Posted on the Ultralist:
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:08:15 +0000
From: Mike Melton
Subject: Way behind schedule – my Hinson Lake 24-Hour race report
Listers –
Here’s my Hinson Lake 24-Hour race report – WARNING! LONG AND BORING CONTENT TO FOLLOW! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
START FAST, GO DOWNHILL QUICKLY, PULL THE PLUG EARLY
So I’m walking along the trail that borders Hinson Lake in Rockingham NC, and darkness has fallen. I’ve got my headlamp on, and since the trail is smooth and wide, it’s easy to make good progress. Except that I hear a kind of click, and the large circle of brightness in front of me fades to a dim small penlight-sized area of illumination. I turn the headlamp on and off, and it’s still dim. I try it again, and it suddenly won’t work at all. Nothing. The thing refuses to work from that point on.
That’s a metaphor for my race at Hinson Lake – going along fine, progress dims suddenly, then blinks out.
Oh, well. Every race can’t be a Personal Record. But only some races can be a Personal Worst, which is what my 2009 Hinson Lake effort turns out to be. I finished with 72 miles by my count, 68 miles on the official record (I’m sure that the mistake is mine), by far the worst showing in the five 24-hour events I’ve done. The only other time I didn’t get at least 100 miles was at my first FANS race, where stupendous blisters put me off course at 84 miles.
After running dozens of ultras, I did something that I’m embarrassed to admit – I let what other people think take me out of my game plan, and it cost me a good race. I was worried about being ‘Doomed’ and being ‘Griffithed’ and being ‘chicked’ by my good friend Juli Aistars, and I knew that many people were pulling for me to do well, and that a couple of Listers would be secretly delighted by a poor showing on my part. I let all these OTHER people and what THEY would think affect my race, when I know better. I know to stick to my plan, and to adjust my race effort when things start to go wrong, as they inevitably will. I know all that, and still I let the opinions of others get to me. Big mistake on my part!
Learning that lesson alone was worth the price of admission.
Before I get started, I’d like to thank the people who made this race so much fun for me. Fred and Susan Dumars (the Dooms) were incredibly gracious and offered me their hospitality before the race. A comfortable bed and an awesome pre-race meal along with scintillating company – they put out the total package! Chalet Doom rates five stars all around!
I saw lots of old friends at HL – Jim O’Neill and Sue Norwood, Dave Luljak and his son Peter, Mike Brooks, Sarah Lowell, Byron Backer, Ray K, Christian Griffith, Joe Ninke, Doug Dawkins, Johnathan Savage (whom I met at Laurel Valley) among others, and met some new friends and put faces to UltraList names. Abi Meadows and I had corresponded via the List, but now I know what she looks like (and she’s very easy on the eyes 😉 ). I remembered Gary Cantrell from Mother Road, but he wouldn’t have known me. We chatted a bit as we passed, and his aluminum foil radio antenna reminded me that he might not be getting the best radio reception but he was clearly protected against alien intrusion ;-). And Charlie Thompson, a fellow Floridian, was there, along with Steve Durbin and Cheryl Lager.
Joe Ninke was very kind and offered the use of his big popup tent, so I had some place to stash some of my stuff instead of self-crewing out of my car in the parking lot. He’s also a fellow Floridian and a heck of a goo=
d runner. For a while, he vied for the race lead before succumbing to fatigue and minor injury.
Christian’s buddy Matt Kahrs was there, and again I got a face with a name. Matt, a very fine runner, had a difficult day running while nursing an injury, but his positive attitude and cheerful demeanor the ENTIRE time
he was there showed his character and class. I was hoping to meet Letty Marino, but I missed her – she was there, but we never connected.
It was especially nice to see my good friends Juli and Val Aistars again.
We met a couple of years ago when Juli and I both crewed at Badwater, and we were all together the year that Western States was cancelled due to the fires (Val was crew, I was pacer), and the three of us have been through some interesting times lately in our personal lives. Juli and Val stayed with the Dooms as well, so we had a wonderful dinner filled with jokes and laughter and good story-telling. It was friendship and comraderie at its finest, and I’m blessed to have such friends!
Tom Gabell and his volunteers did an awesome job on the race, and Tom’s got a real keeper in his event. Hinson Lake is a superb place for a timed race – the course is supremely runnable smooth wide (6-8 feet wide at minimum, more for most of it) trail with almost nothing to trip over, the distance of 1.52 miles is a perfect loop that gives you plenty of access to support while adding miles with each iteration, the terrain changes just slightly enough that it helps keep fatigue away, and the shade of the forest covers nearly the entire course.
The loop begins by crossing the top of a low earthen dam that’s lined with support tents and tables, so you run a gauntlet of crew to start each lap. I usually walked this while consuming whatever I had gotten from the aid station and so I wouldn’t run into anyone who was on or crossing the path. A turn off the dam puts you on the trail around the lake, which in most places is canted slightly from the right side (away from the lake) sloping ever-so-slightly downhill to the left side of the trail (the side nearest the lake).
The race is kind of like a NASCAR event – just make left turns for 24 hours. In fact, Rockingham is home to one of NASCAR’s races, and we passed the track on the way into the race. I just wish I could travel around the course as fast as those cars do ;-)!
Since we never turned around, we always ran this direction and after a few loops I began feeling some Achilles tendon pain in my left heel. By 15 miles, the pains were sharp and beginning to stab up into my leg. I have had this recurring pain very intermittently for the past four months or so, but it never appeared during my Laurel Valley race last month, and so I was surprised and disappointed when it popped up, especially so early in this race. I changed shoes to a newer, cushier pair and the pain subsided to a dull throb that numbed out for the remainder of the race, and I can’t blame my poor showing on this issue. It was in the back of my mind for many miles, though.
