Run to Win

I have wanted to take part in the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge for the past few years, but since it is on Memorial Day Weekend and I am rarely home I haven’t been able to until this year. I can now see why everybody raves about how great it is.

This is a tough race. It is made up of 25 kilometer loops, where runners can run 1 loop (25k), 2 loops (50k) or a 3½ mile mini-loop and then 3 full loops (50 mile).

There are a lot of turns (click map above for PDF download.) The course is very easy to follow, with plenty of surveyor’s flags and arrows pointing which way to go. When in doubt, you always turn left and can’t go too far wrong.

There are a couple of short but very steep downhills each loop, but otherwise there isn’t anything that individually would seem very difficult. However, you can never rest on this course. You are always climbing or descending; there are no flat sections to this course at all: (Click here to continue reading…)

Just a quick announcement to anybody interested in running at the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge on Memorial Day Weekend in New Gloucester, Maine:

The Pineland Farms Trail Challenge is coming up on Sunday, May 24th.

After this Sunday the 10th the price for each race will increase by $5 so sign up soon! This year we have capped the 25k race at 250 and right now there are only 80 places left, these are sure to go quickly over the next two weeks.

We are looking for volunteers on race day and to help with set-up the day before, let us know if you can help. This year we are looking for school sports boosters clubs to take on aid stations, in return we will make a donation to each club. If anyone has connections to a group that may be interested please let us know.

This Saturday the 9th we will be running the race course at Pineland Farms starting at 8:00am. Meet in the YMCA parking lot.

The Trail Challenge consists of 3 races at 25k, 50k and 50 miles. All 3 races are run on the trails at Pineland Farms, which are like big, soft and grassy roads (with a lot of hills.)

If you are interested in running, you can get more information here:
http://www.mainetrackclub.com/pinelandfarms.html

If you aren’t interested in running but would like to help out, volunteers are needed! Click here to sign up to volunteer.

I am now a week out from the Running From An Angel 50 Miler, and while I don’t suffer from any illusions that I am completely recovered I do feel pretty good. I have gone for a couple of walks and runs with only mild soreness, spent a few hours snowshoeing, and an hour and a half shoveling snow since I got home.

I also got my first professional massage a few days after returning home, and the massage therapist (Michael Gage from Maine Sports Massage) couldn’t believe that I had just run 50 miles. My muscles were all where they were supposed to be and were only mildly tight.

I think that I can attribute that to 2 things. First, I was well trained for the race. I also think that 2 products that I made use of after the race helped aid my recovery and have made the past week much more pleasant than it otherwise might have been.
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Having never directed more than 1 race at a time, I have no idea how Joyce manages to keep track of 5 races at the same time on the same course. The Running From An Angel races included a 50 mile, marathon, half marathon, 10k and 5k option. I opted for the 50 Mile race and began my day promptly at 6:00 in the morning along with 43 other hardy folks out in the Nevada desert.

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This Autumn I concentrated on running a fast 5k, a goal that I was only moderately successful at (given the times that I wanted to run versus the times that I did run.) At the beginning of October, I switched my training over to get ready for my first 50 mile race which was at the beginning of January.

My first week was a recovery week from my Summer and Autumn training schedule, and I only ran a couple of times that week. Then I began to build up my mileage in preparation for the race. I did very little speed work outside of a few tempo runs. You can see my weekly mileage for the latter quarter of 2008 here:

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Yesterday, I ran 50 miles. At once. Yeah, strange thing to do, but it seemed like a good way to finish off a vacation.

At a very rough estimate, I probably burned around 5500 calories or so in the 8 hours that that took. Here is everything that I consumed before and during the race:

Pre-Race

• 1 banana (105 calories)
• 2 wheat rolls (~85 calories ea / ~170 calories)

Breakfast total: 275 calories

Race

• (Lots of) Water (0 calories)
• 2 pouches of Hornet Juice – start & @ mile 19 (60 calories ea / 120 calories)
• 12(ish) cups (2oz to 6oz) of Heed (100 calories per 16 ounces / ~300 calories)
• ~70 Black Forest Gummi Bears (120 calories per 17 bears / ~500 calories)
• 6 Crank Gels (150 calories ea / 900 calories)
• 12 pretzels (24 calories ea / 288 calories)

Race Total: 2108 calories

Consumption Strategy

In all, I consumed less than 2400 calories, which gives me at least a 3000 calorie deficit by the end of the race. That would explain why I’ve been so hungry for the past day or so, I guess.

