JW Corbett 50K 25 April 2015 Ball don't lie, and neither do training logs... and race results

Keeping this one short to avoid what has been happening with the past few entries, they stay in draft format never seeing the light of day.  Just did the JW Corbett 50K, which is the same race that gave me a nice big DNF this time last year.  The course was well marked, I had run it multiple times before the race, the conditions were nice, and the bottom line is I just didn't train properly and ended up starting the race fatigued perhaps.

Just arrived at the finish line getting checked in after a long day.

Looking back at training logs always brings a nice dose of reality back into focus.  In my mind I took all of February off of running after a 100K (Croom Zoom) and 50 Miler (Skydive Ultra) in January and slowly ramped mileage back up in march.  In reality it was more like 2 weeks off, then ran a couple hard runs that really killed me, so took off another week then jumped back into some 50-75 mile weeks with a few shorter weeks in between.

There was a duplicate on top so the 90.8 is really about 76M

There were 2 runs over 30 miles one on the 50K Corbett trail course almost completely unsupported, 4 runs in the 15-20 mile range, a few in the 10-15 range including some trail repeats and a half marathon.  Pepper in normal short runs and I think I was just a little too cooked.  Some people can handle that, and it looks like I'm not one of them.

On the positive side of the race: The first half of the race, I was able to go slow and easy, keeping my heart rate below 140, and the plan was to start pushing harder the second half.  No major spikes.  I was able to finish the race without getting lost unlike last year.  The course was wonderfully dry and almost "too easy" according to the race director for the L2O race.  What made up for the dry course was the heat, it was 90 degrees out, which in the big scheme of things, isn't too horrible, it could have been 95, like it was the next day.

The bad news is that after 2 harder miles on the way back I was out of gas.  It ended up being around 10 hours, not sure the official time but definitely a personal worst for a 50K, and I wasn't DFL.  It was a tough race and out of all the 50 mile starters, I think there were 20 or so, only 4 finished and I was very happy "only" to be doing the 50K.

The above video is about 3 weeks prior to the race.  A large chunk of the course was under water.  That section was still there but it was very runnable on race day!

Getting kicked out of the FUR Aid Station that was manned by FUC-ASSes... (entire other topic for that one!)

Post race with friends and an ultra-baby!  

When looking at my training logs over the last month or so leading up to the race, that's when "Ball Don't Lie" popped into my head.  Training logs don't lie and if you deserve to do poorly because how you trained, then you will do poorly :) There are some changes that should have been made and some silly choices for training runs, but that's what we call experience.  Next up is Lake 2 Ocean again in June, which during the race, I was sure that I was going to pull out because of being in such "horrible" shape but 24 hours later feeling a little more optimistic and starting to see why this one went a little south.  The intent for Corbett was to be a training run for L2O and it was a good wake up call and preparation.  It sure woke me up, and time to figure out the next 6 weeks to avoid a similar issue on a longer race.  Until next time...