Breaking the 50K Barrier: My Emotional First Ultra Marathon Adventure

Voiceover: 0:00

Discover Raw, inspiring stories from runners who've been right where you are this is the Choose to Endure Ultra. Running Podcast With your host. RI He's English, not Australian Richard Gleeve.

Richard: 0:19

Hello everyone, thanks again for joining me. This is the Choose to Endure podcast dedicated to the back of the pack, ultra Runners who are redefining possible one epic mile at a time. Well, I am still here waiting on a couple of guests to join the show, as I promised previously, but in the meantime I figured I would take you through my own experience as it relates to the first 50K Ultra Race I ever ran, because it was a bit of a doozy and it really opened my eyes In many respects. I made all the mistakes that you shouldn't make during an Ultra Running Race, but also it was one of the most memorable experiences that I've had to this day and I've run some pretty decent races at this point, but still that first race for me, especially the end of it, makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up on end when I think about where I was and what happened to that. So we'll get to that in a bit, but I wanted to take you through sort of front to back my experience and maybe you can relate to that, maybe you can find some value in there. So, from an inspiration perspective, I'm not really sure what I was doing, trying to run an Ultra Race, this 50K. I had run a couple of marathons and so prior to that I was kind of overweight, like most folks getting into middle age decided that I need to do something about it, went out and joined a local running group. I ran my first marathon here, the Chevron Houston Marathon in January of 2016,. And then I trained through that summer again and ran my second Houston Marathon in January of 2017. And at some point after that I was sitting in a Starbucks having a conversation with some of the other runners from the local Marathon training running group and the idea of an Ultra Marathon came up. So I went and looked on the internet and I found one in September of that year called the Lighthouse Hill Ranch 50K. So this was a race that was out just west of Austin, between Austin and Fredericksburg, right off 290 there, if you are any kind of familiar with that area, but it's a beautiful area. You're just getting close to all the wineries, the olive groves, the peaches out there. It's really awesome. I don't know what I was doing trying to pick a 50K race, a first 50K race in September in Texas, because it's still really hot here, crazy hot but I decided I was going to do that race because I'd already trained to do the marathons and I wanted to continue to use that. I found stopping training and then starting training again was really tough. I was like so stiff, so sore when I was trying to restart training. I figured you know what I'm just going to train through and I wanted a reason to train through, I think. So we were chatting about that in the coffee shop after I run one morning and the 50K came up, as it does with a lot of conversations. It's just five miles further than a marathon and I'm already trained for a marathon and I've done two marathons so I know I can do that distance. So I should be able to do a 50K. And it's in a beautiful place. It's in a beautiful part of Texas. So once I'd looked it up I discovered it was really close to two breweries Jester King Brewery and I think it was Twisted X. It still probably is Twisted X Brewery, but they're really close to the location for this race. I thought I'm going to make a weekend of it here. I'm going to go do a brewery beforehand and then do another one afterwards, make a whole weekend of it. So I can't say it was anything really emotional or groundbreaking from an inspirational standpoint for that first race. It was really more an excuse to go out and utilize the training I'd already done. Also an excuse to Go and try a new brewery. I hadn't been to either just a king or twisted eggs and spoiler, they're great, by the way, if you ever get a chance to head out that way, there was some excellent bruise to taste to try out, particularly just a king, because it has, like a brick pizza oven on site so you can get these homemade pizzas, which were phenomenal, right on site and then go across the way and grab some beer to go with it. So, anyway, highly recommend just a king if you're ever out that way. So yeah, so I hadn't really done anything like that. I'd only done a couple of marathons before from a training perspective. Having decided to do this, I I really I didn't know what the hell I was doing. To be honest, I had trained for the marathon on the streets around my neighborhood and I continue to do that because I didn't really know any different. So I just thought well, I'm going to a ranch, you'll be fine, they'll have roads there. So I continue to train on the roads, the streets around my neighborhood, and so that's what I did. I did my standard marathon training, you know, ramped up from wherever I've recovered from the marathon and ramped back up and train through the summer on on the roads around around me, around where I live in and in the neighborhood. I didn't really have any, I just I basically considered it a marathon and that was it. I didn't really have a concept