FANS 24 Report

Yes, this is me in the last couple of hours of the race.

I’ll quote the race director:

POST-RACE UPDATE
Very cold, very wet weather severely challenged the field, but could not stop Michael Henze from shattering
Danny Ripka’s course record of 136 miles, which had stood since 1999. Henze completed more than 147 miles.

I noticed that Ripka ran much of the later stages of the race without a coat as did the female winner. Not a lot of clothes means not a lot of extra water weight.

I have to admit that I admire those who run fast in these things; it seems that all of them have a very short, very compact efficient stride with not much knee lift.

My race The first 10-15 miles felt fine, though I felt myself starting to slow just a bit. I took Succeed tablets every lap and they worked ok; nausea wasn’t to dog me until I ate solid food 12 hours into the race; by then I shouldn’t have (given that I was exhausted from the effort). My initial laps were a bit too quick as well; the 32-33 should have been 35-36. I was to pay a heavy price later.

Also at about 4 hours I started to get some pain in the back of my right knee; part of it is that I have lots of scar tissue in that leg and it aches during wet weather. The other part is that, where I have put in enough miles to “fake it” through a marathon, I haven’t done enough miles to walk in this fashion for such a long time.

I took Tylenol at 4 and 8 hours. But when I took Tylenol at 4 hours (2 extra strength tablets) I got some face tingles and felt just a tad bit “loopy”; I was worried that I had taken too much sodium? I figured out that it was the combination of the drug and my lower blood volume when I took it again at 8 hours and got a similar effect.

At around 6 hours I knew that it would be rough sledding and I told Bruce Leisure (the racewalk coordinator) that 100 miles was out of the question but that 100 km would be realistic.

Still I was holding a reasonable pace, though after stopping for nutrition at 8 hours, I took some time to change into a new jacket and a dry shirt. That revived me a bit though it took more time off.

At 10 hours I had passed over 40 miles and seemed to have settled at a realistic pace. The rain had lessened and I was enjoying things: the lake (and the huge channel catfish that you could see as you passed over the bridge), the other competitors, etc. One lady had me wondering if I were hallucinating as she put on some white with black leopard spotted tights.

I wasn’t worried about the walking competition; I had lapped Barb Curnow 3 times but I knew that my finishing ahead of her would largely depend on my NOT blowing up as this tough lady tends to walk all of the way through.

It turns out that our competition really amounted to which one of us would sleep less; she had a rough time of it as well.

I was also having a friendly back and forth with the eventual winner of the 12 hour walk; he’d get a bit ahead, stop for one reason or another and then catch up to me. It turns out that we tied at the 12 hour mark.

Food wise, I was eating white bread and bananas; that worked fine for the first couple of feedings.

Crunch time came at 12 hours when I hit 47.7 miles (11:52). I thought “do I eat another solid meal or do I switch to soups/liquids NOW”? I tried more bread; bad mistake.

I almost instantly got sick and that lap (albeit with weigh in, lamp pickup stop) took an ugly 51 minutes. I felt horrible; I had to kick myself into finishing the lap. That did put me at 12:43 for 50.1 miles (best since 2006) but I was miserable; my stomach was turning somersaults. I had thought about trying to tough it out for one more lap (double marathon) but decided to rest for 30 minutes.

30 minutes became 90 and I went out again. The first post rest lap (in the darkness) went very well; I took a swig of diet coke and it went bad again. I had to stop and puke just a bit during the next lap; part of my previous meal didn’t digest (though some of it had). That loop took over 1 hour to do so I stopped again.

This was my protracted rest stop that killed me in terms of distance. I stayed in my car for 4:30; I had woken up at 2:00 into my nap and felt much better but my right knee (behind the knee area) was killing me. So I thought about dropping; I shut my eyes and awoke 2:30 later and my knee felt ok.

I decided that I wanted 100 km so I got up, checked back into the race and got going.

It was 21:41 into the race when I finished that lap (now 57.5 miles) and I was walking better. In fact, Betty Greene (wife of John Greene, centurion from the year before and a mathematics professor) walked with me for the lap that got me to 100 km.

