SwampStomped!

Morning sunrise over Poplar Tree Lake

It's been a while since my last ultra marathon, partly due to my schedule and partly due to the fact that they seem to fill up a bit faster here in Memphis than they did back in Kansas. Last year I missed out on the SwampStomper 50k at Meeman Shelby Forest, and I almost missed out this year as well due to alarm clock issues and the fact that the race sold out in under an hour. However, the race director was good enough to start a waiting list for the 2014 race and after a couple weeks on the waiting list enough folks dropped out to allow me in. 

Josh's Pre-endurance-race Oatmeal

So, on January 19th I got up at 5:30am and did my usual pre-race oatmeal breakfast and 64oz Gatorade/HEED combo. At about 6am I started off for Shelby Forest and arrived at 6:45 with plenty of time to spare. My right quad was a little tight from a few too many miles the week before so popped a couple Endurolytes, stretched for a bit, and had a few more swigs of Gatorade to get things moving. The morning was pretty brisk so I must confess that I may have missed parts of the pre-race meeting due to my moving about, but it's a 50k trail race right? Besides having to go twice out and back what else do I need to know? Without much more than a simple "Go", the race started at 7:30am sharp.

The race start!

With a lot of Garmin bleeps and bloops we ambled off at about an 8 minute pace. With 32.6 miles (yes, this particular 50k is actually 52.5k) to go there isn't a whole lot of need to accelerate quickly. However, after about 1/2 a mile of warming up the rabbits dropped the pace down to about a 7 minute mile and the race was on. I fell into sixth place with the intent of picking off the other runners later on in the race. After dropping down a large set of railroad tie stairs I passed a couple runners and found myself in fourth place.

Afternoon sun warming up the lake

At this point the guy in front of me was clipping along at a decent pace so I fell in behind him for about 4-5 miles. After a mile or so on the steep ascents and descents of the Red Trail I decided to forge ahead at my own pace and started working on reeling in the leaders. I'm not sure if the first checkpoint realized that we'd be arriving as quickly as we did because they seemed a little confused, especially when I grabbed their party cups instead of holding up a handheld bottle for some water. I've never liked running with extra stuff and the day was cool enough that I figured I could rely on the aid stations and go without a bottle or pack.

The second aid station was fun. It had a Hawaiin theme and they were quite a bit more prepared than their aid station #1 counterparts. After this things got a little dicy through the Red Trail and I realized that maybe I should have paid a little more attention to the pre-race meeting info. Nontheless, after a couple pauses I found my way and headed north to the turn around. There's anothing like a double out-and-back to confuse a trail runner! About three minutes from the turn around I saw Kyle, the race leader, coming back down the trail and at two minutes from the turn around I saw another racer. So I was still in third place and about 6 minute behind the leader. Cool, there was still over 30k to go.

25k or so down, 25k to go

Heading back south to complete my forst 25k lap was fairly quick work, except for one frustrating part when I adjusted my heart rate monitor one too many times. Not sure that I even needed a heart rate monitor since the goal in endurance is to reach a sustainable maximum exertion point and stay there. For me that's usually a feeling more than anything else. At any rate, I managed to release my heart rate monitor and it plopped down inside of my shirt. Getting it back on probably took less than 10 seconds, but it felt way longer. Not cool. Now, at the end of the first 25k, I was over ten minutes behind the leader. After fumbling with my too-tight Gatorade bottle lid for what seemed like yet another long waste of time, I finally headed out on my second 25k. Time to catch up!

Now I knew the course (even though I did pre-run part of it the week before with Memphis Velo teamate Phillip Young), I was hydrated, and I had a few more Endurolytes in me. With no one in front and no one behind me I just focusd on covering ground quickly and efficiently, blowing through the first aid station with a brief "No thanks!" The more efficient Luau aid station was nestled ahead in the hills of the Red Trail. Well, it was more efficient until I realized that they had swapped out most of their Gatorade cups with beer. Hmm, I wondered to myself how that would work out. Try anything once right? Well, not in the middle of the catchup leg of an ultra marathon. Gatorade it was.

On my climb to the top of the turn around I saw that Kyle was still ahead of me, but not the ten minutes that he had been ahead back at the start of our second 25k. The folks at the turn around confirmed this and told me to go catch him. Still, by my count he was a solid 8 minutes ahead and that was a lot of time to make up with just a little over 10k left to go. Well, the only good race pace is a suicide pace right?

So I stepped it out with a vengeance and actually started to really close the gap. Runners that I passed kept telling me how close he was, but I still couldn't see him on eth straightaways darnit! Well, I finally did see Kyle as he crossed the finish line 31 seconds ahead of me. I crossed the finish line at 4:37:50. That was about an 8:31 pace and I went a little over a minute negative on the second 25k. The trail had around 3,400 ft of elevation gain and it was a really great race. But, I'm still going to win one of these ultras someday!