Two Hearted 50k

“Keep Your Expectations Low And You’ll Never Be Disappointed” 

I live most of my life by this mantra; especially when dealing with people. This has served me well because when people do something disappointing I am not shocked or dismayed and can deal with it better. And when people do well, I feel joy like a happy accident has just occurred. The one person I often fail to apply this motto to is myself. The result is that I am often unhappy even when I do well and overly upset when I underperform in any aspect of my life. Not fun.

For reasons that I’m still trying to parse out, I had high expectations for my first ever ultra running race, the Two Hearted 50k, that led to initially feeling disappointed. Here are a few: 

• I was well trained and well tapered. I’ve been training for a 50 mile race and did a 34 mile adventure slog in the Porcupine Mountains 6 weeks pre-race so a 50k should be a walk in the park or at least a nice run through a state park.
• My running partner (who I generally consider myself to be just a notch or two below) killed a marathon in Alaska so hard that he had to have a mortician approve the race medal he brought home on the flight. Somehow I thought his performance would magically translate into success for a race that was just 5 miles longer. Makes sense if you don’t think about it, right?
• I thought this was an easy ultra. Maybe I’ve been watching too many Western States films on YouTube. The race description of this event made it sound flat and fast. In my head I had compared it to a long day at Burchfield. It wasn’t until after the race that the race director emailed everyone a thank you and called it a “notoriously difficult” course.

So, in the moments immediately after the race I felt very disappointed but with some distance between myself and the distance I’m seeing that my expectations were way off and I really did well, especially if “doing well” is measured by overcoming difficulty (which is how we’re going to measure it for this ultra and for the ones to come.)

Pre-race

I woke up at 4:30am in my in-laws’ camper, drank a cup of coffee, pooped, and felt great. At 5:30am we loaded onto 2 busses at the Upper Tahquamenon Falls parking lot. There were 25 people running a trail marathon and 50 people doing the 50k. (My friends Doug and Crista ran the half marathon loop and Doug got 4th place overall out of 90!)

The 45 minute bus ride to a dirt road near Lake Superior was quiet. About 15 minutes into the ride I started asking people where they were from and shared some light conversation with the people around me. Ultra people are cool people.

We arrived at a seemingly random spot on an isolated dirt road and there were 4 porta-johns and 75 people in line. I felt like I needed to poop again but couldn’t make it happen. In training runs when this happens, the feeling goes away and everything is fine. That would not turn out to be the case here.

The Race

With everyone porta-pottied to the best of their abilities the race started about 8 minutes early, heading up the dirt road. Nobody took off fast and we all cruised at a conversational pace on the sandy but runnable road. I talked with a guy about the Marquette 50 miler and got some insights about the climbs and the potential use of poles. 

The first aid station was only a couple of miles in and I just topped off my water bottle. Bringing a bottle or wearing my hydration vest was a big pre-race question. Looking at the other racers I’d say 75% wore vests. Some used the hydration pack and straw while others just used the vests to hold water bottles. In my water bottle hand strap I had 3 of my choicest Gu packs and some Tums and ibuprofen. 

The weather in Holt had been very hot and hydration was a struggle on longer runs. I came into the Two Hearted with a plan to hydrate like I had been in training but the weather was much cooler. I backed off the hydration a bit and felt like it was a good adjustment. Shortly after leaving the first aid station at 2.2 miles I felt my stomach sloshing. It felt like the liquids I had consumed starting at 4:45a (a cup of coffee and half a gatorade) and the liquid I drank from my water bottle weren’t actually being digested. They were just a’sloshin’! This quickly became nausea and then bad cramping. I’ve had some stomach pain on 20 mile training runs that eventually goes away and I figured this would too. Maybe it was just nervousness? It did not go away.

Sometimes It Does Always Get Worse

I want to be careful not to be critical because this was my first ultra and so it’s almost certainly my fault but there were a few things about this race that I believe were not as advertised and thus are opportunities for me to learn how to read between the lines of race websites and informational emails.

1. Running along a lake means running through deep sand for many, many miles. I thought running along Lake Superior would be beautiful but instead it was beautifully difficult. I thought it was a plus because there was little elevation change. But for about 10 miles of the race we were running in thick sand. This obviously takes time off of your pace but it also takes energy that would be useful later in the race. Fellow runners were talking about if it would be better to walk the sandy parts but then you’d just be struggling to walk instead of struggling to run and there was so much sand that you’d be hard pressed to hit cut offs. Running the sand was the only choice.

2. When the emails from the race director telling you what products will be available at the aid stations always contain different products it means they have no plan and probably were sent promotional products. In a “Pat”agonia-esque manner, in an attempt to avoid stomach issues, I emailed the race director to find out exactly what gels they would have. He replied quickly and I bought those gels and the hydration powder he mentioned and trained with them leading up to the race. I decided to not bring my backpack which could have held all I needed for aid and things that I know help my stomach because I felt good about the products I practiced with. They had different products on race day. This forced me to break a cardinal rule of ultra running and running in general: never use something for the first time on race day. 

Considering the extreme stomach pain and the deep sand, I was doing well through the second aid station at 9.2 miles. Then my stomach truly rebelled. I burped and felt like I might throw up but the feeling went away…until mile 14 when everything in my stomach went away. Thankfully I was alone when the vomit hit. Projectile sprays of pure liquid flew forth. It’s like I was a landscaper spraying for bugs along the side of the trail but using my mouth instead of a sprayer. 4 times followed by dry heaving until all of the contents of my stomach were in the woods and not in my belly. I’ve read about this happening and now I‘ve experienced it. I wish it was just someone else’s anecdote to keep in the back of my mind instead of something I had to wipe off the corners of my mouth.

