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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16430154795590324512014-10-01T22:24:53.347-07:00Token Running BlogDavid Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-47875359612072815172014-07-21T04:15:00.000-07:002014-07-21T05:37:14.980-07:00Race Report - 2014 Philadelphia in24 24-Hour Urban Ultra First, let's be clear about what this post ISN'T about. It's not the Badwater post that you've come to expect around this time of year for the last four years. And yes, it does feel a little strange NOT to be writing about Badwater at too-early-o'clock on the day after the race, as has been a mid-summer tradition for me.

This post is about another tradition, one that hearkens back to 2008, and the first Back on My Feet "20in24" 24-hour race in Philadelphia. As a total unknown, having run ultras for only about a year, I showed up at the race with Collin. While Collin had a bad day and dropped out early, I braved 95+ degree weather and no shade to run 111+ miles, and finish second overall, to Serge Arbona (who, at the time, was a relative unknown to me). At the time, the thrill of battling it out for 24 hours under brutal conditions, and the resulting muscle pain, sunburn, and $75 prize check were the height of "epic" when it came to ultrarunning.

Then Badwater happened, not once, but four times, and each time was incredible and memorable in its own way. It was a difficult decision not to run Badwater this year, but with the course change, and all of the background that went along with it, in the end, it just didn't FEEL right. And, let's face it - a lot of things about ultrarunning, if not life in general, aren't entirely logical.

Fortunately, the Back on my Feet "in24" provided an exciting opportunity to do something different this year. I had always wanted to go back and run it again, but since it always conflicted with Badwater, it was never an option. Finally, this year, it was. And not only was it a chance to run a race that I had always wanted to go back to, but it was also an opportunity to re-unite the Badwater 2013 crew - Chris, Shannon, and Meredith. And, better yet, Chris, our perennial crew-member but complete non-runner, was going to race, courtesy of a few of us pitching in to cover his entry fee. Back on my Feet also gave me a free entry to the Midnight Madness race to give away, and my friend Traviss won my contest for the entry, so he would be out there at midnight, too. All in all, it was shaping up to be an exciting race.

There was one major downside, though - training.

After the Boston Marathon in April, I was sick for almost a full month. Then I attempted 3 Days at the Fair in mid-May, and crashed and burned (unsurprisingly) in my attempt at a good 24-hour race there. At that point, I now had 8 weeks before "in24," and between significant new job responsibilities at work, at church, and managing a newly long-distance relationship (after a couple of years of being as close as those type of relationships get), the time and energy to train the way that I had wanted to just weren't there. I averaged 50 miles per week for the 8 weeks leading up to the race. That's not terrible, but it's certainly not the kind of volume that's ideal coming into a 24-hour race. (Although it's still better than Chris's 5 miles of walking a day, in preparation for his first 5K, 5-mile, 10K, 10-mile, marathon, 50K, 50-mile race . . .)

In spite of my lackluster physical preparation, for a number of reasons, I was mentally in the right place coming into this race. The idea that, in contrast to 3 Days at the Fair, I would have my friends there supporting me, made a huge difference. Even though there were not a lot of logical reasons to believe that this race would go well, I had a good feeling about it. For eight weeks, on every training run, I thought about the race. I thought about the focus that I would need to have, the pain that I would need to endure, and the feeling of reaching my goal, which was mostly to compete the best that I could for first place. Considering the physical shape that I was in, a PR in the event, although possible, seemed unlikely. That left competing with the course, the conditions, and the other competitors . . . the same way that the event was in 2008.

Pre-race dinner with Chris, Meredith, and friends, was as light-hearted as the pre-race Badwater dinners, albeit in the suburban jungle of Chipoltle and make-your-own-froyo, as opposed to a remote desert oasis. Having not slept too well all week leading up to the race, I finally slept soundly the night before, knowing that when I woke up in the morning, the only thing that I would be worried about for the next 24(ish) hours would be forward progress, the best that I could.

After saying goodbye to Meredith's husband and daughter (the latter of which would have me laughing about her "on stairs" joke, that I'm not going to bother explaining here, since I am the only one in the world that thinks that it's funny), we headed off to Fairmount Park, found parking, checked in, and set up our tent (strategically next to Serge Arbona's tent, and just a couple of steps off of the course, for convenient access). We had a good laugh at Chris's outrageously high blood pressure and resting heart rate (somewhere in the neighborhood of 145 over 91, and 78, respectively), which the paramedic taking the readings just shrugged at as he handed Chris the check-in form. Chris, of course, being cheerful Chris, was undeterred.

The weather was much cooler than expected, thanks to the "polar vortex," rearing its head once again in the middle of the summer. This would make the race interesting, since with reasonable temperatures, anybody who was truly in shape for the event (not me) and raced smart could potentially log huge mileage. Off we went, and I settled into what felt like a reasonable, comfortable pace for the first four hours or so, ticking off the 8.4 mile lap in somewhere between 1:15 and 1:30 per lap, employing strategic walking breaks to make the task more mentally manageable. Serge had gone ahead, and there was nobody in particular who was running at my pace, but that was okay. I was enjoying the freedom of finally running the event that I had planned on running months ago. My stomach was bothering me a bit as I started settling in, but amusingly enough, when I passed Chris, he had Gas-X to give me, proving that he can crew even when he's running a race.

Nearing the end of four laps, the cloud cover was lifting, the sun was coming out, and the temperature was climbing. This was the insidious sort of temperature increase, that you don't realize is a problem until your stomach turns and you start throwing up. I could feel my control on the race slipping away, but then the first of a series of well-timed things happened.

About ten minutes away from the end of my fourth lap, Shannon showed up, right on time to begin pacing (pacing was allowed after four laps). He was fresh, and throwing down a tough pace, but it was exactly the sort of challenge that I needed at that moment to push through the mental low point that I was reaching. Shannon paced me for another two laps, and had me talking and laughing enough that I forgot about the increasing pain everywhere.

I could tell that Shannon was fatiguing, though, and at this point, not quite 9 hours into the race, there was still a ton of time left. And then the second of a series of well-timed things happened. Jackie and Jeff showed up just as I was finishing my sixth lap. Although they weren't exactly "fresh," having "run" (read: scrambled over boulders) quite a bit on the Appalachian Trail earlier in the day, they were still less fatigued than I was, at just over 50 miles in. Having their company and distracting banter for the next lap once again helped me push past what could have been a low point. They left for a lap, which was just enough time alone with my thoughts, before Jackie jumped in for one more lap, again, just the right amount of help.

At that point, it was getting late (after 10 pm), and Jackie and Jeff needed to leave, but then the third in a series of well-timed events happened. Traviss, who was my Midnight Madness contest winner, was standing around near the start/finish waiting for his race to start, and, as he overheard our conversation, he offered to pace me for a lap or two after he finished his race. Left to my own devices for a lap, the Midnight Madness runners proved, again, to be the perfect distraction, as they ran towards me with their glowsticks and words of encouragement. I smiled a lot during that lap. Here I was, out there running for 14 hours, still 10 more hours to go, with these runners just starting out, and I was actually able to smile. So, I may as well smile.

Near the end of the lap, I picked up Maggie as an impromptu pacer, and she pushed me through the next few miles, matching (and in some cases exceeding) my pace. Once again, a well-timed event that carried me through to the end of the lap, where, as luck would have it, Traviss was finishing just as I was getting ready to head out again. I set out for another lap with Traviss and Maggie in tow, and once Maggie reached Lisa, who she had promised to pace, it was just Traviss and me for the remainder of the lap. Once more, the perfect support and distraction, especially at nearly two in the morning.

Unfortunately, Traviss needed to leave after a lap, since this was an unplanned pacing gig anyway, but he did bring me some particularly delicious fresh-squeezed orange juice before he left, which, stomach-churning effects aside (nothing that some Tums and Coke can't fix), was probably the best thing that I had tasted the entire race. Now I would be on my own for a while, and my thoughts turned to the competition. I had been at the start/finish a couple of laps ago when Serge lapped me, so, short of a blow-up on his part, or a miracle on his part, I was unlikely to beat him. But Mark mentioned to me, a couple of laps ago, that the mysterious second-place runner (who I had heard was old, young, from Haverford, and probably a dozen other things) was only about 20 minutes ahead of me.

I had no idea who I was looking for. Maybe I had already passed him. But without the aid of pacers, I needed the motivation of trying to catch somebody who was ahead of me to prevent me from lapsing mentally. After a little bit of iPhone-aided research, I discovered that his bib number was 61, and I would spend the next several hours looking at every person that I passed for that magical number.

Finally, heading into my 14th lap, coincidentally enough, very close to where I had stopped in 2008 when I ran 111+ miles, I jogged up behind a group of three people in their mid-20s, surrounding another person in his mid-20s. This fit one of the vague descriptions of this "Cohen" fellow that I was chasing down. I passed him, said a friendly hello, looked at his chest, and sure enough, partially obscured by the mandatory reflective gear that he hadn't yet taken off (I hadn't taken mine off, either) was that magical "61". He asked how I was, and I said "just taking it one step at a time." And with that, I knew that I had to make my move, and I took off running.

I pushed through the next lap in around 1:25, the fastest lap that I'd completed in quite some time. I wanted to make sure that when he came around at the end of the lap, and asked how far behind he was, I would have put the maximum distance between us that I could, and that that might break him.

As I later found out, after the race, when he came over to me and shook my hand and congratulated me, he confirmed that my strategy had worked exactly as intended. He had thought that he was further ahead of me, but was already a bit demoralized to learn that he had just a 12-minute lead. When I passed him with authority, and got far enough ahead of him, he actually stopped after 14 laps. Not knowing this, I had to "suffer" through an entire 15th lap, to arrive at the start/finish with 45 minutes left, to confirm that I didn't need to go any further, and that, with 126+ miles, I had secured second place, with no chance for first.

Meanwhile, amidst all of this competition, the final of the very well-timed things happened. As I reached the last half-mile of my 14th lap, Shannon and Chris were off to the side of the course, getting ready for one last push to the finish. Chris was going to make his 50 miles! I slowed down to walk with them, and we walked in together. I didn't realize it at the time, but, as we crossed the finish line, both Chris and I were victorious (him with his 50 miles, me with securing second place) at exactly the same time.

What I did realize at the time is that both Chris and I were in horrific pain, Chris moreso than I was. But my time would come. I could feel myself mentally breaking down at the end of my 15th lap, having left Shannon behind, who himself was tiring as a pacer for Chris, and Meredith, and me, putting in over 50 miles himself between pacing the three of us. As I let my guard down, and the adrenaline started to wear off, the pain starting to overwhelm me. The thought of Chris dragging himself through the finish, and how he must have felt, was in the back of my mind. Slow or fast, in these races, we all have our moments of doubt and suffering. Soon enough, though, I would be sitting in a chair near the finish, spent, glad to be finished, and delighted with the DJ's sense of humor, as he played "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica, and then "Money" by Pink Floyd, in succession.

After a massage and perhaps lingering too long on the Lloyd Hall upstairs patio with a banana and a bottle of water, I went downstairs for the awards ceremony, to greet Serge with a fist bump, and it looked something like this:

Serge and me, 1st and 2nd place, post-race, all smiles.
(Thanks, Meredith, for capturing this moment!)

Just like in 2008, Serge had finished first, and I had finished second. He had run just over 142 miles today, and I had run just over 126. Just like in 2008, neither of us had had our best day, but as competitors, we gave it our all until the end. Unlike in 2008, we both walked away with a lot more money - Serge with $2500, me with $1000.

The in24 in Philadelphia certainly isn't Badwater. Only Badwater is Badwater (and this year, even that is unclear). But the in24 was the right midsummer race for me this year. At the end of the day, I got exactly what I had wanted out of the race - great competition, and quality time with great friends, all of whom I cannot thank enough. I've definitely started races in better shape, and I've definitely had better performances by the hard numbers. But I can't think of a single race that I've run where I've had more timely and valuable support from my friends leading up to, and throughout the event.

So now this is going to sound like the end of a Badwater race report, as I offer my most sincere thank-yous to Chris, Shannon, Meredith, Jackie, Jeff, Maggie, Traviss, Meg, Tina, the mysterious "Cohen/61," Serge, Mark, Christian, the rest of Serge's crew, all of the folks at Back on my Feet and Pretzel City Sports and Stroehmann Bakeries (that make lots of gluten-filled foods that I personally can't eat, but are great for everybody else), all of the participants in the Philadelphia in24 races, the amazing, enthusiastic volunteers on the course, all of the other sponsors that made this race possible, and probably a bunch more people that I'm forgetting. At the end of the day, this, like Badwater, was a race that was about bringing a team and resources together, and competing the best that you are able to. And, thanks to the great friends that I have, that all came together to help me through this, the 2014 Back on my Feet "in24" 24-hour race was exactly as amazing as I had hoped it would be, and, this year, exactly the right race for me.David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-80497459676763410732014-04-24T08:23:00.001-07:002014-04-24T08:23:53.207-07:00Boston Strong, and the Road AheadThe good news is that I made it back to the Boston Marathon this year. The bad news is that it didn't quite turn out the way that I had hoped. In spite of better training and a more focused pre-race taper, stomach issues got the better of me, and derailed what was, for about 18 miles, shaping up to be a PR effort.

Still, it was an awesome experience to be a part of. In the now 9 times that I've run the Boston Marathon, I've never heard the crowds cheering any louder at the finish line, or along the course, for that matter. Coming around the final turn, the roar of the crowd was downright deafening. Congratulations are in order for all of the runners, volunteers, organizers, friends, families, and fans who pulled together to make this year's Boston Marathon an unforgettable event.

For me, the positive energy at the marathon lessened the sting of walking away knowing that I had a 2:45-2:50 performance in me that day, but failing to put up the finishing time to prove it. That same energy that the city of Boston rebounded with after last year's tragedy has, in spite of my performance, left me energized for the challenges ahead.

Next up is 3 Days at the Fair https://sites.google.com/site/njtrailseries/fair). Provided that I stay healthy, I think that this race gives me a great opportunity to better my 24-hour mileage PR of 134 miles, set at 24 the Hard Way this past October.

The other race that I'm particularly excited about is the 20in24 in Philadelphia, put on by Back on My Feet (http://philadelphia.in24race.com/). I competed in the inaugural running of this race in 2008, and, on a brutally hot July day, set a 24-hour mileage PR of 111 miles, finishing second. The support staff and the fans made the race an amazing, unforgettable experience. Since that year, I've wanted to run the 20in24 again, but until now, other commitments (most notably Badwater for the past four years) have made that impossible. So I'm excited to have the opportunity to once again slug it out in the heat for 24 hours, and test my limits on that course.

If you're interested in being a part of the 20in24, the good people at Back on My Feet have given me one race bib to give away, to either the Midnight Madness 8.4 -Mile Race, or the Finale 5K. All you have to do is "like" their page on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/in24Philadelphia), and then email me to let me know that you liked their page, and why you want the bib. I'll pick a winner this Friday. Good luck!
David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-151939116086069222014-02-03T14:34:00.002-08:002014-02-03T14:34:55.622-08:00Race Report: Rocky Raccoon 100 (2014 USATF 100-Mile Trail Run Championship)It's been "go big or go home" for me lately when it comes to racing. So as I sit down to write this, my first thought is that maybe I didn't go "big enough" at the Rocky Raccoon 100 this past Saturday. Surely the prize money and the Western States 100-Mile Endurance Run auto-entry for a top-three finish is as big as this sort of thing gets, and a reason to pull out all of the stops. My effort fell a bit shy of that mark.

And considering that earlier today, I ran 6 miles at a typical training pace, my legs a little less than hard-marathon-sore, while others who finished ahead of me described their post-race experience as "crippled" and "hobbling" (and based on the people that finished close to me, I'd say that those words were not exaggerated), I can't help feeling that maybe I left something on the table.

But after further consideration, I think that I took a lot more away from this experience than a very respectable 11th overall/9th male/6th USATF male (i.e. competing under USATF rules, meaning, among other things, no pacers, no headphones) finish and a 16:38:36 100-mile finishing time (second-fastest 100-mile run time for me). What I took away was arguably more important than either the prize money or the Western States 100 auto-entry.

But more about that in the closing paragraphs. For now, the race:

After my third-place finish at the US National 24-Hour Championship (this thing), the US National 100-Mile Trail Championship seemed like the logical "next big thing," especially since it was about three months away (a decent amount of time to recover and rebuild), and at Rocky Raccoon, a race where I ran well in 2009. The added benefit of having one more long race to add to my Badwater 2014 application, just before the application would be due, made Rocky Raccoon too enticing to pass up. And of course, with the prize money and the Western States 100 auto-entry on the line, this race was going to draw a deep, competitive field, which would make it exciting to be a part of.

Between the US National 24-Hour Championship and Rocky Raccoon, I continued to train and race. I ran 2:55:12 at the NCR Trail Marathon, as sort of a "target of opportunity" race, since it was a short drive, and a Boston-qualifying course. A couple weeks later, I made it only a little past 70 miles in 12+ hours at the Desert Solstice 24-Hour Invitational, before throwing in the towel, primarily due to a total lack of any sort of speed. Then I took some time off, and started a mileage re-build in mid-January, so by the time that it was Rocky Raccoon time, I was in the best shape that I could reasonably be in. But given this mixed bag of training, I couldn't be totally confident that this was going to work out. If anything, my performance at Desert Solstice had me slightly concerned that I had either reached my ultimate performance limit, or burned out entirely.

In the interim, life also happened. My beloved 2001 Honda Civic EX (five-speed manual transmission, accept no substitutes), with over 207,000 memorable miles, nearly all of them driven by me, was totaled, in an accident that I watched from outside of the car, and I changed work assignments, both of which required plenty of attention that I may have otherwise given to running. And then, on this trip, since I would be in Houston for a day prior to the race, and my girlfriend lived there for a substantial period of her life, I made a point of visiting all of her recommended restaurants, parks, and other attractions (incidentally, I highly recommend the Rothko Chapel). Not to mention that I was car-pooling/room-sharing with two other runners, which I don't normally do (although this made for a highly amusing trip to the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, Texas, the town where the race is held).

So there were plenty of twists and turns and distractions, enough so that on the eve of the race, I wasn't particularly excited about running it. In my mind, all of the other experiences that were rattling around in my mind, both on this particular trip, and in my life in the past few months in general, were far more meaningful and substantive than five 20-mile loops in a state park in an obscure city in Texas. I didn't NOT want to run the race, but my pre-race lacked a certain sort of nervous energy that I'm used to before huge events like this.

On the other hand, being less wound-up about the race afforded sounder pre-race sleep, and helped me keep my cool during the parking catastrophe that turned a 20-minute drive to the start of the race into a 60-minute lurching-slowly-forward car-march. Jackie, Robin, and I arrived at the start with about 10 minutes to spare, which is just the right amount of time to get to the starting line with your shoelaces fully tied, but not so much time that you pace idly back and forth and waste precious running energy. It's even enough time to go back to the car, get your phone, and bring it back to your start/finish drop bag, as I learned by doing exactly that, re-arriving at the starting line about two minutes before the start, and using most of that time to weave through the 600-person crowd to the front of the pack, where I presumed optimistically that I would finish.

The countdown to the start happened, and we were off, at a leisurely pace for maybe the first quarter-mile, before, inevitably, people started sprinting ahead. I was not at all surprised or shaken by this. I said repeatedly, to various people in the weeks prior to the race, that my goal was to run the first 20-mile loop no faster than 2 hours, 50 minutes, and do the best I could from there, and that if I stuck to that plan, there would probably be about 40 people ahead of me at the end of my first loop. That's how competitive races with a lot of whatever-you-want-to-call-it on the line work. I didn't keep exact tabs on all of these numbers, but that's about what it felt like.

For my part, the first loop felt easy and comfortable. The course was in great shape, with only a few random mud puddles here and there, all easily avoidable. Of course, the roots were out in force, as they were on my last go-around with this race, but I was having no trouble picking up my feet and picking past them. Some minor aches and pains settled out in the first half an hour, and I found myself enjoying the relative warmth. After a month of running in temperatures in the teens every day, weather in the high 60s feels like a tropical paradise. And not entirely in a good way, as it also had me drinking 20 ounces of water every half-hour, in my non-heat-acclimated state. But overall, after a first pass, the course seemed easier than I had remembered it. I even found myself socializing with other runners during the race (as it turned out, the woman who would go on to finish in second place), which I don't often do in these sorts of races. And, with a split of about 2:55, I had more or less achieved my first-loop goal.

The second loop was more of the same. Now we were entirely in daylight, so I could see better the parts of the course that I had run in the dark on the first loop, which added some variety to an otherwise monotonous task. The eventual second-place woman, Kaci Lickteig, passed me on this loop (handing me a gel that had fallen out of my pocket as she passed, which was nice of her), and I passed a couple of others that were ahead of me, including Neal Gorman, who was walking at the time, but would go on to make a very strong comeback. With an extra bathroom stop (the most interesting one, and perhaps the most interesting thing that happened on this loop, being the one where I went off the side of the trail to pee in the woods, and who should pass, but none other than Connie Gardner), and a few more walk breaks, I finished this loop in about 3:10, still feeling okay.

In the third loop, the wheels came off a bit. Just outside of the Dam Road Aid Station (colloquially, the "Dam Nation Aid Station," due to its being the beginning and end of a six-plus-mile loop, the longest unaided section of the course), I waved to a couple of runners who were coming back, took my eyes off of the ground, and caught my toe on a root. I sprawled forward, fortunately onto soft pine needles, so there was no real damage done. But, having hit the deck, I was a bit shaken, and so, a couple of miles later, when I went to try to swallow something, I choked on it, and immediately had a violent vomit reflex. Although I didn't actually vomit, my body wanted to, and it took some standing still, followed by some slow walking, to bring me back to "comfortable" (in a relative sense, considering that I was some 7-plus hours and nearly 50 miles into the race). As a result of that episode, I stopped eating for a bit, and soon found myself dizzy and low on calories. Fortunately, I was carrying a few gels, so I pounded those, then headed quickly, yet conservatively, to the next aid station, where high-glycemic-junk-foods of every variety awaited me. While it was an ugly, slightly slow patch, it was far from the typical "bad patch" that people talk about in these races, and probably cost me only about 10-15 minutes, as my overall lap split of 3:25 suggested.

