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| Tracking: https://caltopo.com/m/PSSU30H |
At midnight on Saturday June 7th, I attempted an unsupported 100-mile out-and-back run along the Mountains-to-Sea Trail starting from home. To spice things up, I sprinkled 20 virtual controls from last year's Falls Lake Unnamed 8-hour Adventure in Wake County at the turnaround.
The Run Across Durham And Return (RADAR) is about 98% trail and is a familiar route, the triple-digit distance, not so much. Last time I ran 100 miles was in 2012. I knew there was a high chance for failure, especially as cool dry weather from earlier in the week was replaced by heat and rain.
I went ahead with the attempt because this was the one weekend in June open for it. My goals: 1.) to log a good endurance effort between May's tour de tanZ and July's upcoming tour de navX; 2.) to test the tracking capability of caltopo pro for said upcoming adventure; and 3.) run 100 miles!
Notes from met goal 1: setting an hourly alarm to eat worked well; I need to improve accessibility for some items in my pack. Notes from met goal 2: caltopo did okay, but somehow dropped my track from mile 19-21 (compared to purple offline tracking). Are there issues with loading the map?
As for unmet goal 3: starting at midnight in a thunderstorm was discouraging. Going as much as 22 miles between water had me bogged down with a 12 lb. pack. I had (lofty?) intentions of going sub-24. When I started to fall off of that pace in the wee hours of the morning, I lost my resolve.
I decided on an impromptu 29-minute stop at about 7 am at 30.5 miles to swim in the lake, eat, drink and switch into my one extra pair of dry socks. Although this definitely helped rejuvenate me, the negative thoughts of going into a hot stormy afternoon and the early hours of Sunday soon returned.
Conclusion: going unsupported in rainy heat and humidity with big gaps between water made me quit at 50 miles and 12 hours. I don't have to look too far back (SOMO postman) to find a better unsupported performance at a greater distance. I'll just have to try again!
Bonus thought: it's a wonderful privilege to be able to run so far from from home almost entirely on trail in rain or shine, night or day. The diversity of critters I saw out there was great: deer, possums, foxes, owls... I tried not to step on the hundreds of frogs playing frogger.
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