Tom Davidson just sent me an email stating that this blog is now linked to the SMAC website.
http://sugarloafmac.org/
I guesse that means I should start writing shorter and more frequent postings. Let me know if any one is reading this stuff. I am not against an ongoing dialog happenning here, it could be fun.
Keep on running friends.
Mark
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Massanutten Trails 100
The following is a piece I have written for my running club's newsletter.
Enjoy.
The Massanutten Trails 100, from the crew’s perspective
Front Royal, Virginia, Saturday morning, May 7, 2005 :
Some time around 4:30 A.M. 141 runners are getting ready run a trail race, a very long trail race. The Massanutten Moutain Trails 100 is a 101.8 ultra marathon trail race around the George Washington National Forest. The runners have 36 hours to run this course through 82.7 miles of trails, 14.8 miles of dirt roads, and 4.3 miles of pavement climbing over 18000 feet in the process.
The Virginia Happy Trails Running Club (VHTRC) is a well organized vibrant group that makes the Massanutten and other several other trail races possible. For the MMT 100 the VHTRC has put together 130 volunteers to do every thing that needs to be done in an event like this. The runners have on average two additional people supporting their efforts. The teams support their runners by driving from aid station to aid station over the many hours bringing food, drink, and encouragement. After 6:00 P.M.Saturday night pacers are allowed to join their runners to accompany them through the night and in to the following morning (and afternoon if necessary) to the end of the race.
5:00 A.M. : 141 runners start out from the Skyline Ranch on a paved road for a little over two miles before they head into the woods. The course has claimed 9 runners already who DNS (Did Not Start).
It Is About the Support
While the runners start their 102 mile trek I am back at my room in the in the Quality Inn asleep. Bill Cook is preparing to meet his wife Donna Utakis at the Shawl Gap Trail Head Aid Station at mile 8.7 to take her lights and give her more Hammer Gel and sports drink. My role in this event is be half of Donna’s support team. Around 6:00 AM Bill bangs on my door to ask if I want to join him to see Donna at Shawl Gap. I say, “aaah no.” and go back to sleep. I am a dedicated member of the team.
8:15 AM: I am shaving. Bill bangs on my door. We have to hit the road to catch our runner at the second team accessible aid station about 24 miles in to the run. I grab my gear and we are off to AS #5 (aid station number #5 of 16) Habron Gap Trail Head.
9:23A.M. AS #5 Habron Gap Trail Head 24.7 Miles: Bill sees Donna running in to the aid
station before we even have a chance to park the car. She is running much faster than we had expected her to. We are not ready with the sports drink or much else in terms of support. We barely get her refueled and our runner is gone. Bill has been up since 3:30 AM and he will be schlepping a cooler to all of the accessible aid stations on the course. He has a broken wrist so his job will become truly painful when I jump in as a pacer, and leave him on his own.
24.7 miles is awfully close to the end of a marathon, and I am astounded at how fresh the runners appear at this point in the race. Marathoners do not look happy after 20 miles of running, yet
these ultramarathoners are all smiles.
It is About the Food
There are 16 aid stations along the course provide every thing from emergency foot care to amazing assortment of hot and cold foods. If you run marathons or shorter races in race nutrition is probably a couple of Gues and some Gatorade. 100 mile trail events require real fuel to get the runners across the finish line. Nearly all of the aid stations provide a spread that beats out most races post-race food. At the Gap II check point the runners had grilled cheese, fried spam, soups, cookies, potato chips . The spam and grilled cheese sandwiches really caught my eye.. I never imagined such food could eaten during this kind of event.
As a pacer I happy to hear the race director say that the pacers would be fed during the run, but the crews were on their own. The pacers were not supposed to have the potato soup, because this was in limited supply. Thus began our ongoing joke about the soup Nazis, and how lowly pacers could not have the soup.
I found the cold pizza at the last two aid stations to be real life savers. The cookies were good. Donna shared her potato soup with me and got a real tung lashing for it. I never got to try the Spam.
It is About Smoozing With the Other Runner’s Support People
10:00 A.M. AS #6 Camp Roosevelt 34.2 Miles:
We are waiting for our runner and watching the leaders come out of the woods and then disappear again in to the forest. There are about thirty people at this aid station in the woods. I spend an hour talking with the families and support people of runners. Many of these people are runners , though most are not ultramarathoners themselves. It is a beautiful sunny morning and I am able to enjoy the company of these people who are waiting for their runners to come in. An older man wearing a VHTRC volunteer tee shirt and I share a piece of the trail a couple hundred feet up the aid station. His son is running this race and is some where in the front of the pack. Along with his dad, this runner’s young children and his wife are all there to provide support for the more than 24 hours it will take him to finish the run. I never learn the name of this runner, but I am impressed that his family is so involved in his long distance running.
