Subject: Re: Very Looooong Umstead review - A Social 100 Date: Mon, 3 May 1999 23:18:06 EDT From: Thewashman@aol.com Folks, Here is my review of the Umstead 100. It is quite long so skip it if you don't wish to waste the time. This run is the second 100 mile run in a series of ten that I will be running in 1999. I am calling my running odyssey the DecaCent (10 one hundred milers). The Umstead 100 Mile Endurance Run takes place in Umstead Park near Raleigh, North Carolina. The course is on hard-packed dirt roads within the park on a ten mile loop of which part of the loop contains an out-and-back section of 1.9 miles each way. When I arrived in Raleigh on Thursday night, April 8, the temperature that day had reached near 90 degrees. With the problems that plagued me at the Rocky Racoon race, I was hoping for perfect conditions but it appeared as though my luck would not change much for Umstead. On Friday, the temperature reached the mid-eighties and the forecast for Saturday was for temperatures only to reach the high seventies. My wife dropped me at the pre-race festivities and went to spend the weekend with a friend in the area. I was going to sleep in one of the nearby cabins and run the race unaided. Since Umstead is a loop course, it is quite easy to run without a handler. I checked into the headquarters and ran into many people that I knew and some that I only knew through the Internet. I got to meet Stan Jensen and Dan Baglione. I also talked with Jose Wilke who plans to run twelve hundred milers this year. And, if he had gotten into Western States, he would be doing thirteen. I'll be seeing a lot of him this year. Some people like to keep themselves low-keyed and relaxed at these race briefings and pre-race dinners or even skip them entirely, but I use them to get myself energized. I love meeting the other runners and hearing the stories of races run and plans for races to come. This camaraderie and sharing is what I love best about ultrarunning. I awoke at 4:30 for the 6:00am start, did my pre-race toilet visiting, my usual race morning feeding ritual and walked to the starting line to check in. I had a Mini-Mag flashlight in my fanny pack but figured that I wouldn't need it for the start. The race starts on fairly good dirt road so the light wouldn't make that much of a difference. Blake Norwood, the ever-present race director, got us underway and we quickly settled into our paces. During the first couple of miles, I fell into line with Nick Palazzo, from New York, because I wanted to talk to him about his plans for this year. Nick is running the Badwater 145 (from Death Valley to Mount Whitney). I wanted to inquire about his training and about his race preparations. By the way, my wife informed me that I was not allowed to run the Badwater. Apparently, she read a story on how tough and dangerous it is. Nick has been doing quite a bit of heat training and has his crews lined-up and prepared. I wished him the best of luck. After I let Nick go, I hooked up briefly with Georgann Quarles, who was running her first ultra (the 50 mile) but has done a number of short triathlons. She is planning her first Ironman distance triathlon later this year. She finished as the second woman in the 50 miler. I then dropped back to my normal pace and to run with some friends from Massachusetts, Jeannie Gerstein (who now lives in Cleveland) and Paula Bishop (running her first 50 miler). My goal was to run the first 50 in around ten hours and, since that was Jeanie’s goal for her 50, I decided to tag along. Paula was going to try and stay with us for 30 and then just try to finish. We managed to keep to our 12 minute per mile pace quite easily that first lap; however, it hadn't warmed up yet. We finished the first loop right at two hours. The second loop was much like the first. We ran together the entire way and it was rather uneventful. It was beginning to get a bit warm for me. This was only the second time this year that I had worn shorts when I ran, the other was at Rocky Racoon. Even though the heat wasn't unbearable, it was enough to bother me. I slowed just a little and finished the loop in 2:04. Not far off my goal pace but the trend was going in the wrong direction. On the next loop, Paula began to falter a bit and Jeanie and I started to pull away near the eighth mile of the loop. We had been walking the ups and running everything else but it was beginning to get harder to do. I finished the loop in 2:07. I had worn my Saucony Jazz 4000 for the first 30 miles and had planned to changed to my Asics 2040’s for the next 30 miles. While I changed my shoes, Jeanie waited and refueled. I hadn’t realized just how rough the dirt road had been on my feet until I changed my shoes. With the change made, we began the fourth loop. Jeanie was feeling stronger than I was and, since she was only doing the 50, I told her to take off and I would try to keep up my pace but it was getting harder. My change of shoes made my feet feel much better and I was running a bit better but I was faltering in my pace. I should probably describe the course. The start has a short (100 yds) downhill to a lake and then we return back up the hill to the start/finish line. We then run along a short trail section (100 yds) and on to the roads. Although the roads in this course are not bad, they are very hard-packed dirt roads with sharp imbedded rocks that hammer away at your feet until they cry out with pain. The Asics were more cushioned than the Sauconys but they didn’t make that much difference. The problem with the race is that the footing never really changes during the entire race. It would be helpful if the course were changed to utilize some of the single-track trail that exists in the park to give runners a change for their feet. There was an unmanned aid station near the beginning/end of the 1.9 mile out-and-back section (2.2 & 6.0 miles) and then a manned station at 4.1 miles. Another unmanned aid station was near the 8 mile point. The out-and-back was nice in that runners got to meet and greet other runners who were either just ahead or just behind them. I got to see the leaders go by a few times. David Luljak was running with such ease it was hard to believe that he was running so far so fast. The course did not have any large hills but it did contain many short ups that accumulated into some pretty difficult climbs as the miles went by. The course designer was nice enough to put one of