Oh Well…

I’ll write more about my race a bit later when I am more rested.

Bottom line: 40 miles in the first 12 hours (ok; it was hot a times). But, only 18 miles in the last 12 hours, as I combated waves of nausea and I took several 2 hour plus breaks (3)

The good part is that I started out at an easy 15:30-15:45 pace (much of it with Lawrence Block) and more or less maintained that for the better part of the first 4 hours or so. Then it got hot (at least for me; it was 34 F when I left Peoria).

The bad news: at 8 hours I ate my second meal; this one was a hamburger. A hamburger worked at 4 hours and digested nicely. At 8 hours, PART of it digested and indeed helped. But about half did not; that ended up coming up.

Then started the following routine: walk, get sick, rest/nap for 1-2 hours, walk another 4 miles, get sick again, rest/nap. My legs felt fine and my body felt fine; it was my stomach that was killing me.

Finally after a sustained break, I was able to walk slowly for the last 3 hours; I had the pleasure of seeing several new centurions and of seeing the 48 hour finisher David Groggins get well over 200 miles, and the woman’s winner Connie Gardner (runner) getting 145 miles to set a new American women’s record. She blasted out 9 minute miles toward the end and made it look easy.

The course itself was a park road “out and back” on the shore of a lake. At night, the frogs, toads and other animals made quite a racket. There was also a period of howling coyotes which was pretty cool.

Overall results are here Unfortunately, the walkers are not distinguished in the 24 hour results.

I do have some of my own data: (every two miles:

31:06
31:31 (1:02)
31:33 (1:34)
30:59 (2:05)
31:07 (2:36)
31:00 (3:07)
31:09 (3:38)
30:57 (4:09)
34:30 (4:43) (eat)
41:45 (5:25) (switch shoes)
36:38 (6:02)
34:41 (6:37)
36:41 (7:13) marathon
39:00 (7:52)
40:19 (8:33) eat
35:59 (9:09) (8:51 at 50K)
34:54 (9:44)
34:10 (10:18)
34:21 (10:52)
43:32 (11:36) (stomach problems start here) 40 miles
Mile 44: 14:53; it took 2:58 to do these 4 miles, or about 1:20 rest
2:55:42 (17:48:54) mile 46 sick as a dog
36:54 (18:25)
40:21 (19:06) started to get sick AGAIN: Mile 50.
2:50:37 (21:56) mile 52
38:35 (22:35)
38:59 (23:14)
45:00 (23:59) slowly walked 2 more mile on the “short lap (400 meter)” loops; cheered the other runners and walkers on.