Edited by: The Great Meg McNew
Be forewarned: this will be long, but since it was my first real ultra I
want to capture everything so I can look back one day. What I ended up with was a day where I missed
what I thought I was capable of running and almost quit halfway through. I was
in a really bad place. But thanks to
friends I was able to salvage my day, finish my first 50 miler and have a very
positive experience. Like I try to
explain often, sometimes it’s more than just your overall time goal that
matters in running and this race is a perfect example.
Looking back, after 15 weeks of training and more miles than
I‘ve ever run in consecutive months, I can pinpoint a 10 day window where I
caused some overuse injuries that plagued my taper and race day. I ran the
entire Baltimore Marathon as part of a relay team, blazing the last 10k, then
followed it up with an 84 mile week. After that, I ran
a PR marathon in Atlantic City, ugh.
In retrospect, I can see how dumb it looks, but in the moment I got
carried away. It’s a mistake I shouldn’t
have made. I try to never let myself get carried away when training is going
well. It’s the easiest time to push too
hard when you feel on top of the world!
But I digress to the race.
I had my plan all figured out and my crew ready to go. 2 scoops of Tailwind in my water bottle and
20 ounces of water I’d drink at crew stops, and I’d fill up with Gatorade and
water at all other stops. I had some
GU’s on me, chew-able salt tablets, some shot blocks and some Advil. I am a terrible technical trail runner so I
expected to get burned up on the Appalachian Trail (AT), come down the Weverton
Switchbacks, hit the C&O, and start reeling people in since running a
consistent pace for 26 miles felt like something I could do. On Friday I headed out to Boonsboro and hit
massive amounts of traffic, man Frederick how do people deal with that
mess! Got to the hotel around 6:00 and
opted for a night in to relax and keep the mind calm. Slept horribly as I always do at hotels, but
whatever, I slept well the night before.
I set about 7 alarms for 4:20 am and I was ready to go.
For once, I had a really good breakfast before a race: an oatmeal, a GU wafer, a Starbucks
Frappucino in a bottle and half a power bar.
About 800 calories before the race is a win in my books. Pete and Meg were nice enough to offer me a
ride over to the race start, and it was much appreciated since I was stressing
a bit on morning race logistics, where to park, pre-race meeting, how to get
back to my car at the end of the day etc.
So I met them in the lobby and off we went. Pete, as a veteran of these
types of races, and having run JFK before, did a fantastic job calming my
nerves. As we walked down to the
starting line it seemed like we didn’t have a lot of time until the 6:30 start
and were pretty far from the line. When
we heard the National Anthem go off, it became a bit of a rush to get to the
line. So I threw my clothes off, rushed
to tie my shoes, and we sprinted up the sidewalk to the front with about 45 seconds to
spare. Then I heard Pete screaming
“Nick, you forgot your water bottle!” Man, what a mess! Got my water bottle and Meg and I started
side by side next to a Panda… Spoiler alert: who knew 7 hours and 2 minutes
later we’d also finish side by side? (Meg and me, not the Panda).
The gun went off and I did some dodging around people and caught
a chase pack. At 3 minutes into the race, Jim Walmsley was already 30 seconds
ahead. All race long it was nice to hear
people tell me I was 10, 20, 30 minutes behind
the leader; he destroyed the race, as expected. A nice group of 9 of us chatted as we
ascended the climb to the AT. There were
some interesting dudes in this group from all over the US telling some funny
stories. We hit the AT still mostly
together 2.8 miles in, only 47 to go!
The first bit of the trail is pretty easy so I wasn’t shocked I was able
to hang with the pack. After that portion of the trail we
began to climb the last 2 miles before we hit the AT, where we would have
climbed 1200 feet before entering it. We
hit a pretty steep portion here and I felt I was working a bit hard so backed
off and let a group of about 4 people go.
Finally we hit the rocky AT, which I knew would be my weakness, so I
figured I’d get dropped. In the next 4
miles I mostly held my own to my surprise (turns out I was probably working too
hard though) and I really enjoyed having someone in front of me to show me the
best way through the rocks. At about 9.5
miles I dropped the pack of 4 people I was with and hit up the aid station. I
filled up with water/Gatorade, had my 2nd GU and saw 6/7th place entering
the second half of the AT. Six miles
until we are out of the AT, that’s all I had ahead of me. For most of these 6 miles I saw 2-7 places up
ahead and it felt like I was gaining on them. Then at around 14 I caught
the pack, but 2nd and 3rd place had already taken
off. The trail at this point gets very
rocky and I watched someone turn his ankle really bad right in front of me so I
slowed down a bit. Another runner and I
descended down Weverton Switchbacks together in 5/6 place and were careful to not
fall down the side. As I rolled out of
AT in 5th place, I found my crew and it took 3 minutes to get all
settled. Grabbed 3 GU’s, a new water
bottle and for some reason retied my shoes… no clue why they were pretty
tight? I figured looking at past years
if I came out of AT at 2:10-2:15 (hours) I’d be very happy. My watch showed
1:58, I found out later that was 3 minutes faster than Graham last year. Yeah…. Oops.