10:21 AM Todd Walker of Amherst is the second runner into the aid station and one minute out of first place. Having met Todd the night before I will enjoy watching him run through the aid stations for the next 8 hours before he disappears in to the night (finishing second overall in 19:24:03). (Todd would finish second overall in 19:24 behind Matthew Estes, 18:12) I gabbed with his pacer who did the Bull Run 50 miler, then ten days later ran the Boston Marathon in 2:56. I was kind of left speechless.
Kerry Arsenault of Connecticut, a truly fast runner herself, was one of the supportive people chasing a runner from aid station to aid station. She is a marathoner, and like many of people supporting the ultra runners she is considering a 50 miler some day. The great social aspect of this event was the simple fact that you got to hang out with so many runners for extended periods of time. I saw many of the same people at different aid stations through the day.
The runners coming in to this aid station still look good even though they have already run a marathon plus eight miles. The smiles are not as beaming as they were a couple of hours ago, but these runners have been on their feet for more than seven hours.
Bill Cook and I are ready for our runner when she comes in. A sports drink, some hammer gell, and a reminder to eat are all that Donna needs before she runs out again. Bill and I are off to find lunch for ourselves.
A Long Run Through The Night
7:13 P.M. AS #11 Gap Creek Jawbone II 64.9 miles:
Bill and I have been here for an hour and a half. This is our third and final visit to this aid station. The Gap Creek Jawbone aid station is alive with activity. Runners are coming into the aid station from two directions. The first approach is aid station #6 the Gap Creek Jawbone I at 39.9 miles. The second approach is Gap II at nearly 65 miles. Todd Walker was the first runner through this aid station at 11:21 A.M. with eventual third place finisher Karl Metzer one minute behind. If manning an aid station could be an ultra sport this was the premiere event. The last runner to come into this aid station would be come through at 2:00 A.M. Sunday morning.
More than any other location this aid station resembles a campground and emergency triage. The runners are coming in hot, tired and hungry. Some are falling apart. Several are still smiling and moving fast. Runners can get their feet taped, a massage, a drink and food. An amazing variety of foods are available. Hot food including soups, cookies, fried foods. Ultra runners eat things that would make a road runner spew. It had been years since I eaten Spam. The thought of eating Spam in the middle of a race the way one downs a Gue or gel intrigued me.
Besides the runners there are a couple dozen or more crew people hanging out. After 6:00PM pacers are allowed to join their runners. Donna ran through the last aid station at 5:35 so this is the first place where I can join her. Being a first time pacer is a little scarey. I will be running along side of my runner for 37 miles. 26.2 is my longest distance run so far. I have been promised a runner who after 65 miles will be wishing for death, and totally trashed emotionally and physically. My job will be to keep her in this event. This runner I am pacing is promising to
hate me before the event is over. So extreme vitriol and a long night running in the woods with a babbling shell of an ultra runner was the agenda for me. It doesn’t get better this.
Reality proved to be different. Donna came into the aid station, we reloaded her Hammer Gel, and food. We put on our head lamps and ran out of the aid station in to the night. She seemed strong and together and I was excited to be running. This was a good sign.
The first aid station was less than 3 miles away. We got there before dark and soon were on our way towards the “notorious” Short Mountain. I was clueless about the trail ahead. This is work. . It takes us just over three hours to cover the next eight miles which consists of loose rock. This is the only part of the run where I worry about my runner. After two and half hours on Short
Mountain I detect a drop in energy in the voice of my runner. It is close to 11:00 P.M. when I realize that we both really need a serious dose of carbohydrates. I often ask Donna if she has been drinking her Gel. Somewhere near the end of this section of trail Donna’s headlamp battery call’s it quits. I give her a small flash light that I have as a back up. The batteries die in that light quickly also. We come off the trail with just my headlamp.
The Edinburgh Gap Aid station supplies us with the needed carbohydrates, and very kind people have the batteries that Donna’s headlamp requires. Bill is there to provide additional support, as he has been for the last 20 hours. We leave Edinburgh with renewed energy. This point of the run we are fresh again. 75 miles down and our next aid station is nine miles away. We have another 3 hours of running ahead to the Woodstock Tower aid station.
