A picture perfect run

With the possibility that the baby could come any day now, I didn’t want to stray too far from the house for my run today. Plus, I was only planning on running 10 miles or so, so it wasn’t worth driving anywhere too far away to do it. I decided to run at one of my favorite local spots, the East Palisades unit of the Chattahoochee NRA. I ran there a lot when we were in our apartment last summer and I’m remembering why I liked it so much. Nestled in a posh neighborhood, the park has entrances from streets off Northside Dr. and Mt. Paran Rd. You forget the fancy surroundings quickly and disappear into what feels like a real wilderness criss-crossed with little trails. The only hint that you’re not off too far in the woods is the quiet hum of I-75 nearby. More on that later.

I started from the Whitewater Creek parking area and headed across the bridge over the creek towards the upper parking area:

Always nice to have a dramatic start to a run

The trail runs along the creek. In some spots, the creek clearly resents the higher status of the trail and is making sure it brings the trail back to down to its own level:

Dicey to run around this section

After running up a long steep hill to the upper parking area, I followed the trail back down to the river, where the ruins of an old house sit alongside the river:

Nice steps, nice foundation, but suspect wall construction

The trail winds along the river until you come across a stand of bamboo with enormous trunks. Most of the big ones are bigger than I can reach around with both hands and they are extraordinarily tall:

I think I see a panda in there somewhere

This bamboo can teach us all a lesson about reaching for the stars

After the bamboo forest, the trail climbs a rocky outcrop with nice river views:

Well worth the climb

But what goes up, must come down (and back up on the return). So, I had to scramble down some rocks to stay the trail along the river. This is the view from the bottom of the scramble:

The trail goes where?

The trails follows the river until it reaches Ray’s on the River and winds through the garden:

Maybe it was a mistake to let a landscape architect adopt this section of trail

You can cross the river on the access road bridge and then cut underneath the I-285 bridge to get to the Cochran Shoals unit of the Chattahoochee NRA. More on that hotbed of trails in a future post.

 

I turned back the way I came and ran past the rocky outcrops, past the bamboo forest, and back to the main trail. From here I took a separate trail to return to my car another way. It runs past an observation deck:

Successful arson or unsuccessful bonfire?

A small reward in the middle of the run

The trail runs steeply down from the observation area to a trail along the river and back to the parking lot. The park is used by a number of flyfishermen. That isn’t a sexist word in this context, since I literally haven’t seen a woman out there fishing yet:

"Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it." - Norman Maclean

I grabbed a sip of water at my car, but carried on for a bit more running. The trail continues to run along the river. Though not marked on park maps and seemingly little used, the trail is improved with bridges over creeks, including a ridiculoulsy over-engineered suspension bridge. Must have been someone’s practice project. The trail continues all the way to Cobb Parkway, across the river from the West Palisades unit. Of course, to get there, you must cross I-75. Since dodging highway traffic is not recommended, another way past it is available. The “trail” runs under the tall highway bridge. I have “trail” in quotes because an identifiable pathway doesn’t exist. Rather, the area is covered with riprap:

Riprap, rippity rap, rip rop rippity doo

You simply hop from rugged rock to rugged rock until you get past the bridge and the trail resumes. To help you picture it, I took a short video of myself running/hopping/walking across it.

 

That was it for me today. I jogged back to the car while talking to Beth on the phone and planning breakfast. I ended up taking this as a really easy run, just making sure the legs made it through SweetH2O intact. Everything felt good, but a little sluggish. No big deal. I’ll ramp it up later. Since I was going slow, I took even more pictures, which are available on my Flickr set for this run.

SweetH2O followup

I looked around the web and came across a few race reports, some great pictures, and even a little video.   I take no credit for the pictures and I’m glad for the folks that took them.  I hope nobody minds if I use them here.  To see them in their original habitats, check out the race reports below and click on them here to enlarge them:

Christian, a fellow GUTS member, always writes great reports for his adventures.  I haven’t actually met him yet, but feel like I know him a bit from his blog.  