By then I was actually passing many of those who had stayed out the entire time; it is amazing how quickly rest revives me.

I still had time for one more long lap that got me to 64.6 miles and it was just over 23:32 into it. I couldn’t quite average 14 minute miles over the last 27 plus minutes; I did get in 7 full laps (1.75 miles) plus a half lap (.125 miles).

At the post race breakfast I sat with the Curnows and found out that Barbara had also taken a rest; she finished her last long lap about 30 minutes quicker than I had and therefore had done a few more short laps. She finished with 66.9 miles to my 66.5; the third place walker got 65.

So to the “wouda-couda-shouda”: getting up 40 minutes earlier would have sealed the “win” for me. But she could say the same thing. On the other hand waiting 20 minutes more would have knocked me back to 3rd.

Lessons learned:

1. The body weight and the marathon and the slow 100 miler did help, but I simply didn’t have enough miles using the “almost racewalk” motion to be competitive. I used a straight hiking style at McNaughton and I should have mixed a lot of that into my race here.

2. Solid food doesn’t work when I am exhausted. When I knew how bad I was feeling at 12 hours I should have only taken liquid and slowed the pace until I felt better.

3. I need the concentrated race specific miles; I didn’t have those.

4. I need to accept that my times will be slower when it is rainy and adjust the expectations accordingly.
I weighed in the day before at 183.5 (shoes, shirt, shorts). My first 4 hour weight had me at 187 and my second had me at 191, and that was not factoring in my fanny pack. THAT was one reason I was feeling so sluggish. (note: the race has a mandatory 4 hour weigh in)

5. Social: it was fun seeing everyone again. It turns out that Julie Berg had a tough time of it (got some bad news mid run) but I enjoyed seeing her anyway. The volunteers were nice and I’d like to give a shout out to the “safety patrol” guy who walked with me during my “get sick” lap; he has finished a 50 miler and recently did a 3:29 road marathon. Funny, but I was too loopy to remember his name, but I not only remember his marathon time but I also remember how he paced his best marathon (7:45 for the first half, 8:00 for the next 7 miles).

Of course, I also enjoyed meeting the Greenes again and Betty’s brother (who ran a hard 24 hours).
And as usual, I’d like to thank Bruce Leisure for the time he put into this; I hope to do one of his “judged walks” soon, though I am going to have to spend some time fixing my technique errors. Yes, centurions are not judged on knees, but my current style is horribly inefficient and I am going to have to spend some time fixing that up.

Laps:

lap	miles	lap time	cum. time
1	1.7	22:30
2	4.1	33:52	56:23
3	6.5	32:37	1:29:00
4	8.9	32:25	2:01:26
5	11.3	31:55	2:33:21
6	13.8	34:47	3:08:08
7	16.2	34:00	3:42:09
8	18.6	39:36	4:21:46
9	21.0	35:16	4:57:02
10	23.4	34:32	5:31:34
11	25.9	34:54	6:06:29
12	28.3	34:42	6:41:11
13	30.7	35:26	7:16:38
14	33.1	36:10	7:52:48
15	35.6	51:08	8:43:56
16	38.0	36:47	9:20:43
17	40.4	38:09	9:58:53
18	42.8	37:27	10:36:21
19	45.2	36:23	11:12:44
20	47.7	39:19	11:52:04
21	50.1	51:05	12:43:09
22	52.5	2:24:24	15:07:33
23	54.9	1:05:40	16:13:14
24	57.3	5:28:29	21:41:43
25	59.8	37:56	22:19:40
26	62.2	35:23	22:55:04
27	64.6	37:06	23:32:11
short laps
1	65.6	14:46	23:46:57
0.8725	66.5	12:35	23:59:34

Lap 15: changed shirts
Lap 21: ate, was mostly miserable
Lap 22: slept for about 1:30
Lap 23: threw up
Lap 24: Rested/slept for about 4:45