My runner has not yet melted down, and I feel pretty good myself. There is a beauty in the dark trail lit by headlamps and glow sticks. The VHTRC has done a heroic job of marking the trail with yellow tape and green glowing light sticks.
Woodstock Tower has soup, cookies, chips, beef jerky. The late hour and running fatigue are making me feel light headed. The Woodstock Tower aid station brings us back again. 84 miles down.
4:00 AM and we are at Powell’s Fort. It is cold, but we have about 12 miles to go. Pizza and soup bring me back into this. My runner is still moving strong and I have not seen any evidence that a melt down is imminent.
I am a talker, so by now my runner either has zoned me out, or is living some where in Dante’s fourth circle of hell. The fourth circle is where sinners must listen to an eternity of dabble from a runner of their own choosing. We leave Powell’s Fort on a dirt road, and then back to run-able trails in the dark. The sun comes up as we make our way to Elizabeth’s Furnace. The final aid station is before us. Bill is there, and so is the food. I have pepperoni pizza, and soup. My runner is anxious to run. Food and drink are necessary, but we are close to the end. We are told of a photographer on the course ahead.
There is final climb of over a thousand feet over a ridge then there are just two or three miles to the end. During this final push we encounter the photographer. The photographer followed us to the top of the ridge talking the whole way. We are polite, but once out of his sight we are happy to be rid of him. We later learn that he is from USA today, and Donna’s picture is seen coast to coast.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2005-05-09-ultramarathon_x.htm
In a literal final sprint the run ends with Donna running to finish in 27:00:30(8:00 AM). She finishes as the second woman, and the 19th of 93 finishers. 50 starters did not finish the course. The ultra runners and their support teams showed their tenacity in getting themselves and there runners moving for up to 35 hours). The good thing about finishing when we did is that we got to sleep before the post race festivities. The last runner finished in 35 hours, 39 minutes, only a few minutes before the post race awards.
This race well organized, well supported, and the course was well marked even at night. In this group as a marathoner I was looked at as a sprinter. It seemed odd to think of marathons as short fast races, but in this context I was. People asked when I was planning on doing s 50 miler. No time soon, but I did enjoy being a pacer, and I look forward to doing this again.
For race information:
http://www.vhtrc.org/mmt/
Enjoy.
The Massanutten Trails 100, from the crew’s perspective
Front Royal, Virginia, Saturday morning, May 7, 2005 :
Some time around 4:30 A.M. 141 runners are getting ready run a trail race, a very long trail race. The Massanutten Moutain Trails 100 is a 101.8 ultra marathon trail race around the George Washington National Forest. The runners have 36 hours to run this course through 82.7 miles of trails, 14.8 miles of dirt roads, and 4.3 miles of pavement climbing over 18000 feet in the process.
The Virginia Happy Trails Running Club (VHTRC) is a well organized vibrant group that makes the Massanutten and other several other trail races possible. For the MMT 100 the VHTRC has put together 130 volunteers to do every thing that needs to be done in an event like this. The runners have on average two additional people supporting their efforts. The teams support their runners by driving from aid station to aid station over the many hours bringing food, drink, and encouragement. After 6:00 P.M.Saturday night pacers are allowed to join their runners to accompany them through the night and in to the following morning (and afternoon if necessary) to the end of the race.
5:00 A.M. : 141 runners start out from the Skyline Ranch on a paved road for a little over two miles before they head into the woods. The course has claimed 9 runners already who DNS (Did Not Start).
It Is About the Support
While the runners start their 102 mile trek I am back at my room in the in the Quality Inn asleep. Bill Cook is preparing to meet his wife Donna Utakis at the Shawl Gap Trail Head Aid Station at mile 8.7 to take her lights and give her more Hammer Gel and sports drink. My role in this event is be half of Donna’s support team. Around 6:00 AM Bill bangs on my door to ask if I want to join him to see Donna at Shawl Gap. I say, “aaah no.” and go back to sleep. I am a dedicated member of the team.
8:15 AM: I am shaving. Bill bangs on my door. We have to hit the road to catch our runner at the second team accessible aid station about 24 miles in to the run. I grab my gear and we are off to AS #5 (aid station number #5 of 16) Habron Gap Trail Head.
