Rocky Raccoon 50 Mile Trail Run

On February 2nd I ran the Rocky Raccoon 50 Mile Endurance Trail Run.  My first 50 miler!

I was so totally excited about this race!  Scott and my Dad had done it a few years ago and always talk about how great it is.  There is also a lot of buzz about it locally so I just decided this is the year for me to try it out.  

I was really nervous in the weeks going into the race because I was still having a lot of pain in my left groin which had now moved to my hip.  It hurt really really bad to run.  I saw a couple of Chiropractors who did some adjustments that helped a little but not a lot.  And they both told me different things.  One said that I had a pulled hamstring and the other told me my lower back was out of alignment so it was affecting my hips.  Whatever, they might both be true, I don't know.  But I just wanted the pain to go away.  I was mentioning this to my friend, Sonae, one day who happens to be a licensed massage therapist.  She convinced me to let her work on my legs to see if a massage would help at all.  So I went to her a couple days later to give it a try.  

She worked for a while and it felt like a deep tissue massage where it hurts a little but feels good a little too.  And then she started working on my left inner thigh and OH. MY. GOODNESS.  I screamed in pain and Sonae immediately knew what the problem was.  She could feel a huge knot in my muscle and could feel liquid around it.  So she went to work on it.  I pulled the covers over my head, went to my happy place, whimpered a lot, might have shed a tear, and told her to do what she needed to do.  She worked on that sucker for about an hour.  It hurt so bad!  But I was desperate to see if this would help all the pain in my groin and hips.  After she finished she told me to ice the area for a couple hours and then to put some heat on it.  She warned me that it might bruise and would be really sensitive for a while.  I told her I would try running again in two days after the bruising and pain from the massage went away.  So two days later I went out for a run.  I came home in tears because guess what?!  It worked!  I didn't have any pain when I ran!  That whole time it was just a really big knot!  Sonae is my hero!  

Okay, that was kind of a long story.  But you needed to know it so you could feel my sense of relief when I was able to run 50 miles pain free.  

So, let's go back to the beginning of my race.  When I told Scott one day that I was planning on doing the 50 miler he decided that he would come down and do it with me.  Kind of.  He opted for the 100 mile option.  Awesomeness.  When I mentioned the race to Kirstin she said, "No thank you!  But I still want to come.  I'll crew for you."  Yay!  And then at the last minute Mike and Zoe decided to come down also.  Double yay!  And Adam and Jen were there to be Scott's crew.  Triple yay!

On the morning of the race I was SO nervous... and even more scared.  I had never done a run like this before.  It was all trails.  I heard there were a lot of roots.  I would be doing some of it in the dark and had to wear a head lamp.  The furthest I had ever run was 31 miles.  What would happen to me beyond that?  What if I got lost?  That morning I kept mentioning that I should just stay with Kirstin and gang to help crew for Scott.  I was serious too.  But Kirstin wouldn't let me.  I asked her why she let me sign up for this?  She pretty much had to push me to the starting line.  But I was going to be alone for 50 miles!  Running by myself with nobody that I knew!  Scott started an hour ahead of me so who knew if I would ever see him!  Whaaa!  I was just pretty much terrified.  

This is a picture of the 50 milers starting.  

The 100 milers started an hour before us.  They did the exact same course except they went out about 4 miles further in one section.  I was really hoping that I would get to see Scott at least once somewhere out there.  We ended up passing each other 4 times!  It was awesome!

Remember how scared I was?  This is me walking 

with the crowd to the starting line.  This is my 
'I can't believe I'm going to do this' look.

I could see the starting line.  The two people in front of me 
were starting to run.  I was putting it off for as 
long as I could...'till I passed over the starting mat.

Here I am just a couple miles in.  
And guess what?!  IT WAS AWESOME!  

I wasn't scared or nervous any more.  The trails were so fun with their turns and roots.  And the people were SO COOL.  I soon found out that I was not going to be doing this race alone.  I had a whole bunch of new friends.  Random people would run up next to me and start chatting about where I was from, was this my first 50 miler?, etc.  I was happy.

