Farmdale

A couple weeks ago, a running buddy from our old club tweeted that he had signed up for the Farmdale 30 mile trail race on October 13th.  On a whim, I clicked the link in his tweet and discovered that the race was near where my family lives and that the course was described as "runner friendly."

The mere idea of running a trail race has always scared the be-jeebus out of me because I am as clumsy as all hell, but I realize I am not going to get very far in the world of ultra running unless I migrate from roads to trails.  This is distressing.

I felt like I needed more information about Farmdale, so my aunt graciously went over there and checked it out for me.  She took a few pictures and talked to some mountain bikers about what the trails there were like.  In the end, the consensus from a bunch of people who are extremely hard core and not clumsy like me was that trails ranged from "not too bad" to "relatively easy."  I felt like this meant I was likely to die or get trampled if I attempted to run this race.

I signed up for it anyway.  

I mean, it's only 30 miles.  What's the worst that could possibly happen?

Rob signed up for it too.  It is a rare opportunity for us to do the same race, what with child care and all.  My parents were thrilled that they would get to spend some quality time with William while Rob and I were out running. 

As race day loomed closer, the weather forecast looked grim.  Showers, followed by rain, followed by severe thunderstorms.  I chose to ignore these reports.  After all, I had my hands full with worrying about what it would be like to run on a narrow, rugged, single-track trail with ravines on both sides and how nervous I would feel when a faster runner came up behind me and clearly wanted to pass me but there was not a whole lot I could do except feel bad about myself for holding up the entire race.

I dealt with my nervousness by acting calm and nonchalant.  

Race morning dawned drizzly and cool.

Rob and I met up with a couple of friends from our old running club and chatted before the start.  It was so much more relaxed than the start of a marathon.  I loved that.  In our swag bag at packet pick-up, we got our race numbers, a long sleeve coolmax shirt, and a headlamp.  Seriously, people, it doesn't get any better than that.

 

Before I knew it, we were off and running.  I started in the way back.  The way, way, way back.  In a single track trail race, this means that you stay in the back because there isn't a good way to pass anybody.  This means when the runners in front of you decide to walk a ridiculously easy uphill, you have to walk it too because you cannot pass them.  It was frustrating because I wanted to be going faster than a snail's pace, but I told myself to just chill out on the first loop and stay alert for challenges or obstacles on the trail.

With every step I took, I became more confident.  This wasn't too bad.  I was handling it.  I didn't like being so crowded by other runners, but I knew that most of them were only doing one 10-mile loop, and after they finished their race, I'd be able to go the pace I wanted.

In areas where the course opened up a bit, I was able to pass people, and eventually I caught up with our old friends from the Urbana running club.

"Melissa, I'd recognize your stride anywhere," J said to me as I ran up behind him.  "So efficient."

I smiled.  In 2004, I set my 10K PR running with him at the Christie Clinic race.  For me, it was the middle leg of a 20 mile training run.  Those were the days.

There was a aid station on the course at the 5 mile mark.  I grabbed some pretzels as I continued to chat with J and C.  I started running again and left the aid station a little bit ahead of them, but I turned around to say something to J.  What I didn't realize was that beneath the leaf litter, the trail suddenly became very rocky.  I landed just wrong and went down hard on my left knee.  Several people rushed over to see if I was okay, and I tried to pop right back up like nothing was wrong.

"I'll be fine," I said, even as I noticed blood on my palms and wrists (where I had braced myself) and trickling down my leg.  My knee hurt like hell. I could barely hobble.  J and C walked with me for a while, across the remainder of the rocky section.  Refusing to believe I was injured, I started running again.  I realized I had dropped my pretzels during the fall.  No big deal.  It was only 5 miles until we were back at the start/finish area, where there would be another aid station.

The trail conditions on the back half of the course were more challenging.  Lots of little, incredibly steep ravines to go up and down.  The uphills didn't bother me (they never do), it was the descents that gave me trouble.  I am horrible at descending.  But as long as I slowed down and took it at my own pace-- not barreling down the ravines like real trail runners do-- it was totally manageable.  Before I knew it, I'd finished the first 10 mile loop, and that meant I'd seen the entire course.  I breathed a sigh of relief.  Sure, there were a few sections that made me a little nervous, but even with a throbbing knee, I knew I could do this.

I stopped for a white bread peanut butter and jelly sandwich slices at the aid station (delicious! And that bread was totally vegan, I'm sure!) and headed back out just as the rain began in earnest.  It had been drizzling all morning, but as I headed out for the second loop, it started pouring.  I slipped and fell again (on my already injured knee) at the first entrance to the single track-- a steep, muddy, bank had suddenly become as slick as ice.

The course was less congested than before, now that the 10 mile runners were finished.  But there were still a lot of 30 and 50 milers out there, and I was more nervous than ever because the trail conditions had deteriorated considerably.  It was as slippery as all hell, and I had a really tough time keeping my footing.  I kept constantly looking over my shoulder to see if there was a faster runner approaching and if I would need to get off the trail to let him or her pass.