the more difficult and longest hills just before the finish. I finished the fourth loop in 2:23. This made my ten hour 50 mile split impossible. The fifth loop was uneventful and I finished the 50 miles in 11:06, over an hour slower than I had hoped. I had run half of the first Umstead 100 five years ago and that course was a gently rolling course with nice dirt roads. I knew that the course had changed but I didn’t figure, since it was in the same small park, that it could be much more difficult. Boy was I wrong. The course was much rougher on the feet and the rolling was relentless. I determined that the reason that I was running as slowly as I was had to do with the lack of downhills. I don’t lose a lot of time while walking up the long, steep hills of a course like Vermont, but I can make up a lot of time while running down those hills. At Umstead, the hills are not that steep and I was not able to make up much time on the downs. I am not a fast runner and lose quite a bit of time on courses where there are no real downhills to help me. This course plays well for strength runners because there is so much runnable surface. Upon crossing the 50 mile mark, I saw my wife who had stopped by with her friend to cheer me on before they left for the night. Also, Jeanie was there and had finished her 50 mile in 10:32 as third woman. On the sixth loop, I got the chance to run most of the way with Melissa Lee-Sobal from Colorado. She has been doing quite a bit of snowshoe racing in CO and I was interested. It sounds like something that I would enjoy. Melissa was eating mayonnaise sandwiches at the aid stations. And here I thought the volunteers were putting too much mayo on my sandwiches. We certainly each have our own ways of running these things. She has a very young child and hadn’t done a lot of running lately and was not having one of her best races. She eventually had to drop out at around 70 miles. The one thing about running Umstead is that, as long as you run at least 50 miles, you get an official 50 mile finish. It was getting dark as I finished the loop but because the road surface was light enough to see where it went, I decided not to use my flashlight. As I was nearing the finish of the loop, Paula Bishop drove by me on her way out of the park. She had finished her first 50 miler in 13:17. She wasn’t happy with her time but she should be. She finished. I ran the sixth loop in 2:44, the slide had began. I changed into my Montrail Vitesse shoes at 60 miles and planned to wear them the rest of the way. I also put on a long sleeve shirt as it was getting a bit cool and I was mostly walking. Since I always keep my Mini-Mag flashlight in my fanny pack and since I thought that I would try running through the night without using a light, I left my big flashlight in my bag and took off without any light. As it turned out, I never really needed a light. I suppose, if I had been running fast (or at all), I may have used one occasionally but, with my pace, it stayed in my pack. I noticed that I wasn’t the only one with that idea as many runners were doing the same thing. It was a different race now that the 50 milers were off the course. There were long stretches where I didn’t see anyone, even on much of the out-and-back section. The seventh loop took me 3:16 to finish. Much of that time was taken up when I changed shoes but I was now walking most of the time. I had hoped, since I felt much better than I did at Rocky Racoon, that I would be able to run at least 15 or 20 miles of the last 50 but there I was back into my walk mode. I’m not a bad walker but I’m not going to win any walking races. I continued to take one Succeed electrolyte capsule every hour and never had a problem with dehydration and my stomach never bothered me once during the run. By the way I felt, there was never a time that I thought that I might not finish; however, I was disappointed that I would not come close to breaking 24 hours. I had urinated about every two hours for the first half of the race but, now that it was getting cooler, it seemed as though I was urinating every half mile. It took me 3:18 to finish the eighth loop. I began the ninth loop in a bit of a funk. I knew I would finish but I just never got myself to run. I’m sure that I could have run some but I had myself in a walking frame of mind and couldn’t get myself out of it. I don’t think it even occurred to me to try. I am usually very good at the mental aspect of ultrarunning and even now was able to keep myself feeling up and moving, but I got so deep into the walking routine that I never was able to get out of it. The ninth loop would have been even slower than it was but, at near the seven mile marker of the loop, a thunder storm started. I got chilled and had to walk much faster to keep warm. I pushed to the finish and went inside the headquarters building to change my shirt and put on my rain jacket. While inside, some volunteers were tailoring some raincoats out of trash bags. After changing everything but my shoes, I put on the rain coat and went out to do the short loop to the lake and back. As I was coming back up the hill to the start/finish line, lightning struck a tree about 100 yards to my right. I decided to wait under the tent at the line until the storm moved off. Soon after I had gotten under the tent, another lightning strike happened right near the tent. I had survived a very serious thunder storm at the first Massanutten 100 but this one seemed even more dangerous. After about 15 minutes or so, the storm moved away and Stan Jensen from California and Suzi Shearer from Texas came out of the building and headed down the road. I decided to follow them. I only had this loop to do to get the race over so I didn’t want to wait too long. We passed each other several times on that last loop and the rains came and went but, at least, the lightning had not returned. I managed to finish that last loop in 3:28 for a 100 mile time of 27:15:25. I have now finished two of the ten hundreds and feel great going into the next one, the Massanutten Mountain 100. It is one of my favorite races. And since it takes so long to run, I get to enjoy it even more. I want to thank Blake and his great group of volunteers for an outstanding social event. I think I socialized more in this race than I have in some of my 24 hour track races. It is well worth your while to come down and try this race but be warned. It is not all that easy.