As you know (if you really do keep track of the stuff I do), today I ran my 4th 50K/32-mile ultramarathon. I got to the race venue and could hardly find a place to park. The 100K runners had arrived early. Their race started an hour before ours did. Eventually I found a place to park and got my race bib. The RD (race director) Dan then began to wax eloquent, giving us runners much helpful information about the race. I was also just hanging out with all the other runners. You might recall that this year's race was themed "TV shows from the 80s and 90s." I saw a bunch of crazy costumes, including the one worn by this guy. I thought it made him look amazingly a lot like David Hasselhoff.
Finally it was "go" time. I went out with the middle-of-the-packers and settled into my normal pace for races of this distance.
The race went surprisingly well for me. Oh, there were the usually glitches, like this blister ...
... and this bleeding (yes, I cut my toenails before the race but apparently not carefully enough. Something to work on for my next time).
At any rate, like I said, the race went a lot better than I had anticipated. In fact, it was by far the easiest and most enjoyable of the 4 ultras I've done to this point in my life. As I drove home, I pondered the question, "Why was this so?" I can think of 3 possible reasons.
1) The weather. My oh my, it could simply not have been better. The temp never once got above 75, and most of the race was run under a cool cloud cover. Again, the weather was PURR-fect, and this is not always the case. But it was today thank the Lord.
2) My steps. I think that maybe getting in an average of 17,000 steps daily for the past year and a half made an amazing difference in my strength and stamina today. My legs never once felt tired, and in fact I ran the second half of the race (the last 16 miles) faster than I ran the first half. And when I finished the race, I felt surprisingly refreshed and relaxed.
3) My weight. The last time I did a 50K race I weighed 240 pounds. Today, I weighed -- get this -- 45 pounds lighter than before. You know, maybe there IS something after all to the injunction in Heb. 12:1 to "strip off every weight"!
Really, the only thing I do not like so much about these races is how lonely it gets out on the course. Today I counted fewer than 70 participants in the 50K race, and once everyone gets going, the field begins to thin out and before you know it you're running all by yourself for miles and miles on end.
But that's really the only downside about these events. Every race I've run with Virginia Adventures was worth every mile. Today the wheels never came off, and I ran most of the race with a big smile on my face. I finished in 8 hours, which was a new PR for this distance if I calculated correctly.
I got a lot of congratulatory texts from my family, which I GREATLY appreciated, but the fact is that the people in my life who love me don't really care how fast I run or even if I run another race. They're just sincerely happy to see me happy, and vice versa.
This doesn't mean that I still won't train hard, but it does mean that as long as I give it 100% I can be at peace with myself. And I know I gave it all I had today.
Thanks for reading!
P.S. After the race -- Mexican food! What else could you want???
