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Showing posts with label trails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trails. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2020

High Desert Drop Bag Gear Review - Ditty Drop Bag


Update! The owner of High Desert Drop Bags recently contacted me to share this limited time discount code with all of my readers. Use code "BCTR-21" to receive 20% off of your order. Offer is valid 9/2/21 - 10/1/21.

I received a High Desert Drop Bag (Ditty Drop Bag) as a part of a swag package included with my entry to the inaugural Mines of Spain 100 mile trail race in October 2017. Since then it has become my “go to” and favorite drop bag I’ve used at any ultramarathon. It’s durable, keeps my gear dry, and cleans up easily after a day of getting tossed around and thrown in the dirt.

Some Quick Stats:
  • Front Identification Panel
  • Water resistant 400 denier nylon packcloth
  • #8 nylon coil zipper for easy access as well as security
  • 1/2" nylon webbing carry loop
  • Available in four easy-to-see colors
  • List price: $22.00 Plus shipping
  • Weight: 3.7 oz
  • Dimensions: 13.75 in × 16.75 in × 1 in

The Ditty Drop Bag is the smallest size drop bag offered by High Desert Drop Bags (Bishop, CA). They offer two larger size drop bags: The Dirt Bag (18.5 in x 19.5 in, 21 liters) and The Ultra (28.25 in x 19.5 in, 39 liters). Even though it is the smallest drop bag they offer, I have found the Ditty Drop Bag has plenty of room for everything I have wanted waiting for me at an aid station. I most recently used it at the Blackwell aid station (mile 80) of the 2019 Eastern States 100. For that race I easily fit all of the following in my Ditty Drop Bag.

In addition to the Ditty Drop Bag’s tolerance for rough handling without showing any signs of wear after a couple years of use, the other feature that stands out to me about this drop bag is the identification panel. It’s an aspect of the bag that may seem like a big fat nothing burger. At first take that was my thought about it as well. After using it a few times though, I realized how handy it was and how much more convenient and dependable it was than my previous methods of labeling my drop bags. In the past, I had attached some type of paper tag with all of my pertinent information to my makeshift drop bag with safety pins. To waterproof my homemade tag, I would seal it in box tape. This worked fine, but was a bit cumbersome and I always worried about the tag getting caught on something and ripped off or being made unreadable from rain seeping through my waterproofing. My other drop bag method was to just use a large Ziploc bag. This was super easy and completely waterproof, but I always worried about the bag tearing and losing some of my goods. The High Desert Drop Bag identification panel resolves all of these concerns. Now I just slap some duct tape on the panel and write my info on with a sharpie. Quick, easy, and no worries!

For me, High Desert Drop Bags have set the standard for other drop bags. No other bag I’ve used has worked as well or as conveniently as a drop bag than the Ditty Drop Bag. If you’re frustrated or even just kinda irked about a few issues your drop bag has caused you, I would recommend at least looking at what High Desert Drop Bags has to offer.

Friday, July 19, 2019

Putting Science In Sport Isotonic Energy Gels To The Test


It's a good day when you find this on your doorstep!

"Disclaimer: I received SiS isotonic gels to review as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review, find, and write race reviews!"
The winner's award from the 2019 Last Idiot Standing - Summer Edition.
What the hell does a totally badass wooden sword and an extremely attractive and unique plaque showing a topographic map of a 5k trail loop have to do with Science In Sport (SIS) Gels? For the majority of people, absolutely nothing. But for me, there is a significant connection as those were the winner’s awards for the last two (and only two) “last person standing” format races that I have run. And during those two races I depended heavily on SIS gels as a major constituent of my caloric intake. It may not be a cause and effect relationship, but SIS gels definitely contributed to my performance to earn those two awards.


