Three Days in the Park 72hr - Thurs, Oct 14th-Sun, Oct 17th, 2021 - Part 2

(AKA The Stahr Wahrs Ultra - Part 1 is here / Part 3 is here)

Like an idiot, I had set a goal for this thing that I'd like to achieve, even knowing that I'd never done anything nearly so ambitious and setting a distance goal was a foolish idea.

Some might say the whole concept of trying to move for three days straight is kind of foolish, but we don't need that kind of negativity in our lives

The goal was 150 laps, or something around 265km. I figured if I could get 100km in during the first 24hrs, then I might be able to manage another 100 miles -ish in the latter 48hrs. By the time I was no longer able to run on Thursday afternoon, though, that goal was already unachievable. Even the lesser goal my mind had presented of 250km was not looking like it would happen, but since the biggest drive I had was simply to keep moving for the whole 72 hours, I tried not to let it weigh on me too much. Anything over ~130km would be a distance PR for me, and a single step over 200km seemed like a decent accomplishment.

Or at least that's what I was telling myself to avoid getting down.

With all that said, I rolled off the cot at first light on Friday and go to work. While the night had been quite mild, I was freezing cold when I got up at 7:06am - I'd laid down at 5:45am in shorts and a 3/4 sleeve shirt, but struggled into a pair of pants (over top of the shorts...and my shoes, which I put on first, which shows you how bright I was feeling at that point) and left the cozy sweater I'd been trying to snooze in on for the first couple of laps.

Not that I'd been successful at sleeping

I had made the fatal error of forgetting to put in my earplugs before laying down, and they were on the far side of the tent...so basically on the moon. Between the sounds of rain showers, wind, the footfalls of Brad & Monica as they came past on loops, and having to get up to have a wee (behind the tent like a savage, because the portajohns might as well have been on Alpha Centauri), I'd only caught maybe a couple of winks. To make things extra special, the buildup of moisture inside the tent and the position of the cot to the left of the door conspired to create a form of torture: the condensation would drip off a seam and right on my head, even as cold drafts blew around my shoulders from under the removeable side panels (which we'd put on when we arrived, because mesh walls are no-one's friend in the rain).

I got a couple of laps in as dawn began to sprawl across the countryside.

Red sky at morning - runners take warning

Soon I found myself starving - full-on belly-growling hunger. Tank was up by 8am-ish: he'd gone for a nap in the car while I laid down, but was awoken by the sounds of another tent going up nearby as Patty prepared to start the 48hr event at 9am. When we had a look at the notebook, the cause of my hunger was pretty evident: I hadn't eaten anything when I got up, which meant my last bit of nutritional intake had been at 4am; that 180cal crispy rice cake, and the cup of coffee I had before my "nap", were now long gone. I scarfed back a banana and a blueberry muffin to silence the growlies, and ditched the sweater. I finished my 51st lap right around the 24hr mark as Patty was starting, having completed only ~90km of the 100km I'd hoped for.

But I was still moving, and that's not nothing.

I held absolutely zero hope for picking up my pace, too: not only was I no longer able to run due to the issue that had cropped up in the back of my right knee the day before. I have since put together that it's basically just a hamstring problem, as the sore spots at what seemed to be the tops of my calf muscles are actually the insertion points of the hamstrings, or where they attach below the knee in order to flex it. In any case, I was only walking, and the walking was going to get tougher due to the weather.

At least it wasn't going to be cold...yet.

I'd also changed shoes and socks after my early-morning lay down, for the first time in the event: I figured the blister on my left foot and hotspot on my right (the former of which was still painful; the latter was behaving itself since I fixed it properly when it appeared) may have been the result of a poor shoe/sock combination, and as I expected more mud I wanted more aggressive lugs. I hoped my New Balance Summit KOMs would treat my feet a little better than the old Leadville 3's had, and maybe even help keep me on them! 

It was dripping on me while I took this

I also believed that loose lacing of my shoes had contributed to movement of my feet inside them, so I laced the fresh pair snugly before setting off. I tried to stay a little more diligent about nutrition through the day, focusing more on real food and less on Endurance Tap gels. I don't think I took any more electrolytes on Friday, either: I drank another cup of coffee a little after 9am, which left my mouth feeling a little fuzzy after all the sugary stuff I'd had in the prior 24hrs. So, I brushed my teeth.

Oral hygiene is important, kids.

Then Tank joined me for a lap, just for giggles. Of course it started dripping again once we got out there, with him just in a cotton longsleeve that would hold the moisture.

