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| Looking at my watch it read ~2:05pm when I arrived to Cave Canyon Aid Station at 40miles. (last year I reached this aid station at 2:32pm... so I was not losing time). A volunteer asked me how I felt, and I replied I felt tired. She told me to eat some food. I was happy that I would not need to get the flashlight out of the dropbag. Even if I walked it in from here, I would finish before sunset. The only thing I pulled out of the dropbag was my Boost. Drinking down the Boost, I took some PB&J from the table and started walking out of the aid station. Ahead of me I saw a runner in black.. She looked like the same runner I had run with on the descent from Gunsight Pass but I was not sure. Unlike last year, I knew what waited ahead of me: A long nasty stretch of rather flat dirt road. Curses. All I could do was look forward to the uphill section of single track that connected up to Gardner Rd (the highest point on the course). Last year I had resorted to run 20 strides, walk 10 strides, and repeat to traverse this flat dirt road. Sadly it looked like that would need to be the strategy this year too. There are campsites located off the right side of the road.. Last year many of the campsites had been occupied. This year they were all empty. The runner in black was running consistently and dissappeared around a curve ahead on the dirt road. The runner in the white shirt was now further behind me. The dirt road went on and on. I remembered that after getting past the campsites, there was the turnoff for the uphill single track. The campsites ended, and I got my hopes up. Then about another quarter mile down the road more campsites appeared. Very tricky and not funny. Eventually the single track turnoff did appear , and I felt simply elated. Up,up, up ---- 0.4mi to Gardner Road. I again saw the runner in black, and caught up with her at the top where the single track empties out to the dirt road. The runner turned to me and said she was done. So we talked a bit and ran together. I told her that I was feeling tired also, and my only goal was to reach the finish in under 11hrs.She said her name was Claire and she was from North Carolina, and this was her first 50miler. I told her that she was doing very well, and that OP50 was a tough course for a first 50miler. I told her she was going to be able to finish under 11hrs. From watching her ahead of me on the flat dirt road which went by the campsites, I could tell she was strong on the flats. And I told her that there were some flat sections between here and the finish that she could look forward to and use for recovery, and that we only had two more climbs of any significance remaining. There was a lot of downhill in the next couple miles and we ran this together. Then I stopped to take a walk break and told her to go on ahead. I was hitting another low spot. We leapfrogged once after a creek crossing and then came into the final aid station, Kentucky Gulch at 46mile.. It was 3:33pm. Last year I had reached this point a few minutes after 4:00pm. So I was keeping my time pad. A sub-11 was looking more and more in my future. Last year I made the mistake of not taking in enough calories at this final aidsation. Thus, I made sure not to repeat the mistake... I drank coke, water and also ate PB&Js, some Gummi bears and boiled potato pieces. I sincerely believe that this last section is longer than 4miles. As I was leaving the aid station , the runner from Fort Collins was arriving. The runner in the white shirt (with whom I had run much of the 7 miles between Granite Mountain and Cave Canyon) left just behind me, and we stayed together for the next ~2miles. Through a couple of cattle gates, and down some single track and then up to cross a road... then some flat, and the final steep climb. On the steep climb the runner from Ft collins was a switch back or two behind us. At the top of the climb there was more single track through an area grown over by trees and bushes. The low branches of a tree or bush shredded the left side of my poncho. I figured it was no big deal since the finish line was only about 3miles away and I planned to discard the poncho in the trash after the event.. The single track lead up to a dirt road that meanders along a flat plateau. In the last portion of the single track, the hail started up again. The runner in the white shirt commented that it seemed to hail every time he ran with me. And I said that maybe it hailed everytime that HE ran with me, and we laughed. This hail stung even with wearing the poncho. It was windy on the plateau. And my blue poncho was trying to fly away! With the left side shredded it became a real flapper in the wind. The hail stopped and the sun came out again. There is probably a mile or more of dirt road on the plateau before the left turn onto rocky single track which drops down to the meadow. I was suffering last year on the plateau... hurting and running out of time. I even poured out the water from my water bottles to lighten the load last year. This year, in contrast, I did not have the time pressure and although I was not running all of the flat dirt road, I was not taking as many walk breaks as last year. The thought crossed my mind to try to break 10:30, but the thought was short-lived. I was happy enough that I had a sub-11 firmly within my reach especially with tired legs from C4P . I had fared much better than I ever expected possible, and a far cry from a death march and missing an aid station cutoff. I felt grateful and satisfied. There was no need to put myself under the time pressure I had felt last year. I told myself to relax and enjoy the desert scenery visible from the plateau, and I did. |