While a lot of the people that look at this site are here to see Rover Pics, and look at what I’ve done in Radio, I’m someone that enjoys doing too many different things to relegate myself to one hobby.
I’ve been running marathons now for the last few years, something that started in late 2019 when one of my cousins was moving back to the area and asked if I’d be interested in running the Rochester Marathon with her. At this point, I think the longest distance I’d ever run to date was maybe 6 miles, and I’d only ever participated in one 5k/running race type event at all before, which was a Spartan Sprint. In high school I was a Swimmer, and a mediocre Tennis player, but I’d always disliked running as an exercise, so Cross Country and Track were out for me… but I love a challenge, and decided that I was all in. Earlier that year I’d attempted a charity cycling event, Tour de Cure, however was unable to complete it due to a broken chain on my cheap bike. I wanted to do this again, but also wanted another challenge for the year. This was in a stretch of time where I was up at 4am every morning to hit the gym before work – all I needed to do was start working in some runs.
I started training for this, beginning to trickle in running to my weekly workouts, hitting about 10 miles a week but still focusing on strength training more than anything else. In January/February I caught a wicked bug that really took out the running endurance that I’d started to build, but I got back to it, and unfortunately by March (2020), we all know what happened. Over the coming months, while things were shut down, and we were in just an odd state of being, I decided to double down on training for this instead of letting it go. I had no weights at home aside from an empty laundry soap bucket that I threw a 25lb bag of lead shot in to make it into a functional weight, and we had a punching bag. I went to Walmart, Dicks, and every other store you could think of to try and buy some Gym equipment for home, but everywhere was sold out. Turns out I wasn’t the only one doubling down on my own personal health during this time. I went and ordered a new bike so I could attempt the charity ride again, which would wind up taking me a little over 8 months to get (believe it or not, it was supposed to get to me pretty quickly, but the first wound up being on the barge that got stuck in the Suez Canal, and with I decided that in the meantime however, I’d hit a local running store, get a good pair of running shoes, and I could focus on the eventual Marathon target.
Over the coming months I got into it… really into it… It became something I needed to do every day – I got home from work, or wrapped up my work at home days, and the first thing I needed to do was get out for my run/get my training in. The years would go by, races would happen again, the Rochester Marathon in its entirety never came back, however they did honor my registration for their Half Marathon that they brought back. I ran that, and immediately started looking for the next one, and then the next one. In 2022 I was finally able to run my first full marathon in Buffalo – when I crossed the finish line, I said, had a beer and some food I said, “okay, that was fun, but that’s probably going to be a one and done thing for me- you know, something that I can scratch off the list of cool things I’ve done.” In 2023 I completed Buffalo and Niagara Falls, and decided that I needed a new challenge, and took on an Ironman 70.3 in the Muskoka area of Ontario.
Let’s fast forward to today, actually, three weeks ago – still almost five years later from when I started this whole goal of running a marathon. I’m still like this in looking for my next challenge. I sit behind a desk all day as a bean counter, I do what I call the workday 100 where I break up 100 push-ups over the course of a day, but other than that and a walk around the campus, that’s the extent of my physical activity during an average day until I get home from work and can get out for my run, or head to the gym, or during the winter get out on the ice – as someone who doesn’t like being sedentary, you can see how that can get annoying, and how I can get into this. I decided that 2024 needed a new challenge – I’ve listened to many Audiobooks by guys like Cam Hanes, David Goggins, Charlie Engle, Tom Foreman, and others discussing Ultra Marathons – was this going to be my challenge for 2024, or would it be a full Ironman race? I decided to flip a coin – Heads? Ironman. Tails? Ultra Marathon. It landed on Tails – so I signed up for the 50 Mile Distance of the Canandaigua Lake Ultra, which benefits a local palliative care (hospice) home. The worst part of this decision? I made it in Mid-August, and the Ultra was in the 2nd week of October. I would still consider myself in Marathon Shape as I never really stopped training after my last, typically sitting around 20-30 miles a week of running, and a few days a week strength training, but was that enough?
I’m just going to jump ahead to race day for you, because quite frankly, I didn’t change my training style. The 50 Mile distance had an early start time, and a regular start time, and then was staggered by 50k and a 25k Events later in the morning. When signing up I looked at my average marathon pace and figured that I should be okay with the regular start. We lined up… a total of maybe 25 people… another maybe 5-10 had gone out on the early start, meaning that if I counted correctly, there were only a total of 35 or so people completing this course. I’m used to Marathons where I almost always have people around, don’t have to focus on the course markers, and can just focus on running, this added an element I should have thought ahead on.
At exactly 7:30 we started – we all went out a little fast for the first mile or two, seems to be something I do in every run, but then we all settled into our pace. I started out around an 8:30 mile, which is my usual long run pace, but I began thinking, when I hit that 26.2 mark, everything after that is completely new territory, so I’d better throttle it back a bit. I decided to settle in closer to a 10:15 or so mile through the Half Marathon mark, but then the hills started hitting hard – and Bopple Hill brought me to a grinding halt of between a 17:00 and 19:00 pace, on a very steep grade, I had to treat it like a vertical hike, but what goes up must come down – and I made up some of that time with another 9:00 mile downhill. In this first 17 miles there were seriously well stocked, and well staffed aid stations that kept me (and I assume the other runners) in pretty great shape – having everything from Electrolyte Drinks and Water, or PB&J sandwiches, bananas, candy, coke, everything you could want to get that sugar boost and rehydrate.
