2007 Sunmart Texas Trails Endurance Run

I finished up the year with the Sunmart 50k in Houston Texas. As many of you know Sunmart is the largest Ultra in the US. This race definately taught me a few lessons most importantly not to eat too much the night before or morning of a race and the value of perserverance. The former speaks for itself but the latter may need a bit of explaining - about 7:00pm the night before the race I felt unusually tired. At the time I thought this was a good thing since there was a 4:00am wakeup to make the hour long shuttle to Huntsville state park to the starting line (next year stay in Huntsville) by any means by the time Maurice and I got to Huntsville raceday I just wasn't feeling great. I thought if I start out fast and get away from the early congestion maybe I can get some early quick miles in and shake this funk. Okay in retrospect that sounds down right dumb but many times when I don't feel 100% if I put a few quality miles in I will start to feel better and can slow down into a nice rythym and just keep going. Well I had a great 10k split for the 1st out and back but just didn't feel well still. At this point I started to get dizzy and very nauscious - thinking this was just stomach bloat I kept up a strong power walk with occasional running breaks and consume lots of antacids and carbonated drinks at the aid stations. At one of the aid stations on the course is a 4 mile out and back and then you continue on the bigger loop back to the start. I missed this section first time around and new something was wrong when I passed my friend Maurice before the end of the first of two loops. It was hugely demoralizing to have to do an extra four miles the second loop. At this point I kept thinking if I can just feel better and start running I can still make a sub 6 hour finish. Unfortunately I never did feel better and ended up power walking the last 20 miles. While my goal had been a sub 6 hour performance, I was plenty happy with 6:57 given how I felt. Truth be told if I would have been at home where I could have just gone home this would have been a DNF for me - but as it was I still had to wait around for the final bus back to the hotel. My buddy Maurice fared much better and finished strong and provided great post-race moral support for a less than perfect race experience.