#Gordon Sulzbach | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

runningaddiction · 7 years

Text

The Endless Hills - Trail des Gueules Noires Race Report

Going to start off this race report with a PSA about integrity. Cutting the course or cheating is still cutting the course no matter if you’re in 1st place or 100th place! This may have happened in races I’ve done in the past, but I was never an eye witness or had direct knowledge of it. In the Trail des Gueules Noires (Trail of the Miners) I witnessed ultrarunners knowingly cut the course because they didn’t want to back track and do the right thing.

I couldn’t believe it. I did realize that the group of runners I was with was in approximately 90-100th place and didn’t have much of a chance to win at that point but that still doesn’t matter when it comes to integrity or sportsmanship.

There was good group of us following the “main” trail and passed several Red/White striped flags and that should’ve been the first sign for me to stop and turn around. However, I chose to keep going with the crowd. We went off course for about four minutes according to my Strava. Then we hit the course again. Every other runner that was with me, choose to do the wrong thing and just continued on with others in the race that had been on course.

I choose to turn around and try to find where I went off course. Understandably, I probably lost a few places in the race, but I didn’t want to compromise my integrity. I also was able to catch a few others runners that had only been off course for a minute or two; they choose to go back and find the course with me.

Throughout the whole race I went off course three times. It was really messing with me because this is the first race that I have gotten lost even once. Getting off track definitely taught me the lesson of making the hard right decision to go back and get back on course, plus who wants to go the wrong way?

The next thing I wanted to bring up was that this race, “Alex Bridgeforth’d” me. If you have ever trained with me for more than a day, then you’ll know that some (probably my only) good stories are from what I like to call “adventures” with previous training partners. These “adventures” are generally really hard or stupid training runs/rides/hikes/death-marches that I’ve pulled/pushed old training partners through. This may make this post longer than it needs to be but I am going to list the ones I can find in my training record.

Might have to write a post that dives deeper into each one of these or you could just ask me when we go out for a run together.

Robbie and I supposed to be doing an eight mile run for our scheduled Sunday training run, but turning it in 26 miles;

Keith and I running eight and half miles from home in Lakeside to School in El Cajon starting at 12:18 in the middle of the day at the end of May. This resulted in one of my more inspirational pictures.

Zion and I supposed to be doing an 8ish mile trail run that turned into 16 miles because we got lost; somehow running off of Fort Gordon.

Jerad, Chris, Brad, and I doing our own marathon around Fort Gordon. I completed a 50km that day, needed add a bit extra on the end apparently.

Zion and I deciding to do our own duathlon. We road 9 miles through Fort Huachuca to the base of Huachuca Mountain, ran 5 miles up it with 1,680’ of gain, 5 miles back down, and a 9 mile ride back home.

Derrick and I doing 12 mile trail run in Phoenix starting at 9:28am in August, and Derrick having no water…

Me talking Zion into a 64 mile bike ride around the Huachuca Mountains.

Zion and I doing the Surge Saturday 53 mile ride in Sierra Vista, AZ. Zion didn’t eat dinner or breakfast prior to the ride and only brought 1 Gu…

Doing a 50k Race with Keith and Joseph, 1 week after my wedding.

Doing 14 miles at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait with Angel E. in a Sand storm.

Eric, Matt, Michael, Zion and I riding 77 miles around Augusta, GA to complete the Strava Gran Fondo challenge. Only a few cramps later and we all got it done.

Tony, Chris, and I riding 70 miles around the small towns west of Sulzbach-Rosenberg and Amberg.

Bottom line is this race “Alex Bridgeforth’d” me well. Whoever the course designer was made this course as hard as it could be. If you ever gone out for a “hard” run with me you would know that I generally try to string together the hardest climbs or hills in an area, because why not. This race would not stop, the hills didn’t stop coming until the very end.

Stepping back a bit, I want to bring up our stay at the Radisson in Liege, Belgium. I have to include this story if only for my future sanity. 9 times out of 10, Angel and I will stay in an Airbnb with the boys. One of the reasons that we will choose that route, even more now, is the reaction of our “neighbors” and one of the employees. We arrived into the town late the night before the race and Ashur was super tired and didn’t want to stop crying. This resulted in the people staying in the room next to ours pounding on the connecting door then meeting me outside and telling me that she can’t sleep because of the crying baby.