of any anything beyond that. So I was really pretty confident going into this race. I had a you know very little in the way of nerves going in. I done the two marathons previously. I was fairly, fairly comfortable that I could finish the distance. I'm not super fast, my marathon times are not fast, but I can get through and and so I didn't really have any challenges other than the heat. So I had your Hearing Texas. It is very hot, and so training for this race the race being in September I was training through June, july, august in Houston, which is really challenging from a training perspective anyway. So other than that, though I had I'd really I didn't have any additional trainings. I was trying to avoid the main heat of the day, so I would go out and train early in the morning or very late at night and I would hit the humidity, but I would avoid Avoid the sun for the most part, and that work. Well, I mean, my training went well. It, it, it felt pretty good and I felt ready by the time I I went out there. So, yeah, I was feeling pretty good mentally, I think. Yeah, I mean I hadn't really, hadn't really considered how this race might go. I I literally considered it an extension of a marathon and I've done a marathon, so I I'm perfectly fine with this. I know I can do it. I'm going to show up on the day, I'm going to jog around my normal jog and you know, if I need to, I'll walk towards the end and I'll get across the finish line and I will then pack up and go have a beer at twisted X afterwards and that was it. That. That was the extent of my mental training. It was Very light. There wasn't really any any preparation other than that. Mentally, from a nutrition and hydration standpoint, I did realize I was going further than the marathon. So I did by myself a hydra hydration vest I think it was an orange mud hydration vest at that point and I had decided that every Sunday I would train with this vest on so that I could get used to running with it. And you know, I wasn't really sure from an aid station perspective what was going to be there or not be there. So I stuff this vest with absolutely everything I could find. Basically I ran self supported Throughout my training and so I ran, probably Every Sunday, 1520 miles or so through the heat of Houston self supported, with all this stuff, stuff in in my orange mud pack which, by the way, I never used orange mud after that. I've never used. I used it in this one race and I ditched it quickly afterwards and never used again. But what I was doing was running around in laps. So because I so this race is 50 K was 310 mile laps, 1020, 30 miles leading to the 50 K. So you run this 10 K loop three times. So I knew I was coming back to that. There was one other aid station midway through, but I knew I was coming back to the start finish area At least three times two times during the race and once at the end. So that's kind of how I trained to some degree, except I was doing five mile loops around my neighborhood so I put in enough enough like food and water to get myself around five miles and back, not really considering that 10 miles is a lot farther in the middle of the day. Then five miles was in a morning or at night, in the dark. So from a hydration perspective, I believe I had Gatorade back then. So this is back in 2017, I had Gatorade because that's what I was drinking when I did the marathon, so I would fill up with I forget which one one of the Gatorades, I suppose. And from a nutrition perspective, I was doing mostly gels, as many gels as I could get, and then I ended up supplementing with like a snack bar of some sort. So fast forward to race day. And so I've got my friend Brian and I. We went out. He was a big beer guy, so he was interested in hitting up the breweries. So we drove out together, rented this really, really low end motel somewhere near the just sorry, somewhere near the Twisted X brewery, because I wanted to go back there Once the race was done, change, shower and then get out to the brewery pretty quickly so I could go taste some of their excellent beer. So we strategically grabbed the. It wasn't even a hotel, the motel closest to the brewery, which turned out to be this really kind of low end motel. It really wasn't, it wasn't super great, but we did. We got out there, we drove out there and we went to just the King and we had a. We had a beer or two the evening before and had a great pizza and then and then we went to bed and I got up the next day. I think the race started at 7am. So I drove over there with Brian. He was going to be my crew, so to speak. He just kind of hung out at the start line drinking beer and waited for me to come around, like he didn't know what he was doing. He didn't really know that he was crew. He was just kind of hanging out for the day before. We went to beer later. So so we get there. I pin my badge on my shorts, because that's what trail runners do. I had read. So I, instead of pinning it in a marathon where everyone's got their bib on there like on their chest somewhere, I was like no, I'm going to be a really cool. I'm a trail runner now, so I'm going to pin it on my shorts because clearly, that's what. That's what distinguishes a trail runner from from a road runner. The location of your bib and yeah, so the gun. It was dark at the start. We made