Bighorn Wild and Scenic Trail 100 - June 17, 2016

NOTE: This was originally a ‘Note’ on Facebook, posted June 18, 2016.

Introduction

Bighorn was my second attempt at a 100 mile race, having completed the Pine to Palm 100 Mile Endurance Run last September. I've completed 10 official ultras in the past two years, including all the major distances, but this was my first DNF.

Looking back, there are several factors that likely contributed to not finishing this run, but foremost among them was poor race-day hydration. I both did not drink enough water and did not consume enough electrolytes given the altitude of the race and the heat. This cascaded into additional problems that put me way off schedule and in jeopardy of not making the final race cutoff, which lead me to decide to drop. Here are the details.

Race Recap

The Bighorn 100 is a classic mountain trail race and an out and back course, turning around at mile 48, allowing for a finish just beyond the start in the town of Dayton, Wyoming. It has 17,500 feet of elevation gain and loss, starting at around 4,500 feet and topping out just below 9,000 feet, and it’s a Hard Rock 100 qualifier. The terrain is varied with a good portion that is easily runnable but an equal amount that has lots of rocks and ruts that give the ankles a beating. It often has a lot of shoe sucking mud, but this year this was minimal. Instead, hardened rutted ground was found instead.

Unlike most ultras, this race starts late in the morning at 11:00. This is good in that you get a good sleep but bad in that you feel pretty fresh in the heat of the day, making it more likely that you push the pace when you should be staying patient. I had an aggressive race strategy to attempt to break 24 hours based on my training and runs at similar altitude.

I nailed my timing estimates up the first big climb, but I started to feel a bit off after about 8 miles, when I continually felt an urge to lay down and sleep, which was probably due to the 7,000 foot elevation. I kept my pace on target, but tripped several times over rocks on the flattish trail, creating some early soreness on my ankles.

I hit the first crewed aid station at mile 13.5 and was in about 5 minutes early. I spent just under five minutes there getting a new stock of gels, an ice wrap for my neck, and full water bottles. I left right on target. Despite not struggling at that point, the race already felt hard.

I hit my timing marks at the next two aid stations, but began to sense that something was off with my hydration around mile 18 as I hadn't had any urge to pee after some 4 hours of running. At the 19-mile aid station, I tried to get some salt ingested by sucking on chips and eating some of that aid station's famous bacon. This was probably the hottest point of the run, which my Garmin read as 95°F. I was anxious to get to the bottom of the 18-mile descent to my drop bag and pressed on.

This descent was very challenging, as technical as any terrain aside from shale on a mountain ridge, and in pounding downhill I stopped to pee and began to feel the tell-tale pain of a bruised bladder.

One of the problems with dehydration and running is that your bladder doesn't fill sufficiently and the walls of the bladder can hit together while you run causing bruising. In extreme cases you get blood in your urine and you feel like you have to urinate all the time, which feels like a burning cramp in your abdomen. When you can pee, you feel relief initially but then intense pain as the bladder finishes emptying. I had an extreme case of this at the Lake Sonoma 50 this year but it arose in the last 12 miles, which meant that finishing was the best way to cure it. I chalked that problem up to overuse of caffeinated gels during the race and under-hydration because of the cool day. After yesterday though, I'm not sure this was the proper conclusion, but back to this run.

The bladder bruising causes pain with every step, particularly on a downhill, and as a result my pace slowed dramatically from what I was expecting. I covered the 11 miles into the 30 mile Footbridge aid station 45 minutes slower that I had planned. Being blessed with Scottish caber-tossing thighs, I'm generally pretty good on downhills, which made this slowing quite mentally challenging.

At Footbridge I sat down and opened my drop bag to change shoes and socks and got out my cold weather gear for the ascent to the Jaws trailhead at mile 48. To help with my dehydration I drank 2 cups of soup and 2 cups of water. I knew drinking and resting, particularly at a lower elevation of 4,500 feet or so, were my friends at this point so I stayed there for 30 minutes.

I felt a bit better after the time in the aid station and headed out just after 7 pm for the next of 3 aid stations before the Jaws turnaround. This part of the race features about 4,500 feet of climbing, which means hiking steep parts and running flats to keep pace. About 2 miles into the hike, I stopped to pee and the pain returned. Given my experience at Lake Sonoma, I minimized running to the first aid station, Cathedral Rock, in hopes of reducing damage. I took some salt tabs here but they did not have any soup, which was my best tool in rehydrating, so I continued on for Spring Marsh aid station, 6.5 miles away. I was again reduced to hiking nearly all of this section.

This was the longest, most challenging stretch of the race for me, and I began to consider dropping at Jaws. All of the hiking was aggravating the Morton's neuroma on my right foot, which I've successfully managed for the past 6 months. Interestingly, hiking causes it much more pain than running, but the bladder pain was more intense so I opted for continued hiking.

At Spring Marsh, I sat down next to the fire and asked for soup. I was additionally starting to get cold at this point, likely aggravated by my hydration status. I drank 3 cups of soup and had some Coke in hopes of lifting my spirits. I stayed in the aid station for 20 minutes before continuing on to Elk Camp. As I left, I felt pretty good and was thinking that I'd make the turnaround at Jaws.

The journey from Spring Marsh to Elk Camp was 3.5 miles and they passed with my mood swinging back and forth. My bladder pain was mostly subsiding as the soup started to improve my hydration status. My right foot continued to worsen and I continued to get colder. I arrived in Elk Camp and again sat by the fire drinking soup, but I only stayed about 15 minutes as Jaws was only 4.5 miles away. I knew that regardless of my decision to drop or not, I needed to get there so I pressed on.

