Note: I had an unnecessary 7 months to mull over this post......here it finally is
Yikes did I learn a lot from this virgin experience. Never more appropriate is the phrase, "If I knew then what I know now.....". Below is a break down of what I felt was Good, what was Bad (but not terrible) and what was Ugly, ie, a disaster. In bullet form this is the take away, the lessons learned for next time or advice for willing virgins:
The Good:
- The Craic was Mighty. So many different backgrounds, shapes & sizes, strategies; one goal. The peeps were for the most part extremely outgoing and easy going. Everyone was cheering each other on daily and was willing to help at the drop of a hat. I guess I would compare it a bit to triathlon WRT the support for other competitors, but maybe a little more humble people. It was specifically GREAT to meet the likes of Amy and Greg, Fern and Red respectively. Very sound peeps. From our brief stints hanging out, they are the epitome of people whom get the most out of life; to merely say they are inspirational would be underselling them.
- Cynthia from GORE. In need of motivation or excessive smiling and laughing, fear not cauz shortly after 7pm every night Cynthia’s on the mic. Clearly unrehearsed/unintentional humor, her time on the mic was better then some stand-up I’ve paid money for; it only got better as the week progressed. She did this nightly “King and Queen” presentation where people were nominated as the days King and Queen of TRR; each getting complimentary GORE-TEX jackets (WOW see below for how awesome the GORE sponsorship is). Before getting to the worthiness of the days King and Queen, she would entertain us with some motivating story, often relating it to us the “Masters of the Extreme”. Then when it came to King and Queens or other giveaways she had this unintentional, hilarious way of interpreting/presenting the details. E.G., One team she called up was named “Lard going Hard”. Innocently (on the mic) she asked the first guy if he was Lard or if he was Hard. I can relate Cynthia to that one wicked cool Mom of your friends in high school. Her infectious presence was not only at night; everyday she was at the finish line, sometimes for hours, welcoming everyone with smiles, congrats and of course gu-brew and water. Big Ups Cynthia, you represent GORE well. They are privileged to have you as their face for TRR!
- GORE. Segueing nicely, GORE really steps up to sponsor this event. Between the nightly giveaways and podium prizes, the ever-present regeneration station (power, chairs, snacks, drink), the swag giveaways and who knows what else, they really help make this one of the “most looked after” events. I was a little skeptical things would be as good as I had read about in the past. But this topped my charts for races. Big Ups GORE. Keep it up. I will truly consider GORE products in the future when gearing up.
- TRR Staff. Tons of them and more then helpful. Within limits, whatever you needed they were there to help; what was theirs was yours whether around camp or at the checkpoints. Particularly notable was the CP2 crew from FLA. Always lively, always ready to fill you with liquid and solids and never short on small cowboys! Across the board the staff at CPs were ideal. They were proactive in asking what you wanted (gu-brew, water, etc) and they were always ready to fill your camel, handie, or mouth. On a few occasions the CPs were slightly short on selection, but that was down to access, i.e., where it was tough to get vehicles to locations with supplies. That’s not me complaining.
- Grub. The food was outstanding, especially considering the logistics of our nightly local. Similarly to Cynthia's stand-up, I've paid for worse. For all of the nights except two in Camp Hale, Gourmet Cowboy fed us. TRR included buffet style breakfast and dinner. Breakfast was scrambled eggs, bacon, potatoes, cereal, oatmeal, fruit, bread, peanut butter (key), juice, coffee, and sometimes a selection of tea. There were probably other things but I was sticking to cereal and oatmeal so I didn’t pay too much attention to the hot food. There was always plenty and the only issue, as with all buffets, is knowing when to stop.
- 120 miles of TRAILS. I've never run 120 miles of anything in one week, and quite possibly I've only touched that sum a few times in two consecutive weeks. However after 6 days and 120 trail miles, my legs were not even sore. Yes my toe was f-ed (see Ugly below), but my legs were fine. I have certainly been a lot worse after a 5K road race. If fact a few weeks after TRR, I did a half ironman and the 13 miles of road running had me crazy sore for more then a week after. It says a lot for trails. I am definitely sold on trails and I wouldn't hesitate to suggest this race to anyone and everyone.