The four flavors I tried, sorry, giveaway is over :(
Where to begin with SIS Gels? Well, when offered the opportunity to try out a new type of energy gel I was excited. As an ultrarunner, nutrition is a huge and one of the most important parts of my racing. Calorie intake and your stomach’s ability to handle your choice of calories can be the difference between completely killing a race or having your race end with a dreaded DNF (Did Not Finish). I’m basically a scavenger when it comes to gels, more or less just using whatever gels are offered at aid stations when they are offered. Because of this, I’ve never become brand loyal to any one type of gel. Some have stood out as better than others, some worse than others, but none so much so that I said to myself, “That’s my gel” or “I’m never eating one of those again.” With my history of a hunting and gathering gel practice, I felt blessed to be able to consistently use one brand of gel for the bulk of my training leading up to and during both Run Ragged and Last Idiot Standing (LIS) - Summer Edition.
At the finish of LIS!
For both races I brought four flavors of SIS gels: lemon & mint, salted strawberry, apple, and double espresso (150 mg caffeine). I wanted to have some variety of flavors for these races as I planned on eating 1-2 gels per hour and I did not want to get to the point where I was sick of the taste of a single gel flavor and I had to force myself to eat it. Thankfully, that never happened with the choice of flavors I had for the 32 and 14 hours that the two races lasted respectively. And for the most part, I totally avoided any total and complete bonks. I was starting to bonk pretty hard around the 25th hour of Run Ragged, but then I downed two apple SIS gels and was feeling better within about an hour. I believe that bonk was basically due to me not keeping up on my calorie intake. I had forgotten to eat a gel at several aid station stops and I had not eaten anything else to get any other replacement calories. I didn’t recognize it until the calorie deficit had already built up, but after the SIS gels and some bananas I returned to the best case scenario for someone who has not slept and has been running for over 25 hours.

Before and after pics of a one mile Fourth of July run; the caffeinated SIS got me moving!
The face of an ultrarunner after a 5:46 mile.
Of all the gels I’ve tried over the years, SIS gels are the most palatable. Most of the time after a long ultra I am almost sick to my stomach of forcing down gels. This didn’t happen even after 32 hours of eating them at Run Ragged. The flavors are not overly sweet or artificial tasting as I find most other gels to be. Additionally, the consistency is thinner than most other gels I’ve used. The lighter consistency makes them easier and faster to consume and negates the need to immediately wash them down. After hours of eating other brands thicker, almost syrupy, gels during ultras I will begin swigging water or whatever electrolyte drink I have in my bottle and swishing it around in a futile effort to rinse the taste out of my mouth and the sticky coating off of my teeth. With SIS gels I never felt the need to do this. The reason being that SIS gels are designed to be an isotonic formula, or the same concentration as in the body. The isotonic formula allows the SIS gels to be processed more efficiently by the stomach without additional fluids to dilute them. This in turn allows the stomach to process the gel more quickly and get the calories on their way to becoming energy for your muscles to burn. 



Packing for a last person standing race, one of the toughest things other than actually running it!

In addition to the better taste and consistency of SIS gels, the boost from the 150 mg of caffeine in the double espresso gels was also a huge help to me in reaching my goals at both races as both races each went from at least dusk to dawn and then some. I became pretty groggy at a few points during some of those early morning hours while I was anxiously waiting for the first signs of the sunrise to show. The kick from those double espresso gels helped me to get out of my chair and continue when a nap sounded pretty nice.

If you’re like me and you have never fallen in love with any one brand of gel, I highly recommend giving Science In Sport gels a try. I can’t and SIS can’t guarantee that you will win every last person standing event you enter if you use SIS gels, but that’s what they’ve done for me so far! If you do decide to give SIS gels a try, use code “TRYSIS25” for 25% off all products excluding sale items then comment on this post and let me know what your favorite flavor was!

Me with my awards and my two favorite boys!
Also, if you want to see what other BibRave Pros thought of their Science In Sport gels, follow the links below!


https://theaccidentalmarathoner.com/product-review-science-in-sport-sis-energy-gels/


Monday, April 22, 2019

Strava: A Safer, Happier, and Healthier Addiction


Disclaimer: I received an annual Strava Summit subscription and Strava merchandise as part of being a BibRave Pro. Learn more about becoming a BibRave Pro (ambassador), and check out BibRave.com to review find and write race reviews!

