On May 11th, we were up in Fort Collins for the Quad Rock 50 miler. Josh logged some training miles and watched the sunrise over Horsetooth Reservoir, and then spent the day volunteering at the finish line while I slogged away on the course. Apparently, if we had gotten up in the middle of the night, we could have seen the aurora borealis over the reservoir.
Training this spring was a bit rocky, but I had several early-season races and plenty of base training. After the 3-day stage race at Moab Run the Rocks, I gave myself some recovery time, backed off on my running mileage, and focused more on strength. I increased to three days a week of strength training and built to heavier weights. I even began adding in hill climbs on the treadmill, working up to my fully loaded 30 lb weight vest. After this transition period, it was time for a 3 week build with a focus on vertical gain to get my climbing legs underneath me for Quad Rock 50 miler. Then, I got sick during Week One. Nothing major, just a cold, but enough to derail my training plans.
I got in some decent work during Week Two, but by the weekend, Mother Nature had other ideas. A giant rainstorm didn’t keep me from getting out, but rain at 37º F is not warm, and even with the best gear, it is impossible to stay dry when it is pouring down from above and splashing up from below, so I had to cut it short. I got in a decent 18 gravel miles on Sunday, but the conditions were too muddy to be on anything with much vertical gain. Week Three was the only week that went to plan, and with that, I had done what work I could to be ready for Quad Rock with its 11,000 feet of elevation gain. I knew it wouldn’t be ideal, but it was a training day. I just needed a long day out, I didn’t need to race.
The Quad Rock course is two 25-mile loops with very little flat. It is all up or down. By mile 10, I started getting a migraine. After taking Ubrelvy and then Imitrex, the pain and nausea weren’t going away. To make matters worse, the Ulbrelvy was causing some GI stasis, so everything I took in was just sloshing in my belly, and nothing was going anywhere.
When I came into the turnaround point at mile 25 I was pretty miserable. I’ve never had a good race at Quad Rock before. I’ve done the 25 mile course twice, once in 6:45 (in the mud) and once in 6:15. For the 50 miler, I came through the 25 mile point at 6:30, and my legs felt far better than they did either time that was the finish. However, my legs were the only thing that felt good. Josh helped me fill bottles, gave me a pep talk and sent me back out to at least get to the Arthurs Aid station. He said “if you get up the climb and back down and your migraine is not any better, you can just come back from there. That will at least be a 32 mile training day.” So began lap two.
Luckily, the weather showed some mercy and it never got over 65º. My friend Eric was volunteering at the Towers Aid station, and 50 mile runners go through there 4 times. It was great to have a friend there to give me a little boost, and help me problem solve what I needed. I was chasing the cutoffs for the entire second lap, which is a stressful way to run. I told myself as long as I made the cutoffs I would keep going, there was no way I was going to voluntarily drop. At the Horsetooth Aid, 10 minutes before cutoff, I had to sit down for a minute with my head between my knees trying not to vomit.
About 15 minutes outside of that aid station I passed some hikers that were discussing all of us doing the race. One of the guys said, “I guess they must enjoy some part of it”. In that moment, as odd as it was, I realized that I actually had been having fun. Did I feel good? No. But it was a beautiful day on the trails, my legs felt strong, and there were so many flowers. The Sugarbowls were particularly great on that section of trail. And then a few minutes later, I began vomiting. That part wasn’t as fun. Afterward, though, my stomach felt so much better to get rid of everything that had just been sitting there for hours.
Back up at Towers, Eric gave me some ginger chews for the nausea, and I started the 7-mile stretch to the finish. It was a long, steep descent, and I was thankful for every single second of strength training I had done. My run training had not been ideal, but that strength work was GOLD. Despite the lack of any fuel or water for HOURS, my legs felt awesome. I hammered past a lot of people who were walking downhill on blown quads, and I didn’t let off the gas for a second. The miles ticked by, and I kept checking my watch and doing the math. I was going to make it. I crossed that finish line 9 minutes before the cutoff, way slower than planned, and so freaking proud of myself for pushing through.
A friend asked me about the race the next day, and I said that I felt miserable for about 35 of the 50 miles, and had an awesome race, all at the same time. It will go down as one of my best races, and not because of my finish time, but because I worked through some rough spots, kept pushing the whole time, and managed to really have fun out there (in some rather sick and twisted way).
I spent the following week on the Oregon coast, celebrating Julie’s 50th birthday with several of her closest friends. We ate good food, napped, read books, talked, and I got in some easy walk/run miles by the ocean. It was the perfect way to relax and recover. Now, it is two big build weeks, including getting up to run on the High Lonesome 100 course this past weekend. We ran Colorado Trail Segment 14 (~mile 75-96 of the High Lonesome course), which was humbling but really pretty and had some super fun flowy sections. The altitude kicked my butt, and I definitely need to spend as much time up high as possible in the coming weeks.
Josh and I finally got registered for the Cuchara 60k, and that will be the first weekend of my final three big weeks before starting my taper. I won’t be “racing” there, but it will be a fun new area to explore some higher elevation trails, which will hopefully be melted out in time for the race. It has been a big winter, and snowpack is deep here. It is going to be a while before I can get out any of the higher sections of the HiLo course, but there are 6 weeks to go before the race, so we still have some time.
6 weeks until the next TBI to 100.