- Drawstring shoe bags. These are very handy for organizing stuff within the big duffel bag they give you. This bag is huge and and you can imagine since there is no rigid structure to a duffel bag things tend to end up all over the place. I had about 3 or 4 with me, but another 3-4 would have been good. Use them for dirty clothes, clean clothes, dirty shoes, nutrition, general stuff, etc. You can never have enough.
- Honey Stinger Nutrition. HS sponsored JP and I with $150 of product each for the race and it treated me very well. Sponsored or not I would have been using HS anyway as I use their products religiously. THANK YOU HS for keeping me out of the red; do you have any products for cramps! (See Ugly below)
- Swag. Just look a the pics. Granted race entry was a $1350 each, but considering the food in and out of race and the logistics required getting our gear and camp from A to B to C to D to E you could argue our entry fee was spent before we arrived. There was some fantastic swag. Leading up to the race, one couldn't help but think that due to the state of the economy, the swag would be below the acclaimed TRR standard. By no means the case.
- Pre-race. Duffel bag, technical TRR T, shoe dryers, penguin wash, bottle of saltstick capsules, tech TRR hat, Inov8 towel, Nathan handie, gel and energy drink
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| Pre-race Swag |
- In-race. GORE Windstopper gloves, two Inov8 buffs, GORE Windstopper scarf, Inov8 rubber bowl, Inov8 trail runners (won)
- Compression Tights. My 2XU compression tights were a daily/nightly feature. They felt like heaven on my legs but immediately post race and then overnight sleeping.
- Handie. On some days I tried using the camelbak, but by far the handie was the most effective for hydration. There were enough CPs out there that we did not have to worry about carrying liters of water. The handie was the easiest to run with too; the camelbak was hot and shifted around constantly. There were smart ways to carry the necessary gear items, so the pack was not essential.
- Ear Plugs and Eye Mask. Wickid essential for a good nights sleep. For whatever reason some of our fellow trail stridders were under the impression that the tent walls were actually 3 foot thick sound proof nylon. This was especially true of the 3-day-ers. So ear plugs were key. The eye mask came in handy for the ritual afternoon snooze or for stray flashlights in the middle of the night. In camp, our tents were packed tight; TRR crew set them up sharing stakes between tents. Who could blame them having to put up and take down over 150 tents/day. Nothing was personal; even flatulence was communal.
- Air Mattress. Yes it took a lot of space in the duffel (JPs), but it was definitely worth it. I'm not sure we would have got as good as sleep without it. The ground surface each night was unpredictable at best. As I said, the crew are laying 150+ tents per day among other tasks, so there's no time for clearing rocks or picking 150 perfect spots. Some times there were rocks and sometimes wickid hard, long grass; all negated by the air mattress. We brought our own. You can rent them off TRR. We were on a double, so at times it was like a water bed with each others shifting, but that's small potatoes compared to having to sleep on a rock.
- Two Types of Shoes. I took Salomon Speed Cross 2 (non-gortex) and Newtons Momentums and switched depending on the day. For the longer days where was to be decent footing/traction I used the Newtons as they were closer to a road shoe. On the shorter more technical days I used the Salomons. This plan worked like a dream. I had not issues on the technical sections and no blisters on the longer days.
The Bad:
- Cycling Jerseys. Not completely Ugly,
but not great either, was the cycling jersey idea. It worked from a storage and
access standpoint, but if the jersey was too loose then it bounced due to the
weight in your pockets. If it was too tight then it tended to ride up on
the front. Also bad was that I did not train with the jerseys full with the standard daily TRR
luggage. That may have ruled these out.
I took it for granted that if they work in cycling and in tri, they'd work here. Monkey.
- Shorts with one small pocket. Again not completely Ugly, but next time for an ultra I would get shorts that have larger or more pockets. The shorts I used only had one small key/iPod mini pocket, so I just about squeeze one gel in them. This was limiting. When I was using the camelbak it would have been easier to get gels from my pockets rather then having to take the pack off to get a gel. Alternatively the newer camelbaks have pockets on the front straps, but more pockets in the shorts would definitely be a plus, since I would skip the camelbak all together next time.
