Little Woods Ultra 2018

I'm not taking a day off from research this weekend but I am doing a non-math blog post. For those few who were really craving some math content today, I'll just say that I'm tightening the model a bit. Rather than just specifying that the observations are a Markov Chain, I'm running that through a transform to produce a martingale from the partial sums. Martingales have really useful convergence properties. Before you shout with outrage that you can't do that when sampling without replacement from a finite population, let me just say that we're talking a REALLY BIG finite population here and that sampling with replacement really isn't materially different when you're talking about a single block sum out of thousands. I'll elaborate tomorrow when I have more results.

That out of the way, several have asked for a race report from Little Woods last week. I'm not sure I would have called Little Woods a "race" even back when I took these things seriously, but we'll go with it.

The Little Woods Ultra was the brainchild of Travis Redden. There are several events like it around the country. The format is referred to as Last Man Standing. In an apparent nod to political correctness, Little Woods lists it as Last Man/Woman Standing. Whatever. The point is, you run until you can't. Last person who can, wins.

Without a little structure around that, the event would quickly devolve into chaos. So, there are some additional rules that turn out to be fairly important (transparent foreshadowing here!) Most of all, one has to define what is meany by "can't" in the above statement. Even the elites take walk breaks in ultras, so rather than insist everybody run continuously, the rule is that you have to complete the loop and be ready to start the next in an hour. Finish early, yay for you, but you still have to wait until the top of the hour to start the next. True to the ultra tradition, the loop distance for Little Woods is a point on which reasonable people disagree (if one could imply that ultrarunners are reasonable people). "Around" four miles is as close as one can get to consensus. The singletrack trail winds through a small parcel of forest on the Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville campus. (There is a larger parcel of forest on another part of the campus; you can probably guess what it's called.)

Travis has passed the administration of the event to Metro Tri Club so he can run it himself. Last year, he and I were the only two to complete 12 laps at which point I decided that running through the night in January didn't sound like much fun and conceded the win to him. Some were disappointed that we didn't make a fight of it, so this year I announce up front that I am not going past 50 for fear of screwing up my run at Rocky Racoon in four weeks. Everybody buys that as a plausible excuse. Truth is, I just don't want to run through the night in January.

As long as I'm out here, I might as well get in some pace training for Rocky. Four miles an hour is a stout 100 pace in the mountains but there are no mountains (or even hills) in Edwardsville, IL. Rocky is also pretty flat, so I'm planning on running 10-11 minute miles; at least for the first 50. I decide I'll run the loop today in around 40 minutes and then walk an extra mile between laps. That will be close enough to race pace and also give me some practice eating while walking rather than standing around between laps like I did last year.

No matter how cold the start, there's always one nut in shorts.

The normal morning temperature for early January in Edwardsville is around 20F, so there was good reason to believe that this year's start would be warmer than last year's 3F. Nope, we're right at zero as we head into the woods at 8AM. In an effort to generate some body heat, I head to the front and lay down a pace that's a bit firmer than my plan. A few stay with me and we finish the loop in 38 minutes. The prize for "winning" the opening round is warm hands and first crack at the aid station, which is basically a pot luck and the fifty or so runners that actually came out in these conditions have brought a wide selection of tasty treats. I grab a few and get to walking my mile.

In addition to pace training, I had hoped to experiment with how much I eat during these things. I've always had a big low section in 100's, usually coming around 10 hours in and lasting for 2-3 hours. I had always got through it OK until last summer at Leadville when it coincided with the return trip over Hope Pass. In that context it was devastating and by the time I had collected myself, I was late for the time cutoff at Twin Lakes. So, I've decided to try eating more early on to see if that helps.

I developed my guideline for how much to eat in long events when I was doing 24-hour orienteering races and 20-30 hour adventure races. In those contexts, I calculated that I needed 100-150 carb calories per hour. This was based on a burn rate of around 500 calories an hour, a maximum of 300 calories per hour being pulled from fat, and pre-race glycogen stores of around 2500 calories. I adopted that as an ultrarunning guideline as well without really thinking much about it. After Leadville, it occured to me that I was probably burning fuel significantly faster in 100's than in the other two activities; probably closer to 600 per hour.

Therefore, upping the intake to 200-300 carb calories per hour probably makes sense. Of course, ingesting just carbs will send your GI track into a tizzy pretty quickly, so I have to eat around 400 calories each lap to make that work. While it's no problem to do that, it does leave my stomach feeling a bit full starting each lap.

Hanging with Travis, Jim Donahue, and Jeff Sona after lap 4

The next three laps are repeats of the first. I'm still very cold at the start of each (walk breaks in an open field don't do much to keep you warm) so I continue with the pace that is just a shade too fast. The same group of three follows me and we get some conversation going.

By the end of lap 4, the temperature has risen into the low teens and I feel like I can hang at the start finish for a bit rather than walking a full mile. After all, the social aspect of these things is a big part of the draw and, by the time I'm done, only a few folks will still be around.