Everything was going great for me, even through that 26.2 mark I was concerned about, I was tracking about a 5:30 Marathon, which was quite slow for me, but I was also trying to keep some in the tank, and I still felt great; however at Mile 28 I was dodging a hole in the road, and slipped on an acorn. In trying to not fall, I stretched my leg a little too far and pulled a muscle right around my lower right hip. It hurt a little but was workable for another 3 or so miles, but then some serious soreness started to kick in, and with another 2 miles to the aid station I actually thought that I might be cooked, and have to throw in the towel at the next aid station.
It took me about 30 mins to cover the next two miles with the hills in between, the downhill was okay, but the uphill was putting some serious strain on that hip. I jogged up to the aid station that was in the boat launch area, and paused for a minute. This was actually the first I downed some Gu Electrolytes, and a bunch of water thinking that this may have been part of the extra pain, that I may have just had some cramping setting in with the strain, so I asked one of the volunteers how far it was to the next aid station. She said it was only 3 miles, and warned me about some of the hills – the next aid station was actually at the top of the last big climb for the event. I considered bowing out here, but decided that another 5k was doable, even at a slow pace. This next aid station was the cutoff station – if I didn’t make it in the hour and a half I had, which should be easy even if I was injured, then I was getting scooped off the course.
Up and down some hills, I hobbled to that cut off aid station in about 45 mins, comfortably keeping myself ahead of the time restriction. This was at a nice community center, I ran to the restroom, had a quick PB&J Sandwich and some electrolytes, and paused for a few mins ro refresh. I almost asked for a ride back to the start, but decided that at this point I’d hit the 50k mark and was well over half way there. I refilled my camelbak, and pressed on into the last section of hills.
Not 250m from the aid station at the top of an incline I had to pause and sit on the guard rail, and stretch a bit. I jogged another 250m or so, and had to do it again. I really was starting to think I should’ve called it. I pretty much walked a steady 15:30-16:00 pace through this hilly zone up to the next aid station. I was talking with the volunteer running the supplies and said that I may need to throw in the towel – she told me that I’m done with the hills at this point, there are no more crazy ascents, and everything is relatively flat moving forward. And essentially I’m two more aid stations to the finish at this point, with plenty of time to spare, so, “we’re not going to let you quit, just take it one stop at a time.” I pretty much just said, “okay, can I fill my camelbak then?”
About 250m from that aid station I had a realization – I had a container of Biofreeze with me just in case I did something stupid, or just was in pain at the finish. I paused again, and rolled a liberal amount on everywhere that hurt, took another second while it was doing its thing to wolf down a protein bar, and chug some water. After no more than five minutes I felt refreshed and good to go, I wasn’t hobbling along anymore, I started running again. After my wife got out of work for the evening, we talked on the phone for a good bit of the final stretch of the run. She’d been watching Seinfeld (which I believe is the best sitcom to ever grace the Television screen), so we just chatted about the show and the Dog for a solid 45 mins, which was a good distraction. In this time I’d breezed through one of the remaining aid stations, and had a few shots of pickle juice, and water, and was on my way to the final aid station.
We got off the phone and I decided that it was time for more music – I’d listened to some intermittently throughout the day, but had been preserving the batteries on my Shokz. I was really feeling good through the last bit, and it was starting to get dark and cool down outside – while it never got above 50 for the day, it felt good when it dipped back down into the mid/low 40’s. I was averaging between 11-13:00 pace, not bad for being 41 miles down. I hit the last aid station, and there were actually three of us that showed up at the same time. We chatted with the volunteers, and asked what the last little bit of the course was like. From here it was 3.7 miles to the finish, and a little bit of that was through grass and downhill, so they were sure to warn us that it might be a little slick with the dew starting to set. I said thank you, and set off to the finish!
At this point, it was getting quite dark, and problematically I had my prescription sunglasses on all day, and didn’t bother bringing my regular glasses, so I was starting to have a little trouble seeing. Why not contacts you ask? Well, after listening to an interview with Courtney Dauwalter, and hearing her horror story of temporary blindness running and ultra with them. It may be a rare occurrence, but not something I ever want to experience. I kicked the flashlight on on my Garmin Fenix 8, and lit the way, and hammered out the last mile and a half at a 10:00 pace, and crossed the finish line at 11 hours and 36 minutes.
The volunteer who told me that she wouldn’t let me quit was there to hand me my metal at the finish line. She also gave me a handful of candy, and a bottle of water,and proceeded to say, “aren’t you glad you didn’t quit?”
Now that I’ve checked the box of this challenge, I’m actually not too sure what I want to do next. I’d like to get through a full Iron Man, but the ultrarunning piece is something I find unique, and something I may do again. I’d like to try a 50k before tackling any other distances, but a 100 mi trail race is something I’d like to give a go at some point too. With that said though, I’m calling this my last one for the season, and regrouping to find what’s next. At a minimum, I think it’s back out to the Buffalo Marathon in May to try and PR that course, and maybe Syracuse in March again… we’ll see.
Roving On 