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| Mud-covered post-run. (Sorry about the lack of pictures you will find here, but I knew I would be slow enough without playing the tourist.) |
Friday, April 11, 2014, was a beautiful
day in the upper Midwest. Driving from Wisconsin to Minnesota past
rolling farm fields, crossing the famed Mississippi River, and then
continuing our journey along the bluffs of The Big Muddy was an
exercise in contentment. The weather was perfect. Not too warm, not
too cold. Clear skies. Even a bit of sun. It was the perfect start
to what would be an imperfect race weekend – at least weather-wise.
The husband and I were on our way to
the Zumbro 17-Mile Trail Race in Theilman, Minnesota. The 17-Miler
was actually the “short” run, part of a wider 100-mile and
50-mile event, which had started
that day at 8 a.m. As we pulled into Olive Garden in Onalaska,
Wisconsin, for dinner, we mulled over the fact that the 100-milers had already
been on the trail for 10 hours. As we crossed Ol' Man River into
the dying sun and then turned north towards the hotel we would be
staying at, we noted that the 50-milers would be starting in about
five hours at 12:01 a.m., spending the first seven hours of their
journey in utter darkness. We, on the other hand, doing the short
race, had the luxury of leisurely driving into the area, getting a
decent night's sleep at the AmericInn in Wabasha, Minnesota, (of
Grumpy Old Men movie fame, apparently), and having a lovely breakfast
before driving to our relatively late start of 9 a.m., well-rested
and ready to go.
Then it rained.
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| Sitting in the car at the campground start. Rain, rain, go away.... |
Driving from our hotel in Wabasha into
the Zumbro River Bottoms Management Area, where the race was staged,
the light drizzle became a bit more emphatic. Pulling into the
campground, emphatic became even more insistent as thunder and
lightning entered the fray. By the time we had parked our car and
gotten our race bibs, the rain had become a downright downpour with
some hail thrown in for good measure. It was 8:15 a.m. We still had
45 minutes to the start.
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| Ok, I didn't say that it was big hail, but still.... |
Sitting in the car, waiting for 9 a.m.,
watching the weather steamroll over us, I was hard-pressed to
remember why I had actually signed up for this event. After all, I
had just spent almost five months trying to rehab an ornery IT band
and now was dealing with a grumpy hip flexor and/or groin muscle.
(Hard to say where that pinching is coming from.) I had jokingly
told my friends that if my plan of slowly getting back into running
while simultaneously training for a 17-mile trail race worked, I
would write a book.
The fact is, though, that ever since
running the Moose Mountain Marathon the previous September on the
Superior Trail on the North Shore of Minnesota, I had fallen in love
with Rock Steady Running's events. They do trail races well. With
Zumbro, I wanted to see what else they had.
Back in the car, we slowly got
ourselves ready: making last-minute clothing changes as dictated by
the rain and 40-something-degree weather, pinning bib numbers,
prepping hydration, etc. As it approached 9 a.m., the sky began to
brighten; the rain let up a bit and then miraculously ceased. It was
time to run.
The Zumbro 100, 50, and 17-mile trail
races are located in the Zumbro River Bottoms Management Area in
southern Minnesota's Bluff Country. It lies within a portion of the
Richard J. Dorer Memorial Hardwood Forest. The race is run mostly on
single- and double-track trail, with a couple of stretches on gravel
maintenance road thrown in for good measure. The net elevation
change is 6,196 feet: 3,098 feet up and 3,098 feet down. The 17-mile
race is actually a 16.7-mile loop that leaves the campground, wends
its way along trails with names such as West Scenic Trail, Bridge
Trail, Old Pump Trail, Ant Hill Trail, and Sand Slide Trail, to name
a few, before landing you back at the campground. The 50-milers do
three of these loops. The 100-milers six.
There are four aid stations out on the
course. It's approximately three miles to Aid Station 1 (AS1), 4.3
miles to AS2, 2.7 miles to AS3, almost 4 miles to AS4, and then
another 2.7 miles to the finish.
So, enough of the statistics. How did
the race go?
After a relatively low-key start, the
200 or so odd 17-mile runners headed out across the campground. The
main occupation at this point was dodging the puddles that had popped
up all over the campground. As time would soon tell there wasn't
much point in that. Approaching the trailhead, our merry band of
misfits slowed to a walk as we all tried to squeeze onto the
single-track. Being at the back of the pack, this wasn't that
unusual. Much like the Keweenaw and Moose Mountain runs I had done
last year, I was used to the fact that when you are getting funneled
onto single-track, you can't really expect to go any faster than the
folks in front of you. Given that in this race, the funneling point
was immediately followed by an uphill, I knew that we'd be walking
for a few minutes. So, I passed the time by chatting with the folks
around me: spouses of 100-milers, the undertrained-but-determined,
and Hoka aficionados. Good conversations all.
At some point on this uphill slog, it
became clear that we were going to be running through some mud, as if
the booming thunderstorm before the start and the huge puddles in the
campground hadn't been clue enough to that fact. Even so, I was still
naively unclear as to what the ramifications for this would be. I
started to catch on as we approached our first downhill segment.
Looking ahead on the trail, I could see that those further up the
conga line we had formed were starting to head downhill and they were
still walking. My cohorts around me and I laughed and wondered what
the hold up was. Reaching the top of our little single-track hill in
the woods, looking down at what awaited us, though, it became quite
clear. The downhills were going to be beautiful messes of
chute-shaped mud. And, it was slippery. The only way to navigate it
without falling would be a) to either go off trail (which was
brush-choked) or b) head down the slippery slide, grabbing trees as
you went. I chose B. For the next 16.5-miles, the single-track
descents were often to become a carefully choreographed dance as I
basically slid from tree to tree. After the race, my shoulders would
be sore from all the upper-body work I had done, both trying to keep
myself from falling on the downhills and to help pull myself up on
the uphills.
