50 Miles is a LONG Ways

Saturday- 50 miles- 7:15:45

Wow, 50 miles is a long ways! All seemed to go as planned...I woke up at 3:30am ate 300cals of pop tarts, drank a 12oz coke, tried to wake up, packed up the gear and headed out to start my long day at 4am. struggling to walk the 1/4 mile with a bag filled with 30lbs of drinks and long run aid station gear... sucked....of course the bag handles broke.

What was in the bag? 4 bottles of water-60oz each, 9 cans of mtn dew, 19 gels, a bottle of Gatorade, body glide, sunglasses, a shirt, and sunscreen

I ran a 2 mile loop in 17minutes then began doing the north camp base perimeter loop following the fence-line (which is 4 miles- 3 of which are blacktop, and one is HARD packed dirt/sand/cement)

The idea was to run this one 12 times for 50 miles, unless I was slower than expected in which case I would bail at the 7 hour mark. I figured If I ran 8 min miles and allowed 2 minutes for "transition time" at my makeshift aid station I could run a 7 hour 50. Pretty ambitious.

I had pre-dissolved 12 NUUN tablets into my water and planned to fill my trusty Montrail bottle with this each lap, as well as, drink AT the aid station, and pick up a gel. This ended up working well as it took most of the 4 mile loop to drain the bottle and I took a 60-120sec walk break 2 miles into the loop each lap to hit the gel.

I wanted to try and consume 50% of what I expended and ended up doing about that. Here is the breakdown:

180oz of water ingest (with 12 NUUN tablets dissolved in it)
72 oz of mtn dew
252 oz total of ingested liquid or about 35oz per hour... I don't think I could absorb much more than that...none was forced- just drank to thirst..but by the 5th hour I was draining the bottle in the first 3 miles of the loop, so could have used more (or a bigger bottle:-)
12 NUUN tablets ingested for 2000mg of NA+, 600mg of K+ (this would be about 6 S! caps), but NUUN has more than twice the K+.... this worked great! despite it being above 100 degree temps I never cramped at all.
11 gels for 1210 calories (one per loop after the first)
6 mtn dews cans- 1020 calories
450cals ingested 25min before start of run
2230 cals consumed during, 2680 Cals processed during, or a touch over 50% of expenditure....this is really good for me
5 pee breaks
1 Aleve tablet at 34miles

Quads totally fried!!!.....They were fine for 5 hours then started to get sore, and by the last 8 miles I was doing a slowed shuffle at 8:30 pace, and my transition time had greatly increased to 3-4minutes.

Splits:
14miles- 2:00
26miles- 3:40
50K- 4:22
35miles-5 hours
42miles- 6:02

The course has no hills, thus It HURT!......I like hills and the exact same leg muscle contractions at the same joint angles really wears on you.

OBVIOUSLY dirt is always better too... But, you get in what you can.

I feel pretty good about this effort and plan to follow it with a 40 miler in 3-4 more weeks. That will make the "3 is the magic number" total pre-race, and also allow me plenty of recovery time before Vermont. I don't want to repeat previous mistakes and go LONG only 2-3 weeks out from my focus race.

I suspect I will be really sore tomorrow....good thing everything on base is only one story high!