Day 632: Pre - New River Trail 50K

It took me six hundred and thirty three days to get here. But I did it. I am an ultramarathoner. What I'm about to lay out below is a very long drawn out story of the weekend, the race itself, and post-race experience. I think I owe it to those of you who read my blog to get the full picture and so I am sorry for anyone looking for a short race summary. I'm gonna start this post with pre-race stuff, and do a second post about the race itself. This is about an experience; it's taken me a really long time to get here and I want to do it justice. I hope you have enjoyed the journey up until this point and that you enjoy this post. :)


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It is here. This day that I've been waiting for for so long. Since I read "Born to Run" by Christopher McDougall and learned about ultra running; since I started researching ultra runners and realized that an average person could train and do this kind of event; since I read "Why We Run; A Natural History" by Bernd Heinrich (which by the way is the book that made me confident that I could in fact train for and complete an ultra), and since I realized this was in fact not out of my capabilities, I've been waiting for this day to come. As you may remember, I tried a few other times, but my plans fell apart every time. But this was it. The New River 50K was about 24 hours away. I finally was going to test out my dream. 


But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start at the beginning of the adventure. On Friday, I left work around noon. I wanted to leave earlier, but got held up my a bunch of random stupid things. After finally finishing those tasks, I ran home, and my brother and I packed everything up and headed out and onto the road. The long, long road. Our drive took us out I-66W toward the mountains, and then down I-81S for hours. In total, I think the trip took about 6-6.5ish hours. My only goal was to get there in time to pick up my packet, check into our hotel, and grab some grub, but we weren’t in any kind of rush. The nice part of the long drive was that I had my awesome brother to pass the time with. We talked and talked for hours about music, life, running, and about a billion other topics. I am so glad that I was blessed with the coolest, most fun, dedicated, loving brother on the planet. Here are some pictures of our drive down: 

The long long road

Blue Ridge Mountains

Objects in mirror...

Side of the highway

... are closer than they appear.

zebra stripes

It's all about... 

... where your focus is.

Bright sun

He drove

sibling non-rivalry

Road to the race packet pick-up

The New River

Excitement. Fear. Hope.

Beautiful scenery

Calm before the storm

thinking about what tomorrow holds...

picture taking

Take me to the river.

Packet pickup went very quickly and easily. I got to meet Annette Bednosky who is the race director and got my race swag. I received a very cool Patagonia wicking shirt, a beautiful hand-made mug, tickets for the raffles, and of course, my bib # 225. So after I picked up my packet and Scott took some photos, we decided to head to our hotel and find dinner. This actually proved harder than we had anticipated because the area where the race was, had zero cell phone service. I am sure that that there is a cell phone carrier that gets service down here, but mine wasn’t it. So since I couldn’t send messages, make calls or even get the GPS/maps feature to load, we decided to drive back the way we came until we found a main(ish) road to go on and head toward Galax, VA.

We eventually navigated our way back to civilization, found our hotel, checked in, dropped off our things, and set off to find dinner before everything in the area closed. Now, for those of you with no experience in south western Virginia, there is like two restaurants per small town, in almost every small town in the south. So your options are limited. But we found this strange American/Mexican/Burger joint hybrid restaurant and lucky for me they served a pasta dish (only one pasta dish mind you). Delicious Lasagna with Garlic bread. Here's some pics of my brother and I at dinner:

Where is my dinner!?!

Long day for buster

Dinner has arrived

Lasagna with garlic bread, YUM!!

After dinner, we headed back to the hotel. There I set up everything for the next morning and tried to get some sleep. I only slept about 4 hours, but I felt rested when I got up. I got ready as quietly as I could so that my brother could sleep for a bit longer, and went down to the hotel office to get our complimentary breakfast. I went with the usual of Cheerios (that I'd bought the day before), milk/water, and a banana. I also drank some coffee because I'd forgotten to bring my Earl grey tea and needed something to wake me up. I was a little concerned about this as I'm usually pretty rigid about what I have the morning before a race, but beggars can't be choosers. 