No major mishaps on the fourth loop, as night began to fall and people began to turn from runners into zombie-walkers. I continued at a steady pace for the most part, taking walk breaks only when I felt that they were absolutely necessary, and continued my trend of not being passed by anybody, but not making what I believed to be any major passes, either. It's worth pointing out that in a loop course that doubles back on itself in several places, it's hard to tell when you're passing people as opposed to lapping them. So I could have been legitimately passing lots of people, but unless they were people that I could recognize under headlamp light, there was no way for me to know. And, in a way, it didn't matter to me. By this time, I was fairly "locked in," making steady progress, enjoying the race, and not really stressing too much about anything. I turned in another 3:25 lap, and felt no dread at heading out for one more lap.

In the final loop, things got tougher, in a relative sense. Given the general trend of my laps getting slightly slower each time, I anticipated more effort to counteract the natural slowing effect, which I needed to counteract to the maximum extent possible if I were to run a mid-16-hour race, as my prior lap times had now positioned me to run. I can't say that the last lap hurt any more than the prior laps. But it definitely required more focus than the previous laps. As far as I could tell, I was in no-man's-land, with nobody close to passing me, or nobody close to me to pass, and the best I could do was to continue doing what I had been doing. I ran the final lap entirely in the dark, which slows progress somewhat, as a headlamp can only illuminate things so much. In spite of some slower first segments, and nearly running headlong into Jason Lantz as he was coming out of the Dam Road/Dam Nation loop for the final time, and I was going in, I managed to hold it together, especially in the final segment of the last lap. About a mile from the finish, I was running up behind two runners who were walking abreast, and I said "excuse me," but they must not have realized how quickly I was coming up on them, and were slow to move out of the way. To avoid running headlong into them, I half-stepped, and caught my toe on a root, falling one last time before the finish. Again, as a fall into soft pine needles, very little damage happened, beyond a dirty arm and a slightly skinned knee.

If anything, the last fall gave me a little adrenaline boost that I may well have needed to finish as I did. Near the beginning of the last loop, I had contemplated walking it in at the very end, not because I expected that couldn't run, but because I felt as though I had given everything that I had, and done as much as I could have reasonably done that day, and that a finishing sprint would serve no purpose. But with the adrenaline surge still fresh, and the finish line so close, I started pushing a little bit, and managed an impressive finishing kick, which maybe a half a dozen people who could find the live finish line webcam and were watching it at nearly midnight (Eastern Time) may have seen. Slightly more importantly, I edged out the 12th overall/10th male/7th USATF finisher, TJ Dunham (who I later found out that Jackie had been repeatedly mistaking for me in the dark, saying hello and being puzzled by why she never got a response) by less than a minute, having no idea that he was behind me the whole time. (You know, for whatever that's worth.) I also edged out the 3rd place female finisher, Shaheen Sattar, who had apparently been chasing me for the better part of the race, unbeknownst to me. (You know, for whatever THAT'S worth.) If nothing else, maybe I learned my lesson after the near edge-out at the finish of the NCR Trail Marathon this past October . . . all the way through to the line, all the time.

Not knowing any of that at the time, I raised my hands in triumph at the finish line anyway, and happily accepted the super-awesome re-designed Sub-24-Hour Finisher belt buckle and USATF medal for 6th Place Male, Open Division. Then I congratulated all of the near-finishers to me, in their various states of disarray (Nicole Studer, the female winner, being the sweetest, and in the least disarray), and proceeded to spend several hours by the heater, lounging in a Texas-flag-themed camp chair, nursing a cup of mashed potatoes, and eventually nodding off to sleep.

I spent most of the time between my finish and Robin's and Jackie's finishes (just under 28 hours, and just over 29 hours, respectively) in the finish area tent, picking at the aid station food, helping out distressed runners where I could (turns out that chafing is EVERYBODY'S problem, and that the extra Butt Paste that I had brought along is decidedly the answer), and generally enjoying being outdoors (although never too far from the heater for too long, as I was having trouble maintaining my core temperature in the 50-degree, off-and-on rainy weather).

And now we come to the moral of the story, if there is one. At the time, during the race, I felt as though I was giving everything that I had, and that I couldn't possibly have gone any faster. After the race, I reasoned that my near-vomit escapade on the third lap cost me up to 15 minutes in time, but would have made no difference in finishing place, and was probably incidental to the experience. But once again, considering just how broken every other finisher near or ahead of me seemed to be, and how functional I am as I type this, I wonder if I had more, and just wasn't able to access it, for whatever reason.

But regardless of what I had or didn't have left in the tank, what is clear to me is that this is the second-fastest 100-mile race that I've ever run, and through smart training, planning, and, most of all, working with my body and with life circumstances in general, I managed to maximize not only my performance on race day, but, more importantly, my life experience as a whole relative to this race. The biggest accomplishment here is not my finishing time, but the way that I got there - through continued focus and resilience, while allowing things that could have been distractions or detriments to instead compliment or contribute to the experience.

I'll stop with that line of commentary here, as it's pretty much impossible to talk about this sort of thing without drifting off into various platitudes that soon start meaning nothing to people that haven't already had the experience, and therefore don't really need to hear them in the first place. Let it suffice to say that for once, I truly feel the weight and value of all of those over-worn, home-spun sayings about patience, persistence, and commitment to excellence. I'm sure that there are plenty more life experiences on the way that will one day make what I believe today to be a deep understanding of all of this seem relatively shallow, but for now, I consider this a major milestone not only in race performance, but in overall maturity in that other silly game that we're all playing, called "life."

And so, after an ambiguous past few months, it is once again clear to me that I'm on the right track, I'm doing things the right way, and that, regardless of what the deal was that day, there's more in the tank for the future, and many more good things on the way.

That, and I STILL haven't seen a single gosh-darn raccoon, rocky or otherwise, on that course.David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-17494528492674968512013-10-29T13:22:00.001-07:002013-10-29T13:22:23.238-07:00Race Report: 24 The Hard Way (2013 USATF 24-Hour National Championship)First, let me make one thing clear: running as many miles as possible in 24 hours, on the same loop, over and over again, is its own special type of hell. If you're looking for a "good time," look elsewhere. The race ends only when either the clock stops, or you give up. Until that point, your reward for completing a mile is . . . the chance to complete another mile. Your reward for fatigue and pain is . . . more fatigue and pain.

So why, on earth, you may ask, would I want to do this? Well, I've been pretty quiet about running this race, because for me, this was a very personal endeavor. Here's why:

My introduction to ultrarunning was a 24-hour race (Around the Lake in Somerville, MA in 2007), and I was instantly and irrepressibly fascinated by what could be possible under such unusual rules. How many miles could somebody run in 24 hours? More importantly, how many miles could I run?

Since then, I've run ultras at many other distances, up to and including 135 miles (Badwater), but the 24-hour race always held a special appeal to me. In my mind, it continued to be a pure challenge of human limits, and one that I continued to want to test myself against.

And I did, several times, with mixed results. After a strong second-place, 111-mile performance at the Back on my Feet 24-Hour Race in 2008, under brutal heat and humidity, with virtually no shade, I failed, not once, not twice, but three times at the North Coast 24-Hour Race (the USATF National Championship race in 2010, 2011, and 2012), each time failing to make it more than 70 miles before throwing in the towel, deciding that being rewarded for my pain with more pain was no longer tolerable.

But after Badwater this past summer, and my huge comeback in the last 65 miles, I was soaking in the pool at the Vdara in Las Vegas with Chris, who's been around since I started this crazy ultrarunning thing, and when he asked me what was next, I paused for a minute. I considered the fact that I was pretty healthy and strong for once, and that the 24-hour riddle still felt distinctly unsolved. So then, with little hesitation, I told him, "24 The Hard Way - 2013 USATF 24-Hour National Championship."

So I trained with focus and confidence for the next few months, consistently racking up the miles, pushing the tempo runs, and concentrating on quality recovery. A week away from the race, I still felt a little uncertain about how this was going to go down. I would be flying solo, and with so many prior failures, history was not on my side. But on paper, I was going to show up rested, healthy, strong, and the wiser for my mistakes. Here was my opportunity; time to make the most of it.

I arrived in Oklahoma City and navigated all of the pre-race business with no major hiccups. I even got in some quality time at the Oklahoma City Monument (highly recommended if you've never been - a truly artful, tasteful, and meaningful memorial).

One thing that I didn't do (and here is where the self-critique starts) is set very specific goals. I had a vague idea in my mind that 120 miles would be decent (at least a PR), 140 miles would be nice (solid total, and 5 miles more than the minimum to make the US 24-Hour National Team), and 160 would be super-awesome (but probably too hard). But I didn't really cement these in my mind, and I didn't hang too much of "success" on their achievement. Really, I just wanted to run respectably for 24 hours, and not drop out early, as was historically the case.

And so, a few minutes before 9 a.m. on Saturday, 25 October 2013, all of the runners gathered on the bridge just outside of the Bluff Creek Park loop, the 0.9675-mile monster that we would all battle for the next 24 hours. Make no mistake about this: while Chisholm is a gracious race director and an excellent host, the course was definitely doing this "the hard way," and not just because of the asphalt surface (traditional for a 24-hour race). With 50+ feet of gain/loss per loop, the elevation change added up to about 5000 feet over 100 miles, which eventually becomes significant. The weather was overcast and in the mid-50s at the start, but it steadily got colder overnight, and, after the afternoon rain, this was not the direction anybody wanted the temperature to take. All of these conditions put together meant (to me, anyway, and certainly in retrospect) that this was a day to race against the competition, and survive, and not to set records or otherwise be a hero.

But of course, this is a championship race, and none of that stopped anybody from trying. So while I stayed within myself for the first 6 hours, running comfortably and barely pushing, the leaders were surging ahead. I was feeling okay, and getting comfortable with the loop, but I could feel (vaguely, since it is hard to tell where anybody is in a race like this) that I was losing ground. This was disheartening, and was further complicated by the fact that I couldn't quite get the nutrition right. My energy felt a little low, I had to pee too much, I wasn't eating enough, then maybe I was eating too much . . . On and on like that, and even though I kept going, the "comfortable groove" that I was hoping to settle into would never materialize.

All the while, I tried to suppress the negative thoughts. "Jeepers, that first hill feels like a mountain now." "Oh great, somebody else is passing me." "Yuck! Here's that spot that smells like poop again." But when you are forced to submit to the same stupid (albeit tree-lined and generally pleasant) scenery for hours and hours, you lose some mental resolve. It didn't help (alert: more self-criticism) that I hadn't been getting as much sleep as I would have liked in the week prior to the race. Not that I was falling asleep on my feet, but I just didn't have the mental energy to turn that negativity around.

But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, putting on a good show for the crews hanging around the start/finish in their makeshift tent-city, while each time I would cross the line and pass my lonely duffle bag, sitting in the grass on the side of the path, and wish just a little bit that somebody was there to encourage me, hand me fruit snacks, or even just tell me what lap I was on. Eventually, I started feeling bad for my bag, which got rained on, and then the rain froze on the bag overnight. Sometime shortly after that, I considered the possibility that I might have been losing my mind.

For everybody else's part, they were plenty courteous. Aside from one runner being rude to the start/finish folks when there was a lap count issue that affected everybody early on, and another runner who very aggressively requested AN ENTIRE CAN of Red Bull overnight, all of the other runners, including the race director, were encouraging each time that I passed. And that's all well and good, but I've heard all of that before. That brutally unbiased observer, to give me the straight story, wasn't there, and I found my resolve waning and drifting.

And so, struggling with the cold and low energy, at around 9 p.m., about 12 hours into the race, I stopped in the start/finish tent, and stared at the leader board. I was somewhere low on the list, with my 75 miles, and I imagined that everybody else was still going strong and charging hard. Laying down, under blankets and harsh floodlights, against the background hum of the generators, was what I knew how to do, and it seemed as though this would be yet another failed effort.

But I couldn't sleep, and I didn't feel that bad, so I got out there, this time in a jacket and long pants, and resumed running, about 45 minutes later. And just like that, I was back on track, knocking out the laps on the dark, dark path.

About four hours later, my energy started falling, and with it, my confidence. I wasn't going to be able to keep this up. I stopped again.

And again, 45 minutes later, I was up and running. I marveled that not once, but twice in the same race, I could make such a significant comeback. Better yet, my legs barely felt sore, and my feet were plenty comfortable in my Nike Pegasus 29+ "Team" shoes, in green and white, which I added yellow laces to as a tribute to G-PACT, my Badwater 2013 charity, and the disease which my little sister struggles with. So maybe I could do this.

And then, another four hours passed, and I found myself with no energy, and little will to continue. I had been trying to make six laps an hour, but it was getting difficult, and having fallen off twice already in the same race gave me no confidence in my ability to continue. I had no idea what mile or lap I was on. All I wanted was for the clock to stop and the race to end. I wanted to stop running.

My stomach was shut down. The same water that I had drunk an hour ago was sloshing in my stomach. I grimly contemplated that this must be what gastroparesis feels like, and was darkly amused that I had inadvertently managed to connect to the disease and the charity cause by inducing it in myself. At the same time, I reasoned that people, including my sister, could live (albeit uncomfortably) with it, so I may as well keep on running.

And that I did, pushing through the blinding low points with slow jogging or walking until the lights came on again. I was getting a vague sense that I might be passing people and moving up in the standings. That was encouraging. But I had given up on any mileage goal. I just wanted to keep moving forward, mostly to prove that this beast hadn't won again.

Finally, the last lap came around, they handed me a flag with my number on it, and I had the next six minutes to run as much of the loop as I could before time was called. Part of me wanted to slow down or stop. But a better part of me wanted to prove, one last time, that the 0.9675-mile monster hadn't gotten the better of me. I pushed one last time up the mountain, one last time down the hill, cruised one last time on the never-ending straightaway with the maddening hill near the end, and ran one last time under the Christmas lights, still generator-lit at nearly 9 a.m. Two minutes. Push push. Then, at last, the gun. Relief. Who knows how I finished. Who cares. I could finally stop running that loop.

I trudged unceremoniously to the finish area with another runner, chattering about the race as if it hadn't been pure torture that had just ended a few minutes ago.

And then, when I reached the finish line, and saw the results, I experienced an appropriate mix of elation and disappointment. My last surge had impossibly propelled me to third place overall, just seven miles behind the winner, and a mile ahead of Connie Gardner, of 2010 North Coast "why did you stop?" fame. But alongside that was the disappointment that I had made "only" 133 miles, narrowly missing the 135 minimum mark needed for US National 24-Hour Team consideration.

But joy won out, and I thanked the race director copiously, before I sauntered over to my duffle bag to lug it, by myself, to my rental car, where I would go on to change my clothes, sleep in the back seat of, drive to an Indian buffet where I would eventually stop eating due not to being full, but fatigue, sleep some more, repack my stuff, and ultimately drive to the airport to catch a flight to Detroit for a work trip. Cage the Elephant was generally right: "there ain't no rest."

Overall, a few days later, I have mixed feelings about this race. On the one hand, this is almost the most miles that I've run at one time, and certainly the fastest that I've ever run a distance this long. But my legs aren't trashed at all. This may be the first time after an ultra when I was back to normal running the next day. So I left something on the table. And with that "something" being 90 minutes of stoppage time, it's hard not to think that what I left on the table might have been the win, and the auto-qualifying spot on the US National 24-Hour Team.

But ultimately, I accomplished my basic goal - to legitimately push my limits in a 24-hour race. I survived, and, in spite of some errors, turned in a pretty solid result.

And going forward from here, I feel even more optimistic about the future. The good thing about leaving something on the table is that you know that there's more out there, and greater potential to reach. Based on this performance, I am now more confident that, if not this year, some year soon, I will be toeing the line at the 24-Hour World Championship Race, proudly wearing "USA" across my chest.

And beyond that, who knows. But there has to be something, and that's still a huge part of the appeal.

So on this, my birthday, and the start of a new year in my life, I'm excited about the road ahead - especially since, health and powers above willing, I will be running it.
David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-22554903671161157032013-09-09T08:30:00.000-07:002013-09-09T08:30:15.812-07:00Race Report - Lehigh Valley MarathonYou know what they say - sixth time's the charm. Well, okay, nobody really says that, but apparently that was the deal. After five failed attempts to run a sub-3:05 marathon after September 2013 and qualify for Boston 2014 (Baltimore 2012, NCR 2012, George Washington's Birthday 2013, Rock N Roll USA 2013, and New Jersey 2013, to be specific), the Lehigh Valley Marathon was my last chance before Boston 2014 registration opened.

So I took, in a relative sense, no chances. After Badwater, I had two weeks of 50-ish miles, then stepped it up in the following four weeks to run 85, 85, 71, and 85 miles. Long tempo runs on Wednesdays, short, fast intervals on Fridays. Doubles most days, longer singles on the weekend (up to 2.5 hours on my feet at a time). You know, all of the fundamentals that need to be part of a program to run faster at a long distance.

I was pretty fortunate that after Badwater this year, I didn't suffer a total meltdown, and was able to put in that sort of volume without forcing it or suffering too badly. (Of course, if I really had to force it, or suffer a lot, this whole thing wouldn't have worked, anyway.) I was also fortunate that the vast majority of this training was enjoyable, and that I didn't have to drag myself out the door too many days (even at 6 a.m.).

So given all of that, even though I made the slightly risky decision to "train through" this marathon, in anticipation of bigger events ahead (more about that later), I was pretty confident that even coming in on 58 miles in the six days before the marathon, I would still meet my goal. And if not, well, I'd failed so many times in the past year that I could deal with it.

The lead-in to the race itself, minus the pre-race parking fiasco (maybe somebody should have thought more seriously about doubling the number of runners, to over 2000, as opposed to less than 1000 in previous years), was pretty hassle-free. Packet pickup thankfully did not involve a forced scavenger hunt through the expo to pick up all of the piece-parts of the requisite swag bag. There were plenty of low-priced accomodations in the near vicinity of the start of the race. The number of runners was reasonable for the layout of the course, and there was no fight to secure a decent position in the starting corrals. After a round of the National Anthem, and a round of "Face Down" by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, off we went.

Within the first couple of miles, I was questioning my plan not to significantly taper leading up to this race. In my experience, tapering can fail in both the "too much" and "not enough" modes. Either you taper too much off of too little volume, or taper not enough off of too much volume, and either way, you feel "flat" to miserable during the race.

The good news was that I wasn't feeling miserable. But the bad news was that I was feeling "flat." I was moving up in the pack by virtue of being aggressive on the early downhills, but otherwise, I was just sort of plugging along. It felt like the average daily training run, except that my legs were moving slightly uncomfortably fast. Still, as long as I wasn't losing ground or slowing down too much, I reasoned that I could at least hang on.

For about the first six miles, nothing too eventful happened. Then we reached the gravel trail, which would be the majority of the rest of the race. Some runners love this kind of surface. But speaking from strictly a "speed" perspective, it's not as fast as pavement, and I could feel myself dropping back at the same effort level. This was a little bit disheartening, but at least it was shady and there was a good view of the river.

I reached the 12-ish mile relay exchange point at 1:21 and some-odd seconds, which, by my math, put me at just under 3-hour pace. This was the first time I had gotten any feedback on my pace, since I decided not to wear a watch. (Again, this is a strategy that can fail both ways - you can wear a watch and then be enslaved to it, not listen to your body, and push yourself to early failure, or you can not wear a watch, listen to your body, and drift off pace until you're too far behind your goal pace to catch up.) I wasn't feeling a lot better at this point, but I wasn't feeling a lot worse than I did at the start. So, more or less, all was well.

The race continued, mostly on gravel trails, with a few short paved sections, and only gradual hills here and there. As I pushed past 17 miles, I started catching some of the people who had gone out way too fast and were now paying for it. Eventually, I reached the 23-ish mile clock point (seriously, would it hurt to put the clocks in locations with clearly marked distances?) at 2:36 and some seconds. This left me with only about 5 minutes to spare under 3:05 if I didn't push all the way through to the finish, so I carefully stepped on the figurative gas for the last three-plus miles of the race and hoped that nothing would break.

As I rounded the final turn towards the seemingly interminable straightaway to the finish (they always seem that way, don't they?), I heard a man shouting "3 minutes!" Not wearing a watch, and not wanting to ask "3 minutes until what?" I assumed that he meant 3 minutes until 3:05, and broke into a wobbly-legged kick (yeah, definitely not tapered enough). I started thinking that maybe not wearing a watch was a mistake, and that just passing people a lot in the second half of the race wasn't a good enough indicator of my pace. The idea that I had maybe screwed this up one more time was not very appealing to me, but it was at war with a strong compulsion to just keel over right there, as there was not enough gas in the tank for much more push at the speed that I was pushing. As I got closer to the finish line, I realized that he had meant 3 minutes until the 3-hour mark, as the "2" in the front of the clock time came into focus.

But before this revelation could result in any sort of relief, I ran past the finish line, staggered forward, took my medal, walked about 50 feet, and collapsed in the grass for about 10 minutes. Finally, I had done it. But there was no catharsis. I just felt numb. (Emotionally, that is, although feelings of numbness were coursing through my extremities.)

It wasn't until after I had gone to the bathroom, grazed the post-race food and drink, and was sitting on a rock near the finish line, about half an hour later, watching the river rush in front of me, that I felt anything at all.

I felt thankful, not for the race result so much as the process that had gotten me there. The repeated failures, the struggle back to health, and finally feeling as though I could run again without being in constant pain or misery . . . the race result was really the culmination of all of this. It felt good to be back to a place where I had been before, but with a new, wiser perspective on it. And I felt thankful for everybody and everything that made this possible, all at once.