our way there, dropped our bag, brian put a chair out, I had my bottles full of Gatorade, I applied some sunscreen, which was a good, which was a good thought, because it was. So the temperature at that point was like high seventies, I would say, but it was supposed to go pretty high that afternoon. So so, yeah, I had put some sunscreen on ready to roll. So start line comes around it's still dark. At this point, I'd forgotten a headlight, so I didn't have a headlight. I was running with, like I was running with somebody. You had a head, like a head torch at that moment, and it didn't take long for the sun to come up, fortunately from a vision perspective. But yeah, that was a you know point. Number one for me was hey, don't forget a head torch. If you're going to start when it's dark, you need some way to actually see where the heck you're going. And so I very quickly realized within the first half a mile, that this was going to be quite different. I was on trail. It was rocky, it was the first, I think my two miles of that race is pretty much straight up a hill, and immediately I was like, oh heck, what is this? I didn't really train for hill, so yeah, so I'm trying to run up this hill because everybody else was running and on that first loop we hit we hit rocky trail. We hit a rocky Jeep road. I think we hit some dirt trail. There was loads of ups and downs and I realized it was a completely exposed trail and the sun was coming up and it was already starting to get hot. Now I did have a I wouldn't call it a hat. I had a for marathons. I had been running in a visor to keep the sun out to my face, so I had my, my, the same visor I would wear for my marathons. I had that on, but obviously it was exposed right on the top. So very quickly I felt the top of my head getting quite warm and, much to my chagrin, I saw a lot of people running off pretty quickly and going uphill and there was only like 20, I think 25 of us maybe in that first race doing the 50k. But I, you know, there was a couple around me but a lot more had run off ahead of me and I, you know, I thought I was reasonably quick, reasonably good at running. As I run around the neighborhood, really discovered, yeah, I'm definitely more back at the pack. And so I started chatting to the guy next to me who told me he was doing this race as a training race for another 50 mile. He had come up in the Dallas area and I was like, get out, how, how on earth are you doing a 50k as a training race for another race? I just couldn't, I couldn't quite wrap my head around around that concept at the time. And then so we chatted a little bit and and then he quickly ran off, ran off and kind of left me and so, yeah, and I had put on my watch at a Garmin 235, I think, at the time, but I had set alerts, much like I would have done during the marathon. I had set alerts for a run walk strategy. So I would run five minutes, walk one minute. Well, that went completely out of the window right at right at the get go as I was trying to run up the first two miles worth of hills, and so I tried to catch back up on that strategy throughout the whole first loop and then realized after that this was a really stupid strategy because it had me running up hills, walking down hills and it was getting really hot. So I decided to ditch running when it told me to run and walking when it told me to walk, and just kind of do what felt a bit more natural, like run the downhill, because that felt kind of good, and walk more of the up hills, because I was struggling to run them at this point anyway, about two thirds into the first loop. So yeah, but what I hadn't realized was that I couldn't turn that off. And so every five minutes, and then every one minute after that for the remainder of the day, my damn watch beeped and vibrated at me and I'm sure if anybody was around me they were really aggravated at that and I know it really aggravated me. They were pointing there every time. After that I've given up on the alerts because it really annoyed the hell out to me, to be honest. Oh, and the other thing yeah, right out of the gate I had brought some salt pills, but I put them in a bottle and trying to fit them in the orange mud pack space that I had. And so, as I left on that first mile, going uphill, close to everybody, the pills in the bottle were shaking constantly and making a rappeling noise and it like within the first quarter mile, it was driving me nuts and I assume it was driving everybody around me nuts too. So I had to. I made the executive decision to go ahead and, for some reason, ditch the salt pills. So I chucked them all. I just let them out of this bottle because I didn't quite know what else to do with them at the time. Believe it or not, I dropped all my salt pills. I didn't wait till I got back. I didn't come back in hand them to Brian, who was sitting at the start finish line. After the fit, I was embarrassed about the shaking and the noise it was creating, so I literally dropped them all. I handed a couple to people around me and put some in my pocket and dropped the rest Just to stop the rattling which was driving me absolutely nuts. So yeah, great decision from me there. So anyway. So I ran the first loop and that wasn't too bad. I was okay on the first loop as the sun was coming up. I got around in a pretty decent