20.7mi, 4:21:57, 10 FEB 06, Kansas City KS

stuck in the back of my head for the entire time:
- Chris Cornell, "You Know My Name"
- The All-American Rejects, "It Ends Tonight"

WX at 1200: 21.9 (-5.6) DP 3.0 (-16.1) BP 30.42 (1030) Variable 6 cloudy RH 43 WC 14.2 (-9.9)
WX at 1100: 18.0 (-7.8) DP 1.0 (-17.2) BP 30.43 (1030) Variable 5 cloudy RH 47 WC 10.6 (-11.9)
WX at 1000: 18.0 (-7.8) DP 1.9 (-16.7) BP 30.43 (1030) NNW 5 cloudy RH 49 WC 10.6 (-11.9)
WX at 0900: 15.1 (-9.4) DP 1.9 (-16.7) BP 30.42 (1030) NNE 7 clear RH 55 WC 5.1 (-14.9)
WX at 0800: 12.0 (-11.1) DP 3.0 (-16.1) BP 30.42 (1030) NNE 8 clear RH 66 WC 0.5 (-17.5)

Odometer 2: 346.5mi

Z3-4.

This morning's slug-a-thon was the Psycho WyCo Run Toto Run trail race. What a smoker. I asked whether I should wear shoes with sheet metal screws in them, as I had done to shoe pair 2. Those saved my bacon. I consider myself singularly fortunate that I only wiped out once during the entire 20 mile run.

By the end of mile 9, I was about done for running uphill. Any uphill in excess of 1% was walked from there on out. I simply did not have the raw leg strength to get uphill, and there were times that it was step, stop, step, stop, step. The worst part was trying to walk uphill some of the really steep climbs, except with ice added on!

This is absolutely the most punishing race I have ever run, and this includes the abortion of a pseudo-marathon that I ran at COB Speicher last April.

Race administration was actually very good. I have to credit Ben Holmes (race director) and the Kansas City Trail Nerds for a great, great race. The nature of the course was that people were very friendly, helped each other up, all that. I caught some guy who was sliding, almost about to go arse over teakettle down a very steep hill.

I make no apologies for my change in pace in the last half of the run. My legs were just toast, and to compound that, my stomach was doing flip flops about midway through the race. I should've taken some of the Tums antacids midway through the race; my stomach felt horrible from there on out until later after the race when I did eat some, which helped a lot. The catch-22 to walking/running was that if I stopped going uphill, I was going to cramp, badly. I worked through some of it during the race, but the only way to make sure it got addressed was to finish the race. Period.

Aggregate in-race chow, broken out among 8 feeding stops:
4 Krispy Kreme glazed donuts
5 PowerGels
7 Pringle's potato chips - particularly vital when my legs started to do a lot of cramping from electrolyte imbalance
8 oz Mountain Dew
8 oz Starbucks Frappucino (That really hit the spot on my last rest stop, about 2.5mi out from the finish)
probably something like a quart's worth of Hammer HEED.

After the race:
2 bowls of vegetarian chili. That was quite tasty!
8 oz Red Bull, non-diet version.

About 2/3 of the race course was covered in hard pack ice. That made running uphill (and downhill in some cases) a downright sporty experience. There were quite a few hills where I got to the base, started walking, and the priority was to find patches of brown, preferably dirt, where my screws would grab. My tunnel vision from just hanging on was bad. Going up a lot of those hills, I was focused on the 1.5-2 meters in front of me looking for just that next brown patch to step on. That's how bad the ice was.

I finished strong, with a big grin on my face. That I could actually run to the finish was intensely gratifying. The hardware was a pendant with the Psycho WyCo race symbol on it. Not a bad piece of hardware, and man, did I earn that in spades for running two laps of suck.

There was a sizeable field for this event, the vast majority of whom cut bait after the 10 mile distance. About a mile into the second lap, I was thinking about what the rationale was for signing up for this kind of floggery. My prediction of the operative mindset being "you can't kill me" was accurate.

Evil practical joke of the course: The race administration posted yellow signs throughout the course. About 4.5mi into the course, there was a sign that said "Mile 1." About 50 meters after that, there was another sign that said "Just Kidding!" with a smiley face on it.

I ran much of the course blind. I had bad tunnel vision because I was concentrating so hard just to avoid wiping out. My GPS would simply not acquire a signal. Period. I was never able to get a complete almanac download or satellite lock during the race. Not that it would've mattered. I'm not sure how much I wanted to know how slowly I was really going.

I am SO glad I didn't even entertain the thought of the 50km (30 mile) distance. There was no way my fat ass could take another lap of the course. I probably could've finished it had I walked the entire length in its entirety, but I wasn't having any of that!

A miracle: no blisters. I wore double-layer Wigwam racing socks, but the absence of blisters is nothing short of miraculous.

Epilogue: I finished 16th overall in the 20 miler, 8th overall in the men's 30-39 age bracket.

A truly great race! If I get another chance to try it, I probably will.

Splits
SEGMT AGGREGT SEGMENT PERMI AVGPC DIST
10.35 1:51:04 1:51:04 10:44 10:44 10.35
00.00 1:57:37 0:06:33 REST STOP AT 10-MILE POINT
10.35 4:21:57 2:24:20 13:57 12:39 20.70