Running in Circles

Well, we did the Hinson Lake 24 hour yesterday or in my case, the Hinson Lake 18 hour! That's a new PR for me: 18 hours! We stopped at 2:00AM. It was a great event and lots of fun. I wasn't sure what to expect but as soon as we arrived we were greeted by fellow MTC members with hugs and good wishes. We set up camp next to Marie and Chris and were ready to go. The event is very low key and after a few words of advice from the race director, we were off. The course was a 1.52 mile loop and although I thought it would be boring, it turned out great. Doing so many loops alloyed you to see everyone and to run with various runners as the day progressed. I had some stomach issues and had to visit the restroom on multiple occasions. Fortunately, I felt no pressure to do any particular distance or time so I took a couple of breaks of about 30 minutes and that was great as it allowed me to chat with various other runners and friends. There was no pressure and many of the runners that I hooked up with hadn't determined their goal yet either so I felt comfortable with my lack of decision about what I was going to do. As the day progressed, most of my loops with completed with a women I met from SC named Teri. She is a feisty lady with multiple ultras in her life with 4 starts and finishes of Western States. She was a ultra chick way before it was mainstream. Anyway, 34 loops seem to fly by when you're chatting away and chat we did. My voice is a little horse today from all the talking.
I ended up running about 52 miles which was much further than I thought I would and what I was trained to do but I walked after about 20 miles, so I was comfortable with pushing the envelope although I am wondering how I'm going to run a marathon next weekend as my legs are a little sore. No worries, all will be fine.
Frank came out about 11:30 and walked for a couple of hours and after 34 loops, I had made the top 10 on the leader board (I had been there earlier but dropped off after too many breaks) Once I was assured of my status, I decided to call it a day. For a brief moment I thought about going for a few more loops to move up the leader board with more miles, however, thought about my running plans and realized that if I continued, I'd be recovering for longer than I want to as the start of my "training" for Umstead kick-offs. I have to admit, it was not bad running for 18 hours, although many were actually spent walking. I walked at about a 15 minute miles so that allowed my to achieve my target loop time of about 25 minutes, very doable. My feet started to really hurt on the last loop and I am a little concerned about how I will be able to continue forward motion in the 100 if my feet continue to breakdown as they did in Umstead, but hopefully training will toughen them up.
Well, better go fix breakfast. A full day of relaxing and recovering. Makes it all worthwhile! Bring it on!