Looking ahead, I'm feeling confident that I can train through this race, pace 3:05 at the Baltimore Marathon next month, and then put in at least a PR effort at 24 The Hard Way at the end of October. The 24-hour race was my unofficial introduction into ultrarunning, and, since then, a good effort at a 24-hour race has repeated evaded me. But now I think I'm in a place where I'm ready to get closer to my potential in this event, and I'm excited to see where the next two months of training take me.
David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-31616714763059042862013-07-17T06:44:00.001-07:002013-08-17T17:12:19.408-07:00Badwater 2013: Spirit WalkerIt's happened every year, at least to some degree. But this year, it was the worst. As I crossed over to the right side of the road, to retreat to the relative cool of the crew van, just 18 miles into my 2013 135-mile Badwater run, the first and foremost thought in my mind was: How on earth am I going to finish this race?

Not that this was entirely surprising. After 2012's Badwater left me so physically spent, it was hard to imagine coming back to Badwater in 2013, especially considering how poorly I was running in February. But I had made a promise to my little sister to run Badwater in 2013 for G-PACT, and that, above all other reasons, was why I came back to Badwater 2013. Although I trained well, got much healthier, and improved my fitness greatly in the months that followed, my race results had been a mixed bag. There was really no way for me to be confident about a strong performance, and as race day got closer, this anxiety intensified.

On the logistics side of things, though, things came together without incident. With Chris and Shannon crewing again this year, and Meredith, a veteran of Badwater as both runner (most recently, last year's last-place Badwater finisher) and crew member, replacing Jackie (who is attempting the Grand Slam of Ultrarunning this summer, which conflicts with Badwater), the assortment of gear and goods needed to run this race came together quickly, even affording us time to visit the Hoover Dam before the race. (I've wanted to visit for the past three years, but somehow, preparations always seem to take longer than expected.)

Since you've seen plenty of Death Valley pictures on my Facebook page and on my blog, here's something different: a nifty picture near the Hoover Dam.

Race morning came, and although my own preparations were quick and efficient, loading the crew van was not. Being stuck behind slow-moving tourists who were yielding to runners from the earlier waves meant that we made it to the start with just 10 minutes to spare, missing the group photo, but in time for the national anthem, for which I wore a pair of pink-and-blue wayfarer-style glasses, with giant kisses on each lens, in the interest of being one step ahead of the trend - this year, the "Badwater Store" was selling these glasses, the kind that my entire crew wore in 2012, and Chris Kostman himself was sporting a pair, of white (our team's color) no less.

(This year, our team's name was "The Spirit Walkers," at Shannon's suggestion, after the relatively obscure, vaguely obnoxious, oddly infectious Ween song, which pretty much sums up our approach to this event: http://youtu.be/g1_GoMgoT44. Hence, the feathers pinned to my cap and my wristwatch, although I think this will not be as trend-setting as the sunglasses.)

After the group countdown, we were off, and for a few minutes, I thought that, in consideration of what was expected to be extreme heat this year, even for Badwater, we would all run conservatively. But of course, about ten minutes in, this all went out the window as people started going off the front, stringing out the starters. I did my best to keep things under control as the heat rose, but I found myself passing the Furnace Creek time station just 10 minutes slower than my split last year, under much hotter conditions. I didn't feel too bad, so I reasoned that things would all sort themselves out . . .

Which they did, in a less-than-desirable way. Shannon hopped out to start pacing me (pacing is allowed from the 17-mile mark at Furnace Creek to the finish), and I responded by immediately going into heat-exertion induced dry heaves. Of course, I'd been here before, as recently as last year at Badwater, but this I couldn't shake. I moved forward more slowly, but after another mile or so, I had to temporarily throw in the towel and head over to the crew van to cool down. After 15 minutes or so in the van, I went back after it, but it wasn't more than another mile before I was back in the crew van, packed with ice, hoping to feel better. The fact that Dean Karnazes had already "staked out" (gone off the course temporarily to seek assistance, medical or otherwise) was at least some reassurance that everybody was suffering.

By 3 pm, and about an hour of time-out in the van, I was back on the road to Stovepipe Wells, moving at a more controlled pace. I told my crew that hopefully now, the worst of this was over, and it would be relatively smooth sailing to the finish.

Of course, this turned into a falsehood, as the temperature continued to rise above 120 degrees, with a hairdryer-hot crosswind making it feel even worse. Even with ice in my bandana and my hat, the heat cut right through this, and my pace slowed further as I neared Stovepipe Wells, the 42-mile mark. I reached the time station about an hour and a half slower than my 2012 split, feeling far, far worse.

Still, I was not alone in my misery - Shannon Farar-Griefer and her gingham-dress-clad entourage were lingering there, and rumor from my crew was that Oz had blown up there as well. So I took about half an hour to eat an ice pop and try to cool down in the van before I continued. Townes Pass, with its 5000 feet of climb over 17 miles, is no joke, and I wanted to do everything in my power not to break down on the climb.

But sure enough, the blasting headwind and the continued heat meant that I continued to struggle. Just a few miles past the Stovepipe Wells time station, I got back in the van again, for another 15 minutes or so, wanting desperately to quit (although never saying it out loud, which, by Meredith's logic, doesn't count). My crew urged me back out there, but after another 15-20 minutes of trudging misery, I returned to the van. Shannon was clearly climbing stronger than I was, and I was feeling worse by the minute. Thoughts of not finishing the race and disappointing everybody who had supported me were getting louder in my mind.

So, as a last resort, similar to what I did in 2011, and with Shannon's blessing, I lay silent, by myself, in the dark crew van, for an hour. I didn't really sleep, but an hour of collecting myself made a huge difference. I returned to the course, Rhapsody-enabled iPhone in hand, and blasted Attack Attack while I, well, attacked the climb. I started moving more comfortably, as Shannon, Meredith, and even Chris took turns pacing me up the climb. I passed Shannon Farar-Griefer and her crew apparently having some sort of picnic behind their van on the side of the mountain, which made me feel even better about my progress (they laughed at our water gun system of cooling, so it all worked out for everybody).

When I finally reached the top, it was "business time," and I gained some momentum on the downhill. I could see the line of blinking crew vehicle lights ahead of me in the valley. We were now in a sort of no-man's-land, as all of my early stops had separated us from the rest of the race. But I was running a good downhill pace, and slowly but surely, I was gaining on the runners in front of me. Meredith paced me in to Panamint, where I tried to use the restroom, but discovered that it was occupied. In the interest of never spending more time at Panamint than necessary (see previous years there), I just left. Walking away from Panamint quickly is always at least a minor victory.

It was now 5 am, which put me at about 4.5 hours slower than my 2012 split, mostly due to stoppage time, as opposed to running slower. So I knew that I had the legs to do this, if I could just hold it together for the next 63 miles. With the sunrise, I perked up a bit, and made brisk progress up the climb to the Father Crowley overlook. I was chatty with both Meredith and Shannon as they alternated pacing me, and feeling better about how this was going.

Sure enough, in four hours, I had covered the tough 18 miles from Panamint to Darwin, the mile 90 time station, where Meredith welcomed me with a little "Darwin dance." And sure enough, I was passing plenty of people, which was a mental boost, even if some of them (like Tammy, who was fascinated by the fact that she was "ahead" of me, even though she had a 4-hour head start) were in earlier starting waves. (In Tammy's case, she tried to get her pacer to take a picture of her ahead of me, but by the time the pacer got the camera set up, I had already passed her for good.)

Holy cow, I'm running Badwater! (From more or less this section of the race; I just like this picture.)

From Darwin to Lone Pine, a 32-mile stretch, the course becomes more runnable, and, channeling some of last year, that's what I did. In spite of a 15-minute nap break, because I was falling asleep on my feet, I covered this section in 6 hours, getting stronger and stronger as I got closer to Lone Pine, fueled by Kaskade, Ke$ha, and New Order blasting on my headphones. My crew and I had finally hit on a sustainable strategy of water, soda, spraying, and ice bandanas, and everything was clicking. The crowning achievement was passing David Goggins about a mile away from the turn to Lone Pine, at a 7-minute mile pace. Who knew what place I was in at this point, but the surprised, "who the hell is THIS guy?" looks that I was getting from those in front of me, zombie-marching while I approached at a full-on run, told me that some people were going to be very surprised that I was hot on their heels . . .

At this point in the race, this was pretty much everybody's view of me.

Shannon and I blasted through Lone Pine, hollering, screaming, and fist-bumping with the sheer joy that comes with running that fast after having covered 122 miles on foot, and we jay-ran across the street (albeit inside the crosswalk) to Portal Road, where Jimmy Dean Freeman, who I chased in my first epic climb up Mount Whitney, and who always seems to be in the right place at the right time, encouraged me to "climb like you're chasing me!" I told my crew that this would not be a wobbly-legged climb this year, as it was last year, and I proceeded to put on a climbing clinic, power-hiking up the hill, head forward and headphones still blasting. I didn't speak much, lest I lose focus on the task, which was not only to power up the climb as fast as possible, but also to make sure that I didn't crap out at some point, so that, as I had promised, Meredith would get to see Mount Whitney in the daylight. (As a "slow" finisher, she always ends up climbing Mount Whitney at night, and was excited by the prospect of seeing it in the daylight.)

And then, somehow, almost impossibly, for the second year in a row, after over 100 miles of running, I had passed Dean Karnazes. I couldn't believe how I had done it. To this day, I'll still never understand how it happened. But I did it!

As is the case in this part of the race, the air gets cooler and the climb gets more comfortable near the top, in contrast to the 109-degree heat near the bottom. So I sped up closer to the top, not really sure what my split was shaping up to be, but having a vague sense that I might be on track for a PR. I was pushing the edge at this point, low on calories but not wanting to eat and upset my stomach. I was feeling woozy with a little over a mile to go, but two well-timed bags of chilled fruit snacks later, I was feeling strong again, and powered through to the finish. My crew and I ran through the tape together, finishing in 32 hours, 7 minutes, and 51 seconds - a 3 hour, 12 minute split to Whitney Portal, slightly faster than my 2011 march. And of course, Jimmy Dean Freeman was there to share in my success, and offer me handfuls of peanut-heavy trail mix. Another victory.

Victorious.

We got down the mountain as quickly as we could, in our starved, sleep-deprived state (those post-race hamburgers at Whitney Portal really hit the spot), and headed for sweet sleep at the Whitney Portal Hostel. Sweet, sweet sleep.

I finished 3.5 hours slower than last year, and 8 places lower, but ultimately, I think that I ran a smarter, better race. Last year, I had the benefit of "mild" weather, a tailwind, and plain old luck. This year, many more things were stacked against me, from my long recovery to health to the extra-hot weather. I had my share of low points and then some, but I worked through them well, and ultimately ran the last 63 miles of the race, from Panamint Springs to the finish, in 13 hours - an hour faster than my best for this section, including a new PR on the climb to Whitney Portal, and, overall, about the same as the top finishers' splits on this section of the course. So, in a way, this year's Badwater was a lot like this year's buildup to Badwater - fumbling and frustrating in the early going, but eventually smoothing out, and going on to exceed expectations.

I am deeply thankful to all of those who supported me and my efforts this year, and the years prior - family, friends, crew, donors to G-PACT, and I'm not going to list any more right now because I'll surely miss people. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you all are the reason why I ran Badwater this year, and you all are the reason why I kept fighting to turn the race around and finish strong. And thanks to all of you, fingers crossed, I'll be back again next year, for my fifth consecutive Badwater, with the goal of making it the best yet.

David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-52933224523907737902013-07-11T07:36:00.004-07:002013-07-11T07:37:27.836-07:00Anticipationhttps://www.firstgiving.com/G-PACT/david-ploskonka-badwater

. . . Before the race has even started, I've met at least one goal; as of today, $2000 total raised for GPACT. So of course I'm raising the bar - the new, lofty goal is $4000. Because, hey, why not? And, as I did last year, I'll write whatever you want, in whatever color marker you want, on some article of clothing that I wear during the race. If you haven't told me what you want written yet, let me know soon.

In other news, I thought that there would be more levity here in this blog since the last post, but there hasn't been. Not in a bad way, exactly. It's just been work, work, work, and then work some more to put the finishing touches on the best possible training and preparation that I could muster for this race, considering the deeply compromised state that I was in back when this journey started in February.

All things considered, it's been a solid effort. I've averaged 82-ish miles per week for the past four months, and 93-ish miles per week for the past month. Last week (30 June - 6 July), I ran my first honest-to-goodness 100-mile week (i.e. without a ridiculous race to prop up the mileage) since - get this - the last week of January 2012. And that was a week that, like each of the preceding weeks, included a quality long-hill day. (Most weeks included a hill day and a tempo day, but considering the magnitude of last week's hill workout, and its proximity in time to the race, I'm okay with just a hill day for last week).

Typical minor dings, scrapes, and bruises aside, I feel no worse for wear. Obviously, a one-week taper is a bit of a gamble, but considering the relatively short length of my mileage build (about half of how long I had to build last year), I'm guessing that I have a little less damage to repair. In any event, random unfortunate events aside, I'll most likely be lining up on Monday much healthier than I was last year.

But that's all the numbers and technical stuff. What has me the most excited about this race is the level of mental focus that I have going in, which has steadily increased since the TARC 100 fiasco. My training in the weeks following TARC has been some of the most consistent, joyful running that I've done in a long time. Especially in the past couple of weeks, there hasn't been a question in my mind about whether or not I was going to do the workout that day. The workout was going to happen, and it was going to happen according to the plan, and physically, I was responding. And there's a quiet joy in the rhythm of that kind of consistency in training - the joy that comes from the slow, steady progress towards a desired state of fitness.

And there's also the more visceral joy in the process. The sweat pouring down as I clip along at a measured pace under a blazing-hot afternoon sun, in 100+ degree humid Baltimore City heat. The smile that I can't suppress as I fly down a steep hill at breakneck pace, the scenery blurring in my peripheral vision. And the sublime relief that comes at the end of a long, hot run from downing a huge glass of ice water and flopping on my back on the cold-floor, with the stereo blasting Kaskade. The process feels good again, and has felt particularly good lately. And that means something.

But make no mistake about it - by and large, Badwater this year is not about me. While it's certainly encouraging and exciting to feel this level of joy in running again, I don't need to go all the way to Death Valley in the middle of July to feel it.

But I do need to go all the way to Death Valley in the middle of July for a lot of other people - the folks at GPACT, my little sister, all the people who donated to support GPACT, all the people that I've trained with in preparation for this event, and all the people that have otherwise sponsored, supported, or encouraged me to get back out there, for whatever reason. All of you are the reason why I need to go back to Death Valley, and all of you will be the reason why I will be able to endure the inevitable pain and suffering in the 135 miles between the Badwater Basin and Whitney Portal.

So that's all for this blog until after the race. Stay tuned to the rest of the internet (Facebook, the Badwater webpage, Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, whatever) for updates in the meantime. And thanks to all of you for getting me to that starting line - you'll get nothing less than my best effort between there and the finish tape.David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-26085869023812769082013-07-01T12:02:00.002-07:002013-07-01T12:02:45.940-07:00PerspectiveFirst things first:

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/DavidPloskonka/david-ploskonka-badwater

As I've been mentioning for a while now, my 2013 Badwater effort is in support of G-PACT, the Gastroparesis Patient Association for Cures and Treatments. My little sister struggles with this disease, so this cause has particular personal significance for me. Any and all donations are appreciated. And, as was the case last year, if you donate, I'll write whatever you want me to write, in whatever color you'd like, on an article of clothing that I'll be wearing during the race (I'm leaning towards an arm sleeve).

And, with that said, it's now July, or, more significantly, Badwater month. With just a couple weeks now until the big event, and the better part of the proverbial physical hay (the kind that collects from as many hours as I can stand, running in whatever heat that I can find) in the equally proverbial barn, most of the task now becomes logistical and mental preparedness, so some perspective is in order . . .

Flashback to February, after I couldn't manage to average sub-7-minute-mile pace for 10 miles at Club Challenge. The idea that, in five months, I would be toeing the line for another 135 miles through Death Valley, chasing, if nothing else, the ghost of my impressive endeavor there last year, was downright terrifying.

And the year since then has been one big scary adventure into the unknown. From missing the Boston Marathon for the first time in eight years, to repeatedly near-missing qualifying times for the 2014 Boston Marathon, to adventures in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Bolivia, to an unlikely success at MMT, to an abject failure at TARC, nothing has been very predictable, and everything has kept me on my toes.

Now I'm here, July 1st, after the longest coldest winter I can remember, on the verge of running what has the potential to be the hottest Badwater ever. For this year, that seems to be par for the course. And with the course of 2013 being as fraught with peril as it has been so far, I'm reluctant to make too many promises or predictions about what might happen for however many hours it takes after 10 a.m. on Monday, July 15th (aka the Ides of July).

I will go as far as to say that there will be pain - and lots of it - from the Badwater Basin to Whitney Portal. I'll also go out on a very short limb and say that, based on recent race experience, I will want to quit, and frequently. But I won't quit, no matter how much I want to - and I strongly suspect that I will want to.

Because if the first half of 2013 has reminded me of anything, it's that there's plenty more to running than competition. Since my burnout in 2012, it's been a long way back to re-learning how to run healthy, and to re-gaining the little joys that come from that smile from a passer-by, or that glimpse of scenery that burns itself into your memory. And now that I remember that running can be like that, more often than not, that's how I want it to be. And more often than not, it should be that way. But come race day, it's not going to be that type of pleasant; it's going to be an excursion back into the darkness that was the latter half of 2012.

For myself alone, I have no reason or desire to go back into that darkness. It's too recent, it's not fun, and it's not the way life should be.

But I'm not running Badwater this year for myself. I'm running it for my sister's charity, G-PACT, because I promised that I would. I'm running it for the people who supported G-PACT through their donations, because they believe in the cause and they believe in me. I'm running it for my family and my friends and the city of Baltimore, because they've supported my running for all these years, and they deserve to see the fruits of their support now and again. I'm running it for all of my Badwater crew members, past and present, because no matter how well I run there, they always deserve better. I'm running it for the other competitors, because I owe it to them to contribute to the challenge of the event, to push them to their limits.

So for all of those reasons, I'll spend the next two weeks running in whatever heat I can find, packing up the various and sundry clothes, shoes, and gadgets that make this sort of expedition possible, and mentally preparing to go back to that dark place for many hours in the hot desert sun. Because this year, Badwater isn't about me. And it's only because this year, Badwater isn't about me, that I'll make it to that finish line.

(And if that was, "too much f***ing perspective," a la Spinal Tap, just wait a few days - maybe until next week, at the latest, when I'm sure that I can come up with something much more whimsical; hours and hours in the heat make me downright silly.)
David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-16300715808189343302013-06-17T09:23:00.000-07:002013-06-17T09:23:52.071-07:002013 TARC 100-Mile Mud Run / Deathmarch ReportIt's now a little over a day since I took my last painful step on the extended mud pit that was the 2013 TARC 100-Mile Run course (otherwise unofficially known as the world's longest Tough Mudder), and I am no less ambivalent about how things went. So this is a little more detail about how it was, and a little less clarity about how I felt.

First, a little background. Originally, I had planned to run the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, in keeping with what I've done the past two years to prepare for Badwater (running the MMT 100 and the OD 100 back-to-back). Unfortunately, I was sick with a pretty bad stomach bug the day before the race, and ultimately decided not to start. It was a tough decision. I would have liked to have posted here that in spite of being on my back on the floor in the airport in Bogota, Colombia, en route from Bolivia back to Washington, DC, crippled with stomach pain and drained from way too many trips to the bathroom, I managed to bounce back less than 24 hours later and finish a 100-mile race (and maybe even finish well). On the other hand, that may have been too close to an outright miracle for it to have been even a remote possibility, and, in the interim, the race could have turned into a painful, miserable, injurious struggle.

Enter the TARC 100, which had me at least a little more (but still not entirely) at peace with my Old Dominion DNS. Two weeks after OD, and a month before Badwater, the timing of the race made more sense than the timing of OD. Based on the course description - relatively tame trails with little elevation gain/loss - it seemed as though it could be a "fast" 100-mile race, which would be a good complement to MMT, which is a much slower, more technical run. As Massachusetts' first 100-mile run, though, there was the element of the unknown. There could be something terribly wrong with the course measurement, or markings, or organization otherwise that could have made it an ordeal. And usually, the first time around, these events have those sorts of problems. But the materials that were available online were detailed and thorough, and it seemed as though the race directors had everything covered, so it seemed like a risk worth taking. Plus, at $60 to enter, including a really nice finisher's jacket, the price was right.

Pre-race logistics went as well as could be expected. Patrick and I left from Aberdeen on Thursday evening after work, and although it rained steadily for most of our drive up, we missed any potential tornadoes or flash-floods that the weathermen were threatening. We crashed at my friend Steve's friend Nate's place in Charlestown, slept for most of Friday, and left for the park in Weston mid-afternoon on Friday, encountering minimal traffic along the way. After a quick run to the little grocery store and bagel place in Weston, we parked, endured a strangely long and slow line to check in and pick up our bibs, and then got dressed and ready for the race.

At the pre-race meeting (6:30 p.m. meeting, with a 7:00 p.m. race start time), the race director warned us that he had run the entire course earlier in the day, double-checking the markings, and due to the heavy rains over the past few days, there would be mud. Not everywhere, but parts of the trail hadn't drained, and probably would not drain entirely. He recommended just running straight through it, as opposed to rock-hopping, which was potentially slippery and dangerous. You could say that we were fairly warned. But running one 25-mile lap of the course, in daylight, on fresh legs, is quite different from running four consecutive 25-mile laps, at least partially in the dark, as we would all soon find out . . .

We counted down backwards from 10 to the start, and right on time, we were off. A lead pack of about 10 of us were together for the first mile or two, but the pack began to splinter as the runners looking to win the 50-mile race really took off. Glen, Jack, Patrick, and I were all fairly close together during the first 4.5 mile loop, and we chatted a bit about this and that (including Badwater, which Glen will be running for the first time this year, with Ian Sharman as a pacer, apparently). For my part, it was a decent start, and I was in no particular distress. We passed the start/finish area on our way out for the next 20+ miles of the first loop, only slightly muddy from a few relatively minor puddles. Our false sense of security had been established.