time and then the second loop started and I began walking up the hills. By the way, I never really experienced an ultra-aid station either. So, coming from a marathon, where you get water and a couple of gels at best, I rolled up to the start-finish area, which I couldn't actually see because it was dark when we set off. But when I got around at the end of the first loop, the light had started to come up it wasn't super hot yet, but it was definitely light and I could suddenly see that I mean, there was like sandwiches, there were chips, there were I don't know Pringles and M&Ms and all kinds of stuff on the jelly what do you call them? Gummy bears? Yeah, all over the table, and a whole bunch of other stuff too, and I was like what the hell is it? This is awesome, absolutely loving it. So I'm, you know, feasting on that and I took way too long on this race at this aid station, just kind of chilling out, thinking, oh yeah, I'm a third done with this, and maybe it took me two hours to get around the 10 miles on that first loop, if I recall something like that, pretty slow, but yeah, I was loving the aid stations. My eyes were wide open after that, like this is the way to run when they feed you every few miles here with this awesome smorgasbord of really kickass foods, so, yeah. So I started off on my second loop and that's when the sun really came out, and before I left I had meant to put on more sunscreen and I didn't, and so about a third of the way into the second loop I really started to get hot, hot, hot, hot. And yeah, that's where it all started to fall, apart from me and over the remainder of that second loop I got hotter and hotter. The route was very exposed, so there wasn't really any shade. At this point I had pretty much I wouldn't say stopped, but I was very reticent to run and make myself any hotter by running when I was already getting really, really hot out on this exposed Jeep trail. And I had. You know, when you run marathons you wear like a singlet right, you got cut off things. So I was starting to feel a bit of sunburn on my shoulders and my face, my nose, my knees, for some reason. I remember my knees starting to hurt somewhat, and so I'm looking now I'm looking, I realize I need to. I'm losing hydration as well. So I wasn't hydrating properly, I wasn't taking on enough water and I'm starting to get sunburn. I think I finished that second loop in pretty rough shape and I sat down with Brian and I kind of said I'm not sure if, I'm not sure if I want to go out and do another loop, I feel burnt, I don't feel great, a little nauseous, a little dizzy, and he's like well, you came here to do, you came here to do a 50K. You should go around and you can walk it if you want, and then we'll go for a beer. So I was like, okay. So I once again failed to put on sunscreen and off. I went on loop three and I pretty much walked that whole 10 miles. I was very slow. I got more and more sunburned, I got more and more dehydrated. I didn't have any salt. I don't know why I didn't take salt at the aid station, looking back Like why did I not do that? I sat at one aid station, the halfway aid station on the loop, for probably 20 minutes, 25 minutes. Yeah, I just I was not having a great time feeling ill, start of heat stroke, and so I'm really questioning my decision to be out there at this point. Like, what on earth am I doing here? What did I get myself into? This is absolutely nothing like a marathon. By the way, the Houston marathons are in January, so my only experience of doing these kind of distances in relatively cool slash, cold January temperatures here I am, you know, three quarters of the way now into a 50K in September in Central Texas, which is at this point probably high 90s and battering down with sun with nowhere to go to get around it out on a Jeep trail with stone and rock, just bouncing that heat right up at me. So yeah, I was really feeling it at this point. I trudged on very slow. I'm right towards the back of the pack. The time for each loop my first loop, I think I said, was two hours. The second loop was probably two and a half, but the third loop that I was doing it probably took me four hours to do a 10 mile loop, which is ridiculous, but that's how slow I was going and obviously the longer I was out there, the more I was getting sunburned and and crispy. You know, the top of my head hurt. I have a little bald patch on the top of my head that got absolutely fried. So yeah, I was not having fun at all. I was utterly miserable, sunburned, very upset with myself, upset that I couldn't run, like I thought I should be able to just upset with the day with the heat, and I had. For some reason, I chose to grab some M&Ms and I put them in a pack like the peanut M&Ms. I put them in my pack I had two of those big yellow packs of them put them in my orange mud some vest and figured I would just eat those as I was going around, because that would be kind of cool. And so I did that. And these, these M&Ms, the chocolate, and I'm just melted so much that it started dribbling down down the pack. So when I actually went to eat these things, I had chocolate all over my hands. I didn't know what to do. I mean, it was a proper mess and still people were running by me and I was just really angry that they were able to run and I was not due to my