Nanny Goat 24 Hour
May 23, 2015
Where are the goats?
100 miles in one day, 23:53:05, first time I ran a hundred in less than one day!
What do you do after your best friend has cancer? Find a race in a sunny place and take her on a trip there. Katy finished her cancer treatments and we needed to get out of town. Where else better to go than Riverside, CA... I am sure you could have thought of better places but Riverside is near Disneyland and the beaches and they had a 24 hour event that looked like a sub 24 hour type of course. It is called Nanny Goat but there were no goats, instead a horse farm just outside of town would be the venue.
I schooled myself on Betsy...meaning go out easy and back off from there so you have running legs later in the race. This strategy worked well. Most people will tell you that I often go out too fast and suffer through the end of a race, not this time. Funny because days before the race I didn't visualize or think through the race as I usually do. The night before I slept well, highly unusual. And on race morning I was relaxed, very weird. Go figure.
The course is a one mile loop on a horse ranch. The runners pack into a corral and are let out a few at a time to spread the runners out on the course. There are some broken pavement sections, a rutted grassy section, a little muddy section and mostly dirt with one slight hill. The rutted grassy section was the kind of section just waiting to twist an ankle or cause a fall. Most people walked this section, especially at night. The kids on the farm like their motorcycle and ATV and rode around creating dust as well as all of the runners creating dust so we ate some, yum. But the scarier thing was when I changed my socks. My toes and feet were covered in gritty dirt. This would disable many runners later who didn't take care of their feet.
For most of my longer runs I have had terrible blister issues with my toes. I have switched shoes, gone to toe socks, and I now change socks and re-glide my feet every 25 miles. It works for me to keep blisters away. Sitting for five minutes is a nice bene as well. Also, changing to half size bigger shoes at 50 miles feels wonderful as the extra room helps my toes feel like they have been given the royal treatment...till they have to pound out another fifty.
I was trying out a new strategy for my stomach issues, I ate only gels, cola and bananas. This worked really well until the middle of the night when I had some real food and ramen and broth. The dry heaves started but only when I tried to go too fast. Still I ate a lot less than I normally do and felt like I fueled well. It wasn't hot by California standards but still it was hot for this seattleite as it was muggy and in the low 70s. I drank lots of water and nuun and still couldn't pee.....I know TMI. But peeing is a good indicator of whether you are hydrating properly. Finally later after the broth things were working.
I got into a funk after fifty five miles. Katy came to visit and we walked a couple of laps and this helped me get out of my funk. Her cheerfulness gave me an attitude adjustment and when she left for the hotel I was ready to power through the night. I only had one real wonky time at night when I started to weave a bit. A little caffeine and I was back on track.
At five am I gave up as I didn't think I was going to make my goal. I finally saw a recline chair. I grabbed it and timed myself to lay back with my feet up for five minutes. This really helped my achey feet but I was thinking I wasn't going to make 100 in 24 hours. So I walked a lap with a fellow runner and thought oh well I will be in the 24 hour range and it will be a PR....but when I came back around to the timing tent I re-calculated and found out if I hurried and pushed myself for two and one half hours I could make it. Yolanda was out there also trying to make 24 hours. She was a couple of laps behind me and said she was cutting it close. I thought I was cutting it close. She encouraged me and told me I could make it when I was doubting myself. This really helped as the stunning walking diva is one great walking gal. I couldn't keep up with her when she was walking but I was still running at times and so we went back and forth for a few laps and encouraged each other. That is one of the reasons I like loopy courses. You get to support one another and see the race unfold in front of you. There were two young woman duking it out for first and they would lap us regularly. Kind of cool to see the race from that perspective.
So pushing yourself for two and half hours at the end of a full day and night of running kind of sucks. I had to tell my self all those sayings to get my butt in gear, suck it up buttercup, you will hate yourself if you don't push now, pain is only temporary, pride is forever, just one more lap, just one more mile, I feel good, na na na na good, so good, ....basically i lie to myself to get one more lap done.
Then my friend Katy shows up and all is right with the world. She is excited when I tell her I am on pace to reach my goal. The collective "we" get a move on and push myself even harder. She and I walk and run the last four laps. The first two with Katy is exciting while the last two were painful and draining. It is amazing how good you can feel and how terrible you can feel in such a short amount of time.
Katy is magic as she makes me laugh and knows all the right things to say and do to get me going. She is quite the runner herself but spends time supporting her friend in these ultraruns. Thanks my dear.
Goats? No I didn't see any goats...except maybe the race director. I think he and other older runners who put on the race call themselves goats, or old goats and that is where the race name comes from. They have a decent buckle and it comes in several colors and so I was hoping for a red one. Apparently each color represents a different year. First year, blue, second year, black, third, red, so when I asked if I could have red, the old goat said I could when I came back a few more times. Not likely....although as my husband says, never say never.