The next section of the course was far more representative of what the entire race would be like, and was a mud-ridden, bubble-bursting nightmare. Ankle-deep, shoe-sucking mud pits about every quarter mile, coupled with flooded streams that, in the worst cases, were waist-deep on a short person like me, ensured that our feet would be forever wet, and our footing would be never stable. Since we were all still feeling reasonably good, we plowed through most of it with reckless abandon, but I could hear comments that this would not last, and we wouldn't be running this way later in the race. When I ran through what appeared to be a puddle that turned out to be more of a stream, with giant, jagged rocks at the bottom, and nearly twisted my ankle as I planted my foot awkwardly on a rock and plunged waist-deep into the cold water, I was more than inclined to agree.

While the leaders gained a little bit of separation from me during the first lap, for the most part, I held my ground, even as darkness fell, and the mud hazards became even more hazardous, as it was even less likely that you could tell what you were stepping in before you stepped there. I came through the first 25-mile lap in just over 4 hours, all in all not too disheartened by the caked-on mud from my knees to my feet, and pleasantly surprised by how awesome the power-line cut looked against the reddish night sky (my most significant regret relative to this race is not getting a picture of that). Maybe this would turn out okay.

And then, somewhere within the first 10 miles of the second loop, things started falling apart. My stomach had been unhappy with my level of exertion for the first loop, but I kept putting food and drink in, and hoping that it would eventually level out, get tired of protesting, and fall somewhere in the background noise that is the typical ultramarathon aches and pains. Instead, it was gradually worsening, and it soon became apparent that I would need to enter survival mode.

For the remainder of the second loop, I tried slowing down, I tried eating more, I tried eating different things. I tried every trick I could think of to stabilize the situation, but no matter what I did, I couldn't find a way to run for more than about five minutes at a time without feeling like my stomach was going to explode, reducing me to a slower-than-normal walk that offset any of the gains made from running. Pushing through the stomach pain only made the inevitable crash worse, as it demanded even more nutrition than my body could reasonably provide in that state.

In this condition, the goal became to make it to at least 50 miles, as that would be two complete loops, back at the start/finish area, where my drop bag and the car were, and where I could most comfortably end what was rapidly becoming an unmanageable ordeal. I made it back to the start/finish area at around 10 hours, for a 6-hour second loop.

I tried to console myself with the fact that everybody was hurting now. Hurting from 10 hours of constantly wet, muddy feet. Hurting from intense darkness from the tall tree cover and minimal light from the crescent moon. Hurting, in some cases, due to slipping and falling (when I passed Jack, who eventually dropped, his entire thigh was bandaged, due to a "run-in" with a tree stump).

But at the rate at which my condition seemed to be worsening, all of this was little consolation. More than likely, the fact of the matter was that, in spite of this being two weeks after my digestive catastrophe, I had lingering effects of the stomach bug, or some other bug in my system. But either way, my stomach rejecting everything, and the random aches and pains that weren't race-related were indication that I was sick. Every step I took was going to be more stress on a sick system, and going to be just a little bit more difficult and painful than the one before.

So I had a decision to make. Drop now, or keep going? The race director gave me the typical (albeit very energetic) "it's a nice morning just go out and walk the first 4.5 mile loop and come back here and see how you feel" line, and there is definitely a part of me that responds to that. There's also a part of me that responded to his interaction with another runner on the verge of dropping, when another person commented that the race director should show the runner the basket with all of the bracelets of the runners who had dropped (apparently, 60 people had dropped after the first loop). The idea that it was still possible for me to finish, albeit slowly and painfully, and keep my bracelet on my wrist, instead of in the basket prematurely, had its appeal, and of course, everybody there at the race, and associated with the race, was pulling for me, and for everybody else, to at least finish.

But stopping had its appeal, too. At the rate that I was going, barring a miracle turn-around, it could take the next 20 hours to finish the last 50 miles. 20 hours is a long time when you're sick and tired and far from home, and, in the grand scheme of life, there are people and places that might be more deserving of your attention (for starters, Sunday was Father's Day). And even in the event that no long-lasting damage occurs as a result of the struggle, it's still not likely to be very much fun in that state. 20 hours of what was shaping up to be meaningless suffering without a point seemed more unappealing than it ever had in any race that I had run to date.

But since I was there, and, perhaps on some level, because I hadn't given Old Dominion a try, I felt very marginally motivated to at least give this a try, against all odds, knowing full well that it would be a huge struggle ahead. After half an hour of laying out in the morning sun, warming up and letting some food digest, I went back out there. It took me nearly an hour and a half to walk the first 4.5-mile section of the third loop. My stomach vaguely protested, my legs felt weak, and now that I was walking and my feet had been wet for that long, my toes were even more painfully waterlogged and/or blistered (I wasn't about to take my shoes off to see). People were passing me, and I had no energy to keep up with them, much less pass them back.

Still, I persisted, and walked through a little over half of the loop, before I got to the Ripley 2 aid station, where there was a conspicuous doctor and equally conspicuous cots. I took this opportunity to eat and lay down, since the doctor said that I didn't look so good. I spent about half an hour there, and coincidentally woke up just as Snipes was sitting down at the aid station. I got up to talk to him, and he immediately got on the "follow me and we'll finish the race" soapbox, to the chagrin of the doctor. (I later found out that Snipes and the doctor had disagreed about some things on the last go-around, so perhaps that was part of the motivation behind his response.) As much as I didn't want to, and as much as I clearly expressed to Snipes that more than anything in the world, I just wanted to stop, I followed him and his pacer Christopher out of the aid station and onward.

We spent the next 7 or 8 miles of the loop jogging slowly on the flat sections, walking the uphills, and walking the muddy sections. I was hanging on, but barely, and I knew in the back of my mind that sooner or later, Snipes was going to drop me. And in the last three miles of the loop, he did, directing Christopher to stay with me at least through the end of the loop. The company for part of the loop was nice, but at the same time, it was a constant nerve-wracking experience to wonder when my body would fail and when I would get dropped.

I reached the start/finish at the end of the third loop, mile 75, and I was in significantly worse condition than I was at 50 miles, and dropping was significantly more appealing. I knew that Patrick was having a good day, since I saw him near the end of my third loop, and that he would be finished soon. It was now a little over 19 hours into the race, and, at the rate Patrick was going, based on where I saw him, I figured that he would be finished in the next 10 or 15 minutes (and, as it turned out, I was pretty close to correct). I could have just stayed at the start/finish, waited for Patrick to come in, and packed up and left. We could have been on the road by 4 pm, home by midnight, in time for a good night's sleep in a real bed, with a full Sunday of life outside of this mud-coated fiasco. And, in the grand scheme of life, this all seemed very sensible and reasonable.

But again, the race director told me to just give it a try, and everybody was pulling for me (and everybody else) to give it their all and finish, and again, in a very marginal sense, these forces won out, against every part of my will that was screaming loudly "stop stop STOP!" I tried my best to brace for the worst.

The first 4.5-mile section took me an hour and forty-five minutes this time - immensely painful, considering that it took only 35 minutes in the good old days of the first loop. I was getting passed worse than before. Everything hurt. At least the weather was nice - sunny, clear, and not too warm in the shade.

Back at the start/finish, now with just over 20 miles to go, the excitement should have been palpable. But at this point, I'm not even sure that my heartbeat was palpable. I was a weak, broken zombie, stomach churning and toes burning. The race director described the rest of the race as "just a long run," which struck me as the equivalent of telling somebody who's just eaten 80 hot dogs that he could easily eat another 20 more, since he already managed 80. But apart from the previous 80 hot dogs, he did have a point. I lingered for a bit, ate some food, and prayed for it to digest so that I would have the energy to keep moving.

Meanwhile, Glen, who had just finished, gave me a "c'mon, this is your Badwater training!" and then jokingly offered a young girl that he was talking with (apparently another runner) as a pacer, which of course she wanted no actual part in. I'm sure that he didn't mean for it to come off as taunting or insulting, but in his post-finish-line glow/delerium (they're nearly the same thing), and in my 20-more-hot-dogs state, it felt awful to hear, and was definitely filed away in the "retribution later" section of my brain (maybe my opinion will change between now and Badwater, and it won't stay there, but for now, there it is).

Not wanting to hear any more, I got up and staggered forward, getting ready to gradually jam those hot dogs down. Strapping on the headlamp, I felt particularly defeated, knowing that, barring a miracle, I would be passing that way again in the dark (the volunteers were confused as to why I thought that I needed it, furthering the sense of abandonment in this ordeal).

On my out-of-the-way walk to get my headlamp (bad planning on the drop bag location), I saw Patrick on the massage table, and the race director commented that he'd been there for the past two hours (which I found out later was only marginally exaggerated), and that I shouldn't let him get too comfortable. Patrick said "don't worry, take your time," but I never explicitly said to him that I was fully anticipating another 8 hours before I would be back, and I think he mistakenly assumed that I was making a comeback, rather than death-marching it in. I apologized to him then, and I'll apologize again now.

And then, I was alone again, marching down the trail, stomping through the mud. As people inevitably passed, I moved to the side of the trail, hands on knees, defeated. People generally offered help and encouragement, but my universal response to how I was doing was simply "bad," and I didn't take anybody's help. Then, at one point, as I was bent over, I heard a girl who passed say "hop on the train!" and maybe it was the expression, or some combination of interesting colors and shapes in my blurring vision, but I figured, why not, I'll try one more time to get some momentum going. I ran with Hillary for a little while, and we chatted about this and that, which was a welcome distraction. At one point, I got ahead of her, and she apparently waited for her father, who was also running the race, to catch up, so I left her behind.

Maybe I should have waited too, as it would have slowed the pace, but instead, I kept going, hoping momentum would take over, and not too long after, I wound up reduced to a walk again, as if that were really a surprise. So eventually Hillary passed me again, and I tried one more time in vain to keep up, although I knew it wouldn't happen. And then I knew I'd be walking in the next 15+ miles.

I'd say that the rest of the race was entirely nondescript ever-darkening woods, mottled with foot and stomach pain, but there were a few other things that stood out. After Hillary passed me, and I eventually made it to the next aid station, her father showed up at the aid station just as I got there - apparently she had left him, too. He asked if Hillary had passed me, and I said yes, I wasn't feeling so good. Then the guy that he was running with at the time made a comment about how he "raised his daughter right" and he joked that he would never let her date a guy that couldn't keep up with her. Again, not entirely meant to be an insult, but in my state of abject misery, the insinuations that a.) I was somehow trying to "date" her because I was running with her for a little while, and b.) I was just some jackass trying to do this run to look badass, and not somebody who legitimately works hard at and trains for this sort of thing were deeply insulting. Strike one.

Meanwhile, the aid station volunteer asked if I needed my hand bottle filled, and I didn't have the patience at this point to try to explain to her I wasn't sweating at all, and water wasn't going to help my condition. When I told her no, I didn't need my bottle filled, and she insisted anyway, I handed it over, then went over to the table in the meantime to try to eat something. After I had finished eating, I asked for my bottle, and, a minute later, she still wasn't finished filling it. Immensely frustrating, since she was prolonging my pain, and I didn't really need it filled in the first place. Strike two.

As I stood there staring while she fumbled with the bottle, "raised his daughter right" guy, in his own stumbling state, stepped on my left foot, right on my toes, where they were the most raw. Strike three.

I don't remember which choice word was my knee-jerk reaction to the blinding pain, but I know that I immediately grabbed my hand bottle from the aid station volunteer, uttered another rude phrase, and marched off as quickly as I could. The worst part was that I knew that I couldn't keep up that fast-walk pace, and that they would eventually catch me and pass me. And they did.

So I spent the last portion of the race very frustrated, somewhat humiliated, and entirely alone. Somewhere in the last five miles, I finally was no longer getting passed, which was some consolation - at least at this point, nearly everybody was walking.

And, in a final moment of petty retribution, as I navigated the mud pits that were cruelly, unintentionally placed about a mile from the finish, ensuring that all my efforts to wash my shoes in the clean streams would be defeated, who did I pass but Hillary's father, struggling because "he hurt his foot," to which I responded "we all hurt all of our feet a long time ago." Of course, he meant, and clarified, that he had done something particularly bad to one of his feet somewhere in the last mile (which would have meant less than three miles from the finish), but whatever. In the miserable turtle race that close to the finish, I was going to struggle to the finish line ahead of him, rather than waiting up, since, based on our previous interaction, I knew that he would do the same for me.

29 hours and 12 minutes later, this whole stupid thing was over, and I was soaking my legs in a bucket of warm water along with all of the other busted-up people at the finish line, trying in vain to scrub all of the mud off. I'm pretty sure some of it is still permanently embedded in my skin.

Patrick had moved my drop bag closer to the finish area, but I had no idea that he did it, and he wasn't there, so I spent 10 minutes searching for it where it used to be (sort of far from the finish line), when it was actually sitting three feet behind me the entire time.

Right after finishing, I had this new mess to deal with.

All around me was that vague glow of the exhausted pride and relief of the finishers, who had made it in just ahead of the 30-hour cutoff time, but I wasn't sharing in it. Patrick and I both had to get home, and my extended wilderness escapade had put us way behind schedule. I made myself as presentable as possible, and within 40 minutes of my finish, we were in the car and headed home, via the caffeine-aided buddy-driving system (Patrick took the first couple of hours, and I took the rest, since it turned out that he hadn't slept much at all after he finished).

We both made it back to our respective lives in one piece, and I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the car and organizing stuff and visiting with my family - you know, normal human things that don't involve meaningless suffering without a point. Also, sleep. After 46 straight hours of consciousness, sleep is good.

That's the story, and I'm still ambivalent about the entire thing. I do think that very few people understand what a deathmarch in an ultra really is, and this is perhaps an opportunity to clarify that. For the most part, an ultra turns out one of three ways for a person that runs it: 1.) Better than expected (faster and/or less painful), and a pleasant surprise, 2.) More or less as expected, give or take a bit, or 3.) DNF. Very rarely is it the case that somebody is on track to perform far worse than expected, but continues anyway, instead of taking a DNF.

The reason is that, as the above has most likely illustrated, when you're doing awful in a way that isn't going to respond significantly to ad-hoc attempts to address the problem (broken bone, sprained ankle, stomach illness), the only way to make progress is to reduce yourself to the slowest possible forward progress that you can manage under deteriorating conditions, and hope that that pace is good enough to at least make the finish cutoff. This is significantly different from having a "bad patch" in a race, working through it, bouncing back, and maybe even going through the cycle a few more times before finishing. There is no bounce-back. There is only struggle and pain until you reach the finish line - or drop out. And most people drop out.

And not only is a deathmarch a miserable experience in the moment, due to the associated pain and suffering, but it's also, at least in my mind, the antithesis of what running is about. Not because you're most likely walking, as opposed to running, but because it takes away from the feeling of freedom that is one of the things that makes running so awesome. When a run is going well, you feel as though you're in control or even transcending what you thought was possible, to make it from one place to another under your own power, at your own pace. When you're deathmarching, you're a slave to an unresponsive body, forced to play by its slow, miserable rules if you want to get anywhere, which, considering the amount of pain, a large part of you doesn't want to anyway.

So I have the distinction of being one of the few people with the "guts" or "toughness" or whatever you want to call it to finish a race under those conditions. And I'm pretty sure the record will show that this was the worst that I've ever finished in an ultra, since I finished 54th, out of 64 finishers, just 48 minutes ahead of the 30-hour cutoff time. And I did feel some sense of satisfaction in receiving my finisher's jacket and belt buckle.

But at the same time, what was the point? The race was almost uniformly un-fun past 50 miles, and the only thing I wanted during the second half of the race was to stop running. What did I really gain from that sort of torture? Who did I hurt or disadvantage by continuing the way that I did, for as long as I did? The awareness of the wonderful things in this world, like showers and soap and blankets and clean sheets and people that truly love and care about you, intensified as this ordeal progressed. Why willfully forsake those things to "accomplish" something that, from many perspectives, could be characterized as stubbornness at best, and stupidity at worst?

I don't really have an answer for any of that, and at the end of the day, this is a classic "agree to disagree" situation, which, in retrospect, was heighted by the "backup plan" nature of the race (Old Dominion was still the race that I wanted in my heart) and unfamiliarity with the course (which, by the way, although appearing to be spaghetti on paper, was immaculately marked, and you would have had to have been an idiot to get lost, and that's coming from somebody with a history of getting lost), both of which weakened my resolve in the face of adversity (although the absence of those factors wouldn't have really helped my stomach situation).

Amidst all of the perceived negativity here, I would like to point out, here in this fine print, that anybody who can mark a course that is this confusing with absolute clarity, so that not even I get lost once, is an amazing race director. Also, that if the course had been dry, it would have been much faster and more fun. So congrats, race directors - you did awesome.

So one last clear, unambiguous statement before I leave this for good: Badwater is about a month away now, and if this experience had any value at all (which is still debatable), it showed that if I can persist to complete a race in a situation in which I have barely the capability to, and virtually no interest in doing so, it should at least mean that for something that I do care about, like Badwater, something awesome is going to happen, no matter what condition I show up in on race day (but hopefully, due to lessons learned here, and a little good old-fashioned luck, it will be much better than this go-around). So if you'd like to support that sort of effort, make a donation to my Badwater charity, G-PACT, here:

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/DavidPloskonka/david-ploskonka-badwater

And now, back to life . . .David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-78030042641916095742013-05-20T14:38:00.002-07:002013-05-20T14:38:40.231-07:002013 Massanutten Mountain Trails 100-Mile Race ReportI was scared.

Since my first 50-miler in 2007, I've never been scared to start an ultramarathon. But on MMT 100 eve, as I writhed uncomfortably in the slightly-too-warm back seat of my Honda Civic (now seeming much worse as "Plan B" in action than it did in my mind, when I thought that I wouldn't have to use it), I wasn't having trouble sleeping from the typical pre-race nerves, or excitement, or even bug bites. I was just plain scared.

Since Badwater last July, my races have turned out mediocre for the most part, and the one ultra that I did attempt (Speedgoat 50K aside), ended in a disaster, the way only a race like Hellgate can. So, just hours away from lining up for a 100+ mile quad-thrashing rock-stomp, I felt nothing but fear.

I was certainly in much better health than last year. Debatably, I was in similar or better shape. But not having successfully attempted this sort of distance in far too long, I had no idea how my body was going to respond. I tried to suppress visions of collapse in the woods, feeling totally broken, but I knew they were there. I didn't even want to think about what this might mean for Badwater in July.

But in other news, most other things were under control. New headlamps and new handbottles (to replace the lost and stolen ones), drop bags set, warm clothes pre-positioned at the finish line, the dozens and dozens of actual important things to do outside of this silly race at least temporarily taken care of . . . on a very practical level, there wasn't really anything to worry about. At 3 am, I made deliberate, yet efficient work of my pre-race preparations, and then it was off to the starting line with 10 minutes to spare, to mingle with 200-ish other runners and try to feel like I belonged there.

The semi-circle at the starting line, the same as in 2010, was there with about 2 minutes to go until race start. Although there were quite a few legitimate contenders (probably even more than last year), nobody wanted to take the lead. This time, I didn't either.

At exactly 0400, off we went, and I settled in with what ended up being the lead pack as we held a comfortable pace over the first few road miles. We turned off onto our first trail, I switched my headlamp to high, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that I wasn't losing ground. I was also an indeterminate kind of surprised that while I was running near Jason Lantz, he brought up my New Jersey Marathon blog entry, and asked me if I was going to try to qualify for Boston 2014 again (most likely, yes). Sometimes I forget that some people read this thing.

Before I could really think too hard about anything that was happening, it was daylight, and I was motoring along a technical downhill trail section to Edinburg Gap with the rest of the lead pack. As we came through the aid station, I looked at my watch - right at 2 hours. Having studied splits from previous years, this was about on pace to go sub-20 hours, which, in my fear-filled mind, was too fast.

I backed off a bit in the next section, not as much because I had to, but because I wanted to, and a few more people passed me. I was still making decent progress, picking through rocks and enjoying the scenery that I could within the motion blur, but I was also gradually starting to feel worse. By the time I hit Elizabeth Furnace, the 33-ish mile mark, at just over 6 hours, I felt as though the wheels might already be coming off. My stomach wasn't feeling right, my legs were feeling weak, and if somebody had told me that I could stop at that moment, I would have done it without hesitation, curled up in a ball, and fallen asleep right there, on top of rocks, dirt, bugs, whatever.

People at the Elizabeth Furnace aid station were saying that I looked okay. I felt awful. As I forced myself into a very uncomfortable jog out of the aid station, distinct thoughts of "this is a cruel, sick endeavor" and "why on earth would anybody subject themselves to this?" were first and foremost in my mind. I tried to convince myself intellectually, rationally, that I could do this, but my body was protesting loudly about going beyond the marathon distance. I tried to figure out why on earth I felt this way. Had I accidentally ingested some sunscreen? Maybe something bad in last night's dinner? Lack of sleep? I had no answers, other than to keep moving forward.

I reached Veach Gap, not-so-fresh off of a gravel road slog that I desparately wanted to walk, but compelled myself to mostly run, to find Jon Loewus-Deitch working the aid station. He came towards me to give me a hug, and then, barely touching me, recoiled with an unabashed "ew, you're gross" . . . which, that far into the race, was probably pretty true. Still, the whole incident amused me enough that I was at least a little bit distracted on the ensuing climb out of the aid station. That didn't last for the entire climb, though, so the best I could do was hope that the drop down the back side of the mountain to the Indian Grave aid station would be a welcome break. And it was, if you count stubbing your toes on multiple rocks and struggling not to fall on your face a "break" from a never-ending uphill grind.

And there I was, just past Indian Grave, on an almost 4-mile road section, feeling more and more broken by the minute. The race director passed me in a truck, heading towards me. I tried to smile and wave, but my walking a flat road section betrayed the very strong instinct to beg for a ride back to camp in the truck. Matt Bugin passed me on the road section, and, in reference to the Hammer Nutrition shirt that I was wearing, quipped "C'mon! It's Hammer Time!" It was at that point in the race that I couldn't understand how anybody could do this sort of thing, let alone be so cheerful doing it. I let Matt pass, and when he said "I'll see you again later," I responded with a very definitive "maybe."

