On June 21, I ran the Jackal Trail Marathon. This was the first race of The Jackal Marathons, which is a five-day series of marathons sponsored by Run It Fast.
I didn’t sleep well last
night. I had no trouble getting to
sleep, but I woke up early and couldn’t get back to sleep. It’s not the first time I’ve started a race
tired, but I hope it doesn’t become a pattern.
Today’s course was a 3.75-mile
trail loop. To complete a marathon, I
needed to run this loop seven times. There
was an aid station where we started and finished each loop. If I wanted nutrition more frequently than
that, I needed to bring it with me.
We started at 7:00
AM. It was already 75 degrees, and it
was going to get hotter. There was a
heat advisory starting at 11:00 AM, when the heat index was expected to reach
100.
I couldn’t get by just
drinking at the aid station. I wore a
fuel belt that holds a 22 oz. bottle. I
figured that would be enough to get me through each lap, and then I could refill
at the aid station.
Here’s the description of
the course that we received in an email: “The loop is 3.75 miles and is not technical
to most. That can be a relative term of course. It does have a good number of
roots, down tree limbs (at times), and one rock. It will be a very fast trail
if we have no rain. It has lots of turns (that throws accurate GPS readings
off). There are no major climbs but several decent rollers.”
I quickly realized that
this course might not seem technical to some runners, but it certainly did to
me. There were way more roots than I was
expecting. Here’s a section of the trail
that was close to the aid station.
There were runnable
sections too. Some parts were like this.
Overall, I found that I
had to always be on the lookout for roots.
I also had to change the way I run.
I’m usually a heel striker, but today I had to stay up on my toes. The only times my heels touched the ground were
when I was walking. My stride was much
shorter than usual. It was like I was
taking a series of short hops. Half of
my energy went into getting my feet high enough above the trail that I would
clear the roots.
For most of the race, we
were running under trees. That meant we
rarely felt the sun. It also meant we
never felt any wind. There was nothing
to counteract the humidity.
I was always planning to
take walking breaks. Before I saw the
trail, I assumed I would walk the hills.
I did have to walk some uphill sections, but I was most apt to walk where
there were clusters of roots. I also
often walked downhill sections if there were roots. Tripping and falling while running downhill
would be much worse than tripping and falling on level ground.
When my watch gave me a split
for my first mile, I was shocked to see that my pace was barely under 14
minutes. That was for a mile that was
mostly running. My second mile was about
the same.
It’s worth noting that I
couldn’t really trust my watch to measure the distance accurately. We were constantly turning. The course snaked back and forth several
times in each mile. Running through a
forest, your watch can’t always stay in touch with the GPS satellites, so it’s
easy for your watch to miss some of the turns.
My actual pace was faster than what my watch was telling me, but I didn’t
know by how much.
Before the race, one of
the experienced runners told me that each lap consistent of two trail
loops. After the shorter trail loop, we
briefly emerged from the woods. Then we
re-entered the woods in a different spot to begin the longer loop.
She told me the second
trail loop was more difficult. As I ran
the first loop, I found that hard to believe.
Then I reached the more difficult sections of the second loop. There were a few hills that were short, but they
were so steep that you had to walk them.
There was also one longer hill that everybody had to walk, even though
it wasn’t that steep.
The course was
well-marked. At times, you went a long
time without seeing trail markings, but it was obvious where the trail
went. Where we made a turn that wasn’t
obvious, they had blue or orange signs with arrows. They also marked turns we shouldn’t take with
flour lines.
As I was finishing my
first lap, I saw a sign I recognized. I
had seen this sign as I was walking to the start/finish area. I knew when I made this turn, I would be
within sight of the aid station.
One of the things I was
doing to keep myself cool was to wear one of those cooling bandanas that soak
up water like a sponge. I had one
soaking in ice water overnight, and I put it on just before the race. After my first lap, I also started putting
crushed ice in my hat. The ice cools me
down, and as it melts, the ice water runs down my neck and get soaked up by the
bandana. That kept the bandana from
drying out.