So far as a BibRave Pro (BRP), all of the products I’ve tested were brand new to me. I may have heard of some of them, but testing them as a BRP was my first direct experience with them. Until now, as I have been selected to tell my story of how I became a Strava user which will hopefully motivate you to become a Strava user as well or at least pique your interest enough to look into Strava and learn how it could benefit your running habit. As soon as the opportunity to work on this project presented itself I knew it was the perfect fit for me. Just in the past year I have turned two of my coworkers into Strava users (one of the two I converted over from using the IOS app, Health). 



I have been a regular Strava user for about 2-3 years now. I first heard of Strava after I fell in with a new crowd, the Facebook group “Trail and Ultrarunning”. I hooked up with this group of trail and ultrarunners around the same time I ran my first ultra (Blues Cruise 50k) in the fall of 2015. I kept seeing people posting in this group about Strava this and Strava that. “If it isn’t on Strava, it didn’t happen” was also a common refrain. I decided I should learn what the heck this whole Strava thing is.

At first glance, I didn’t see what the big deal was or why Strava was so popular. My initial impression of it was that it was just another online fitness tracker. I had used several others before and at the time was a Garmin connect user only because I used a Garmin GPS watch and all of my data was automatically uploaded, tracked, and stored there. It was simple and I questioned why I would have any need for a secondary online fitness tracker. In my mind, it would only complicate the system I was using which seemed to be working fine for me.

Then I learned what Strava brings to the table where many other online fitness trackers fall short: the social networking aspects it offers. Where Garmin Connect and Suunto Movescount (probably the two most broadly used online fitness tracker apps with 10,000,000+ and 500,000+ installs respectively) were limited to just users of their GPS devices, Strava provided a platform where users of all GPS devices could play and interact, including folks who tracked their activities with their phones. Strava also allows users of other third party fitness tracker apps to sync those accounts with their Strava account so that like minded fitness addicts have a common playground to interact with one another. Now other online fitness trackers may have taken note and followed suit with Strava’s lead, but I’m unaware if they have. Once I drank the Kool-Aid, I haven’t looked back at any other fitness trackers. I use Strava exclusively as my fitness tracker and it fulfills all of my needs and then some. 


Inclusivity isn’t the only benefit that makes Strava shine. Here is a short list of some of my favorite Strava features, all of which I will go into and explain in more detail in a future blog post:

  • Group Activities and Events - A way to organize and get more social with other athletes.
  • Clubs - Join up with other athletes by geographic region or specific interests. Find the BibRave club here.
  • King Of the Mountains (KOMs) - Think of these as virtual races.
  • Flybys - Probably the coolest way to relive a race. This one is probably my favorite. Check the boxes for “Scott” and “Rich” and watch!
  • Segment Explorer - Traveling to a new area and want to find a great running route? Use segment explorer.
  • Gear Statistics - Track the miles on all of your running shoes!
  • Challenges - For when you need a little extra motivation.
  • Achievements - Think of these as racing yourself.
  • My Year In Sport - This is like a celebratory video of your past year’s activities. Here’s mine from 2018.
Stay tuned for a more in depth explanation of all of those Strava features. Until then, here is a short “how to” video about creating strava segments and just a general Strava overview.


If you're already a Strava junkie, you can now show your Strava pride with some Strava swag
Strava swag on Amazon.


Monday, April 8, 2019

2019 Rat Race 50K


My cool finisher mug!

A Cinderella Story Without The Cinderella Ending

Even though everyone had told me he wasn’t that far ahead and that I could catch him, I was not prepared for the kick at the finish. Honestly, what are the odds that in a four plus hour race it will come down to who has a faster kick for the last quarter mile. The chances are pretty slim, but it happened. It was the type of ultra finish I had dreamed of witnessing and to have been more than just a spectator to it and to have had the honor to share it with the caliber of athlete that I did left me downright giddy for weeks. This is my story of the inaugural Rat Race 50k!