But it was a Star Wars shirt as well, so it was too awesome to cover up anyway

I honestly don't remember a whole lot about Friday - I know I was moving quite slowly, even though I was doing my best to keep going. I was still drinking plenty of water (and had figured out that - at my rate of ~500ml per hour - our 18.1L bottle would run out by halfway through, even if Tank hadn't been filling his own water bottle and making coffee from it. Fortunately Clay let us know we could grab a replacement any time we wanted), and still using the portajohns with good (possibly excessive) frequency, but not having been able to sleep more than a couple of minutes during either of my "naps" was taking its toll as the clock crept toward 30 hours. The grey skies and gusty winds didn't help with any sense of joy, either, and I was struggling to keep my posture from disintegrating as I stumped my way up the big hill - I'd find myself remaining bent forward at the waist even once the trail flattened out.

I tried the trick of walking up it with my hands on my hips, but it wasn't easy to climb the increasingly slippery hill like that

I was a bit downcast about my performance so far: I'd previously run 100km twice, once in about 16hrs and (more recently) once in about 15hrs. It took me 27.5hrs to cover the same distance in this event, which was certainly no boost to my confidence. I mean sure, I was still moving, but was probably being outpaced by continental drift. I developed another issue of my own manufacture, too: I had laced my shoes snug after having had my legs up for almost an hour, and as I walked my feet began to swell. I didn't really notice it starting, but soon the tops of my feet began to smart from what's known as a "lace bite". By the time I figured it out, it was so far gone that it would hurt for the rest of the event. 

I'd say the mushrooms were the only ones thriving, but Brad and Monica were still looking super strong too.

I didn't see a single sign of wildlife all day, though I would occasionally hear a squirrel or chipmunk leaping through the canopy or scuttling through the undergrowth. I had one chitter at me from a tree at one point, and the thought occurred to me that I had basically become a woodland creature myself for a few days - not half as cute or fuzzy as them, though, and not even a smidge as graceful and agile! I was just working as best I could to keep myself moving, taking pleasure in whatever little things I could find that made me smile.

Like a bit of blue sky appearing near noon

I made a butter tart and an oatmeal raisin cookie disappear as I ambled along, and had offered Tank that I would make sandwiches for us around lunchtime. At 1pm I decided I wanted to sit down for a bit, and was going to make sammiches happen, but then we realised there was still some of the amazing roast chicken that Scher had brought the night before. I sat and scarfed back a chunk, knowing that we hadn't been able to fit it into the cooler, so it had been unrefrigerated overnight. I took a digestive enzyme to help out in case I was making a terrible decision, and finally took some of the other supplements I'd brought along as well: a ginger capsule, a collagen/lysine/vitamin C tablet, some l-glutamine, branch-chain amino acids, and a turmeric capsule. Would any of it help? Who knows! Couldn't hurt, though. Oh, and I ate a bunch of fuzzy peaches as well, because I am basically a kindergartener who got old rather than growing up.

Somewhere in the swirling thoughts in my head as I walked, I came up with a plan to combat the problems I'd had napping that morning: as I ate my highly suspect chicken-and-candy lunch, I talked it over with Tank, and he agreed to pull the tent apart a bit so we could move the cot to the back wall. It would keep me away from the seam that was dripping condensation, and meant I'd be against a solid wall (well, actually a second door, but we kept that one zipped completely shut) that should offer better protection against drafts. 

It also let us arrange totes full of gear a bit better for ease of access

The wind gusts got more aggressive in the meadow on top of the hill, and the temperature dropped 5c in 20mins. I put on a warmer shirt and did a couple of laps like that, hoping some hippie vibes would perk me up.

I even picked some of the wildflowers in the meadow and stuck them behind my ear - not that it did much to improve the odours

I was still struggling, though - progress was happening at more of a stagger than a walk as fatigue weighed heavy on me. I had a stroopwafel and did slurp back one more Endurance Tap gel past lunch, washing the latter down with another cup of coffee and taking a blast of vitamin B12 spray around 3:30pm. Within 20mins I had perked up quite a bit, and was marching away with more determination than I'd shown for most of the day. I made a mental note of the coffee/B12 combo as a turbo boost, but knew that I couldn't go to that well too often: I had an issue many years ago, somehow becoming allergic to caffeine for a year, and having had to re-introduce it very slowly and carefully. It was more than 20 years ago now, but I still feel awful if I have more than a couple of cups of coffee in a day, so I'd have to ration my intake.

Scher arrived again around 4:30pm, this time having brought ginger curried chicken drumsticks (plus chana masala and naan for Tank). I got 20 laps (~35km) in from the time I got up and out until I sat down again around 5pm to eat two of those delicious drumsticks, make and eat a sunbutter & strawberry jam sandwich, and try to get another nap in. 

