Run for the Ranch 6 hour: Laps 1-8

The short version is here, and pre-race is here.

The half, full, marathon relay, and 6 hour races all started together. Eric, Colin, Spencer, and I immediately settled in together as planned. Spencer had won the 1 mile that took place 45 minutes before the other races, and wanted to do 13 miles total so planned to run 3 laps with us. I was super excited and a race environment makes me want to race, but clearly no one needs to be racing a quarter mile into a 6 hour race. I aimed for that "run all day pace" feeling since we were, pretty much, running all day. I didn't look at my watch during the event, but early on Eric kept us updated on our splits. I think he was more concerned about going out too fast than Colin and I were, since he'd done 39.3 miles before with 26.2 being smooth and 13.1 being rough, per his report. Since I had no idea what I was doing, I didn't have that healthy fear. The paces we would run all seemed so much easier than any other race paces I'd done, it didn't seem like 7:30 was really any different from 8:00.

Lap 1 - This one consisted of non-stop chatter. We talked about a little bit of everything, laughed, complained about the hairpin turn, and wished away the headwind on the long stretch going west. It felt like just a normal easy pace long run. We were joined by a man who was running the marathon, looking to negative split a 3:20 - after he left us, we didn't pass him back, so hopefully he did it!

Looking happy...

...yet...

...very cold

Lap 2 - This was pretty much a repeat of lap 1, except without marathon guy. Lots of talking and I felt invincible. I was also trying to pose for photos when I saw Julie taking them.

Wahoo

Lap 3 - Another lots of talking and super relaxed lap. Spencer finished when he hit 10 miles and wished us well. I told him to tell the Miles from Mentor message group that we were in good spirits. Only 30-some miles to go!

Power of the pack

Lap 4 - We had been dropping the pace just a tad as the race progressed - which is typical of an easy long run, but maybe not something we should have been doing in this race. My splits for miles 11-13 were 7:35, 7:39, 7:14. The 7:14 was because I jumped into a porta potty very quickly during the 7:39 mile (so that one was probably more like 7:19) then reeled the guys back in. I tried to take my time catching back up, but I was anxious to rejoin the group because it's always harder solo. Eric was monitoring our splits, and kept telling us we were a little fast, but no one did anything about it. I think we passed the half marathon point in 1:43.

After a few laps, I learned the
professional photographer's location

Ultra fun

Lap 5 - On this lap, I noticed a decrease in conversation, so I brought up my proposed game: we pick a theme word for every lap, and try to use it as many times as we can during that lap. I got the idea from the book Running Man when they had a theme word every day they were running across the Sahara Desert. I'd already talked to Colin about it and he wasn't interested, so I told Eric his vote would be the tie breaker. He said he didn't think he was going to be talking much more and that he wasn't feeling very well. I encouraged him that it could turn around any moment, and I offered him UCAN if his nutrition wasn't settling well. My word game was vetoed, and Eric stopped at the end of this lap. 

Lap 6 - By now, the field was thinning out with a lot of half runners finished. We lapped runners from all of the different events, and I never knew who we were racing, who we were passing, or who we were lapping - but I had a pretty good idea that we were leading the 6 hour race. I felt bad that Eric had pulled out but thought he would possibly sit out a lap then join back in; when I mentioned that to Colin he said, "That's an option??!". I've run many, many training miles with Colin, some of them on the same road the race was on, so it just felt like a normal training day at that point. I didn't think much about what was ahead, which I think served me well.

Lapping a marathoner

Lap 7 - On lap 7, our friends Missy and Rebecca showed up, and they were all-star cheerleaders! Colin and I continued a little faster than we should have, clocking 7:29, 7:19, 7:30, 7:28, 7:17, 7:20 for miles 17-22. I'd wanted no faster than 7:45 and preferably 8:00, but since I wasn't looking at my watch and we no longer had Eric monitoring splits I didn't realize we'd sped up. At about mile 22 we climbed the hill of the loop, and Colin pulled a little ahead of me. He is better on hills than I am, but he then continued putting distance on me. I didn't feel comfortable speeding up so I let him go. I was staying right around 7:30 - he had some 7:00ish miles in there! The clock was on 2:58 when I passed through for lap 7, so I told myself "you only have to do 6 laps in the time you just did 7". Nothing to it, right? Halfway there, time-wise.

Lap 8 - I was solo now, and the wind kept picking up. The marathon point felt like a good milestone, though during this lap was the first time I started having some doubts. To hit my goal, I had to finish a marathon then run 16.3 more miles...seems a little crazy, eh? I started thinking I should feel better than I did, considering I was running 1:15ish/mile slower than if I had been racing a marathon. I started thinking that I felt better during the 30 mile training run than I felt during this race (which was accurate, but probably not encouraging). I felt like I was running a little low on fuel, and started wondering if I wasn't taking enough to account for the cold weather, since you burn more glycogen when it's cold. I took a SIS gel, which has over 200 calories and is sugary sweet immediate carbs, at the end of that lap. Those are really hard for me to choke down, but I think it helped! I crossed the finish for the marathon at 3:23:59-3:24:00. That mark gave me a boost (plus reminded me that I ran plenty of marathons over that time in my 20s!), and I was off to chase my next milestone, a new distance PR.

The story continues here.