Short Report on the Vermont 2012 - Unbelievable!

This weekend, in a word? WOW!

Statistics couldn't tell me around which time I will be coming in during this 100 mile ultra. The variability is just to large for an accurate result in a race as long as this.

So I had to go with my gut feeling instead. And my gut feeling was I had an "outside shot" of going under 24 hours and maybe get a belt buckle.

But better than 21 hours and 24 minutes? I would have never thought that I was capable of this. 53rd place overall? No way.

As a matter of fact, I was holding the Midnight Pace (12 min/mile, or 20 hours that would make for a midnight finish) or better for this race until mile 80!

Better yet, I was still running everything except the steep uphills all the way to the finish. Granted that my running form wasn't looking very good after mile 90, but whatever "bad form" of running I was doing was definitely faster than a walk. And even on the uphills I was still walking quite fast.

I started having a feeling that I was going to have an epic race at mile 28, when when I easily went up and over the Sound of Music Hill.

That feeling got bigger when I handled Agony Hill in a suprisingly easy fashion(mile 50) as well. In 2010, I suffered up that hill. When I got to the top this year still feeling strong, I KNEW something good was happening.

Getting back to Camp Ten Bear 2.5 hours faster than in 2010 and during the daytime was the clincher. I was still feeling very well. I just told myself to go with it the rest of the race.

Again, I have to thank my crew AL, RL, and NC for an excellent job they did in the race. I owe them a lot of gratitude for my race this past weekend.

I used this race as part of a thesis. After a DNF in Leadville and really not getting anywhere with ultra races the past couple of years, I decided to find out whether going back to triathlon training might help in ultras as well.

Well, it definitely did!

I'll fully detail it in coming reports, but in short there are two primary reasons why triathlon training did work:

1) Since triathlon training trains a lot more muscles than just ultra training alone, I was able to put in a lot more hours of training swimming, biking, and running rather than running alone. This is one of the primary reasons why I toed the start line at least 15 pounds lighter than in 2010.

2) More developed quadriceps. I think all the cycling I did really built up my quadriceps to the point where the hills were much easier to manage. I also did a lot more trail running which helped as well. Handling the hills in this course was the most critical difference between this year and 2010.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'm off to buy an appropriate belt for my sub 24 hour belt buckle.

That's all for now. The official race report and pictures will be up soon.