It began to thunder and lightening.  It was cold, and I was drenched to the bone.  Rain came down in angry sheets.  It got dark and very hard to see the trail.  I slowed down a lot.  Creek crossings became like river crossings-- water up past my ankles.   What had been easy on the first loop was now treacherous.  I realized it was inevitable until I fell and broke my leg or worse.  It was hard but in a completely different way than a marathon or shorter race.  I wasn't limited by energy or ability to turn over my legs.  I was limited by the constant slipping and sliding with every muddy footstep on the trail.  This felt like an entirely different race than the leisurely first loop had.  It was, in fact, how I always imagined trail races would be, and why I had always been afraid of doing one.  This was, by all accounts, my own personal hell.

At last I made it to the 5 mile aid station.  Now 15 miles into the race.  I refueled with orange slices and presumed-to-be-vegan PBJ's.  I chatted with the very nice guy who was working the aid station, and that helped cheer me up.  I tried to make my mind a blank slate and not become paralyzed by fear at the thought of running the more difficult back half in these conditions.

More thunder, more lightening.  Ravines that had been a little scary but do-able for me on the last loop were now impassable.  I was pretty sure I was going to die out there.  I didn't know how I was going to make myself go out for a third loop if I managed to get back to the start/finish area alive.  I had never DNF'd in a race before but I was pretty sure this was going to be my first.  It would be better to DNF than die or lose a limb.  I tried not to dwell on what was going to happen when and if I finished this lap. I just took it one agonizing step at a time.

At last I crossed back into the start/finish area again.  4 hours and 27 minutes for 20 miles.  It had taken me more than a 1/2 hour longer than the first lap to do the second lap.

Before I had time to process my next move, another runner came thundering into the chute.

It was Rob!

He was finished with the race.  He'd done 30 miles in the time it had taken me to do 20.

And more than that, he had won!

As lame and "stand-by-your-man"-ish as this may sound, it was totally freaking awesome to get to see him win the race and congratulate him at the finish line.  Even though I was bedraggled from running 20 miles in a thunderstorm, I suddenly felt like I was walking on sunshine.

But now I was faced with the decision of whether or not I was going to go back out for another 10 miles.  Knowing what the trail conditions were like made the prospect very overwhelming.  Rob looked at me and I could tell he was kind of amazed that I'd made it this far.  Even he thought the trail was treacherous.  

I will never forget the thing he said to me.

"This is the worst it's ever going to get.  If you can go back out there and finish this, you can do anything."

So I grabbed another peanut butter and jelly sandwich and left.  

The course was very sparse now, which was how I preferred it.  Some people were running in small groups or with pacers, but for this I needed to be totally and completely alone.

The rain stopped.  This was a good omen.  But I soon found out that the course was even worse than it had been on the previous lap.  Pools of standing water had been one thing.  Now the entire trail was a slick of soul-sucking (and sole-sucking) ankle deep mud.  It took every bit of concentration and muscle control that I had just to stay upright.  I tried to just keep calm and carry on, but I was terrified of the back section of the loop, the one with all the ravines.

While the downhills were terrifyingly dangerous, the uphills were the hardest part.  There were several times when I felt like I was trying to climb up a vertical mudslide.  I'd manage a few steps and then slide back down to the bottom of the ravine.  I had to crawl on my hands and knees in the mud to get up a couple of them, or grab onto vegetation. Before too long, my arms hurt worse than even my throbbing knee, just from having to expend so much effort to pull myself up the ravines.

 At last I passed a point on the course where I knew I'd left the most difficult parts behind.  With only two or three miles left, I finally knew I was going to make it.  

It was still tough to get to the end.  With no more ravines to worry about, I suddenly noticed how bad my knee hurt.  Not exactly in the place where I'd fallen, but instead, behind my knee cap.  I couldn't really bend my knee at all.  I had to use kind of a weird gate--never heel-striking, just landing on the ball of my foot.  I wondered how long I'd been running like that.

Finally, I emerged from the trail and onto the grassy straight-away with the finish line in sight.  Volunteers and runners who had already finished saw me come out of the woods and began to cheer.  Somebody even rang a cowbell.  I heard Rob yell, "You're an animal!" as I crossed the finish line.  Everybody made me feel like a million bucks, even though it had just taken me 7 hours and 19 minutes to run 30 miles.

 

I didn't even eat anything when I finished; I just collapsed in the tent and tried to process the magnitude of what I had done.

My knee was killing me.  I looked down and saw how scratched up it was, how swollen it was, not just around the point of impact, but behind my patella as well.  I almost couldn't believe that I'd run 25 miles on it like that.  I hoped I didn't cause permanent damage.

While I was still kind of in a daze, Rob loaded me up and took me back to my parents' house, where I put ice on my knee, took an ibuprofen, ate a ridiculously large quantity of BBQ Fritos, and got lots of hugs and kisses from Will.  Thankfully I didn't have The Nausea like I've experienced in most marathons and my other ultra, I just felt completely emotionally drained.  Kind of like I couldn't really do anything but sit there and cry, except I had no idea what I was crying about.  I started feeling better after a hot shower, but my knee still hurt.  In fact, it hurt so bad that I had a lot of trouble sleeping that night.

Finishing Farmdale wasn't quite as hard as giving birth or going through whatever it was we went through right after Will was born.  But it ranks right up there at the top of the list of challenging things I've done.

I'm definitely going to cherish this.

 

Thanks for reading.

Dear William (38 months)

Dear William,

Today you are 38 months old, hooray!

You are taking a gymnastics class.  You are so good at it, I keep expecting your teachers to contact us and say that we should pull you out of pre-school so you can do gymnastics full time.  

