Le Grizz 50 miler Oct 10

[RonPerth]

Anybody want to go? Glacier Nat Park just over the border in Montana.

http://www.cheetahherders.com/LeGrizz.html

Ron

[ultraslacker]

This one's been on my radar for a couple of years... hitch is that it's on a gravel road (icky). I hear it's flat and easy though!

[Jim Bob]

I ran this one last year and my wife is running it again this year. We love this race and always look forward to going down. It is a low key race that is well organized, beautiful views, and a great time at the finish socializing. Maybe I will see some of you there.

[RonPerth]

I'm a little stressed (ok quite stressed) about the issue of getting from the finish back to the start. Any ideas for me, since you've been there before.

Ron

[UltraQueenga]

I just checked out the website. Wow, I'd love to run that event some time! 50 miles is the most I'd want to do in bear country like that, holy moly!
Looks like a fun and friendly race, though.

[RonPerth]

Well I'm grateful for a good breakfast at the local diner. They do it better in the states than Canada.
I'm grateful to be staying here another day, just relaxing. I really, really don't feel like an 11-hour drive. As in, really.
I'm grateful to feel better than when I woke up this morning and felt 100 years old.
I'm grateful to have the package of health, fitness, intention, got-it-together, time and money and motivation to be able to do something like this.
I'm grateful you asked.

So since you so kindly asked, I'm not going to do this again until next time. I had a decent sleep, got up a 4. Followed the shuttle bus to the finish line, then got on it to go to the start. Started right off with 2 full hours of misery. A school bus on this washboard gravel road, for 2 hours. Feet freezing, breathing gravel dust, pitch black out, and I got nauseous, and felt the whole time like hurling my breakfast onto the floor of the bus. We got to the start line and registration, and I got my t-shirt and number. It was so freakin cold! I was dressed for about freezing, and expected to take off one jacket once the sun came up, but it was 0 F, really cold and I was cold all day, pretty well. Waiting for the start I was hypothermic and shivering pretty well uncontrollably. Pretty discouraged. I actually did consider bailing out and going back with the bus. Thankfully, the bus waited for the start, and we could stay in it to keep a little warmer. (not moving, it did get a little warmer)
Finally we started, and it felt a little better to be finally moving along. The first couple of hours were not fun, just doing what had to be done, waiting to warm up. I had no water or carbs with me and I was waiting for an aid station, but there wasn't one until an unmanned station, just water, at about 15 miles or so, and then the first manned one at 23 miles. Oops I did have a gel from my packet pickup package. So for the first marathon distance, I had one gel, six butterscotch candies from the aid station, and a bottle of water. Far from the usual routine. Unlike the normal ultra aid station buffets, these were really spartan. Water, gatorade, perpetuem, a candy, a cookie.
What was different and nice, but I didn't know in advance, was that this is kind of like a relay race, in that the runners support vehicles keep leapfrogging the runners. Thats one reason the organizers don't have to supply much. The runners are being fed from the tailgates of the crew cars. Well we start out being pretty reserved, but after about the 1/2 way point, every one has got used to the same people being around them, and started to get acquainted. Finally one of the crew ladies called out 'who wants some licorice', I think to the people behind me, but I piped up and held out my hands, and got some. Best licorice in the world, she told me, and it was. Big soft squares like fig newtons, and I could just feel the black juice going out into my legs. Anyway from then on she asked me what I wanted or needed every time she saw me and gave a little encouragement, and a couple of other crew vehicles started to do the same thing as they realized I was on my own. So that aspect was really really nice once I got tuned into it.
As for the running, well it was an event, an adventure, but not really a running race as most people think of the term. More the kind of adventure of your car is parked 50 miles away and you have to get to it on foot before night. My work days are long, so I don't run on weekdays. My weekends get busy, so I frequently miss my weekend runs. So I was basically untrained. Fortunately I went along with a local guy for a while who had done this many times, and he told me he got pretty good times by walking all the ups, even the apparently really easy one and just runnning the flats and downs. But he walked at a helluva clip, and he jogged pretty good too. Eventually he got away from me, but he made me feel a lot better about all the walking I was doing, and was going to do. The course is mosty gravel road, except the last 6 or 7 miles are blacktop. Its very gently rolling, with long ups and long downs. An easy course, made for fast times. It runs along one side of a long valley that has been turned into a resevoir by a dam at one end. On the side the road is on, you can't see much of where you are, but you look across the valley, and its always a picture postcard scene. Blue water, forested mountainside, snowy mountaintops. Just a lovely venue.
After the 1/2 way point, I felt a lot better in some ways, but soon my stomache stopped disgesting, for quite a long while. So even though I was taking in the stuff I needed, it was all just sitting there sloshing around. Things stayed that way till close to the end. I stopped trying to put anything more in. I stopped jogging even the flats at one point, and just did the downhills, and finally had to stop doing even that. My calves started to both get crampy from even a few steps of jogging, so it just became a walking game. Now the same thing that had left me untrained for running, 10 hour days on my feet walking around at work, now was my saviour for all that walking. No problem, I can walk, so I settled down to walking it in, not shuffling along, but powerwalking. It worked.
My finishing time was 11:38, in between my two previous 50's. No blisters. One skinned knee from trying to do four things at once and getting my ankles crossed. Regretfully, my camera acted up, frost and ice crystals on the lens and shutter, and I couldn't get it thawed out no matter where I put it, so only a few pictures. I wouldn't hestitate to do it again, if it fitted in. The place was nice, the motel and local diner were nice, the people were nice.
I don't know my own placing yet, as if it matters, but I was told at the diner that it was an Alberta girl who won the race in 8:30 or so. So congratulations to her, for sure. Was it Jim Bob's wife?

Tired Coyote jogger

[Nicholas]

Good race, Ron. Hope you tipped your support crew well. So, any grizzlies at Le Grizz?

[RonPerth]

No sign of them, of course. They just don't hang around the side of the road waiting for a snack to come jogging by. I hope. But its grizzly country, thats for sure. Big, wild, rough, and densely vegetated. Wild animals can live in these mountains with very little impact from people.

Ron

[UltraQueenga]

Very nice report, Ron. Thanks so much for sharing! I was curious to read about this race. I read about it in Trail Runner a few months ago (story of a Saskatchewan woman who got mauled by a bear in 2005 ends up running LeGrizz 50 the following year).
Sounds like a great race! Congrats on another 50 miler!!

[Nature Girl]

...and I could just feel the black juice going out into my legs.

I love this visual. . Mmmm, licorice.

Wow, crazy race dude. Nice work.

[Jim Bob]

Hey Ron, Glad you made it out to the race. The girl you were talking to from Alberta was probably Sue Galup.

It was a cold morning, colder then any other in the last 12 years. One of the aid station volunteers who has done this for 12 years said this year was the first time the water was freezing in the cups.