I spoke very briefly with David Ray (another GUTS member) after the race, but didn’t really introduce myself.  His reports are always great too, and he takes tons of awesome pictures.  I actually started carrying my small camera on my long training runs after seeing all the pics he took and posted on his blog.

I just came across Rick Spencer’s blog because he found mine and was cool enough to comment.  He is the guy that got stung by a bee in my original post.

So here are the pictures I came across

Here is a picture at the start.  You can actually see the back of my head.  Look at the “S” in start and work down until you the green shirt and white/gray hat.  I’m talking to Rich Schick, who at that moment was telling me how he planned to take it easy.  He went on to win the Men’s Masters award.  Never trust a runner.

 

Pretty big crowd for a trail ultra

I mentioned aid stations in my original post. Here is a picture of one of them.  Quite a feast.  I didn’t really say it before, but the volunteers were incredible.  Always ready to fill your bottle, check on your needs, and keep you motivated.  These people stayed out there for hours, in the heat, with 200+ runners coming through each aid station multiple times.   We can’t thank them enough.

 

PB&J never tasted so good

The rest of my pictures document the two dominant features of the race in most minds, the powerlines and river crossing.  

First the river crossing.  this is taken from the side you start from:

 

Looks pretty easy from this vantage point

A combination of deep water, short runner, and slippery shoes led this part of my crossing to look similar to this below.  Just holding on to the rope and pulling myself across the strongest part of the current.

 

Looks a little tougher from here

The rest of the pictures I grabbed show the “powerlines” section.  Really two sections, one a narrow gasline easement and the other a wide open powerline easement.  I grabbed so many pictures, because no one picture does it justice.  There are certainly tougher trails out there, but this section is so different than the surrounding area, and you get to do it twice in this race, so it really stands out.

 

this part was "easy" because it was shaded

 

The runners give a sense of scale to the hills

 

Speaking of scale, the black specs near the treeline are runners. You may have to enlarge it to see them.

 

Lest you think there was no reward, behold the view

 

A great self-portrait of David Ray with the hills in the background

A GUTS member was out on the course volunteering and took a bunch of video. He posted it on YouTube. If you just want to see me, check around 4:03 or so in the video. You can see me slowly work around/through some mud and then slowly shuffle by the camera in my green shirt and white hat.

SweetH2O in the bag

I ran my first ultramarathon yesterday at the SweetH2O 50K.  For those not versed in metric, 50K is about 31 miles.  I picked this race for a few reasons, with the two biggest being timing and location. The race is located at Sweetwater State Park in Lithia Springs, GA near Atlanta.  That’s only about 20 minutes from my house, so I run out there a decent bit.  Plus with Beth scheduled for a C-Section in two weeks, I wanted to be close to home in case I had to leave the race early.  I figured that knocking out a long race before the baby came would be much easier than after.

I debated carrying my camera with me, but decided against it.  I was already a bit loaded down with a cell-phone in case THE CALL came in from Beth.  No call from her, but my builder did call and the ring startled me a bit.   So, no original pictures.  I’ll scour the web for pictures that others took and include them here or do a separate post later.

Having run a marathon two weeks ago, I was a bit worried about being ready again for another long race.  I took it easy the last few weeks, so I felt good and rested.  The weather at the marathon two weeks ago was overcast, not too hot, but super humid.  For the 50K, it was clear, warmer, but the humidity wasn’t too bad (for Georgia in May) and there was a breeze early on.  Not as bad as it could have been for sure.

I remembered a crowded parking situation when I ran the half-marathon here two years ago.  I figured I would get there on the early side by  leaving an hour and a half before the start.  No trouble parking, but it seemed like everyone else was already there.  I got my number and went about the long process of applying various substances to my body: lubricant to my feet to avoid blisters, sunscreen on my neck, face, and ears and Ivy Block to my lower legs.  By the time I got my socks and shoes on, number pinned to my shorts, and cell phone carefully ensconced in two plastic bags, it was time to head to the start.  I ran into a few fellow GUTS members there and chatted for a few minutes before the start.

