Tale of two loops: Stayed on target pace for potential sub-5-hour finish for 18 miles...then came out into direct sun and 90F temps on second climb up Bulldog Motorway. Heart rate spiked...energy flagged...went into survival mode (there was a lot of that...and DNFs...going on all around me). Three short walk breaks during that second climb (ran 2.5 miles of the 3.3), but started walking all the climbs after mile 21.5. Ran out of fluids in pack around mile 28. Spent a whole lot of time managing HR and condition of my chronic bad back on the big descent after mile 24. Walked about half of the last half-mile, just to put a ribbon on the whole day. Dropped from 17th to 23rd during the last 25K.

Maybe be a bit more realistic about the impact of 7 months of injury rehab and undertraining, combined with brutal heat (into the 90s during the second 25K loop). This was my 3rd 50K and it was my slowest by a full 25 minutes (and 40 minutes off my PR of 5:06 run only 9 months ago on an arguably tougher course).

Made a beeline for water and Gatorade at finish line. I was the most dehydrated I've been in a race in years...at least since 2012. Definitely a couple stretches where I was concerned about heat exhaustion and running out of on-board fluids with a couple miles to go was bad. Fortunately I was able to get rehydrated reasonably comfortably and get some food in me.


Dehydration, first. Undertraining due to hamstring injuries, second.


Long time race director was out due to pneumonia and it impacted a couple things this year. Her fill-in was less verbose and so we got gathered at the start too soon, really. More importantly, I was told this created a need to bring in an alternated timing system and it failed...no 50K results post-race and none online for 2 1/2 days. For a race that often gets hot weather, this was especially bad...a lot of DNFs in both 50K and 25K this year.