Rock Bridge Revenge

I don't have too many reasons to ever go to Columbia, Missouri, but when I do, I always try to get in a run at Rock Bridge State Park. The west side of the park is loaded with cool rock features (the most prominent giving the park it's name) and the larger east side is just miles of flowing singletrack through pretty woods. I've done a couple orienteering meets there, but never felt like going all the way to Columbia for a short trail race. When they added the 50K distance a few years ago, I was immediately interested, but it wasn't until this year that it fit into my schedule. After the DNF at Leadville, I almost bailed in favor of doing a fall 100, but decided that this one had waited long enough.

It's only a two-hour drive so I get up at 3AM and drive out race morning. I don't generally sleep well the night before a race anyway. Oops, did I say race? I mean, event. Actually, no, I mean race. The result notwithstanding, the truth is that I took pretty good fitness into Leadville. It bugged me that it came to nothing. I decided I'd try to hold on to it for a few more weeks and give this one an honest effort.

Since I really do need to make some forward progress on my dissertation, the only way to keep my mileage up is running to and from work. That's great for fitness, but doesn't offer much opportunity for technical training. I did plenty of trail running over the summer, but most of it was at 100-mile pace. A 50K is a completely different stride. The trails at Rock Bridge aren't terribly difficult, but they do have more than their share of what Mikell Platt calls "time bleeds", little obstacles that break your stride and steal your pace a couple seconds at a time. I manage to get out on trails a few times to sharpen things up.

Any thoughts of winning are dismissed by the presence of John Cash. I'm pretty sure I won't be keeping up with the overwhelming favorite on the women's side, AnnMarie Chappell, either. That's actually pretty comforting as it makes it less likely I'll do something stupid in the first half of the race.

Left to right: Cash, Chappell, Me, Sankalp

The first half mile is an out and back on the park road to string things out a bit. John and AnnMarie hit the trail first, followed closely by Shiva Sankalp and another runner I don't know. I'm in fifth with a few other runners fairly close behind.

The sun only rose a few minutes ago and it's hidden behind overcast skies. As a result, I'm almost wishing I'd brought my headlamp as the woods are fairly thick. Despite some heavy rain in the last couple days, the trail is in pretty good shape and I've got a half dozen machine screws drilled into the sole of each shoe, so the poor visibility isn't a huge problem. Even concentrating on the placement of each stride, there's no missing the fact that this is a truly beautiful forest. The diffuse light gives it all a deep green glow.

By a mile in, the four ahead are out of sight. After crossing the stream around mile 2, I hear no splashes behind me. It appears this is going to be a lonely run. I'm fine with that. This isn't really a distance conducive to early-race chatting; the effort is fairly firm throughout. Being alone also reduces the risk of missing a trip hazard and going down hard. (Alert readers may have picked up on the foreshadowing from the use of the word "reduces" rather than "eliminates").

The first six miles make a loop around the perimeter of the west side of the park. We don't go past any of the really cool stuff as those trails get mighty busy on a typical fall day. As this morning is uncharacteristically muggy and drizzly, we pretty much have the park to ourselves. One could reasonably conclude from the current conditions that this was just going to be a drab fall day. The weather radar tells a far different story. A fierce line of storms is heading our way with an expected arrival right around the end of the first of two laps.

That's actually a good thing for me as I tend to do better in bad conditions. I do have one concern though: the osage orange. If you've never seen one, they are about the same size and shape as a regular orange, but that's where the similarity ends. They are really hard and no good to eat. The trees aren't super huge, but they're big enough that when the fruit falls to the ground, it hits with an alarmingly loud thud. Each little breeze sends several of them to the forest floor. If the storm unleashes them all, this could turn into a live fire exercise.

After the aid station at six miles, the route crosses to the west side of the park. This loop gets run in alternate directions from year to year. This year, we go clockwise, which is the direction that has "more climb". Obviously, that's not really true since you start and finish at the same spot, but what's meant by that is that more of the uphill is true uphill rather than gentle grade alongside a stream. People who have run the course both ways confirm that the clockwise loop is a bit slower.

Shortly into this loop, I catch the unidentified runner ahead of me. He's going a lot slower than he was last time I saw him, but doesn't appear to be injured. If he's cooked himself by mile 10, he's in for a really unpleasant day. He hears me coming and steps off the trail to let me by.

The volunteers at the next aid station are particularly buoyant. I'm not sticking around to chat, but even the few seconds it takes to grab some banana slices and water are enough for them to unload quite a bit of encouragement. It's a pleasant boost, even if it wasn't needed just yet. I still feel fine, as one should at this point in the race.