Sometimes, knowing the course is a bad thing. When the road finally ended, at Habron Gap, I knew what was next - a 10-mile stretch between there and Camp Roosevelt, the easiest drop-out point, containing dozens of nasty rock-ridden surprises. On the one hand, I wanted to drop at Habron Gap. I wanted to drop at the previous three aid stations. On the other hand, dropping at Habron Gap meant a much longer drive-of-shame back than dropping at Camp Roosevelt. The 10 miles ahead were somehow the lesser of the evils.

As I trudged up the mountain, it took every bit of willpower to make forward progress. Near the top, the only thing that worked was to focus on a patch of ground two feet in front of me, and tell myself to put my foot there, again, and again, and again. When I reached the top, exhausted, I sat down on a rock for about two minutes to collect myself. Nobody else was around. I closed my eyes and I felt my entire body tingle and buzz. I was close to blackout. I was close to failure.

But, sticking to my easy drop-out plan, I couldn't stop there, so I stood up, and somehow felt a little better, so I kept moving towards Camp Roosevelt. Somewhere on the interminable yellow trail to the Camp Roosevelt aid station, Keith Knipling, who has finished this race something like 13 times, passed me and asked how I was. I told him bad, and that I was feeling slow. He said "well, just keep moving forward," and he kept moving forward. It was at this point that somehow, the apparent pointlessness of this endeavor had lifted. Keith had done this many times before. He had most likely had bad days here. I had a bad day here in 2010. Somehow, I was going to find a way to do better, if for no other reason than for the sake of doing better. That was the logic, and that was the plan. I started to run again. Before long, I had caught Keith, passed him, and reached the aid station.

When I arrived at Camp Roosevelt, at around quarter after 5, I found myself, time-wise, in nearly the same situation as I had been in last year. And last year, I had run under 24 hours. Last year, I had come through feeling much more under control, but I wasn't totally out of this year's race yet. Mark Rodriguez said that he thought I normally came through there around 2 pm. Z said that I looked a lot better at this point in the race than I did back in 2010. It's all relative, I suppose. Being on the edge of a total breakdown, the best commentary I could manage on my condition was "hangin' in there," which became my go-to line for the rest of the race whenever anybody asked me how I was doing. And before too much navel-gazing could take place (or before Keith could beat me out of the aid station, for that matter), I was off and running again.

At this point, the race blurs quite a bit. My focus shifted from the impossible to the plausible. I had somehow come in under 24 hours last year, with a similar start time-wise, so it had to be plausible to do it again. I distinctly recalled sections of the race where I had walked when I could have run instead, and about how much time I estimated I would have saved by running. I reasoned that there was margin under the 24-hour line if I just stuck with it. And I really wanted to be under that line, because I didn't want to be out there any longer than I had to.

I kept moving forward, and I kept focused. I was going to have to keep trying things with pace and nutrition until something stuck and I didn't feel so terrible. I tried to enjoy the pleasant things - the breeze on Kerns Mountain was refreshing, and I kept both of my contact lenses this time around. At the Visitor Center aid station, Jackie Palmer and her friend found me some Listerine strips, so that I didn't have to taste stale Gatorade (at least for ten or fifteen minutes). The momentum kept building. And I kept passing people. By the time I reached the Picnic Area, Mile 90-ish, I was in the aid station with two people who were ahead of me still there. The thought of getting out before they did, and gaining ground, was too exciting to prevent me from rapidly downing two cups of water, a banana chunk, and a cup of Coke, then nearly throwing it up a quarter-mile later. (I dry-heaved three times, then rode the adrenaline surge all the way down the trail to the road crossing.)

After one more mountain crossing, as I hauled down the road to Gap Creek, just over six miles to go, somehow running comfortably, it occurred to me that this was pretty much the definition of "hanging in there," which is a thing that my Dad says a lot when somebody asks him how he's doing. I used to look at it as a way of deferring a "real" answer to the question. At that point, I had a profound realization that a lot of the time, it probably was the "real" answer to the question. "Hanging in there" is definitely a state of being, where clear "good" and "bad" don't exist, but you keep going anyway. In this case, all the way to Gap Creek, where I did actually see Matt Bugin again . . . sitting by the fire. Maybe he had gotten there ahead of me and was resting briefly, maybe he had dropped hours ago. I didn't know which. I didn't want to find out right now. I wanted to finish the race.

And, with a huge surge of energy, I attacked the last section. Up Jawbone Gap one more time, much more briskly than the first go-around, even though it wasn't very much cooler at almost 2 am, down the rocky backside, and on to the gravel road to the finish.

I hit the gravel road running strong. The night was dead-silent, save for the crunch of gravel under my feet. The only light was my headlamp. Nobody was nearby. As I scanned the horizon, looking for the next reflective confidence marker, my footsteps quickened. Impossibly, after hours of pointless suffering, I had found a way. It took only 99+ miles of forward progress on foot to re-discover the pure physical pleasure that running can be when it's done just right. And, for the first time ever in the last few miles of an ultra, I didn't really want the race to end. I felt as though I could have kept on running down that dark road for hours.

So I had to make do with finishing strong, in 22 hours, 54 minutes, and 48 seconds, nearly 40 minutes faster than last year's time, 7th place overall, with Mark Rodriguez and Chris Avedissian, who's been a fantastic crew person since Old Dominion 2008, waiting for me at the finish line. Since I was in the "solo" divison, they couldn't help me during the race, but they were immense help afterwards, even though I didn't collapse into a ball on the ground or throw up in a trash can, as is customarily the case. I tried to sleep, but all of the energy that I had suddenly found at the end of the race refused to be pent-up, so I hung out with Mark and Chris until they had to sleep, then hung around the finish line and watched more people come in - in particular, Sniper, for his 10th finish, and Shannon MacGregor, sticking out a tough race to come in under the 36-hour cutoff.

And that, I'd say, is the day that I learned the true meaning of "hanging in there." Thanks, Dad, for that one. Considering how poorly the Club Challenge 10-Miler went at the end of February, it's hard to believe that in the relatively short interim, I've been able to turn things around so much. I'm starting to feel excited about Badwater (cautiously excited, of course). The plan, as it were, seems to be working. That's the power of "hanging in there."

And finally, related to Badwater, just a reminder that you can make donations to G-PACT, my Badwater charity, here: http://www.firstgiving.com/G-PACT/david-ploskonka-badwater . . . it'd make my pointless suffering just a little bit more meaningful, and I'm sure that my little sister, who suffers from gastroparesis, would appreciate it, too!David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-58171520155185099662013-05-05T14:36:00.001-07:002013-05-05T14:36:14.159-07:00New Jersey Marathon Fail ReportThis is not at all what I wanted to be writing right now, so I'm going to do my best to get this out of the way quickly, without terribly compromising the quality of my writing. (It probably won't turn out to be either, though.) Here goes:

First, if a picture is still worth a thousand words, then this one more or less spares you from having to read the rest of this:

(Yes, it cost $5.00 to get out of the giant parking lot at Monmouth Park after the race.)

The longer version, starting with the acknowledgments and disclaimers: Yes, it is, by many accounts, "stupid" to try to run two marathons in two weeks, even if the first marathon felt like only a moderately difficult training run. Yes, people have the right to charge whatever they want for a marathon, and since people are willing to pay a lot, registration fees keep going up. Yes, there are no guarantees that even on what you think will be your best day, you will actually perform.

All that said, leading up to the Kentucky Derby Marathon last week, and especially after the race, if you had asked me what sort of shape I thought I was in, I would have answered, in all honesty, 2:50 shape. My legs felt exactly the way they did before Boston in 2011, where I went just under 2:50 (which, at the time, I didn't think was even remotely possible). So even though I had run a marathon a week before this one, I felt that, as a "flat, fast course," this was a good opportunity to qualify for Boston. And, with my upcoming ultras, starting with the MMT 100 in two weeks, leading up to Badwater in July, this was just about the only opportunity to qualify for Boston before my legs will be too trashed from running ultras to run a fast marathon. (Remember, that qualifier has to be in by an unspecified time in early September, and it better be good.)

So even though over the past week, my legs felt just a little flat (but by no means wrecked), and I was sick on Friday with some sort of stomach bug, and I spent most of Friday and Saturday getting yelled at by somebody who will remain unspecified, which (to cut short a much longer story) culminated in $84 of tickets, and a $125 tow job (which, as an aside, makes me angrier than just about anything else on this earth, as people in the towing business are the lowest scum on earth), I still drove 4+ hours to Nowhere, New Jersey on Saturday afternoon, so I could pay $155 to register for this bad marathon. At this point, I was feeling like the whole thing was baloney. (The expo was, quite literally, as the only edible samples there were . . . bologna. Seriously.)

Outside of all of that was a lodging mess. People were in, then people were out, and I did finally find a place to stay, but they didn't need to make me the subject of derision (albeit somewhat rightly so) when they found out that I paid $155 to run this marathon to try to qualify for Boston. (As pacers, they were running for free, which is probably about what this race is really worth.)

In spite of all of that, I managed to make it to the 5 a.m. wake-up call, so that we could spend an hour and a half driving what should have been 45 minutes to the start of the race, complicated by the single-point-of-entry parking system. (In truth, we pulled some questionably legal maneuvers that shaved about an hour off of our parking time - otherwise, we would have been scrambling to get to the starting line.)

And in spite of all of that, I managed to be smiling and enthusiastic about a situation that, objectively, was pretty much bullshit. I was the only one in the sparsely populated "A" corral smiling and singing along to "Sweet Caroline," in my discarded women's sweater-shawl (courtesy of anonymous half-marathoners flush with disposable clothing). Everbody else looked nervous, scared, and cold. For me, in spite of a lot of garbage in every other aspect of my life, there was still joy in racing.

And for the first 20 miles of the race, I felt in control. I felt strong. I felt like I was really going to do this. While I wasn't out super-fast (just over 1:30 at the half, and 2:18 at 20 miles), I felt as though it was a controlled effort. The course really was pancake flat, although being near the shore, it was not without the wind-to-the-face, particularly when the course snaked in the direction of the shore, which it did quite often after the half-marathon mark, to add mileage without having to close down any more of New Jersey.

But somewhere between mile 20 and mile 22, the wheels started falling off. Things started hurting, my form faltered, my stride rate slowed, the wind-to-the-face intensified, and by the time I hit the 22 mile mark, the clock said 2:37, and I was broken. I contemplated my options, which included muscling through, maybe salvaging an 8-minute mile pace, and finishing in around . . . 3:10. As if I haven't already failed three times to qualify since October running approximately 3:10 (Baltimore: 3:09:27, NCR: 3:11:something, Rock N Roll USA: 3:07:12). This was painful. I had no gas left in the tank. This was no longer fun.

So I chose instead to reduce the pain level and try to death-march my way to hopefully less than a 3:40, but this random woman would not let me quit. She claimed to be hurting a lot, and was reduced to run-walking (how she got so far ahead of me is beyond me, although there many opportunities to cut the course, not that I'm accusing anybody of anything), but she wasn't hurting so much that she couldn't periodically come up from behind me when she was walking, push me in the back, and tell me to keep moving. She wanted to finish the race with me. I wanted to be anywhere but there. I would run ahead, get tired, start walking, and just hope that she wouldn't come up behind me again. But she always would. And it would start all over again.

As I got closer to the finish, more than enough other people came up behind me as I walked, patted me on the back, and told me to "c'mon, run." What part of "3:05 was ten minutes ago" don't you understand? I thought to myself. At one point, I said some unkind words to one of them out loud, which a couple of clearly non-runner passerbys actually smiled at. It was the first smile that I had seen from anybody all race, which made me feel a little better, until I looked down at my shirt and noticed that my right nipple had bled all over my shirt, probably the worst nipple bleed I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot of them. No wonder people were giving me horrified looks all day.

Eventually, like everything else in this life, the race ended, just after the random push-in-the-back woman sprinted past me (she wanted it more). I ran a 3:25:something, but who really cares, the point was that it was over.

For my trouble, I got a huge heavy albatross . . . er, medal, hung over my neck, a bottle of water, a banana, a tiny chocolate chip granola bar, and three pieces of saltwater taffy, each of which were half-stuck to the wax paper wrapper. Pretty lame, New Jersey. As soon as practicable, I sat down on the sidewalk by the ocean, waiting for my ride, and the inevitable post-race shivers (it was windy and 50) to come. I didn't have to wait long for either, as the slowest was pacing 3:30. In the meantime, I put my head on my knees, blocking out the sunlight, and contemplated my lot in life. I drove many hours and spent way too much money on this. There was nipple blood on my shirt and salt on my face and I reeked of A&D ointment. I was a smelly, sloppy failure.

I got out as fast as I could, considering that it was a mile walk to a shuttle bus to the parking area, and now I'm here in Baltimore writing this, after a distinctly unsatisfying round of Taco Bell, the only thing that seemed appetizing when I finally regained my appetite. (I again no longer have an appetite after that.)

So I'm sure that this all comes off as a disorganized pity party. I entirely acknowledge that. But I guess that's the thing about racing. You set goals and make plans and you hope that they work out. And when they do work out, you look really awesome and you feel really great and life is beautiful. And when they don't work out, at best, you're left scratching your head wondering why they went awry, or, worse yet, you're ashamed and humiliated.

Five attempts to qualify for Boston since October 2012. Baltimore, NCR, George Washington Birthday, Rock N Roll USA, New Jersey. Hundreds of dollars in race fees, hundreds of miles of driving, over 16 hours of wasted running. So why keep trying?

Well, I'd like to go back to a sentence that you either skipped or probably already forgot by now. The one where I talked about singing and smiling in the starting corral, not because I'm always a singing, smiling kind of guy, but because of the gratitude that I had for being on the starting line, in spite of a lot of bad stuff, and the opportunity to do something really awesome. Standing there today, I secretly hoped that Boston 2011 wasn't just some sort of wind-aided fluke, and that I had the potential to run 2:50, or even faster.

Today, it didn't work out that way. And at the risk of the terrifying potential that it may never work out that way again, I stubbornly, and perhaps foolishly, choose to believe that with continued hard work, and a little luck, tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow . . . it just might. (So go ahead and throw stones.)
David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-2903286822543072732013-04-28T08:43:00.001-07:002013-04-28T08:50:36.532-07:00Week in Review: 21-27 April, and Kentucky Derby Marathon Pace Report21 April: Morning: 6 miles (40 minutes), Harford Community College, progression from 7:30/mile down to 5:30/mile. Evening: 9 miles (65 minutes), easy, Baltimore Inner Harbor

22 April: Afternoon: 7 miles at APG (50 minutes), Evening: 6 miles in Baltimore (45 minutes)

23-24 April: off

25 April: Afternoon: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG, Evening: 6 miles (45 minutes) Baltimore

26 April: 5 miles (40 minutes) shake-out in Louisville, Kentucky

27 April: Morning: 26.2 miles, Kentucky Derby Marathon, 3:10 pace group leader, in 3:09:17 (gun; 3:09:16 chip), Evening: 5 miles (40 minutes), over the Second Street Bridge to Indiana and back.

Total Time: 585 minutes
Total Distance: 80.2 miles

It's been a wordless sort of past couple of weeks for the world in general, and for this blog in particular. That's not a coincidence. Originally, when I left for a two-week vacation in Costa Rica, I thought that I would post about all of the awesome adventures that I was having there. But Internet access was sporadic, and by the time I was about to post something, it was April 15th, and Boston happened. For the first time in eight years, I wasn't running Boston, and, being relatively isolated in a hostel at the foot of Mount Chirripo, Costa Rica's highest mountain, I didn't find out about it until about 5 hours after the event. At that point, dozens of people had already tried to contact me to see if I was okay, and I used what limited Internet access that I had to let everybody know that I was safe, and to try to figure out if everybody that I knew who was there was safe.

From my far-away mountain-view, the scene, based on words alone, was vivid, yet surreal and senseless. I've run down Boylston Street towards that finish line eight times now. There was the sweet relief of my first finish in 2005, my heartbreaking blow-up in 2006, the numb struggle in the cold drizzle of 2007, more heartbreak in 2008, and finally sub-3-hour redemption in 2009. A sub-3-hour repeat in 2010, a strong sub-2:50 in 2011 followed by a happy surprise visit from my parents, and a just-glad-to-finish in the heat of 2012. I've seen a lot at that finish line, and felt what seemed to cover the range of conceivable emotions that could be felt at a marathon finish line. I never would have guessed that in 2013, the first time in eight years that I didn't cross that finish line on Patriot's Day, I would feel a new emotion: survivor's guilt.

I spent the rest of the week with these nagging feelings that I should have been there, to help in some way. Logically, things happened the way that they happened, there's no changing that, and there's no guarantee that being there would have made any difference. For all I know, I could have wandered back to the finish line at the wrong time and been injured or killed. But the idea that so many people were hurting as a result of something that I had once been so close to, and now was so far away from, and so powerless to affect, was truly nagging at me. Especially considering that I was on vacation, having fun, my situation seemed completely incongruent with that of the victims, and that bothered me even more. (My cat Ash died just before I left for Costa Rica, on top of all of that, so that really wasn't helping my mental state either.) And I really didn't have words for it until that paragraph that I just wrote.

But physically, I've been getting stronger, training better, recovering faster, and feeling better overall. So while I was I was in Costa Rica, and Dan sent me a Facebook message saying that he wouldn't be able to pace 3:10 at the Kentucky Derby Marathon, I strongly considered it, as, schedule willing, it seemed like something I could do without killing myself too much (even though it would be risking a Boston-Qualifying attempt at New Jersey the following weekend). But after more thought, I felt as though there was no way that I couldn't do it, for the sake of all of those affected at Boston.

So at 6 a.m. on Friday, I hopped in the van at the Hagerstown Park-And-Ride for the 8+ hour drive to Louisville, Kentucky. As usual, these road trips yield amusing sights - a tanning shack next to a gas station in West Virginia? Wild and Wonderful, indeed. Otherwise, it was an uneventful drive, followed by a shake-out run along the Louisville waterfront (the highlight of which was running up and down a pyramid in a playground), standard pasta dinner at the expo, pace team meeting, and early bedtime.

Race morning was cool (mid-50s) and overcast, with very light winds. Take away the Harlem Shake playing at the starting line, and you had perfect weather for the race. I stood there in my bright orange shorts and singlet, holding up my 3:10 pace sign, while people crowded around me, most hesitant to outright commit to the group. After a country-singer rendition of the national anthem, and an awkward exchange between the male and female announcer, in which the female announcer unabashedly proclaimed her gratitude for runners' work on their bodies, while the male announcer tried to steer her away from the topic as quickly as possible, we were off.

In contrast to 2010, I was allowed to line up much closer to the starting line, and didn't have to fight through a slow crowd to get on pace. I was over-prepared for a fight, though, and we went through the first mile at 6:40 - oops, 35 seconds in the bank already. I backed off, although not too much, too rapidly, and after our run through Churchill Downs at 8 miles, we were about a minute fast, which is about what we would maintain for the remainder of the race. We were right on pace through the hills in Iroquois Park; maybe seeing the leaders coming out of the park when we were going in, in a very close race, made us run a little tougher. Even at the mile 21 turn-off into the wind and the industrial area, I still had a group of five people with me, all hanging tough. Two would go on ahead to finish just ahead of me, pushing each other to the finish in their first marathon, two would finish just behind me, and one sadly fell back a bit and came in at 3:10:24 . . . just short of a Boston Qualifying time. I spent some time reassuring him that it was his first marathon, and he would have another shot at it in the fall, until his girlfriend dragged him away from the finish line (at which point I was too cold to keep standing there anyway).

I finished 43 seconds on the happy side of par, which was important, since Boston Qualifying times now no longer have a 59-second grace period past the mark, and the people you're pacing would prefer not to miss a qualifying time by sticking with you and running just a little too slowly as a result. But even more importantly, I had a good group of runners with me, and, considering that a lot of people in faster pace groups tend to drop at around 20 miles, it was a good feeling to not just be finishing by myself.

Later that evening, after general hanging out at the hotel, where (as if life needed to be more strange) both a prom and a bodybuilding competition were happening (spray tan on the third floor!), I went for a run with Emily (the only person that I could drag with me after all the food and drink) over the bridge to Indiana. We were serenaded with the sounds of the Uncle Kracker concert as we crossed over the Second Street bridge, under a light drizzle, traffic flying past us and kicking up spray from the concrete. The waterfront park on the Indiana side was cozily lit and serene, and the downtown Louisville lights glowed across the Ohio River. As we hit our turnaround point and headed back, I thought about Boston again. Being on the mountain when Boston happened, just like being on the Indiana side of the bridge, felt uncomfortably worlds away. But as runners, we're not always running away from things, as funny folks on the street like to jokingly suggest at times when we pass. As reports were indicating about the response to what happened in Boston, we're more often running towards things - to better things, and to make things better. Stepping in to pace at the Kentucky Derby Marathon, pacing well, and bringing people to the finish line on time, although a small thing in the vast world of running, was one small step in the giant human race towards healing from the tragedy and making things better.

As we turned right off of the bridge and headed back for the hotel, in spite of many miles on my legs, I felt comfortable, I felt strong, and I felt fast. I finally felt like I was moving forward from Boston 2013. Once again, my heart goes out to everybody that was affected by the tragedy. Stay strong; the way everybody has moved so far forward already is truly inspiring.