9:23A.M. AS #5 Habron Gap Trail Head 24.7 Miles: Bill sees Donna running in to the aid
station before we even have a chance to park the car. She is running much faster than we had expected her to. We are not ready with the sports drink or much else in terms of support. We barely get her refueled and our runner is gone. Bill has been up since 3:30 AM and he will be schlepping a cooler to all of the accessible aid stations on the course. He has a broken wrist so his job will become truly painful when I jump in as a pacer, and leave him on his own.
24.7 miles is awfully close to the end of a marathon, and I am astounded at how fresh the runners appear at this point in the race. Marathoners do not look happy after 20 miles of running, yet
these ultramarathoners are all smiles.
It is About the Food
There are 16 aid stations along the course provide every thing from emergency foot care to amazing assortment of hot and cold foods. If you run marathons or shorter races in race nutrition is probably a couple of Gues and some Gatorade. 100 mile trail events require real fuel to get the runners across the finish line. Nearly all of the aid stations provide a spread that beats out most races post-race food. At the Gap II check point the runners had grilled cheese, fried spam, soups, cookies, potato chips . The spam and grilled cheese sandwiches really caught my eye.. I never imagined such food could eaten during this kind of event.
As a pacer I happy to hear the race director say that the pacers would be fed during the run, but the crews were on their own. The pacers were not supposed to have the potato soup, because this was in limited supply. Thus began our ongoing joke about the soup Nazis, and how lowly pacers could not have the soup.
I found the cold pizza at the last two aid stations to be real life savers. The cookies were good. Donna shared her potato soup with me and got a real tung lashing for it. I never got to try the Spam.
It is About Smoozing With the Other Runner’s Support People
10:00 A.M. AS #6 Camp Roosevelt 34.2 Miles:
We are waiting for our runner and watching the leaders come out of the woods and then disappear again in to the forest. There are about thirty people at this aid station in the woods. I spend an hour talking with the families and support people of runners. Many of these people are runners , though most are not ultramarathoners themselves. It is a beautiful sunny morning and I am able to enjoy the company of these people who are waiting for their runners to come in. An older man wearing a VHTRC volunteer tee shirt and I share a piece of the trail a couple hundred feet up the aid station. His son is running this race and is some where in the front of the pack. Along with his dad, this runner’s young children and his wife are all there to provide support for the more than 24 hours it will take him to finish the run. I never learn the name of this runner, but I am impressed that his family is so involved in his long distance running.
10:21 AM Todd Walker of Amherst is the second runner into the aid station and one minute out of first place. Having met Todd the night before I will enjoy watching him run through the aid stations for the next 8 hours before he disappears in to the night (finishing second overall in 19:24:03). (Todd would finish second overall in 19:24 behind Matthew Estes, 18:12) I gabbed with his pacer who did the Bull Run 50 miler, then ten days later ran the Boston Marathon in 2:56. I was kind of left speechless.
Kerry Arsenault of Connecticut, a truly fast runner herself, was one of the supportive people chasing a runner from aid station to aid station. She is a marathoner, and like many of people supporting the ultra runners she is considering a 50 miler some day. The great social aspect of this event was the simple fact that you got to hang out with so many runners for extended periods of time. I saw many of the same people at different aid stations through the day.
The runners coming in to this aid station still look good even though they have already run a marathon plus eight miles. The smiles are not as beaming as they were a couple of hours ago, but these runners have been on their feet for more than seven hours.
Bill Cook and I are ready for our runner when she comes in. A sports drink, some hammer gell, and a reminder to eat are all that Donna needs before she runs out again. Bill and I are off to find lunch for ourselves.
A Long Run Through The Night
7:13 P.M. AS #11 Gap Creek Jawbone II 64.9 miles:
Bill and I have been here for an hour and a half. This is our third and final visit to this aid station. The Gap Creek Jawbone aid station is alive with activity. Runners are coming into the aid station from two directions. The first approach is aid station #6 the Gap Creek Jawbone I at 39.9 miles. The second approach is Gap II at nearly 65 miles. Todd Walker was the first runner through this aid station at 11:21 A.M. with eventual third place finisher Karl Metzer one minute behind. If manning an aid station could be an ultra sport this was the premiere event. The last runner to come into this aid station would be come through at 2:00 A.M. Sunday morning.
