I'm not certain where to start his post, but think I should probably thank a friend who did more than her fair share of listening to me worry and whine about this race. Thank you Melissa for being my go to reference person about Flatrock. I'm certain all my newbie questions and worry while you handled your own race prep (She ran the 50k, because she flipping rocks. You can read about her adventure here) was annoying at best, but you answered all my questions and reassured me at every turn anyway. Thank you.
Monday I realized that the pre-race dinner was at 6pm Friday night which meant I needed to leave by 3pm. This posed a problem since the planned babysitter (sweet and awesome mother-in-law) wouldn't be off work in time to pick the boys up from their respective schools. So, instead of sweet husband coming with me he stayed here to take care of the boys while I went off to have an adventure by myself.
Friday came and I promptly freaked out that I was going to run my longest run ever on the least amount of training ever. I think repeated something to the effect of, "this is going to flipping hurt. I know that and I'm okay with it" over and over again in an effort to make myself okay with it (it didn't work). Add that to sweet husband not coming with me as planned, and the forecast which called for 80% chance of rain and my head was a mess. I packed up way too much gear, dropped S off at pre-school (had a hard time leaving), then realized I forgot my shoes (dude...seriously??). I went back to the house to retrieve the shoes and then headed out for Elk City.
Three hours later I checked in to the hotel and realized how quiet it was without the boys. Silence is something I never paid attention to until I had kids. When the boys aren't around it's like the world stops because the noise level is so low (can you tell my boys are loud?). After finding my room I unpacked, sort of organized stuff and then headed to the dinner to see Melissa, pick up my packet, buy a flatrock hoodie, and eat some tasty spaghetti & salad.
Sunset on Flatrock Friday Night
After the dinner I finished organizing everything, took a picture for the boys (I had promised that a stormtrooper would run the race with me and that I would send them pictures. See below for the adventure of the stormtrooper), sent a goodnight message to sweet husband and tried to fall asleep. The night before race day is never a good nights sleep for me, and sweet husband likes to joke that I can hear a mouse fart miles away, so when the people in the hotel r`oom next to me got up at 3am I was awake too. I checked the weather one more time in the fruitless hope that it had changed (it hadn't) and got up to take a shower (still not sure why), got dressed, ate some breakfast and left the hotel to find coffee (side note: I rode the elevator with a cute looking chihuahua and his family. The cute chihuahua then tried to attack me...like trying to bite my face...and I promptly wigged out. Not a fun way to start race day).
Ready to go on race morning.
After finding coffee, I pulled into the start/finish area, parked and it started to rain. Damn it. Pulled my gear out and headed to the packet pickup tent since the shelter was packed full of 50ker's getting ready for their pre-race briefing I had wanted to say hi & good luck to all my friends running the 50k, but I was cold, wet, and had an hour to wait before my own prerace briefing. Sorry guys...I'm a wuss or at least I was before the race started. I chatted with others that popped into the tent, talked to the nice volunteers, and even got to give the RD Eric some hell about his knack for epic weather (I swear he has a deal with mother nature) and then it was time for my own race briefing and to get going to the start line.
Cheryl and I in the first mile or so
The rain had slowed a bit since the 50kers had taken off which was nice, but we still got soaked. In the few minutes while waiting for the start I met Cheryl from Oklahoma who I would spend nearly the entire first half of the race with. The gun went off, and we were on our way. Cheryl and I chatted while everyone else took off ahead of us. I was fine with that (did I mention the lack of training?) I knew that this was my longest run ever and had no desire to burn out earlier than I likely would anyway. Once we got into the trees the wind died down and the rain was more like a light shower thanks to tree filters and I enjoyed those first 3 miles just like I had the last time I ran this trail (WinterRock)....except that this time I could see the trail a bit easier due to a lack of leaves on it, all the mud, and the 50k er's leaving a nice track to follow. The mud was slippy, but not too bad, the rocks were wet, but not coated in mud yet. Mostly it was cool, drizzly, beautiful morning on a gorgeous trail and I was having fun. Once the trail dumped out into the grassy sections though the mud really got awful.
Mud....So much mud.
Shoe sucking, drenching, slipping everywhere awful. I tried to go up on the side of the trail in the taller grass, but one foot would always slip back into the mud which was far worse than just clomping through it. We made it to the first aide station and since I had everything I needed I just headed on through after thanking the volunteers and making sure they had my number (I actually had to go back and make sure they had it since I headed straight through before I remembered). More mud, lots more mud. Tons of slipping around and trying like hell not to fall on the downhills. At this point all the rocks that everybody usually curses were turning into blessings. At least where there was rocks there was sure footing. At some point in this section there was a lovely gravelish covered downhill that I ran a quickly as I could. It felt good to be able to run without so much effort of making sure you had footing. For every down hill there's an uphill, or two, at Flatrock. The uphill was a rooty, muddy, slippy mess and honestly the rest of course was that way. I don't remember much from this section except that a song from Monty Python popped into my head. This song:
I actually can't place this section of trail, but
trust me most of it looked like this.
I have no idea where that song came from. I'm not really a monty python fan, but I was thankful for that song. It got me all the way to the turn around aide station. At this point I realized that I had maybe taken two drinks of water in 7.whatever miles. Hmmm...not good. I was feeling pretty tired and my fingers were starting to not have knuckles anymore due to swelling. If it had been hot that would have been normal-ish for me, but on this cool (almost cold in places) day it was not a good sign. I paused for a minute, chatted with the volunteers about how this day didn't even compare to their being stranded in the blizzard at Prairie Spirit, thanked them profusely and then headed back out. Cheryl headed out of this station before me and she was moving faster at this point so I let her go on and headed out on my own.