 

You don't usually do somersaults at gymnastics class (I guess that's too advanced), but you love doing them at home.

 

We took another camping trip this month. We went to Pere Marquette State Park. It was beautiful, except there were lots of mosquitoes. You didn't complain, though. Particularly after we found you a playground.

You took a nap in the tent with Woody and Jessie.

And then we went on a Family Hike.

You have been speaking more and more Spanish this month. You can easily count to 10 en español. While we are reading books, you often identify animals by their Spanish name first (Conejo! Oso! Mono! Tigre! Elephante! Dinosaurio!) At the playground, you went up to two little girls, smiled, and said, "HOLA!"

You refer to yourself as Guillermo sometimes, and on one occasion you called yourself Gille-- the Argentinean pronunciation. You're adorable, mi cielo.

You invented a game this month where you say to me, "You be William. I be Mommy." And so we reverse our roles. You say, "William, do you want some milk?" And I tell you yes. You hand me some pretend milk and I pretend to drink it. Then you ask, "William, do you want a snack?" And I tell you yes. So you cup your hands and pretend to give me something to eat. It is precious.

You continue to be a playground connoisseur. You love playgrounds. We have found two nearby elementary schools (despite their proximity, they are in a fancy-pants school district we don't belong to) that have amazing playgrounds. The last several weekends we have taken you there to play, and you've had a blast.  You are at this stage where you require me and your dad to actively participate with you while you are playing.  That is, you don't just want to run around on the playground equipment by yourself, you want us to join in on the fun.  I don't think you're scared to go down the big slide by yourself, for example.  You just love it so much that you want to sit on my lap and slide together so that we can both experience it!

We took you to go see Finding Nemo in 3D at the movie theater this month. It was pretty cool to see on the big screen, and it looked like the fishes were swimming up and down the aisles with us. Also, you were very cute in your child-size 3D glasses.

You have been making more art this month:

You have been slightly more adventurous with your eating habits this month.  And by "slightly more adventurous," I mean, after lots of screaming and crying and bribing, we finally got you to try a few bites of a lentil sloppy joe one night.   I was so proud of you for being brave and trying a new food!  Let's do it again sometime.

You've started sleeping with your door open at nighttime.  The first night you did this, I woke up at 3am and you were standing at the bedside looking at me.  A little creepy.  Now most of the time you just get up and come to our door and breathe heavily until I wake up and ask you if you want to come in.  Then you jump into bed with us and cuddle up tight and fall fast asleep.  It gets a little bit crowded, but I really like having you close.

William, we had a great month.  Looking forward to our next adventures!

Love,

Your mom

xoxo

Last ditch attempt

Everything in my life seems to be perpetually falling apart.  I'm not sure if it has always been that way or if it is just since we moved to St. Louis.  Probably the latter.  I recently read through some of my first blog, from the year we spent living in Nicaragua when I was doing my dissertation research, and I realized that I actually used to be a happy person.  What happened?  Hyperemesis.  Finishing my dissertation but then walking away from the thing I'd spent 8 years working towards.  Our Urbana house explosion.  St. Louis.  

But mainly St. Louis.  It is easier to blame this on a place.

For about the first four months we lived here, things were okay.  It was exciting to have a job, and my coworkers were nice.  I no longer spent every minute of the day completely terrified that something would happen to Rob and I would have no way to support my child.  But then we had that house thing happen in Urbana, and everything got really awful for a while.  St. Louis no longer seemed promising.  Nothing seemed promising.  

I began, either consciously or subconsciously, to look for an Exit Strategy.

The form that my grief took was to write a book.  Just do it.  The thing that everybody in my life has spent my entire life telling me to Just Do.

I don't know what I was hoping to accomplish.  I didn't necessarily think of money as being the goal, but it would have been nice if we could have both quit our jobs and picked up and moved to Eugene, OR.  Why Eugene?  Because it is a place (I am told) that is so liberal, Rob and I would be considered "just right of center."  It seems pretty good compared to Missouri.

The book didn't pan out.  Maybe I can write and I just don't have what it takes to succeed the publishing industry.  Or maybe I can't even write.  It's really hard to say.

I'm exhausted.  I just can't put any more energy into it.

A couple of weeks ago, the NGO I was loosely involved with when I did my research in Nicaragua contacted me and asked if I would teach a primatological field course during the winter session this year.  At first I said there was no way.  

But then I took a good look around me and saw how much I don't belong in St. Louis.  I emailed them back and said I'd move heaven and earth to do it.

It would have involved planning and designing the course during the nights and weekends, then maxing out on all my vacation days for the entire year to take off enough time to go down there and teach it.  Rob was going to come with me and bring Will, of course.  I started getting excited for Will to learn Spanish.  To be wild and free and swim in Lake Nicaragua and watch monkeys with me in the forest.

It was only going to be 3 weeks, but maybe that would be enough.  Just enough of an exit to give me the energy to keep on doing this for a little bit more.  Maybe I could get a trumpet for Eduardo and bring it to him.  He wants to go to a university in Rivas and study music.  He wants to start his own mariachi band.

But then the whole thing fell through.  These things happen.  I got the news while I was at work, and I had to close my office door for a while.

