To say that I am not disappointed with my race at Terrapin
Mountain 50k would not really be the truth. I was hoping to continue my
positive momentum from Holiday Lake and live up to my pre-race seeding of 7th.
I have had some great training since Holiday Lake, but I also had been pretty
sick for a couple weeks. Either way, heading into this race, I was feeling
confident, excited and ready to roll.
The past week leading up to the race, work had been a little
higher stress than normal, due to some changes that are going to be occurring
in the near future, but otherwise uneventful.
Friday, Kristen and I headed up to
the Sedalia Center right after work. The drive was beautiful and seeing the
mountains really got me excited to run the next morning. We arrived at the
center, set up our tent and spent some time hanging out with fellow runners
before heading off to get a long nights rest.
Our alarms woke us up promptly at 5am for the 7am start. We
did our usual pre-race routine and unlike at Holiday Lake, we were BOTH ready
to go at race time.
As we headed down the road towards the first big climb, I
ran with Kristen and a friend from PT school. We chatted for a bit about our
expectations for the race and what to look forward to on this course.
Slowly, I eased my way up to run
with a couple of guys who I knew would be in the hunt for a top ten finish. We
climbed together for the first several miles and came out at Camping Gap in 12th
and 13th. As we headed down the long descent, I was passed by one or
two runners, but I tried to heed the warning of some fellow runners to not blow
my quads out on this early, long descent. I maintained a controlled pace down
to the bottom and started the long climb back to Camping Gap. About ¾ of the
way up, I started to get really cold. This is something that has started
happening to me recently and for the life of me cannot explain why. Possibly
from slowing down while climbing, I started getting really cold and began to
feel pretty miserable. By the time I got to Camping Gap again, I just filled up
and headed out, not much conversation or banter.
Let’s just say that the next
section of the course was pretty ugly. On the White Oak Trail, the wheels
started falling off for me. I lost sight of the guys I had been running with
the whole race up until then, and people started picking me off, starting with
the lead female, who looked like she was effortlessly prancing through the
woods…haha. Either way, this section should not have been as hard as it felt
and I should not have been slowing down as much as I was. It was encouraging to
see lots of folks when the loop reconnected with the main trail, and at that
point I really started getting passed by tons of people. This made me realize
how much I had really slowed down over the last several miles. By the time I
had reached Camping Gap for the third time, I had been caught by several of my
teammates who were having very impressive races, including freshman Darren and
Guy L. who had just rocked a top 10 finish at the Georgia Death race the
weekend before. I was really excited about seeing my teammates but at the same
time it was frustrating because I could not for the life of me keep up with
either of them. I had no ‘pop’ in my legs and was only able to trudge along at
my miserable pace. I kept thinking to myself, “It’s ONLY a 50k, this should not
be this hard.” I guess this shows that no matter how many ultras you have done,
each one is a unique, difficult challenge.
I truly enjoyed the section after
climbing up and over Terrapin Mtn. It was turning into a beautiful afternoon
and the view from the summit was awesome…even though I was trying hard not to
fall off the cliff while punching my bib and getting buffeted by some big
gusts. The ”Fat Man’s Misery” was quite an experience. I loved the unique nature of clamoring
through this narrow section! This section was the first time that I was
actually able to enjoy the race…probably because I had the pressure off my back
to get a top 10 finish and I could just run, enjoy the people, revel in the
beauty of the mountains and reflect a little.
The downhill to the last AS was
long, steep and one of the tougher downhill sections I have ever done. My legs at this point were still feeling
pretty bad, but I was able to run a pretty good clip. I lost my balance a few
times and nearly took some ugly spills, but that’s trail running for you. At
the last aid station I saw one of my friends from tech and she gave my some
good encouragement. This was one point where knowing the course better would
have helped. I was not 100% sure how much longer I had and that made for a very
long last stretch. While I did not feel terrible during this section, I also
didn’t really have the drive to bring it home strong. I was kind of in auto-pilot mode and just kept running,
though not overly fast.
Coming down the last hill, I saw
Horton sitting off in the woods and he yelled to me, “CHANG…. I am PRETTY sure
your wife is going to catch you.” Haha….great. Anyways, kicked it on home with a 6:10 final mile for a total
time of 5:07 or something like that. About an hour slower than Holiday
Lake…oops.
Not sure why this race didn’t quite
go as planned but sometimes its not about painstakingly figuring out what went
wrong and more about picking yourself back up, enjoying the ride and barreling
onward…and that’s what’s going to happen. On to Promise Land!
-J. Chang
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