On lap 5, I take a short walk break halfway through. The three I've been running with push on. It's the first time all race I haven't been in the lead. I'm not sweating, but I'm not cold either so I finish out the lap at an easier pace. I still get back in plenty of time to get in my extra mile. Lap 6 goes pretty much the same but, as I'm walking my mile I realize something has changed: I'm not enjoying this.

That's a bigger deal than it sounds. I love running long distances. A lot. To not be enjoying an easy pace run when I've not even hit 50K is usually an indication that something isn't right. There are plenty of candidates: the cold, the big fluctuations in pace (I normally take much shorter walk breaks), jamming down so much food each lap, a leg injury from two weeks ago that hasn't fully healed. But, as I mentally check those off, none of them seem to be the problem. It seems this just isn't the day.

Well, it looks like I'll get to train something else today: resilience. This is quite different from "toughness". Tough is when you willingly hurt yourself because that's what the competitive situation calls for. Resilience is quite the opposite: it's figuring out how to keep going without messing yourself up. It's what allows you to be in a position at the end where toughness will matter.

The ultra crowd

I've found the best way to do that is not to slow down my run pace, but mix in more walking. On lap 7, I run the first mile, walk the short incline at the beginning of mile 2 (about 60 seconds), take my usual mid-lap break on the small incline at the end of mile 2 and then walk all of mile four. This pacing has me finishing in a bit over 50 minutes, so I don't have time to walk between laps.

At 28 official miles (with my inter-lap walking, I've gone five or six more than that), we are now into ultra distance. Ten line up for the start of lap 8. I repeat my lap-7 pacing and finish the lap feeling quite a bit better about the run.

I bring my headlamp on lap 9. The sun won't set until 4:53 and I should be back at the start/finish by then, but one of my few hard and fast safety rules is to never go into the woods within an hour of sunset without a light. You just never know and any problem is made worse if you can't see what you're doing.

Sun's going down; sure you won't stay?

I don't walk all of mile 4, so I get back with a bit more time to spare. I walk a bit, but the wind has picked up and the field is really cold. The organizers are offering their usual enticements for us to stop. I hold off on the whisky, but am pretty sure I can down a piece of pizza and still run. Just before the start of 10, I get my handheld light out of the car. The trail isn't particularly technical, but it does have lots of trip hazards in the form of roots. The handheld does a much better job of exposing those.

I run most of the lap with Travis. He's debating whether to fight James Baca (3rd last year) into the night. James has never won this event, so he might be pretty motivated. With my total mileage now in the mid-40's, I decide I'll probably pack it in after this lap. I've gotten in some excellent pace training, the increased caloric intake, while somewhat uncomfortable, hasn't caused problems, I got in a night lap and, most importantly, I haven't hurt myself for Rocky.

Two women and two men toe the line for lap 11. Well, a podium place is worth a little effort, even if it is in an informal event like this. I hop in just as the countdown to 6PM completes. Once again I run most of the lap with Travis. Since this will be my last lap, I don't walk it in and get back with about fifteen minutes to spare.

I confirm that only five people took the start and then pack up my stuff. I hang around the finish to say goodbye to those still in the race. Travis comes in just a few minutes after me. James and Rosemary LaRocca (who will go on to win with 13 and 12 laps respectively) come in just before the cutoff.

Then, just seconds before the cutoff, two more emerge from the woods. The others go off, but they head over to their supplies, refill bottles, get something to eat, and head back out. "They're not still in the race, are they?" I ask. I'm told that they are. How is that since they haven't made at least the last three starts? "That's not the rule." says the Race Director.

Well, actually, it is the rule. It's rather plainly stated on the event web site: "If you can't start the next lap on time you will not be allowed to continue." That's pretty unambiguous. But even if it wasn't stated explicitly, it's ALWAYS the rule. Intermediate time cutoffs always refer to the time you have to leave. Otherwise, you could hang out at an aid station for hours and then decide to get back into the race when all the support had been yanked. It's one of those rules that is so ubiquitous it doesn't need stating, like "you're not allowed to use a bicycle" or "no throwing rocks at other competitors."

I can be a bit of an obnoxious ass at the end of long efforts, but even I can see there's no upside in pitching a fit about finish order at an event like this. So, I settle for a loudly spoken, "That's bullshit!" and head on my way. It gnaws at me for most of the way home and then I let it go.

For what it's worth, several Metro Tri members have talked with me since and agree that the rule was not properly applied. They say that will be cleared up in the future. I hope that's true (and have no reason to believe it isn't) because, while it is just a fun local thing, it's not really very much fun to get beat by people you didn't even know were in the race. Meanwhile, I still had a great day on the trail and had promised myself I'd stop at 50 no matter what, which is exactly what I did. So, I can't say I was actually injured beyond being peeved for a half hour or so.

One of these years I might actually try to win this one. It's very much my kind of race. On the other hand, tonight's vexation with the rules notwithstanding, I've really been enjoying this sport much more since I quit competing locally. It might be a good idea to stay that course, at least until I've derived the variance of a finite-length martingale of partial sums from a series of correlated random variables. More on that tomorrow.