Now that my bladder was doing a bit better, I ran a bit more to alleviate my foot pain. The foot pain had been exacerbated by the shoes I had changed into at Footbridge. They have a more narrow toe box than my preferred shoes, but they have more cushion, which I thought would be nice for my bladder. My feet had swelled a bit in the course of the first 30 miles as well, which was additionally antagonizing. The running helped me make faster progress up to Jaws, and I began to pass some people. Typically at this point in an ultra I have paced myself well enough that I am passing people so this boosted my spirits. As I arrived at Jaws and saw Bill and Jane, I was really uncertain whether I would drop or continue on. I was three hours behind schedule at this point.

I went to the bathroom just before entering the aid station and while not great, my hydration was ok for being 48 miles into an ultra. I sat down to change shoes, socks, and shirt and developed an uncontrollable shiver. One of the medical volunteers came over to me, and we discussed my situation. She got me soup and electrolyte drink and was concerned about my shiver. She moved me to a seat next to a heater and brought me heat packs to put under my armpits. Jane and Bill helped me clean up my feet (caked in mud at this point) and I got myself geared up to head back out. I was still shivering though and the doctor wanted to see me warmed up before I left. After about 30 minutes in the aid station, I stopped shivering. I had done the math to figure out what returning to the course would mean for me. With aid station stops, I had been struggling to cover the course in under 20 minutes per mile. I figured that the best case scenario was to finish at 8pm the next day, an hour shy of the cutoff. This did not bode well given that Saturday was forecast to be 10 degrees hotter than Friday.

Still, I thought I might go back out and got up to test my legs to see if I could do better than the 20 min/mile pace. After sitting as long as I had, my legs were really stiff. All of the aches and pains had caught up, particularly a nagging Achilles strain. I was able to move but concluded that 20 min/mile was probably as good as I could do. The next 18 miles were downhill, and I thought about testing that section to see if I could do better than 20 min/mile, but if I didn't hit 20 min/mile, I would then have to go another 18 miles before I could drop. In the end, I thought about playing the long game. With one 100 mile finish under my belt (or should I say on it), I didn't feel a strong need to prove that I could do it, and given that I want to keep getting better at running ultras, I decided that minimizing damage here was the smart play. It was a pretty agonizing decision to make, but I'm surprised at how appropriate it has felt in the hours following.

Conclusions

I've spent the past few hours thinking about everything that contributed to this outcome and what lessons I should take away. There are several.

On hydration, I've been pretty opposed to taking on additional sodium during ultras as there is good research pointing to it being unnecessary for avoiding hyponatrimia and some suggestion that supplementation is potentially harmful; to avoid hyponatrimia, you should minimize fluid intake and only drink to thirst. I ran Pine to Palm with no sodium/electrolyte supplementation and have relied on the sodium present in my gels for past races. However, given the importance of sodium in particular in carbohydrate absorption, I think my stance may be a bit misguided. In addition, at altitude and in the heat, I think the rules change, given that you need to take on more fluid to maintain all of the systems that rely on fluids. I'll do some more research here and figure out my plan, which is always evolving.

On recovery, my racing season thus far has been pretty intense. In training for Pine to Palm last year, I ran long races in preparation, but I treated those races as training runs, running them very conservatively. This year I scored lottery wins to get into Way Too Cool 50k, Lake Sonoma 50, and Miwok 100k, all each one month apart. I ran all of the them pretty hard, setting PRs in each, but after Miwok, I did not take enough time to rest. I felt this in my last training runs for Bighorn as I never had a workout that felt great, unlike before my prep for Pine to Palm. My Garmin data suggests as much, too.

When I get back to training, I'm going to focus on improving my VO2 max before anything else as base fitness helps in all aspects of ultras.

When racing at altitude, if you can't get to the race location more than 2 weeks ahead of time to acclimatize, it's best to arrive 24 hours ahead of time to reduce the negative impact that the acclimatization process has on blood plasma volume. I have been at elevation for a little more than a week, visiting family in Bozeman. While I've had a great time, I would probably plan a visit after the race next time.

Last, I plan to take a few weeks off from running to let my body fully recuperate. I don't think I'll plan for any more 100 mile races this year as I already have my Western States lottery ticket from Miwok. I have a couple of shorter races I'll do, and I'm looking forward to crewing and pacing friends in their 100 mile efforts. I haven't actually crewed an ultra before so it's probably time for me to do some learning there. I'm also going to volunteer at some races as I can't say enough about the quality of people who help out at ultras. The care you get is incredible, and I want to give back to the community.

The last question is whether or not I'll come back to attempt Bighorn. Ultrarunners are often adamant about returning to a course to tackle it. I'm not sure yet. I enjoyed the course and would like to see it again (and do it in reverse on the way back), and I certainly have some pangs of wanting to cross the finish line in Scott Park. There are so many other races to do and places to run that I'm not sure about it though. The race also has distances of 52, 32, and 18 miles; perhaps a group of friends descending on Dayton and hanging out in the cool cabin we rented will bring me back.

In ultra running circles, a DNF is often described as a right of passage and affectionately referred to as "Did Nothing Fatal". Gary Cantrell, founder of the Barkeley Marathons, not surprisingly has suggested that if you have not had a DNF, then you have not really taken any risks to explore your limits, which is a lot of why we run ultras. Suffice to say that risks were taken and limits and lessons learned. I’m certain I’ll be better next time.

As always, ultras are not an individual effort. A huge thank you to my crew for the day, Jamie, Jane, and Bill. They were simply awesome.