Making the noms
(Photo by Scher)

Before I did so, I wanted to make sure I was ready to go for what promised to be a rain-filled night, so I wanted to do a full change of clothes. Bless Scher's heart: despite this only being about the 4th time we'd ever met face-to-face, she didn't even bat an eye when I started pulling my kit off...all of my kit. Her only comment was to offer to help, either with pulling clothes off - and let me tell you that I'd been in the same pair of compression shorts for about 35 hours by that point, so this was no errand for the faint-hearted - or by finding the stuff I wanted to put on in the cavernous 104L tote full of clothing-stuffed packing cubes. Endurance sports friends are the best friends! By the time I swung my legs up onto the pile of pillows at 5:45pm, I was wearing a pair of full compression tights, a dry wool sports bra, a longsleeve wool shirt, and had a rain jacket, fleece skirt, and foam-front trucker hat ready to go.

 

This started not long after I popped into the tent - my timing was pretty good throughout a lot of the 72hrs!

I left my socks alone, as the leukotape on the hotspots on the balls of my feet were rather stuck to them, despite me having slathered the patches with Trail Toes to keep that very thing from happening. The hotspot-come-blister on my left foot had worked its way up between my big toe and 2nd toe - something I've had happen before, at one or another of the 100k's I've done - and since I couldn't really do anything about it, I decided to just ignore it.

I had to get up 45mins into my nap because I was gripped by an undeniable urge to pee, which I accomplished behind the tent again before scuttling back inside and laying down again. I slept a bit, then turned on my side with my legs still on the pillows, and had just dozed off again when Tank came in the tent to wake me up at 7:20pm. I was glad I had the fresh shoes I wanted and all my other gear close at hand, as I needed to get moving pretty quickly: I'd reached out to my friend Rich a few weeks prior to see if he might be able to pace me for awhile, and he'd generously offered to come out from 7:30pm Friday until 7:30am Saturday, despite just having run 100km the weekend beforehand for his annual Grand River Hospital Cancer Centre fundraiser!

I had one other ace in the hole to get me through my second night, too: I was busting out the poles.

Tank hates it when I call them "wimp sticks"
(Photo by Scher)

That meant I needed to use a vest and a soft bottle as well, because I can't carry my handheld and use  trekking poles at same time. I started out with an Osprey bottle with a long straw attachment to it (which you can just barely see in the pic above), but it was too fussy to get back in vest, so after I emptied it I went with one of the (narrower) bottles that came with the vest. They were harder to drink from, due to having to pull them up to my face and the fact the silicone of the bite valves is much stiffer than any other similar bottles I've used. I also found it more difficult to gauge the water level in them;  I'd think it was empty and I was drinking well, then I'd give my boob a feel and find lots left. It seems like the narrowness of the bottles made them collapse easily when trying to suck the water out through the top, sort of locking the water in the bottom of them. Not ideal, but I made it work by sort of squeezing the water up toward the valve when I wanted a drink.

Now if I could just figure out how to make my legs work..
(L-R: Tank, my dumb arse, and Rich - photo by Scher)

I was getting less inclined to drink anyway, as we'd run out of the Cambridge tapwater with which Tank had filled our 18.1L bottle before we left home - we were onto one of the bottles Clay had generously provided for us, and I could taste the difference in the water. I'm sure it was fine, but I drink a lot of water at home, and it's a matter of what you're accustomed to. I'm sure that seems like such a small, fussy detail - who's the damn princess who's going to complain about the taste of the water in an ultra? - but it was just one more tiny chip away at my morale.

As if I needed another challenge, my right knee started acting up as soon as Rich and I set off, but in a brand new and different way. I'm not sure if turning onto my right side with my feet still up on the pillows was the straw that broke the camel's back (or the idiot's knee?), or if it was just accumulated wear and tear, but the outside of my kneecap was now really painful whenever I'd walk downhill.

..and let me tell you there was a lot of downhill walking out there.

Those downhills may actually have been a contributing factor to the knee issue: in most other races (or long days on my feet) I can still run the downhills, which uses a different muscle engagement and foot plant than walking down them. I had spent one of my walk/run training sessions in the week before the race intentionally walking steep downhills to try to give my legs a taste of what they'd be in for, but oddly enough it seems one single day was not quite sufficient to condition them. How very strange!

