Monday, July 18, 2022

Race Report: 2022 Summer Camp Series, Day 3

On July 18, I ran the third race of the Summer Camp Series.  Summer Camp is a series of marathons and half marathons in central Minnesota put on by Mainly Marathons.  This series was previously known as the Minnesota Brothers Trail Series.

This year, the Summer Camp Series consisted of five races.  Each one is at a different venue.  Two of the venues were new this year.  I’m not doing the entire series, but I want to experience each race venue at least once.  As it turns out, the races with new venues happened to be on consecutive days.  Running on consecutive days doesn’t give me much time to recover between races, but it’s convenient for traveling to the races.

I stayed at the same hotel in St. Cloud where I’ve three or four times before.  In the last three years alone, I’ve spent 31 nights in this hotel, so I’m getting to know the area pretty well.

I drove to St. Cloud after lunch on Sunday.  On my way, I made two stops.  First, I stopped in Clearwater to familiarize myself with the park where tomorrow’s race will be held.  Then, I went to the park in Sauk Rapids where yesterday’s race was held.  Several of the runners were still on the course, and I got a chance to say hello to a lot of runners I know.  Everyone was talking about how hot it was.

When I got to my hotel, they didn’t have a room ready yet.  While I waited, I went grocery shopping to pick up food for breakfasts and post-race snacks.  By the time I got back, my room was ready. After unpacking, I went to Whitney Park, to check out the venue for today’s race.

I had an early dinner at House of Pizza in Sartell.  They have pizzas with interesting combinations of toppings.  I had their roasted garlic potato pizza, which is the same pizza I had before the first day of the Running Ragged 20in20 Series, two years ago.

I got to sleep as early as I could.  I slept well for half the night, but then I woke up and had trouble getting back to sleep.  When I got up, I didn’t worry about whether I got enough sleep.  Instead, I worried that I might have let myself get dehydrated yesterday.  I was either outside or in a hot car for most of the afternoon, but I didn’t have anything to drink until dinner.  I don’t usually drink much before a race, but this morning I made an exception.  I also reminded myself to take in plenty of fluids during the race.

Today’s race was held at Whitney Park, which is a large athletic complex in St. Cloud.  Our course was and out-and-back route that went most of the way around the perimeter of the park.




The course was paved, and it was extremely flat.  According to my watch, there was only 27 feet of ascent in the whole race.  That’s an average of one foot per mile.



We ran clockwise around the park for just over a mile.  Then we made a U-turn and ran counter-clockwise until we returned to the starting point.  To complete a marathon, we needed to run this route 12 times.


The race started at 6:00, but I needed to be there early to pick up my race packet.  People doing the entire series already had their race bibs, so there were only a few of us who needed to pick up our race packets in the morning.

Today was another hot day.  When the race started, it was already 75 degrees.  The forecast high was 95.  It wouldn’t get that hot until late afternoon, but it climbed into the upper 80s before I finished.

There was an aid station in the start/finish area with water, Gatorade, and a variety of food.  There was a table where we could leave our water bottles.



Usually, these races only have one aid station.  Today, there was also a self-service aid station on the opposite side of the park, which had water, Coke, Sprite, and a cooler full of ice.  It was positioned where we would pass it twice on each lap.  If I had known there would be two aid stations, I would’ve brought two bottles.  I only had one bottle, so I left it at the main aid station.


I struggled at the Firecracker Triple earlier this month, and my training has been hampered by an inflamed tendon in my left leg.  I wasn’t really sure if I was up to racing on  two consecutive days, so I planned to pace myself very conservatively.  The hot conditions gave me an extra reason to go slow.

When we started running, I went out of my way to start slowly.  My pace was so slow that it felt awkward at first.  Even so, there were only a few runners ahead of me in the first lap.

At each of the aid stations, I took a one-minute walking break.  I did that to keep from overheating.  Walking for a minute gives your body a chance to cool down.  For the first few miles, my pace (including the walking) was about 11 minutes per mile.  After a few miles, my pace slowed to about 11:20.

I was sweaty, but didn’t feel hot.  The walking breaks were effective in giving my body a chance to dissipate the excess heat.

Kevin Brosi does a lot of these races.  Kevin tells bad jokes to anyone who will listen.  Apparently, Kevin has raised his game.  Now he puts them on signs too.