The Rat Race trail runs have been an annual event for awhile; I only became aware of them last year. I ran it for the first time last year, opting for the longest distance offered, the 20k. This year the RD decided to offer a 50k option. I happily partook. In the past, both the 10k and 20k distances used the same 10k loop to reach their total distance. Until arriving at the race, I was expecting this to be the case with the newly offered 50k distance. To my surprise and satisfaction the RD had altered the course a bit for the 50k runners. Rather than five laps of the 10k loop, he added a longer 20k loop which was then followed up with three laps around the original 10k course. If you want a more in depth description of the 10k loop, go to my race report from last year on the 20k. As happy as I was to hear that I wouldn’t be running five laps of the 10k course, the added 20k loop to start was not 20k of completely fresh trail. In fact, about half of the large loop was the same trail as the 10k loop (see Strava map). And all of the added distance to the large loop was either fire road or powerline cuts, no new single track. I’m not trying to complain here, just making it clear that the 50k is for the most part achieved by running the 10k course five times.

With this being my first race of the year, my primary goals were to test out my fitness level, get adapted to those pre race jitters before my “A” races, and have some fun of course. If everything went well, I hoped to set a new 50k PR (4:54:29) for myself as well. Why did I have such high hopes for my first race of the year? I went about training over winter completely differently in this past offseason than I have since I started running ultramarathons. I got myself a gym membership and started building up my mileage and doing some speedwork on the treadmill in January after light mileage in November and December. I’ve found that I enjoy a couple months of lower mileage to allow the body to recover and to avoid burnout after heavy training and racing. This year I increased mileage and intensity more quickly with access to the treadmill. I wasn’t sure how well all of the treadmill miles would transfer to trail running, but I was excited to find out and hoped for the best results, a 50k PR. 


All set, ready to race!
The week before the race the timing company sent out an email with a link to the entrants list. I scanned it to see if anyone I knew would be running the 50k. I didn’t see any names I recognized except for Rich Riopel. If you’re not familiar with who Rich is, in short, he is one of the best ultrarunners to come out of NJ. He has qualified for and represented the USA multiple years on the 24 Hour National Team to compete at the International Association of Ultrarunners (IAU) 24 Hour World Championship. If you want more evidence that he is an accomplished ultrarunner, just look at his Ultrasignup results. Why am I giving you all of this information about Rich? Well, he is a main character in my race report.

As we all took off from the start the course started off following the same unpaved road that 
the 10k loop starts on. I was following Rich and one other runner when early on, probably a quarter to half mile from the start, Rich hops of to the side and begins retying a shoelace. I passed him at that point and expected to see him passing me within a couple minutes. To my surprise, I ran with the other lead runner for a couple miles at what felt like a pace that I could maintain for the entire 50k and there was no sign of Rich. We were doing around eight minute miles and it was feeling good so I tried to maintain it knowing that the 10k loop was more technical than what I was running on this bigger loop. Other than some sandy sections, and even those were runnable, it was all easily runnable. I figured to meet my goal I only had to average 8:30 miles so I was trying to bank some time for the loops around the 10k course which I figured would be a bit slower paced. The 10k loop was a bit more wet than it had been last year and the wet spots were a bit sloppier and more treacherous than I recalled. Regardless, I made it around the large 20k loop and back to the start/finish at about 1:34 with only another 30k to run. 

A Strava Flyby screenshot of just before the final lead change of the race!
Starting my first of three loops around the 10k course, I began to wonder what the heck happened to Rich. Did he drop? Was he just here for a fun run and jiking this 50k? These questions were answered about two miles later when he passed me just a bit before hopping on to the start of the single track portion of the course. I tried to keep up with for him a bit and soon realized he was in no way jiking this thing. With the curvy, heavily vegetated trails it didn’t take too long before he was out of sight. I was shocked to see him again just a couple miles later making his way back onto the trail. I assume he must have made a pit stop and he hopped back on to the trail just behind me. Having him right behind me and knowing that we were in the first and second at about the halfway point of the race lit a bit of a fire under me and I pushed a bit harder than I probably otherwise would have. We ran within a couple paces of each other for about a mile until the course pops off from the single track to a short unpaved road section again. At that point Rich cranked it up a bit and pulled ahead. I tried to give chase and kept him from pulling out of sight on the unpaved road section, but shortly after being back on the single track he was gone again. 

