The loop itself, I soon broke down into four short segments, which would help me push through in later miles as I took it one segment at a time rather than one loop at a time. From the start, we wound through the pines and picnic tables and onto some fresh, loose gravel. We emerged and had a fairly flat straightaway on parking lot gravel and a dirt maintenance road where spare curbing and equipment was being stored. What I called section two was a stretch that ran downhill toward Jordan Lake in a field. It was very exposed to the sun here, with no tree cover. Section three ran parallel to Jordan Lake and had two hills here that were not long or terribly steep, but as the race wore on, they became the first walking spots. The final section was a windy stretch of flat trail through the pine forest back to the finish area. There was nothing truly technical about the course with the toughest footing probably being the loose gravel in the first section.
Because the new course was not in the State Park, we would not be able to camp pre-race. This was a little bit of a letdown since the closest sites (in the Park) had water views. But, there was no guarantee the gate would be open for us to get to the 7:00 start if we camped inside the Park. So, a brief Expedia search pointed me to Chapel Hill, about 25 minutes away. I selected the University Inn on Fordham Boulevard and upon arrival I quickly realized that Leslie, had she come, would have not been happy with the room. When I told Lee and Phyllis about it at the race, her comment, "So, you wouldn't want to have a blacklight there?" pretty much summed up my impressions. I did take advantage of its proximity to one of Leslie's favorite stores, Southern Season, to go pick her up a souvenir loaf of banana nut bread. The hotel itself was novel, with old UNC radio football and basketball highlights being played outside the lobby and UNC souvenirs available for purchase in the lobby. The room just left much to be desired.
Anyway, I survived my night, despite the A/C giving out and awoke before my 5:30 alarm to get packed up and head to the race. I tried something a little different for a pre-race breakfast this time, going with peanut butter on a "everything" bagel. I figured it wasn't so different from anything I normally eat that it would cause issues. Despite having started the day with plenty of time, a longish checkout process and my generally moving slowly had me arriving at Jordan Lake at about 6:30 a.m. There was plenty of parking (roughly 75 runners were registered) when I arrived and it was only about a 100 yard walk to where Lee and Phyllis had already set up a table for all of our food, water, etc... We had both purchased a 2.5 gallon Deer Park dispensing water jug and we had both brought our folding chairs. Lee left his open to sit in, while I used it to hold my duffle bag with all my stuff. In addition to various granola bars, I brought about ten servings of Tailwind, sunscreen, Vaseline, extra clothes and a change of shoes. Not knowing the terrain, I would start the race in my Salomon road shoes, but had my Salomon XA Enduros as backups.
Besides Lee and Phyllis, I saw a few familiar faces in Tyler Peek, Dan Paige (who just came up to help,) and Doug Dawkins, who is the father of the race director. There were also some others I knew, but not as well. There were 51 registered for the 12-hour, versus 38 in 2016 and they added a 6-hour race that had 20 registered runners. So, it was a little bigger crowd on a shorter loop, which meant that you'd rarely be alone on any section of the course. As ready as we were going to be, everyone gathered behind the timing mats for a few standard announcements from RD Erin Suwatanna and, having forgotten her air horn, she just gave us the "ready, set, go" start. I was near, but not at the front as we crossed the mat and almost immediately made a near-180 degree turn to continue along the trail. For this first lap, I carried nothing, but would pick up my bottle - a Salomon soft flask - when I came by our table on the next lap.
My initial goal for this race was to do better than I did in 2016, which was 61.53 miles. That would mean I'd need to do 46 laps. Knowing that number gave me a secondary goal of 50 laps since that would be a nice round number, though I never did the math to determine how many miles that would be. The farthest I've gone in 12 hours in 72 miles in the first half of the 2011 Freedom Park New Year's Eve Ultra. That was very unlikely to happen since Freedom Park had a solid surface and nearly ideal weather. The forecast of temps in the 80s and partly sunny made my first goal of doing better than 2016 my only real focus since I handle heat so poorly. There were supposed to be two relay teams taking part in the race, but from the start, I could only spot one team, made up of three youngish guys. They carried a chipped baton and handed it off at the start/finish area whenever they changed runners. From the outset, they were flying--fortunately too fast to even pull me along at their too-fast pace. I, along with everyone else, would see them come by me many times over the next twelve hours.