In what I now recognized as a pattern, the course had gotten muddier while I snoozed, so I was definitely grateful for the assistance of the poles even if it made drinking more challenging - I'd probably still be in a sobbing, crumpled heap at the bottom of the big stinkin' hill now had I not had them. The poles helped significantly on the uphills, and I suppose they took some of the pressure off going downhill, but after a few hours I could definitely feel the fatigue in my shoulders and back as I used them to almost hoist myself bodily up the big stinkin' hill. Even on the flats and gentler inclines, I seemed to have some trouble striking a balance between stabbing them into the ground (which used unnecessary energy and was a bit jarring) and not properly getting them set. It's almost like fine motor skills - like those used to plant a pole just so - suffer a bit after more than 30 hours of trying to move. Funny, that.

It wasn't all bad, though. I did have some hotspots start to come up on my thumbs from the poles, but that was easily resolved by putting on a pair of dollar store stretchy gloves (with skeleton hand designs, of course). The rain and wind were awful, but having company was delightful - I find Rich very easy to talk to, and we chatted pretty consistently. I was much more lucid than I'd expected to be during my second consecutive night on the trail, though I'm told I was a bit rambly. Admittedly it was Scher who said it, and she's not used to hanging around me and my endlessly tangential and parenthetical way of yapping my bloody head off, so we'll take that with a grain of salt. Oh, and that horrible blister on my left foot seemed to have burst while I snoozed, which sounds like a bad thing but actually meant that it was no longer squishing with every step and wasn't even really painful anymore.

Let's get your mind off the idea of a burst blister with something distinctly more fun: some signs turned up along the course as darkness fell, put out by one of the volunteers. 

This was on the downhill out of the forest just before the big stinkin' hill
(The beaver with the Canadian flag and the "Three Days in the Park" banner is the official race logo)

While it was great to have company through the dark and painful night, the easy conversation with Rich meant that I'd forget to drink as often as I should. All credit to him, though - he was excellent about reminding me, and also helped by grabbing things out of the tent when I needed nutrition, asking about and making sure I dealt with hotspots on my feet right away (one came up on the inside of the ball of my right foot, and got taped up), and checking my posture as he walked along behind me. It was fantastic to have an experienced hundred mile runner to think of all the things my brain wasn't capable of suggesting to me! I did manage to figure out that my headlamp batteries needed replacing, though; I swapped to a different light (that I'd brought for just such an occasion) for a lap while Tank switched them out, and the improvement in brightness was astonishing!

Speaking of posture: on one hand it was easier to keep myself upright while using the poles, as their length requires me to walk fairly tall, but on the other hand my head would droop forward as I got sort of sucked in by the pool of light in front of me from my headlamp and waist light, while the weight of the headlamp on my hat brim dragged my head down as well. I needed to keep stretching my neck and shoulders as they were getting very sore. I even had this weird thing going on for awhile where my head tilted to the right, and a nasty bulge of knotted muscle in the left side where my neck met my shoulder. I tried to massage it out a bit, but that's understandably a bit difficult while using trekking poles - at least if you're not interested in stabbing anyone (or yourself).

No way I was running, but I adore the storm trooper-helmeted version of the race logo!
This appeared just past the halfway point of the loop

We were coming into base camp from a lap as a really nasty squall of rain hit, and I suggested - noting the gusting wind - that it might blow over quite quickly, so maybe we should go hide in the aid station tent for 5 minutes and let it do so? Not only would we be more comfortable while the burst lasted, we'd avoid getting soaked to the skin, which could make a big difference for the remainder of the night as well. We ducked inside as it bucketed down, and I grabbed a seat by a propane heater. It felt absolutely lovely to get the weight off my feet for a bit: I'd changed into an older pair of Salomon Speedcross (a gift from a dear friend who no longer needed them), knowing they had really aggressive soles that would be a great help in what was predicted to be the rainiest - and therefore muddiest - night of the event. However, it felt like they had no arch support at all, and my feet were suffering for it. My left foot in particular was very sore through the arch, and it wasn't until days later that I finally remembered that shoes that are too narrow will make my arches hurt in the same way; I had a pair of skates that put me in agony as I tried to break them in enough, and eventually had to give up on because I couldn't wear them without almost the exact same pain I felt. The Speedcross had always been just on the edge of being too narrow, and they felt ok when I put them on, but again that was after having my feet elevated and I'm sure the swelling from so many hours of walking was likely the culprit. At the time, though, it never even occurred to me try try loosening the laces. I'm bright like that. In any case, almost exactly 5mins after we popped into the aid station tent, the rain tailed off again, so I got up and got moving.

My absolute favourite of the signs that turned up Friday night - just after you turned into the woods from the downhill along the cornfield, this made me giggle every single time I saw it.