Kevin can be forgiven for the bad jokes, because he’s there early every day to help set up.  He makes sure all our ducks are in a row.


By the end of my third lap, I had already emptied my 20 oz. bottle of Gatorade.  I refilled it and headed out on my fourth lap.  I continued drinking at the same rate for the whole race.  At first, it seemed like I was hydrating well.  After five laps, I already had to make a bathroom stop.

For the first half of the race, I often thought I heard footsteps.  It always seemed like there was another runner right behind me.  I eventually realized it was the sound of my camera bouncing up and down within my fanny pack.

After six laps, I was on pace to finish in the low 4:50s.  I expected to slow down in the second half, but it seemed likely that I would break five hours.  I was hesitant to make that my goal.  I had to wait and see how I felt in the second half.

Before starting my seventh lap, I refilled my bottle again.  I also took the time to take my camera out of my fanny pack and put it in my drop bag.

By now, the temperature had climbed into the 80s.  I felt warmer, and I was sweating more, but the walking breaks were still doing their job.  I didn’t feel like I was in any danger of overheating.

My pace slowed down a little.  In the first half of the race, it ranged between 11:00 and 11:30.  In the second half, several of my miles were slower than 11:30.

Speed is relative.  I was running at a pace that I regard as slow.  For many years, I consistently finished marathon with times in the 3:20s.  Today, I was on pace to be an hour and a half slower than that.  Most of the other runners seemed to regard me as the fast guy.  Indeed, I was the first runner to finish six laps.  By the end of my eighth lap, I was already at least one lap ahead of everyone else.

When I did the Running Ragged 20in20 Series two years ago, I often tried to be the first one to finish.  When I was only competing against other runners who were doing the whole series, I could do that.  Sometimes, a new runner would show up with fresh legs.  When that happened, I knew better than to try to complete with them.

Today, I was the runner with fresh legs.  Most of the other runners were already on their third consecutive day.  Some of the runners did the 7-day Heartland Series right before this one.  For them, this was the 10th day in a row.  I had some soreness in my left leg, but I’m pretty sure everyone else had more aches and pains than I did.

Although I didn’t have a bottle at the secondary aid station, I realized there was still a way I could make use of it.  It occurred to me that I could stop there to put ice cubes in my hat.  Each time I went by there, I thought about it.  Each time, I told myself that I could consider doing that later, but I didn’t have any immediate need to do that.

When I finished my 9th lap, I finished another bottle of Gatorade, but my bottle had warmed up in the sun.  The Gatorade was warm, and it wasn’t at all appetizing.  I still finished it.  Then I started to refill my bottle.  I wondered if I could put ice cubes in it.  Then I saw the volunteers were scooping ice cream to make root beer floats.  I left a little room in my bottle and asked them to put a scoop of ice cream in it.  Then I put the cover on.  A Gatorade float may sound weird, but it was a way of chilling the Gatorade so it wouldn’t warm up as quickly.

In my 10th lap, I started to feel really hot.  Sweat from my forehead was dripping into my eyes.  The salt made my eyes sting.  It was time to start putting ice in my hat.  I had already run by the self-service aid station once, but I could stop there on the way back.

When I got back to the self-service aid station, I opened the cooler and put a handful of ice in my hat.  The hat I was wearing today has a large opening in the back and half of the ice went right through it.  I put more ice in my hat.  This time I was more careful to keep the ice in the front of my hat.  When I put it on, half of the ice still fell through the back.  The ice that remained in my hat felt good.

This is the first time I can recall putting ice in my hat during a marathon, but I’ve often done that during hot-weather ultramarathons.  It’s effective in cooling you, but the cold ice on your head can hurt at first.  There wasn’t actually that much ice in my hat, so it didn’t hurt.  Within a minute or two, I could start to feel it melting on top of my head.

The ice made me feel more comfortable, but it didn’t take long for it to melt.  Early in my 11th lap, the ice cubes were already gone.  Ice water from my hat ran down my neck and into the back of my shirt.  The cold water in my shirt helped cool my back.

When I passed the self-service aid station again, I felt like I was OK for now, but I decided to stop there again on the way back.

