2025 D3 50K
Hoping Not To DNF

Hoping not to DNF is not a desired or typical approach to a race, being somewhat defeatist at first glance. However it may be realistic whether I like it or not. About a week after my last race, Crooked Road 24, in mid-March my RHR (resting heart rate) became high indicating I wasn't recovering well. I could understand a value in the upper 50s, but it climbed up to 70. At that point I began to wonder about the possibility of suffering from overtraining syndrome, not just over doing it and needing an extra day or two of rest, but a chronic condition possibly requiring weeks of rest and recovery. The symptoms I noticed were tachycardia, poor sleep, fatigue, and loss of motivation. Trying to work around that, I took extra rest days with not even a short walk. Sometimes it seemed to help and I could get in a good run of an hour and a half or more. I reasoned that longer runs when I could would be more beneficial that more intensive workouts. I'm now nine days away from race day and some days even a three mile brisk walk is an effort. Fortunately the 50K starts two hours after the 24 hour race, so I have 22 hours to finish my 125 laps on the 400m track.

One week to go an finally had some positive feedback from my workout today. First my RHR dropped back to normal overnight. Secondly I was very comfortable with walk ing 2:00, running 1:00 for my hour and a half run today. That was an experiment to see if running at all during the race was feasible. Stalking the weather so far, I haven't seen any really adverse weather report, though the temperature will reach into a moderately uncomfortable low 70s (22C). This far out that could change drastically.

Taper week has been a toss up for preparation. Only one day was my RHR at or near normal. Even with two consecutive full rest days, it is still high. I'm uncertain how or how much that will affect performance, but I'm anticipating a significant slowdown and the need for frequent breaks for recovery. I skipped Friday packet pickup and will plan on arriving 30-45 minutes before race start to pick up my shirt and number, timing chip, and to set up my chair and bags. Hopefully this race I won't forget anything. Last year it was a hat and I had to borrow one from Bill, the RD. I'm bringing my camera, but it remains to be seen if I'll remember I have it and take pictures.

Race day morning went relatively smoothly and I arrived at the track about an hour before race start, picked up my packet, set up my chair and knapsack, then visited with a few friends. It was chilly enough that I didn't remove my warmup suit until about 10 minutes before race time. I kept my long sleeve shirt on for several laps while I warmed up, but took it off before the first mile split to run in a short sleeve shirt. With the lack of long runs and mileage for several months leading up to the race, I started very conservatively running one minute and walking two. L was good with that for 20 kilometers which I reached in 3:16:00.

From that point on the race was a tedious trudge exasperated by my right leg periodically buckling on me. It was worse walking clockwise, so it was a relief when we changed direction again after six hours back to counterclockwise. Several times I took breaks to see if a short rest would help, but they seemed to have no effect. It was tempting to use that as an excuse for a DNF, but I knew I would later regret that, so I slogged on slowly trying to keep my laps under 5:00. It helped once I reached 30K to count down the laps remaining while I also watched a sub-9 hour time slip away. I occupied myself with a lot of mental calculations to see what was possible at the pace I was moving. That was a lot harder than it should have been, and I kept coming up with conflicting numbers. As I started counting down the last 10K, I was resigned to finishing somewhere between 9 and a half and 10 hours. Estimating the partial lap, I passed the marathon split in 7:58:58, less than 8K to go.

The final numbers came to 9:37:54 as I was able to speed up just a little to ensure I was under 9:40:00, finishing 15th of 15 overall and 5th of 5 men. Still it was about 20 minutes faster than my 50K split at Crooked Road 24. It was also harder and more painful; excruciating is how I described it to a friend.

I have only six weeks until Six Days in the Dome where I'm running 24 hours. Some of that time will be recovery as I don't want to repeat the mistake I made after Crooked Road and try to increase my mileage too quickly. That doesn't leave much time to actually train and get in a few longer runs, so I'm uncertain what to expect at the Dome. I could always request dropping down to 12 hours, but I'd planned the whole year around moving up in distance and time, so that would be counterproductive. It may still be the more reasonable alternative as my training has not kept up with my plans and goals.