Journey to Leadville - Byrne - May 25, 2012

85 days until the Leadville Trail 100 Mile Run....

Lots of pictures and more to come....

Yesterday was a HUGE day! 58 miles on our run to West Branch. Rick and I ran 58 miles, Jay Gates ran 48 miles and Lindsay Caes ran around 15 miles. Gordon Staley and Todd Hornbuckle were our heroes - driving by encouraging us, supplying us with Gatorade for the last 20 miles and driving us home from West Branch. What a great day - more to tell when I can get back to this computer after coming back from a graduation party tonight :o)

http://www.mapmyfitness.com/routes/view/96346597 - 58 miles - 12.5 hours

Rick and I started from my house at 5:03 a.m. and headed through Davenport on Kimberly Rd.  We met up with Lindsay Caes at Harlan's in West Davenport a little before 6:30 am. About 1 mile later Jay Gates joined us near the Davenport West softball complex. Jay's original plan was to bike out about 30 miles and run the remainder with us. His revised plan was to run 48 with us - how cool is that?

Basically we ran Highway 6 for about 52 miles before turning north on a road leading to West Branch. The highway was much busier than I thought it would be but cars were great about going into the far lane to give us room. The weather was absolutely spectacular. The sun was hiding under clouds for much of the day and disappeared for the last hour of our run. We did get some sun and it felt pretty hot from 11 am - 2 pm but no complaints by any means.

We ran most of the way for the first 25 miles - taking some walks toward the tops of hills along the way. We also had a few detours to hit a Casey's (Walcott), Lindsay's house (Durant), and a saloon (Atalissa). We also stopped by a Casey's (Wilton) and a Subway (West Liberty) but those locations were directly on our path. The detours added a couple of miles to our run but they were necessary and worth it to refuel to get cold ice, water, and Gatorades. - more to come later..... - need to go to church :o)

Maurer Street in Wilton, Iowa

Lindsay was gracious enough to share some gatorades, water and ice with us from her home. It was about 6 blocks off our route but well worth the detour. After getting refreshed, she rode on our bike with us through town and bid us farewell.

Found 'Maurer' St (or Rd) in Wilton - thought our friend Aaron Maurer might like it.

Jay and Rick - Wilton

We continued on for another 7 miles to make it to Wilton. The next 2 pictures were taken on the west end of town as we were getting ready to head south  out of town.  It would have been shorter to stay south of town but we needed to refuel with food, water, gatorade, and ice.

John and Rick - Wilton

Rick and John - Atalissa

Rick and John - West Liberty

Rick and Jay - West Liberty

Rick and Jay - near West Liberty (I think)

As we moved further west, we walked more, it started to heat up, and the stretches seemed longer. We crossed a fairly wide creek that we first thought was the Cedar River only to discover that a few miles later we crossed the 'real' Cedar River.When we reached Atalissa we were looking for a gas station or convenience store to refuel - the only place we could find was a saloon in town. The lady behind the bar was wonderful - giving us ice and water. Other than beer and pop all she had was tea so we opted for the water. We walked for a bit to the edge of town, heading west toward West Liberty.This stretch seemed to go by fairly slowly. It's funny how you can see water towers in the distance and as you get closer to them, they seem to get farther away and then disappear! We knew however, that the more we kept running, we would eventually get there - which is exactly what happened. My experience with long runs also has taught me that one experiences highs and lows. For me personally, coming into West Liberty was a low point. I was feeling overheated and dehydrated - despite feeling like I was drinking a lot of fluids. My feet were beginning to feel hot and a little sore from the pounding they were taking. I had no intentions of quitting, it was just not very pleasant. I also felt like walking more and running less.Once in a while I'd stop to stretch my legs a bit but for the most part, just kept moving forward - that was our mantra - 'one foot in front of the other'. A couple of miles before West Liberty we were welcomed by a most wonderful sight - Todd's black Chevy Tahoe! Todd and Gordon had already been to West Branch for a Mexican lunch and since we were starting to fall behind schedule - they had more time to kill than they probably wanted. They caught up with us about 1 mile east of West Liberty and had plenty of Gatorades in the car - cold and multiple flavors! You have no idea how motivating it was to see these guys. Despite being in an air-conditioned vehicle and looking refreshed, they were a great sight for us. We could have held on for a couple more miles with our fluids but it was a pleasant surprise to say the least. Afterwards Todd commented that we didn't look like we were going to make it so we must have looked pretty bad. Rick and Jay had commented that they weren't feeling too good at the time either.

We rolled into West Liberty and found a Subway. Jay and Rick shared a sandwich - I didn't feel like eating (we had a few Gu's along the way - maybe 3 each?). Once we left West Liberty we were encouraged because our next stop was West Branch - our final destination! The sun seemed to dip behind the clouds for the rest of the day, the breeze seemed to pick up, and we even had a few sprinkles on the way into West Branch.

Rick and John - heading North to West Branch

Rick and John - on way to West Branch

We were greeted several times by Rick's friends, Tigger and Barney, as well as Todd and Gordon. I think they knew we were in need of some emotional support and it was great to see them come by a few times. Maybe they were checking to see whether we had collapsed! Truth be told we probably ran better from West Liberty to West Branch than we did coming into West Liberty.Their encouragement was powerful for us and we appreciated it more than they know.

Eventually we crossed over Interstate 80 and saw our destination! As we entered town it started to rain - no complaints - the wet raindrops felt great. Gordon and Todd were awaiting us across the street from the Jack and Jill grocery store and captured a couple pictures and video at the finish.

Rick and I had 2 goals on Friday and I think we accomplished both of them.

Goal #1 - to finish. We did it, just like we had planned.

Goal #2 - to answer 'yes' to the question.... "Could we keep going?" We both agreed that we could have. We were certainly glad to be finished - we worked hard. But we also know that Leadville is a lot longer and a lot tougher and it would not bode well for us if we didn't feel like we could continue.

Gordon and Todd drove us to Barney's house where we all soaked our legs for a few minutes in cold water followed by a hot shower. After a quick visit with Barney and Tigger, we headed back to the Quad Cities in Todd's vehicle. My original thought was that we would have finished closer to 2:30 pm - which was probably a little naive. We did have some detours which added time. In addition, I forgot that the longer one runs, the slower one gets and the more walking that one needs to mix in with the running. I also feel terrible that Todd had hoped to be back in the Quad Cities around 4:30 pm - I blew that one big time.

All in all, the day was highly successful. A few lessons learned...
We'll hydrate better in the days leading up to a long run.
We'll make sure to use more vaseline to prevent chaffing better.
We may have started off with too fast of a pace.

All of these errors are fixable and it was good to learn them in a training run like this. Rick did amazing and I'm predicting that he will have a successful finish at Leadville. I'm feeling confident about my ability to finish Leadville but in order to go sub 24 hours I will need to keep training hard and lose that extra weight I keep talking about.

Thanks for reading this very long blog but as you can appreciate, there was a lot to talk about on this day :o) Resting Saturday, Sunday and probably Monday. Body is feeling good and strong and ready to get back after it. 


Until my next post, have a great day!  DIG DEEP!