I put ice in my hat again.  This time, I got most of the ice to stay in my hat.  That was both good news and bad news.  It would eventually cool me down, but it was painful at first.  It also seemed to make me feel sluggish.  Having so much ice on my head caused a rapid surge of blood flow to the top of my head.  When that happens, it can briefly make you feel short of breath.  I’ve experienced that before.  I didn’t actually feel short of breath, but I had to slow down.

A few minutes later, I could feel ice water filtering through my hair.  That felt good.  I felt much cooler now.

Near the beginning of my last lap, I stopped again to pee.  I could’ve waited until after the race, but the port-o-potties were a distance away from the start/finish area.  I decided to stop while I was going by anyway, so I wouldn’t have to walk there after the race.  That says something about how I felt.  I would rather lose time during the race than have to do extra walking later.

When I was halfway through my last lap, I looked at my watch.  It was obvious that I would break five hours, but not by as much as I previous expected.  My previous mile had taken 11:44, and I assumed I would continue to slow down.  I neglected to consider that my previous mile included a bathroom stop.

In the second half of that lap, I was sure I was slowing down.  In retrospect, I may have been overly pessimistic.  I felt awful, and the last mile seemed to take forever, but I may not have slowed down at all.  I may have actually sped up in that mile.

I finished in 4:55:40.  That surprised me.  I was expecting to finish in 4:57 or 4:58.  I slowed down in the second half, but only by about two and a half minutes.  That’s not bad when you consider it was much hotter in the second half.

The medals for these races are designed to link together to form a chain.  You get the top piece and the piece indicating the year for doing at least one race of the series.  For completing today’s race, I got the piece that says, “Viking Voyage.”  That was the name of today’s race.  For each additional race in the series, you get another piece to add to the chain.  Finally, if you do the entire series, there’s an extra piece.  Here’s what my chain looks like so far.


After finishing, I was out of breath.  I had to lean on a table for a few minutes before I could walk away.  I finished my Gatorade and sat down on a bench for a few minutes.  Then I got a root beer float and sat down again while I drank it.  I needed several minutes to recover before I could walk back to my car.

During my last lap, I made I bathroom stop, so I wouldn’t have to walk back to the port-o-potties after the race.  That turned out to be a bad decision.  After sitting for a few minutes, I needed to make another bathroom stop, so I had to do that extra walking anyway.

After the race, I briefly had a symptom that I can only assume was heat-related.  My vision was slightly impaired.  When I looked at the grass, I saw a combination of white and green.  It was as if the grass was covered with cotton balls.  That eventually passed, but it was disconcerting.

When I got back to my car, the first thing I did was to check my weather app.  It was now 87 degrees.  When you factor in the sun and the humidity, the “feels like” temperature was 99 degrees.  No wonder I felt so awful.  I felt like I was doing OK for most of the race.  It was only in the last three laps that the heat took a heavy toll on me.

When I got back to the hotel, I switched into recovery mode.  My first priority was refueling.  I drank three glasses of chocolate milk and ate four mini-scones.  I wanted to replace carbs as quickly as possible, while also getting some protein.  I refilled my water bottle and put it in the refrigerator to get cold.

I had some symptoms of dehydration.  I had to be careful how I moved my feet, or they would cramp up.  If I stood up too quickly, I would get light-headed.  I worked on rehydrating for the rest of the day.

After a race, I usually take a hot bath and stretch.  I took a bath, but I was careful not to get the water too hot.  Then I did some stretching.

One of the advantages of driving to a race is being able to bring anything you need.  I didn’t have to travel light.  I brought a variety of gel ice packs from home.  My hotel room had a full-size refrigerator, so I was able to freeze them overnight.  After I dried off, I iced the sore spot in my left leg.


Ideally, I wanted to ice it and then hop in the hotel’s whirlpool.  I was worried I might easily overheat in the whirlpool, so I settled for just icing, and then waiting for my leg to warm up on its own.  Then I iced it using a different ice pack.  I had enough of them to do that five times.

Tomorrow’s race is expected to be just as hot as today’s.  Given how wiped out I felt after today’s race, I’m a bit worried about tomorrow.  I may have to go much slower.


Race statistics:
Distance:  26.2 miles
Time:  4:55:40
Average pace:  11:17
Lifetime Marathons/Ultras:  460
Minnesota Marathons/Ultras:  86

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