Sweet Victory

This past weekend was the Tails 4 Trails 40 Mile Ultra in Hanover, PA. For me, it meant the 2nd of 3 ultras in a 6 week period. Going into this race, I wasn’t too sure of what to expect. I had never run in Codorus State Park, before. Moreover, the previous weekend had been my only failed workout of this build so far – a scheduled 5-6 hour long run that I pulled the plug on at 4 hours due to a head cold. And just to keep the mystery elevated, I elected to get my flu shot the day before the race. I’ve been getting them for years, and tend to respond fairly well to them, but sniffles and a little fatigue wouldn’t have been unexpected. But rather than stress about these unknowns, I opted to go into the race with a “Let’s just see what happens” approach. Either way, I had to run long this weekend, so why not make it a race? I woke up at 4am, with a perfect blood sugar of 112. I arrived at the race site an hour before the scheduled 7am start, which meant I got there in pitch blackness.

I had been interested in the 12 hour Labor Pain Endurance Trail Run ever since its first running in 2010 when my teammate, Ryan Jones had won it, but this was the first year I was able to fit it into my schedule. Unlike a fixed distance ultra, the concept for Labor Pain was different. The course consists of 5 miles of technical trail running over rocks and mud, the first half of which has 325 feet of vertical climbing before giving all of that elevation back on the last 2.5 miles. Runners could stop whenever they wanted, but awards were given for furthest distance traveled in 12 hours. Elapsed time only became a factor if you had run the same number of loops as other runners. Based on the results of the previous two years, I decided to set a stretch goal for myself of 60 miles. Fifteen minutes before the race, I tested my blood sugar and found myself at 48. Whoops! Fortunately, I had planned to take in carbs just prior to the race anyway, so I set out feeling fine. My plan con