David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-76892965287549575702013-03-28T11:58:00.001-07:002013-03-28T11:58:23.483-07:00Week in Review: 17-23 MarchThe running:

17 March - 10 miles (75 minutes) around Baltimore, on a subdued Sunday afternoon (apparently everybody was too tired from all of the "practice" Saint Patrick's Day celebrations for the past two weeks to celebrate the "real" one)

18 March - 9 miles (65 minutes) at APG

19 March - 2 miles warmup, 2 miles @13:21, 400m jog rest, 1 mile @6:20, 3x(200m @34, 400m recovery jog), 800m @3:11, 2 miles warmdown (9 total miles, 70 minutes)

20 March - 11 miles (81 minutes) at APG

21 March - 0.5 mile warmup, 35 minutes on the treadmill, level 15 hill program, 4 miles/1321 feet gain, 0.5 mile warmdown (5 miles, 45 minutes)

22 March - 10 miles (75 minutes) around Baltimore, cold and windy

23 March - 7 miles (52 minutes) in the morning, 8 miles (56 minutes) in the evening, in Baltimore

Total Time: 519 minutes

Total Distance: 69 miles

After not quite reaching my marathon goal this past Saturday, I'm pretty pleased with my rebound week. Highest weekly mileage in 2013, some decent tempo/speed stuff on Tuesday, a strong return to treadmill hill running on Thursday, and at no point did I feel totally beaten down and exhausted from this effort. Ultimately, I think my marathon failure was for the best, as it was still a solid training run, and gives me motivation to take another shot at a Boston qualifying time in early May, and to hopefully give a better than just "sneak in under 3:05" effort.

In other news related to the big dance that is Badwater, I've selected my crew, and hopefully all of my initial selections will make it to the starting line (and finish line) with me. If you weren't selected, and you're still interested, let me know, because if something bad happens between now and then, and somebody can't make it, it would be nice not to have to scramble too much.

Also, my G-PACT fundraising link is up. To make a donation, go here: http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/DavidPloskonka/david-ploskonka-badwater And, just like last year, with your donation, I'll write a thing of your choice in a marker color of your choice on some article of clothing of my choice that I will wear during the race. As I mentioned previously, this cause is personal for me, as my sister struggles with gastroparesis, so your support means a lot to me. Donations of any amount are appreciated!

And that about wraps it up for this week. If you were looking for something more insightful here, well, so was I, for the past few days . . . And then I decided to let the hard work and progress speak for itself. (But stay tuned for the weeks - and adventures - ahead, as I'm sure that I'll have plenty more to say.)David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-66574190541515522842013-03-16T10:21:00.001-07:002013-03-28T12:26:06.583-07:00Week in Review: 10-16 March, and Rock N Roll USA Marathon Race ReportMiles:

10 March - off

11 March - 10 miles, in part with the Fed Hill Run (75 minutes)

12 March - 3.5 mile warmup, 3x(800m, 400m jog rest, 200m, full recovery)@2:53/34,3:01/36, 2:58/34, 3 mile warm-down (9 miles total, 70 minutes)

13 March - 6 miles easy (45 minutes)

14 March - off

15 March - off

16 March - 26.2 miles in 3:08:12, plus 2 total warm-up/warm-down miles (20 minutes)

Total time: 398 minutes
Total distance: 53 miles

The marathon is a funny race. A little bit here and a little bit there can make a huge difference over 26.2 miles. Being just a little bit away from a Boston Qualifying time, after four failed attempts to qualify again for 2014 (Maryville 2012, Baltimore 2012, NCR 2012, George Washington Birthday 2013), with a best time of just under 3:09:30 at Baltimore, or about 10 seconds per mile too slow, when I was still feeling pretty bad, I was pretty optimistic about my chances to qualify at the Rock N Roll USA Marathon. Friendlier course, friendlier time of year, friendlier weather, health steadily improving, workouts going pretty well . . . Yes, the marathon is a funny race, and there are no guarantees, but especially given my history of posting faster-than-expected times at this race since 2006, this was as close to guaranteed as this sort of thing gets.

And in that sense, the race delivered as promised. With a packet pick-up assist from Chris, and free lodging and parking at his apartment, near the metro and just three stops from the starting line, the pre-race was easy. I woke up feeling strong, with a lot of pop in my legs. It was overcast and cool, but not too cold - no rain, as had been threatened.

Then the race started, and about one 6:40 mile in, things started feeling just a little wrong. I could feel my legs starting to drag slightly, and even though I was holding this pace through 5 miles, it didn't feel as easy as it should have.

I tried to shrug it off, shift muscles on the surprise hills in the re-designed first half, but the longer this went on, the more it became clear that I was just buying time. I went through the half in just under 1:31, not feeling strong. I went through 20 miles in just under 2:21, feeling even worse.

I tried my best to ignore and push, but the cruelly hilly end of the race got the better of me. With 10 minutes to go until that magical 3:05 mark, I was still a little short of the 25-mile marker. I resolved to give whatever I had left for the next 10 minutes, knowing that it was probably going to be too little, too late. I passed a few runners in what felt like slow motion - my legs wouldn't go any faster.

At 3:05 on my watch, I looked up, the dead highway to the finish snaking uphill in front of me, now impossibly long.

I'd like to say that I continued to push like hell to make a point, but there was really no point to be made. I slow-motion stumbled to the finish, to what sounded like halfhearted cheers, as the stream of half-marathoners coming in at nearly 3 hours and 10 minutes were getting most of the attention.

I sat down on a curb just past the finish line, and hung my head for five minutes. I had nothing left.

Then I got up, moved on, and began the hour-long ordeal for post-race food, drop bags, port-a-pots, and the metro ride back to Chris's apartment.

The marathon is a funny race. I don't know why I didn't have a 3:05 in me. Maybe too much rest on a low-volume schedule, maybe not enough sleep over the past couple of days. Maybe not enough time and volume, period. Maybe I just forgot how to run a fast marathon.

What I do know is that it hurts to have a race die in slow motion like that. Normally, when a marathon doesn't go well, you feel it at 10, 13, 16 miles, try desperately to hang on, all the while knowing that you're going to blow up and have to walk a lot to make it to the finish line. But in this case, there was no blow-up. I stayed tough and hung on, and even at 20+ miles, I was still tantalizingly close - just one second-winded surge away from my goal. In spite of my effort, I wound up a little over 7 seconds per mile short.

I'm not going to be disappointed about this for too long. There's more work to do. But I won't forget, either - it's motivation to work just a little bit harder.David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-32082052119951110942013-03-11T10:40:00.000-07:002013-03-11T10:40:13.909-07:00Week in Review: 3-9 March - Healthy Again, ProbablyThe running:

3 March: 4.5 miles (30-ish minutes), around the Inner Harbor, at the secret dead time (7:30 p.m. on Sundays, for anybody who wants the scenery without crowds of any sort)

4 March: 5.5 miles (40-ish minutes), easy jog on and around the APG dirt loop

5 March: afternoon: 5.5 miles (40-ish minutes), at APG; evening: 2 mile warm-up, 8x(400m speed, 400m jog) in 82, 81, 83, 83, 83, 83, 83, 80, 2.5 mile warmdown, total 15 miles (total 110 minutes)

6 March: 6 miles (45 minutes) at APG

7 March: off

8 March: 10 miles (75 minutes) around downtown Baltimore

9 March: 13 miles (100 minutes) at Patapsco, mostly on trails, finished with one run up Gun Road

Total Time: 400 minutes
Total Distance: 54 miles

The story:

Per the plan, more mileage than the week before, and also, per the dream, feeling better doing it than the week before. This recent turn-for-the-better that my health has taken seems to be continuing, and I'm going to continue not to question it too rigorously, lest I create problems where there are none, and fall apart again.

One thing is for (relative) certain, though, and it's that I haven't felt the way I feel right now in a long, long time. I'm not sure that I can remember when I felt this physically well. I have a lot of energy, I'm not dragging myself through the day, I'm thinking a lot more clearly. Feeling healthy is awesome. And, more to the point, feeling healthy is so awesome that it's hard for me to imagine now how I dragged myself through so many months (by my guess, since over a year ago, if not longer) feeling so terrible.

Of course, I realize that health is fragile (if my past year or so has taught me anything), and it is entirely possible that it could all fall apart again, for any number of reasons. But for now, the life lesson is that preservation of your health should be a high priority, and if you're constantly tired, or foggy-headed, or generally miserable, YOU ARE NOT HEALTHY. Don't make the mistake that I made, and assume that it's part of life, or getting old, or just how things are. There are things you can do to try to get better. It will be a process, and it will take time, and it will take effort to maintain. And I'm not about to get on a soap box and preach about the best method to get there from here (as I'm still sorting out exactly which things I've done have improved my health). All I will say is that there is a way, and if you're not doing so well, your first priority should be to find that way, whatever it is.

Finally, Badwater stuff: If you're interested in being a part of my crew for Badwater this summer, you have until this Saturday (16 March) to let me know. I'll make my decision on Sunday (17 March) and let everybody know, one way or the other. If I haven't acknowledged your request, ask me again. And when you do let me know, please let me know WHY you want to be a part of my crew. I'm not going to list a whole bunch of qualifications, or make up an application (amusing though that might be for me), but I will say that it is important for me to understand why you want to be there, and that the reason why you want to be there is arguably the most important factor in my decision. But of course, whatever other information that you'd like to provide is more than welcome.

The week ahead: more running, and the Rock N Roll USA (formerly National) Marathon - fingers crossed, my first decent marathon performance in a long time . . . David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-32381389965298078172013-03-04T14:24:00.002-08:002013-03-04T14:24:35.545-08:00Badwater BusinessNow that the proverbial dust has settled from the initial "you got into Badwater!" excitement, it's down to business. So, a few things:

1. Charity: This year, I'll be running to raise funds for G-PACT, at my little sister's request. She's been dealing with gastroparesis for some time now, and it is, at the risk of sounding glib, no picnic (especially since picnics and other food-centric events become complicated when gastroparesis is involved). The website is here: http://www.g-pact.org/ . . . and the Facebook page is here: http://www.facebook.com/#!/GPACT. Check it out, and if you feel so motivated, make a donation, and let me know (or don't, although I would like to keep track if possible). If you do let me know, same deal as last year; I'll write whatever you want on clothing that I wear during the race. I'm thinking this year maybe arm sleeves or my hat, so that it's more visible in the photos. (Probably not as face or body paint, as that probably won't last 135 miles.)

2. Crew: I do like company when I run, and, in truth, it's difficult to cross a desert in July by yourself. So I need a few support crew members to help me out. Yes, I could just ask my entire crew from last year to come back, and I'm sure that they all would, and they would all be just as awesome as they were before. But Badwater is too much awesome not to share, so I'd like to open it up to the general public and see what happens. So send me an email, post on my Facebook wall, call me, text me, whatever creative way you want to contact me, and let me know why you'd like to crew for me at Badwater this year. I'll leave the lines open until, oh, say, March 17th, and then make a decision based on what I've heard at that point. Please keep in mind that this decision will likely be totally subjective and somewhat random, so no hurt feeings, okay?

3. Training: Oh, right, that thing. Last week, I ran 15 miles total on Sunday (including that awful, awful 10 miles at Club Challenge), 13 miles on Monday in two runs (5 at lunch, 8 in the evening), 8 miles on Tuesday in two runs (5.5 at lunch, 2.5 on a terrible, terrible windy cold rainy evening), took Wednesday and Thursday off, ran 4.5 miles on Friday, and 5.5 miles on Saturday. 46 miles total.

And that doesn't sound like a lot, and it isn't, in terms of quantity, but, as it turned out, the run-on-sentence-before-last ended up being of much higher quality than its grammatical construction.

After Club Challenge catastrophe, and what was a struggle to make it to 13 miles the following day, Tuesday took a turn for the even-worse. The night was cold, windy, and rainy like (in technical terms) WOAH. My goal was 2 warm-up miles, 2x200 FAST, on full rest (~600m), and 2 warm-down miles. The 2 warm-up miles on the track were at around 8:20/mile pace, with the wind blowing impossibly hard starting halfway on the second turn and all the way down the home straightaway. The first 200 felt like it had to be fast, until I looked at my watch, and it said 37. Dismayed, and dreading another 600m around the oval, I ran back and forth on the home straightaway until my 600m was up (at least the wind was predictable that way), and lined up for my second 200m. In spite of the wind assist, and my resolve to run faster than before, this time, my watch said 38. And that was enough. I jogged off the track, cold and defeated, and went home.

Two days off later, I went for a half-hour run around Patterson Park. Granted, the weather was a lot nicer, but my expectations were still fairly low. To my pleasant surprise, I completed the entire 2-mile loop of the park in exactly 14 minutes, not feeling as though I had pushed hard or was in any particular distress, then proceeded to run Butcher's Hill on the Baltimore Street side of the park, bottom to top, in 3:13, again, in no particular distress. To put that in perspective, the hill is 30-40 meters shy of half a mile, and rises a little over 90 feet. I finished the half-hour feeling as though I could put in two or three more half-hours like that.

I felt similarly good on Saturday, so, fingers crossed, this trend will continue. I'm going to continue to be cautiously optimistic, the way I was in early 2011, when I came back from a stress fracture in December to run 2:49:33 at the Boston Marathon in April. I'm sure that there will be ups and downs between now and July, and there will be plenty more foul weather to tough out. But I do feel as though I've turned a corner, hopefully for real this time, and I'm excited about my training in the weeks and months ahead.

So if there is a mini-moral here (and I feel as though this has to end with something of the sort), it's that the focus for now needs process and the effort, and not the final goal. 135 miles is a long way, and it's still a long way off. So far, focusing on the process, and making gradual gains, seems to be working. Expect to see more of this, and maybe some cat or Baltimore-street-vagrant stories, which are inevitably part of the process, next week . . .David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-1297180150220192052013-02-25T08:12:00.001-08:002013-02-25T08:12:48.800-08:00The Long, Hard Road AheadFirst, the good news: I've been accepted to compete in the 2013 Badwater Ultramarathon in July. I'm grateful for the opportunity to take on this epic challenge for the fourth consecutive year, to raise funds for G-PACT, and to try to surpass the high bar that I set last year, with my 28.5-hour, 8th place finish.

Now, the bad news: 1:11:07.33.

That was my time at yesterday's RRCA Club Challenge 10-Mile race, and the slowest 10-mile race I've ever run, including the Army 10-Miler a couple of years ago when I was horribly out of shape. (I'm not about to thorougly research this, but I'm pretty sure that prior to this, my slowest 10-mile time was 1:08ish, and that was on a particularly bad day).

And as horrible as that race was, and as horrible as Club Challenge has been in the past, this was by far, all in all, the worst race I've ever run. From the first mile on, I was getting passed by EVERYBODY. I was especially getting passed on every uphill. Even the finishing sprint that I managed at the end wasn't good enough, as one other person managed to sprint even harder past me.

And it hurt. It hurt nonstop from the first step to the last, and I crossed the finish line feeling like I never wanted to run another step in my life. Not exactly the best feeling when about five months from now, I'm going to be in the Badwater Basin, 135 miles away from the relief of the finish line.

What's wrong? Well, since the last time I posted here, in the remainder of the month that followed, I ran a total of 135 miles (amusingly coincidental number that that is), and so far in February, I've run a little over 100. And, to be fair, I did run a marathon last weekend, a 3:19:55 at the George Washington's Birthday Marathon, under particularly ornerous (cold, windy, snowy) conditions.

So my training volume has been pretty low, and my times have been slow. But I've been worse-off training-wise in the past, and performed not nearly as poorly, so this is a little scary. This is uncharted territory. Maybe a return to focused training won't get me anywhere, and I'll still be in a similar or worse run five months from now.

On the other hand (the one that I'd prefer to concentrate on), this represents a huge opportunity to work hard and to make what would be (in my mind, anyway) the most incredible running-related comeback of my life. There's clearly plenty of room to improve in terms of training volume, and, historically, high mileage, almost regardless of quality, results in vastly improved performance (for me, anyway).

So expect to see more training-related posts here in the coming weeks, as I venture out into the unknown, for many miles, at all hours of the day and night, and see if it really is possible to come back from so far down. (Considering that I'm a bit superstitious, and all of those digits in my 10-mile finishing time are lucky ones, I at least have a vague feeling that luck may be on my side . . .)David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-89429978903793257652013-01-08T06:37:00.003-08:002013-01-09T13:03:41.910-08:00A Month of Running9 December - 6 miles (45 minutes), in Baltimore City

10-11 December - off

12 December - 10 miles at APG, including a mile "time trial" (5:54, near-DNF), followed by 10 minutes easy, then 3 minutes faster, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes faster, 4x(90 seconds faster, 90 seconds easy), warmdown (70 minutes)

13 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), p.m. Baltimore City Christmas Lights Run +, for 12 miles (90 minutes)

14 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), later a.m. 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes)

15 December - Wandering around Great Falls Park for about 130 minutes - 17-ish miles.

16 December - a.m. 5 miles (35 minutes), p.m. Gunpowder Falls trails for about 10 more miles (80 minutes)

17 December - 10 miles in part with the Monday Night Run, including 10x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) (70 minutes)

18 December - off

19 December - 10 miles at APG, including a mile "time trial" (5:37), followed by 10 minutes easy, then 3 minutes faster, 1 minute easy, 3 minutes faster, 4x(90 seconds faster, 90 seconds easy), warmdown (70 minutes)

20 December - 10 aimless miles at APG

21 December - 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes) - windy and a little snowy the whole time

22 December - 27 December - holiday frenzy = only figurative running-around

28 December - 4x(Patterson Park hill, up), jog down (@ ~4:00 each, both ways) - 4x(30 seconds faster, 30 seconds easy) in both the warm-up and the warm-down. 11 miles total (73 minutes) - weather-wise, less bad than the last time, but worse than the first time. First hill felt easy, in 3:55, but crashed and burned at around 3:10 on the second interval. Pulled together to finish the last two in 4:07 and 4:10.

29 December - 8+ miles (60 minutes) around the Inner Harbor

30-31 December - off

1 January - 6+ miles (45 minutes), Patterson Park/Fells/Inner Harbor

2 January - 10 chilly, windy miles at APG - 34 degrees, feels like 28 - gravel and bay loops. (70 minutes) Later, 3-ish miles (20 minutes) around the Inner Harbor, just for fun.

3 January - 9+ slightly-less chilly, windy miles at APG, with a "mile time trial" on the gravel loop, starting at 20 minutes in, in 5:50. Slower than the last time, faster than the first time, but a far more even-paced effort than either time (and not all-out), so it's acceptable, for now.

4 January - 10 miles in cold, dark downtown Baltimore (70 minutes)

5 January - 11 miles in bright, sunny, daytime Baltimore, including 10x(30 seconds fast, 30 seconds easy) at around 50 minutes in. (80 minutes)

6 January - 8 miles across the city and back, post-Ravens-game (60 minutes)

7 January - Back to the grind at APG; 10 miles on the gravel loop and bay loop (70 minutes)

8 January - And, at long last, back to the Gilman track, for my first workout in forever. 2.5 miles warmup, 2x1200 @ 4:36, 4:34, 4x800 @ 3:05, 3:05, 3:04, 3:04, 2.5 miles warmdown. 3 minutes jog rest between reps. ~9 miles total. (~70 minutes total)

Total time: 1569 minutes
Total distance: 212 miles

. . . And that's a whole lot of numbers, without a whole lot of sense behind it, which just goes to show how much "on paper" really counts.

The interpretation, though, is that, really, since sometime this past spring, I've had a hard time putting together any sort of consistent training mileage. From late April until, well, pretty much this past month, it's been race, race, race until I finally burned myself out. It was fun while it lasted, and served a purpose at the time, and even led to some pretty nifty experiences and results, but was hardly a plan for long-term progress.

With that in mind, my first and foremost goal for 2013 is to train consistently again, which means a lot of testing the waters to figure out what sort of training pace/volume is supportable at this point. Based on my recent running, 60-70 miles per week, to include some higher-quality faster stuff, seems to be pretty achievable for right now, while still being challenging by virtue of incorporating faster stuff. I'm not feeling terrible on every run anymore, and, more importantly, I'm enjoying running.

Make no mistake, I've got a long way to go. Christmas logistics cost me a solid week, and my most recent track workout (first in forever), while not totally draining, was not very fast, although those paces FELT really fast. It's going to take a while to get some speed back. But I'm feeling ready for that process now, and excited to see where it takes me. I have some thoughts in mind for how I'd like 2013 to play out, but for the time being, I'm enjoying the feeling of all of the possibilities that come with being back on track.

(P.S. - if anybody's looking for a cat, I still have two good ones that need good homes . . .)David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-11705611958338265822012-12-12T10:44:00.004-08:002012-12-12T10:45:22.519-08:002012 Hellgate 100K - What the Hell Happened?It really has been a while since I posted here, hasn't it? Other than a couple of mediocre marathon results (3:09:27 at Baltimore, 3:12:01 on a brutally cold day at NCR Trail Marathon, neither good enough to qualify me for Boston), there hasn't been much to post about, because I haven't been running much. Ever since Badwater this past July, it's been a struggle, physically and mentally, to get any sort of running momentum going.

Call it burnout, maybe, but the good news was, coming into Hellgate, I was finally physically and mentally back in the game. Yes, my training mileage has been low (almost 40 miles in the week before Hellgate, which is, relatively speaking, a lot lately), but my I was feeling good doing it, and feeling enthusiastic about doing it. And since Hellgate, with its midnight start, is at least as much of a mental game as a physical one, I had a good feeling about this race.

The drive to the race, solo this year, was uneventful, except for a few signs (one on a trash truck that said "Satisfaction guaranteed or double your trash back," and a "Romney/Ryan" campaign sign posted over an Endless Caverns sign by the side of the road, above the caverns' tag line "The fun and excitement never end."), that I now regret not taking pictures of. I got to Camp Bethel early (before Horton's pre-dinner prayer), was one of the first few in line for dinner (which, now that I am gluten-free, was a disappointing array of green beans in tomato sauce, and salad with Italian dressing), and sat through the pre-race briefing, even though the only "random prize" that I gained for this effort was the disturbing news that Horton would be undergoing a septuple-bypass surgery on Monday (side note: I sincerely hope that he's okay). Nevertheless, Horton was as energetic and engaging as he always is, even joking that he couldn't help move chairs around because of his "heart condition," and by the end of the briefing, the collective nervousness at the pre-race dinner had vanished. With all of that wrapped up by 8:30 p.m., it was back to the back seat of my car for a couple of hours, where I would attempt sleep and fail miserably.