More than any other location this aid station resembles a campground and emergency triage. The runners are coming in hot, tired and hungry. Some are falling apart. Several are still smiling and moving fast. Runners can get their feet taped, a massage, a drink and food. An amazing variety of foods are available. Hot food including soups, cookies, fried foods. Ultra runners eat things that would make a road runner spew. It had been years since I eaten Spam. The thought of eating Spam in the middle of a race the way one downs a Gue or gel intrigued me.
Besides the runners there are a couple dozen or more crew people hanging out. After 6:00PM pacers are allowed to join their runners. Donna ran through the last aid station at 5:35 so this is the first place where I can join her. Being a first time pacer is a little scarey. I will be running along side of my runner for 37 miles. 26.2 is my longest distance run so far. I have been promised a runner who after 65 miles will be wishing for death, and totally trashed emotionally and physically. My job will be to keep her in this event. This runner I am pacing is promising to
hate me before the event is over. So extreme vitriol and a long night running in the woods with a babbling shell of an ultra runner was the agenda for me. It doesn’t get better this.
Reality proved to be different. Donna came into the aid station, we reloaded her Hammer Gel, and food. We put on our head lamps and ran out of the aid station in to the night. She seemed strong and together and I was excited to be running. This was a good sign.
The first aid station was less than 3 miles away. We got there before dark and soon were on our way towards the “notorious” Short Mountain. I was clueless about the trail ahead. This is work. . It takes us just over three hours to cover the next eight miles which consists of loose rock. This is the only part of the run where I worry about my runner. After two and half hours on Short
Mountain I detect a drop in energy in the voice of my runner. It is close to 11:00 P.M. when I realize that we both really need a serious dose of carbohydrates. I often ask Donna if she has been drinking her Gel. Somewhere near the end of this section of trail Donna’s headlamp battery call’s it quits. I give her a small flash light that I have as a back up. The batteries die in that light quickly also. We come off the trail with just my headlamp.
The Edinburgh Gap Aid station supplies us with the needed carbohydrates, and very kind people have the batteries that Donna’s headlamp requires. Bill is there to provide additional support, as he has been for the last 20 hours. We leave Edinburgh with renewed energy. This point of the run we are fresh again. 75 miles down and our next aid station is nine miles away. We have another 3 hours of running ahead to the Woodstock Tower aid station.
My runner has not yet melted down, and I feel pretty good myself. There is a beauty in the dark trail lit by headlamps and glow sticks. The VHTRC has done a heroic job of marking the trail with yellow tape and green glowing light sticks.
Woodstock Tower has soup, cookies, chips, beef jerky. The late hour and running fatigue are making me feel light headed. The Woodstock Tower aid station brings us back again. 84 miles down.
4:00 AM and we are at Powell’s Fort. It is cold, but we have about 12 miles to go. Pizza and soup bring me back into this. My runner is still moving strong and I have not seen any evidence that a melt down is imminent.
I am a talker, so by now my runner either has zoned me out, or is living some where in Dante’s fourth circle of hell. The fourth circle is where sinners must listen to an eternity of dabble from a runner of their own choosing. We leave Powell’s Fort on a dirt road, and then back to run-able trails in the dark. The sun comes up as we make our way to Elizabeth’s Furnace. The final aid station is before us. Bill is there, and so is the food. I have pepperoni pizza, and soup. My runner is anxious to run. Food and drink are necessary, but we are close to the end. We are told of a photographer on the course ahead.
There is final climb of over a thousand feet over a ridge then there are just two or three miles to the end. During this final push we encounter the photographer. The photographer followed us to the top of the ridge talking the whole way. We are polite, but once out of his sight we are happy to be rid of him. We later learn that he is from USA today, and Donna’s picture is seen coast to coast.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/2005-05-09-ultramarathon_x.htm
In a literal final sprint the run ends with Donna running to finish in 27:00:30(8:00 AM). She finishes as the second woman, and the 19th of 93 finishers. 50 starters did not finish the course. The ultra runners and their support teams showed their tenacity in getting themselves and there runners moving for up to 35 hours). The good thing about finishing when we did is that we got to sleep before the post race festivities. The last runner finished in 35 hours, 39 minutes, only a few minutes before the post race awards.
This race well organized, well supported, and the course was well marked even at night. In this group as a marathoner I was looked at as a sprinter. It seemed odd to think of marathons as short fast races, but in this context I was. People asked when I was planning on doing s 50 miler. No time soon, but I did enjoy being a pacer, and I look forward to doing this again.
For race information:
http://www.vhtrc.org/mmt/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)