It wouldn't be quite so bad if I thought I was going to be able to go to Fuego y Agua with Rob in February.  Oh yes, he's running it again.  But when I tossed out the idea to my coworkers, there was some grimacing.  It would have been much easier to have me gone, even for 3 weeks, over semester break.  Taking a whole week off in February, during the semester, is problematic for everyone.  They put up with it last year for me.  It was kind of a one-shot thing.

And so.

Eduardo isn't getting the money I send him every month.  I'd worked out this deal.  It seemed okay, but that fell through too.  He emailed me and told me the money didn't matter to him.  He'll always think of us as his North American family.  Of me as his Mama Meli.

And meanwhile, I'm still stuck in St. Louis.  Not sure what I'm doing here.

I decided I needed to pull myself together.  To put in one last ditch attempt to stop feeling toxic in my own skin.  

And now is the point at which I actually begin writing about what I intended to when I began this post.

Juice.

Yes.  You read that right.  Juice.

For a really long time, I'd been thinking about getting a juicer and doing a juice fast.  I mean, I'm a vegan, so it's kind of the next step-- right?  I finally took the plunge and did it.  Well, at least I bought the juicer.  It's a nice one.  A Breville Compact that I got refurbished for only $69.  And I bought the fruits and vegetables, a ton of them.  They didn't even all fit in the fridge.

I was so excited.  I just wanted to feel clean and clear-headed.  But what I found out is that I don't actually like juice.  

In particular, I don't like green juice, which is the juice you're supposed to rely on while fasting.  It all goes back to kale.  The first food that made me sick when I had hyperemesis.  I still can't eat it.  One of my main motives for buying the juicer was that I thought I'd be able to consume kale if it were in juice form.  The texture is what bothers me, not the taste so much, or so I thought.

It turns out, it is the taste that bothers me.  And juiced kale tastes about as good as, well, you'd imagine.

Of course you mix it with other things (like celery, cucumbers, apples, etc), but that just makes the other things taste bad.

About 22 hours into the juice fast, I was on the floor writhing in nausea, and I thought, okay, this is not working.  Most people who juice fast probably don't have such strong aversions to kale, and they probably aren't running 5 miles a day in preparation for some as of yet undecided ultra marathon.

So I gave it up.  My last ditch attempt to get my shit together.  I'm not sure where to go from here.

On the plus side, I've gotten Will to drink fun things like carrot-mango-orange juice.  I'd been hoping to sneak some leafy greens in him this way, but the kid knows better than to try anything that contains kale.

I've got no more Exit Strategies up my sleeve.  So, I run.  At some point on this blog I think I said that I run because I need the feeling of pushing myself into a deep, dark, scary place and then finding my way out.  But maybe that's not really why I do it, at least not all the time.  Maybe I run like this because I can't really run away.

Thanks for reading.

Dear William (37 months)

Dear William,

Today you are 37 months old.  You are really enjoying being three.

We took another family camping trip this month.  We went to Hawn State Park near Ste. Genevieve, MO.  There was a playground right on the campground, and you loved that.  We played nature bingo in the amphitheater that night.  Then you snuggled up next to Mommy and Daddy and went to sleep in the tent.

The next morning we went hiking.  The trails were great-- sandy and beautiful.  I hiked barefoot because a blister on my ankle made shoes uncomfortable.  It was lovely, William.

 

Your daycare randomly closed one day because of a water main break, and your dad took the day off work to take care of you.  The two of you went on another hike.  This time you rode in the pack.

 

We went to the Festival of Nations at Tower Grove Park.  You wouldn't eat any food (as per usual), but you did have some frozen lemonade.  It was really good.  It was a lemon icee and they put a peppermint candy at the bottom that melted into the lemonade and became pure wonderfulness.  I think we got it from the Hawaii booth (which is a state, not exactly a nation), or from some unaffiated booth that was next to Hawaii.  I hope your father can find this booth again next year (I've already forgotten where it was) because those icees were delicious.

 

We went to the Science Center, where you looked at trains and puzzles and played with magnetic tiles.  We don't know anybody in St. Louis, but we saw three people that we knew there that day.

 

 

 

You did some more hiking with your father.  You stole his trekking poles.

 

We went to the zoo and visited the stingray exhibit.  Did you know it is free during the first hour of operation?  That is great.  There were stingrays and little sharks in the enclosure.  Visitors could pet them.  I put my hand in the water and a couple of stingrays swam over and let me pet them.  They felt slimy and amazing.  You and your dad didn't really want to touch them.  Maybe next time.

You continue to be a non-eater of food and I wonder what keeps you alive.  

You never want to go to bed.  The whole process takes us two or more hours every night.  You cry like your heart is breaking and cling to me whenever I say "Nigh nigh" and try to leave the room.  You beg me to stay with you.  You get up repeatedly to ask for a drink of water or to go to the potty or to tell us that you are afraid of lions.  Sometimes you call me into your room in the middle of the night and tell me, "I need a hug."   It is hard to be mad at you because you are so cute, but William, it is exhausting.

You started taking naps in underpants (no diaper) and waking up dry.  We haven't tried that overnight yet-- I'm a bit too scared.  Maybe this month, we'll see.

Get ready for more adventures, William!  

Love,

Your mom

2 years

"Give it two years."  That was what a friend said to me when we moved to St. Louis.  "You can't really expect to feel at home any place until you've been there for two years."