- 9am start Stage 1. Stage 1 was in the "high desert" with little to no tree cover, so it was always going to be a hot stage. Therefore the earlier the better in my mind, but I can understand if there are logistics to sort out, e.g., people getting to the race start, getting everyone's duffels, etc. I'm sure I would have commented equally for it being too early had it been the other way around. Its a lose-lose unless you start somewhere else geographically. Bottom line is be prepared for the heat; suntan lotion, water, salt tabs, hat/visor, etc.
- Bringing Food. Plain and simple; it's not necessary. We thought we would need it for lunches but the reality is with the finish-line nutrition followed by a HS protein bar, your held until dinner, which every night, was a massively amazing spread. In future I'd leave everything home and only take a few bars of dark chocolate, some beef jerky and green tea, otherwise your just packing it and moving your stash around the duffel all week.
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| Finish-Line Refuel |
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| Fire it up - Dinner Day 5 |
- Computer. Frankly, there is no need other then full size typing blog stuff. The phone would suffice. It's not worth lugging the laptop.
- Medical Tent. The lines were huge in the mornings and most of the days the staff weren't very helpful in my opinion. There were a few (maybe only one) exception and JP can attest to that as he got good help from one guy specifically. Thankfully, I didn't spend much time there and thankfully I didn't break my toe earlier in the week. It may have been more useful if there was just someone handing out supplies as I did most of my own taping work. I got the impression that a few of the staff didn't appreciate the scale of the what us trail striders were attempting.
- My Gas. WOW JP how did you cop with that! Where the compression tights were good for the legs they were bad for delayed release.
The Ugly:
- Cramps. From the very first CP 1 on day one, I had upper abdomen cramps that I could not shake. It was a disaster. It limited my speed and probably drove JP insane when he was rearing to go. I couldn't really pin it. I have been in altitude (CO) plenty of times; I have skied here a few seasons, did 5 days on the 10th Mountain Division trails (with JP on similar trails to TRR) and raced the Wild West Rely (200miles/6 man team) and never had problems. Some peeps I asked advised that you can come to altitude 10 times and not problems, but on the 11th time it can kill you. Affects were unpredictable. When I first got in town a day before the race, I had pretty big headaches, so I proceeded to horse the water in to keep dehydration off. When the cramps set in, I didn't think that I was dehydrated and I tried relentlessly to take on tons of water and salt capsules. None of it worked. If I have 5 gears of running pace, I was stuck in 2nd. I'm not sure what I would do in the future. Maybe come to CO a little bit earlier to get acclimated? Try to get some altitude training in prior to the race? One thing that might have helped a bit was to stop wearing the compression shirts. This allowed my chest to expand a bit more. I'm wondering now if it has anything to do with hurting my rib a few years back. Maybe it never healed properly and the altitude resulted in harder breathing, thus pushing on the damaged rib. Who knows, but it certainly was frustrating. I have even experienced similar cramps back here in Ireland, training, only when swimming.
- Kicking Stumps. Plain and simple it su*ked and most definitely, indirectly has me sidelined here 7 months later . We were doing so well that day [day 5] but in the last 3-4miles, I kicked a stump, most likely breaking my toe (never got an x-ray) and JP tripped going down hill and threw his knee into a tree. We were in bad shape, but we were determined to get across the line ahead of the competition. So we HTFUed and got it done. We were both destroyed after but we crushed it that day, we'll always have Day 5!
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| The Gruffalo |
- Being on the Same Page. Day 5 we nailed, but as for 1,2,3 and 6 - not so much. The thing I took for granted the most about the TRR challenge was the team element. I never suspected it would be so tough for both of us to feel good each day. In a multi-day endurance race there are bound to be good days and bad. The toughest thing was that JP and I never really trained or raced together so when he or I were in camp sh*t, we didn't know how best to handle each other. Do I tell him to man-up or do I shower him with constant encouragement? I would consider the two of us best of homies, but I had no clue what to say. It's a tough position to be in when you could have 20+ miles ahead of you. Lesson learned, figure this out before and ideally, train with each other, especially some long distance when things can go wrong.
Bonus:
The Trifecta: JP you were good, bad and ugly, especially ugly (your toes).
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| Toenails Optional |
Thanks John Paul Robb.
Thanks for being a homie.
Thanks for convincing me to do TRR.
Thanks for always identifying the next challenge.
Here's to future Wickidness.
Go You
Go Me
