2022 Merrill's Mile 6-Hour
Merrill's Mile Meets Murphy's Law
When I added this race to my schedule, I knew it would be hot, but I should have part of May and all of June for acclimating to the heat. It didn't exactly turn out the way I planned. Temperatures seemed to whipsaw back and forth between mid-70s with clouds and rain, and upper 80s. Just as I was starting to get used to the heat, it would cool off for several days, and I felt like I lost any acclimation I had developed. The closer race day approached, the more I realized I needed to reduce my expectations for a distance goals.
The drive down to Dahlonega, GA, would be about 12-13 hours, so I would need to make it a two day trip to avoid arriving exhausted from traveling. Day one would be longer so the second day of driving would only be about 5-5.5 hours. At least that was what I planned. This seems to be a common theme for me driving to races. Once again I missed a turn. By the time I realized I was way off course, I was 30 miles south of where I should be and in the middle of metropolitan Atlanta rush hour traffic. Needless to say the added travel time and rush hour driving did little to reduce the pre-race stress. By the time I found my hotel and checked in, all I felt up for was a short mile walk to work out the stiffness of another 8 hour day driving. Unfortunately that wasn't the end of my Odyssey. It was supposed to be an 18-20 minute drive from my hotel to the race. Another missed turn took me miles out of the way and turned it into an hour long adventure. I arrived only 15 minutes before the start, barely enough time to check in, find a spot for my drop bag, walk back to my car to get something I had forgotten, and get to the starting line with a minute to spare.
By this time my goal was to be on the course and moving for 6 hours with hopes of reaching a minimum of 20 miles. While the temperature at the start may have been in the low 70s, the humidity was oppressive. At least that early in the day we did get some shade on the course before the Sun rose over the trees. The first few laps on the .9902 mile course weren't too bad, a little slower than I had hoped but acceptable given the conditions. As the Sun and temperature rose, moderating my effort to keep from overheating became my primary focus. By two hours into the race I shifted from running 1:15 and walking :45 to running until I felt too warm, then walking as long as needed to cool down. A quick check on the time indicated I could comfortably reach 20 miles by maintaining a 20:00 per lap pace. Anything faster and I might be able to finish one or two more laps. With a visit to the aid station almost every lap to maintain my hydration and food intake, not to mention adding ice to my drinks as the afternoon progressed, I added a good 30 seconds or more on each lap. By this time those long straightaways seemed interminable. As narrow as the course was, they were almost a half mile long with a very short, almost hairpin turn at each end. Moving automatically I was often unaware of exactly where I was as it seemed like I would never get to the end to turn back toward the finish. With my erratic pacing lap time varied from 16 to 18 minutes plus. On the rare occasions when we had a break with the Sun behind clouds, I could run a little more and log a faster lap.
One thing that kept pushing itself into my mind was that the course was marginally short of a full mile. With only full laps counted that meant I had to run 21 laps, not 20 laps, to officially reach 20 miles. 20 laps was only 19.804 miles. That kept me running as much as I could in the heat. I was making my calculations based on 20:00 laps or 3 laps per hour, but was actually running closer to 17:00 per lap. As we moved toward the final hour to hour and a half and I ran through another calculation, it was obvious that I would have no problem finishing 21 laps, and 22 laps was a possibility. That kept me pushing steadily and running when I could, rather than coasting to the finish with a steady walk. I finished moving steadily throughout the race with a little over 3:00 to spare with a total of 21.7844 miles. Given the conditions I was more than satisfied with that because I was on the course the entire time and had no drastic slowdowns where I had to walk for an extended period.
Recovery following the race was inexplicably slow. I felt like I could barely move as I walked back to my car to drive up to my daughter's cabin in North Carolina. The next day I couldn't finish an easy 3.2 mile hike with her. I had to stop after 2.5 miles while sweating profusely with legs that would not move, and wait while she walked back to the car to come pick me up. I took off the next three days completely with no exercise beyond walking around the local park for some of the Fourth of July activities. Then I received a call at the end of the week from my cardiologist because the upload from my pacemaker indicated I'd had an atrial fibrillation event, which explained my symptoms. So I'm scheduled for a follow up consultation and my future race plans are on hiatus. I do have one race scheduled for Labor Day weekend, but it remains to be determined whether I can race it or not.