Wished I had some opera singer like JD did in Scrubs to sing MISTAKE to
me before I made it.
At this point I knew I was ahead of pace but I honestly felt
great. Two people passed me as I hung at the aid station but caught them back
on the C&O and started with a 6:57 mile and then proceeded to drop the pace
a bit, 6:35’s for the next 2. I felt a
2:55 – 3:00 marathon was something I could do all along so figured I’d settle
into that pace. I was now in 5th
place, rolling along with 6:30-6:45 miles, all alone. Around 22 I saw 4th place in front
of me and it looked like I was reeling him in.
I caught him at the mile 24 aid station and as I passed him I heard
someone coming really hard behind me. I looked back and it was Michael Wardian
and he was MOVING. He flew by both of us
and the other guy went with him. I tried
to go with him but it felt too hard for 24 miles in so I backed off and then
things started going south fast. At
around mile 18 my IT Band started to really hurt, not just soreness but like a
shooting pain in the hip, then my ankle issue came after that and started to
really hurt around 22 and the knee pain came back right at 24. I have been dealing with each of these
injuries for the past 3 weeks, but never
all together. If I was smarter I would
have taken an Advil when the pain started but it was the last thing on my mind
at that point. I was too focused on trying to catch 4th place.
At mile 25, it went downhill. I went from 6:45’s to an 8:17
mile. Everything was killing me now. I got passed by two people and fell
back to 7th. I had heard from
experienced ultra runners that there are
points in every race this long where you just feel terrible, but just be
prepared for it and you will eventually feel good again. Even knowing that, I wasn’t expecting to feel
this terrible. After two
more 8+ minute miles and some walking,
I made it to 28 miles and saw Ryan.
I told him “I’m done, throwing in the towel,” he convinced me to jog up
to the crew where everyone was soo helpful to offer me everything and anything
I needed, but I was a MESS. I’m sure
everyone has a funny Nick story from this aid station. I nibbled on a power
bar, I struggled to swallow Advil pills, I chewed and spit out a shot block, I
drank 2 sips of a V8. I was an absolute
disaster, but after 11 minutes or so my crew convinced me to keep going and it
was much appreciated. I’ve never DNF’ed
before and I am glad I didn’t this day.
And off I went, really struggling. At this point all I was noticing is
was that my entire left leg was just a useless appendage. Sure, it hit the ground every other step, but
it was providing me no benefit. I could
not get a normal stride going. Everything was constricted, no push off on any
step, every lateral movement hurt like a bitch, and my ankle was on fire, but
NBD only 22 miles to go! 8-9 minute
miles became the norm here with walk breaks scattered in. At mile 30.5 I ran into my old pal Terri and
her aid station. So much energy here;
she was amazing, getting me pumped up, telling me I could do this, even getting
me to take a selfie when I felt like death.
I can never turn down one of those!
I left that aid station ready to go, and I felt great for 800
meters. At this point I realized my last
GU was at mile 18, and had no real solids in me. My stomach was swish-swoshing around and I
was popping chew-able salt tabs like it was my job. So I pulled out this chocolate GU and managed
to get ¾’s of it down. Since we don’t
litter on the C&O I put it in my pocket, and so began “The GU incident Part
2”, but that story or Part 1 is not blog safe.
From miles 30.5 to 34 I still had some run/walking going on, and I was
just getting past left and right. At around mile 34 I heard I was in 22nd
place, ugh who cares I just want to finish and die now. I looked at watch and
figured I had 2 - 2.5 hours to go, ugh these numbers are so big. At 34 I knew I’d see my crew in 4 miles and
started figuring out what I wanted from them. I was going to finish this thing
and I was going to get everything I needed to feel good there.
Rolled up to 38 and could hear my crew shouting a mile away.
