This year’s Holiday Lake 50K’s women’s field was stacked.   With the well established ultrarunners Annie Riddle and Laura Nelson on the line along with Kristen Eddy, the only female to ever win an Ironman (off-road) outright, I knew it was going to be a battle.  Any of us women could take the victory, and at the end of the day all of the top 5 women broke the course record.

Standing at the line, I checked my equipment—shoes tied, clothing situated, nutrition ready.  I went through my race plans in my head.  I still hadn’t decided which one to use.  Plan A:  Pace off the other girls, and go at the end.  Plan B:  Be conservative and negative split my laps.  Plan C:  Use my heart rate monitor to keep me on consistent pace.  Or Plan D:  Just run.  Horton lined us up, and we were off.  Plan D it was—just run.

In retracing the race in my mind, I know what the deciding factor was and it had nothing to do with my legs or my technical race plan.  I had to stop 3 times to tie my shoe.  I fell once.  I peed twice.  I walked up 5 or 6 hills.  I filled up my water bottle 7 times.  I had no crew—no one to give me splits or to give just me aid at the nine aid stations.  My crew man and wonderful husband Van was running too (his first ultra, and he actually did negative split his race!!), so I would have to fend for myself.  Or so I thought.  And herein hides the secret to my seven second victory (unbeknownst to me, Kristen was coming on very strong!).  It wasn’t those long training runs on the trail with Horton et al and on the road with Jeff and the boys.  It wasn’t my pre-race muscle work by Jim McFarland.  It wasn’t that killer butterfly workout we had done in the pool last week.  The deciding factor relates to my very favorite discipline in triathlon—the transitions.   It was, and this can be our little secret, the pitchers of water and Conquest at the aid stations (I’d never seen that at any race I’d been in before).  Actually, I should say that the deciding factor was the wonderful volunteers who were ready with the pitchers and jugs of liquid in hand—ready for everyone, not just their ‘person’.  Without them there to quickly fill up my water bottle (which they did 7 (!) times) the race would have had a very different outcome. Just like the title of Lance’s second book, every second really does count.

So I won’t describe my every step around the lake and on the trails.  You were out there too (or at least you should have been).  You saw the peaceful ice covered lake, you dodged puddles, you plunged through the icy creeks, you questioned your sanity, you felt the pain, you savored the endorphins, you downed Aleve when the going got tough, and you smiled when the volunteers filled your water bottle too.  We all had our ups and downs mentally and physically, and hopefully everyone found something delightfully beautiful about getting up before the crack of dawn to pound out 34(!) miles instead of being served breakfast in bed on Valentine’s Day.  A favorite quote of mine from Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek sums it up:

Spend the day, you can’t take it with you…

So maybe this trail-running-ultra-stuff really isn’t all that crazy after all.  Besides, this time I was actually able to walk down steps the day after the race…