From: Doug Freese (dfreese@hvc.rr.com)
Subject: Bull Run 50 mile Trail Race
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 11:40:49 GMT

I'm not big on race reports but what the hell. This is about 
my 15th race at this this distance and I'm lucky if I can 
distinguish one race from another. 

Last year I had added Bull Run(Virginia) into the spring race 
list. What I remember about the first race BR last 
year was the overall heat/humidity and the first 16 miles.
The first 16 miles is flat but when wet, it is 
heavy clay and very slippery. Last year I ran about 9:17 
and finished in 31st placed and third in age. 

This year I ran 8:44(33 minutes quicker than last year), 
and placed 29 but still third. Just for some 
rough numbers - the race had 315 sign up, 289 show 
up for the race and 254 finished. At sign up time 
there were 82 men in the 50-59 group so I was 
not third of three old goats. :)  

This year we did not have the wet course but did 
have 60+ degrees and 99.99% humidity. If this 
was a summer race the conditions would be ideal.
Since I live in upstate NY, I only had shorts 
on once and did all my long runs in 20-40 degrees.
Bottom line, zero heat acclimation and scared shit. 

I'm not going to give you mile by mile time and 
experience for two reasons;  one, there "ain't" 
no mile markers and I can remember shit. What I do 
recall is passing a 24.5 mile marker and judging my 
half way time at 4:15. My goal was to slip under nine 
hours and my half way split generated a tirade of 
self directed expletives for running  a dumb 
first half. I'm usually very conservative and try to 
run negative splits. In the first half I usually walk 
many of the ups to conserve for the second half. At 35 
miles I still felt good and started to run just about 
every inch. I kept waiting for the well to 
run dry at every bend in the trail. The worse
thing that might happen would be I'd have to 
walk all the way to the finish.   

At one of the aid stations that I got to 
hit twice, were hot grilled cheese sandwiches. 
I had two and thought I'd entered Nirvana. As 
for fluids I had my UD single bottle and emptied 
that between aid stations which were roughly 
an hour apart. They were serving Cytomax which 
happens to be a favorite of mine. I did my share 
of mountain dew, coke and even put some water to
my lips. They also had some Gatorade and I asked 
how it was selling. The usual response - they treat 
it like the bubonic plague. 

At 10 miles to go I had 2 hours to get under nine 
hours. One must keep in mind this is undulating 
trails so averaging 12 minute miles is humping. 
In effect I did this in 1:44. 

As I'm driving home, mentally going over my race
and wondering why I went out so fast and would I have 
done even better if I ran the first half slower. Then 
the light bulb went off, and I should know better, 
I'm thinking the race is symmetric in effort. 
The first 16 is damn near flat and of course my 
half way time would be skewed. In effect I had run 
conservatively in effort but not on the clock. Duh!

The race as always was a class act and anyone wanting
to step up to this distance, give it a shot. 

I never did get to meet Bill LaDieu and will let
him tell his story. 

 

 
-- 
Caveat Lector
"the further you go outside, the further you go inside" - B. McKibben 
Doug Freese 
dfreese@hvc.rr.com