| Photo 2: Meandering through a pine forest |
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| Photo 5: Another example of the rugged beauty in this National Forest. (Last photo taken before camera was damaged by rock impact). |
| Zane Grey Highline 50Mi Trail Run page 2hotos from McKey Roughs Natuh 50re Park |
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| Photo 4: Interesting geologic formations |
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| Photo 3: Orange marker ribbon tied to a manzanita. |
| Photo 6: A grassy section of trail (this photo was the first one taken after camera hit rock) |
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| Climbing up some switchbacks, I spotted Texas-flag shorts ahead of me on the trail and it turned out to be Robert. He quickly dashed off in the distance. We leapfrogged a few times between the first and second aid station. An aspect of terrain that I remember in these early sections was when the trail ventured down through a piney area along a small creek. The ground cover would suddenly turn to a wonderful spring green color.. I was also surprised to see manzanita along the trail. I did not realize that it grew in Arizona. |
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| Photo 7: Another view from the trail. |
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| Photo 8: Looking back. |
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| Photo 9: Last Photo: One of the many burn sections with some new tree growth. The leaves were just starting to bloom on the new growth. The runner in the orange shirt (Tom Knutson?), whom I had run with the previous month at OP50, is shown in this photo |
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| The sun was rising higher by now. The sky was an inviting shade of blue. Some of the scenery in this section reminded me of the Big Horn course in Wyoming, in particular the section through the Little Big Horn River canyon. Off to the left of the Highline trail were views of beautiful exposed walls of tall crinkled rock, as the two photos below show. It was also in this section that I accidentally hit the camera on a rock. The plastic disposable camera must have suffered a crack which allowed light into the camera, causing the later photos to be washed out and overexposed. |
| About a mile or more before the second aid station, Robert and another runner came zipping by me. Robert commented that his two bottles were dry and he was trying to get to the next aid station quickly where he had a camelbak in his dropbag. I was down to about a quarter bottle of fluid, but felt it would last me the remaining distance to the Washington Park aid station. A half mile or less before the aid station, the course crossed a dirt road. I did not see the trail resume on the other side of the road. So I started running down the road, and thought how nice it was to have a short dirt road stretch into the aid station. A chance to stretch out the legs and not worry about footing. But after about a minute or so, it dawned on me I could see no orange ribbons ahead. Looking down to the ground , I did not see any shoe treads in the dirt. Looking back there were no orange ribbons either. This could only mean one thing. I turned around and started running back up the road. Sure enough I saw runners crossing the road ahead and picking up the trail again. Fortunately I caught my mistake early and only lost a few minutes. Back on the trail, it was just a short jaunt to the aid station. When I went to take a split on my watch, I saw that my watch had reset itself to 12noon and the stopwatch had cleared to 0:00:00. ( This was to be the watch’s last race, as I had ordered a new watch that was to be delivered the following week). Arriving into the aid station I located my dropbag. Since I did not have a spare bottle in this dropbag, I drank down extra water and some soda at this aid station in addition to a can of Boost. One bottle was filled full of water, and the other bottle was half Boost -half water. I asked a volunteer for the time, and reset my watch accordingly. It was 8:57am, or 3:57 into the race. I grabbed a PB&J quarter and headed out. It was in the next mile or so that I started feeling bad. My throat hurt more , became dry and the soreness spread into my ears and lungs. It had been wishful thinking to hope that I would hold up all day with only an excess of nasal congestion to manage. My lungs hurt to breathe deep and my energy felt drained. It was an 8mile stretch between the second and third aid station. I tried keeping the pace down a loose rocky descent, because a runner was right behind me and the trail was too narrow and precarious to stop and step aside. The pace obviously felt over-taxing and not sustainable . Reaching a point where the trail leveled out a bit I pulled off the side of the trail to let the runner behind me pass. Time to take heed. I started wondering about being able to continue past the third aid station at 25miles. I really needed this ZG run and time-on-the feet to get ready for WS. Just like at OP50, something changed around 18miles and I felt the bottom fall out. 32 miles still to go. It was too early to be feeling this way. Fortunately I was not up against the cut-offs at this point, and one option I had was to further slow down the pace and walk more. Late winter through spring I’d worked hard on hill repeats so my legs were adequately trained for the course, independent of how the rest of me was feeling. I figured that I’d try to keep going until I got caught by a cut-off or felt too bad to safely continue. It was a beautiful day and the scenery was a dose of good medicine in itself. It would be a shame to waste seeing the trail.. So I took more photos. With each photo, the crank became progressively more difficult to turn. We had entered into a burn section. |
| I stayed in this mental state for a while longer, trying to adjust to the revised plan for the day. Running some then walking some. Eventually a new runner was behind me and I asked if she wanted to pass and she said no. Then another runner in an orange shirt passed by me, and he greeted me by my first name. He told me that we had run together for a bit at OP50. My mind drew a blank. I asked him if it had been early in the race, and he replied no that it was after I had fallen …maybe around 35miles. My mind had been so embroiled in dealing with the current situation, that I initially had difficulty recalling details from OP50. But after a few minutes, I remembered. It had been in the section between Calif Gulch and Granite Mtn that we had run together. By then he was too far ahead, outside of earshot, for me to tell him I remembered. It was also in this section that there was a very noisy woodpecker in the area. |
| The person who did not want to pass me, was still behind me. I asked again if she wanted to pass, and she said no, that there was a long switchback climb ahead. So I asked her where she lived . She said Phoenix. Then after more exchange of conversation, she mentioned she was training for WF100. It dawned on me at that point that she was the person who had sat beside me on the bus. I apologized for not recognizing her, but she said she was wearing a different shirt and had on sunglasses. She told me she was thinking of dropping. Her legs hurt because they were not yet recovered from a muddy 50miler she had raced in March. I told her I was also having a slower than expected day, and she was welcome to stay with me if she wanted. I hoped to finish but it was going to be a long day. So we stayed together and walked the uphills and ran/walked the downhills and short flat sections. The conversation, which ranged from running topics to non-running topics, helped to pass the miles and time. It turned out that she had helped Wayne mark this section of the course, between the second and third aid stations. She had also run ZG the year before. She said that we would be able to see the third aid station, Hells Gate Canyon, from a distance as we approached it. With less than a mile before the aid station we came upon a runner sitting with his back to the trail looking out in the distance. At first I thought he was a sweep volunteer taking a break to enjoy the scenery. But Laura noticed he was a runner who did not feel well. She offered him Hammergel, but he declined saying he had some Hammergel. Laura told him the aid station was close by. After we passed by, he stood up and continued also. |