Until There Are No More Steps Left To Take

Still Hollow Trail Half Marathon

Distance: 13.1 (completed only 10K of it)
Time: N/A
Place: DNF

As you can see from my big fat DNF that I dropped from this race. Not what I wanted to do, at all, since I have never dropped from a race ever in my life. It was a tough but smart decision to make midway into the race. Also, it has taken me awhile to write this because to be perfectly honest with myself who wants to write about dropping from a race. Also, I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses. Don't get me wrong there are legit excuses out there in the world, but I hate it when people do it and constantly talk and talk about why they did horrible. So I hope not to sound redundent and just explain what happen and what I think went wrong.

To start off, I honestly did nothing out of the ordinary the night before my race. I chilled at home, listened to music to pump me up, ate dinner at a reasonable time, and drank plently of fluids (mostly water). The only thing that went differently that I can think of was that I didn't get a wink of sleep. I went to bed but never fell asleep, and it wasn't because I was nervous of the race. I was thinking more about my future whether I'd get into physical therapy school or not and what I would do if I didn't. Staying up all night ended up making me pee every 45 minutes or so for some reason and with that I became dehydrated. Also, if I'm completely honest with myself I'd have to say that my head was not honestly in it. I mean yeah there were several people I was wanting to beat, but for some reason I just didn't have it mentally. I am a little more concerned with Stump Jump 50K in a few months.

Start!

The race started off great. I felt great taking off and feeling strong for a whole 1 mile and then around mile 2 my hamstrings started to cramp and tighen up. And when I say tighen up I mean tighen up! My hanstrings hadn't felt like that since 2 years ago when I ran my first 50K around mile 26 with minmal training for my first ultra. So when that happened I knew something was up with my body. I progressively got slower and slower. It didn't help that the course was covered with mulch. It almost felt like I was running in sand.  When I would run around tight turns and downhill my hamstrings felt like they were in overdrive. Around mile 4 or 5,  people were passing me that shouldn't be passing me and I was sweating profusely non stop.  I knew I was probably going to drop and where I could do it I couldn't get there fast enough.

I did wrestle with dropping or not. I thought about reading Anton Krupicka's blog (his race report). In his lastest race Speedgoat 50K, he just wasn't feeling it and his legs felt dead (of couse his world class slow is on a different level than mine), but he pushed through it to finish 4th in this race right behind Max King if that tells you how fast those guys are out West. Then another image/reminder came into mind. I'm currently reading Alberto Salazar's book 14 Minuters (so far is a great read) and I just read the part where he pushed through a race and did finish. However, he pushed his body toward heatstroke and almost died and in theory should have had brain damage because his body temperature was 108 for so long. At that moment in time when I thought about that, I was hurting and know what the symptoms are for heat stroke and the lesser heat exahustion. I knew what I had to do and that was drop. Once I dropped I kept sweating profusely and didn't stop. Also I started to get cold chills and a woman ask me if I was ok. I said yes and calmly sat down and ingested fluids and waited and watched as everyone finished.


I'm a little bummed but not too much. I'd rather have things go wrong and drop this race instead of it happening to me during Stump Jump. My eyes are looking towards that race anyway. No matter how much we do things right sometimes our body can decided otherwise. Now it's time to buy some new shoes and put the mileage in. I'm pretty excited about Stump Jump and my goal is to cut an hour off my time from running it 2 years ago. Fall weather is just around the corner and I'm so glad. This hot weather can almost make you hate running. Onward to Stump Jump 50K!!!

Right Before I Dropped

Thanks for reading!