Crud 8 Hour (and 24): quality event but too much for me now…

Today I participated in the Crud 8 hour trail “run” (I walked most of the time, though I mixed in some jogging during the first 2-3 hours).

The event itself: the race directors go all out. The trail is interesting and superbly marked; even *I* couldn’t get lost (and that is saying something!) The aid station (which you see every 3.5 miles) is well stocked. The swag is generous (shirt, canvas bag, finisher’s award which you can see below).

They also offer a 24 hour event which starts at 4 pm on Friday afternoon.

The course: a 3.5 mile trail loop with a 1 mile “end of the race” loop for those who finish their last “long” loop after the “45 minutes to go” mark. This year, there was only 1 really muddy spot (shoe sucking) and a couple of “somewhat avoidable” mud spots and two minor stream crossings. But the race directors, while giving you plenty of shade from the sun, also gave you several quad burning hills. This is NOT an easy course!
The vast majority of the course is single track; there are some “road like” parts and some “triple wide” stuff near the end of the loop.
There are a few rocks and roots but not many; these were never a factor for me. It can get muddy if there is lots of rain.

It is pretty though (and set in Jubilee State Park; here are my photos of that park but much of the trail I show is NOT on the race course)

My race: simply pathetic. I had dreams of finishing beyond a marathon (7 loops plus 2 one mile loops); I ended up with 6 full loops and 1 one mile loop.
(note: loops are 3.5 miles ( 5.63 km), and 1 mile (1.6 km)). Yes, it got a bit warm

(via Weather Underground)

My laps: 57:11, 1:02:46, 1:01:37 , 1:06:07, 1:38:16 (hell), 1:30:29 (6 minutes at the aid station), 24:12 for the last “1 mile” loop.
The first two laps saw me mix a little jogging in; lap 3 had maybe a couple of one minute jogging breaks early but was mostly walking.

What happened to me: basically my right leg (knee) went south on me on the “lap from hell”: lap 5. I couldn’t straighten my knee at all (not even close!) and I had pain behind my knee. It was killing me for a while. I stopped…and what turned it around is that after slowing to a crawl, I found a fallen tree, sat on it and stretched the afflicted leg out. That really helped! Ironically 3 other runners stopped and we all chatted. I got back up and finished out the lap, thinking that I would bail. But I had 2.5 hours left and I wasn’t feeling that bad (overall) and my knee had stopped hurting.

So I stated lap 6 thinking “ok, I’ll make up time”. Wrong….I found out that there was a reason my knee stopped hurting: I was going slow! So I slowed down to a pace that was pain free for my knee and just swallowed the embarrassment when the other runners would ask me if I were ok.

Though I got tired, I really never got into the “serious exertion” zone; my knee wouldn’t let me. Sure, my quads were trashed and that is why my knee got painful to begin with. My quads were not trained for these hills and when they became fatigued, the support that they gave my right knee (the one I got operated on last July) vanished, hence the pain. Were I in better shape, I doubt that this would have happened.

So the upshot is that I did NOT get nauseated nor did I get overly tired. My legs did get fatigued; my piriformis didn’t bother me. Today I was limited by my knee and quad conditioning (lack thereof).

I remember getting very cranky at times; I cursed my body and I had to pull over to let someone faster pass me many, many, many times. But the other people (runners, race officials and volunteers) were so friendly and nice; it warms my heart to think about them.

And back to the course: the hills were not as steep as McNaughton nor were they as numerous. But there weren’t the long “stretch your legs” sections either; McNaughton has lots of those.

I’ll post some photos and results when they become available.

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