It took only a couple laps for the morning's 60 degree temperatures to begin to be too much. I was wearing my lightest weight, white shirt and it was already burning me up. This changed a little bit for the better when I had sweat through it and it helped cool me with the occasional breeze, but when you're hot at 8:00 or 9:00 a.m., it doesn't make you look forward to 1:00 p.m. There were a number of walkers in the 6 and 12 hour events. I don't know whether they were out there for a distance goal, because they knew and wanted to support Erin and her organization, or for both reasons.
I knew that I was probably going too fast early on because I don't really have that conservation of energy mindset that I really need. I was running what I thought was a ten minute mile pace, but Strava tells me that for the first 18 miles, most were in the 8s. I think, but am not certain, that my watched stopped the running time clock when I stopped at the table to refill my bottle, etc..., so that pace was based on actual running time and not elapsed time.
I really didn't do much talking early on aside from the usual "good job" type things when you are passing or being passed. I kidded Lee when I caught him talking one guy's ear off that he was stealing his energy. But, knowing it would be a long day, I was really trying to just zone out and let the time pass. One big negative to these "hour" races is that you see the clock ticking ever so slowly with each loop. Part of you is happy because the slow moving clock means more time for a higher mileage total at the end. But, the flip side of that is that there is more time for more pain and suffering. It was ticking VERY slowly on this day--due largely to the short loop causing me to see it more often than at the other 12-hour runs I had done. Brandon Wilson was timing it again and he has the large TV screen with the clock in the center and as you cross the mat, your stats appear at the top. Prior runners' stats are listed below yours, in order that they last crossed the mat, but many are hidden behind the time. You can see your place, but the only way to see who is right ahead or behind you, mileage-wise, is if they crossed one or two spots before you on that lap. I tried not to look and did a pretty good job, except my eyes were all too often drawn to the clock.
Even though I wasn't talking much, I could tell early on that this was an extremely friendly bunch of runners. Many were teamed up and chatting away. These events do pass more quickly when you have the distraction of a fellow runner with you, but I was on my own here. I saw one guy wearing on a 50-states Marathon shirt that had "X 6" at the bottom (did all 50 six times, I guess) and "110 countries" at the top. I never got around to asking him if I understood the shirt correctly, but that would mean a minimum of 410 marathons without any overlaps. There was also a guy with a shirt indicating he beat lung cancer, but I never got the chance to congratulate him. In general, everyone was in a good mood and kept it the entire race.
Since the laps are so repetitive and relatively uneventful, there is little use in going into great detail about each one. So, I'll skip ahead to around mile 20 when I decided the Salomon Sense Pulse road shoes I started with were no longer suitable. That was the longest distance I had worn them running so maybe they just don't suit me as well as my other shoes. Changing into my XA Enduros felt like saying hello to an old friend and I stuck with them for the rest of the day. On one lap, both me and the guy who was running just ahead of me noticed that we didn't hear the beep when we crossed the mat and I didn't see my name come up at the top of the screen. We both talked to the timers and they assured us we were being counted. I later noticed that there is a delay of several seconds between the time I crossed the mat and when it appeared on the screen. In talking with the timers, I learned that I had just completed lap 20, which was right at a marathon distance, at roughly the four hour point. My Garmin watch agreed with their numbers almost exactly. Holding that pace would mean a day of about 78 miles, but I wasn't so foolish as to believe the next eight hours would go so well. It was now about 11:00 a.m. and the hottest parts of the day lay ahead.
As 11:00 moved to noon and 1:00 p.m., the shade was at a premium and the sun was bearing down in full force. Eventually, some clouds made there way overhead, but they were currently infrequent. To keep from squinting and minimize pollen in my eyes, I put on my sunglasses pretty early. This would be only the second time I had worn them in a race with the other being Bryce Canyon last year. Though I worry it makes me seem standoffish, they really did help. I was regularly using sunscreen on my face and arms and around 1:00 p.m., I broke out the Enduracool towel I had put in a cooler of cold water. This lightweight, water-holding, towel I bought at Lowes on clearance was the single best thing I had packed for this race. Initially, the thought was to just cool down at the table with it, but it was so lightweight, I just left it around my neck and tucked the ends into the front of my shirt and ran with it on me. Every several laps, I'd put it back in the cooler to chill while I filled my bottle and put it back on when I started up again.
