Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Goose Bumps 6 Hour Race for Lupus Awareness - Race Report

This was a fun event / race, I hope it is an event that continues and grows. 

The event was held on the trails at Goose Island in Stoddard, WI (Just outside La Crosse).  A 2.8 mile loop with a nice mix of grass and dirt, wooded and nice views of water at many points.  The course was well marked with flags and ground paint.  It was flat and non-technical by trail running standard, but did have many very some small ups and downs and a few rocks and roots.  This would be a great event for serious trail runners and 1st timers looking to try a trail ultra.

Richard (RD) Over-did the in-race and post race food and beer (Not that I am complaining).  The start finish was at a park shelter that was easy to keep all your stuff safe and dry.  There were 2 park bathrooms at different points on the course just a few feet out of the way.

Another nice thing for this event was Richard had the support of a Gel sponsor Vi Endurance, whose owner(s) actually ran the race with us.  These are the gels I used in the race
http://www.viendurance.com/p/57/vanilla

They are made from organic ingredients - The vanilla has 2 types of pure vanilla (Which was the best tasting gel I ever had).  Complex ingredients that were easy to digest (Most gels have very simple sugars - overly sweet by gel #10) and gave a much smoother flow of energy. 

If you would like to try the gels - Here is a coupon code that will give you 10% off the purchase price and the Lupus foundation $10 per box :LupusAlliance1010  (I think he said this would be good through October 10th)

This was a family event for us and I am very proud of my family for participating and want to thank them for making it a fun race day.  DD#2 (7) completed 3 laps for 8.4 miles and DD#1 (11) and my DW did 4 laps for 11.2 miles.  With my family kicking in 11 laps = 30.8 miles, I only needed to do 12 laps = 33.6 to hit our family goal of 100k.

I ran the 1st 4 laps with the La Crosse gang (John, Angie and Jim) and it was nice to catch up with them.  At lap #4 I thought about what I wanted to hit for the race - 14 laps popped into my head.  I had the realization I was moving too slow to hit 14 laps.

My plan was to crank it up for 2 hours and then back down to just hit 14 laps. 

Hours 2-4 were like may "Middle" of races ~ I was running pretty hard, but doubted I could keep the pace up to the end.  It seems 5k - 24 hour race, the middle part of the race is often about overcoming doubt about keeping the pace up.

I hit 10 laps in 4:08 with many laps @ 22 minutes.  I did some quick in-race math, I could actually do 5 more laps if I ran 22 minutes per lap.  I decided to run 2 more faster laps to see if I could put myself in position.

Part of this mental wrestling was beacuse of the cause of the race = Lupus.  Lupus has knocked my friend Richard down many times in the last 2 years.  Richard will always get up one more time than being knocked down.  He loves trail running (Superior 100 mile finisher) and being active ~ But these activities have been very limited during this time.  My decision to push for 5  was in part to honor all the pain Richard has had to endure for much longer than 2 measly hours and part because he would love to be able to push his body and relish in the pain of racing.

With 67 minutes to go I had 3 laps to run - I knew I could.  In the end I ran the last 3 laps in 60 minutes, getting to 15 laps ~ 42 miles in 5 hours 53 minutes.

I was happily spent.

Post race was a burger and a beer with all my fellow racers and with a great RD and friend Richard, Renee his DW and my family.  What a nice way to spend a day!

Good running to all ~

1 comment:

  1. I am glad that you showed up and the weather really was good weather. Nice job on punching out 42 miles. We are planning it again for next year so hope the Henze family will make the travel over. Thank you for the plug for the even and hopefully next year we can bring another 10 runners in and 20 more over all runners walkers.

    Richard

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