Battle wounds.
Going out for my second to last lap and knowing he wasn’t that far ahead I tried to push harder and earlier than I had intended. I could see him in the distance on the long straight fire road sections that start the loop, but as soon as we reached the single track again there was no sign of him. I tried to maintain my pace hoping that he may slow down and I’d have a chance to run with him again, but my other motivation to keep a good pace during this lap was completely unrelated to my race goals. My wife was running the 10k and with the staggered timing of the start times of the multiple distances if I had any chance to see my wife on the course it was during this lap. I was pushing hard during this lap in hopes I would get to see her and give a few words of encouragement. It was the first race she had run in a long time, her first trail race ever, and the first race we had run together in an even looonger time. It was great motivation for me to push, even more than chasing after first place at the moment, but to no avail. I wouldn’t see her until passing through the start/finish area for the final time. 

As I passed through the last time I was surprised at how encouraging the few people hanging out were. They were excitedly telling me that first place wasn’t far ahead and that I could catch him. One person even said he was only ahead by maybe a couple minutes. With that information and knowing it was my final lap, I ate my last Honey Stinger gel (I believe my sixth of the day) and pushed as hard as I could for the last easily runnable section of the course before the single track. I thought to myself that maybe I’d catch a glimpse of him on the long straight road, but nope. I held on to a bit of hope running the single track, but by the halfway point with only about three miles to go I had pretty much lost hope and started comforting myself by focusing on the positives. I was going to be able to pretty much cruise into a second place finish. I was going to set a new 50k PR with a finish time of easily under 4:30. From then on, my main motivation to not totally just coast in was to improve my PR by as much as possible and hang on to second place. I had lost all hope of catching up to first. 


All I need for a 50k.
That is until about a half mile from the finish when I heard some grunting and heavy breathing from behind me. It was just before the little wetland section of the course around the lake where there’s a couple of single log pathways for water crossings. Basically a section that is unrunnable. I looked back initially thinking it was probably a 20k runner sprinting it in to the finish. I was shocked to see Rich behind me with a full head of steam sprinting to catch up to me. Shock quickly turned to a mixture of fear, confusion, and panic. I would have to run this unrunnable section and then sprint the last quarter mile or so if I wanted to have a shot at first which just a few seconds ago I had already thought a completely lost cause. I tried my best to get across the logs quickly without falling and then going into any kind of a sprint that I had left. It wasn’t long after that the wet section that the trail widens then a quick left up a little hill and about a 100 yard dash across a grass field to the finish line. It was just before the left turn that Rich passed me. At that point I knew that I would have to give it everything to have any chance of keeping up with him. I was mentally committed, but my body wasn’t. My tired legs showed themselves as I tried to sprint up the little hill only to catch a toe, go down and skid on one knee for a bit before pushing myself back up onto my feet with both hands. It felt like only a second, but by the time I was back on my feet I knew I didn’t have a chance of catching him. He only had a few paces on me but I was moving like I had just run a 50k and he was moving like he was finishing a 5k.

Video Credit:  Greg Lassik

I was proud enough to at least continue to run it in as hard as I could even when I knew I wouldn’t be able to catch him. And amazingly, from the point just after my fall to the finish line was all caught on video by a spectator. In the end I finished in 4:15:24 just 10 seconds behind Rich. After congratulating one another on a ridiculously exciting ultra finish, I had to find out how it came to be. As it turned out, Rich had missed a turn about a mile from the finish and did an extra half mile or so. Sometime during that extra out and back he did, I unknowingly passed him. In retrospect, I can’t be disappointed with how the day turned out. I improved my 50k PR by almost 40 minutes! I raced a world class ultrarunner for much of a 50k to finish only 10 seconds behind him after a sprint to the finish. I mean, I could be super disappointed that I didn’t manage to sneak in with first place, but that wouldn’t be as much fun so I’ll stick with what has worked best for me in the broader scope of ultrarunning and be happy about all the positives.

Photo at the finish.


Scott Snell
April 8, 2019


Saturday, March 2, 2019

24 Treadmill Miles To The Bowl



Twenty four miles on one bowl of oatmeal.

