Frisco 50k: Out (Miles 1 to 15.5)

The race was off at 6:01 a.m.!  Andrew, Colin, and I were out front from the gun, although there was a man and a woman with us for a bit as we eased down to pace.  I have run the Frisco Trail multiple times before (including pacing my husband in this marathon in 2011!), so I knew exactly what to expect from the start through mile 13.1, which is mostly just a rails to trails dirt trail that looks the same the entire race after the first bit on a paved part of the trail in town.  Our race simply went out 15.55 miles northwest then turned around and came back south.  The wind was light from the north, which was ideal, and it was around 52 degrees at the start - I'd worried a lot about this race being hot and windy, but it ended up being nice!

We got only 2 photos of us 3 together
somehow, & none were good

Andrew made a playlist for the race, which I give him a lot of props for because it was a last minute request (the day before the race), and served as our mobile DJ through the race.  The 3 of us chatted, enjoyed the music selection, and felt like we could run all day at the 6:45-6:59 pace we set off at.  The trail has a lot of long inclines and declines, and while not steep, they influence pace from mile to mile so I knew we wouldn't be perfectly even on our splits.  I generally do not look at my watch in races because I am most successful racing by feel, but I didn't know what a 50k should feel like so I paid attention to most of my splits in this one.  The effort felt very "go-all-day" pace, and spirits were high in our pack!

I told Colin that his hydration pack made me
think of Robocop

My family was armed with all of my nutrition and with plans to meet me at every aid station except for the turn around (my friend Jeff was working that station and took my bottle out there for me, which allowed my family to stay at the most remote station at mile 13/mile 18 for both times I passed it).  There were 11 aid stations on the course, approximately every 2.5 miles.  Much of the trail runs parallel to a road, so my family was able to drive along the road and stop as needed.  The race rules were that runners could take aid from their crew but only at aid stations (e.g., they couldn't give aid in other locations on the course).  I was happy about this because I didn't think I could take 10 gels [insert barf emoji here], so I had 5 bottles of UCAN lined up for my way out and 5 bottles of nuun with gels taped to them for the trek back (spoiler: I only got about half of this down, but I'm going to do an entire post on nutrition and what I learned).  Seeing Jon and my parents every 2.5 miles throughout the race was a huge blessing, and Jon did amazing at handing me my bottles!

All of our hand-offs were flawless!

At some point early on, when Andrew was messing with his phone that was playing our music, I told him that he should take a video, and I loved how it turned out (view it here)!  We were very optimistic early in the race.  It really just felt like a training run.  Marathon pace is never easy for me - in the early miles of a marathon I'd describe it as brisk but very maintainable - but 50k pace was easy!  We engaged in a lot of fun banter, and I just enjoyed myself.  I also kept thinking how great my TFL felt, and how thankful that made me!

The farther we got out on the course, the rougher it became.  None of it is technical trail, but the initial miles were very smooth crushed limestone and farther out became more like a poorly maintained country dirt road.  Although it barely sprinkled during the race, we'd had a lot of rain the night before so it was also muddier the farther out we got.  I still have no idea how much the trail slowed us down (vs. if the race had been on pavement or even if the smooth limestone spanned the entire race), but it certainly didn't help us.

The other non-winning photo of us 3 running
together - I was caught when pointing back
at Andrew & telling Jon to give him that bottle

The miles flew by, and at mile 11.5 we were at the noticeable decline section, which spanned from there to the turn around.  I expected we'd be a little faster going down it, having run miles 11.5-13.1 before, so wasn't surprised when we dropped some splits in the high-6:30s.  I also expected we would slow coming back up it!  We did another lovely video at 13.1, which was the marathon turn around on the course and which we passed in 1:29:19.  The race also had distances of 8k, half marathon, full marathon, and 50 miles, so we'd passed all of the turn arounds except for the 50 mile.

Before I knew it, we reached our turn around, where we also recorded what ended up being our final self video of the race!  There was an aid station about 50 meters before the turn around, but very little fanfare at the actual turn, aside from that we made for ourselves.  Our time was 1:45:10ish at the turn around, so I told the guys we just needed to run the second half 11 seconds faster.  We all felt like that was easily achievable at that point...

The turn around as displayed on the race's Facebook

The story continues here...