Our two year anniversary of living in St. Louis came and went (quite unceremoniously) near the end of August, and I didn't feel a flash of brilliance, a sudden sense of belonging after two years of being an outsider in a city with which I can't quite reconcile myself.

The way I feel about St. Louis is kind of like how I imagine it would be to have a weird uncle you don't really like.  Maybe this person annoys or bothers you, but he's family, so anybody who's not related to you and dares make a derogatory remark about him is going to have hell to pay.

I complain about St. Louis all the time, but I'll be damned if anybody else talks down about it.  The crime rate, the dilapidated appearance of the downtown buildings as you whiz by on I-64, the crime rate, and did I mention the crime rate?

Well, there was only one shooting on my running route last week, and nobody was injured, so that's something I guess.

Aside from all the crime, people here are uncommonly nice.  Freakishly nice.  Even in places where you don't expect people to be nice, such as the benefits department at work, the post office, and the driver's bureau.  When we first moved here, I had the feeling that it was just the people I worked with who were nice, but then I found that this niceness extended to the entire university, and even beyond that, to what appears to be the entire community.  I've never encountered that anywhere else in the world, but I've always imagined it's how Wisconsin would be.

I'm suspicious of this niceness, though, because I suspect that beneath it all, the person at the grocery store or library or auto repair shop who is exchanging seemingly genuine "Hellos" and "How are yous" might legitimately be the kind of nut job who would vote for this nut job.

And beyond that, the niceness completely breaks down once anybody gets behind the wheel of a car in this city.  I follow the local news on Twitter and every day, I swear, there are at least 8 fatalities on the interstate just because road rage, privilege, and the "mine is bigger" mentality takes over when people are attempting to merge or change lanes.

Don't get me wrong, all the road idiocy is hardly confined to the city's over-used interstate system.  At the corner of Delmar and Skinker, I have seen, on no less than two occasions, someone make a RIGHT turn from the LEFT turn lane, on a RED light, while talking on a cell phone.  

I have never, ever felt so unsafe walking anywhere since living in St. Louis, and I'm not talking about the fear of getting shot or robbed.  I am honest-go-god scared to be a pedestrian in this city.  Green lights and walk signals are meaningless.  Cars barrel right through them.  In fact, I came the closest I've ever come to getting hit by a car just last weekend at mile 3 of my 14-mile run, when an SUV didn't think it necessary to stop or even slow as I crossed the intersection (on a green light!).  When I am driving and I do yield to pedestrians, the driver behind me generally honks and makes wild gesticulations.  I assume profanity is involved as well.  At least it is on my part.

Yet St. Louis is a haven compared to the areas beyond--that is, rural Missouri.  The people are probably really nice there too, but I don't feel welcome as a vegan, feminist, environmentalist person who supports LGBT rights.  While we were driving to a state park recently to take a family camping trip, I felt nauseated at the sheer amount of political signage proclaiming that our current president is a Muslim (he's not) and urging passers by to reject the idea of health care for all.  Last fall, a couple of grad students even reported to me that they passed through an actual clan gathering (and by clan I mean clan with a k) while on their way to the Ozarks.

Shudder.

Of course, it isn't all bad, and I'm even getting a little mad at myself for being so negative in this post.  St. Louis seems to be a place of great opportunity, of great potential.  There are genuinely many times that I'm excited to live in a big city (yes, I consider St. Louis to be big), because there are a lot of things to do here (even if they are way too over-crowded and there is never any parking available).  Forest Park has got a lot of free museums (the Science Center, the Missouri History Museum, the Art Museum) where I can take Will, and honestly, I often think about how he would never have had so many of these amazing experiences if we'd stayed in Urbana.  While I miss Strawberry Fields and the Co-Op, here I've got Whole Foods and a produce delivery guy who is also a stand-up comedian.  St. Louis is also a thrift store shopper's paradise, ranging from "upscale" places like the Scholar Shop, to the Goodwill Outlet, where you can buy items (clothing, shoes, used candles, broken lampshades, picture frames, and boxes of expired cake mix) for 79 cents a pound.

Plus, St. Louis seems to be on the Indigo Girls' tour circuit, so it's got that going for it.

I don't know what the future holds.  Sometimes I dream about moving to Eugene, Oregon, or going back to Nicaragua and living up on the volcano with the hippies who are into permaculture.  But I also feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what St. Louis has to offer.  I really don't get out much, what with the full time job, the toddler who still takes a 4 hour nap in the afternoon, and the ultra marathon training schedule.  I know I would miss this place if we ever left.  I guess all I can do is give it more time.

Thanks for reading.

Howl

Well, I ran my first ultra this past weekend (August 11th).

After my last marathon, I felt pretty jaded about running and the world in general, and I decided that the way to make it better was to run an ultra.

On a whim that may have been fueled by a couple of beers, I signed up for Howl at the Moon-- an 8-hour ultra at the Kennekuk Cove County Park, conveniently located near where Rob's parents live.  We'd have a place to stay the night before the race, childcare on race day, and the event itself would be like a family reunion with all our friends from Second Wind Running Club.

Training went pretty well for me, despite the record heat and drought in July this year (I think St. Louis has had 20 days over 100 degrees so far in 2012).  I did at least 4 long runs (21-22 miles) in 105 degree heat, and aside from a few blisters, I felt pretty good. 

