Eat Drink Run Woman

Ever since I’ve become a Marathon Maniac I’ve heard grumblings from the more traditional, old school marathoners about our group: we care more about quantity than quality, running not to perform at our best or even for the love of the sport, but to simply add another notch in our marathon belts.  This argument even circled among our ranks, as the group’s founders proposed tightening the rules on what counts as a marathon to eliminate what appeared to be glorified training runs that are merely used to pad ones stats.

While there may be a few Maniacs who are guilty of such behavior, I never considered myself one of them.  Sure, I’ve run marathons as training runs, but I’ve always set some sort of goal for myself, whether it be to run all the hills, hone my fueling strategy, run a negative split, etc.  Sometimes my goal was simply to have fun with my friends — both during the race and while mingling afterwards.

I must confess: last Sunday’s 50K was a PYS (pad your stats) run.

In my last post I mentioned my plan of running 13 marathons/50Ks in 12 weeks (which in itself could be called the PYS Plan), finishing up the streak with the Tacoma Marathon on May 2 — my 50th marathon overall.  Turns out my math was off, as Tacoma would only be my 49th marathon.  Given it’s the Maniac reunion, I just HAD to make it an even number, but where to add a race?  I was already planning on the Pigtails Fat Ass 50K on Jan. 23 (not to be confused with the Pigtails FLAT Ass 50K in December), and there were no local races for this weekend.  I considered next Sunday’s West Seattle Fat Ass 50K, however, not only is that all on roads (which is tougher on my body), it would mean I’d finish up my 13 in 12 one week earlier.  That just wouldn’t do!

My only other option?  Run the Yours Truly 50K the day after the Pigtails 50K.  Yikes!  It wasn’t inconceivable; after all, I’ve run a double-double and a triple, but I had hoped to make January a recovery month.  However, I emailed the race director the Monday before to let him know my darling and I MAY be joining him, but that we wouldn’t make the final decision until after our Saturday race (Yours Truly is a very casual, free race, so last-minute decisions were not a problem).

Pigtails was held at Lake Youngs, scene of my absolute personal worst race.  However, the RD had us run counter-clockwise, which for some reason seemed slightly easier.  Rather than having to run up the nasty steep hill at the end, we ran down it within the first quarter mile (although we did have to run up it during the out & back to make it a full 50K).  Still, it was somewhat of a tough go, especially given the rain (the forecast had promised nice weather, so we were all caught off guard).  I did manage to beat my time for 28.8 miles my almost 20 minutes, finishing the full 50K in 6:07:27.

After a hearty lunch of burgers, onion rings and sweet potato fries (and yes, a couple of beers), my darling and I crashed for several hours.  We managed to muster ourselves out of bed for dinner (butternut squash ravioli), but were soon snuggling back under the blankets.  Several portions of the Lake Youngs trail are rocky, and my inner quads were feeling the beating.  I gulped down a couple of vitamin I and tried to get a good nights’ sleep.

As the alarm went off the next morning my darling and I appraised our respective well-being.  Neither was suffering from any debilitating injuries, and our mental faculties were still present (then again, perhaps it was the absence thereof that spurred us on).  We downed several cups of coffee and a bagel and hopped in the car for the 45-minute drive to Ravensdale.

Because it was such a casual race many runners had already started when we arrived.  But fortunately my friend Marie had waited for us and we ended up running together the entire race.  The Yours Truly course is much easier than Lake Youngs and is one I’ve run on several times.  It’s a double out & back to Lake Wilderness (a gradual 7.75-mile climb) on a well-groomed dirt and gravel trail.  Marie and I pretty much stuck to a 1-mile run/.15-mile walk ratio; neither one of us was looking for a fast time.  We hit the halfway mark right at three hours, however, after taking an 11-minute break to visit the port-o-potty and fuel up on hot chili, we knew breaking six hours would be a stretch.  By then the rain came back and it was a long, soggy slog, but we finally crossed the finish line in 6:26:08 (you can find a couple of pictures here).

So yes, you can now call me Patty McPadster.  But truth be told, now that the race is a week behind me, I can now say it was still a lot of fun!