Just this morning I finished what will probably be my last long run (24 miles on the treadmill) prior to my first race of the year, the Rat Race 50k. It felt good for having not run much in the last week due to work obligations and some family celebrations. I know a whole lot of people will disagree with my opinion, but it wasn’t that bad doing a long run on the treadmill. Especially since I have a pretty solid spotify playlist prepared just for such occasions. The other benefit of long runs on the treadmill is the ability to set the pace and stick to it mindlessly, which is what I had planned for this run. I ran the first 18 miles at my target race pace for the NJ Novo Nordisk Marathon, (8:30/mile) which would be under my marathon PR by less than a minute. After that I increased my pace slightly until the last 2 miles when I ran sub 8 minute miles. Being able to run 22 miles at my target pace without feeling like I was struggling at all and then being able to pick up my pace a bit at the end is a huge confidence booster for my PR goal at the NJ marathon. However, I still have my doubts about whether I’ll actually pull it off. Not because I don’t think the fitness or ability will be there, but because the Hyner 50k is the weekend before. And not just because the Hyner is a tough 50k with some big climbs, but because now that I’m committed to running the PA Triple Crown Series all three of those races (which begin with Hyner 50k) are my “A” races for the year. This means that I intend to not hold anything back at Hyner and if it goes well and there’s nothing left in the tank at the finish, I likely won’t be fully recovered after one week when I go for the marathon PR. Whether I blame poor planning or just myself for making stupid decisions doesn’t really matter because I’m not changing my plans regardless of how dumb they may be. The way I see it is if I do run a good time at Hyner and still hit my marathon PR goal it will just be that much more impressive. Additionally, it will likely motivate me to go for another marathon PR soon after in hopes that I could surely run a better time on fresh legs.

Before I wrap this up, just a side note, or more so a bit of a humorous story. One of the earlier mentioned family celebrations was a trip to Great Wolf Lodge in the Poconos of PA. While this trip took some time away from what would have been dedicated training time, I still got on a treadmill to run at the Great Wolf Lodge resort. While it wasn’t a great work out or run, it was a pretty entertaining one. The fitness room is small even by hotel fitness room standards. And one of the three walls is made of glass windows along a busy hallway. This hallway is a pretty high traffic area between the water park, arcade, and a wing of the hotel rooms. Never before have I had more ice cream eating children stopping to stare at me running on a treadmill than during this treadmill run at Great Wolf Lodge. I’m not complaining about this. I actually found it pretty humorous at the time and still do. It was somewhat surreal as I kind of felt like I was an attraction at the resort with all of the attention I was getting. If you’re ever at a Great Wolf Lodge don’t totally blow off your work out if the weather is crappy, you’re slightly drunk, or just feeling exhausted. Find the fitness room and run some miles on the treadmill. It will entertain the kids roaming the halls and if you’re like me you’ll get a few chuckles from their fascination.


Scott Snell
March 2, 2019

Sunday, June 10, 2018

2018 Hyner View Trail Challenge 50k


Then and Now

My parting view from my second visit to the Hyner 50k course.

"We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present." --- Victor Hugo


Training and preparing for the 2018 Hyner 50k was an experience unique to me since becoming immersed in ultrarunning. If you read my report on the 2017 Hyner, you’ll know that in my opinion it was the best performance I felt I have ever had at the 50k distance. The question of how to follow what was a nearly perfect day at peak performance in my estimation plagued me. My goal for most races that I’ve gone back to run additional times is simple:  see if I can improve on my previous time. My experience at Hyner was different though; I questioned if there was any room for improvement. This probably was not the best mindset for an improved outcome, but it forced me to accept that if I am not able to dedicate more time to training then I shouldn’t expect improved results. Since I did not expect to have any additional free time to put into training, I settled to just try to match or get as close to matching my finishing time of 5:36:36. Since my overarching goal for this year is to complete the entire PA Triple Crown Series for the second consecutive year and to try to do it in a faster cumulative time, just matching my finishing time from the Hyner last year seemed like a good start. Especially, considering that I felt I had the least room for improvement at Hyner than the other two races (Worlds End 100k and Eastern States 100).

