My first 50K

I ran the East Texas Trail 50K earlier today in Tyler TX, which is 2 hrs east of Dallas, as my first run beyond marathon distance aka ultramarathon. I actually tried another 50K few weeks ago at Bandera, but had to DNF(Did Not Finish) due to some problems with my legs on a difficult course and in difficult conditions, due to all the rain it received the days preceeding the race.

The race started at 7am and it was freezing cold, ~30F. I drove to Tyler State Park along with a friend, Brad Garrison from NTTR and reached the start area around 6am. We had to stay in the car to keep us warm. I was also worried about my IT Band of my right knee and cold weather doesn't help it at all. The race is structured into 3 loops, with each loop being ~10.3 miles. The race being a small local race, my car was easily accessible at the end of each loop, which is useful to either pickup or drop off stuff. We started off at 7am and I was towards the back of the pack of runners and wanted to take it easy and be conservative. For the first couple of miles, I was indeed the last guy in the race, out of ~35 people doing 50K. After about 5 miles, I started to feel good and warmed up and picked up the pace a little. I went ahead of a group of runners including a few from my club NTTR. The terrain was very runnable inspite of the rolling hills. I was walking the steeper sections of the uphill an was able to maintain around 13 min pace and finished the first loop around 2:15 and I was quite happy with it.

After a quick pit stop, I started my second loop and I met a seasoned ultrarunner Mr.Tim from New York and we started chatting along the trail, well he was the one who was doing the talking. He was telling some stories about his running and he seemed quite knowledgeble. It turns out that he is the defending national champion for 50K for his age group, and his PR for the distance is 4:44! I found out later that his name is Timothy Kourounis and he is 68. He was pretty inspiring and he got me going at a very good pace for the next 5 miles or so. Later, I went ahead when he took a break and I finished my second loop pretty strong around 2:10 for a cumulative time of 4:25.

At the start of the third loop, I was thinking of a time goal and I thought if I feel strong I can try to shoot for 6:30, which was pretty aggresive. The first 3 miles to the aid station were fast and I was on target. When I started from the aid station after a break of a minute, I felt that my right IT Band was getting stiff and I was terrified. In less than a minute it had gotten pretty stiff and it was so bad that I had a hard time to even walk and the worse news was that I had 7+ miles to go. My first reaction was that I might have to drop the race and I started to feel a little bad. My past experience with IT band issue from couple of years ago was that it would get worse if one doesn't keep movinig. So, I decided to try to keep walking for a little while and see how it goes. After about 5 mins, I started to feel little better and was able to run, thankfully. It is like a positive feedback and once I started running it has gotten more flexible and I was able to even pick up my pace a little. It got little worse at the next aid station when I slowed down but I kept walking and was able to keep going. I started to realize that it is possible for me to break 6:45 if I keep my pace and as soon as I saw the last mile, I did pick up my pace a little a was able to have a strong finish to finish in 6:43. That was an awesome feeling and a PR for me both in terms of distance (50K=31.1mi) and time on feet. In a nutshell, I had a great day and was able to finish my first ultra strongly, inspite of a hiccup. I could not have asked for anything more on my first 50K. It was nice to receive a call from my friend Padma, the first Indian woman 100 miler, soon afer I finished my run. Now, I can't wait for next weekend, when I will be doing Austin Marathon along with Team Asha Austin. See you next week!