just another Saturday in hell

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October 9, 2015

Only the weak blame parents, their race, their times, lack of good fortune, or the quirks of fate

 – Louis L’Amour

People who know me, know this… I hold a certain disdain for organised ‘citizen’ racing. Running, Riding, Swimming, Tri-geek stuff, or anything else for that matter. The way I see it, if you want to run a marathon, then just pull on your shorts, lace up your shoes and head out the door. Run your 40 kilometers or whatever, then come home, and have a sandwich. You don’t need to pay hefty entrance fees to do this. You don’t have to hang out with a bunch of wankers. You don’t have to line up for portable toilets. Do you really need another t-shirt or cheap finisher’s medal? Sure I used to do some of this stuff in the past, but eventually the lustre sort of wore off. Then again, I’m not really a ‘people’ person so it kind of makes some sense in my case. Maybe some people need this kind of motivation to workout, train, or exercise, or whatever you want to call it. I don’t. As you can probably tell, there is going to be a ‘but’ coming up here pretty soon. So without any further preamble or delay… here it is…

But…the other week a co-worker came to me. Someone I actually like.  He was in a bit of a bind and was wondering if I could help him out. The deal was this. He had assembled a team to run a 100k off-road relay race. The problem was that one of their team had to drop out at the last minute. So here he was looking for a fill in. He was aware that I have done a bit of running, but also knew to some extent my aforementioned thoughts on racing. Yet there he was standing in my office… I should have said no.

Some more background information to pad out the story a bit… I got this invitation a week and a half from race day. Also my ‘running’ as of late had been somewhat half-hearted and minimal to say the least. I had in fact been running only three times in the last two months. And these were more or less only very modest ‘jogs’ at best. Most of my running is zone one stuff in any case. So overtraining was certainly not going to be an issue here. I had about ten days, so I figured I had plenty of time to train. I got in exactly two more runs prior to the event. I figured that my longest leg could take a slug like me an hour to complete, so I went out and ran an hour. Check! Man running is hard. Next were the hills. There was supposed to be some serious elevation gain on the course. Well at least what passes for serious in this part of the world.  My hilliest leg had about 150m of elevation gain and loss. I went out and ran a 150m hill. Check; Training complete!

More background information to elicit sympathy from you the reader (or just to highlight that I am a whiner deep down inside)… I had to travel for work the week of the event, which was on a Saturday. I returned home Friday evening late, with a three hour time change to contend with and the worst head and chest cold I have had in years. I was one very tired and sick dog. But I had committed to these guys, and I couldn’t very well back out mere hours prior to the start time.

Badass

 ____________________

Dumbass

Here is the fine line between Badass and Dumbass

I sort of knew two of these jamokes from work, the other two I had no clue about. We met in the dark at a local park and ride at 0600 and would car-pool about an hour to the start of the race. Turns out this was a fun group of fit people, who while competitive, also had a pretty light-hearted attitude. They loved taking the piss out of each other, and about anyone else we came across. It soon became apparent that one needed a sense of humour for what was coming up.

The race was 100 kilometres long and divided into 15 legs. Each team had five members so it made sense that we each ran three legs, somewhat evenly spaced apart and in equal in total length. Where the fun started to come into play was in the course itself. Not all legs were created equal, and this was billed as an off-road adventure race. I had pre-selected the legs I was going to run, and because the team was in need of a warm body, they graciously allowed (or at least did not complain about) my first picks. I selfishly picked what I thought were the easiest. Actually my only real criteria that I used, was picking the three sections that advertised the minimal amount of poison ivy to be expected. Some were labelled  ‘maximum’ and ‘extreme’ I picked, ‘none’, ‘minimum’, and ‘medium’.

As it happened the order had me running last. I was the last member of our team to start a leg and I also was to run the last leg. So that had me running legs five, eleven, and fifteen. We reckoned that there were probably close to 400 teams competing, so a fair number of people to contend with, but as the day wore on the legs were increasing less crowded. The gun went off at 0730. Our lead man was our fastest and he had to contend with the full complement of asses and elbows on the 7.5 km first leg. Most of the sections had us piling in the truck and driving to a transition zone at the start of the next leg. Only one or two sections started and stopped in the same place.