The lap ends without incident. The time, 2:31 elapsed, is a bit of a shock. I don't wear a watch, so this is the first pace feedback I've received. I've only once run a 50K over 5 hours; usually I'm a bit over 4. There was nothing about the trail that seemed particularly slow and I felt like I was running OK. I'm also in fourth place, so I can't be doing that badly. Maybe the measurement is wrong. I don't know. At any rate, I feel fine, so maybe just a bit more effort on lap 2 will yield a negative split.

And then the storm arrives.

It got a lot muddier than this

Thankfully, it's just really heavy rain without much wind. The feared mortar attack from the osage orange trees does not materialize. With the trail already a bit soggy, it doesn't take long for the grip to completely evaporate. Even with the screws, my shoes have no luck securing solid ground. While this dashes all hope for a negative split, it also raises a different possibility. At least one of the people in front of me is probably going to cave in these conditions.

I'm not really sure why I do so well in the mud. It's not that I particularly like it. I just seem to be good at it. My best finish (11th) in 16 tries at the fabled Pere Marquette came on the year the trail was inches deep in mud. At Psycho Wyco, where inches deep in mud is a normal year, I've pretty much kicked ass and was the eight person ever to get the title of "mud stud" for running it in under 5 hours. Now, with the trail turning into a river, I have a very real chance of a podium finish if I can find my form for the last 10 miles.

As I cross the road to the eastern loop, I get a comical display of the opposite extreme. There had been a guy hanging around the start wearing cowboy boots. Turns out, he was actually entered in the race. He's not looking super happy with his progress. Today might not have been the day for that joke.

The east side loop is insanely slick. I let up on a few of the descents where even a small mistake could be the end of the race. Other than that, I'm hammering for all I'm worth. The rain has stopped and the cool air behind the front is a welcome relief. But, the trail won't recover until hours after I'm done. I get to the aid station and find the workers every bit as upbeat as on lap one. As I'm leaving, they offer one noteworthy fact: "San is just in front of you."

Well, the reason I didn't ask is because aid station workers are notorious for giving out ambiguous information. "Just in front of you" could mean anything from 1 minute to 10. There are only six miles left, so unless it's closer to the former, he's out of reach. Still, they wouldn't likely say that if he was further ahead than he was on the last lap. It could well be that my second lap efforts are paying off.

Indeed, only a mile from the station, I spot his orange singlet ahead of me. He doesn't seem to be struggling with the mud as much as just plain old fatigue. I catch him on one of the smaller inclines and do my best to put on a brave face as I go by. He's 23 years my junior; not someone I want be sprinting against up the final hill. Better to make the pass stick now. I surge for the next mile and then get an opportunity to look back at a trail bend and confirm that he's not making a fight of it.

I'm pretty happy to be in the top three, but I'm also very much feeling the effort. I try to remember exactly where I am on the loop and how much there is to go. I get to a wider section of trail that leads to a small campground. I recall that from there it's a big downhill, a very steep uphill, and then another long descent to the road crossing. After that is the final mile in the west section and OH SHIT!

Normally, when you trip on something, your foot does come free, you're just so far off balance that, after a few awkward steps you hit the ground. This is more like a movie pratfall. Whatever grabbed my foot wasn't letting go so all my forward momentum is quickly converted to rotational. For those who haven't taken physics, that means I hit the ground really fast and really hard.

Fortunately, this is not a rocky section of trail and, aside from having the wind knocked out of me, there's no damage done. I'm back up quickly and within a minute I've found my stride. Still, I decide that for the rest of the race I'll be concentrating on the trail right ahead of me and not everything else between me and the finish.

I pass quite a few of the 25K field (who started an hour after us) in the last few miles. As always happens to me, I start panicking that someone will catch me from behind in the last mile. This pretty much never happens to me so I don't know why I stress over it. Then again, maybe it doesn't happen because I stress over it. At any rate, I'm third to the line in 5:08. They don't do age groups in this race but, for what it's worth, John and AnnMarie are both under 50.

Not a time I'm going to brag about, but the effort was certainly a good one. I really enjoyed going all in on lap 2. Age, obligations, and life in general pretty much guarantee that the limits of my performance will continue to decline (and the rate of decline will likely increase). However, given that limit, it's pretty gratifying when you know you've come very close to it. I did my best and that will have to be enough. I'm fine with that.