bad decisions and maybe they were just better than me. Either way, I was really upset and I think I got. Looking back, I was probably a mile to a mile and a half from the finish and utterly looking forward to getting out of the sun and I just had enough. I, I there was a ledge kind of some steps coming down the trail at this point and I stopped and I, just I sat down it's the only time I've done that in the middle of the race, actually on the trail purposely. I just, I just had enough. I reached the end for that day for me, and it was about a mile off the actual finish. I sat down and was feeling very sorry for myself. And maybe two or three minutes later, I'm not sure, a lady ran by me who I now know is a lady by the name of, I think, meredith Teranova, and her husband, Paul Teranova, quite well known. They were running the race. I think Paul had obviously finished at this point. Away ahead of me, meredith ran up to me and stopped and said oh, did you finish already? You're coming back out here to check on some money. And I was like no, no, I haven't finished, I'm just, I've had enough, I'm just, I'm done for this day. And so she said well, if you haven't finished, why are you sitting down here. I said I'm done and she said, no, no, you're not, get up and walk, it's only. You're only about a mile, a mile and a half from the finish. All you have to do is walk it in and then you're done sitting here, you're not done. So I was like, oh, who is this lady giving me aggro on the trail? You know? Like why are you yelling at me to get up and move? So, not wishing, you know, having gotten yelled at, not wishing to get yelled at more, I stood up and began walking and she ran off ahead of me into the distance and I thought nothing more of it really. I was like, oh, there's another person running by me. I'm probably last now, so I'm just going to carry on walking to the finish. And so that's what I did. And the finish of the race is sort of like an S bend. You kind of curve left, go down a down a short sort of 15 foot slope and then bend right and run in about 100 yards to the finish line. So you can't actually see the finish line when you're pretty close to it. So as I approached the finish line, I made that first left and came down the slope, and then you can see everything off to your right, you can see the finish line itself. And so as I came down the slope I was slowly jogging down the slope because it was a downhill I noticed that the lady that was just talking to me had run on ahead and she had grabbed everybody at the finish line. And because I had told her this, I had also told her this was my first ultra, first 50 K. So she had run to the finish line, grabbed everybody that was there, people who have finished, parts of the crew, the race team, really anybody that was there, it seemed, and she had got them. She had got them lined up at the finishing shoot, clapping, cheering, waving, just for me. There was nobody behind me, nobody else coming in, and so as I came down that hill, they all kind of broke out in a cheer and a clap and sort of encouraging me to kind of get the final 100 yards into the finish. And it was just the state I was in at the time, coming down that little drop, that 15 foot drop, to make that little right hand bend to the finish. I just it made me cry then and it makes me cry thinking about it now because I was in such a rough state and for somebody to take the time to go and do that on my behalf, to run to the finish and to purposely get these people lined up, the cheering, the clapping, the encouragement to get over the line really was an experience I will never forget. And it's still like I said, it still chokes me up thinking about it even now. So, and that's really so, I did finish, I went over the finish line and it took me hours and hours to finish that race, but I eventually got there, burnt, dehydrated, swearing I would never do this again. But that experience was really what opened my eyes to what the difference is with trail and ultra running to the road races. The camaraderie between people and, you know, folks helping, helping each other to get to the end of that particular day or that particular journey was just looking back. It was just an incredible experience and I think part of me realized that, hey, you can, you can do these things. And I kind of left that guy sitting there on the steps, you know, a mile from the finish. I left him there and I became somebody that wants to get to the finish and wants to encourage others to get to the finish and I just think that's incredible. And the community I've found since with ultra running has been the exact same way it's it's all the same. It's all about getting each other and to where we want to be and helping each other. So, yeah, I felt pretty rough right after finishing that race. I don't think it exists anymore, but they did have a really nice kind of little I don't even know what you call it like a rock pool kind of waterfall thing on the ranch that you could go sit in. It was ice cold so I got to at least cool down and stop the heat stroke. We eventually went back to the CD motel and we went over to the twisted ex brewery. But I I don't know why, but when I get dehydrated I lose kind of hearing. It's like I've gone underwater. So I struggled to hear and I lost taste in