Levi's Transformation: Running/OCR: March 2014

Oh my.... I hope it in me to get through all of this...

So it was about a 2 hour 15 minute trip down to Danville PA for the Humdinger.

Got there, they parked us at the school and it was about a quarter mile walk down to the pig barn. We even got to walk on part of the course. Well this was beneficial since I had VERY little testing of my spikes on the Lontra's. From what I could see it was not ice, it was crunchy snow. So I decided to not take the less than fully tested spikes. This was probably just as well as when the race did start I saw one of the exact same set of spikes I had and there was a woman running back to pick it up.

Anyway, I was there a good hour before the race. walked down to the barn on the course through the corn field. First time I was on a course with manure on the ground!
Found registration in the pig barn, picked up my tag, a shirt, a bracelet for drinking(I put it on but never used it) and a timing chip. So far my 5K's had only used the disposable ones built into the runner tags. These were a chip and a velcro strap that you had to put on your ankle and then return.

So I went back to the car, put my tag and chip on, jacket off, sipped a bit of water and tried to relax. Definitely plenty of the usual pre-race nervousness.

2:30 I headed back down to the barn(race started at 3). Took a potty break and then hung around. It was about 35F out so it was cool for standing around in my race layers, but not as bad as the 20F ish that my previous 5K's had been.

About 3 they started talking and split us up odd and even numbered people for the crossfire start where we went at 90 degrees against each other. This went off actually much more smoothly than I might have thought.
Then it was off up through the cornfield. I was only passing people. That is still just utterly amazing to me. At this point we had the full and half dingers all together. I was doing well on the paths. Maybe 8 inches of crunchy snow, much like the seasonal roads I have been training on. Though with 60 or so people on there ahead of me packing down a path, you did have some options as to what surface you hit. It was frequently better in my opinion to go for the deeper stuff to avoid the slipping.

Then we hit a bit of paved road and we were off into the woods on tight trails. It took some time and effort to pass people there, but I did manage to find a few spots where I could either stride ahead, or go on the inside of a tree around a corner down a hill and pass some more. I think I was only passed once. Again, utterly crazy to me.

Then we were at one of the sections they had said was particularly bad and it was really iffy that you weren't going to slide off this 6" wide packed snow/slippery path and go about 15' down into the creek. Well, a few hundred feet later we were redirected to climb this very steep slope like 20' up, go across an easier section for a hundred feet and then DOWN like 50' back towards the creek. I looked down and said aloud "This is the EASIER way?!" It was STEEP. Everyone ended up just going on their butt and sliding down. Of course I ended up not being able to stop myself before hitting the log across at the bottom and unfortunately there was a guy there ahead of me, but thankfully he was stopped and I managed to straddle him without a problem.
More of the tight stuff and then we headed out to a bit of a parking lot for a minute before back in the woods. I think we may have cleared a mile or maybe 2 by then. Whatever it was, it was definitely a feeling of "No way, that's ALL we've done so far?!" But we kept going. Then up some hills. Oh, those hills sucked. And then across some more. I think we split off from the half dingers somewhere around there... Not sure if it was before or after the water stop.

Got to the first water stop. One of the "attack mascots", "roadkill" in this case was facing away from me at the bottom of yet another like 10' steep decline and the people were all saying "Jump on his back!" "Do it?!" I looked at them like "Are you sure?" They continued so I went down but with that incline it's not like I could just stop, so it was more like I just kinda rammed him from behind. I stopped for a moment to get a Gatorade and head the guys looking at the camera say that it looked awesome, apparently possibly rather risque. I am waiting to find this picture!
So back up the hills. I think I let 2 people that I had passed back ahead of me when they didn't stop.

This was probably also about when we were still running across the hills, up the hills and the hills really sucked. And then it was like "yeah, this hill really sucks." And then I made the mistake of looking UP. No way, really? I have yet to look to close to my GPS data, but I'm guessing this was like an 800' hill and it was steep enough where you were frequently on your hands as well to keep from falling while getting up. It rather sucked.
About at the top of this hill I believe was where I heard some weird noise and it seemed some kid was running off to the side with a tablet that was making noises, I'm guessing taking video, but who knows. I was very tired and I kinda don't notice a lot when I'm running hard and tired. I have yet to see any pics or video of me...

