Miles for Moffitt Ultramarathon 12 Hour Endurance Race

Ok, in an attempt to more fully describe my twelve hour run on the night of the April 30th/1st of May:

Before we ran:
Dahlia and I went downtown to see her old teammates on their dragonboat race near channelside. He team was “Miami Red Dragons”. I met her old team captain Dennis who said “wow Dahlia, you’ve lost weight!” He looked her up and down and I saw gears grinding. We chatted with some of her friends, waiting for the race to start. As the team took off to the assembly area where they get on the water to race, I see Denis come running up the steps and start looking around. I realized he was looking for Dahlia and said “Dahlia, Dennis wants to talk to you.” He spotted her and came over. He invited her to drum for the dragonboat. That position is usually awarded to one of the lightest people you can find, and Dahlia had impressed him with her skinniness at a point when he needed a drummer.

So they get out on the water, race, and … won their heat, and not only that… had the best time all day. Dahlia won a dragonboat race before she even got out on the track that weekend. I was stunned, honestly.

First hour, arrival:
We were drinking A LOT previous to the race, but Dahlia and I had debated various food intake and had mostly agreed on a late noonish pasta meal, followed by just a snack at 5 or 6, then nothing but fluid before the race. This we did, except that I ate 4 slices of toast with spaghetti sauce at the “snack”, and so for the first hour of the race, I noticed the toast disagreeing with all that water I was drinking. The nausea went away after the first hour.

Technique:
After months of discussion and even debate, we agreed on using the Galloway technique for this long run. We started in the first hour with 10 minute runs followed by 1 minute walking periods. For the first hour or two I didn’t worry about forgetting to walk. We had several interruptions – my dad came by to say hi, which was a welcome interruption, but it threw off the Galloway timing. I didn’t worry about it much.

Several other visitors:
Kasi, Dahlia’s daughter, came twice! Once with friends after 10pm, when we had been running for a while, but were still relatively fresh, but also at 2 am, when we thought everyone was sleeping :-) When Dahlia was texting Kasi to come she asked me what we could ask Kasi to bring when she came (to help motivate her to come)… so I say “milkshakes”. Dahlia said ok, and texted Kasi with the request. Well, Kasi was in the parking lot, so she and her friend just shook their booty at us and called it a “shake”. Hilarious. Later, she and boyfriend Ian brought milkshakes, for real. They were delicious, but in the interest of honesty, I will admit that I ditched most of it. It was the best chocolate shake ever, but if I drank that while running this event I would not have finished. But god bless Kasi and Ian for their late night support trips. Alba also came out, with her son and a friend. She took photos and encouraged us and even hugged Dahlia (by then I was way to sweaty to hug). That was after 1am, I think. We were still chugging along quite well, I think, at that point.

Strategy:
So we planned our approach to 50 miles this way… We would run slowly to 20 miles over the course of 4 hours, and then take a break. In training we had noticed that the “wall” was somewhere after 20 miles and we didn’t want to hit the wall. So we took a long break at 4 hours, 20 miles into the race. Originally we planned for it to be an hour, but I think we shortened it to 45 minutes. Later, this break turned out to be crucial. I think it was clearly too long. When I say “break” I don’t mean we stopped. We walked but kept going. Any attempt to get 50 miles requires some walking for all but the elite. The male winner Joe Ninke didn’t stop, ever. And I refrained from tripping him. There were a couple others too. We walked, drank and ate. Oranges, Gatorade and Dahlia ate M&Ms.

Midrace:
We managed to get to 25 miles at around 5:15 into the race. (The race timer counted DOWN, instead of up, from 12 hours to 0.) Which seemed like we were doing well, but … honestly no… we needed to be further down the road to hit 50. And yes, I was pretty obsessed with making my goal, so I was doing the math repeatedly. After “only” five hours of running, math was a struggle. I remember saying to Dahlia “hmm, ok, so 8 times 4 is … (long pause) uh…24?” To be interrupted by a female runner who chimed in with “32!”. “Oh, yeah.”

We were continuing to use the Galloway timed walking technique and for the most part kept the pace at 12 minutes per mile. Until we took that long break anyway, and again while running afterward. Later in the run, we were not able to keep that pace.

