DNF lessons

After my first DNF, at the Tantalus Triple Trek, I was more devastated than I thought. At the time I was disappointed and a little confused but not overtly upset. A couple of days later though, I was still pretty down. I felt like I had prepared well, was ready for the race, and yet I didn't finish. What was going on? I thought I'd done everything right.

What was really bugging me was not knowing what I did wrong. I had completed every race in the HURT trail series up to the Triple Trek, and the only race I had left in the series was the Peacock 100k, which I'd already signed up for before my Triple Trek DNF. After the Triple Trek I was seriously doubting my ability to run the 100k. If I can't finish a 50k than how in the world was I justified in competing in a race twice as long.

What started my mental recovery was reading a race report about UTMB and Western States 100. Over the years I've started to recognize and idolize many of the successful American Ultrarunners. Anton Krupicka, Geoff Roes, Scott Jurek, Jez Bragg, Topher Gaylord, Michael Wardian... and many others (there are plenty of inspirational female athletes as well).

As I was reading these race reports I noticed something that I'd previously ignored, many of these ultra-athletes have dropped during recent races. This isn't an unusual occurance, these people have intense schedules, intense training, and really intense races, it's not that unusual for a talented athlete to drop from a race.

What?

I'd seen these reports before and just never really paid attention to the list of the names that didn't finish. Once I had my own DNF experience the names suddenly jumped out at me.

I would never equate myself to these amazing runners, that would be like a weekend pick-up player comparing himself to Michael Jordan.... there is no comparison. And yet it made me feel a little better to realize that even these supreme beings of the running world have had a bad day, have problems, have issues. It makes them more human, and therefor makes my own humanity a little more excusable.

One of the things that I've learned in the interim is how difficult it is to explain the mental aspect of ultrarunning. When you're hurting in a 5k it's pretty easy to rationalize pushing yourself through it, 'only a couple miles left', 'only ten minutes left'... etc. When you're running marathon and beyond it becomes a little more difficult.

I ran 20 miles in the Triple Trek and started to fall apart. If I'd had a couple of miles left it wouldn't have been too hard to push through it, but when you know you have AN ENTIRE LAP left, TEN MORE MILES (of mountainous, muddy trail= 3+ hours)... that becomes a little more difficult. Then you look at these amazing endurance athletes who run hundreds of miles, every little difficulty becomes harder to push through. The mental aspect is something that I've learned (now) that you can't do much to train for. If you aren't very used to running these extreme distances than mentally it can be very difficult on race day when problems pop up.

It's been said in many places that the effort it takes to run an ultra is not linear. If you can run 10 miles in 60 minutes than you should be running 100 miles in 10 hours, right? Yeah, no. Even the best athletes have their performance gradually degraded over long distances. The better the athlete the longer it takes, but it still happens.

In the time since the race I've been able to rationalize the race and my performance more. I figured out a couple of things, and in doing so realized some pretty large faults in my pre-race planning and training.

First, I was not mentally prepared for the distance... mostly because I had never run that distance on that difficult a course before. This also resulted in more knee problems because of my unfamiliarity with the difficulty and the distance. I pushed myself too hard too fast and my knees paid for it.

Secondly, after much internet research I have realized that I 'decouple' during these long difficult races. That is, after a while my heart rate was much higher than it should have been for the effort I was putting out. I had a feeling this was a cardiovascular issue but it wasn't until I found the books and blogs by Joe Friel (http://www.joefrielsblog.com) that I learned some of the specifics of this issue and ways to address it.

I ran a lot, right? So, my cardio should not have been an issue, right? Except for the fact that I pushed myself harder on race day and therefor spent more time in my 'cardio' zone than in my 'fat burning' zone. Which meant that I wasn't training my cardio as hard as I should have been. Or I should have forced myself to slow down on race day.

After looking at some of the race reports and having some time to learn from my mistakes I am feeling a lot better about myself and my abilities. I've learned a lot about what I'm doing wrong and the things I could be doing better.

I'm looking forward to putting my lessons to the test, though I really wish I'd done better at Tantalus. I really wish I had the confidence of a finish behind me going into my next race.