As I set out to start my
second lap, I looked at the clock. My
first lap took me 51 minutes. If I kept
up that pace for the whole race, I would take almost six hours to finish. I knew I would gradually slow down as it got
hotter, so I realized already that I was going to be slower than six hours.
I slowed a little in my
second lap, but in ways that were subtle.
Sometimes, when I reached the end of a hill or a section with lots of
roots, I would walk for a few extra seconds before I resumed running. That was a trend that would continue in
subsequent laps. The temperature climbed
two or three degrees with each lap, and I needed to slow down a little as a
concession to the heat.
The one sun-exposed part
of the course was where we finished the first trail loop and then ran through an
open area for about a quarter mile before re-entering the woods. I didn’t notice the heat of the sun on my
first lap, but I noticed it on my second lap.
This section felt hotter each time for the rest of the race.
I knew I was about to
complete my second lap when I recognized the last trail marker before the aid
station. Just as I turned that corner, my
watch recorded a split for mile seven.
In fact, I was finishing my second lap, which meant I had run 7.5 miles. Already, my watch was off by half a
mile. I couldn’t trust it to tell me how
far I had run, nor could I trust it to tell me my pace. I expected that, but now I had confirmation.
On this sort of course,
you don’t measure your progress in miles.
You measure it in laps.
Regardless of what my watch said, I needed to finish seven laps.
Before starting my third
lap, I put two handfuls of ice in my hat.
Then I decided that wasn’t enough, so I added a third handful. That’s the most ice I’ve even put in my hat.
During my second lap, I
barely noticed the ice. As I started my
third lap, the ice was so intensely cold, it was painful. I had to walk through the first section,
which had a lot of roots. The ice made me
so uncomfortable, that I was afraid it would take my attention away from the
roots. I didn’t start running until I
reached a more runnable section.
It didn’t take long
before I got more comfortable with the ice.
Then I could run all the same sections as before.
I was about a mile into
my third lap when I was passed by one of the faster runners. He was already a lap ahead of me. Up until then, I sometimes passed other
runners, and other runners sometimes passed me, but we were all on the same
lap. Now, we were spread out enough that
I was no longer leap-frogging with other runners. The only time I got passed was when one of
the fast runners lapped me. That would
happen one more time in this lap and three or four times in the next lap.
I was almost done with
the shorter of the two trail loops when I got close enough to the road to hear
church bells. I counted the number of
times the bell rang. It was 9:00. It was depressing to realize I had only been
running for two hours. It seemed like I
had been running forever. There were so
many turns, hills, and other notable features that each mile seemed more like
three. In reality, I was less than one
third done. I was going to be on these
trails for a long time, and it would only get more tiring as it got hotter.
By the time I started the
longer trail loop, I no longer felt any ice in my hat. I never noticed exactly when the last of the
ice melted, but it was always gone before I was halfway through each lap. The ice helped cool me down in the early part
of each lap, but once it was gone, I started to get hotter. I felt the heat much more toward the end of
each lap.
In my fourth lap, I was
on the sun-exposed section when I again heard the bells. This time, it was 10:00. I felt better about that. I was almost half done with the race.
As I continued through
that lap, my watch gave me a split for mile 13.
I knew I was probably closer to 14, so I could finally tell myself I was
past the halfway mark.
There was one particularly
tough section late in each lap when we had to go up and over a few small ridges
in rapid succession. By my third lap, I
had noticed that there seemed to be another branch of the trail a few feet to
my right that went around these ridges instead of going right over them. In my fourth lap, I finally noticed where the
trail branched. After that, I always
took the less difficult branch of the trail.
I wish I had noticed that three laps earlier.
When I finished my fourth
lap, my elapsed time was roughly three and a half hours. When I finished my fifth lap, it was four and
a half hours. I took an hour just to run
one lap. I assumed I would get slower in
my last two laps. It only took one lap
for me to realize I would be slower than six hours. Now, I assumed I would be slower than 6:30.