These people are so amazing. They knew I
was struggling and gave me everything they could to help motivate me. I took some Advil,had a Skratch Emergency
pack, and politely asked Ryan how our other 2 runners Meg and Cantor were
doing, only to have Sean say “Oh look there is Meg now”. They told me to get going and so off I went,
to the 41 mile aid station. Three more
miles of trail until we hit the roads and a giant hill out of the trail on
which I was told to just walk. At this
point I was basically taking a cup of coke at every aid station; the stuff
tasted so good. At 41 hit the road and
up the hill Istarted walking. As I hit the ascent I looked back and saw Meg
like 30 seconds back so I decided strength in numbers would be better for both
of us to finish this thing, although somewhat thinking she’d probably drop
me. She caught me and off we went, 8.5
miles to the finish. Honestly, at this
point, just having company to keep me sane and chat with was all that was
keeping me going. This road section
sucked so badly though. 8.5 miles is so
far at this point. All we seeing were more hills, and the mile markers seemed
like they were not changing. Meg was in
third at this point, so our goal was to make sure no one caught her. I started complaining about my leg just being
destroyed at this point and she told me how she basically fell on the trails
and devastated her back and probably broke her leg. We were a fun bunch of
people at this point. A couple well
positioned aid stations with some coke and refills of our water bottles were
great. Around mile 46 our nice sunny day
started to turn into something else. The
wind started picking up and temps started dropping. Around 49 we almost got hit by a car and
watched a State Trooper blaze after the guy that almost hit us. As we rolled down the home stretch, we could
hear our crew going nuts. 7 hours and 2
minutes earlier Meg and I started this day next to each other with her telling
me to pull that Panda’s tail(I didn’t do it) and we finished . 01 seconds
apart. (Or as Dave P texted me later
.0002 seconds per mile difference!)
I had a really rough day. Looking back, I went out too hard
on the AT and was too aggressive early on the C&O, but I just can’t put my
finger on how everything fell apart so quickly.
Sitting here 2 days later my left leg is still shot and I can’t walk,
but I am not in the excuses business. It
happened, and I’ll learn from this and not make the same mistakes. But as everyone told me many times, it’s
ultra-running and anything can happen. I
am beyond blessed my crew got me to keep going and not DNF, and for me it was a
very exciting ending to be able to finish with a good friend when she was having
an absolutely awesome day. We were both
in terrible pain during those
last 8 miles, and for me it was a great to have a friend to run with and not
end up walking. Plus it made for a
pretty funny Facebook Live video, complete with us all chugging a Jordan Dillen
homebrew about 45 seconds after we finished.
I’ll always say I love running for more than just results, and
everything about this race was that for me.
I went for it and blew up, and when I tried to quit, my friends wouldn’t
let me. I suffered a lot and got to run
it in and finish with a friend, something I could never have done if I’d quit. When I look back at my first 50 mile race I
will always think of it as a positive experience because of everyone who was a
part of it. I missed my time goal; ah
well. But like my prerace post said, one
of my goals was to have fun, and that’s just what I did. When I look back on
this JFK 50 miler, I won’t remember finishing 22nd. I will remember my great friends all together
at the finish line as we all were a part of a 7 hour day of racing
together. And it’s that feeling that
will bring me back to the line to try another Ultra.
I want to thank everyone for their texts, emails, calls and nice words. I am so thankful to have so many people in my life that support my love for running and my adventures.
Because of all their support, I want to shout out a bunch of
amazing people that were a part of this:
All my Falls Road Running Teammates, who I train with day in and out thank you for everything. Also to the Falls Road Running Store where almost all the items I used for this race were bought from.
Dave Ploskonka, for all his JFK50/Ultra advice that I
ignored 15 minutes into the race!
My amazing wife Kelly Klastava, who allows me to pursue these crazy running adventures while being 8 months pregnant and is nothing but supportive.
Tom Stott - for his great advice when all my injuries hit the fan during my taper. He got me to the line feeling ready to go and calm.
Rich Wilson, Ryan McGrath, Tristram Thomas, Bryn Burkholder,
Graham Peck, Mrs. Peck, Sean Caskey, Maggie Smith, Terri Gibbons, and Andrew
Cantor for being the most amazing support people on the entire course. I’ve never had a crew before and I couldn’t
have asked for a more supportive group of friends.
Pete Mulligan, for being about as helpful as anyone could be
and doing it all without a complaint and really without me ever asking him to
do it. Not sure how my morning or
post-race would have gone without you, but it would have been bad.
And my running partner Meg D: she and
I had many funny conversations about who would beat who at JFK50, and after all
that we basically tied (but she was the real star getting 3rd
overall).
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