Anecdotes:
We met Jim when Dahlia realized her corns (bumps on her feet) might give her trouble on this run, so we asked for a medical kit. The race director didn’t have a kit but he pointed us to “Jim” who did. He kindly let us use the kit and Dahlia didn’t have any blisters after the race, so I think it worked.

Jim was funny. He told us some stories while we ran. He told us we were a cute couple to run together like this (Dahlia was kindly keeping her pace to match mine). He said his wife won’t run with him anymore because at the start of their half marathon, after the race began he said in a loud voice “OK! I’ve HAD it with you! We’re going to be running for 13 more miles, and I’m not taking any more of this shit!” I got the distinct impression that she was surprised by the announcement, but she reportedly replied “You can quit now and save yourself the trouble.” Jim said for him the approach to the finish line involved dodging daggers.

Jim also remarked that his dog was comfortably sleeping on his side of the bed by that time of the night.

Sometime in the middle of the night I announced to Dahlia: “I am not scared.”

“These are MY roads. My name is Michael Andrew Turner. I have been running these roads since I was a child. My son, Caleb Cian Turner will run these roads when I am gone. I am not scared! These are MY roads.”

It was inspired by a similar announcement by a native American in the great running movie “Apocalypto”, a Mel Gibson movie.

Dahlia has been nagging me not to hang my head while running. It’s a bad habit, and probably obstructs airflow while running and is bad posture… etc. At one point in the middle of the night I quoted Shreck (actually it was donkey): “IM LOOKING DOWN!” It’s a hard habit to break.

At 8 hours and 11 minutes into the race after coving roughly 32 miles, my Garmin ran out of battery power. That’s right, I out-ran my sports watch. The watch showed us as having run nearly two miles more than the lap counter gave us credit for. Trips to the bathroom and aide tent might account for that, plus we usually reserved the inside lane for the elite runners who didn’t walk at all.

Late in the Race…. At about 9 hours into the race:
I had an odd out of body sort of experience where I realized I should be holding a video camera and announcing, and I really did: “Ok, it is 4am, we have been running for 9 hours, and have covered 36 miles” [actually I cant remember the number] “but we have 3 hour remaining to run.” Dahlia, bless her heart said “Just 3 hours!”

I did the same thing at the tenth hour. “Ok, it is 5 am, we have been running for 10 hours. We have 2 more hours to go.” “Just 2 hours!”

With less than an hour to go… I realized my math wasn’t going to work. I had failed to make 50 miles unless I did something drastic. Such as run without breaks. I needed 6 miles in an hour. I could do it! Except… I couldn’t. It was a painful realization. Somewhere in the second to last hour, my knee had given out and I was limping. It was a strain to run two laps and then walk one lap. We were averaging about 14 minute per mile when we were not just all out walking on a break.

Dahlia suggested we walk that last hour. My response was diplomatic: “NO.”

Half a mile later, Dahlia suggested we walk for the remainder of the race. She wasn’t doing this for herself, she could have kept going. I didn’t say anything, I don’t think, certainly nothing that I’d care to write here where my mother might read it. I walked.

Finish:
My dad showed up. Which was so nice of him. He drove us to breakfast and then home.

But the race was not totally finished when he showed up. I was limping along by this point, basically barely able to walk, but still determined to continue. I had taken off my shoes to see if walking without my shoes would be less painful. Answer: No. Dad shows up after we’ve been running for twelve hours and says “Hey why are you walking? Lets get going!” and despite the fact that he is wearing leather soled shoes, he starts jogging. I explained Jim’s threat about daggers at the finish line, but dragged myself into a rolling limp-jog.

At the twelfth hour… literally:
Mike at the starting line said “Oh, Dahlia, be sure to hang around for the awards ceremony!” I hadn’t realized until that point that she was 3rd place female out of a field of 10 or so. I had placed 9th out of about 15 males. They took photos and congratulated the finishers. I am proud of my 47.8 miles in 12 hours. I am impressed by Dahlia’s strong finish, yes, identical to mine.

After:
I hurt. It hurt a lot. Mostly my knee, but also I had nasty cramping for 4 or 5 hours. I was fine the next day except for my knee. I couldn’t walk on my knee all day. The day after my knee was just sore. In fact, two weeks later now and it is still sore.

Dahlia didn’t seem to suffer much. She could have gone further, faster, whatever, done better. I am impressed.