We left St. Louis on Friday and made a brief stop in Urbana, at Will's birthplace (so to speak)-- Davenport Hall.  It was where I spent 10 billion hours of my graduate career.  Most of the people I knew in the department have gone (including SL, who recently took a job elsewhere), but I did get to catch up with some of the office staff and become overwhelmed by the weirdness of merely visiting a place where I'd lived so much of my life.

 

We headed on to Kennekuk to pick up our race packets, and upon arrival we ran into at least 50 people we knew  (slight exaggeration), including Cousin Don.  

The protocol appeared to be that everybody had a canopy tent pitched along the start/finish area (where we would be looping around every 3.29 miles).  There, you were to store the various items you would need for the day, such as a cooler of drinks and snacks, extra shoes/socks, chairs for lounging in (or collapsing in).  I was glad Rob knew this is what you were supposed to do (and had brought a canopy tent), other wise I would have been out of luck.

With our race numbers in hand and our tent pitched, we headed to Rob's parents, where Will opened a few more birthday presents:

"Oh boy, a dinosaur!"

 

And scared his grandfather:

 

We ate some pasta and tried to go to bed.  Unsuccessfully.  Will had skipped his usual nap for the day (refusing to sleep in the car) and was beside himself with exhaustion.  By the fifth time I had gotten up to soothe him, he begged, "Sleep with me, Mommy," so I brought him back to the bed where Rob and I were trying to sleep.  He proceeded to unfurl himself so that he took up the space of 3 adult humans, and neither Rob nor I had any room left.  He thrashed about for the rest of the night and snored and kicked me in the face.  I saw the clock go from midnight to 2am to 3am.  In fact, at 4:59am, I turned off my alarm and just got up because I was already awake.

Not a great way to spend the night before an 8-hour ultra.

It was freezing in the morning.  After several months of scorching drought, an unseasonable cool settled over the region.  Temperatures were in the 50s--almost 50 degrees cooler than what I was used to training in.  I shivered so hard my teeth shook as I waited in our canopy tent.

I was nervous about running my first ultra, especially on so little sleep, but the atmosphere around the whole thing was completely different than any marathon I've ever run.  Everybody seemed pretty laid back, and for me at least, this event was more about catching up with old friends than sticking to a certain pace per mile.  I had no idea what was ahead of me because I had never run for 8 hours before ("That's an entire workday," Rob's brother astutely pointed out when we told him what we were doing), so all I could do was go along for the ride.

I was just standing there chatting with a friend ES when all of a sudden I realized, oh we're starting, and off we went.  

The miles slid by.  It was fantastic to have ES running with me.  He is a very accomplished ultra runner and he probably could have been going a lot faster than I was, but we stuck together--talking about everything from writing to photography to beer-making to Western States.  He became like my own personal ultra marathon doula.  I am eternally grateful.  I couldn't even feel my feet hitting the ground.

The course was a 3.29 mile loop on grass and gravel, with an aid station about halfway through.  Every time you circled around and got back to the start/finish area, you had to make sure that your "scorer" saw you and marked down that you'd gone another lap.  Each age/sex division (ex: open males, masters males, open females, masters females, etc.) had their own scorer.  I'm not sure how many people each scorer was responsible for, but every time I went through, my scorer looked at my bib number and called out something encouraging like, "Melissa!  Heading out on lap number 4!"

I tried to do the best I could with eating and drinking.  I managed to eat a whole package of Clif Shot blocks in the first 4 laps or so (200 calories), and then I grabbed handfuls of pretzels from our snack stash in the tent every time I ran past.  I carried my own water bottle and topped it off at the start/finish area each time we went through.  Probably by about the second lap, I started taking one S!Cap every time we reached The Big Hill, which 1) wasn't really that big -and- 2) was actually pretty easy, because you just stop and walk up it to conserve your energy.

By around mile 16, ES was having some knee pain and needed to walk for a while.  I was faced with a Major Dilemma.  I wasn't at this race to be a hero or to break a new world record, I was just here to have fun.  So…should I keep going on my own, or stay with ES and walk?  In the end I decided that I felt way too good--freakishly good-- and I wanted to keep running.  I was afraid that I might fall over and collapse a few miles later, but I just wanted to see how long I could keep it up.

I did, however, pause long enough to take a picture of myself and attempt to Tweet it (which failed, because my phone had no signal) and to do some math to figure out how many laps I would need to run in order to make my goal of 35 miles.  (Why it hadn't occurred to me to figure this out before the race, I don't know).  It worked out to something like 10.6 laps.  I decided to try to shoot for 11 laps and make it an even 36.19.

Un-Tweetable:  Melissa at Mile 16.3

I felt stronger and stronger as the miles piled up.  My laps were pretty even around 33-35 minutes, which was a decent pace to keep.  8 laps in was marathon distance, and from then on out every step I took was uncharted territory.  I fully expected to fall apart, but I didn't.  I ran a great lap and everybody at the start/finish area called out "Buffalo!" (the battle cry of the Second Wind trail runners) when I got back to start my 9th lap.  I was officially an Ultra Runner now.  I felt like a million bucks.

