On the RR50K course

Rocky Raccoon is actually the name of one the trails we ran during the race. The course was quite pretty, lots of greenery, and tree cover. Rains over the past week had left the ground free of some mulch. Parts of the trail are sand and the rain had helped make that harden in some parts. Most of the trails are laden with jutting out roots and one really needs to watch out to not trip here.

The aid stations were stocked with bananas, oranges, cookies, and water, powerade, sprite and flat coke. Some also had peanut butter. Santhosh partook of enough food at all the aid stations that he had to take a restroom break. To be fair to him, Gaurav and myself also loaded up at all the aid stations and at the end of the first loop, and lucked out not having to stop.

I hate my Camelback. It leaks. A Camelback is a small backpack which has a bladder that you can fill with any liquid of your choice, and a pipe coming out of it with a nozzle that you can suck on from time to time. What with a leaky nozzle which opened up like the very Ganges when I bent down, I had to put the nozzle in my mouth when I was forced to tie my shoe laces end of loop one. That clearly turned out to be a mistake, since my stomach was sloshing with the Clip2-Cytomax mixture I had in my camelback, and it left me nauseous the rest of the race.
All learning experiences of course, and I have to take mine back to REI.

The most important learning experience of course was that in all over 7 aid stations, I spent about 40 minutes hanging out at the aid stations. Even if I reduce that to 2min/aid station, I would have finished in 5hr:38min instead of the 6hr:04min with absolutely no extra effort. Plus end of first loop was such a long break and stomach-full-of-clip2-water, that I easily took atleast an extra 8-10min warming up again. Random inefficiences need to be addressed.

The Sunmart course is going to be very similar and all this experience hopefully will be of some use. However, the entire last loop (4 loops of 12.5 miles each in Sunmart) and maybe parts of the third loop will have to be run in darkness. Promises to be entertaining.