photo by Cole Peyton

Miles 13-17: Just past mile 13 there was a mud hole where I met up with another runner, Brian, and we ran together for a good 10 miles. We shared stories and had a nice chat which was a great distraction as the course was getting hilly again. Just before mile 17 we saw one of the race directors on the course who Brian knew and she asked how the markings were and if we had any trouble with the course. After telling her it was perfect we ended up totally missing a turn and went off course, thankfully we came to a road after about 1/8 mile and discovered our error! When we got back on course we saw how embarrassingly obvious the marking was and have no idea how we missed it but thought the timing was pretty comical! Needless to say I more carefully watched the markings from here on out. We had passed several runners but I don't recall being passed by anyone else after mile 13.

Miles 17-22: Mile 17 passes back through the course start and there was an aid station here. I topped off my water again, added some more Tailwind and grabbed 1/4 PB&J sandwich, which I had a little trouble getting down. We were back to the hilliest part of the course and did a lot of power hiking on the uphills. At this point my quads and knees were starting to scream on the downhills. We stopped briefly at the mile 20 Aid Station where I sipped on some plain water, then off to keep tackling those hills. We arrived back at Horse Camp, mile 22.3, where I found Travis and had him take my drop bag since I figured I wouldn't need anything from it.

Miles 22-27: Brian and I took off from Horse Camp and continued together for about another mile or so. I figured he would drop me sooner or later but he actually told me to go ahead and I reluctantly did. After we parted ways I ran on my own for the duration.This section didn't feel nearly as flat as it had the first time through, but I managed to drop my pace down a little for a few miles. I was about to enter mileage that I had never reached before and it was starting to get tough.

Miles 27-29.8: I stopped at the Aid Station just before mile 27 and just topped off my water bottle and grabbed a Kleenex for my nose that had been runny, food did not even cross my mind at this point. There were a few rolling hills during this section and I ran/jogged them as much as I could just to get them over with!

Miles 29.8-33: One last stop at Horse Camp where I topped off my water and ate 3 potato chips because salt sounded good. I called Travis after I left the aid station to give him my ETA. I thought I only had about 3 miles left at that point but it was closer to 4 so he had to wait a little longer than the 30 minute warning I optimistically gave him. The 2nd loop seemed a lot hillier toward the end than I remember and the last 3 miles felt like forever! I never felt like quitting but by mile 30 I was questing why I was doing this! At mile 31, which is true 50k distance, I was questioning why I picked a long 50k!

Mile 33-33.6: I saw that last mile marker sign and knew that I just needed to make it up one last hill and I would be there. It felt like the longest 1/2 mile of my life, but I managed to pick up the pace and finish strong. Travis was at the top of the hill, and the finish line was just around the corner. I was so happy to see him and I tried as hard as I could to smile while he took these pictures!

I crossed the finish line and tried to keep moving for a few minutes before picking out my medallion. The finish area was pretty quiet, just a couple dozen people around, which was nice because Travis got to be right there waiting for me. I was tired and my legs were dead, but overall I didn't feel horrible. Brain was the next finisher after me so when he came in we talked again and he offered me a beer, but my stomach wasn't ready so I let Travis enjoy the beer with him instead. After all he got up early and waited around for 6 hours while I was out running so he probably deserved and needed a beer more than me! About 30 minutes later I was ready to go get a beer and some real food!

They brand your chosen wood medallion with
your finish distance when you're done

My thoughts about this race: 
On race day I keep the display screen of my Garmin on time of day so I don't focus on watching my pace, instead I try to run by feel. I'm not fast enough to win any races and I'm perfectly fine with that. My main goal these days is to run fast enough to get a decent time, but slow enough to enjoy the time. If you don't enjoy it, what's the point, right?! For the most part I really enjoyed the run so I would say it was a success! I feel like this was a great choice for my 1st ultramarathon even though the course is on the longer side for a 50k. The elevation change, while larger than I'm used to, was really not too extreme and the course was all very runable.  The event was very well organized and the volunteers and Aid Stations were amazing!

Amazing spreads at the Aid Stations...
too bad I'm not an eater while I run!

Race Results:
Based on my "training" I predicted I would finish in 5.5 - 6 hours.
With an official time of 5:42:02, I ended up being the 4th female and 15th overall out of 92 50k finishers.
Overall average pace: 10:10, average moving pace: 9:58, fastest mile 8:15, slowest mile 12:15
The great thing about ultra running is that nobody even really cares about your finish time, it seems to be much less about competition and more about camaraderie.

Race Day Fuel:
1 cup of coffee at 4:15 am.
Bagel with peanut butter 2 hours prior to start and sipped on about 1 cup of water.
During the race I consumed a total of 400 calories of Tailwind (1/4 of which were caffeinated) with approximately 60-80 oz. of water
1/4 banana
3 pretzels
1/4 PB&J sandwich
3 potato chips

I was also carrying a package of Honeystingers but never even thought about taking them and had an additional 200 calories of Tailwind that I did not use. Food does not go down or sit well with me while running and I honestly think I could have skipped the little bit I did try to eat and been fine with nothing but Tailwind.