This did bring immediate relief which got my hopes up, for about half a mile. Here’s the thing with an ultra run: you have to keep taking in calories or you can’t keep running. Garmin says I burned 4,000 calories on this run. At least some of those have to be replaced during the run. All of the potential calories that I had taken in decided to take themselves out and I’m pretty sure they weren’t digesting anyway. I was starting to feel sluggish and woozy but I kept on running. At the next aid station I grabbed a couple of gel packs and forced one down, gagging as I swallowed. It made my stomach burn but it stayed down. For the rest of the race I would gag down gel packs as sparingly as possible to keep my energy up. It was a dangerous dance indeed. I had to drink straight water instead of the Gnarly energy drink that they provided (and I trained with) which meant even less calorie and electrolyte replacement. Not gnarly! 

Another translation lesson I learned from race websites: “Single track” means the most narrow possible pathway covered in wet ferns and undergrowth. Seriously, if it wasn’t deep sand it was wet vegetation for the whole race. We were emailed the night before that these would be the driest conditions ever even after a rainstorm. What is this race normally like if those were exceptionally dry conditions? I officially declare the North Country Trail (28 miles of this race) to be a total disaster. Patrick and I joke about how bad it is in other places yet I thought this was going to be the nice part? There is no nice part of the NCT. But I’m still gonna go for the patch.

Other worsenings: As the morning went on the temps went up and the deer flies came out. They did air shows around my head for the last 15 miles and got a couple of good bites in. I had to slap myself in the head every few hundred feet to fend them off. The last 11 miles were a real struggle. My legs felt great for the whole race but my stomach was so bad. When a wave of nausea would pass I would go as fast as I could until my stomach hurt too much. On top of all of this, every time I needed to pee we’d be in a burned out section of forest where there were no trees to hide behind. When I was dehydrated at the end of the race there were plenty of trees and lots of roots to almost trip over.

The Result

I finished in 5:40:17 and I was miserable. I couldn’t believe how difficult this race was and how bad my stomach hurt. I complained wholeheartedly (mostly about my performance) and I was ready to never run again…for about an hour. I slowly reintroduced real food and began to perk up.

Here’s the crazy thing: in all of that struggle I ended up in 12th place out of 48. I thought I was near the back of the pack but there were a lot more people behind me than ahead of me! I PR’d my 50k by 25 minutes (nearly 1 minute per mile faster). I got a pint of maple syrup for finishing 2nd in my age group. Looking back, I did really well. Curse those high expectations!

In fact, with all that I had to overcome (I seriously had moments where I thought about dropping out but didn’t really know how to do that) I can’t believe I did as well as I did. I’m looking back and seeing a truly gutsy (pun intended) performance and many, many lessons learned. After all, this is the training because it’s all training!

If You’re Livin’ You’re Learnin’! Lessons I never want to learn again:

Bring The Backpack

Seriously, just bring the hydration backpack. Why wouldn’t you bring the backpack? Bring it. I could have had a variety of food and aid with me. I’ve never had that kind of stomach trouble before so I guess I needed to learn this but now I know to bring the backpack.

Ultras Are Hard

This should be obvious. The word “ultra” is in the title. But for some reason I thought this would be an easy ultra (those words together don’t even make sense). Here’s what I saw toward the end of this first race: Everybody was struggling the last 10 miles. People who looked like ultra veterans, people who talked about all the races they had done, people with cool running tattoos – all suffering together. People passed me during my waves of nausea and I thought I’d never see them again because they must have been better at pacing. But toward the end of the race I was passing people even with my constant stomach pain. It was a suffer fest and I wish I had expected that. The end of ultra races are struggles of human will more than showcases of physical fitness for most. I’ve read things like that in articles and books and now I’ve experienced it for myself. On the trail, I wished it wouldn’t have been so difficult but I think that was a de-lusion of grandeur. Maybe there’s a reason trail and trial are anagrams? The terrain, the remoteness, the sparse and confusing aid stations all made this first ultra race worthy of the ultra title.

Adventure Running > Ultra Racing

I’m so glad I got to experience this race and that I tried to try hard. This might change in the future but I think I like adventure running more than ultra racing. I didn’t bring a camera to take pictures because I didn’t want to stop. (The fog was so bad that you couldn’t see Lake Superior anyway.) I think I would have been better served to chill a little and enjoy this race more. Maybe if I have a couple more years of races and experience under my belt I can try hard again. I think this will help as I approach the Marquette 50 miler in 2 months. I’m confident that I can do it and this race helped me build confidence in the most terrible way possible. But I (wisely) want to do it with a more chill attitude. I want to take pictures and focus on enjoying the experience more. I think I can come in well under the cut offs and have more fun at the same time. Who knows, maybe it will even help the overall pace and time to be better! Even with a chiller attitude I will also keep reminding myself that the end of any ultra race is going to be very, very difficult.

Overall, the hard-earned and hard-learned perspective I’ve gained about the difficulty of running an ultra is what I’m most grateful for as I look back on this first official, non-virtual, ultra race with real aid stations not provided by Pat. Now I know that these things are hard. I guess I had to learn that the hard way!