In the mid-afternoon, I was doing more walking and I started chatting with some of the runners if we were near one another. I even found myself on an extended walk break talking to the same guy as Lee had talked to earlier in the race. This was his first ultra, having done marathons before. Lee thought his name was Grey and if so, he would finish the day at about 48 miles, not too much less than double his previous long distance. By now, I had people telling me I was leading and I was able to figure out who was next behind me. At one stop, he crossed the mat just behind me and I asked Phyllis to go look at the screen and tell me how close in laps he was to me. She said he was three laps back, or about 4 miles. I realized that if I actually wanted to win, I couldn't relax because he could make that up quickly. I had seen him running ahead of me at times and he looked like he was just cruising effortlessly. We talked for a while on one lap and I told him he was making running look easy. He assured me it was anything but easy, but I certainly couldn't see him struggling.
At about the nine hour point (4:00 p.m.) I began to feel like the home stretch was approaching. Yes, it was still a long three hours to go, but the end did seem to feel in sight. The clouds had thickened some and while there was still direct sun at times, we did get extended relief at times. The EnduraCool towel was doing great and I believe it made a huge difference in how I felt during the hottest part of the day. Some time in the mid-to-late afternoon, I began taking advantage of the BB&T bottled water they had on ice at the finish and was getting one every couple laps. It was so good, but I had to be careful and not drink too much too fast. It was so cold that it didn't settle well during one lap, and I had to deal with stomach discomfort for a while. Fortunately, that went away--probably as my body brought the water temperature up to normal--and I was more cautious about how I drank it going forward. The ice under my hat routine continued and I kept carrying my Tailwind-loaded Salomon bottle on most laps, though occasionally, I carried the BB&T bottle instead.
I knew that I had to keep the guy in the blue tank top from passing me multiple time during these final hours. If I ran into trouble or walked too much, I thought it a real possibility that he could easily pass me once per hour. I don't go into races thinking or expecting to win, but if I have a chance, I want to at least try. I remembered the 2016 race where I was something like 17 minutes behind the leader on our last lap and closed it to within about 2.5 minutes by the finish because he ran into some major issues right at the end. I just had to be smart about when to run and when to walk, and keep cool as best I could the rest of the way, so that the same thing wouldn't happen to me as happened to him that day.
Because I thought I recognized her as a friend of Derek Cernak's and a participant in some of his events, I introduced myself to Shannon, whom I had seen on occasion throughout the race. She said she did know Derek and we spoke briefly about our mutual acquaintance. Unfortunately, she was about to make a longer stop at her table so we didn't really get to compare Derek notes.
During the last couple hours of the race, I was biding my time. Some laps felt better than others, even if the split times were roughly the same. Sometimes the difference in lap times was just a factor of how much time I spent/wasted at our table after a loop. I caught Lee a couple times in the final hours because he was walking more. On occasion, I'd walk a bit with him. Phyllis joined him for the last 9-10 miles to lend moral support. I expected my laps to be in the 20 minute range now and would calculate how many that meant I had left. "Unfortunately," my laps were actually more like 15-17 minutes, so the number of remaining laps increased one or two over the last two hours.
When I was in the 11th hour, I completed a lap at roughly the 11:20 point. I knew that if I gave the next one a good effort, I could probably walk all of the final lap and finish just under twelve hours. Keep in mind that partial laps don't count, so if I wasn't across the line in that final lap by the 12 hour point, it wouldn't count. Still, I thought if I could allow myself 23-25 minutes for that last lap, I could likely walk it. I pressed a little and finished my current lap at the 11:35 point. I decided to run a little bit of this final lap, just to give myself extra cushion for walking. After getting through the first section of the loop and about to start walking, I saw Lee and Phyllis walking ahead of me, on the straightaway heading down toward the lake. So, I kept running--perhaps another quarter mile--to catch up, and walked it in with them. Shortly before the finish line, Lee had Phyllis run ahead to get a picture and we ran roughly the last 100 feet to the end to look good for the camera.
