Grindstone 100 Race Report
I ran the Grindstone 100 this past weekend. I signed up over the summer while I was hiking. I chose it because I want to run at least one 100 every year, it's a Western States qualifier, considered fairly difficult, it's reasonably close to DC, and it's soon after I would move here. All those sound great, right? It's an out and back, and the weird thing about it is its 6PM start, which leads to a goal of avoiding the second night.
I essentially didn't train for it. Since June, I ran the Canadian Death Race, and I ran two group runs with Virginia Happy Trails and the Woodley Ultra Society, and that's literally it for runs longer than two miles. So this was a test of how well slow hiking on the GDT and in Alaska translates to running. Not perfectly is the answer.
I picked up my rental car Thursday night, but made the mistake of getting it from near the airport, just because I'm used to that and assume it's cheaper. That took forever and I didn't get to sleep until midnight. Then I was dumb and worked Friday morning for a few hours. I could have easily taken the whole day off and slept in, and should have. Instead, I left work at noon and was so tired I had to get a Pepsi to stay awake on the drive down. I was able to nap for 30 minutes before the 6PM start, but it was unfortunate that I was so tired already and that I had to drink caffeine on the drive, and have had to drink caffeine at work regularly, so I'd basically blown that wad already and it wasn't going to pack quite the punch when I needed it during the race.
So it started at 6PM, and we had an hour of daylight. I enjoyed that, and then enjoyed passing some people on the first rocky descent in the dark. The course is an out and back, and on the way back, well into the second night, I would stumble across these rocks and seem unable to do anything but walk slowly, stumbling and kicking a rock with each step. On the way down the first time, it was fun to pass people with my (temporary) skill advantage.
I was never running very fast, not even in the stretch to the first or second aid stations. I was clocking more like 4 mph than 5, and by halfway it was closer to 3. My GPS watch is in storage, and Strava acted weird on my phone (I don't think it works well with data saver or battery saver) so I didn't bother recording, so I had only the vaguest sense of how fast (slow) I was going, and didn't care too much as long as I wasn't in pain. The aid stations didn't have gels and didn't have a ton of hot vegan food but were generally OK. I got by on soda, pb&j, and potato chips.
We're past the equinox, so the nights are long. My headlamp situation worked out well (my lamps are still in storage with everything else I own, so I had to borrow some and had to meet new people from whom to borrow them). Chafing was problematic, not in my usual thigh area, but butt cheeks. I'm not used to the humidity, so I may have gotten off fairly easy on this front--good thing I remembered to pick up some Body Glide last weekend.
Anyway, I made the turnaround I'm guessing at around 15 hours. The best, and for my money only view is at a paved summit at mile 49. On the way back the most notable thing was the largest descent, which would have been a lot more fun if I wasn't so beat. Then it was hot for a few hours, but one advantage of the annoying, essentially viewless green tunnel is that we weren't exposed to direct sunlight. Then the second night came and I was stumbling. Luckily by this point I got back to my drop bag with my USB charger so I could get my iPod going again. I listened to almost the entire Slow Burn (great Slate podcast about the Clinton impeachment.) I was much less impressed with Radiolab's Gonad series, though it got better as it went along and the episode about the intersex person who finally learned the truth in their 50's was moving.
So I was able to keep kicking rocks, swearing, sitting down, getting back up, and moving along. I finished in 34 hours. The race website says the race has 23,000 feet of climbing. To me it really only feels like 4 large climbs, but the course is pretty relentless.
I slept some, met a friend for coffee in Staunton, took a dip in the Shenandoah River, and drove home. Glad I did it, but I definitely won't be running the race again because it's not that pretty. I wonder if anything out east will strike me as pretty--I don't like being in the green tunnel. It's all I knew as a kid, and I liked it then, so maybe it will grow on me. Hope so.
I essentially didn't train for it. Since June, I ran the Canadian Death Race, and I ran two group runs with Virginia Happy Trails and the Woodley Ultra Society, and that's literally it for runs longer than two miles. So this was a test of how well slow hiking on the GDT and in Alaska translates to running. Not perfectly is the answer.
I picked up my rental car Thursday night, but made the mistake of getting it from near the airport, just because I'm used to that and assume it's cheaper. That took forever and I didn't get to sleep until midnight. Then I was dumb and worked Friday morning for a few hours. I could have easily taken the whole day off and slept in, and should have. Instead, I left work at noon and was so tired I had to get a Pepsi to stay awake on the drive down. I was able to nap for 30 minutes before the 6PM start, but it was unfortunate that I was so tired already and that I had to drink caffeine on the drive, and have had to drink caffeine at work regularly, so I'd basically blown that wad already and it wasn't going to pack quite the punch when I needed it during the race.
So it started at 6PM, and we had an hour of daylight. I enjoyed that, and then enjoyed passing some people on the first rocky descent in the dark. The course is an out and back, and on the way back, well into the second night, I would stumble across these rocks and seem unable to do anything but walk slowly, stumbling and kicking a rock with each step. On the way down the first time, it was fun to pass people with my (temporary) skill advantage.
I was never running very fast, not even in the stretch to the first or second aid stations. I was clocking more like 4 mph than 5, and by halfway it was closer to 3. My GPS watch is in storage, and Strava acted weird on my phone (I don't think it works well with data saver or battery saver) so I didn't bother recording, so I had only the vaguest sense of how fast (slow) I was going, and didn't care too much as long as I wasn't in pain. The aid stations didn't have gels and didn't have a ton of hot vegan food but were generally OK. I got by on soda, pb&j, and potato chips.
We're past the equinox, so the nights are long. My headlamp situation worked out well (my lamps are still in storage with everything else I own, so I had to borrow some and had to meet new people from whom to borrow them). Chafing was problematic, not in my usual thigh area, but butt cheeks. I'm not used to the humidity, so I may have gotten off fairly easy on this front--good thing I remembered to pick up some Body Glide last weekend.
Anyway, I made the turnaround I'm guessing at around 15 hours. The best, and for my money only view is at a paved summit at mile 49. On the way back the most notable thing was the largest descent, which would have been a lot more fun if I wasn't so beat. Then it was hot for a few hours, but one advantage of the annoying, essentially viewless green tunnel is that we weren't exposed to direct sunlight. Then the second night came and I was stumbling. Luckily by this point I got back to my drop bag with my USB charger so I could get my iPod going again. I listened to almost the entire Slow Burn (great Slate podcast about the Clinton impeachment.) I was much less impressed with Radiolab's Gonad series, though it got better as it went along and the episode about the intersex person who finally learned the truth in their 50's was moving.
So I was able to keep kicking rocks, swearing, sitting down, getting back up, and moving along. I finished in 34 hours. The race website says the race has 23,000 feet of climbing. To me it really only feels like 4 large climbs, but the course is pretty relentless.
I slept some, met a friend for coffee in Staunton, took a dip in the Shenandoah River, and drove home. Glad I did it, but I definitely won't be running the race again because it's not that pretty. I wonder if anything out east will strike me as pretty--I don't like being in the green tunnel. It's all I knew as a kid, and I liked it then, so maybe it will grow on me. Hope so.
 |
| Why am I doing this again? |
 |
| The one view |
 |
| Done |
 |
| Staunton on the way home |
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