I have not been that upset at a random person in a long time. I was just thinking like what do you want me to do? Choke him? So I felt like I did the right thing and took him to the stairwell, where even though the sound may bounce, he’ll have a chance to calm down without ruining any more Belgians’ precious sleep. But no, one of the employees came up and asked me if I could get him to stop crying because it was bouncing off the walls. That was it, I finally just put on a YouTube video for Ashur and told Angel what happened when I got back to our room.

Back to the race: With my nutrition for the race, I chose, well I didn’t really have a choice. In the morning I had a local european “energy” bar. We were kind of late getting up, trying to get both boys up and out the hotel door.

I was planning on using Tailwind and 33 shake during the race. I planned on the normal 200 calorie Tailwind pack with one 16oz collapsible water bottle per hour and also take in a 90 calorie Chia Seed “Gu” from 33 shake every hour. I had tried 33 shake before once in training, so I guess that counts as not trying something new on race day.

I think my nutrition went pretty well, I probably need to start bringing something to eat in the middle of races. I wanted real food by the time I got to the two aid stations in the 33 mile race. The first aid station I was at about 2.5 - 3 hours into the race and I definitely needed fuel at that point. I also need to get more collapsible bottles, Angel could’ve had some and we could’ve easily switched out at the aid station. The 33 shake worked well, but I didn’t have enough to take it in the latter stages of the race, that was a failure on my part.

I saw potato chips at the first aid station and of course those are my favorite "bad for you" aid station food. So by the time I was getting close to the second aid station I had my mind set on getting some. The problem with that is that I definitely had too many there. One handful of chips is probably enough, but I had probably four to five maybe more. I need to find some kind of salty snack that is more healthy that will get me through my urge to have chips. Also, I drank 2-3 cups of Coke, which I don’t think hurt me. I generally drink Coke the last 25 to 33% of every race. It helps settle my stomach and gives a nice caffeine boost as well. I may have had only one stomach cramp throughout the race which came near the end. Overall, I think I was pretty solid nutritionally, which was surprising. I think a lot of that had to do with my pacing though.

Pacing, I decided before the race, I wanted to do the first 2/3 of the race at MAF, or for me (180 minutes your age) is 142-152 heart rate range. My goal was to keep it in that range on the flats and downhills. For the uphills, I knew there was going to be a lot of them, but I had know idea how many, my goal was just to push as hard as I could power hiking, which most of the time meant I was higher than my MAF.

I feel that is ok in my mind because one of the ideas of MAF is that you’re saving blood from having to always be pushing to your legs and you can let your stomach actually process some fat while your running. When you’re just hiking, your stomach isn’t jostling as much. Your stomach is able to settle and calm down more. I power hiked a lot, there seemed to be no flats. Maybe... maybe, 10% of the race was flat enough to get any kind of rhythm going.

I planned to pick up the pace starting last 33% of the race at mile 23. That didn’t happen, there was so many vertical or straight up and down hills. If you can imagine a big hill to your left with no trail then that was probably where the race was headed. I felt it was impossible to get a faster pace going. I just kept working at the MAF on flats and downhills and power hiking the uphills as fast as I could go. At that point my legs were so shot it was just a fight for every step to pass people or just having the terrain slaughter my legs even more.

I need to use Angel and the boys as more of a race cheer leading crew rather than a race pit crew. In the past, we have struggled, causing Angel stress dealing with the boys and dealing with my nutrition. So this race I decided that I was going to bring all my nutrition in my Salomon pack with me. Instead of using her to help me focus on making sure I had everything I needed, I could do that and she could focus on the boys and getting to the next aid station to see me and relaxing and hanging out and helping only when I actually got to the aid station versus having to try to fight to remember everything that I needed

I think it worked out almost perfect. If I had some extra bottles, I could’ve given those to her with some extra tailwind with no expectation that she have it ready unless she felt that she had the time when she got the next aid station. But I would still maintain all the nutrition I need. I plan on keeping that strategy for the next race. I think the aid stations being spread out like they were and even if there are more than I need to choose some for her that are at about the 2- 2.5 hour mark, so she doesn’t feel so rushed.

Another big thing in all the races I’ve done here in Europe is that everyone else speaks a different language which makes me feel like I’m running solo. At least there are other runners around, but it still catches you off guard because I’m used to being able to have a full conversation with the other runners around me. Also, since I’ve been living in Germany, I’ve gotten better at listening and speaking it, I know some questions to ask and certain things to say. This race was in Belgium, where they speak primarily French and I speak/know almost zero french. Like, zero zero.