Post Race/Recovery: When I got home after the race I took an ice bath followed by a warm Epsom salt soak then a hot shower. Other than sitting down for lunch, the hour long car ride home and sitting in the bath I didn't sit much the rest of the day/night. We actually went to a Halloween party/haunted house and I was on my feet for a few hours but as soon as I hit my bed at 11:15 I was out.
I was stiff when I got up the next morning and the first time going down our 16 stairs was very slow and painful but within a half hour of getting out of bed I was already starting to loosen up. My quads were the most sore, however not even nearly as sore as they were after Boston. Surprisingly my calves weren't too bad, especially considering they were starting to tighten up less than half way through the race. The more I moved around the better, if I sat for too long on Sunday my quads got stiff. Monday DOMS set in a little and I was probably the most sore this day, but the more I walked around the better I felt. I did some walking, but took 3 full days off from running, Wednesday night I will attempt a very slow run and ease back in from there.

Training: While I say I didn't technically train for this, I didn't just jump into it completely unprepared since this race was on my radar. I had been running an average of 30-40+ miles per week since June. 80% of these miles were slow and I focused on keeping a low heart rate to build up my aerobic endurance. I had done really no speed training since before running the Fargo Marathon in May. I did long runs including 18.6 miles on trails, 18 road miles with rolling hills, 26 miles mostly on trails, 21 miles mostly on trails, 20 road miles, 27 miles mostly trails (after running 10 miles the night before), 19 miles on the trails at Afton State Park after 8.5 miles of trails the night before, then back to back 10 mile runs the weekend before the race. Long run and mileage wise my training was good, however next time I know I need to do speed-work and a lot more hill training.

A Change of Pace

I've come to the conclusion that it's time to work on getting better, not just trying to be faster. This not only applies to running, but to my life in general. I'm always rushing around trying to get as much done as fast as possible so I can move on to the next thing. I thought I was living life to the fullest. The truth is, I'm so caught up in what's next, that I'm never living in the moment. I'm always impatient and feeling rushed and this is not a fun way to live. Even running, which I really do love and enjoy has started to not feel as fun anymore.

As far as changing the way I run, I've been looking at Heart Rate (HR) based training such as Maximum Aerobic Function or MAF for a while now. I trained for Boston using a plan from the book Advanced Marathoning which had me running by HR rather than just running certain paces. I did a lot of slower running but was able to run more miles per week than I ever had before with no injuries and not feeling tired all the time. While Boston didn't go as well as I had hoped, I believe the way I trained gave me the potential to do great had the conditions been better. I want to continue to build on that training and see where it takes me.

Since I don't really have any more races planned for this year, I've decided I'm going to spend the rest of 2016 focusing on building a strong aerobic base. This means slowing way down!

This will not be easy for me, it means I need to swallow my pride and trust the process. When I started running in 2010 my paces were between 9:30 - 10:00 minutes per mile. In 2014 I ran the Twin Cities Marathon at a 7:53 pace. Today I did my first run keeping my HR in the aerobic zone (under 144 beats per minute for me) at an average pace of 10:56 minutes per mile! 7 miles which would normally take me less than an hour, at what I would have considered a easy to moderate effort, took me an hour and 16 minutes today. Talk about a hard pill to swallow! But as hard as it was to go slow, I felt great the entire time and felt like I could have kept running all day.

I may occasionally run a little faster, but for the next 6 months I'm going to focus on doing 80% of my running in this aerobic zone and see what happens. I am not a patient person and this will be a huge test for me. I'm excited for a new challenge, especially if it has the potential to improve not only my running, but also other aspects of my life. By slowing down I will not only become a stronger and faster runner, but also a more balanced and patient person. While I want to run fast, I don't want my life to keep passing by at such a hectic pace. I'm hoping this plan will help me slow down and learn to live in the moment.

Fargo Marathon

A few days after returning home from Boston I decided I was going to run another marathon sooner rather than later.  Signing up for another race right away as a "do over" isn't recommended, but I knew I could do better and feel better. I needed to experience that good feeling so I wouldn't give up on running. I had also started doubting the training program I had followed since it was completely different from how I've trained in the past. But it didn't seem fair to judge it based on the not so ideal race conditions that Boston presented so I wanted to give it another shot.

I wanted just enough time to recover yet be able to maintain the fitness I gained during my training cycle without having to start all over. The Fargo Marathon was just under 5 weeks after Boston and only 3 hours from home. I hadn't run it before and a gal I follow on Instagram was running it for the 3rd time and recommended it, so I decided to go for it!