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| Example of the hills we scaled. |
Of course, there were runnable hills,
too. (For me, naturally, that refers to downhills, as I walk uphill
as a rule.) Those mainly were the trails that had a lot of rocks or
roots poking out so that I could jump from one to the other, were
somewhat navigable off-trail, or whose mud had been so churned up
that you could essentially plant your heel in it as you ran down,
i.e., turning it almost into a downhill stair run versus a hill.
About twenty minutes into the race,
just in case the course weren't muddy enough, it started to rain
again, and not just any rain – a thunderstorm. I don't think I
have ever run in thunder and lightning before, so that was a new
experience. I kept thinking about the Pikes Peak Ascent I had done
in 2011 and how paranoid they had been about running during a
thunderstorm. Of course, that was at 14,000 feet and above treeline;
this was only at about 1,000 feet and in the woods. I kept telling
myself that this wasn't really a big deal. And it wasn't. The worst
part about it was that it got me wet. Up until that point, I had
enjoyed the illusion that I might manage to keep everything above the
ankles dry.
The whole race wasn't run up or down
hills, of course. There were some nice, flat runnable sections, but
even these turned out to be more of a challenge than they otherwise
might have been. Single-track was transformed into a slippery,
narrow chute, while double-track tended to be flooded. With the
latter, the choice was either to run through the
puddles, or try to pick your way around. My choice throughout the
race was to tiptoe my way around the puddles. Mentally, I am sure
the option of picking my way carefully through the ankle-deep mud to
the side of the trail seemed like a drier proposition than picking my
way through the ankle-deep puddles and
mud down the middle of the trail.
To
be honest, it didn't even occur to me to plow through the puddles
until coming out of the first aid station, when I witnessed a tired
looking 100- or 50-miler resolutely walking straight through the
middle of the flooded trail. I remember thinking that person must be
really whipped to have given up on trying to keep her feet dry. What
I should have realized was that, really, I was fooling myself. My
feet weren't dry and they weren't going to dry during this event. In
the end, I decided that I should have just followed that
ultrarunner's lead. Running through the puddles would have saved me
not only time, but effort. Surely, despite the water, the center of
the trail would have required less effort than picking around the
overhanging brush while navigating the sketchy footing at the trail's
edge. Lessons learned for next time.
It
would be hard for me to remember this entire race, blow-by-blow,
given how distracted I was by the muddy conditions, however a few
things stand out to me about this event. Regarding the trail itself,
it was a fantastic mix of different challenges. I am not a really
strong runner, so as I get tired the flat sections lose their charm
for me. But I love power-walking up the hills and running the
downhills – even late in the race. This event had a great mix of
everything. Plenty of hills, but also enough flat sections to keep
the flat-land runners happy. The footing did not seem too technical
to me. There were a couple of rocky sections, but for the most part,
the trail was fair. Of course, I can't judge too well given all the
mud.
There
was one stretch in the middle of the race that seemed to dry out,
because the soil was more sandy. That was great until the race put
you into a dry creek bottom. There was a decent stretch where you
were running through sand. Not a little sand, but like on a beach –
and it wasn't hard-packed. I chose to walk much of this,
because it seemed to take a lot of strength that I didn't have to
power through it. Making up for the sandy part was what seemed like
a mile-long stretch of dirt road as we approached Aid Station 4. For
people who run well, this would be a boon. I had a 50-miler pass me
on this stretch, because she said the flat sections gave her her
energy back. After being up and down hills so much (and given that I
had only been doing a run/walk as I recovered from my injury), I
found this section to be a slog. I ran/walked it, but as this came around the same time that my 13-mile “wall” did, I was feeling pretty pooped. I was happy
to have this section behind me after the last aid station and to get
back to some hills for the final stretch.
I didn't wear a watch for this race,
and I didn't wear the run/walk
interval timer I had been training with to get back into running.
With a nine-hour time limit on the event, I knew I had the luxury of
lollygagging if I wanted/needed to. The event for me was a slow one,
for sure. I finished at about 4:45. To be honest, my goal time
in dry conditions had only been 4:15, so to have missed it by only a
half hour given all the mud, I was happy.
In fact, I can honestly say that
overall I really did enjoy the run. I had a smile on my face for the
first thirteen miles, which coincidentally is the length of my
longest training run for this event. The area itself is beautiful.
The climbs are tough but manageable, and the sweeping views you see
of the river once you get up there are fantastic. I enjoyed the loop
concept that allowed me to feel I was running with people for the
entire race. Even as my 17-mile field thinned out, there were 50-
and 100-milers still out there to talk to.
I am happy that I only had to do one
loop, though. If I were in it for the 50- or 100-miler, I think
mentally I would have a hard time. I am not a huge fan of multiple
loops for long runs anyway, but one that has the challenges this one
has would be especially hard. I mean, after being quit of that sandy section, I would have been less than thrilled to realize that I had to do it two (or five!) more times. I really give a lot of credit to the
folks who did it. Again, though, I am biased by the conditions we
had. I talked to several of the longer distance runners on the trail
and they all said they enjoyed the run. For most of their race, they
were able to enjoy pleasant, dry weather conditions. It only got
hard at the end, but then doesn't any race even without the
thunderstorms?
I definitely think this is a race worth
doing, and if it were something that was closer to home for me, I
know I would be out there again. As it is, I think I might enjoy
getting back to it someday. I would love to run these trails in fair
conditions...and maybe next time take some pictures.
