Jemez 50 Miler

Fifty miles is my favorite distance. It's long enough to feel long, to need to pace yourself, to be faced with challenges that aren't over quickly, to still do some hard running, yet short enough to still be a human after the race, to be able to eat and drink and be merry. 100ks are kind of pointless, and during 100 milers you get to a point where you're completely over running and walking and you just want to be done. So I was stoked to sign up for Jemez Mountain 50 miler down in northern New Mexico. Darren, my old training buddy senior year of college, persuaded me to sign up. The race was fairly inexpensive, I'd never done anything besides drive through NM, I was looking for a spring 50 to dust off the rust, and the race was notoriously slow with a ton of vert. The course ended up changing due to fire restrictions (super dry and hot), so dropping some off trail sections and vert, but still it was a fun race.

I had some decent training with a 35 mile Catawba Runaround in VA, a 50k in Moab, and one weekend of back-to-backs. Then I re-cracked a rib doing tree work and got sick from too much work travel, which derailed me physically and mentally. Still, I was gonna do it. Week of the race I became nervous. This race is at altitude, it's hard, and I'd only done 5ish long runs in 2018. I over-complicated logistics, decided to make it easy on myself and just do drop bags and run with a pack.

Gasping for breath near 10,000 ft (cred: Jim Stein)

The 5am start came early, duh. While super early starts suck, I kind of like them because they get the first couple hours out of the way before you wake up. Clearly I was still sleeping when I fell and busted open my knee at mile 1.5. It was clearly a moment of: do I get pissed off and let this be a bad start to a bad day, or do I brush off this dust and dirt and click on like it never happened? I did my damnest to chose the latter.


I set low expectations for the race. While I wanted to be running hard in the top 10, I realistically wasn't trained/ready for that effort. I ended up running the first 30 miles in 25th-ish place, and worked my way to nearly 15th by mile 40 until I started to unravel.  I got dual side stitches in my stomach and couldn't run downhill, which not only felt awful, but was awfully frustrating. I ended up walking a ton of downhill and shuffled the last 5 miles to the finish. I estimate losing at least 30 mins in the last 10 miles. I didn't have the altitude lungs, and got overheated and dizzy around mile 42. I finished in mostly one piece and ate a bunch of burgers and enchiladas.

Takeaways

• I'm very proud I didn't drop down to the 50k. I felt horrible at mile 20
• I'm equally as proud of Darren CRUSHING to second place!
• Running at altitude is really hard. I think traveling so much isn't letting me adapt to SLC elev. 
• I love camping maybe more than running. 
• Northern New Mexico is beautiful. (And CO, but we knew that)
• 10:13 is easily my slowest 50 mile race to date. It maybe was the hardest. 
• Despite the deep suffering for a few hours, I've already forgotten the feel, and my legs are fine
• I checked my ego before the race and everything was OK
• I still get pissed at 40-50 year old dude-triathletes in ultras who don't say hi and don't want to talk
• Yeah, fine, I still like ultrarunning. 

I get to head to Germany and France for work/play here where I'll either run a lot or barely run. Either way it doesn't matter because I have a few weeks before the Wasatch 100 build really needs to start. As of right now, I'm definitely scared about Wasatch but looking forward to the training and exploring the Wasatch mountains. 

Cheers to listening excessively to Boston Manor for the past five months and being ok with your instabilities.