This past weekend, I traveled to northern Michigan to participate in the
North County Trail Marathon in the Manistee National Forest west of
Cadillac, near Wellston. It was my 27th long distance event, completing
my 21st state on a quest to run a marathon or ultra in all 50 states.
I'm getting there, 26.2 miles at a time.
I will preface this by
saying that I'm not a trail runner. I don't really run trails, don't
train on them, and as much as I want to like them, I'm just not sure
they are my thing. Going into this event, I initially had signed up for
the 50 mile option last fall, but downgraded to the marathon this
spring when my running priorities changed.
I'm in the midst of
training for a 24 hour event next month in Cleveland, so I decided to
train right through this run and not really treat it as a "race". I did
not taper at all, running high mileage (for me) for the previous 4
weeks, reaching a 30 previous day peak of 290 miles. So, realistically, I
had no expectations for a fast finish time, although given recent road
marathon times, I was shooting for 4:30, which in reality, was a pipe
dream. Ha.
The race is held in the Manistee National Forest in
northern Michigan. It has a lot of hills with 2250' of BOTH elevation
ascent and descent, and it's mostly a single track sand trail with a lot
of roots, but thankfully no rocks or mud. It turned warmer in the last
couple of days before the race. Starting temp was in the lower 70s and
finish temp was near 90 for me.
The course itself is a 1.2 mile
out/back on the roads, then a 25 mile loop through the forest. After a
30 minute delay because of a tree fall, we were running. It was also
very humid. I live in humidity so I'm used to it, but it really
affected me today. Overall, the miles ticked off. I walked the hills,
ran the downs, and was having a pretty enjoyable time through the first
15 miles. First half split was 2:18, just 3 minutes slower than I had
planned. But by then it was getting progressively hotter, even though
we were under the tree canopy, but with the high humidity, I was
sweating a lot and was soaked from head to toe.
By mile 18, my
stomach started rebelling, and I was getting pretty nauseous. I "wish" I
would have thrown up, it probably would have felt a lot better. The
heat was really getting to me. I've run 3 extremely hot marathons in
the past 4 months, resulting in a bad case of heat exhaustion on the
first one back in March and also just recently in June, so I think the
heat gets to me much faster/easier because of that.
Any running
by mile 19 resulted in feeling generally worse, which is unfortunate
because there were a lot of runnable parts of the trail here. So I
decided to essentially walk it in mostly, deciding to not push it, and
still tried to jog short distances when I could without spiking my HR. A
LOT of people were walking. One guy was down on the trail with heat
exhaustion, but he seemed fine and was talking and told me and others to
go on. But I just wasn't having a lot of fun in those last 6 miles. I
really hated the heat, the hills, the humidity, and I really just hated
running in general at that time.
I did finish with a time of
5:06. That resulted in 7th out of 18 for my A/G of 40-44. The winner in
my A/G finished with a time of 4:30, my original goal. Overall, the
race was very well organized, the aid stations were well stocked, the
volunteers were fabulous, and the after party was absolutely awesome
with beer, hamburgers, chips, beans, and just a lot of fun. About 500
people total participated in the event, split between the half marathon,
marathon, and 50 mile run.
This race also gave some of the best
swag I've gotten for a race. Because I was one of the first 100 people
to register, I received a nice running jacket with my name
screen-printed on it and a pair of tech running shorts. We also got a
canvas shoulder bag, and the shirt is a nice tech shirt, and the medal
is about 7" in diameter, supposedly the 3rd largest marathon medal in
the country, and weighs about a pound. It's like a small dinner plate.
Ha.
Another cool thing, Marshall Ulrich was also there. I've
read his book Running on Empty on Kindle, so I had him sign my bib
instead. He wrote, "Van, Good luck with your 50 States quest! Dig Deep
and Love More." That last part is his signature line I think. I also
got to meet another forumite, mjsmith1223, whom I've chatted with on
here for a couple of years at least, so it was great to finally meet
him.
Bottom line, I completed a fairly difficult trail trace in
an OK time given all the conditions. I really didn't have this as a
goal race, and just used the event as a stepping stone to complete a
race in another state. I didn't taper, and the hills with 2250' of both
elevation ascent and descent, on single track sand, along with the heat
and humidity, really made this a challenging race! In retrospect, the
trail was beautiful, and perhaps I will run another trail race some day
in the future!