After coming back up to the room (I brought my brother a bagel and cream cheese from downstairs), I put on my race outfit. For this race, I did a lot of things differently than I normally do. I wore:

Pinning my bib on (in the wrong spot, Haha!)

- Different clothes: a pair of tight black shorts,  my neon blue Mizuno shorts that my pool running buddy Maria gave me, a Zensu racing tank (from my brother for my birthday), a Brooks wicking long sleeve (from my Nana for my birthday), and my light Smartwool sweater top. The only one of these I've raced in before was the Smartwool top, everything else was only around a month old. Though I did wear almost all of these pieces during a long run or hard workout.


- Different shoes: Normally I would be super strict about doing my race in the same shoes I do my long run in. However, my long run shoe was actually 2 different shoes: the Adidas Zeros (which definitely have the most mileage pounded into them), and the New Balance Road Minimus (which I only did 2 long (18-20 mile) runs in but I wear them pretty consistently for shorter (6-10 mile) mid-week runs. So I spent a LONG time vacillating on which shoe to bring and wear. As you probably read in earlier posts, I recently had to deal with a pretty bad back injury. So thinking that perhaps the shoes were the cause of it, I said screw it and brought my new Asics Gel-Speedstars, which I never used on a long run, only on shorter (again 6-10 mile) training runs. Most people would HEAVILY advise against ever doing something like this. But I'll explain my logic: besides the back pain, these shoes were the most cushioned of all three lovely pairs of running shoes. I figured that the most cushioned pair would be the best pair to use for a long ass run, plus my shorter runs felt amazing in them. 

Happy, nervous, and excited pre-race

- A hat: Why is this such a big deal? Well for one, I have never worn at hat in a race before, Ever. Normally I feel like a hat would have bothered me. maybe it's just that any other hat would bother me. But this hat is special. This hat has a promise and a special bond tethered to it. This is my Big Sur International Marathon baseball cap style running hat. It's vented, it has a velcro strap in the back, and it's the most beautiful shade of robin's egg light blue. Big Sur in 2012 is potentially going to be the last road marathon that I race, before I completely switch over to racing ultras and trail runs. Big Sur is my last hurrah. And this hat and I are gonna get through it together. I've never liked hats before, but this one is special.


- I wore NO body glide or Vaseline - I know what you're thinking, I'm insane. I probably am a little bit, but I didn't care this time. I opted for none of that sticky sweaty sliding about feeling. Although, I did use some chapstick on a few spots I thought might chafe a bit. I will also add that the chapstick has since been retired as lip chapstick, since now that it's been on my armpit, I really don't want it near my mouth again.


- Lastly, I wore my jewelry. I usually take off any earrings, rings, etc. that I wear from day to day for running. Which 9 times out of 10 means that I don't wear any jewelry at all. But I do wear a necklace which is very simply just a gold chain with a piece of light blue beach glass on it. I made it myself, and I wear it everyday and rarely take it off. I wear it to remind me to never to let myself get too far from home. By home I mean my amazing family, in my heart. I am from the ocean and wearing that necklace keeps me grounded to who I am and where I came from. I occasionally wear earrings but I ditched them for the race. And last but not least, I recently bought this steel and copper fused ring when I was visiting a friend in Charolettesville, VA. The copper and steel welded together reminded me of old and new friendships. I had gone on this trip with two of my current best friends, and was going to see an old best friend from back in the day. I decided to continue wearing the ring throughout the race to remind me of the incredible strength and support my friends have given me throughout my racing, training, and my life. I am very lucky to be blessed with such amazing people surrounding me.


So once I was dressed and ready to go, I put on my USMC sweater over all of my other clothes, my Patagonia Down Sweater Hoody, and my Aglove gloves. I grabbed my Camelbak and everything I might still need and we headed out the door. The sky was lighter now, but the air was frigid. It was hard to imagine that it was only the first weekend in October. My brother and I hustled down to my truck and we drove off to the race start. :)


To be continued...