Two hours later, I was cramming myself into the back seat of an SUV with Jackie and Alan, and feeling a lot less nervous about this endeavor than I thought I should be. Maybe the fact that Jackie was enthusiastically coordinating her crew and pacer plans, while Alan was spouting seemingly obscure facts about the trail, made me feel as though my "I'm going to run in the woods for a while" attitude was perhaps too nonchalant. But before I had time to really re-think my lack of strategy, we were at the Hellgate parking lot, and it was time for me to chug a coffee drink, head to the starting line, fist-bump Snipes for luck, and head off down the trail.

The start was "slow" . . . for about the first two minutes, and then the leaders really took off, aided by the relatively flat, smooth trail, and the lack of any water crossings or significant water of any sort on the trail. With a starting temperature in the 40s, when the typical temperature is somewhere in the teens, this really was turning into "Wussgate," as Horton derisively nicknamed this year's edition of the race. For my part, I held back a bit, and came through the first "3.5" trail/Horton miles in about 36 minutes, having lost some ground to the lead pack. I felt comfortable, though, and as we headed up the 4-ish mile road climb to Aid Station #2, I started really settling in, and even passed a few people on the climb. This was truly exciting to me, since it had been a very long time since I had felt good in any race, much less an ultra, much less such a long climb in an ultra. I passed through Aid Station #2, "7.5" miles, in 1 hour, 13 minutes, feeling as though this was going to be a good night.

Shortly after Aid Station #2, though, everything changed. As I navigated the steep, rocky single-track trail downhill past Aid Station #2, the jostling in my stomach became unbearable, so I stopped for about five minutes to, um, use the woods. I thought that I would feel better, but I came back to the trail feeling absolutely terrible. Totally out of rhythm, no energy in my legs, and within 10 or 15 minutes, I had to use the woods again. Between Aid Station #2 and Aid Station #4, I stopped to use the woods another five times, each time losing a few minutes for the stop, but many more minutes in increased lethargy when I returned to the trail. What felt like dozens of people were passing me. At the rate at which this was worsening, I was convinced that I would have to drop (possibly, quite literally, in a heap on the ground) at Aid Station #4, about 26 miles in.

Somehow, though, I made it to Aid Station #4, at which point my stomach was pretty close to empty, and therefore, a much less significant detriment to progress. Not feeling very well, but determined to make this work, I pressed onward. Not having to stop so frequently to use the woods seemed to help, and I started picking up the pace. About halfway to Aid Station #5, as the trail turned to wide, grassy downhill, I was finally able to really get moving again . . . just enough to miss a switchback and continue about a mile further downhill. Once the trail got scrubby enough, and I realized that, on the current path, I wasn't getting any closer to the bouncing headlamps below me, I turned around, jogged back uphill, and got back on course - about 20 minutes lost there. I continued more cautiously from here, and, while tiptoeing my way over some rocky downhill, Jackie came blazing past me, blasting Blink-182 on her headphones. This was enough to shake the remains of my apathy. No way was Jackie going to beat me to the bottom of this hill. I picked my way through the rocks with increased vigor, and once the trail got smooth again, I really opened up, passing Jackie, and totally confusing her, since she hadn't noticed passing me in the first place. We continued on to Aid Station #5, Jackie just a bit behind me, with just one stop, as a lack of markers around a corner induced brief paranoia that I may have gone off-course again.

Determined to maintain this momentum, I tanked up on Gu Brew and mentally prepared myself to attack the steep climb out of Aid Station #5. The first year that I ran Hellgate (2009), this climb felt impossibly steep and long (and, in a relative sense, it is), so I knew that it would be a huge confidence boost to stay strong in this section of the race. Sure enough, I fell into a rhythm reminiscent of that on the climb to Aid Station #2, and now I was passing people, people who were (duly) looking ragged and spent. As the sun rose, and the path turned from single-track to road to single-track to road again, I recalled Hellgate last year, when I reached Aid Station #6 at around 7:15 a.m. This time, in spite of borderline catastrophe, I was on pace to reach Aid Station #6 at around 7:30 a.m., which, discounting my 20-minute detour, actually had me ahead of last year's pace. Seeing Jordan Chang's crew driving down from Aid Station #6, cheering for me on the climb, had me feeling far more optimistic than I had been in hours. I knew that I had to be gaining ground, and now, in full daylight, I was excited to chase the runners ahead of me for the rest of the race.

But with about 2.5 miles to go to reach Aid Station #7, the "42.5 mile" mark, having passed a few more people since Aid Station #6, the race-ending disaster struck. I started feeling overwhelmingly weak, overwhelmingly hungry, and somewhat disoriented. I did the only thing I could do at the time, which was to go slower, drink more, and hope that I would come back around quickly. But in spite of my efforts to back off, it got worse and worse, until finally, I sat down by the side of the trail, lowered my head, closed my eyes, and saw, against a white background, two black bars on either side, and rapidly-shifting symbols between the black bars. This was, in technical terms, "not good."

I begged gels off of the runners that passed, and told them that it was okay to tell people at the next aid station that I was in trouble and to send help. But even after 7 gels and an hour of lethargic stumbling down the trail, I still wasn't at the next aid station, and at least twice the number of people that I had passed since my "comeback" had passed me. In wet clothes, moving slowly, my hypoglycemic, nutritionally-deprived condition was now complicated with hypothermia.

Finally, at around 10:15 a.m., I reached Aid Station 7, entirely under my own power, feeling weak, listless, shivering uncontrollably, lips turning blue. (Whoever they sent out to search for me never found me.) Horton and his heart condition were looking far better than I was (I would later learn that, given my symptoms, I was at far greater risk of death at the moment than he was), and he helped me into a chair near the fire, while aid station volunteers brought me broth and hamburgers, both of which sounded good back when I was on the trail and feeling better, but now uniformly tasted like cardboard. One girl was particularly helpful in bringing me gloves, a hat, a jacket, and a sleeping bag, but when it was clear that even these efforts weren't working fast enough, they helped me get into a truck, where they turned the heater on and closed the doors. Still shivering, wrapped in random clothes, I slumped over onto the steering wheel, which apparently was very comfortable as a pillow given my physical state. I don't remember a lot of what happened here, other than people were periodically opening the door to check on me, I was drifting in and out of consciousness, and there may have been a sugar pill placed under my tongue at some point.

About two hours later, I got out of the truck, finally no longer freezing, shed my clothes, and walked around a bit. The sun was out and the temperature was in the mid-60s. I didn't feel terribly sore, and I almost felt good enough to run again, albeit slowly. But at this point, it was just a few minutes until the 12:30 p.m. cutoff time at this aid station, and continuing now would mean that, if I couldn't get any momentum going again, I would risk not making it to the finish line by 6:00 p.m., the cutoff for the race. It would also likely mean a slow, miserable slog, putting me nowhere close to a goal finishing time. Most importantly, since I still hadn't sorted out everything that had led to my collapse-in-a-heap disaster in the first place, it would put me at risk for another near-death experience.

I decided that two strikes in one race was bad enough, and I didn't want to risk a third, and so, at Aid Station #7, I chose not to continue. Instead, I rode back to the finish area, and hung around to cheer for the finishers - among them, Jackie, second woman, in a little under 14 hours, Snipes and Mike crossing the line in the mid-16s, and Alan toughing it out to finish about 15 minutes before the 6:00 p.m. cutoff. After some grazing at the finish line buffet, I headed off with Jackie, Alan, and company, for celebratory dinner at a hibachi grill, followed by a long, dark, solitary drive back to Baltimore.

With the benefit of a few days to process all of this, I think I can finally address the race report's fundamental question: what the hell happened? From a physical standpoint, the majority of that answer was fairly clear, fairly immediately (although not without dispute in its subtleties): due to an upset stomach (possible causes: excess caffeine, bad food, stomach virus), I lost a ton of "stuff" from my system (possible key items: potassium, calcium, sodium) that, given my pace and my nutritional intake (primarily Gu Brew, which, with different sugars and lower caloric density, is not a good substitute for my go-to, Gatorade, and neither of which may have been suitable to replace this sort of loss), was not being replaced and processed quickly enough, resulting in my hypoglycemic/hypothermic state. This sequence of events is particularly frustrating, since apparently, from a pure fitness standpoint, I was in good enough shape to run well, based on my performance in sections of the race where these nutritional issues were not factors. (That said, there may be some element of "first ultra in a while" that compounded this problem - too much time with too little running probably dulls your ability to respond quickly and appropriately to your body's signals.)

But from an emotional standpoint, that answer changed multiple times. I went from running strong to nearly dropping to running strong to nearly dying to finally dropping. Of all of the races that I've run, this one has probably been, from start to finish, the one with the highest highs, lowest lows, and least certain outcome. Considering that I ended up dropping, my initial reaction was disappointment, and it was difficult not to feel totally defeated on the drive home. A day later, it was regret, thinking that there must have been something I could have done better to change the outcome.

But now, a few days later, the reaction has died down, and in my mind, the 2012 edition of Hellgate is a case study in the fragility of running. Years of work and suffering go into fleeting moments of brilliance. And once those moments are gone, we have to decide how hard we want to work, and how much pain and suffering we want to endure, to try to get them back again, knowing full well that we can't really get anything back; we can only hope for an acceptable replica. In spite of the outcome at Hellgate, there were moments of fleeting brilliance, moments of flying headlong down trails and recovering from disaster to emerge even stronger. And in spite of the outcome, I'm thankful for these moments, and, looking back on these moments individually, I feel no less joy in those than I do in any other similar running-related moments in the past. Going forward, I feel no more reluctant in working hard for more of these moments.

I definitely have a lot of thinking to do about what sort of moments of brilliance I'd like to create in 2013. 2013 may or may not include another run at Hellgate. But there will be running, and, in spite of whatever else might happen, there will be brilliance.David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-13723740713805968612012-09-17T12:14:00.001-07:002012-09-17T12:14:44.435-07:00Week in Review: 9-15 September 2012At the risk of boring everybody:

9 September: 17 miles (per previous blog post) (120 minutes)

10 September: 12 miles at lunch, fast-ish (felt that way, anyway); 11 more miles in the evening, partly with the Fed Hill group. (total 160 minutes)

11 September: 8 miles at lunch (60 minutes)

12 September: off

13 September: 5 miles at lunch (35 minutes) - felt bad

14 September: 9 miles at lunch (65 minutes) - felt worse

15 September: off

Total Time: 440 minutes
Total Distance: 62 miles

If you're keeping score, this is a pretty mediocre weekly mileage total in the grand scheme of things, but, in the narrower picture of the last three months or so, a pretty big mileage total for a week without any significantly long races - probably my longest such week since sometime in May. So it's probably not a surprise that it started hurting towards the end. But after a weekend off, I'm feeling ready to get after it again, so we'll see how this week goes - 10 miles so far, and far from dead yet . . .

In other news, this little guy is still free to a good home:

blackandwhite sports cat, still hangin' out . . .

And as of last Thursday, he is up to date on all of his shots, and vet-certified healthy. And he's fixed, so you'll only be adopting ONE cat. And of course, he's still just as cute as he was a week ago. (The other cat, Ash, is already spoken for, so don't delay!)

That's about all of the wisdom I have for this week. Stay tuned for next week, when maybe there will be more miles and fewer cats!*

*not a guarantee by any meansDavid Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-15177461780152040662012-09-10T07:57:00.001-07:002012-09-10T07:57:16.354-07:00Building It UpIt has been awfully quiet here, hasn't it?

In brief numbers, here's what's been going on:

Week of 19 August: 31 miles

Week of 26 August: 26 miles

Week of 2 September: 17 miles

Day of 9 September: 17 miles (3.5 miles in the morning, 13.5 miles in the afternoon . . . just do that a little over 9 more times in 24 hours and I'd have a world record . . .)

In brief words, that all amounts to minimal and inconsistent mileage. And to go a little deeper, it's been inconsistent, because my body has been very inconsistent in responding to anything that I try to do. One day, I'm dragging myself through 5 miles, and the next day, I'm running 10 miles as if it were nothing, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to this. For now, I'm going to chalk it up to fatigue from a long year of racing a lot, and difficulty in getting a consistent running schedule established, with all of the inconsistency in my life otherwise.

But yesterday was a promising day, so maybe, after over a month of really low mileage as a result of only running as much as a tired body feels like running, I can finally get the momentum going, and start thinking about what I might be able to accomplish in the months ahead. For now, though, I'm going to reserve judgment on the subject.

In the meantime, in a related matter, it has, over the past year, come to my attention that with all of the travel for work and running that I do, it's not exactly fair to my constant-attention-seeking cats that I'm rarely home for long enough to properly brush, pet, and play with them. So if anybody out there is looking for a new cat, these are free to a good home:

Meet blackandwhite Sports Cat, just hanging out . . .

Meet Ash, the forever-tiny-kitten (who, at almost 3 years old now, is actually a cat, but a very small one)

Ash is the friendlier of the two, and will roll around at your feet, follow you wherever you go, and generally shower you with unconditional affection. Arguably the cuter of the two, blackandwhite takes a while to warm up, but his distinct chirping and skittery, scaredy-cat nature will amuse even (and especially) the most jaded.

Check back here next week, when I might be posting more about running, and less about cats!David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-57657788593474336592012-08-17T15:56:00.001-07:002012-08-17T15:57:59.835-07:00The Hardest Run I Never DidFirst, the fact:

I am not running the Summer Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run this year.

Next, the speculation and introspection:

It would be partially true to say that when I packed my bag this morning (on auto-pilot, as has been the drill for some time now), and walked down to my car at around 1100, to find the passenger-side window broken out, and my backpack, water bottle, tote bag, and all of the food in my trunk stolen from my car, that the ensuing 4+ hour ordeal to make things as "right" as they could be (i.e., restore the window, if not my property) made a 7+ hour drive to Lockport, NY prohibitive given the timeframe for the race, and that's why I am not starting.

It would be partially true to say that since Speedgoat, my weekly mileage totals have been, with great difficulty, 42 miles two weeks ago, 23 miles last week, and an anemic 10 so far this week (albeit with two days to go), and that given that I back-slid so badly into Badwater, and managed to somehow far-exceed expectations there anyway, it would be very risky to attempt another 100-mile race on such poor training, especially considering that this past week, I was deathly ill (to the point of sleeping all day this past Tuesday), and that's why I'm not starting.

It would be partially true to say that since this time last year, I've run Badwater, six 100-mile races, a 50-mile race, two 100Ks, five 50Ks, five marathons, and attempted the North Coast 24-Hour National Championship race twice, and that 1300 miles worth of marathon and ultra-racing in a year might, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, be enough, and that's why I'm not starting.

But the most complete, significant truth is a lot more complicated than any of that . . .

At this time last year, I was just starting to start over, no longer engaged, and, quite honestly, afraid of the void that I knew she would leave.

So I ran. A lot.

I ran at 3 a.m. down deserted city streets. I ran in spite of fences topped with with barbed wire in the rain, fences I bravely (if stupidly) scaled. I ran in obscenely bare legs in an improbable snowstorm on my 30th birthday. I ran in deserted woods in the frigid cold at midnight. I ran loop after loop around a park by the shore of a lake. I ran in the scorching hot desert. Sometimes I was careening down steep, winding, mountain single-track trail at breakneck speeds. Sometimes I was trudging up similarly steep mountains, hands on knees, straining to keep making forward progress. Sometimes I was shuffling along at death-march pace, nearly too exhausted to keep myself upright. And sometimes, I was running effortlessly, and felt like I could run that pace forever.

But no matter what, I was still running, half because I wanted to prove that I was "better" than before, and half because I was afraid of what might happen if I stopped.

But today, this morning, walking up to my car, sneakers crunching on the broken glass, the sound and sensation warning me that something was wrong before I even saw the window, I felt, for the first time since this time last year, an uneasy truce inside myself.

Because the reality is, pesky matter of the marathon PR aside, I've improved significantly on nearly all of my same-race performances from 2011 to 2012, not to mention taken on a number of new challenges with great success. At this point, considering all that I could have done, and, out of that, what I failed to do, I have no significant nagging regrets. In fact, I think that the level of success that I've achieved this year hasn't truly sunk in.

But more importantly, as I stood there, staring blankly at the broken glass, my first coherent thought was: "Today, I have nothing to prove. Today, for the first time in a year, instead of running, I am going to go home."

And that, honestly, even in consideration of all of my crazy adventures this past year, is the scariest thought that I've had in a long time.

In a relative sense, it would be "easy" to drive for a long time, and sleep in my car, and put on my running shoes and clothes, and run for hours until I've completed another unimaginably long race. I know how to do those things. Over the past year, I've become an expert of sorts.

But it's truly "hard" for me to pack up and go home before even starting the race, to go home and start the process of learning to live without being "dependent" on running to fill every one of those difficult moments. It's "hard," especially given the last few months, to take a step back from the frenzy, to restrict my running to a plan, to set daily mileage goals, and weekly mileage goals, and goal races, when I've been bouncing from one adventure to the next, with very little thought in between, for so long. I did these things once, but it's been so long ago now that I barely remember how to do them.

But for the sake of long-term health and success, in all aspects of my life, that's where I need to be right now, starting today. With one last possible 100-mile "adventure" aside, my schedule is blank from today forward. And, right now, that's a scary, but necessary thing.

Finally, the conclusion:

I will not run today. But don't mistake this for an "I am no longer running" manifesto. I don't plan to stop running anytime soon. But, just like at this time last year, it's time for me to rethink my strategy, revise my approach, and reframe the way running fits into my life. And that's not without bumps and jolts early on, but, as this past year has proven, over the long haul, this is a difficult thing that needs to happen, if greater successes are to come in the future.

I hope that this has been somehow interesting/educational/amusing/informative for all who took the time to read it, even though it is mostly about not running, which pretty much everybody does (or doesn't do, whichever construction is most comfortable for you). (And I hope I'm not waxing overly long and poetic here, because this is as concise and direct as I can be right now.) Good luck to everybody who will be running the Summer Beast of Burden 100-Mile Run tomorrow; enjoy everything about the race, and if things fall into place, hopefully next year, I'll be right there with all of you.
David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-88819511610558925702012-07-30T07:33:00.000-07:002012-07-30T07:33:11.855-07:00Week in Review: 22-28 July 2012, and Speedgoat 50K Race ReportFor the first time in a while, a list of dates and mileage:

22 July: 11 miles (77 minutes) on a soupy-hot morning, across Baltimore and back, west-to-east

23 July: 10 miles (70 minutes), in and around Patterson Park

24 July: off

25 July: 10 miles (70 minutes), in and around Patterson Park

26 July: off

27 July: 1+ mile (12 minutes), in the morning, running with bags to catch a train at Penn Station in Baltimore, to kick off this wacky weekend. 3-ish miles (33 minutes) evening at White Pine (8,000-ish feet altitude) to shake out before Speedgoat

28 July: Speedgoat 50K (444 minutes, 31+ miles), 7:23:17, 39th overall

Total time: 706 minutes

Total distance: 66+ miles

And now, the Speedgoat 50K:

The 2012 Speedgoat 50K course (photo credit: Tetsuro Ogata)

I'm putting the picture first, because that's the most unequivocally beautiful thing about Speedgoat. A 50K that, with 11,000+ feet of gain/loss (this year, with the course changes, it was probably over 12,000), all at altitudes above 8,000 feet, going as high as 11,000 feet, with nasty, steep, rocky climbs that will haunt your dreams, runs more like a 50-mile race, is not exactly the easiest sell. But it's that way on purpose; as the t-shirt tag line goes, the course is "A Meltzer-Designed Nightmare."

Taking on this monster just 10 days after Badwater, without the benefit of altitude or mountain training, seemed like a a terrible idea. But it also seemed like an exciting challenge. I had been signed up for the race since January, just after Bandera, where my performance there inspired me to raise the bar once more in a competitive field. Still, I didn't know how I was going to feel after Badwater, but after a few days of "normal" running earlier this week, I felt ready for the challenge. As I saw it, it was a great opportunity to

(1) get a "Wasatch 100 preview" (i.e. determine how likely I am to die on the mountains during that race)

(2) compete against a strong field

(3) have a fun day in the mountains (probably)

So the "exciting challenge" assessment won out. Tina helped me make travel plans just a few day before the race, and on Friday, I scrambled through three trains, a bus, two planes, and a baggage-loaded run to Penn Station to make it to Salt Lake City at around 6 pm, just about 12 hours before the start of the race. Collin picked me up at the airport, and we went about the business of picking up supplies for the race, and heading up the mountains towards Snowbird for pre-race camping and shake-out run. After our shake-out run, I was a little worried about dying on the mountain. While I wasn't exactly gasping for breath, my legs were still feeling a little tired from Badwater, and the thin air was just making me feel . . . slow. Collin was moving along much better than I was, and, for the first time in my life, I felt severely disadvantaged for living at sea level.

But whatever, the race was happening, either way, so by the next morning, when I was dressed and ready to run, all of that was in the back of my mind . . . at least until the gun went off. Within about ten minutes, maybe a fifth of the way up the first climb, I was probably in about 100th place. Everybody seemed to be charging up the mountain with reckless abandon, while my poor tired legs were screaming at me to slow down so they could suck down the paltry amount of oxygen that my lungs were delivering to them from the disturbingly-thin air. It occurred to me that maybe this should have gone into the "terrible idea" bin instead. But here I was, out on a beautiful, sunny, 70-degree day, climbing some awesome mountains, and taking in some awesome views (sadly, sans-cell-phone, which I had forgotten in my rush to the starting line - otherwise, there would be more pictures here), so I figured I may as well soldier on.

By the time I hit the steep, rocky climb to Hidden Peak (mile 8+ into the race), my place had stabilized a bit, and I was getting into a little better rhythm on the climbs. I tagged the top at 1 hour, 58 minutes, and hauled down the backside of the mountain with reckless abandon, smiling and laughing as I skidded down an alarmingly steep drop over loose dirt and rocks, overjoyed to finally have gravity in my favor, and to be passing people.