Except that I hadn't eaten in a while--not really since the Clif Blocks and pretzels early on in the race.  I figured that by this point I had run over 29 miles, so I might as well bust into the stash of junk food we'd brought.  BBQ Fritos are vegan and sounded amazingly good right about then.  I dug into our rubbermaid tub and found, much to my disappointment, that I had mistakenly bought and packed Original Fritos instead of the BBQ ones.  I had a moment of extreme disappointment, because BBQ Fritos are much saltier and sounded a lot better to me.  I tried to make the best of it-- I shoved some boring, original flavor Fritos into my pockets and worked on eating them until made it back to the start/finish area again.

Surprisingly, I didn't slow down, at least not too much.  And I felt peculiarly great.  I kept sucking on Fritos (wishing they were BBQ) and I even ate some slices of cold, boiled potatoes dipped in salt.  The volunteers were fantastic, offering huge amounts of support and encouragement as I ran through aid stations and refilled my water bottle.  They even started handing out ice at the top of the hill, and that was like heaven.

At some point I realized that I had 35 miles in the bag.  I could walk it and make it.  I could lie down on the side of the trail and take a nap and still make it.  I was completely and utterly bewildered by this.  I had thought it would be so much more of a struggle.  I began to have illusions of grandeur and wonder if I could make 40.  I spent several laps doing the math and realizing that it was within my reach.

A brief bout of feeling bad hit right about mile 35, when I was at the aid station at the bottom of the hill.  They'd been handing out soda there all day long, and all of a sudden a couple sips of Coke sounded good to me.  After all, it had brought me back to life after a 2-week stint of Vortex in Nicaragua.  I raced into the aid station feeling much anticipation and when I got there, they were all out of soda!  Such the luck.  Like the BBQ Fritos.  I popped an S!Cap and told myself to keep the crazies at bay.

When I got back to the start/finish after my 11th lap, I had surpassed my goal and it was only 6 hours and 30 minutes into the race.  I stopped to talk to my scorer and asked, "What do I have to do to get to 40 miles?"  I had lost all ability to compute.  She told me to run one more lap of 3.29 miles, and that would put me at 39.48.  Then all I'd have to do is a one-mile out and back, and I'd be there.  Perfect.  I still felt good, and I had an hour and half left to do it.

So I took off for my last big loop.  Right about the time I hit the aid station, Rob passed me for the second time since the race began.  "You're an animal!" he called out.  He looked strong, and I calculated that he was on pace for 50.  Now who's the animal?

I knew I had this wrapped up.  There was no need for speed at this point, I could afford to take it easy.  My quads hurt and my feet hurt from crunching down on gravel in 4mm drop shoes with no rock plate, so I walked a lot that last loop after Rob passed me.

I reached the start/finish area at around 7 hours 15 minutes and had put in 12 laps, totaling 39.48 miles.  I told the scorer that I didn't want to try to run another 3.29, I just wanted to do an out-and-back so I got up to 40.  She said that the out-and-backs didn't start until 7 and half hours, so I just had to wait 15 minutes until that began.

I drank some weak orange gatorade and bided my time.

At 7h30m, the announcer called all of us waiting to do out-and-backs and we lined up to go.  It was a free-for-all on very bumpy, rough terrain, and I had wanted to walk the whole way, but I was afraid I would get trampled because everybody seemed to want to go fast.  I tried to jog as best I could.  I really did not like this section of the race and just wanted the whole thing to be over.

At last it was, and I went to report my one-mile out and back to my scorer, while other people kept running to add another mile or two before the 8 hour time limit.

"Great job!" my scorer said.  "You made 37.19 miles."

"Wait a minute!  I was supposed to have 40!"

"No, honey, you never ran that 12th lap."

"Yes, I did!  I ran right over here and you told me I'd gone 39 miles and all I had to do was a 1 mile out and back to get 40!"

The one thing on the instruction sheet for Howl at the Moon was that you must never argue with your scorer, the scorer is always right.

But goddammit!  I was so confused by this point.  Either she had been wrong about how many laps I'd run and she'd misled me, or she had forgotten to write down my last lap.

I stood there feeling a horrendous cloud of doom wash over me.  Here I was, having thought I was so damn tough for running 40 miles at my very first ultra, and this lady was telling me I had only gone 37.19.  There was nothing I could do about it now-- with only about 15 minutes left in the race, I wasn't going to be able to put in another 3 miles.  I was shit out of luck.

Maybe the scorer just wanted to get rid of me, or maybe she wanted to avoid a nasty outburst of tears, so she reconsidered and said.  "Well, okay.  I'll mark you at 40."  She kind of whispered it, and I got the feeling that she still thought she was right but she didn't want me disappointed or make a scene.

I walked away from the scoring table, feeling shitty, and made it back to tent, where I collapsed in a chair and sat there motionless.  Feeling shitty.

I looked at my watch and reaffirmed that I had recorded splits for 12 full laps prior to doing my 1-mile out and back.  Next year I'm taking a freaking GPS.

I just ran 40.48 miles, dammit. 

 

Rob showed up a while later, looking like death warmed over.  He'd made just over 50 miles, which is 20 miles farther than he's ever run in his life.

Within a few minutes, he turned white and his lips got blue and he started shaking.  ES and I ran over to find some EMTs, who came over and put some ice packs on him (not what I had been expecting) and took his temperature and blood pressure.  I guess he got so overheated that he became cold.  He felt a bit nauseous, and they gave him some oxygen.  You want to see something scary?  Your significant other lying in the grass with an oxygen mask on his face.

