An object in motion tends to stay in motion until acted upon by an outside force, such as a finish line. It's amazing how, during a race, how once across that line you feel completely exhausted. Endurance racing extends that limit past what a person could think of as possible. During the 18 hour race in August, I rode more singletrack than I do in certain months. This last weekend was a similar experience.
RunRideRace put on the 12 and 24 Hours of Momentum, a team or solo running event of 5 miles laps. Run Sweat Repeat, my running team, put up a 5 person team for the 12 Hours and a soloist for the 24 hours. I was on the 5-person team, which mostly consisted of Blue Ridge Relay runners.
2nd in rotation, I watch Todd start RSR off and less than 40 minutes later come in 3rd to the exchange zone. Having requested not to go first to reduce pressure to do well, I now felt like I needed to hold the lead Todd built. I ran hard fending off anyone behind me and before the half-way mark saw the 2nd place guy in my sights. He charged a hill and I let him go because I remembered how long it was from the 18 Hours on the Farm. He faded and I passed him before he even hit the top. After 5 miles of technical, hilly trail, I handed off to Glenn who passed to Brittany, then Morgan, and then back to Todd again.
I thought about doing a double-lap for my 2nd rotation, but being fairly warm, I held to a single. My 3rd lap was in the twilight. Too dark to see well, too light for my headlamp to be effective. Slower, I did what I could. By this time, it was pretty clear that we were going to win the 12 hour category. By the time I started my last lap, there was 1:15 left on the clock. Needed to finish before midnight, I could either take my time and cruise it out or push hard hoping Glenn could crank out another. Already having 15 miles in my legs, I felt I should be tired and beat, but felt surprisingly strong. I pushed and ran harder that I probably ever have. Doing the math on the fly, Glenn could finish with a fast 37 minute lap if I finished in 37 minutes, 2 minutes faster than my first, fresh lap. I treated the whole course like a flat track, ignoring roots and turns and thinking the entire time "There's no way I can hold this pace." Under darkness, without even moonlight, I dodged trees, ran past creeks, through fields, splitting fog, passing cabins and a skunk, and charged up the final hill yelling "Glenn! Glenn!" to come in at 42 minutes with our next runner in jeans and a jacket. 35 minutes left wasn't going to be enough, even for our fastest runner. It was the hardest, most meaningless effort, but still strangely satisfying.
We got 1st by 3 laps or 15 miles or 2ish hours. Very nice job done by the team. 17 laps, 85 miles, under 11 hours and 30 minutes.
I stayed up the rest of the night, fatigued and hungary, chatting with whoever was at the exchange zone waiting on their runner to come in. Anne, another RSRer and 24 hour soloist, kept coming in, looking like she could do another or quit, but kept doing more laps. The race director caught a little sleep and when the timer was getting tired, I volunteered to punch in numbers for a while as runners came it. It's another side of fatigue that this sport will teach you. With less than 10 runners on the course, sometimes there were 20 minutes between runners and I would sit there, looking over a laptop and keypad, staring past the race tape, over the lake reflecting stars, and into the dark woods, looking for headlamps of ultra runners, trying to keep my eyes open. Empty chairs on each side of the timing tent from people that had gone to sleep, I waited to quietly say "Good job" and punch in a number.
Eventually, the sun came up and pancakes were served. Anne was still running and walking, logging more miles. Our team decided on a "victory lap" or "recovery lap" and took to the course for a slow round, cutting some of the course and catching up with Anne to bring her in to her 70th mile. To think I was impressed with my 4 race laps and 1 morning lap, which now seems so insignificant to her effort. Such as it is with endurance sports.
Pictures coming soon.
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