In laps three, four, and
five, faster runners were lapping me. In
lap six, I started to lap the slower runners, who were mostly walking. I passed at least four in that lap.
The second part of each
lap was the more difficult part, but in my sixth lap, I noticed something I had
not noticed in the earlier laps. There
was an amazingly long section that was fairly runnable. Maybe it was just my mood, but I enjoyed a
good long stretch of continuous running before getting to the harder stuff neat
the end of the loop.
It wasn’t until my sixth
lap that I finally noticed the one rock on the course. It was in the middle of the trail about
halfway up the longest hill. I always walked
this hill, so I didn’t need to pay as much attention to trip hazards.
As I set out on my last
lap, I forgot to notice the time. In lap
six, I sometimes gave myself permission to walk briefly during a section what
was relatively runnable. My rationale in
lap six was that I would be more apt to have a lapse in concentration and trip
on a root if I let myself get too fatigued.
In lap seven, I had a
different reason to give myself permission to do extra walking. I knew I would finish this lap, but just
finishing the race wasn’t enough. I
still had to be careful not to get overheated.
I made it through most of
that lap without incident. With about a
mile and a half to go, I struggled to pick up my feet enough to clear the
roots. At one point, I caught my foot on
a root, and I lurched forward off balance and out of control. Other times, I had tripped, but I had been
able to regain my balance. This time, I
couldn’t. I saw a tree next to the
trail, and I reached out with both hands.
I used the tree to stop my forward momentum. If not for that tree, I would’ve fallen.
A short time later, I tripped
again. This time, I was able to keep my
balance, but it was a reminder that I wasn’t picking up my feet enough. After that, I was briefly more diligent.
Two people on mountain
bikes were coming from the other direction on the same trail. I had to slow down and move to the edge of
the trail as we passed each other. That
distracted me. Right after that, I
tripped again. This time, I hit the
trail.
I was lucky. I landed on a soft part of the trail where
there weren’t any roots. I rolled on my
side, and I was immediately on all fours, ready to stand up. The muscles in my lower back weren’t happy, but
I avoided injury.
That took the wind out of
my sails. I had to walk for a while,
even though I was on a section that I would normally have run. Another runner caught up to me, and we walked
together until I was ready to run.
I asked him if he was on
his last lap. He was. Then he said that this would’ve been his last
lap regardless. I thought about it and
wondered what I would do if I still had another lap after this one. It was hard to imagine doing one more. I wouldn’t quit with one lap to go, but I
would probably walk the entire lap.
When we got through the
toughest part of the loop, I was able to run most of the way to the finish. I finished the race in 6:27:53. I was surprised to see that I broke 6:30. I had assumed my last two laps would be slower
than my fifth lap, but apparently, they weren’t. It seemed like I was doing more walking.
The finisher medals were
made from wood and shaped like the head of a jackal.
I stayed in the finish
area for a few minutes to talk to a few of the runners who had already
finished. Then I hurried back to the
hotel, so I could begin refueling and rehydrating.
Before walking back to my
car, I checked my phone to see how hot it got.
It was 92 degrees, with a heat index of 103.
I knew my watch wouldn’t
record the distance accurately. One of
the reasons I still put it in run mode was to get a record of my heart rate
during the race. I was happy to see that
it never got unusually high. I did a
good job of not overexerting myself in the heat.
This was only the third
time in my life that I took more than six hours to finish a marathon. I expect tomorrow’s race will be the
fourth. We’ll be running on the same
trails, and we’ll have similar weather.
There will only be two differences.
First, we’ll be running the loop in the opposite direction. More significantly, I’ll already be fatigued
from today’s race, instead of coming off a rest day.
The weather was brutal,
but I’m convinced the roots slowed me down more than the heat did. I’m curious to know what my time would have been
on a paved course with similar weather conditions. I won’t have to wait long to find out. On Monday, we’ll be running on pavement, but
the weather will be about the same.
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