Michael: Lost but Encouraged

The green rolling hills
Bucolic tranquility
Belies their cruelty.

Monday, March 27, 2017

Despite falling shorts of my time goal and missing out on an opportunity to possibly win a 50k, I’m very encouraged by my performance at the Valencia 50k last Saturday.

That’s partially because my time and place were effected by my far too frequent habit of getting lost. I was running in third not far behind the eventual winner when I lost sight of him after a tight turn about 10k into the race. At that T section I chose to run uphill which took me to a power tower that overlooked a pretty heavily grassed trail. Without any runners or ribbons in sight, I turned around and headed in the opposite direction. Eventually, that put me back on course and dropped me into the top third of the half marathon runners who started 15 minutes behind the 50kers. That, along with my alarm that beeps every 15 minutes, leads me to believe that I lost a good 20 minutes. By counting runners at turn arounds, I also calculated that at least 5 guys and 3 gals passed my while I was off course.

At that point I briefly contemplated dropping or just counting this race as a hard workout, but I was feeling good, the weather was perfect, and the terrain promised to get easier as the race went along, so I challenged myself to see if I could work my way back into the race.

I did. Nobody passed me after my mistake and I was able to work my way up to 5th overall and 3rd among men. I finished 22 minutes behind the winner. I ran a negative split race even factoring in the time I lost from getting lost and I felt stronger at the end of this 50k than I ever have.

I could dwell on what might’ve been, but I’ll be better off focusing on the positives; I was able to quickly get my head back into the race and control my effort and run the rest of the race pretty intelligently after such a big goof.

This was also a great test of my training plan. Now I have three months to gear up for three upcoming races in the states beginning in late July.

As an aside, because I got lost and ran with the some of the half marathoners, I ran into an old acquaintance I hadn’t seen for years; Dale Reichneder. A few days prior to the race I saw his photo on the cover of  the March issue of Trail  Runner Magazine. Then I saw his image again in the race goody bag as Trail Runner was given as a freebie. Then out on course I saw him in the flesh as we were grinding up one of the steeper hills of the race. He gave me a punch in the shoulder as I pulled up to him and I’m going to presume it was for good luck since we were in different races.

Getting lost is never in the plan, but it can provide a wealth of insights. At almost 60 and with my history, I’ve just got to expect that those opportunities will continue to present themselves more so for me than they seem to for others.