Crested that hill. More running around, through the woods, across, ups, downs... It mostly ended up being a number of events like "OK, some flat, 10 seconds and then we need to start pushing to running again.", OK uphill. This really sucks, we;re walking/climbing. OK, downhill, we're gonna go pretty fast, watch our footing, aim for the deep snow where people haven't been, slide through it, aim for the trees, wrap a hand/arm at it/around it to swing ourselves around and keep us on the track. (this seemed to be where I would pass people. They didn't seem to be doing the same tactics, most seemed to be sticking to the packed slippery stuff).

Most wasn't TOO worrisome, though I did have one time, barrelling down the hill, heading toward maybe a 3' deep creek and I saw it coming and said to myself, "Yeah, we better make this one or we're going to be face first into the oncoming side of that creek!" I let out a bit of a chuckle once cleared that my footing had made it without crashing! (:
I did fall maybe 3 other times, no biggie. Expected. Just sliding down snowy hills!

More rough flats, ups, downs, repeat. Definitely tiring. At one point I wondered if I was in last place. I knew the 2 people I had been seeing repeatedly were a bit ahead of me and I hadn't seen anyone behind me. Then I heard people and with the switchbacks could see there were a number of people just coming up on about mile 4 and I was up on mile 5. I wasn't last! Woot! And then I ended up passing a few more people downhill and kept them there.

Somewhere in there I hit the second water stop, I took a moment to down a Gatorade which apparently gained me beads. From what I understood you got them from drinking beer or doing stupid human tricks, but hey whatever!

Getting around the end of mile 5 we emerge and hit a bit of paved road, then back to the corn field, hitting mile 6. Now we're directed across a creek about a half dozen times. This was basically 4' declines and inclines across. I hit them with the speed I could muster, because I'm not sure how else you would make it up some of them being almost vertical and limited things to grab/pull on and quite muddy with 60 people ahead of me.
Now across the creek for the last time, greeted by 2 girls "Congratulations you made it, down through the rabbit hole!" and I was directed down INTO the creek and there was a concrete bridge maybe 3' high with 6" of water in the creek that I had to go probably 10' to get out the other side. Went well, though I think I did bump my head there just a touch at one point. Out of that... I think then we ran across some pit with like a couple foot wide pavement beam running across with fire down below. I was tired and not looking that closely. It wasn't like I was worried about falling off and this was the end and things were happening fast.
Across that and I think we were back to the pig barn and I realized I knew this was a climbing obstacle I'd seen pictures of and either from just pumping my arms for an hour and a half, and/or swinging around trees, my arms were tired as well. Ugh. I stopped for a moment to try the first/hardest part, a rock climbing wall. Then after a moment of thought realized it was going to be difficult to figure out just where to place my hands and feet and I was a bit tired, so I hopped a wall and went for the next hardest which was a rope hanging in front of wall with some 2x6's running crosswise. So it was pull yourself up on the rope and walk up the wall. It was hard and I had to try at about 99% effort to pull up to that last knot, but I made it up without issue(I wasn't sure before how it would go, let alone being that level of tired). and managed to dive into the second story of the barn. Maybe a 15' climb. Took me a minute to figure out which end of the barn to go after that, down the slide and I think it was on to the timing mat!

1 hour 39 minutes for 7.1 miles they said. Got my medal, a glass of water and then found a couple wrap pieces and some soup.

Knowing the girls were waiting, I just grabbed them and ate as I was walking across the corn field back to the car.

I debated changing, but figured it was quicker and not much worse to just stay in my wet clothes for the ride back. Mostly just the usual sweat. Setting the heat to 85F seemed pretty good.
Was afraid that I had forgotten my wallet, but didn't really need to stop for food and I had filled the tank before I left so I wouldn't have to stop. Though it did turn out I had my Mobil Speed Pass with me so I wasn't super worried.
As it turned out, I made it home on "add fuel", and later found that I had brought my money, just never zipped up the pocket or found it when briefly looking while driving.(I had brought about 3 bags of water/clothes/etc just trying to figure out what I needed).

As it turns out it seems for the Full Humdinger Males I was 58 out of 84. For kicks, I looked at the female Humdingers and I would have been 9th place there! So while not near the front of the pack, I still had 26 guys and about 30 girls behind me on the trails. Not bad! Especially since I had run just about zero miles as of like 6 months ago!

At the end, about to head home

Don't know who this is, but demonstrating the hills we we had to get up and down

Everyone starting out

Shirt

The pig barn, that's the rope climb I went up on those boards.

Someone else demonstrating some of the slippery trails. These were relatively flat, but not very wide and getting very slippery as they got packed in!