Races Trailrunning

Altitude: My Speedgoat 50K Race Report

I can wrap this race report up quickly: altitude is not my friend.

  • Fainting during a hot Fourth of July Parade in Aspen, Colorado.
  • Traveling to Ecuador for the summer and staying at a hacienda at 3,600m (11,800 feet) for a week. I spent five of those seven days in bed, nursing cups of an herbal tea I was handed to help cure me of my nausea and, moreso, the depression of missing out on the chance to get close to Cotopaxi, at 5,879 m (19,347 ft.).
  • Driving up to Hawaii’s Maunakea to see the stars at night, only to spend the majority of the time looking down at the ground, dizzy and nauseous.
  • Climbing Mt. Whitney (14,505 ft.) with my boyfriend, Nick, and having a melt-down halfway up and passing out for 30 minutes (Nick still refers to that point as “Jade Cry Rock” and uses it as a measurement when setting FKTs. Go figure.). I moved roughly twenty feet every ten minutes as I stumbled from one rock to the next, trying to catch my breath and keep down what little food I had eaten, thanks to–you guessed it–nausea!
  • Feeling like fainting while walking around an aviary in Salt Lake City, Utah, the day before Speedgoat 50K.

This last example might have been taken as decent foreshadowing for how I would feel the following day while running up and down and up and down the Wasatch Mountains, but I pushed aside any negativity and continued to believe that I would be fine. One day was enough time to acclimate, right?

The drive to Snowbird, Utah had been a highlight of the trip itself–from stopping at the most beautiful hot springs I’ve seen to literally running into Utah’s biggest celebration, “Pioneer Day,” and its consequent parade and race, to visiting an aviary and meeting Andy the Andean Condor (with a wingspan of 10 feet!)–but after two days of driving and meandering and talking about nutrition and race strategies and positivity, both Nick and I were anxious to actually experience Utah’s mountains.

Relaxing in a Utah hot spring the day before the race. Definitely good race preparation!
Relaxing in a Utah hot spring the day before the race. Definitely good race preparation!

We stayed a short 30 minutes from the race start, so the drive to the race was a cinch; our packing had been done the night before, and besides, we had gone light. Nick carried two handhelds and I donned a hydration vest with a few baggies of CarboPro stuffed in the pocket. Five minutes before the start of the race, Nick worked his way up to the front of the hundreds of runners lined up at Snowbird Resort, Entry 1, while I tried to stay closer to the middle of the pack. Even though my muscles felt strong and well rested and ready to climb, my breath was short and the lightheaded feeling I had felt yesterday was back. A few seconds later, I heard the countdown and the race began. There was no time to dwell on how I was feeling if I wanted to be competitive here.

Just one of the many stunning scenes at Speedgoat.
Just one of the many stunning scenes at Speedgoat.

The first 8 miles of the race went up. Way up. The fire road we started on was shortly funneled into single track that wove through forest and meadows, thick with indian paintbrush and bluebells. By mile two, however, I knew that the “racing” part of the race was over for me, and by mile four I was ready to quit. My head was throbbing, like someone had clasped their hands over my ears and had squeezed hard, pressing into my skull. My heartbeat felt erratic and uncontrolled, and I briefly dreamed of the possibility that maybe my heart murmur actually meant something and that this might somehow affect it in a very negative way. Still, there was little I could do about it now. The next aid station was past mile 8, so I put my head down and focused on moving up, following the line of runners up the switchbacks of scree and gravel. More than once I felt my body lose its balance and slip to the side of the trail; I kicked rocks, unable to lift my feet up despite Nick’s caution of Pick up your feet! Pick up your feet!  ringing through my head.

Less than an hour into the race, I started to think about what it would mean to drop, to acquire my first DNF,  but the unease I felt now and the fear that I was actually hurting my body in some irreversible way was stronger.

At 2 hours, 15 minutes, I came into the first aid station, disappointed at how long it had taken me to travel those eight miles. Already it felt too late to fix the race and besides, I had rationed that if I dropped now, at least I would be able to watch Nick finish and cheer him in. Before dwelling longer, I sought the first volunteer I saw and told him I was done.

“But you look so strong!” He said, which would be a common theme throughout the rest of the race.

“But I feel awful and I’m from San Diego and I’ve had bad experiences with altitude before and I feel like I’m dying…” I droned on, attempting to explain how I felt.