The next climb and descent came and went without too much fanfare, except to say that the descent was over a pretty significant loose-ish rock-pile, reminiscent of a descent at MMT, but not quite as long, and over rocks with a bit less permanence in the landscape. This took me to the 15-ish mile aid station, the "turn-around" point, and I could see runners coming out of the aid station towards me, many not looking so great. At 4 hours and 27 minutes into the race at the "turn-around" aid station, it was around 11 a.m., and with the sun high, and the elevation "low" (as in, slightly under 8000 feet here), and 100-degree F temperatures predicted in the valley, conditions were starting to take their toll on the runners. I heard one runner say to another on the downhill, "I'm so wiped out from all of the climbing - I can't even bomb this downhill." Considering that I was still keeping a steady pace, and not feeling catastrophically bad, I began feeling optimistic about the remainder of the race.

On the way out of the turn-around aid station, fortified by an orange popsicle and an unexpected cold-water-dousing that nearly gave me a heart attack, I caught up to Collin, and we stuck together for a little while up the next climb, a long, wide service-road style, Hellgate-like ascent (except at higher altitudes). I settled into a brisk hike, and soon was passing people on my way to the top . . . which involved a very cruel left turn up a steep (but mercifully short) rocky hill, where there wasn't a trail so much as a series of flags to follow, all of which had me crawling on hands and feet to get to the top. After passing a few more people, a merciful downhill into the next aid station followed . . .

But mercy was not to be the case from there on. Not quite three miles to the next aid station, 3100 feet of climb, and a few hundred feet of drop, for good measure. When we started running downhill out of the aid station, I knew something was "wrong." Sure enough, when we reached the base of Baldy, we turned right, up a rocky, steep, arbitrarily-marked nearly-vertical grade. This was the lowest point of the race for me, as I struggled on hands and feet, stopping several times, before I finally reached the top. Once I was over the top, I gradually settled into a running rhythm again, but not before several people who were recovering much more quickly than I was managed to pass me and keep going.

And from there, it got worse. From the tunnel to the top of Hidden Peak, the last aid station, there was another descent, followed by a prolonged, nasty climb. I was with another runner for most of this climb, but I was still dragging myself through, and slowing him down for most of it, since, with a little over a mile to go, he went ahead and kept on going. At this point, being at nearly 11,000 feet altitude, climbing up a stupid-steep slope, 25 miles into the race, my non-mountain sea-level disadvantage became most painfully apparent. Fortunately, at the top, 6 hours, 30 minutes into the race, there were cheers for "Baltimore!" (I was wearing my red Falls Road Racing singlet), and promise of a 5-mile downhill to the finish line.

The next 5 miles were the happiest downhill miles of my life, even with the nasty rocks for the first mile or so. In addition to gravity in my favor, the air thickened as I followed the winding trail to the finish line. I was solidly in whatever place I was in at that point (which turned out to be 39th), so there was no need to push too hard (although at the very end, a runner did come close to me, prompting a bit of a finishing sprint). Instead, I kept a steady pace, enjoyed the scenery, and felt a sense of gratitude for accomplishing what I had accomplished in the race, in spite of circumstances.

Sweet Speedgoat swag - no fluff, all useful running stuff. (yellow is men's shirt, pink is women's shirt)

Collin came in about 20 minutes later, and we spent a little time after the race drinking UltraGen recovery drink and soda, hanging around the finish line and socializing, and watching the awards ceremony. Kilian recorded the fastest time, but was barred from prize money because he cut switchbacks on his way to the win, which is allowed in European mountain racing and skyrunning, but not in this particular race (which was a part of the skyrunning series, so that was perhaps the source of the confusion). He was still recognized alongside Rickey Gates, who took second, as the fastest runner of the day. Anna Frost took the win on the women's side. And for what it's worth, it was a lot of fun to be part of such a deep, fast race.

7:23:17, 39th overall, and the first non-mountain, sea-level competitor to cross the line, and still shaking off Badwater fatigue - I'd say that's a pretty solid result. There were definitely some steep climbs where I lost a good bit of time, and there is lots of room for improvment in my mountain-running ability, so this result has me curious to see how I could do in a mountain race with some actual specific mountain-specific training at altitude. But that's for another time and place - for now, considering that I don't feel completely crippled after this run (just generally tired), I'm excited about my next round of races and training in August and September . . . more and better-prepared (but still most likely full of awesome surprises) adventures soon to come!David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-10338564343001917462012-07-19T05:49:00.000-07:002012-07-19T14:26:10.636-07:00Badwater 2012 Race Report: Dark of the Moon

Two days later, it's still difficult to process this race. 135 miles on brutal, shadeless roads, through day and night, in temperatures as high as 115 degrees, and as low as 50 degrees, up three significant climbs . . . for the third year in a row, six hours faster than previous years, finishing eighth against some of the stiffest competition ever to undertake the deathmarch from the Badwater Basin to Whitney Portal. But here's my best shot at it . . .<o:p></o:p>

I was a little nervous about this race for a few reasons. One, as I mentioned in my previous blog post, I was back-sliding into it, since my training over the past month has been mediocre at best. Two, I would have an "all-rookie" crew, in contrast to the veterans that I had last year, which would mean that I'd have to do more to direct them. Three, well, it's Badwater. It's a huge race that a lot of people are watching, and given the prior two points, I couldn't help feeling that I hadn't taken preparation as "seriously" as I should have. (Also, my mom said that she was concerned about this, which is usually a bad omen. Then again, Meg D said that I would do awesome, so that at least somewhat canceled it out, right?)<o:p></o:p>

But sometimes, things just sort of come together, and this was one of those times. I landed in Las Vegas early Thursday morning, checked in at the Stratosphere, and wandered the strip for a while until it was time to pick Shannon up. Chris and Jackie came in the next day, which gave us all day Saturday to pick up provisions for the race and go over strategy - not to mention appreciate the awesome view from the 108th floor of the Stratosphere tower. Meanwhile, Falls Road Running mailed me a pair of Altra Instinct shoes, courtesy of company president and founder Golden Harper, along with some other goodies. By the time we set out for Death Valley on Sunday morning, Team Caliente (Like a Boss) was ready to rock.<o:p></o:p>

The view of Las Vegas from the Stratosphere Tower - storm a'brewin', indeed . . .

Check-in and the pre-race meeting was the usual hectic scene – photographers everywhere, people posting to Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram . . . with all of that commotion, it's easy to forget that you're getting ready to run a race. Mostly, I remember eating a pint of ice cream from the general store in Furnace Creek, and unexpectedly seeing Dr. J, in her role as Brooks rep, while I was jamming chocolate chip ice cream in my mouth. That, and sitting near the front of the pre-race meeting for the "elite" 10 am starting wave, near the Fruitarian, Dean, Sumie, and Mike Morton (and Eric Clifton, one of his crew members), and feeling like this whole experience was beyond surreal.<o:p></o:p>

Jackie and I, escaping the check-in pandemonium at Furnace Creek Resort.

Fortunately, we had a very relaxing night before the race, and all woke up well-rested and in good spirits for this epic journey. The mood was light as we followed the line of cars to the Badwater basin; stuck behind Mike Morton's support vehicle, we joked that he should be disqualified because his rear window was partially blocked with luggage. <o:p></o:p>

After weigh-in, the national anthem, and a few words, we counted down the start, and then we were off. Mike Morton picked up speed quickly and got pretty far ahead of the pack in no time; meanwhile, I hung back near Oswaldo Lopez, Zach Gingerich, and The Fruitarian. In the amusing things that runners say to other runners category, Zach proudly told the Fruitarian that he ate "a lot of bacon" this morning. (Then modified his statement to say that all that bacon wasn't sitting so well on his stomach. "Ugh, bacon," he concluded, dejectedly.) Gradually, Morton's push at the front started dragging people along, so I "hung back" with Oswaldo, who commented that the pace (currently around 8 minutes/mile) was "easy" . . . as the temperature climbed to 110 degrees and the road undulated relentlessly. It didn't feel that bad, actually – it was okay enough that Oswaldo and I chattered a bit in Spanish before he started pulling away, with the rest of the leaders, who were gradually getting sucked in to Morton's pace.

And . . . we're off!

Before I knew it, I was at mile 17, Furnace Creek, the first time station – in 2 hours, 8 minutes. Definitely way faster than I've run this section of the race before, but I wasn't feeling bad at all, and I had really enjoyed rocking through the first part of the race at that pace, not to mention the drive-by sponging/misting support that I was getting from Farinazzo's crew, and from Coach Nudelman of the Navy Marathon team, who was crewing another runner. Plus, even at that pace, I was still getting passed by a lot of runners – as I said, extremely competitive field. My crew had gotten into a pretty good rhythm of frequently stopping to cold-mist me, put new ice in my hat and my bandana, sponge me, swap out my Gatorade bottles, and pass me food . . . when they weren't taking photos, texting, or tweeting. Between Chris, the driver and "the IT guy," and Jackie, whose prolific Facebooking earned her the title of "social media expert," no part of this epic journey was going undocumented. Meanwhile, Shannon was organizing/coordinating/herding the crew stops. All systems were decidedly "go."<o:p></o:p>

Shannon and Jackie, keeping me hydrated and cool on the way to Furnace Creek - that's Oswaldo Lopez, just ahead of me.

Predictably, the section from Furnace Creek to Stovepipe Wells got a little rough. The temperature was climbing, and the fast early pace was taking its toll. I started slowing, and reached the point, around the 50K mark, where I stopped, leaned over, and dry-heaved several times. No big deal. I backed off the pace a little bit, and kept moving forward, per my strategy this year to make constant forward progress at just about any cost. I had intermittent pacing help from Shannon here, packing a water gun to keep me cool in between mistings. I told them that my goal was to make it to Stovepipe Wells, the 42-mile mark, (a) within 7 hours, and (b) feeling reasonably good. As I rolled through Stovepipe Wells about 10-15 minutes ahead of my 7-hour schedule, I felt good about my progress.<o:p></o:p>

Holding it together in the heat on the way to Stovepipe Wells.

Then came Townes Pass. I knew this was going to be a tough, brutal grind, but I hadn't anticipated just how bad the headwind was going to be. (Maybe the tailwind at the beginning of the race should have given me a clue . . .) Fortunately, our crew had matching sunglasses for the day, and clear glasses for the night, so at least dry eyes weren't going to be a problem. But this was by far the stiffest, most suffocating wind in this part of the course that I had ever faced. (It also didn't need to include Collin shouting "Falls Road sucks!" from his crew vehicle as they passed me, but that's another story.) It was bad enough that I stopped a couple of times on the way up, for about 20-25 minutes total, to collect myself before going on. Some people passed me here, but I wasn't terribly worried, because I knew I had a long downhill coming, and plenty of legs to catch people on the downhill. Plus, Jackie was serenading me on the way up, with songs like "You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings," which, silly as it was, did lift my spirits a bit.<o:p></o:p>

Marching up Townes Pass, crew in tow.

And sure enough, on the backside of the pass, I was motoring along, happy to let gravity work for me for a change, and passing people with reckless abandon. Before I knew it, I was at Panamint Springs, terrible place that it is, about 14.5 hours into the race, with another 63 miles to the finish. As I said a few times about last year's race, if I could just put two good "halves" of the race together, I could have an awesome finishing time. But in this case, that would mean dropping a 14-hour run from there to the finish, just as I did last year, right after pushing hard enough to get there that fast in the first place. I was a little nervous . . .<o:p></o:p>

Blazing down the backside of Townes Pass, into Panamint Springs - long-exposure, light-speed style.

Because, recall from previous years that Panamint Springs had been the site of my lowest points. I was determined not to let that happen this year, so I told my crew we were not stopping there for any period of time if we could help it, and I kept chugging through. They soon caught up to me, and while I was less aggressive on the road to Darwin this year, I kept making progress. At this point, it was solidly night, and COLD. As in, 50-ish degrees. But also moonless, which made the stars even more visible, much to Chris's delight – he got some awesome night-sky pictures, which may have made up for the fact that, for once, it was too dark when I passed Father Crowley overlook to get any good pictures there.<o:p></o:p>

There are stars over Death Valley, too.

I was doing my best to take advantage of the cool temperature and darkness and pick up the pace (also, moving fast enough so as not to freeze was sort of a factor), and gradually, I started passing people. By the time I reached Darwin, the 90-mile mark, I was in 17th place (by some report, anyway). I felt mostly disheartened by this news. Here I was, on track for a mid-28-hour finish (if I could pull off the second half of the race that I thought I could), and I was still that far back. But then again, my primary goal was to finish under 30 hours, and I could at least achieve that. So I decided to focus on that.

As I headed from Darwin to Lone Pine, a 32-mile trek, the sun came up, the temperature became briefly pleasant (on its way to being brutally hot again), and Jackie Choi (aka "Jackie Joy") started hopping out of the car to pace me. Jackie is always sunny and smiley, and the rhythm of her footsteps behind me kept me locked in to a comfortable running pace. In this section, I told both her and Shannon as they paced me that this was the section of the race where magical things can happen, since everybody is getting tired, and by making slow, steady progress, and being patient, you can gradually pass a lot of people.<o:p></o:p>

And sure enough, patience and persistence paid off. At this point, the only runners ahead of me were from the 10 am wave, so every pass moved me up a place. And wouldn't you know it, Dean Karnazes was just ahead as we were nearing the 100-mile mark. Jackie hopped out to pace, wearing a sweater (still complaining of being cold), and carrying her cell phone, to both photo-document and play Deadmau5 to spur me on, while Shannon told me that Dean was dying, and I could take him down. I couldn't have planned it better – we passed Dean, and his decidedly more serious-looking pacer, just as we crossed the 100-mile mark on the road, at around 20 hours and 40 minutes, a solid 100-mile race time itself, and Dean said to us "35 miles to go," in a tone that suggested that we were stupid to have done what we just did. But considering that I kept putting distance on him, I'd say it was a great move, and Jackie sure got a kick out of it.<o:p></o:p>

Things of note, right to left: Dean Karnazes, his pacer, me, Jackie, 100-mile mark on the road.

We kept up the steady pace, and by the time we reached Lone Pine, we had passed several other runners, including the Fruitarian (who was on his back on a mat with his legs up on the rear bumper of his crew vehicle when we passed him). I unofficially broke my PR for most miles run in 24 hours (I reached 118 miles just as my watch turned over to triple-zeros; previous best was 111). In another nod to Jackie, I passed Sumie, the eventual first female finisher, ahead of Pam Reed, just before we reached the Lone Pine time station. I had to go a little faster than I would have liked to make that last pass, but considering how patiently and effectively Jackie had been pacing me, even though we had already passed Dean together, I felt like I owed her another one. At the Lone Pine time station, one of the volunteers actually recognized my Falls Road Racing jersey, and asked if I was from Baltimore, and I had my very brief moment of proudly representing, before I jay-ran, Baltimore-style, across Main Street and onto Portal Road, just to make sure that Sumie stayed behind me.<o:p></o:p>

Then, the climb to Whitney Portal – 13 miles, lots of elevation gain, and, this time around, since I was finishing so fast, it was noticeably hotter than usual. Normally, this is where I take off and do awesome things, but with the heat and all of the running I had done in the previous section, I felt totally flat on the climb. All of Shannon's water-gunning in the back and Jackie's cheer wasn't really helping, except to ensure that I had no excuse not to grit my teeth and resolve to put one foot in front of the other until I reached the top. By the time I got to the 131-mile mark, the last time station, the temperature had dropped, and I had been marching up the climb for long enough that I actually felt as though I had fallen into a semblance of a rhythm. And, with just a 4-mile "fun run" to cross off on the car (we had been crossing off each half-marathon as we passed the half-marathon marks), my mood improved significantly. I was chatty, cheery, and coherent as I fell into a rhythm much more evocative of this section of the climb last year, and, with cell phones finally working again, I was feeding off of not only my crew's excitement, but the excitement of the people at home.

Finally starting to smile in the final stretch of the climb to Whitney Portal .

And so, 28 hours, 31 minutes, and 50 seconds after I started this epic journey, replicating last year's 14-hour Panamint-to-the-finish ending, I crossed the finish line with my crew, very pleasantly exhausted. 8th place overall, an amusing finishing place, considering that I wore an Aberdeen Ironbirds hat the entire time, and Cal Ripken, the owner of the Ironbirds, wore number 8 in his playing days with the Baltimore Orioles (and I make it a point to touch the number 8 Cal Ripken statue in front of Camden Yards every time I run there). But most importantly, a sub-30-hour finish, and a top-10 finish – both of my admittedly lofty goals for the race achieved. Everybody commented on how coherent and capable of moving under my own power I seemed, compared to the people who finished near me, which probably means that there is room for improvement (isn't there always?), but all I wanted at that point was to use a real bathroom, put on dry clothes, lay down for a while, and somehow fix the contact lens that rolled back into my eye (as I type this, it's still back there, somewhere). Little things. J

Heaven on earth. (Also, as I was later informed, an excuse for others to take "dirty" pictures of us in our compromised position.)

My crew and I hung around the finish line for what seemed like a very short time to me, but was actually several hours, sunning ourselves on rocks, eating the remaining junk food that we bought for the race (who knew that we had that much beef jerky?), and cheering for the finishers that came in behind me. I felt a little too dazed to be useful. Eventually, we headed back down the mountain into Lone Pine, to tend to the cuts, scratches, blisters, and general filth that we had accumulated during our adventure. I barely remember the Mexican food that I ate for dinner at the food cart in front of our hotel, but I'm pretty sure it was awesome (and now that my appetite is returning, I wish that I had some more). It was definitely awesome that they gave me a free pineapple Jarritos for running the race.<o:p></o:p>

Even after writing all of that, and having a day to think about everything, this is all still unbelievable to me. Obviously, I've trained hard for a long time, and I knew that I was capable of this performance, but to finally have everything come together, and to make it happen, is a totally different thing. Most of all, I'm overwhelmed by all of the support and well-wishing from family and friends, and I am beyond thankful for all of it. I can't possibly thank everybody here, but I do want to mention a few – my awesome crew for this race, of course (Chris, Shannon, and Jackie), my crew from the previous two years (Andrew, Sara, and Jason), without which I wouldn't have had the experience to do what I did at this race this year, all of the people who donated to CAF, whose names/slogans were on the back of my jersey the entire race (and didn't run a bit, even with the constant misting, thanks to the magic of fabric markers), Meg H for dutifully watching my cats, Meg D and Pete at the Falls Road Running Store for overnighting me the sweet kicks for my race, Golden Harper, founder of Altra, for the shoes, my beautiful girlfriend Tina for her unwavering emotional support, and my mom, dad, and sisters, for always being there for me. And if I didn't list you here and you feel slighted, feel free to call me out on it – there's just so much to process right now (including, amusingly enough, 135 text messages on my cell phone after the race, once I got service back) that I'm not even sure that this 3000-word essay covers it.<o:p></o:p>

But the last thing I will say, before I move on (to some sort of food, most likely), is that everybody I'm thanking here and elsewhere is a motivation, inspiration, and source of energy for me to run the way I run. Keep it coming – I'm determined to keep on raising the bar!<o:p></o:p>

EPILOGUE: Our crew's sleep-deprived post-race trip back to Las Vegas is practically a blog post in and of itself. But the short version is that after many, many photo stops between Lone Pine and Las Vegas, and one very clutch In-N-Out stop, we arrived at the Vdara in Las Vegas with our baggage jumble, only to find that our bathroom reeked of cigarette smoke – in a supposedly smoke-free hotel. Naturally, we complained, and asked for an upgrade, and the next room that they gave us . . . reeked of marijuana smoke. One more complaint and one round of uncontrollable laughter later, we were in an excessively awesome room, with a view of the Bellagio fountain, a stainless-steel refrigerator and dishwasher, and robes for maximum enjoyment of lounging, champagne-toasting, and re-living the experience. An appropriately surreal end to a delightfully surreal experience.<o:p></o:p>
David Ploskonkahttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-1643015479559032451.post-43452592410197688512012-07-10T13:46:00.001-07:002012-07-10T13:46:23.784-07:00Catching Up - Badwater PreviewYes, it's been pretty quiet in my little corner of the blogosphere this past month, ostensibly as I prepare for Badwater. So what's been up? (A question more for myself than for you, although if you have something to share, feel free to comment . . .)

In spite of a "weak" June (316 miles, 100 of which were accumulated during the Old Dominion 100), I reached the more-or-less-halfway point of 2012 (30 June) with 2,269 miles logged, averaging 84.04 miles per week, or just slightly over 12 miles per day. Which is sort of neat-o, considering that in 2011, for the entire year, I averaged a little over 11 miles per day. So if that were a goal of mine, I'm more or less on track, despite the recent decline.

That said, if you trace back 33 weeks (more or less the beginning of November 2011), the average actually goes up, to around 89 miles per week (after which it declines a bit). Perhaps it's fair to say that after an extended period of pretty high volume, my body has been looking for an extended taper, which is essentially what the month of June was.

But that's all training numbers, for whatever they're worth (which is sometimes not much). Both MMT and Old Dominion went far better for me this year than they did last year (9 hours better, and an hour and a half better, respectively), probably in part due to increased fitness, but also in part due to better race strategy. And since race strategy has been my weakness in my previous two runs at Badwater, if lessons learned from previous years, and recent strategic success in 100-mile races this year, mean anything at all, I'm in far better shape this year than I have been previously.

But all of the above is talk - come race day, anything can (and very well may) happen. The bottom line, then, is that, all of the above aside, I'm excited to take another shot at this monster, and hopefully continue with the momentum that I had at the end of last year's race.

With that, you can follow me on the Badwater website (http://www.badwater.com/) - they'll be tracking everybody on race day. And there's still time to donate to CAF in support of my run at Badwater, in recognition of which I will write your name, or whatever you want, in the Sharpie color of your choice, on the shirt that I'll wear during the race. Donate here:

http://adventurecorps2012.kintera.org/davidploskonka

. . . and stay tuned for the more-exciting-than-it-probably-should-be conclusion!David Ploskonkahttp://firstname.lastname@example.com