Since I knew I had very little room for improvement, I figured my best chance to better my time would be to simply push myself closer to that proverbial red line for as long as I could. Considering I felt like I was pushing that way for the most part of the race last year other than the early big climbs, that seemed like a good place to start. So that was my plan, attack the climbs from the start and hammer the downhills harder than last year. The plan started off working well. I cranked out a good pace on the short paved section (a little over a mile) of the course from the start to the trailhead. Then I hit the first climb, Humble Hill, a gain of roughly 1300 feet over the course of a little under two miles. I pushed myself hard for this first climb, a stark difference from last year where I tried to reserve my legs during this first climb for the next four big climbs that I knew lay ahead over the remainder of the 50k course. After the climb, I hammered the downhill trying not to even consider the possibility of blowing my quads out.

I continued this strategy throughout the day almost hoping to feel exhaustion. Last year at Hyner I never felt exhausted which made me think I may have been able to give more at some point. This year, for better or worse, feelings of exhaustion began to creep in around the halfway point. I was happy about it because it meant that I had pushed myself to a point that I had not reached last year. I dialed it back trying to maintain and hoping I had made up enough time early on to come out ahead of last year. Looking at my watch and estimating the miles left to the finish I knew it was going to be close. It was desperation pushing me from around the halfway point to the final aid station at the top of the last and steepest climb up SOB, looking at my watch and doing some poor math far too often. At that point, I thought I had a chance. I popped out from the trail to the final short road section to the finish with three minutes to match last year’s time. I soon realized that the road section was longer than I remembered and even sprinting the whole way I was not going to make it. I ended up finishing in 5:42:02, five minutes and twenty-six seconds slower than last year.

Chart 1
Hyner 50k Strava Pace Data - 2017 VS. 2018
Column graph of 2017 and 2018 Hyner 50k Strava splits data.


I took a risk and I failed. It didn’t pan out the way I had hoped it would. Did it bother me? Yes, but was it a total failure? I would argue not completely. I didn’t match last year’s time, but I wasn’t far off and there was still plenty of room for improvement at the next two races. Even using this solid logic to deagitate myself, I still wanted to explore where things went wrong. So I of course made a spreadsheet of my Strava data to compare my splits from last year to this year (Table 1). And of course I followed that up by using that data to create a column graph to visualize that data (Chart 1). Of course the Strava data doesn’t perfectly match up to the official results, but it provides an idea where my improvements were and where my shortcomings were. As can be seen in Table 1, I was ahead of my 2017 pace up until the fifteenth mile and from there I never was able to make up the difference. Interestingly, this completely coincides with my early interpretations of my performance where I assessed that it was around the halfway point that I started feeling exhausted and felt like my pace slowed. Looking at Chart 1 it is apparent that my first half of the 2018 race was an improvement over the 2017 race. Also apparent, is that my second half of the 2017 race was overall better than the second half of my 2018 race. So, the data shows what I felt was true. This concept that the data confirms my initial feelings about my performance is really cool to see, but the real question is the why and the how. Why did things take a bad turn? How did things go wrong? Is there anything I could have done differently to avoid the negative turn and come out ahead?