In between returning home from Boston and Fargo Marathon I really tried to focus on eating as clean and healthy as possible and I cut out alcohol, with the exception of about 4 beers during the entire 4 weeks. I didn't run at all for 5 days, but did do a ton of walking around Boston the 2 days after the marathon. Leading up to Fargo I did longish runs of 12, 12, 16 and 14 miles, 2 speed workouts, a tempo run and several easy 5-6 mile runs. Overall this mini training cycle felt pretty easy but I felt ready for another 26.2. That being said, I still had no race plan or real goal because I didn't want to put too much pressure on myself. I went into this marathon not really knowing if I would try to "race" it or maybe just consider it a long training run for a 50k I'm thinking about doing. I was just going to wing it and decide how I felt once I got out there.

Tara, my new Instagram friend, who I got to meet Friday night, had a goal of 3:35. I felt pretty confident that I could manage that pace well so I decided I would start out near her and see how it went.

The marathon starts and finishes inside the Fargodome which was awesome to have real bathrooms and not have to stand around outside in the cold before starting! The marathon started at 7:30 but we got there by about 6:15 so I had plenty of time to relax a little before lining up at the start.

I spotted Tara near the 3:35 pacer at the start but couldn't quite fight my way through the crowd to get next to her before the gun went off. Fortunately it was a smaller race and after we got outside I was quickly able to make my way next to her. We started talking and running together and the first 3 miles seemed to go by in no time.

Miles 1 - 7 were mostly through neighborhoods, there were a few random people out cheering but it was fairly quiet and not too exciting.  (Splits 8:31, 7:55, 8:04, 7:55, 7:58, 8:00, 8:08)

At mile 7 the course moved from the streets to a paved bike path along the Red River which was a nice change of scenery. At mile 8 I heard my name and found my friend Nekaya who came along to support me. About 25 feet past Nekaya was Tara's family cheering for her, it was a nice boost! We continued along the river, first on the ND side, then crossing over to MN at mile 9. At mile 11 we were back on the streets and I was still feeling pretty comfortable but starting to get hot. (Splits 8:08, 8:06, 7:58, 8:05)

Miles 12 - 13 went through the campuses of MN State University - Moorhead and Concordia College and there were some nice cheering sections along this stretch. At about 15.5 miles we were back to the river trail and crossing back into ND. Tara and I were still together but by mile 16 I had gotten a little ahead of her and from there we began our own races. (Splits 8:07, 8:18, 8:13, 8:18, 8:18)

By mile 17 I turned on my music and just tried to focus on keeping my groove. Running through some more neighborhoods and there seemed to be more crowds out cheering now. I felt pretty relaxed and my legs still felt great but by mile 20 my mind was starting to fight against me and I was getting hot. I saw on a bank sign somewhere around mile 20 that the temperature was 71 but thankfully there was a good amount of shade. Several houses had sprinklers out to cool us off, I made sure to run through every one of them! I can't remember which mile, maybe somewhere around 21 I saw Nekaya again which was a much needed boost, she even got this picture of me and I look pretty happy!

The next couple miles started to get tough mentally but my legs still felt good. For some reason mile 23 seemed to go on forever and was the worst! I was wondering why I do this to myself and just wanted to be done for good. (Splits 8:07, 8:01, 8:17, 8:15, 8:14, 8:13, 8:26)

Once I hit mile 24 I knew I had slowed down but it didn't matter, I was going to finish and I was happy with how everything was going. I just focused on moving forward. You could see the Fargodome by mile 25 and it seemed to be taking forever to reach it! Nekaya was right at mile 26, before I made my way back into the dome, giving me that last boost that I needed to finish strong! (Splits 8:25, 8:17)

I pushed as hard as I could and finished that last .2 at a 7:32 pace. Final time was 3:34:58 and I was beaming as I crossed that line!

I heard Tara's name shortly after I crossed and waited to give her a high-five. We both qualified for Boston and we had a great time celebrating together the rest of the day and into the night!

I really enjoyed myself for the majority of the race and thought Fargo put on a great event. It was exactly how I wanted to feel during Boston and was exactly what I needed to experience. Even better is the fact that I earned a second chance to have a great run in Boston!

A few things I did different for Fargo that I think helped me; I made sure to eat 250-300 grams of carbohydrates the 3 days prior to the marathon, mostly brown rice, whole grain bagels, quinoa, and a small amount of fruits & vegetables. I didn't carry my phone because at Boston it annoyed me and the strap ended up chaffing my arm. I didn't try to carry my own drink because that was annoying too. Instead I took a Shot Blok every couple miles beginning at mile 4, alternating between caffeinated and non-caffeinated and took water at almost every water stop. I didn't wear compression socks because I actually think they made my legs feel worse/heavier, they may have been too tight.

I felt great after the race and was able to go out and enjoy myself and I was barely sore at all. 3 days later I don't even feel like I ran a marathon! The flat course probably helped some...and my next race will be the exact opposite when it comes to elevation change!

The only bad thing I can think of, the chaffing that resulted from the Shot Bloks that were stored in the built-in pocket on my sports bra. I didn't feel it at the time, but man did that sting when I took a shower, ouch!