The course has 15 (I know because I counted them many times) wooden bridges that mostly span small erosion ditches, and they range from 3 paces in length to 86 paces in length. Most are short, with a couple of longer spans. I was afraid they might get slippery but the footing on them was really good. About halfway around the loop, the course crossed the longest bridge, spanning a swampy area at the opposite end of the lake from the start/finish area. This bridge had some benches which I used late in the race to stretch my legs, and some runners took short breaks here.
After the bridge, there was a gentle uphill section that led to a slightly rolling up-and-down portion leading to the final small hill back into the parking lot and transition area, where you crossed another bridge to begin the next loop.
Switching shoes early on solved one problem and created another – after 25 miles or so, I began to feel a rubbing on the outside edge of my heel just below the protruding ankle bone, caused by the upper edge of the shoe sawing back and forth against my foot. I never stopped to deal with this problem, and it became part of the reason I stopped early. I never even looked at my ankle until Sunday morning when it became light, and I had what looked exactly like a huge muffler burn, slightly larger than a Kennedy half-dollar (now I’m dating myself). There was a hole in the sock, and a blackened burn-like ring around the hole, and a quarter-sized open raw spot in the middle of the hole. Some people thought it looked as if I had burned a hole in my ankle with an acetylene torch.
Apparently the leading edge of the plastic heel counter in my left shoe had been pushed into my skin just underneath the ankle bone protrusion, and it rubbed right through my sock and into my ankle.
My usual plan is to get in 30 miles at six hours, try to hit 50 miles at 10 hours, and then that gives me 14 hours for the next 50-plus miles. Well, I pushed right from the start and hit 30 miles in 5:42, so I was a bit ahead of the plan, which can be a good thing. Unfortunately, the high humidity and the warm day combined to keep me soaking wet for the entire race – right from the start. I was dripping wet by the end of the first loop – and that’s only a mile and a half!
Between 30 and 50 I noticed that the chafing was getting worse, and although I had some of Dr. Andy Lovy’s patented anti-chafe cream with me, I resisted taking the time to stop and get it out and put it on. I kept thinking ‘one more loop, and I’ll deal with it’, and then the next time around I’d say to myself ‘next loop I’ll take care of it’, until I was closing in on 50 miles and also closing in on some serious rug-burn between my thighs.
I passed 50 miles in 10:10 or so – the 50-mile mark was past the start/finish area – so I was slowing down and struggling more and more. I finally stopped and tried to get a handle on my chafing, but it was too far gone to correct. Now it was only a matter of preventing worse burn. But each lap caused more chafing, and by 60 miles I could tell I was in serious trouble.
I tried all the usual tricks – changed clothes (those quickly got completely soaked, since the humidity was still high), more lube, different stride, more walking, less walking, resting in the chair, and by the time midnight was approaching I was looking at the end of my race.
The other factor working on my head was the fact that I was entered in the Great Eastern Endurance Run 100K being held the following weekend in Waynesboro, Virginia. As I circled the drain at Hinson Lake, I kept thinking about how much damage I was doing to my body and would it heal in time for that next race.
I think that doing lots of races close together is both a blessing and a curse – it’s a blessing because those upcoming races keep me from pushing myself too far and doing serious damage to my body in an effort to notch a finish or a good race. It’s a curse because it’s yet another excuse to grab onto when you’re getting depressed and thinking about dropping out.
As I was completing what I thought was 68 miles, I saw Sue Norwood relaxing near her vehicle, and so I stopped and sat and chatted for about 20 minutes, hoping that I’d feel better. Gary Cantrell joined us, and just after midnight, I got up to do two more loops so that I’d have three miles done on Sunday morning. That way, I wouldn’t have to run later in the day to keep my streak alive. The day before the race, I began my 15th year without missing a day of running at least two miles.
Once I got in my loops, I got my folding lawn chair and sleeping bag out, set up near Joe Ninke’s tent, and promptly fell asleep for several hours. My sleeping position reminds people of a corpse, since I sleep on my ba
ck with my arms crossed over my chest. I’m told that photos of my corpse-like state are available somewhere on the internet ;-).
I awoke on Sunday morning about an hour before the end of the race, and was able to cheer in the remaining runners. I was very impressed with Johnathan Savage’s course-record performance of 132.24 miles, and infinitely more impressed with his demeanor while running. He was uniformly cheerful and polite to everyone, demonstrating the character of a true champion. I admired Liz Bauer’s 109.90-mile performance as top woman runner, and her demeanor during the race was intense.
I was also impressed with the number of young people who were running. Eight-year-old Peter Luljak did a wonderful job of pacing himself to a 50-mile finish, accompanied by his father David. David is one of the truly nice people of this sport, and a heck of an athlete in his own right. I believe that he may be the only American to have run more than 500 miles twice in a six-day race, and his 547-mile 6-day performance puts him on the list of all-time great performances. To watch him and his son negotiate a 24-hour event was a heartwarming sight.
Abi Meadows’ son TJ was also inspiring as he notched nearly 35 miles. He =and I shared a couple of loops and some good conversation.
In the end, I re-learned the lesson to run my own race and to focus on being proactive instead of reactive about bodily issues. Had I stopped much earlier to deal with my issues, they may well not have being full-blown problems. So not only am I a slow runner, I’m also a slow learner ;-)!
All in all, it was an outstanding event and I’d highly recommend Hinson Lake as a fine place to run for 24 hours!
Sincerely,
Mike Melton
Jensen Beach, FL
Hinson Lake 24 Hour Race
Also Mike has website that can be seen at: mcmelton.com/
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