My general strategy was to eat what I had available for breakfast, and to make sure that I had plenty of water during the run. I wanted to eat gummi bears regularly throughout the run every 15-30 minutes and a gel packet every 45-60 minutes. Since Heed was available, I took a cup of that at most of the aid stations, being careful to space out my gel packets and my Heed consumption since I didn’t think those would mix too well. I also grabbed a few pretzels from the aid station tables on 4 separate occasions, 3 at a time.

I also started with a water bottle full of Hornet Juice which I refilled at mile 19. I meant to refill my sandwich baggy of gummy bears at mile 36, but I got busy reapplying sunscreen and forgot to grab them. I only ran out of water once, but I knew that there was an aid station coming up within a quarter mile so that worked out fine. I did dump quite a bit of water on the ground, though, because “1/3 to half full” apparently meant “so full you can’t screw on the top” to most of the volunteers at the marathon aid stations. That was fine, though, better too much than too little.

This strategy kept me going. The majority of the calorie consumption came early in the race, since there was way I was going to be able to process everything late in the run and I knew I wouldn’t be able to take in as many calories as I was using. I just thought it would be interesting to find the specific deficit, especially since I could still remember everything I ate during the race and thought to jot it down.

Specific details on the race will be going up over the next few days, including plenty of pictures. I carried my cell phone with me and snapped photos of (almost) all of the 50 milers as well as plenty of the beautiful surroundings that are to be found at Lake Mead, although I did not get any photos of the coyotes. (They sounded like they were just on the other side of the hill that I was running around, although they were actually across a river that was on the other side of it.) The crows didn’t excite me enough when they came visiting late in the race for me to take the energy to get the camera out.

On Saturday, I ran 20.1 miles and then took a 2 and a half hour nap.
On Sunday, I took a 90 minute nap and then ran 6.6 miles.
On Monday, I ran 21.3 miles and then took an 80 minute nap.
On Tuesday, I went to work and didn’t have a chance to nap, but ran 5.4 miles.
On Wednesday, I ran 24.1 miles but didn’t nap. (I cooked a chicken instead. It was good.)

Thus ends the bulk of my training for the Running From An Angel 50 Miler on January 3^rd. This will be my first race that is longer than 50k, and my goal through this training period was to get as many back to back long runs on the weekends as possible with a long(ish) run mid-week as time allowed.

I didn’t get quite what I wanted, although I did bump my weekly mileage up to levels that I haven’t run at since college, hitting over 100 miles the week before Thanksgiving. This week I wanted to do the 3 runs over 20 miles every other day as the last tough training that I was going to get in before starting to taper and letting my body recover. I now have 3 weeks and 3 days before the race to do so.

Next week, I may run as far as 15 miles in one go, but no further. Christmas week, I am going to limit myself to 10 miles in any one run. New Year’s week, I’ll have 1 run that is 50 miles long but otherwise will try not to go over 5 miles at any given time.

That said, does anybody have any good running suggestions for while I am in Vegas?

Anybody in New England that is still looking for something to do on Memorial Day weekend should look towards making a trip to New Gloucester, Maine, to participate in the Pineland Farms Trail Challenge.

There are 4 races along with volunteering opportunities. The 25k and 50k are returning for their 3^rd incarnation, and the 4km canicross race is returning for it’s second running. (When was the last time you ran a race tied to your dog?) For those of you are looking for a bigger challenge, the weekend is now also hosting a 50 mile race.

The courses are all located on the beautiful Pineland Farms campus and are made up of soft rolling hills. The trails are not technical in the least bit and are split between fields and dirt paths. There is ample course support available, and what will likely be one of the better BBQ parties of the weekend is located at the finish line. There should be plenty of free food and beer for everybody, volunteers included, with at least a dozen people committed to bringing the good stuff like cookies and brownies.

Speaking of volunteers, more are needed. If you are not up to the challenge of running the race, volunteering can be just as fun and rewarding. You may not get a silver (50k) or gold (50 mile) cow bell for finishing, but you do get $5 in Maine Track Club bucks and access to the party. There are also some volunteer positions available that will still allow you to run, especially if you are running one of the shorter races that start later in the morning.

For more information, check out these links:

• Pineland Farms Trail Challenge home page
• Remaining volunteer opportunities
• 2007 Photos
• Canicross race information