41.2 Mile (Strolling Jim 2011: May 7th): Overview and prerace.

Quick overview:

I finished the Strolling Jim for 2011. This 40 mile race is actually 41.2 miles. My time was 9:09:29. The winner this year was Leah Thorvilson in a time of 4:44:49, this was the 4th fastest finish ever for a male or female. She destroyed the female record by over 30 mins. It was a good weather day for TN in May. It was in the lower 70's with decent cloud cover. Today, just 2 days later the high is forecast for the mid 80's.

It was a great run and I felt fairly good at the end (nowhere near dead). I had three progressively harder goals. 1) Finish. 2) Finish in under 11 hours. 3) Finish it under 10 hours. So I blew away my goal and finished in under 10 hours by about 50 minutes. I knew at mile 10 I could finish because I felt like I could start a 30 mile training run at that point. I knew at the marathon distance I could finish in under 11 hours and knew at mile 30 I could finish under 10. I kicked the last 5 miles because the hilly course flatted out and I had the energy to do so. Plus somehow I had picked up the nickname of Superman during the race and I figured Superman would kick* it at the end. (*kicking it at the end of an Ultra is relative term meaning a good marathon pace.)

Longer prerace report below (feel free to stop here. This is more of a training log for me below).

Taper: I was getting annoyed and worried about my taper. Tapers for the marathons are fairly well researched and there are plenty of programs to follow. There are no plans for how to taper for a 41 mile run so I was making it up based on my experience. I was worried I had tapered too much. The general rule is it is better to show up slightly over rested than over trained. So that is what I was telling myself but it didn't mean I wasn't worried. I somewhat felt out of shape (for this). However, clearly it did not hurt me as my overall pace was almost 35 seconds faster per mile than even my fastest 30 mile training run despite running another 11 miles. So I guess I will still taper for ultras.

Afternoon/Night before:

I went to the tent to pick up by bib number (66) and race t-shirt (back above). The back of the shirt has a warning about the dogs on the course. This warning is real as I have heard/read stories of people being bitten during the run. It worried me a bit because mean dogs seem to have a taste for going after me. However, I wasn't too worried because I knew I would be near the back of the pack and they would have likely gone after the people ahead of me already. The other possibility was by the time I got to them they would be really annoyed. It turned out not to be a problem at least for me and as far as I know. A few mean looking dogs did bark but stayed on their yards. The pictures below are the type of dogs that end up on the course. They just wanted to join in the fun. I heard later both of these dogs ran with others too.

I drove the course the afternoon before. There was an official course tour but I didn't make it in time. It was probably better I went by myself anyway because I had to figure out which way to go. The course was well marked (Below: the full mark here was "running fools"). This course tour turned out to be worth it because I saw the lack of porta potties on the course was not going to be a problem (very rural, many natural places) and had learned I would not need the course map. However, it scared me because it took a long time even in a car and I saw the hills. As I was headed to the course tour I was thinking 10 hours was a good goal. After the course tour, I was thinking 11 and wondered what I got myself into.

The night before I stayed in a hotel. The race was close to home (1 hr 15 mins) but with a four year old at home that isn't a great sleeper, a hotel was my best chance for a good night sleep. So when my wife suggested I stay at a hotel to get a good night sleep, I took it. It turned out to be a great idea as I got about 7 hours of good solid sleep (way more than normal). For breakfast I had two cups of coffee (like normal) and two bagels about an hour before the race started.

This is the smallest official event I have ever done (5k, 5 miles, Marathon). There were 112 finishers (I'm not sure how many started but it was less than 130 for sure). So it was easy to find parking and get to the starting area (all right there in the square of the small town of Wartrace, TN).

Next post (coming tomorrow) will be the race report.