Table 1
Hyner 50k Strava Pace Data - 2017 VS. 2018
Mile
Hyner '17
Hyner '18
difference
cumulative '17
cumulative '18
1
7:38:00
7:00:00
-0:38:00
7:37.6
6:59
2
9:16:00
8:13:00
-1:03:00
16:54
15:12
3
15:32:00
13:58:00
-1:34:00
32:26:00
29:11:00
4
17:49:00
17:27:00
-0:22:00
50:14:00
46:37:00
5
8:23:00
7:56:00
-0:27:00
58:37:00
54:33:00
6
13:34:00
12:56:00
-0:38:00
1:12:11
1:07:29
7
17:14:00
16:49:00
-0:25:00
1:29:26
1:24:19
8
12:47:00
14:14:00
1:27:00
1:42:13
1:38:33
9
9:19:00
9:26:00
0:07:00
1:51:32
1:47:59
10
9:21:00
9:10:00
-0:11:00
2:00:53
1:57:09
11
9:15:00
10:29:00
1:14:00
2:10:08
2:07:38
12
8:16:00
8:54:00
0:38:00
2:18:24
2:16:32
13
9:10:00
8:45:00
-0:25:00
2:27:34
2:25:17
14
12:15:00
12:36:00
0:21:00
2:39:49
2:37:53
15
16:32:00
19:06:00
2:34:00
2:56:21
2:56:58
16
14:28:00
15:22:00
0:54:00
3:10:49
3:12:20
17
8:35:00
9:30:00
0:55:00
3:19:24
3:21:50
18
8:48:00
10:02:00
1:14:00
3:28:13
3:31:53
19
9:44:00
11:08:00
1:24:00
3:37:56
3:43:01
20
9:54:00
10:46:00
0:52:00
3:47:50
3:53:47
21
19:01:00
19:39:00
0:38:00
4:06:51
4:13:26
22
13:23:00
13:18:00
-0:05:00
4:20:14
4:26:44
23
9:02:00
8:46:00
-0:16:00
4:29:17
4:35:30
24
23:39:00
24:00:00
0:21:00
4:52:56
4:59:30
25
9:31:00
10:04:00
0:33:00
5:02:27
5:09:34
26
10:16:00
10:13:00
-0:03:00
5:12:43
5:19:47
27
10:08:00
8:49:00
-1:19:00
5:22:51
5:28:37
28
8:46:00
8:22:00
-0:24:00
5:31:37
5:36:58
29
9:28:00
9:45:00
0:17:00
5:37:11
5:42:17
Strava split data comparing 2017 to 2018 Hyner 50k.


I did my best to examine these questions as objectively as possible, but could only come up with two decent answers. The first being the most blatantly apparent that I have already alluded to:  I went out too hard and didn’t have enough left in the tank to finish strong. You could say that this is just not running smart. I would argue that when I felt like there was little to no room for improvement, this at least gave me a shot at improvement. So, stupid or not, at least it gave me a shot. Long story short, I’m not mad or disappointed with myself for going out harder than I thought was “smart”. My second answer sounds like a total excuse or that I’m just a dumbass for allowing it to happen. And that answer would be that my shoes broke somewhere around the 20 mile mark (see pics). Now my shoes didn’t totally break and I didn’t run barefoot, but I feared that I would end up having to at some point with one major misstep. I will readily admit that my shoes had minor tears to start the race. In hindsight, I probably should have never started the race in those shoes. But, I did and I dealt with the consequences. And looking at the data, from the time I noticed that my shoes were in jeopardy of falling apart (around mile 20) I had an equal number of faster splits from that point to the finish in 2018 when compared to 2017. So maybe the greatest impact was that mentally it affected me, but physically I was obviously able to run just as fast with broken shoes looking at the data.

Shoe photos after 2018 Hyner 50k.

So what’s the answer? Maybe there isn’t one. I had a better day in 2017 than in 2018. It could be that simple. Weather wasn’t vastly different. Training time and intensity was similar. Regardless of the reasoning and the whys and hows of it, I am happy that I set myself up well to be able to come out ahead for my cumulative PA Triple Crown Series time. If I am being totally honest with myself, I’d say that being only about five minutes off from my finishing time last year felt like a win. In a way, it was a hard but valuable lesson to have reinforced; if you go into a race with the same amount of preparation and effort, don’t expect improved results. At best, hope for an equivalent outcome. I feel that this lesson is especially valuable heading into Worlds End 100k and Eastern States where I am dead set on improving my times. Forget the fact that I finished about ten places back from where I did last year at Hyner and five minutes is nothing looking at how bad I blew up at Worlds End 100k and how much time I had the potential to make up there. Additionally, if I’m smart and take care of my feet while having a good day at Eastern States this year I could very well gain even more time there. Let’s just say it was more of a mental speed bump than a truly damaging setback to my ultimate goal for 2018. With the right training, appropriate effort, and smart running, I feel that my 2018 goal of improving my overall PA Triple Crown Series cumulative time is still well within reach.

Scott Snell
June 10, 2018