My Big Fat Virtual Summer (3 of 3)
Part 3 of the dumb shit I did!
TJM Badger Trail Race Muskie Marathon
Date: Friday, July 17th
I was originally signed up to do the Badger 100, but since the official event was cancelled, I deferred my entry to next year and signed up for the Muskie Marathon instead. I’ve decided that I’m going to do all of the distances at Badger, so I figured I’d start with a marathon so it’s different from my medal from last year (the 50k and 50mi both have the tunnel on the medals). I kind of decided out of nowhere to run this one. I could have given myself another week of training and maybe built up some miles, but I said, “ehhh.” I decided on Wednesday that I was going to run a marathon on Friday and I when I told Tom I don’t think he believed I would actually do a whole marathon out of nowhere, especially given the stupid hot weather.
But I did! I did it as an out and back from the house, so that means you HAVE to finish or you’ll never ever get home, EXCEPT – I didn’t plan it that well so my out was not 13.1 miles, it was only 12ish? My plan was to run to Silver Springs State Park, run around the park a little bit, hopefully see some alligators and monkeys (no dice), and then run back home. It was a HOT day, so by the time I got to about 15 miles, I knew it would be a rough type of finish because it was exposed the whole way. Since I had in the back of my mind that I was going to be doing GSER in a few weeks, I decided to get some good “power hiking” (aka fast walking) training in.
I ended up power hiking the last 10 miles of the marathon, stopping at home at mile 24 to go to the bathroom and grab an electrolyte popsicle before I went out to get it finished up. Good experience and the swag was really nice.
Yeti 24hr Challenge #2
Distance: 50 miles
Date: Friday, July 24th
This was the challenge that broke not just the treadmill, but my spirit/will to live. I also realized during the last 30 minutes of the very last run that I had basically been bonking hard all day long.
I had such a fun time with the first Yeti 24 hour challenge (five miles every four hours for a day, not too bad with 30 miles in all), so I thought adding another 3.5 miles to each run would be just fine. I decided to change it up and instead of doing neighborhood runs, I would do two on trails, two on paved surfaces, and two neighborhood or treadmill runs. It goes without saying that it was brutally hot and humid, but oof, I did not manage myself very well during this whole thing.
I did my first run bright and early Friday morning on the Florida Trail, went home to change and then headed over to Silver Springs State Park (the campground area) for the next run. The trails there are pretty exposed, but I suffered through. I drank a lot of water, but basically felt parched the whole run.
The next one was on the Santos paved trail. Even though it was really hot, my dumb brain thought, “It’s only 8.35 miles, just take a handheld.” Well, that was stupid. I had basically been behind on water all day and then not taking enough for the hottest part of the day just screwed me over. I basically did okay for the first few miles, and then fell apart. This was the story for the rest of the runs.
The fourth run I decided to do at Greenway – I did the 5mi loop and the 5k loop. I also had pizza for dinner prior to the run and I thought it didn’t agree with my stomach, but I think it was more of a revolt in general to the lack of enough nutrition throughout the entire day. Heat saps a lot of energy and I was feeling it.
My fifth run was on the treadmill and was essentially the death knell for it About a mile in to the run I heard a loud CRACK and the belt started running weird. I ended up power hiking the rest of that one on the mostly busted treadmill.
The final one was the wooooorst. So awful. My stomach really rebelled during this one, much more so than the previous ones. I went out into the neighborhood, but had to jump into the bushes a couple of times (thank goodness it was 3am) and realized I would be better off to finish it out on the treadmill where I would be close to a bathroom. Unfortunately, when I got onto the treadmill again, the belt would not stay on track, was going faster than it should have been going, and it was making a horrible sound. I didn’t want to be far from a bathroom, so I switched to doing the last 3.5 miles around the cul de sac. That was misery x10. Every half mile I would switch direction. After one of my bathroom breaks I grabbed a piece of pizza leftover from dinner and a cookie. I ate them while continuing to walk around the cul de sac and within 20 minutes my mood and my outlook on life completely changed. It was then that I realized that I had basically underfueled my entire day and I would have had a much better time of it all if I had done better on eating.
I had about a mile where I felt good and then I was DONE. This was much, much tougher than the other challenge and I definitely underestimated it. I also complicated it by driving to different trailheads which reduced the time I could have been resting and eating. Would I do this one again? HELL NO.
Troubled Raccoon Racing Scavenger's Hunt
Date: All of August
This was a wild month of challenges that had no specific mileage goals, but required fun tasks to be done such as running in the rain, doing squats, taking pictures of animals, and all sorts of fun things! I had a lot of fun with this challenge and my favorite was my Minnie Mouse Beer Mile. In one week there were prompts to do a beer mile and one to run in costume so I combined them! It was a great time!
PB&J 15k
Date: Saturday, September 19
Last year my sister Laci signed up for the PB&J 10k and asked if I wanted to join her. I saw that they had a 15k challenge where you do the 10k and then come back to the start line in time for the 5k. It seemed like a neat challenge and my preferred running fuel is pb&j, so I was in! It was a really fun race and when I got the email that they moved it to virtual, I decided to sign up and make my route.
After the treadmill died after the Yeti challenge, Tom and I decided to get a semi-fancy nordictrack one that had a built in mapping feature that utilizes Google street view, so I decided to run the actual route (plus a little on the end so it'd be 15k). I had a great time and the swag was awesome, I'll definitely be doing it again next year.