He grabbed another volunteer and told her I was dropping, at which point she threw her arms around me, causing me to start crying. If this was for the best, why was I bawling? Why was I only thinking of how disappointed I would be, of how disappointed Nick might be if he knew that I stopped at the first aid station? The volunteers urged me to sit down and eat some food, so I angrily grabbed some pineapple and focused on making myself feel better, if only for the time being. Someone handed me an advil, and told me the trams back  down wouldn’t start until 11 a.m., more than two hours from now. Suddenly, it made no sense for me to stop here. The next aid station was just over two miles away, and downhill at that–just heading down the mountain a few hundred feet would likely help to lessen the pressure. For good measure I grabbed a few more slices of pineapple, told the volunteer that I was just going to continue to the next aid station and started running again.

While I felt emotional relief from continuing on with the race, the throbbing pressure in my head only worsened; the downhill miles only seemed to intensify the feeling, as if I was some bobblehead behind flicked over and over and over. Each step reverberated throughout my body, traveling up from my feet through my spine and to my head. I concentrated on the woman running in front of me, of ensuring that I didn’t trip over a rock hidden by the thick wildflowers overgrowing the trail, of the fact that I was almost at the next aid station.

A few miles later, when I arrived, I stopped to pour some water into my bottle and grab some more food. I had more or less stopped consuming the CarboPro I had counted on for my calories as nausea crept in. After realizing that the next aid station was only a few miles downhill, and that it would be easiest to quit at the bottom of the course as opposed to the top, I reasoned that I might as well continue.

This same pattern continued for the rest of the race; I was always only one aid station away from dropping but always only one aid station from finishing, too. At the third aid station, I once again explained how I was feeling and a volunteer, thinking that my core temperature needed to be cooled down, dumped a bucket of ice on my head. I had felt cold since the start of the race despite the increasing temperatures, and now, soaked and chilled, there was little point in staying here and waiting for someone to drive me back to the start of the race. I had to continue.

From miles 16 to 27, I watched in both disappointment and awe as my body reacted to my environment yet continued up every climb, passing people that had left me miles before as I dawdled at each aid station, wasting upwards of 20 minutes each time.

At the last aid station, topping out at roughly 11,000 feet for the second time of the race, a female volunteer came up to me, both hands raised.

“Way to rally!” She screamed, and gave me another big hug, this time not out of pity or empathy but out of pride.

That was the only boost I needed to finally fly through the aid station and down the other side of the mountain. At last, I started to actually run.

I have never so closely toed the line between completing and ending something, and it’s scary to think that while I can prepare meticulously–by training hard and smart, by resting and recovering properly, by eating the appropriate number and kinds of calories for these races, by thinking optimistically–that my body sometimes has the ultimate say as to what it can or cannot do that day.

This time, it didn’t. By talking with other runners, by smiling when the people around me stopped to take pictures and to enjoy themselves and where they were in some twisted sense of the word, by appreciating the beauty of where I was running, by going from one aid station to the next, I finished.

Coming in for the finish. Finally.
Coming in for the finish, confused and still hurting.

I was pushing the upper end of nine hours and something when I rounded a corner and saw Nick, hiking back up the course with a black backpack and phone in hand. He had been worrying about where I was and how I was doing, fearing that the altitude had gotten the best of me. I groaned that it definitely had, but continued onwards to the finish.

Nick and I at the finish–he placed 7th!
Nick and I at the finish–he placed 7th!

While I’m not necessarily pleased with how I performed at this race, I am very grateful that my body stayed more or less together and that I could both experience and complete this gorgeous and challenging course. As Nick drove us back to where we were staying in Sandy, Utah, I continued to die in the passenger seat, still a nauseous, sick mess but content, mostly because I had made myself proud.

The Details

Race: Speedgoat 50K

Miles: 32.7

Total Elevation: 11,575 ft.

Time: 9:55:58

Shoes: Brooks PureGrit

Fuel: Some CarboPro, pineapple, watermelon, a banana. Basically, not enough.

Hydration: Not enough. Big fail.

Practicing good recovery by returning to the hot spring and finding tropical fish!
Practicing good recovery by returning to the hot spring and finding tropical fish!

Thank you to Karl Meltzer and all of the volunteers for such an organized, gorgeous race! And, of course, I am especially grateful for having a loving family a phone call away and an extremely supportive boyfriend there to send me off and to welcome me back (and take care of me) at the end of the race.

To read about Nick’s race and how he placed 7th in a competitive field, check out his blog here. 

 

 

 

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