Marathon Me

This race came on my calendar in January. I was working upstairs and my wife started searching marathonguide.com (gotta love her). She calls out “Hey I found something that looks kinda stupid, you probably want to do this” and she sends me the link to the Bigfoot Snow Shoe Marathon. I’ve never run in snow shoes, in fact have never even seen a snow shoe in person, but figure how hard can this be? After some back and forth where I wasn’t sure if I wanted to do it we finally commit during the weekend of the Houston Marathon. I got some advice from various members of the Hill Country Trail Runners and figured I was committed.

We fly into Salt Lake City the day before the race and have an uneventful drive to the host hotel. We actually attend a pasta dinner for once so that I could get some much needed information about the race from the race Director (who it turns out has not only run marathons on all seven continents but has logged over 180 marathons as well. Makes me feel like a piker).

We meet some nice guys: Roger, Paul and Brian, all of whom live near the area and are regular snow shoers. After talking up the snow they convince me I need some wool socks or my feet will freeze off. So I figure they must know what they are talking about and they direct me to a running store where I pick up some wool socks. This would prove to be a bad decision an hour or so into the race. I broke the cardinal rule, never do something new in a marathon.

The next morning we wake up and head to Park City for the race and the car thermometer reads 5 degrees. Good Lawd that’s cold.

We find the start area and go inside to get our snow shoes. A super cool thing is the race sponsor provided snow shoes if you, were say from Texas, and didn’t own any shoes. I put them on and go take a 100 meter jog and back. They are loud, it sounds like clap, clap, clap with every step. You hear the crunch of the snow followed by the top of the snow shoe hitting the bottom of your shoe.

I grab a quick photo with Bigfoot before the race.

The gun goes off and we take off. I have no idea how to pace myself for this thing but figure I will go with my usual “fly and die”. It is super cold right now, I have to keep taking the fingers out of my glove and holding them against my palm while I switch hands with my water bottle. After about 5 miles my hands have either gone numb or warmed up, can’t really tell the difference at this point.

The race consists of a 10k and a 5k loop. The 10k loop is groomed snowmobile track and maybe 8 feet wide, the 5k loop I single track trail with about 20 inches of snow on either side. If you come out of the track you tumble. The single track is about 2 inches wider than both my snow shoes next to each other, so there is a little margin for error. The plug side is that the first 2 miles of this loop are straight up hill so you aren’t going fast enough to really worry about getting out of the trail.  Both laps have similar elevation gain, but the 10k gives you twice as long to climb it.

Running on snow shoes isn’t really that much different that running in regular shoes, they are just a lot louder and heavier. The difference is that you never know when the snow will be solid enough to support your weight or when you will drop 18 inches down. I think this is less of a problem for the women as they probably only fall 6-12 inches due to less weight. This is not a good race to be a Clydesdale. A couple miles in my shoes are sliding all around. I stop to try and tighten the strap holding them on, but it has frozen stiff. It takes me about 90 seconds to unhook it and about the same time to get it back synched tight. What a waste of time, but at least I got to catch my breath.

I finish the first lap in 2nd place in the marathon division. The course record was 6:43:30. I seem no possible way that any marathon can take me that long to finish. I did Pikes Peak in 5:50 or so and that has to be harder. So I was hoping for a sub 5:30 finish, a course record and the win. I would get 2 of the 3.

After the first lap I am only about 3 minutes behind the leader as we start going up!

I feel like the Jamaican bobsled team at this point, a fish out of water, a person from Texas running uphill in the snow. Very slow going. It is super beautiful here now. Snow is everywhere, the trees are covered in snow and there are lots of switch backs. I bet this is a gorgeous place to run in the spring. After cresting the hill and finally getting to run downhill I see the leader going the wrong way. He has taken the easy way up the mountain and decides to just run it backwards to get the same difference. I decide at this point I will not let him pass me as I don’t want to lose to him and then feel bitter about him making the course easier. I manage to succeed in this but I would get passed by someone else much later in the race.

I’m starting to blister on both my heels now and it doesn’t feel awesome. Hopefully they will calm down and not get too much worse. I finish lap two in first place, but as I head out I see the second place runner, first female (who her buddy told me is a sub-3 hour marathoner) only 2 minutes behind. Since I outweigh her by a good 80 pounds, I figure I am in trouble. I decide to push it for as long as I can to try and hold her off.

I start the second 10k loop, which has an additional 2k section to get to the full marathon distance, and it is getting rough on my feet. I have to make like the Pope and dart off into the woods and take care of some business. Back on the course I am starting to get tired and am not looking forward to reclimbing that hill. As I come to the start the second 5k loop my feet are raw hamburger. This sucks. I was hoping the snow would make them numb so I could forget about it, but no such luck. I trudge up the 5k loop again in an ungainly shuffle walk both because my feet hurt and this hill is damned steep.

The first 5k loop I finished in 45:31 the second on takes me over 3 minutes longer. 48 minutes for a 5k is pretty ridiculous. Running down the hill I try to stay head of the wayward runner and the first female but they are both closing fast. I am running flat out and fall 3 times coming down the hill. Overall I think I fell 12-15 times, but since it was on snow it didn’t hurt too much, but was kind of embarrassing. I finish the damned 5k loop and am so happy I won’t have to run that again, but I am barely a minute ahead of second place and she is moving. I now know it is only a matter of time and that I am fighting for second place.

She passes me with about 5 miles to go. It is over I know I have no chance. I tell her she is in first place and wish her good luck. We are both pretty beat up and as we start the final climbs both of us are walking, but she is walking faster. I see her pull away and am powerless to keep up. My feet are on fire and even my walking looks pathetic. I just want to make it to the top of the hill and then I know I’ll finish. I crest the hill and can see her off in the distance, I look back and see 3rd place a minute behind me. I decide to push it to make sure he can’t catch me. I go faster hoping not for the win, but just to end the misery.

I cross the finish line having broken the course record by about a hour and 28 minutes.

I feel pretty good about that, but the actual winner broke it 90 minutes. So I wind up winning the first overall male trophy and taking second place. I offer her both trophies since she won but she doesn’t want it. The race director lets me stand in the picture with the actual winner of the race.

Afterwards there is a nice spread of soup and hot chocolate that I guzzle down. I don’t want to look at my feet and so I don’t until an hour later when we are in the car heading home. It is not a pretty sight.

Afterwards Shelley and I have a nice dinner at a little Italian place in Salt Lake City and then go to bed. I am unable to sleep as the drink on the course was 180 degree energy drink. I had 6 or 7 water bottles of the stuff which must equal close to 10 cans of it. I am wired beyond wired. I am a little shaky and even Tylenol PM can’t compete with this energy drink. Somehow a few hours later I actually do fall asleep and then Shelley and I spend 7 hours in the SLC airport trying to catch an earlier flight home which no success.

Overall a fun experience, but it took two weeks for my heels to heal up enough to run again. The Austin Marathon is going to be interesting to say the least.

After cleaning up my feet they looked like this: Yuck

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Tags: Marathons, Race Reports //