Virtual Race Report: Quarantine Backyard Ultra

I belong to a community of runners who run marathons so frequently that it has become a lifestyle.  I last ran a marathon on March 1st, and it will probably be months before I run another one.  All races are cancelled for the foreseeable future.

Some runners are showing interest in virtual races.  A virtual race is one where you can participate from anywhere.  In general, everyone runs the same distance, but they don’t run on the same course.  They can run wherever they are.

Virtual races aren’t new, but they’re gaining in popularity now that conventional races are no longer practical.

I belong to several running clubs that count marathons in one fashion or another.  In the 50 States Marathon Club, the goal is to run marathons in every state.  In the 100 Marathon Club, the goal is to run at least 100 marathons in your lifetime.  In Marathon Globetrotters, the goal is run marathons in as many countries as possible.  Marathon Maniacs is more complicated, but the goal, generally, is to run marathons as frequently as possible.

All of these clubs have rules for what counts as a marathon.  It’s not sufficient that you run at least 26.2 miles.  It has to be an official race.  Each club has its own rules for what is or isn’t considered to be an official race, but there’s a lot of overlap.  None of them consider virtual races to be “races.”

In the past, I’ve never shown any interest in virtual races.  I’ve always thought of them as glorified training runs.  If I’m going to run 26.2 miles by myself, I can do that without participating in a virtual race.

Two weeks ago, I learned about a virtual race called Quarantine Backyard Ultra.  This one intrigued me, because of its format.  It’s a “last man standing” race.  I’ve never done one of those.

You have one hour to complete a lap of 4.167 miles.  If you finish early, you can rest until the end of the hour.  Then everybody begins another lap of the same distance.  You keep doing this every hour.  Why 4.167 miles?  That’s how many miles you need to complete per hour to run 100 miles in 24 hours.

Any runner who fails to complete a lap within an hour is eliminated from the race.  Any runner who fails to start the next lap on time is eliminated.  The race continues until there’s only one runner left.  As soon as someone is the only runner to complete a lap, the race is over.

I’ve heard of races like this before, but they were conventional races, where everybody is running on the same course.  Gary Cantrell (a.k.a. Lazarus Lake) has one called Big’s Backyard Ultra.  That race annually draws some of the best multi-day runners in the country, as well as a few from around the world.  I’ve followed that race the last two years.  Last year, Maggie Guterl lasted 60 hours, during which she covered 250 total miles.

Most virtual races are more about participation than competition.  The Quarantine Backyard Ultra promised to be an exception.  Most runners, like me, were just looking for a fun way to do a long training run, but there were also 22 elite ultrarunners.  I fully expected some of them to run for 48 hours straight, and it’s wouldn’t surprise me if the winner lasted for 72 hours.

Each runner was free to design their own course.  You could run 4.167 miles on a treadmill, or you could run a 4.167 mile loop or out-and-back near your home.  If you wanted, you could run some laps on the treadmill and others outside.  You could also switch between different outdoor routes.  The only limitation was that you had to start each lap from the same “start corral.”  I opted to do all my laps on a treadmill, so my start corral was the deck of my treadmill.

You could stay in touch with the RD and other runners using Zoom meetings.  There were so many runners that they had to create multiple meetings.  In all, there were more than 2,400 runners in 53 countries.

If you weren’t able to use Zoom, you could also participate on your own and submit your results after the fact to get included in the race results.  I was originally planning to join the Zoom meeting, but I decided it was more work than it was worth.  I wanted to be “hands free,” but I couldn’t find a good way to mount my phone to my treadmill.  I eventually decided to just focus on the running and submit my results when I was done.

At the outset, I didn’t know what my goal should be.  I haven’t been training for anything like this, but I’m in reasonably good shape.  From a standpoint of fitness, I assumed I was probably capable of running at least 100 miles.  There was just one problem.  Since December, I’ve had a mild case of Achilles tendonitis at the insertion point.  I no longer notice it during training runs, but I sometimes feel some tightness at the base of my Achilles tendon after a run.  I didn’t know if starting and stopped every hour was going to aggravate it.  If it started to bother me, I wasn’t inclined to risk making it worse.

I had a large canister of sports drink powder that I got as a prize at a race last September.  We had several bottles of Gatorade, but I wanted to start using my supply of sports drink powder, so I mixed up about two quarts and kept it in a large pitcher in our basement refrigerator.  I used it to fill a 20 oz. water bottle.  You know what they say about never trying something new on race day?  I was going to learn that lesson the hard way.  More on that later.

