Holiday
Lake 50++k Feb
14 ’04 – Mike Bouscaren
Every ultrarunner should meet
David Horton, one of our living legends. So I went from Boston to Appomattox for
the ninth running of the Holiday Lake 34.5 mile run.
Bending my rule of no long
traveling for a 50k, I rationalized this is one event I had to do to for a more
complete ultra experience. A little farmland, possum, bible, Civil War
remembrance, to socialize with like souls running, and David presiding; sure, go
for it.
Friday night dinner is one of the better pre-run pasta feeds you’ll find.
There I met new people and
identified faces with names, as David had thoughtfully enhanced congeniality
with name tags.
Through frigid January I
weighed imponderables such as why I grind my teeth at night, why I drive like a
madman, is perfection really so desirable, why running long in companionship
with others brings me closer to answers. The Mt. Pisgah 50k in September seemed
a long way back and my psyche needed an ultra fix. It’s a new year and a new
running season.
I’ve learned to estimate my
times for events I haven’t run by comparing the completion times of others in
the prospective event who have also run events I have run. Separately I also use
a ratio factor to estimate a completion time; such as, I usually place in the 75th
percentile range. Interpolating and
rating the condition I’m in, I came up with 6 ˝ hours as a goal. Pushing
hard, I finished in 6 hrs 25 minutes - 68th percentile. This made a good
training run for Grasslands 50 miler in March, which should make a good training
run for Kettle Moraine 100 miler in June. For me they’re all training runs.
I’m too slow to race. The point is just to finish, possibly with some
incremental cognitive gain on why I grind my teeth at night, etc. So far so
good, except I don’t want to learn so much about myself that I lose the desire
or ability to keep running. Journey, not destination, right ?
The course is a loop done
twice, the second one in reverse. One loop is just over 17 miles: it’s mostly
single track for two plus miles, then jeep road, then single track for three
plus miles to the start/finish, then back.
There are two soaking stream crossings done twice. Temperatures were
freezing to high forties. Entirely runnable.
It’s a younger average age
group with several first timers. Many people run side by side in the jeep tracks
swapping run stories. Holiday Lake is well placed in February for East coasters
and Midwesterners looking to gear up for the peak running of summer/fall.
What I did learn affirmatively
is that weight training – medium weight and high reps – helped my endurance
in the second half. I ran reverse
splits, thanks to good cardio reserves that seemed deeper than usual, after just
2 ˝ months in the weight room. And there’s the “two hour window,” the
estimated time remaining that when achieved allows you to open up to full
throttle through to the finish. The trick is to pace conservatively to that
point. Though not a race, it’s exhilarating to pass people, isn’t it ?
What’s a “ Horton mile ?”
I’m running nine minute miles and just less than twenty minutes from
the finish when Bethany Hunter cruises past me going out to encourage back of
the packers: “Good job,” she says, “You’re just over one mile from the
finish.”