Ice Age 50 Race Report

Finally getting around to posting old race reports that I had saved on my computer.   lets see, this one is only 4 months after the fact...  Headed to ice age, I got lost trying to get to Jasons house.  Luckily he had packed his cell phone in his bag already so he didnt hear it ring when I called 1000x.  Finally figured it out, packed my stuff in Jasons car and proceded to get us lost/stuck in chicago traffic.  I have no idea why Jason let me navigate after my earlier fiasco, but we managed to get to the brewery where we had a couple beers and picked up our race packets and timing chips and checked in friday night.  We slept the night in his minivan at the start line (take out all the seats and its like a room on wheels) and I must say my 10$ sleeping bag from walmart rocks.

Race starts at 6am on sharp.  I saw Scott Breeden who has run some impressive times at Ice Age and OPSF,  he was crewing for his girlfriend Emily who was running the 50 mile.  We encouraged her to run with us since we were gonna be going to be taking this slowly as a training run.  It was fun to take a younger runner under our wing and help pass the time with our jibber jabber.  I think I launched into a long spiel about how NSAIDs not only can give you rhabdo but also impede training gains (I should write a blog entry about this).

Me looking lost, Emily laughing at me.  Jason...  MIA

Every time we thought we had lost Emily, she would just pop back up behind.  Despite looking like she was 18 and lots of pink clothes she is tough as nails. Around 15 miles to go, and I was in the company of my friend Jason, and a new guy Ryan Krol.  I noticed he had some Ironman tats on his legs so i had to ask which was harder.  He exclaimed definitely running 50 miles!  maybe its true, maybe its because we had been running for 5 hours and still had 20 miles to go.  The last 20 miles went by pretty fast, besides the fact that Ryan had some trouble so Jason and I took off.  I dunno if it was because we knew we only had 10 miles left or because we are in 100 mile shape, but we really started running fast the last 10 miles.  Jason started his run walk on a long wooded section and never saw him again either.

Mile 49 almost home

Finished strong, feeling the best I have during a 50 miler ever.  Ran it in 8:58 which is about an hour slower than the Mississippi 50, but I wanted more time on feet anyways :)  It was still good for my 2nd fastest 50 mile time and I felt great.  Did my usual stuff of drinking lots of mtn dew and putting flat pepsi into my water bottles to mix with sports drink.  I ended up taking 1 too many salt tablets and my hands were a little swollen tho.  Anyways the trail race was on 50 miles of the course that the 100 miler im running in June is on so it was great to get a feel for the trails.  Jason ended up finishing in 9:01, Ryan in 9:18, and Emily in 9:45.  All in all it was a great day for team New Balance.

Hung around the finish for a couple hours because they had kegs tapped, had some beers and felt absolutely nothing.  Usually 2-3 beers buzzes me.  It was interesting.  During the drive home Jason and I stopped 3 times for McDonalds, Chipolte and Tbell.  Thats what happens when you have a 8000-10000 calorie deficit driving around in a car.