I failed, but I am ok with it.

I attempted the 60K at Muleshoe Bend. There was a 12 hour time limit; each lap was 10K. I got 4 laps: 1:56, 3:05, 3:30, 3:01 for 11:36. Yeah, I sucked but less than half of the 52 starters made 60K; in fact, check out the results from last years 12 hour on the same course.

(update: 21 of the 52 starters made it; the winning time was 7:28 (about 6:14 split at 50k), and the winning time for the 10K run (that morning) was 56 minutes; only 3 of the 40 10K finishers broke 1 hour!)

What happened: the course was brutal to begin with; sure the elevation change was minimal. But about 80-90 percent of the trail was loose rock (ankle twisters). My feet took a beating and my walking form vanished.

But then it rained three times and the rain turned in the nice “dirt” path part into very slick mud; that sure didn’t help. Also the humidity was stifling.

The upside is that I saw a couple of very large toads and picked one up. The other upside is that I felt like quitting after the first lap but I didn’t. I kept setting goals along the way.

I’d like to give a shout out to Marshall King who finished the 60K; this is NOT your typical “bonehead” trail 50K type race.

Double update I just got this from the race director:

Well, you were right and I was wrong. I went back after the
race was over and re-measured the course. I have a pretty
good idea how I screwed this up, but to hell with all the
excuses…I was wrong. The lap was measured at 7.33 miles.
It doesnt change much of the results, but I did move 3
people from the 60km into the results who were damn class
with 5 loops (36.7mi). My apologies. It wont happen again.
/joe

So I got 4 loops which is 29.2 miles, and so it was an ultra after all.

Here is my race report:

I attempted a 60k trail ultra (Muleshoe all nighter near Austin, Texas) and failed. But because I stayed with it for 12 hours, I feel ok with it.

Details: this course is supposed to be six 10K (6.2 mile) loops. The race started at 7 pm; that helped with the Central Texas heat somewhat.
It was 95 F at the start and it was to drop to 75 by the next morning, though humidity would rise to 89 percent.

The course itself was mostly what I would call: “loose rock” with some stretches of dirt; the latter was to become very, very slick due to three different periods of rain from between midnight and 7 am.

I didn’t even come close to finishing. I needed to average 2 hours per loop to finish and my FIRST loop (in mostly daylight) was 1:55, and I was already getting tired. In fact, when it took me 1:10 to get to the 4 mile aid station, it looked as if finishing would be all but out of the question.

The rocks really beat me (and my feet) up; I have blisters on both of my bunions. I didn’t fall but I cursed a lot and frequently rolled ankles and tripped. Also, my headlight took away some depth perception of the trail.

Time to do each loop: 1:56, 3:05, 3:30, 3:01. So I ended up with “40K”, though I wonder about the measurement. The reason is that so many good runners appeared to be running relatively slow times and that here, I averaged a slower pace here than I did at the McNaughton 100 (on muddy hills) this past spring.

What went right:
1. I drank Heed for calories and it seemed to work; no nausea at all.
2. I didn’t quit; when it became clear that I wasn’t going to be able to finish, I treated the event as a 12 hour event and went for as many miles as possible.

Update: you can see the results here (only finishers are listed). Look at the winning time for the 10K run: 56 minutes, and only 3 of the 40 finishers broke 1 hour!