He made a full recovery and the EMTs went away right about the time that my Post Race Nausea knocked me down and everybody left to go to the awards ceremony.  It reminded me of the time that I lay dying in Nicaragua, all alone, and when I heard a German doctor outside my door, I drug myself out of the room and asked her to give me an injection of some mystery liquid that a pregnant Chilean girl had told me would help me stop vomiting.  Ah, the memories.  

When Rob came back from the award ceremony, he said that I won a Major Award (though I think just about everybody who did this race won a Major Award), and he got me to drink a few sips of V8.  It revived me enough that I was able to make it to the car and get back to Rob's parents' house.

I was really happy to see Will again; we'd been gone for so long that I was afraid he would think I'd abandoned him.  He seemed no worse for the wear and was happily playing with his grandpa.

I felt weird and sick but in a different way than after running a marathon.  Not as intense, maybe.  And more tired than anything else.  Maybe that was because we'd gotten so little sleep the night before.  Rob hobbled to a grocery store and bought some veggie burgers, and I was finally able to eat one of those with no bun but lots of ketchup.  Then I fell into an exhausted sleep and woke up the next morning, realizing it had been a really long time since I'd peed.

Thanks for reading such a long race report.  I definitely want to run another ultra again soon.  Tomorrow, if possible.  Recovery has gone surprisingly well, and I was able to run again on Wednesday morning (after Saturday's 40 miles!) without even feeling so much as a little stiff.

Also, many thanks to Rob's parents for hosting us and watching Will, to the Second Wind volunteers who cheered and shouted Buffalo and made my day, to ES for being an extraordinary pacer and friend, to Cousin Don for, well, being Cousin Don and giving me the sage words of wisdom: Nothing to fear, it's just runnin.'

Buffalo!

Dear William (36 months)

Dear William

Today you are THREE YEARS OLD!

What an amazing journey it has been.

We started off this month with a visit to Illinois and you got to play with your first ever girlfriend, Ashlynn

 

You took a bath together and then you slept in the same bed.  That isn't weird.  You're both only (almost) three.  It was adorable actually.  We could hear you two whispering to each other for quite some time after we shut the lights out, but once you fell asleep, you didn't make another peep until morning, when you both got up and started playing with toys.

 The next big thing that happened is that you moved from the two-year old room to the pre-school room (aka "The Big Kid room") at daycare.  I was worried about it, because you have always had trouble when you've moved into a different room at daycare, plus you were very, very attached to your beloved teacher Mr. D.  But so far, so good.  You have been enjoying the Big Kid room and the transition has been very smooth.  Some of your friends moved up with you, and while you hang out with them a lot, you are also busy making new friends.  Your new teachers are very nice too.  And I heard that Mr. D still comes in to see you before nap time-- he even tucks you in and wishes you sweet dreams.  Mr. D, we will always love you!

This month, you've been improving your Spanish speaking skills!  You know just about all the colors and lots of animals.  When you want milk you ask for leche and when you want juice you ask for jugo.  You can also count to 10 in Spanish.  Here is a video of you counting, but in this one, you only go up to 5:

 

 

You still like to jump on the couch. We are thinking of signing you up for gymnastics.

 

You love helping me water the garden (i.e., the two tomato plants we are attempting to grow in pots).

 

You have been eating slightly better this month. That is to say, on at least a couple of occasions, you have willingly consumed one or more bites of solid food, which is something that almost never happened before. You tried corn on the cob (1 bite). You will eat a 1/2 a peanut butter sandwich (even though it may take us an hour and a lot of coaxing). The other day I was slicing up cantaloupe and you were watching me and said, "OH, THAT SMELL PRETTY!" and I told you it was called cantaloupe and asked you if you wanted to eat some. You said that you did, and you ate a whole big bowl of it. I was so happy that I hugged and kissed you a million times! You also ate an entire cubed mango the other day. I wept with joy.

 

This month, we have discovered that we can get you to do almost anything if we count to five. As in, "William, you need to stop playing with your trains and come over here and put your shoes on by the time I count to FIVE! ONE… TWO…" We almost never get past 2-1/2.

 

You have said a lot of cute things this month. My favorite thing that you have said is, "MOMMY, I LOVE YOU VERY MUCH."

 

I was so excited for your birthday that we had three whole birthday parties for you this month. You've gotten very used to birthdays and presents. In fact, just about every day, you ask me for a present. "I WANT BLUE PRESENT," you will say. And then you might change your mind. "I WANT RED PRESENT." I'm not sure exactly what that means.

 

We had a whole long-weekend party for you, and you got to have lots of fun with your mama and daddy. We kicked the whole thing off with a special breakfast of vegan donuts (which you ate!)

 

You opened your present from Cousin Logan, which was a Mack Truck where you can store all your cars!

 

You opened your present from Mama and Daddy, which was a Jessie Doll to go with your Woody Doll. For months you have been asking me for a Jessie doll at least 10 times a day. You were thrilled to finally receive her.

 

We had a special cake, just for you! You got a Slip and Slide, but I think that was also for Daddy. What do you think? You can check out the whole thing on this video!

 

William, it is hard to believe how much you have grown up!

 

Happy, happy birthday! We've got many more adventures ahead of us!

 

Love,

 

Your mom