my mouth. So it wasn't a super pleasant experience. But Brian tells me the beers he had were awesome, so I assume they still are awesome. But yeah, just but that really that experience at the end. They really opened my eyes to what ultra running is and what the community is, and I made all the mistakes in the book on that first one. I know that's a big cliched, but I really did make every single mistake that you could make on that first race. But I realized, even if you do, that you can still finish these things. You know it. It's really the mental side of it, the attitude, that will get you over the line as much, if not more so, than than the physical side. So you know, if you're listening to this and considering your first 50k, definitely a few things Check the weather, make sure you train appropriately for the weather. I trained at night on roads. This was a race that occurred during the day in the summer on trail. Big, you know, big mistake from me right there. Check your hydration. I was okay with the Gatorade, but from a, you know, I didn't carry enough with me. So I needed to carry more hydration with me, rather than the, the two little, the two little 16 ounce bottles that I had the day called for more than that as I was going around and I wasn't getting enough Hydration. So check, check your hydration, check your fluid levels. Have a better eating strategy. The gels were okay, but I got sick of those and when they get hot they get sticky and gooey and it's just nasty, and then I switched to chocolate M&Ms, which was another disastrous decision. Those went the same way. So, yeah, definitely think about your, your nutritional strategy like, what are you gonna eat, what can you eat? And try all this stuff out In situ before you get to the race. Like, try and replicate the race as closely as you can Somewhere near your location before you actually get to drive out there. Yeah, I mean, so that was my experience, but I had a crap race. It was a crap race, but I learned so much and my eyes were open to the ultra community and the and the just the super friendly attitude that the folks go there. So I guess I hope, hopefully you got some insight from that. That's where I started this ultra journey and from there I decided, okay, if I can do 50, mate, 50k, Maybe there are other races that are a bit closer to me that I can run that are sort of later in the year, from a Houston perspective, where it's not quite 90 to 100 degrees. So I began looking around and I got into trail racing over trex, texas. I spent 2018 Running just about every race they they'd had at the time. So, yeah, but I loved it and I found a group of people that were into the same thing, that that I was, and Experiencing the same thing, and I think you know people going through shared trauma like that. It really it really breaks you down and it opens you up and you you're honest and raw with each other in a way that you may not Ever be with anybody else or you may not be With your significant other. It's just these are people that are going through the same thing, so that that shared trauma really does bond people together and that's why I think it's such a close-knit group. You might call it a niche sport, but it's growing really quick now. But you know, just being around people like that and you have to be positive to finish these races that's something else I learned from this one, like the mental attitude, the positivity, so it really it really sort of forces you to Outthink yourself and become a more positive, focused individual, and I thought that was, you know, something worth Investigating more. So, yeah, I spent a long time after the whole next year kind of finding all the local trail races and running all of them and getting to know some of the people out on the trails and Getting to know myself a little bit more through some failures. My first 50 mile was I finished, but again I had a really rough time past 35, and Then, I think a month later, I went and ran the fastest 50 mile ever over at Brassus Bend that I had run. So you know, things can change and and one race doesn't whether it's good or bad doesn't necessarily reflect what's going to happen on the next race. So, but anyway, I felt like I should share my first race experience and why I Continued into the sport after that, despite the disaster that it was. It really it really set the scene for me and I have thoroughly enjoyed exploring myself, exploring Other areas of the country. I since Started doing this back over in the UK as well, and there are certainly some differences that I hope to get into with one guest, with racing over there or racing anywhere internationally, really. But yeah, I, maybe you've got something of value from this, maybe not, I don't know, but either way, this is me and I definitely appreciate you sticking around and Listening to me ramble on a little bit. So I've been your host. My name is Richard Glee. Trails don't end, they just lead to new horizons. So, and until next time, remember to run long and run strong and keep choosing to enjoy.

Voiceover: 36:24

Thanks for running with us at the choose to endure podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. Keep racking up the miles and the stories and we'll catch you at the next trailhead. Until then, remember to run long, run strong.