Hours passed and about 24 kilometres before I had to run. So I hydrate, pee, hydrate, pee, etc. All the time feeling like the dogs breakfast. At the appointed time I made my way to the transition chute and eventually my guy was in sight and we made the tag and I was officially in it. I probably went out too fast, but that’s typical for me. There was a warning about missing a turn on this part of the course so I had carefully calculated at what time that might be and had my chronograph set accordingly. After maybe five minutes or so I noticed something. Lots of people were passing me. People that didn’t look like they should be passing me either. Fat dudes. Frat boys. Old dudes. Chicks.  Mmmm? It wasn’t that hot of a day, but my throat was dry and parched. It was a pretty decent trail for the most part. A bit sandy in sections and some exposed roots. There were equal parts up and down of about 140 metres in total. I was feeling pretty hammered and I wasn’t even halfway through the 8.5 kilometre leg. At least I didn’t miss the turn I had been worried about. The middle section was on a gravel road and at least I managed to pass a few staggering folks. It brought to mind a saying about tough workouts. A tough workout will make you think you are going to die if you continue. A really tough one will make you want to prefer to die than to continue. To add insult to injury, near the end when I was back in the forest again, slogging and wheezing my way up one of the many hills, two young women handily passed me carrying on a casual and unlaboured conversation. I could hear the transition before I could see it. Finally I staggered across the line and tagged J who had a bottle of water as a hand-off baton. I was exhausted and speechless. Regardless of all the peppy and encouraging talk of my mates, I was wasted. It was no wonder that leg was called Purgatory.

All the while I was slowly recovering from that effort I was trying to figure just how the hell I was going to finish two more sections. I was done. But I couldn’t be. There were more hours of waiting and driving from transition to transition. My next section was called Vertigo, and although short in length at about 4.6, kilometres, and short in elevation at 90m; it was not short in steepness. It took S a pretty long time to finish the prior leg. I was beginning to get worried about her. We had been hearing stories from our team and others about casualties out on the course all day long. People collapsing and being carried off the course. Some woman fell and split her jaw open. People were being taken to the hospital. But in time she showed up, but man did she look shagged. There were only a very few teams left in the transition. The good thing about this leg is that only a couple of people passed me, and I was doing a lot of passing. It had some very steep portions that made for pretty treacherous downhill’s, and there were lots of logs crossing the trail that had to be negotiated.  At least here I was in my element. I’ve spend years rapidly descending steep rough ground. If I hadn’t been so exhausted it would have actually been a bit of fun. The last bit was again on some gravel roads, with the final last little bit before the finish being a neck deep wading through a mucky pond. Soaked to the arse and beat. But wait… there’s still one more leg to go.

There were three more sections that J, M, and B had to run, totalling about 14 kilometres so I had a bit of time to dry-off, change clothes and shoes, drink, choke down some gu and pop some Aleve cold meds. Yep, performance enhancement drugs folks.  Although I am claiming  tainted meat if anyone asks.

So it came down to the last leg. 7 kilometres, more or less. A lot of people legally ‘cheated’ in this race. By that I mean they started a leg prior to their teammate finishing the last one. It was condoned and even encouraged to a degree. They still had to account for the time and run all sections, but what it did was to thin out the pack to a huge degree as the day and race wore on. We did not resort to any such shenanigan’s, although we briefly wrestled with the idea. B materialized out of the trees, tagged me and I was off. This was a glorious section and justifiability named Glory. I passed a fair number of people that all looked in pretty poor shape. I made a point of asking how each one was doing. Many had resorted to shuffling or walking. This leg was supposed to have the most elevation gain of my sections at over 150 metres, but it seemed pretty well hidden. I got caught by a young lady about halfway in who shadowed me for a few kilometers and we chatted some. We got passed by one guy who informed us we were almost done.  Really? I was done on the last leg! I told the lass to go ahead, because I couldn’t keep her pace much longer. A kilometre or so later and the finish was in sight and my teammates were all there to run across the line with me. It took me just a hair over 50 minutes to go those 7K, pretty pathetic. We ended up in 200^th place out of 358, and there were 22 teams that did not finish. We had projected a time of about 11 hours in total and we were 12 minutes over that. There was still some pizza left and some beers, but I indulged without much appetite or enthusiasm. The real dumbass part of the story ended up the following week when I was laid up in bed for a couple of days with strep throat.

So, you’ve just read about what a putz I was, now let me blather on a bit more about some actual training stuff that’s germane to the story. This little caper illustrates two pretty important things. The first is that our old friend the SAID principle was hard at work. Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demand. You get better at what you practice or train at. You can’t expect to turn in a good running performance if you don’t run. There… I said it. Simple as that. The same holds true for virtually everything, but we happen to be talking about running. And even though I have been rabbiting on at length as of late against running as a fitness tool, there is one unescapable fact, and that is if you want to be truly fit, and I mean truly fit in a complete way, you need to be able to run.

The corollary to all of this is however, is that you don’t really need to run much, if at all, to be fit enough to pull something like this race off. You can build a reasonable aerobic base and leg strength with only a few kettlebells and some bodyweight exercises. I showed that this is indeed possible. Now don’t expect to win, or have a good finishing time, or not to suffer (because you will), but you can finish, and you can have a good time.

If, and it’s a big if, I were to do this again, I would actually specifically train for it. But you know I would do all that other stuff too…