The race started on April 4 at 7:00 AM Mountain Daylight Time.  Everyone started at the same time, no matter where they were.  In my time zone, it was 8:00 AM.

I set up a laptop computer on a card table a few feet away from the treadmill.  I kept a tab open to the website for the race.  It had a big readout of the official race time.  The clock on my treadmill was about 20 seconds fast, so I looked at the laptop to know exactly when I should start the treadmill.

I almost missed the opening bell for my very first lap.  About a minute before it was time to start, I realized I didn’t have my water bottle.  I rushed to the refrigerator to get it, but didn’t get back onto the treadmill until three seconds before I needed to start.  I almost DNFed before even starting.

As I started my first lap, I set the treadmill to 6.0 MPH.  That’s equivalent to a pace of 10 minutes per mile.  I’ve been training at a pace that’s at least a minute per mile faster than this, so this pace felt easy.  In fact, it was much too fast.  At this pace, I would finish my lap in just 42 minutes and then have 18 minutes to stand around before starting the next lap.

Ideally, I wanted to slow my pace to the point where I was using most of the hour.  To complete a lap in an hour, I needed an average pace of 14:24 or slightly faster.  I can’t comfortably run at that pace.  It’s feels awkward, and it’s inefficient.  Instead, I alternated between running at 6.0 MPH and walking at 3.5 MPH.  I typically ran for a mile and then walked for half a mile.

After finishing each lap, I took a photo of my treadmill’s display, as evidence that I completed the required distance.  I used my phone to post this photo to Facebook.  That wasn’t a requirement, but it made it easy for friends to follow my progress.

I took another photo just before starting my next lap.  This showed I was back in my “start corral” in time for the next lap.  It also showed that the distance was reset to zero.  I did this every hour.

My treadmill was set up in the basement.  Upstairs, we had out thermostat set for 68 degrees.  In the basement, it’s typically about five degrees cooler.  I had a thermometer set up next to the treadmill.  Usually it reads 63 degrees.  Early in my first lap, it was reading 64.  By the end of that lap, it was reading 66 degrees.  I assume my body heat was warming up the air around the treadmill.

I had a fan set up on a stool in front of the treadmill.  It was plugged into a switch with a remote button, so I could turn it on or off without leaving the treadmill.  While I was running, I turned on the fan, so I wouldn’t get too hot.  When I took walking breaks, I didn’t need the fan, so I turned it off.

With the run/walk mix I was doing, I was taking about 50 minutes to finish a lap.  That was about right.  It gave me time to take my photos, refill my water bottle, go to the bathroom, spend a few minutes online, and still get back onto the treadmill a couple minutes before the start of the next lap.

I’ve done 24-hour races and 100 mile trail runs where you have to weigh in periodically.  During my second lap, it occurred to me I should be doing that, so I would know if I was drinking the right about to stay hydrated.  I didn’t think of that in time to take a baseline weight before starting.  Better late than never, I weighed myself after finishing my second lap.

When I finished my fifth lap, I had 20.83 miles under my belt.  If I was doing continuous running, I would’ve considered that to be enough for a long training run.  The run/walk/rest mix I was doing felt so easy that 20 miles this way felt as easy as 10 miles of continuous running.

By now, I was already feeling discomfort on the back of my left heel.  I was afraid of that.  Ideally, I wanted to run for at least 24 hours, but I knew that was a bad idea.  I didn’t want to risk taking a minor injury that had been healing nicely and making it turn into something much worse.  I wanted to run at least two more laps, so I would get beyond the marathon mark.  Then I’d take it one lap at a time.

Running on a treadmill can be mind-numbingly boring.  I find it helpful to listen to music.  We have a stereo in our living room with a five CD changer.  I have a remote set of speakers in my exercise room in the basement.  As I started my sixth lap, I had only a few songs left on the fifth CD.

I needed extra time between laps to go upstairs and put five new CDs into the CD player.  During my sixth lap, instead talking walking breaks of half a mile, I shortened my walking breaks to only one minute each.  That lap took only 43:25, which was by far my fastest.  That gave me more than enough time to change my music.  I had enough time left over to make and eat a peanut butter sandwich.  It was my first solid food since starting.