From there on out, I'd end up sitting down for a few minutes to get the weight off my poor, maligned feet after every 4th or 5th lap. Was that a bit lazy? Perhaps, but had you been in the same place - only a bit more than halfway through the event, repeatedly showered with rain and buffeted by the wind that whipped in your face as you turned the corner to cross the start/finish and head across the meadow, with horribly painful appendages all complaining about poor treatment - you might have been enticed into taking a load off for a moment here and there, too.

..and sitting the heck down out of the weather.

Things got really distressing for a bit: I'd popped into the portajohn not long after the deluge from which we hid in the aid station tent, and when I got up I noticed some red liquid on the seat. I wiped it with some toilet paper, and yep - that sure looked like blood. I couldn't feel anything painful on my butt, though, so I mentioned it to Rich as we set off down the hill along the cornfield, and decided to monitor the situation. In the cooler temperatures of the night I had dropped from drinking a 450ml bottle every 2 laps to every 3 laps, so I wasn't peeing quite as often, but nonetheless I was back in the portajohn a few laps later. This time I made sure to wipe down the seat before I sat down for a wee, and when I got up there was blood on it again: yikes, it was definitely me. I wiped the spot where the back of my right leg meets my butt, and the paper came away bloody, but I still couldn't feel anything painful or that might be bleeding. Now I was just freakin' puzzled, and on my next lap I told Tank that I needed him to have a look at my arse the next time I stopped for awhile because I was suddenly randomly bleeding. Talk about dropping a bomb on the poor guy! 

What's stranger still is that the next time I used the portajohn - making sure that the seat was dry before I did so - there was nothing at all. No blood on the seat, none on my butt, and still no evidence of where it had come from. I speculated that maybe I had a mosquito bite or something that I'd scratched (prior to the event) until it scabbed, and the scab was pulled off when I pulled down my compression tights to have a wee, then it tried to scab again and the tights got stuck to it and pulled it off again. Then maybe - as it had dried out a little by the 3rd portajohn stop - it had finally just sealed itself without sticking to the tights? I guess I'll never know for sure, but self-resolving problems are the best kind of problems.

By 3am I was struggling quite a bit, though I remained pretty chipper: I just wasn't moving very well at all. I decided now was as good a time as any to try the secret sauce to get me through the last couple of hours I wanted to get in, as I'd decided before Rich arrived that I'd likely go down for another nap around 5am to sleep away the last of the darkness and let him get home a bit sooner. I still had some laps to make before then, though, so I got Tank to make me a cup of coffee (fortunately by this point there was almost always some brewed in our big thermos, so I could have some at a moment's notice) and had another spray of B12 while I sat down for a few minutes. 

Fortunately, it worked! Within 20mins Rich was commenting on how much stronger I was looking as I went from a pole-assisted stagger to a proper hike, in spite of the increasing mud due to the intermittent rain showers. We got a few more laps in, finishing our 21st together (~37km) almost precisely at 5am, just as another nasty shower was blowing in. I thanked Rich profusely for his company and help through the night - I am deeply grateful to him for selflessly offering to pace me through fairly miserable conditions, and at a time when I really needed him - and ducked into the tent with Tank to get some food and a nap.

This bowl of instant noodle soup was the first hot thing I'd eaten in almost 48hrs, and went wonderfully with another couple of those magnificent ginger curried chicken drumsticks

Tank also checked my bum with his headlamp as I took a wee behind the tent in the rain, but he couldn't see a single thing that could have caused the bleeding. I'll always be a little puzzled by that incident.. 

In any case, I'd gone through 19 bottles of water and about 3,700cal of food between 7am Friday and 5am Saturday, and covered 41 laps of the course - approximately 72.5km, which put my total so far at 89 laps, or about 157km in 44hrs. I changed out of the damp shirt and bra I was wearing and shucked off my fleece skirt, delighting in removing my vise-like shoes but leaving my socks and compression tights on. My left foot felt like it had been crushed - even now, a couple of weeks later, I can feel that all the little bones where my toes meet my foot took some damage as they were smushed together by the too-narrow shoes. Fortunately the throbbing in my feet eased a bit as I swung them up onto the pile of pillows, popped in my earplugs, got my Garmin and waist light on charge again (for the last time), and closed my eyes at 6:14am in the warmth and relative comfort of our tent. Moving the cot to the back wall eliminated the drips of condensation on my head, and there were definitely fewer drafts; I'm so grateful that we were able to come up with a solution, as it had only gotten colder and wetter out, but I was feeling quite snug in my berth. I could have stayed there for hours, but at 7:43am I banged awake once more and got myself ready to head out again..

No use sitting here like an idiot - there are laps to walk!

I'll tell you all about how that went when the saga continues next week! Stay tuned for Part 3..

(Continue to Part 3)