Here I am coming in to the start/finish/turn-around spot after my first loop.  

16.67 miles done.  I was all smiles.

I grabbed a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and some Coke at the aid station then headed over to talk to Kirstin and Jen.  Mike and Zoe had slept at Lynn's house (Mike's mom) the night before and hadn't made it to the race yet.

I spotted Adam in the distance hanging out with the dogs.

Kirstin was amazing.  She knows me well enough to know 
what I need when I run so every time she saw me she 
starting putting things in my pack and handing me 
things to eat and telling me how great I was doing 
(I told her ahead of time to tell me that...
even if it wasn't true...I knew I would need the pep talk).

Ready to head out for my second lap!

As I was heading into the last aid station of my second lap and crossing over the main road (from one side of the woods to the other), I heard a car honking.  So I automatically did a little "What!  What!"  dance for the car (I can't be such a dork sometimes!).  And then all of a sudden Mike's head popped out of the passenger window.  What?!  It was Mike, Blake, and Zoe honking at me!  It is such a complete coincidence that they happened to be driving in to the park right when I was crossing the road at the exact same time.  How awesome is that?!  See, Mike and I really are meant for each other!  So I ran over and said hi real quick then carried on my way.

Here's my favorite little camper hanging out while I was running.  
Nana Lynn got her that awesome head lamp!

Running with David.

At some point near the beginning of the second lap I met David.  He is another Marathon Maniac.  We just got chatting for a little while and ended up running the entire second lap together.  I was so happy to have met him because I was starting to get pretty sore and tired, and so was he, so we kept each other moving.  One of us would say, "Okay, let's run to the next hill and then we'll take a walk break".  We did that during the whole lap.  When I was tired and didn't want to run any more, he would be ready to run so it would get me going.  It was great.  And he's a really neat guy too.  This was his fifth 50 miler!

Here I am finishing my second loop.  33.34 miles done.  Still happy!

Meeting my crew.

After getting some food I took my first (and only) bathroom break of the race.  Also, the pbj sandwiches and Cokes were sitting kind of heavy.  When I mentioned this to Scott at one point when I saw him on the trail he suggested I try the Mountain Dew to see if it worked better.  So I switched to Pringles and Mountain Dews.  I ate that for the rest of the run.  The aid stations had EVERYTHING you could possibly want to eat.  Candy, quesadillas, burritos, etc.  But the only things that sounded good to me were Pringles and Mountain Dew.  My stomach didn't ever hurt or anything but eating just didn't appeal to me.  Weird.

All smiles.  Did I mention how much fun I was having?

Zoe hooked me up with some awesome glow-in-the-dark bracelets 
so that they would know it was me when it got dark out there.

Armed with a head lamp, new bracelets, 

and a Pringle...I'm ready to go.  

Sometime during this break, between laps two and three, I got kind of emotional.  I think I was a little nervous because I had never run this far before so I didn't know how the third lap would go, and it was also hitting me how awesome it was that Kirstin, Jen, Adam, Mike, Zoe, and Blake were out there supporting Scott and me.  I remember at one point telling Kirstin and Jen that I needed to get going or else I was going to start crying.  So I left...  I think I was looking for my friend, David, here in the picture.  We had agreed to meet up after taking this short break so that we could run the third lap together.

Goober.

Drawing pictures in the sand.

Here I come into one of the aid stations (with David right behind).  
The gang met me there which was so totally surprising and awesome.

Oh yeah, I ate a lot of oranges too.  

Oh, and this is random but my nose was really runny the whole time so I blew my nose at each aid station and they had hand sanitizer at all the stations so I cleaned my hands at each one.  It was just kind of refreshing to be able to do all that.

Love!

My beautiful girl.

During my third lap, Zoe and Aunt Jen were playing football.  I love this!

This is a group of guys that I ran with or near for a lot of the race.  
They were all really cool people.  The two guys on the right of the picture 
are running The Woodlands Marathon this year too 
so it'll be cool if I see them there.  