Before eating my sandwich, I weighed in.  My weight was down 1.6 pounds since my previous weigh-in.  I made a mental note to drink more.  Drinking more of my sports drink turned out to be a bad idea.  More on that later.

My seventh lap gave me 29.17 miles, which put me beyond the marathon mark.  It was time to start thinking about how much longer I wanted to run.  To the best of my recollection, the farthest I had ever run on a treadmill was 33 miles.  I wanted to go beyond that.  Eight laps would be 33.33 miles, but I tentatively set my sights on nine laps.  That would be 37.5 miles, which was more of a round number.  It would also be well beyond my previous best for a treadmill run.

Midway through my eighth lap, I started to find the pace to be tiring.  For the first seven laps, it was really easy.  I wondered if it was more psychological than physical.  Maybe my heart wasn’t in it, now that I knew I would be stopping soon.  I knew I could do a ninth lap, but I felt like I’d have to drag myself through it.  Instead, I decided to stop after eight laps.

After dropping out, we were each supposed to take a selfie with our homemade race bib and post it with the hashtag #QBdnf.  I did that.  Then I went online to fill out a form with my number of laps, so I could be listed in the race results.  My race was over, but the drama was just beginning.

I felt a little bit queasy.  I had some rumblings in my intestines.  I went to the bathroom to take a dump.  I thought that would make me feel better, but I still felt queasy.

I mentioned the queasiness to Deb.  I told her I was trying a new sports drink for the first time and wondered if it somehow disagreed with me.  I thought I mixed it according to the instructions, but maybe I made a mistake and mixed it too strong.

I needed to sit down.  After resting for several minutes, I started to feel chilly wearing my sweaty running clothes.  I wanted to put on a warm bathrobe, but first I needed to take a shower to rinse off the sweat.  As I started showering, my nose began to run.  It was like turning on a faucet.  Fortunately, that only lasted while I was in the warm shower.  I dried off and put on my robe.

I felt really wiped out.  I wanted to lie down, but Deb was cleaning and had a bunch of stuff on the bed.  I went to our downstairs bedroom and climbed into bed without even taking off my robe.

My breathing was really labored.  I could get enough oxygen, but I had to breath heavily.  I used a pillow to prop myself up in bed.  That didn’t make it any easier.

I stayed in bed for the next few hours.  My shortness of breath made me really nervous.  I’ve been reading so much about COVID-19 and severe respiratory distress that it started to mess with my head.  Was I infected and I didn’t know it before?  Was this what it felt like?  Was I dying?  Physically, I didn’t feel that bad, but mentally, I was starting to panic.

Eventually, I came back upstairs and sat on the sofa with my feet propped up.  That felt much more tiring.  Deb put an oximeter on my finger.  My oxygen saturation was reading 95 percent.  My pulse was 65.  That’s a little high for a resting pulse, but not bad for so soon after an ultramarathon.

Next, Deb put a blood pressure cuff on me.  She took my blood pressure twice.  Both readings were higher that my usual blood pressure, but not alarmingly so.  Finally, she took my temperature.  It was 95.8 degrees.  That was really surprising.  I didn’t feel at all cold.

It was a thermometer we had never used before, so wondered if it was off.  I insisted that Deb take my temperature with a different thermometer.  That one also read 95.8 degrees.  It wasn’t the thermometer.  It was me.

We called the nurse care line for our health insurance company.  They contacted our local clinic, and a doctor there called us back about 15 minutes later.  I explained my symptoms.  Most of my vital signs were OK, but the low temperature was unusual, and my shortness of breath was distressing.

Deb recalled my comments about the sports drink and brought that up.  The doctor asked her to read the ingredients.  It included caffeine and taurine.  That got my attention.  I grabbed the canister and read the instructions.  Apparently, I never read the fine print.  I assumed this was a sports drink like Gatorade.  It was actually a pre-workout energy drink.  The instructions stressed that you should only take one 8-12 oz. serving per day.  I was drinking it for eight hours.  I consumed several servings.  It’s good that I didn’t run any farther, or I would’ve had even more.

In a way, it was a relief to have an obvious explanation for my symptoms.  I was overdosing on both caffeine and taurine.

The doctor wanted me to go to the ER.  I asked if urgent care would be good enough.  She said they would just send me to the ER.  She wanted me to go in and get an EKG and some blood tests, but I was reluctant.

