Solo 50 Miler

In mid March, I was looking to sign up for a 50 miler this weekend. As we all know, the bottom dropped out . Well, the really the bottom fell out about this time.


Since then, I did a 42 miler a few weeks ago so I knew that I was in shape to do one. Earlier this weekend, I decided to throw this in on top of my existing training.

Saturday morning, I staged my car at a good point for a nice 10 mile loop off the trails.

Actually, this day turned out to be a better day than I expected. Temperatures started out in the mid 30s so I needed some gloves for the first lap.  Temperatures rose but stabilized in the 60s which was perfect for the entire run.

I finished the 2nd lap. I dropped my gloves, refueled and headed out again.My legs were not feeling greatest but I refueled and headed out for my 3rd lap.

I chose to 10 mile loops because this works well for keeping the fluids and foods flowing, and 10 miles turns out to be a pretty manageable distance for laps. Surprisingly, I thought that maybe I would hate running the same loop 5 times. Mentally, doing loops can be a challenge. Nothing changes. Yet, on this day, this never happened to me.

At 30 miles, I was over the hump, and running 20 more miles seemed to be more doable now.

During this loop, I noticed that my quads were showing some wear. Soreness was creeping in on the downhills, but still they felt good on the climbs and flats.

At 40 miles, I could have quit any time. This was just me doing a run by myself but my goal distance still lay in front of me. I pushed off for the final 10 miles.

Soreness was creeping more and more in to quads. I ignored it.

The soreness would have been less of an issue if I had tapered in to this run but this was never my goal.

The miles clicked off one by one until number 50 flashed up on my Garmin. I slowed to walk, looked up at the sky, stretched my back, and took a long deep breathe. I was reminded what a beating running 50 miles gives me.

I looked down at my Garmin to see my elapse time. I had been running for 9 hours 13 minutes and 57 seconds. This was nearly 29 minutes faster than last 50 miler. I never expected to be able to run this fast. I spent most of the day just letting my legs run whatever felt comfortable. I did not have any time goal in mind. I was focused only on getting in the miles.

I broke down the splits below to give everyone some idea my pace, etc. I did note that my heart rate seems to jump around. This is something do with my Garmin 35. There are times that my heart rate spikes up. I would be worried about this but it does not happen with my other Garmin. It only occurs with this one.

Laps	Time	Cumulative Time	Avg HR	Elev Gain	Calories
1	09:27.9	09:27.9	122	173	77
2	10:15	19:43	121	131	77
3	09:49.9	29:32:00	121	85	67
4	10:59	40:32:00	118	33	72
5	10:51	51:23:00	120	101	71
6	12:31	1:03:54	118	103	87
7	11:25	1:15:19	144	113	106
8	10:34	1:25:52	146	124	105
9	11:39	1:37:31	147	67	112
10	09:25.7	1:46:57	151	96	99
11	12:01	1:58:57	146	113	104
12	10:12	2:09:10	139	152	59
13	09:51.3	2:19:01	145	66	77
14	10:39	2:29:40	152	50	104
15	10:48	2:40:29	164	57	124
16	12:20	2:52:49	166	115	141
17	12:37	3:05:26	168	94	146
18	10:40	3:16:06	167	88	122
19	11:41	3:27:47	165	130	127
20	09:34.7	3:37:22	172	66	118
21	11:50	3:49:12	168	105	134
22	09:40.4	3:58:52	172	155	120
23	10:36	4:09:29	171	90	127
24	10:11	4:19:40	175	79	129
25	11:10	4:30:50	172	38	131
26	11:39	4:42:29	140	103	70
27	12:07	4:54:36	132	91	65
28	11:44	5:06:20	128	85	53
29	11:02	5:17:22	133	121	40
30	11:28	5:28:49	133	78	50
31	09:50.5	5:38:40	135	113	27
32	11:38	5:50:18	132	114	42
33	10:41	6:00:59	171	148	131
34	09:54.3	6:10:54	172	78	123
35	11:01	6:21:54	172	58	134
36	11:19	6:33:13	151	82	81
37	12:38	6:45:52	134	88	73
38	12:23	6:58:14	142	111	76
39	10:53	7:09:07	133	116	38
40	11:56	7:21:03	136	129	61
41	10:16	7:31:19	135	48	30
42	12:18	7:43:36	129	107	34
43	10:12	7:53:48	131	183	30
44	10:44	8:04:32	129	71	34
45	10:31	8:15:04	133	111	41
46	11:22	8:26:26	133	64	61
47	12:11	8:38:37	131	110	67
48	12:34	8:51:11	162	109	135
49	11:27	9:02:38	169	83	136
50	11:19	9:13:57	169	96	133
51	00:01.6	9:13:59	168	--	0
Summary	9:13:59	9:13:59	146	4,922	4,401

Hope everyone is staying well and able to run some miles,

The Cool Down Runner