This summer I chose the Marquette Trails 50 ultra marathon. For clarification, I did the 50 k not 50 miles. The trails and training are literally ride outside my door. Also the race itself starts at 5:30 a.m. which mimics my summer training schedule. On weekends there are group training runs at ...oh dark thirty as well. 4 hour training blocks are a big ask when you have a family but much more tolerable if you are home from said 4 hour trail run by 9:30 a.m. (and have an outdoor shower). Lake Superior will always be ready to provide you with an ice bath.
As I approached "Top of The World" I heard a banjo playing and hoped it was my family. I hadn't seen them yet. Of course it was my family. My banjo playing husband, my mother in law, and my two children .
Of course one of my children was up in a tree and needed help down. Of course, I needed to lift said child out of tree for a hug before carrying on with my race. I told them my knee that had been bothering me was going to hold up but I was tired and struggling because I ran too hard in the beginning. They told me I was in 4th place. My mother in law told me I looked better than a lot of people. She has watched countless endurance events and is an excellent judge of who is going to crump. The moment I told them I was struggling and why I was struggling was magic. It was like a weight vest was lifted off me. Suddenly I had spring in my step again. I actually started to run well again. I enjoy running well ever so much (especially on race day :) I have actual Garmin data to prove it. Soon I was on my way up the final peak called Hogsback. One of my friends was working the course and commented that I had wounds on my legs. I didn't really pay much attention. I was just happy my knee didn't hurt and was trying to keep it that way. I actually sat on my butt on scooched down several spots on Hogsback not fully trusting my quads to hold me 45 k into the day. I finished all of the hard work and saw my family again at a road crossing.
There was a grinding climb up a fireroad that I struggled to run on shorter runs in training. I fully expected to walk it on race day but Annika ran out after me and ran me up the hill. In fairness, Isaac attempted to run with us, but he made a poor choice in footwear and paid the price.
Annika started shouting at me that my legs were bleeding. She said I should stop running. I smiled at her said something like "It doesn't matter my knee is holding up just fine and there is only 1.5 miles
to go". We reconnected in the last half mile of the course.
Into the finish shoot with Isaac in hot pursuit.
I told Annika if she wanted to beat me it was her chance. She wasted no time. The above pictures shows her turning up the heat. It also show one of my two leg wounds.
I have a lot of ideas regarding why I chafed and wounded so badly..believe me I will go to great efforts so it never happens again.
The finish felt like the perfect venue for a summer blue grass music festival. There was a band, food and lots of my favorite people. I wanted to hang out in the grass all day and just soak up the goodness. Medical came over to me and asked if I wanted my wounds dressed. Tim said I needed to go home before I got shocky. Shortly after finishing I was presented with an award for the fastest combined women's time between the trail ultra marathon and the ski marathon.
I put on a pretty good show for my mother in law by additionally collecting awards for 4th overall female and first in age. People kept handing me awards and stopping me for pictures and greeting. Everybody was nice, most everybody new my name. It is just a different sort of experience than what an age group athlete experiences at races like Ironman or the Boston Marathon. I'm extremely grateful to have had all of these experiences. As fas as the combined award goes, I'm not sure how many women actually did both events. I think not many but I feel honored to accept it. I love being a multisport athlete. I love all of the sports this area has to offer. I really appreciate the race directors taking time to create a division for people like me who compete in multiple sports. I learned a lot about ultramarathon running and would like to apply the knowledge. I think ultramarathons are not unlike Ironman or really any distance triathlon where it really take few attempts to work the kinks out.
After the race it was decided Annika would take a break from running competitively (aka fun run races) and run for fun. Isaac decided he would resume riding his scoot bike and pretending it was a dirt bike. In truth he was pretty annoyed he couldn't ride his scoot bike aka dirt bike in the race.