Then we were off.  The first mile or so is on roads through the park and around the lake.  Then it is back into the woods.  Pretty quickly we cross the wide shallow spillway below the dam.  Just enough get your feet really wet. Here is a picture from a fellow GUTS member’s blog from last year’s race:

 

Wet feet are happy feet

After that, we ran along the creek towards the first aid station and back near the starting point.  A little more running on asphalt before we got back on the trails.  Not my favorite thing, but it helps to have some wide easy to run areas at the beginning of a trail race to spread the crowd out before you enter the singletrack trails.  As I trudged on the road, a few GUTS members caught up to me and we ran close enough together to chat for a bit.  I didn’t have any hour long chat sessions like I did a few weeks ago at the marathon, but I found that I was passing or being passed often enough by friends and acquaintances, to keep from being lonely.

We ran though the trails at the heart of the park and towards the infamous “Powerlines” section that is outside the park boundary.  Before you get to the powerlines, you run up a smallish creek, which you must cross three times getting you feet wet just as they were feeling dryish from the spillway crossing.  Then you climb up a ridiculously steep gully and pop out onto a gasline easement cut into the trees.  From there it is a series of steep descents and climbs until you reach the “Top of the World”.  You get a nice view and keep moving to a trail that loops back to the actual powerline easement that gives the area its name.  More super steep descents and climbs and then back to the main trails.

Once back on the main trails, you run a tough long uphill before settling back to the usual rolling singletrack towards the starting area.   You run past the starting area to a metal bridge across the big creek and run a tough three mile loop which includes a big climb and long slow descent.  The descent is a lot of fun, but tires out the quads for later.  After the three mile loop, you run a gravel road back to the gasline easement (now on the opposite side of the creek).  You run along it and some other trails down to the creek for the infamous crossing.  This is a dangerous crossing through waist to shoulder deep water with a stiff current and a rocky dropoff downstream.  As you can see, everyone takes it very seriously:

 

Is that a Coast Guard approved flotation device?

They actually do take it pretty seriously with rescue personnel on hand.  This year, due to a constellation of factors, that concern led to significant delays at the crossing.  The creek has been running high lately due to the rain, and two days before the race, it was very high.  The race director decided for safety reasons to only allow one person to cross at a time.  The creek level dropped a lot in the two days before the race, but the directive stood.  Combine that with the fact that last year had 62 finishers and this year had 212 and that created a recipe for problems.  For the front runners, there were no delays but as you moved back in the pack to where I was, it got backed up.  I waited 26 minutes to cross and heard people as I hung out at the finish saying they waited 45 minutes.  I overheard the race director talking about some alternate plans for next year, so hopefully there won’t be a repeat.

Since this was my first 50K, my basic goal was just to finish, but I had hoped to finish in 6:30.  After the delay, I mentally adjusted that to a 6:56 finish goal.  Right after the crossing, my legs felt great, fresh and invigorated.  That disappeared after about 10 minutes and I hit a real low point.  I could only manage a shuffle on an easy flat section and I knew I had about 10 miles to go.  Uh-oh.  I walked for a few minutes on a part of the trail I should have been running, made it to a mini aid station for some water and knew that the next mile or so was downhill to a full aid station.

A word on aid stations at long races.  They are a bit different than short races which usually just have water and/or gatorade.  At this one, the full aid stations had pretzels, potato chips, PB&J sandwich quarters, gummy bears, M&Ms, banana pieces, gel packets, electrolyte pills, and salted boiled potato pieces.  Plenty for me, but I’ve heard stories of some aid stations at 100 milers having burgers, fried egg sandwiches, and soup.  I stuck to the pretzels, PB&Js and boiled potatoes.