One of the hard things with all these races is breaking through the language barrier, because you can’t expect everyone to speak english. That’s just the way it is. Even running along with people they will speak German or French to you and look at you like you’re crazy because you have no idea what they just said and because I don’t even know what to say back to them. A lot of it is trying to convey to them that all I can speak is english, so if they want to converse at all then its going to have to be in english or broken english. I was able to talk to a few different people about where they were from but its difficult for me and them to converse.

It’s always difficult running a race and not having anyone to talk to except your crew at the aid station. The race really becomes about trying to focus and stay internal. Another big thing I did this race was the last 33% I put my headphones. That always helps deal with the time. Using music as reward has always helped me out, holding out on listening to it till a certain point will be motivation to get to that point quicker. I use an app called Pace DJ which sets most of the music in my iTunes to a specific cadence that I chose, which helps keeps my feet moving.

Now a little section about gear. Start from bottom to the top. I decided to run in my Pearl Izumi Trail N1. If you don’t know, then Pearl Izumi recently decided to stop producing running gear in 2017. When I heard the news I went out and got two pairs of the Trail N1s. These were my work horse shoes a couple of years ago, so I figured I would give them a chance again. I wore them in my 100 mile race in 2013 and they worked well then. They worked out fine here in Belgium, no blisters, although from all the ups and down there is some tenderness in my forefeet and just normal foot fatigue. However, that can also come from the miles that Angel and I walked around Brussels that evening and the next few days as well. Shoes were no issue and I will continue to use them until it’s time to change them out.

For socks, I always stick with Swiftwick, I have used Injinji before and I know a lot of friends use them, but Swiftwick has never let me down, and I like that they are made in America and I rock the American flag on them. I don’t really have to mess with my feet, no cream or powder, I still got no blisters, Just throw on Swiftwicks and shoes.

The race was about 35-40 degrees the whole way. Early on I decided to wear tights, but as the sun started to come out in the morning and with how hard I was planning on going throughout the race, I decided to go with shorts. I had brought my reliable Lululemon ones, with sewn in compression shorts, body glide in the nether regions and shorts work like a charm. Legs didn’t too cold going as hard I was the entire race.

On the top I chose to go with my Ink 'n Burn christmas sweater tech t. I had originally planned on wearing my lightweight jacket from Salomon, but about 5 miles into the race I took the jacket off. I was able to pull it off through my pack and stuff it away. By the end of the race when the sun was going down or when I was farther back into the woods, it did start to get a bit chilly, but that probably helped push me. A lot of people were wearing jackets, but not this guy.

I had my normal Merino Wool, Smart Wool liners on for gloves, they work well, my hands will sometimes get cold in them, but they wick moisture pretty well. I brought Julbo glasses, put them on for a bit and then put them on my head which probably looked dorky because the sun only came out for a few minutes the whole day. I started off with my Mountain Hardware fleece cap to cover my head, but that came off early in the race as well, I put on one of my Buffs on as a headband. My head did get cold by the end of the race, but again, more motivation to get to the end of the race.

The last big thing I wanted to talk about, which I kind of alluded to in the “getting Alex Bridgeforth’d”, is the hills. You can look at the course profile online and see some hills, but it felt way worse than it looks. It reminded me of some of the parks in the hill county of Texas where it's hill after hill and they never give you a break. This race course felt like if you just continuously pointed at the hardest hill you could see and chose to go run up it. When you got done with that hill, you look for the next hardest one and you were on your way they and it never stopped.

Overall, I always feel bad here in Europe, compared to in the United States, I am much slower against the field here. At this race I finished 102 out of 192. Which is part of the bottom half, in my mind I don’t like. I am not happy with that result. Normally in the states, I run in the top 25%, and it is not like I have lost a lot of fitness. There is nothing against being slow, it just seems “slow” people don’t run ultra marathons here in Europe. I need to keep working on climbs with my “A” race next year being Zugspitze Ultratrail, super hilly, super technical. I definitely need to get back to hill training rather than just doing loop trails.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading all 3,097 words. Probably my longest post yet.

Call for Comments: How did your last race go?

- Alex

If you like the post; like or reblog it on Tumblr, pass it around on Facebook, or Tweet it on Twitter.

#race #race report #Trail Running #Belgium

0 notes