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| Lee and I finishing together. |
In looking back, there were a few things that really went well on this day. Most notably, I was able to keep from overheating and having any dehydration issues. While the long adventure runs (Foothills Trail and Roan Mountain 30-miler) with Dennis and Brian didn't make this day feel short, they did help me to have more run left in me as the day and miles wore on.
There were 43 finishers in the 12-hour race and the results are posted here: http://my4.raceresult.com/94896/. It's interesting that they include splits for (approximately) various distances.
Since they tracked it, my times for approximate distances (nearest completed 1.35 mile lap) were as follows:
Marathon (27.0) - 4:02:46
50K (32.323) - 5:02:25
50M (51.178) - 8:33:51
100K (63.299) - 11:03:21
My splits were:
| Lap# | LapSplit | Race Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 00:10:32 | 00:10:32 |
| 2 | 00:10:34 | 00:21:05 |
| 3 | 00:10:50 | 00:31:54 |
| 4 | 00:11:24 | 00:43:18 |
| 5 | 00:11:17 | 00:54:34 |
| 6 | 00:11:33 | 01:06:07 |
| 7 | 00:11:30 | 01:17:36 |
| 8 | 00:11:40 | 01:29:15 |
| 9 | 00:12:48 | 01:42:03 |
| 10 | 00:11:44 | 01:53:46 |
| 11 | 00:12:03 | 02:05:48 |
| 12 | 00:11:49 | 02:17:37 |
| 13 | 00:12:45 | 02:30:21 |
| 14 | 00:11:44 | 02:42:05 |
| 15 | 00:13:21 | 02:55:25 |
| 16 | 00:12:28 | 03:07:53 |
| 17 | 00:14:11 | 03:22:03 |
| 18 | 00:13:26 | 03:35:29 |
| 19 | 00:14:05 | 03:49:34 |
| 20 | 00:13:13 | 04:02:46 |
| 21 | 00:15:23 | 04:18:09 |
| 22 | 00:13:58 | 04:32:06 |
| 23 | 00:15:08 | 04:47:14 |
| 24 | 00:15:12 | 05:02:25 |
| 25 | 00:15:54 | 05:18:19 |
| 26 | 00:14:12 | 05:32:31 |
| 27 | 00:15:37 | 05:48:07 |
| 28 | 00:14:33 | 06:02:39 |
| 29 | 00:14:58 | 06:17:37 |
| 30 | 00:15:46 | 06:33:23 |
| 31 | 00:15:32 | 06:48:54 |
| 32 | 00:13:02 | 07:01:56 |
| 33 | 00:15:01 | 07:16:57 |
| 34 | 00:15:27 | 07:32:23 |
| 35 | 00:17:12 | 07:49:35 |
| 36 | 00:13:37 | 08:03:12 |
| 37 | 00:15:31 | 08:18:42 |
| 38 | 00:15:09 | 08:33:51 |
| 39 | 00:15:46 | 08:49:36 |
| 40 | 00:19:15 | 09:08:51 |
| 41 | 00:14:45 | 09:23:35 |
| 42 | 00:14:47 | 09:38:21 |
| 43 | 00:16:56 | 09:55:17 |
| 44 | 00:18:35 | 10:13:52 |
| 45 | 00:16:53 | 10:30:44 |
| 46 | 00:17:06 | 10:47:49 |
| 47 | 00:15:32 | 11:03:21 |
| 48 | 00:16:32 | 11:19:53 |
| 49 | 00:15:18 | 11:35:11 |
| 50 | 00:17:04 | 11:52:14 |
This event is really a good one to meet any distance or time goals you might have. The surface isn't perfect for maximum mileage, but it varies and the four distinct "sections' really help to break it up. Erin and the volunteers make you feel like a celebrity at every lap and while I didn't really use their aid station, it seemed pretty well stocked. They did bring in pizza later in the race, but I usually can't handle something like that during a run.
If I keep doing races, I'll likely be back to Jordan Lake again in the future. I'll just have to find better lodging option next time.
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