About half way through the third lap I was feeling really great but David was starting to fade a little bit.  I was trying to encourage him and he was trying to keep up but he finally told me to just go on.  I was sad to leave him but I also wanted to take advantage of the energy I was having.

Also, my GPS watch battery died 9 hours and 15 minutes into the race.  I thought it was only going to last 8 hours so this was actually really good!  So for the last three hours of the race I didn't know what my pace was.  I had my phone with me though so I at least could keep track of time.  Not having a watch didn't bother me much until it got dark.  I really really struggled for about the last 3.5 miles.  I have never run in the dark, I have never used a headlamp (Scott let me borrow his extra one), I was alone, and I didn't have a watch to keep track of how far I had gone.  I looked at my watch about every 15 minutes thinking that maybe I had gone about a mile.  But the time just dragged and I kept going slower and slower because I was so afraid of tripping on the roots that hadn't bothered me until it got dark.  Then all of a sudden there were way more roots and they were really big!  :)  But the one thing I said before the race was that no matter how bad I was hurting or how slow I was going, I was just going to keep moving forward.  So that's what I did.  Those last few miles though seemed to take a very, very long time.

Just when I thought that the course would never end and the miles would keep dragging on and I truly didn't think I could handle it any more, I saw the end.  Actually, it was the final left turn before the end.  I saw some people (somebody's crew, there were about 7 of them) standing there right at the turn and I asked them in the most hopeful voice, "Is this it?"  then this is what happened:

Group of people:  "Yes, this is the end!"

Me:  "Really?!?!  This is it?!?!"

Group of people:  "YES!  YOU DID IT!  YOU MADE IT!  (cheers!  screams for me!  congratulations for me!)

Me:  (sob) "Oh!"

And then I ran for the last quarter of a mile down the chute towards the finish line.  As I ran that last part I was sobbing.  I could see shadows of people sitting in chairs waiting for their people to come.  I know they could hear me sobbing.  I tried controlling it but I couldn't.  I had done it!  I did 50 miles!  As I got closer to the end I could see and hear Kirstin, Mike, Jen, Adam, Blake, and Zoe cheering for me.  I tried to smile but I was a mess and just put my hands over my face.  There was a lady volunteer at the finish line who pulled me over to put my medal around my neck.  She pulled me into her, hugged me, and let me have a good cry.  Then she held me out a little and said, "Wait, this isn't your first one is it?!"  "Yes!"  I cried.  Then she said, "Oh you need another hug then!"  So I cried some more while this nicest lady hugged me.  And then when I thought I was done I told her thank you, turned around, and Kirstin was standing there with the hugest smile on her face.  She grabbed me for a hug and she just stood there and let me have another good cry again while she hugged me.  I know I sound like a huge baby but 50 miles was SO hard and SO fun and SO exciting and such a relief that I could run pain free and just a whole lot more.  All the emotion came out right then.  It was great actually.  For me anyways.  

My official finish time was 12:17:53

After I finished my race, Kirstin grabbed my hand and led me back to the camp.  I really don't remember that part, I think we walked back to the camp.  We all sat by the fire for a while chatting.  It was great.  I told Adam that 50k seemed like a good distance but 50 miles was just too much.  But honestly, I can't remember why I said that.  It was hard and it hurt but it was just so much fun.  I really loved being out there on the trails.  

So anyways, I showered, ate a little, then tried laying down for a rest.  Scott was still running and I wanted to be rested to cheer him on at the end.

As I laid down for a rest, Kirstin laced up and headed over to the starting line to meet up with Scott.  She paced him for his last lap (20 miles).  In the dark.  With the roots.  

I couldn't sleep.  I had too much to think about and now it was all about Scott's race!  So I laid in then tent texting Kirstin for updates on Scott, Annie and Dad with each new update, and Adam with all the necessary "Scott needs this, Scott will be done at this time" stuff...he was in the next tent over...it's kind of silly that we were texting each other.  I also got up once to chase off an animal getting into our food.  And took that opportunity to sneak some food into the tent and eat it in my sleeping bag with a flash light.  :)  

To read up on Scott's amazing 100 mile experience click HERE

Thank you go Jen for the amazing pictures!!!