After a short feast and full bottle of cold water to take with me, I was off for round 2 of the powerlines, already feeling better.  We approached from a different path which managed to get us more of the steep descents while not avoiding the wet feet of a the creek crossing.  Thanks!  Plus the gasline easement, which had been shaded before was in full sun.  I wore Moeben sleeves to protect my arms from the sun, a hat and bandanna combo to protect my neck, all backed up by sunscreen applied pre-race.  That kept me from getting sunburned, but couldn’t kill the heat.  As I climbed on of the hills I heard the guy behind me yell.  I turned  expecting to see a guy on the ground with a twisted ankle.  Instead, he was holding the back of his neck and still moving forward.  Bee sting.  Talk about adding insult to injury.  Even the bees were against this guy.  He soldiered on, however.

I finally made it to the end of the gasline section and got some ice water, and ice to put into my vest to keep me cool for the powerline section back to the creek.  Somehow the powerline section got steeper the second time.  Must have been an earthquake or something.  Also, my IT band started acting up during this section.  That type of injury is exacerbated by steep hilly sections, so no surprise it popped up here.  It would bug me for the remaining 6 miles or so.  

After the powerlines, I was pretty much done.  Once I made it back to the aid station, it was four miles to the finish and I had an hour to do it to meet my adjusted time goal of 6:56.  I would normally alternate running and walking in brief spurts at this point, but my knee pain was worst during the transition from walking to running.  That meant trying to do longer running sections, but also walking longer during the rest breaks.  I thought the hour would be plenty of time.  But at mile 28, the course diverged from the trail I thought we would follow and went straight up a hill where there was no trail.  More sadism from the organizers.  I passed two people on that climb who hated it worse than I did.  We got back on the main trail and kept on moving toward the finish.  That climb cost me precious minutes and sapped precious energy.  

One more time past the aid station at the metal bridge, along the creek to the dam, and back along the shore of the lake toward the finish.  The shoreline trail was very rooty, and although not hilly, it was bumpy and a real tripping hazard.  Once again, the sadistic race director saved that for the finish but I wanted to keep running to make up time.  I popped out from the shoreline to an open grassy area along a road up what seemed like an impossibly steep hill given the circumstances.  I was running out of time and didn’t see the finish in site, so I was about to start walking again.  Just then a little girl came running towards, cheering me along and assuring me that the finish was just around the corner.  I kept running and around the corner, the course cut up a short set of stairs and just a few feet further was the finish.  I made it in 6:55:50.  10 seconds to spare on my adjusted goal of 6:56.  That is 10 seconds out of 24,950 or 0.04%.  Amazing that the margin could be so slim for a nearly 7 hour race.

After the race, I said hello (mildly incoherently) to some friends at the finish.  I grabbed a cup of really good sweet tea and wandered to my car to change clothes and try to cool down a bit.  My stomach was quite jumpy and my recovery shake at the finish nearly made an impromtu reappearance.  I sat on the back of my truck slowly taking off shoes and socks, washing off some dirt and salt from my skin, and regained my composure.  I walked back over to the finish and sat with some GUTS members for a while watching the remaining finisher come in over the next two hours. One of the neatest was to see one of the regular Tuesday night runners, Tony, come in a at a little over 8 hours.  He would normally finish this race faster than me, but he decided to run to the start of this race.  Sounds like a normal thing to do, but he lives 28 miles away, so that is a total of 59 miles on the day.  All completed by about 4:00 in the afternoon.  Good luck to Tony on his preparation for a 100 mile race this fall.

After re-reading what I wrote about this race, it sounds like a lot of complaining about tough conditions.  It is actually a bit of a game out there during some conversations to complain the most while smiling the biggest.  The truth is, we wouldn’t be out there if it wasn’t fun.  We appreciate the challenges thrown at us, but complain a bit about so no thinks we are enjoying it too much.  That would raise eyebrows, for sure.