Winona Lake Trail Ultra - RunUltra Marathon

I went to this race to volunteer and run the 10 mile loop. Had been toying with the idea of running further, but was in no way thinking it would be a "good" idea!! Met another volunteer at registration, Carla, who was awesome. She was planning to run the 30mi. distance and the race directer offered my the chance to run for free because I had volunteered.

Just a note on helping with registration... please don't walk in to a race 10 minutes before the start time and ask to register. That just seems REALLY inconsiderate to me.

So, I decided to run with Carla since she had experience with this distance and was planning to run a pace that I thought I could handle. It was a very wise decision. I followed her plan to walk all of the uphills, and run the rest. The first 10mi loop went great and deciding to do another loop was easy. Since it was 3 loops, we had access to our gear every 10 miles. I took plenty of time here and changed shoes.

Lap 2: There were times that the walk/run thing got really frustrating, but I knew better than to push it, or question it. By mile 15 it had started to rain lightly and continued until the end of the run. At mile 19, I stubbed my big toe on the left foot really hard and knew immediately that my toe was in bad shape. No time to worry about that. Finished lap two and didn't allow myself to think about quitting. It would have been very easy because I was hurting and really tired by this point. Changed back to my original shoes and put dry socks on. That felt good.

Lap 3: It was good to see the mile markers for the last time. Stubbed that same toe at least 2 more times, cursed and whimpered. Things started to get REALLY hard at mile 25, but took a few seconds at mile 26 to celebrate my first marathon :-) Then continued on and knocked out the last few miles. The last 5 miles were REALLY REALLY hard, but we continued with the same plan to walk up the hills and run the rest. I've never been so happy to cross a finish line and was so pleased to spend almost 7 hours getting to know a new friend.

Train for this distance--maybe

Got dry clothes on and then walked around and visited and watched some other runners finish the 50 mile race. There's NO WAY I could have done 2 more laps. Man, 50 miles is a long way!


Training and the fact that I've never done a run over 13.1 miles - until today


Planet Adventure puts on a GREAT race. The aid stations were well stocked and I was able to try all kinds of nutrition on the course: Baked potatoes, Fig Newtons, Gummy Snacks, Oreo Cookies, Banana, Heed, Power Aid, Hammer Gel & Chocolate Milk. No GI issues.