The Hanover Collaboration

Essentially, do not include the following activities in the three months prior to the race: two weddings, one of which is yours, both on the other side of the country; buying a house; moving; multiple relative visits ranging from several days to several weeks long.

Yeah, yeah, it’s no excuse. Still our prep for the Bridger Ridge Run was decidedly inadequate. Given the disparity in running experience between myself and Audrey, this resulted in considerably more dire consequences for her than for me.

I had a good time. I would have had a great time, had I not reinjured my IT band (i.e. runner’s knee) round about mile 13. And of course the final 5mi were essentially all downhill. Sweet. I was solidly on pace to finish in 4:45, 4:30 if I really boogied down the last few miles, up until then, which was my goal. As it was, the last 5mi of descent took me far longer than planned, pushing my time closer to 5:10. Oh well. I was particularly frustrated, since I felt pretty damn good with the exception of my knee. Certainly wasn’t racing, but still…

(If you don’t know, the IT band runs down the outside of your thigh, connecting that pointy bone on your hip all the way down to the side of your knee. Every time you plant your foot and brake, even slightly, your IT band, right at the knee connection, slides over a little bony protrusion. The less flexible your IT band, the more rough the sliding; eventually it gets seriously irritated. At that point, planting and braking feels like someone is stabbing you in the outside of your knee with an icepick.)

The trick to running in this condition is to transfer all braking to your other leg. This is feasible as long as the trail isn’t too steep. Eventually, though, the acceleration you gain while on your bad leg is simply too much for just one quad to handle. Trees are useful when this happens, as is falling. So in the really steep parts you just have to hop down on your good leg.

I think the last 5mi yesterday may have introduced a measurable quad circumference difference between my legs.

But enough about me.

I knew this run was probably going to be a bit of a stretch for Audrey, given that the number of 2+ hour runs she’s logged this summer can probably be counted on one hand. One of them might have been 15mi, but that was 4 weeks ago. I figured that she’d probably just end up hiking the majority of it, and I had no doubt that she could walk 20mi; it just might take a while.

Part of my job (as I saw it) was to anticipate experience related mistakes (think food, clothing, chafing issues) that can be catastrophic and prevent them.

Mistake #1: I didn’t insist that Audrey carry a wind breaker.

I know she gets cold easily. I was fine in a long-sleeve poly-pro, but I should have known that wouldn’t be enough for her.

Mistake #2: Audrey rarely has full blown asthma attacks; as a result she tends to rely on Singulair and stopped carrying an inhaler around several years ago.

But when she does have an attack, they tend to be the result of anxiety+exertion.

So she was actually feeling pretty good as well until about mile 14 (on pace to finish in about 6:00-6:30 or so). Then she got hit by a bit of a rain/sleet squall. At 8500’ with ~45F air temp. Hello hypothermia. The folks at the last aid station (15mi) must have had eyebrows raised as Audrey staggers in. Not only was she clearly freezing and shaking, but the resulting stress triggered an asthma attack which she was only barely keeping under wraps by breathing very carefully.

(On a side note, if I were organizing a major trail race with and I went out of my way to staff my aid stations with trained “First Aid” workers, complete with “supplies”, the first two items on my list would be an epi pen and an albuterol inhaler. None of the aid stations, to my knowledge, had either. Weird.)

Some guy gave her his wind breaker, but the only solution to her breathing was to stay really calm and relaxed and not breathe too hard.

So she had a really fun final 5mi. It took her 2.5 hours.

But she finished. And not only has she agreed to not divorce me, she said she might, possibly, actually do it again.

Postscript – I have to add a short word on the Bridger Ridge Run in general, in case any of you want to do it. The organizers seem to go to great lengths to make it seem scary: it isn’t. The terrain isn’t that awful, the footing isn’t that bad. And the trail is so absurdly well marked that even in pea-soup fog there might be two places where you might have to pause for a few seconds and look around. My impression was that the race attracts large number of people from Bozeman who think they’re fit and outdoorsy because they live in Bozeman, but really have no idea what trail running is.