It was already evening, and Deb would be going to bed in a couple hours.  We’ve both been “sheltering in place” for two or three weeks.  Deb didn’t want to go anywhere near a hospital.  She said she could drop me off there.  I really didn’t want to be at the ER by myself this late in the day with no ride home.  I remembered a time when Deb went to the ER and had to wait for hours to be seen by a doctor.  Even if they could see me right away, I’d be there for hours.

Against medical advice, I stayed home.  I wanted to wait and see how I felt after laying in bed for a few hours and letting the caffeine and taurine gradually work their way out of my system.

I hadn’t had anything to eat or drink anything since finishing my run.  I asked Deb to heat up a can of soup.  She told me when it was ready, but it took several minutes before I had the energy to walk to the dining room.  As I sat down, I suddenly felt feverish.  My forehead was sweaty.  Suddenly, I couldn’t imagine eating a bowl of hot soup.

After sitting in front of the bowl of soup for several minutes, I finally forced myself to have a spoonful of broth.  A few minutes later, I had another spoonful, and then a third.  That’s as much as I could stomach.  I finally had to ask Deb to put the soup in a container and save it for later.  She covered the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator.

I walked back downstairs, stripped down to my underwear, and climbed into bed.  I no longer felt feverish.  My heartrate was elevated from the exertion of walking to bed, but my breathing finally felt easier.  That was a relief.  I laid as still as possible.  After several minutes, my heartrate got back to normal.

Deb eventually came downstairs to check on me, and I told her my breathing was OK now.  Later, before she went to bed, she checked on me one more time.  My breathing was still fine, but I felt wired.  I knew I would be awake for most of the night.

Even though I didn’t have anything to drink, I still had to get up occasionally to pee.  Caffeine and taurine are both diuretics.  Even though I was somewhat dehydrated, they were still making me pass more fluids.  Ideally, I should’ve been drinking fluids to replace what I was losing, but even the thought of drinking something made me feel nauseous.

After each trip to the bathroom, I could feel my heart racing.  I had to lay as still as possible, so my heartrate would settle down.  I relaxed as much as I could, but I had no hope of falling asleep.

At midnight, I was wide awake.  At 2 AM, I was wide awake.  At 3 AM, I was wide awake.  After that, I stopped looking at the clock, but I was awake for at least two more hours.

Eventually, I fell asleep.  When I woke up, it was 7:00.  I probably slept for an hour or two.  That helped a little.  It was only because of sheer exhaustion that I was able to sleep.  I was still wired when I woke up.  After an hour of trying to get back to sleep, I finally got up.

Deb used the oximeter again.  My oxygen saturation was better.  Now it was 98 percent.  My pulse was still 65.  I didn’t feel great, but I felt a little bit better.  The caffeine and taurine were starting to work their way out of the system.  I wasn’t out of the woods, but I was improving.

I usually weigh myself in the morning before eating anything.  My weight was about five pounds lower than it was the day before.  One pound of that might have been weight loss from the running, but at least four pounds was water loss.  I made a mental note to drink at least eight cups of fluid when I could.  It wasn’t going to be easy.

I didn’t feel like eating or drinking, but I followed the same routine I would follow if I had the flu.  I nibbled on saltine crackers and drank ginger ale, a few sips at a time.

I only had about eight ounces of ginger ale left.  Then I switched to orange juice.  When I ran out of orange juice, I drank water.

By 1:00 PM, I managed to drink about a quart of fluids, and I ate about a dozen crackers.  I didn’t know if I was ready for a meal, but I reheated the soup.  The broth made the back of my throat sting.  It also made my nose run.  It took effort to finish the soup.  So far, I had replaced about six cups of fluid.

I felt like the caffeine and taurine were gradually wearing off, but I still felt shaky.  I also felt the lack of sleep.  I didn’t have much energy, but I kept chipping away at rehydrating.

I was curious to know what a last man standing race would feel like.  I didn’t really get to find out.  It should’ve felt really easy at least until the nighttime hours.  It probably would have if not for my Achilles tendon and my unfortunate choice of beverage.

Note to self:  never try something new on race day, even if it’s just a virtual race.

Race Statistics
Number of Laps:  8
Total Distance:  33.33 miles
Elapsed Time:  8 hours
Time Actually Running:  6:34:58
Average Pace (Including Downtime):  14:24
Average Pace (Excluding Downtime):  11:51
Fastest lap:  43:25
Slowest lap:  50:55