The stone arch is one of my favorite features
of the flatrock trail.
More mud, some rocks and, you guessed it, more mud. It was still raining at this point and in the sections without trees it was actually a bit chilly (yeah, I was moving slooooow) due to the wind so I tried to hurry through them as much as the mud would allow me. Several times people from the 50k passed me and I just marveled at their ability to remain upright in the muck. I also realized on a few of the downhills in this section that my left ITband was tightening up. I've dealt with this before and hoped I could just stretch it out on some of the rocks along the way back to get me back to the finish line. So at every downhill I paused and stretched it out before heading down (if there was a rock or tree handy). If not, I gritted and hobbled my way down. Thankfully the ups didn't hurt at all so I powered up them....well...powered might not be the right word, but I wasn't crawling so I called it good. At some point I passed Rick, Melissa's husband, who was also doing the 25k. Chatted for a minute, he said he was doing okay, and parted ways. One of the things I like about this trail is that you can see people coming and going (depending on their race) and it's always nice to see a friendly face out there even if they are passing you. Finally I made it back to the last aide station which meant I only had 4ish miles left. A hard and absolutely beautiful 4 miles that includes the iconic stone arch. I ate some chips, thanked the volunteers and headed out.
Totally mentally done and almost out of the trail.
I kind of lost myself in my own head in the next section. I wasn't feeling good in anyway, but I thought about the boys and thought a lot about J. About how he fights everyday and about how well he's doing with all of the challenges he's blessed with (more on that here). About how he's my other "marathon" and about I would never give up on him, so why would I give up on this (besides, the only way out is through the trail anyway). At this point everything hurt and I was a bit...fuzzy, but I remember stopping at the bench to take a picture for my boys and at some point I realized I hadn't climbed the crack yet. Splish, splosh, slip, slide...always look on the sunny side. Then the crack was there, all slippery and knee breaking. I remember seeing the photographer and thinking that picture would be the worst picture ever (it is horrible), and I remember Candi passing me not too far after that and telling me I was almost there (thank you Candi I needed that).
I did take a small wrong turn in the last 2ish miles...still not sure how I did it...probably the fuzzy headed bit. I backtracked found the blue and very, very slowly made my way down the last extremely slippy hill. When I popped out of the trees and into the grass I nearly cried. I have never been so happy to see a road. I walked the grassy bit through the ditch and up onto the road. There was a lady up there waiting for somebody who said, "You did it. You're almost there". I said something about being uber-happy to see the road, kept walking and starting crying. Me...crying. I am rarely a crier, but I was on this day. I was crying because I was almost done & crying because the people I loved the most weren't there. I don't think I realized how much I wanted sweet husband and the boys to be at the finish line until I was almost there and they weren't.
Anyway...I knew what was coming...as soon as I hit the clearing the airhorn blasted and the cowbells starting dinging. I knew I should run if only so that Eric and crew didn't have to ring the cow bells for so long, but I couldn't do it (sorry guys). I walked up the dirt road smiled as everybody screamed for me to high five "the hand". I was so very happy to be done. Eric ran over and handed me my plaque and a photographer told me take a picture behind a sign. I think I was too out of it to argue.
I saw Rick come in and cheered him on then I rinsed off as much mud as I could, changed into dry clothes and shoes, got some food and pulled up a chair to wait for Melissa, Joell, and Justin to come in from the 50k.
I figured they'd be a couple of hours behind me, but I didn't want to miss them so I stayed. It was a bit of a wait. My legs started to hurt from sitting so I went up and asked Eric if I could help ring the cow bells. He, of course, said yes and then chatted with me for awhile. I got to hear about his experience with the prairie spirit blizzard, his love/hate relationship with mother nature, and how he hates it when other races take down the finish line before the cut off (I could not agree more on this one). We cheered everyone in and the time got closer and closer to the cut off. I asked how many people were still out on the course and learned that the cutoffs had been extended an hour because of all the rain. At the time there were 38 people still out on the course with an hour or so to go to the cut off.
I cheered Justin in and asked him about Melissa. He said she wasn't too far behind. Then I cheered Joell (Justin's wife...yeah they are both badass) in and asked her where Melissa was since I thought they were running together. She thought Melissa was only a quarter mile behind her or so. Not long now. I see Rick standing by the road watching and I'm really starting to worry about time and where Mel is. It's down to 10 minutes to cut off. I ask Eric what happens if she finishes after the cut off. Will it still count for her "hall of pain" finishes? Nope, but she'd still get a buckle. Rick hustles over and tells me that there are 4 people on the road, but he can't tell if she's one of them. I look at Eric and say, "I hope one of them is her". He says, "she'll make it. She has to." One, two, three people make the turn....not her. Cheer them in. The fourth person is MEL!! Eric looks at me and says, "go GET her and tell her to RUN!" There was only a minute left. I ran out, still ringing the cow bell, and started yelling. "Run Mel! You have one minute, RUN!" She made it and got her second FlatRock 50k buckle and her second notch into the "hall of pain". I hugged her and told her how proud I was and watched dozens of people do the same. It was quite impressive to watch.
All in all a satisfying if sad finish for me (5.34 something if you want the time) and an inspiring finish for Mel. A day I doubt I will ever forget. Thank you Eric, the Epic Ultra Brigade, all the volunteers, and the flatrock trail for the amazing memories.
Epic Indeed.
The Stormtroopers Journey:
For my boys, who asked me to take the stormtrooper along and take pictures. For you I would
