Baker Lake 50k

I finished in 6:58 with Robin Blais who helped motivate me for the last 6 miles.
I ran good for 9 miles then my banged up body started a revolt. I limped into the a/s in just under 3 and then crawled back to the finish.
Dave Dutton put on another great race. There was plenty of good food at the Start, A/S, and Finish.

I hadn’t really run since Plain. I did a couple 2 and 3 milers, easy, but that was it. I knew I was going to be slow but I didn’t know how slow I would go. Or for how long, but I knew it wasn’t 32 miles. I decided to just run how I felt.

In the beginning all was well. My legs felt fresh and ready to run. I had thought it would take a mile or so to warm up but it didn’t.
After a few miles on the trail I noticed my ankles kept trying to roll over on the downhill sections. I do go pretty fast downhill but the trail was in such great shape there was really no reason to go slow. So, I just tried to watch my foot placements a little closer. That didn’t really help. It seemed like they just weren’t very strong, like I had never run on trails before. I didn’t actually full on roll an ankle but I did do some quick shifting of my weight a bunch of times. This was creating a lot of extra work so I tried slowing down a bit. That helped for a while but it was getting to be work going downhill. What’s up with that? I stopped 3-4 times on the way out try and stretch and loosen my ankles but it didn’t do any good.

I got into the A/S at 2:48 and I didn’t want to leave. There was no reason that I couldn’t finish so after 10 minutes or so, I headed back out.

The trip back was much different than the trip out. I basically just started to run when I got too cold and after I warmed up I would walk. I even stopped a half a dozen times to admire the scenery. The trees were so beautiful, dripping with moss. The lake was calm and pristine. A runner would come by and I would start running so I could chat or just step off the trail and let them go by. Twice I stepped off into some nettles! I’m going to have to practice that stepping off the trail maneuver some more so that doesn’t happen again. Ouch!

With about 6 miles to go Robin came along and she was interesting to talk to so that made me run just fast enough to keep up. And then I noticed we could just make it in under 7 hours if we picked up the pace just a little. My ankles were feeling a little better from all the walking so we decided to go for it.

When we got to the road we had 17 minutes left to finish. Robin took off down the hill at an 8:00 m/m pace. We ran together to the damn and then I tried to get her to go a little faster by pulling a few yards ahead. It seemed to work and we both finished with 2 minutes to spare.