Black Hills 100: Good then less good

I ran the Black Hills 100 last weekend. It was fine. Nothing extraordinary, just fine. I've liked the Black Hills ever since my sister and I drove across the country after I graduated high school. Badlands National Park is quite impressive if you ever get a chance. Mt. Rushmore and Devil's Tower, sure, I guess, go once in your life if you want.

It's a Friday-Saturday race, so I flew to Rapid City, SD on Thursday. My buddy DYK picked me up at the airport and dropped me off at the Sturgis Downtown RV Park that served as race check in, and was walking distance from the start at the Sturgis city park. DYK offered to let me stay with him and M at their AirBnB, but I declined, then felt stupid about it lying in my tent in the rain, but then met some other nice camping runners so it all worked out. I had a little time to walk around Sturgis, and I wasn't blown away. The hills in the distance are pretty, but I mistook the highway through town for Main Street, which is one block off and slightly more pedestrian-friendly. The bars (saloons) are gigantic, designed to feed hundreds (thousands) of people at a time during the rally; they didn't really strike my fancy. I got some Chinese food and went to bed. 

The race started at the very civil hour of 10AM on Friday. That let me get almost 10 hours of sleep and leisurely get ready for the race (i.e. poop) in the morning. The first mile was a concrete bike path to Fort Meade, where we joined the Centennial Trail, a 111-mile route built to commemorate the Centennial of South Dakota becoming a state (Oh, hi, yes, in 1889 the Dakotas became states. Adding states is a thing we can indeed do. Hint, hint. So people have representation in the legislature. You know, like in a republic.) We were quickly treated to great ridgetop views of Bear Butte to the north. 

The weather remained overcast and cool for most of the day, and I started out on a roughly 5 mph pace. DYK caught up to me around mile 16, and we ran together for a bit before he dropped me around mile 26. I started thinking around mile 20 that even though I was running well, the miles weren't adding up that fast mentally. My stomach stopped digesting the race-provided sports drink Tailwind, so I switched to water (thank goodness there was finally ice at one of the aid stations) then grabbed a pack of Gu drink tabs and pounded the quart of yellow Powerade I had in my drop bag. (Note to self: put yellow Power/Gatorade at every drop bag location! You know this.) 

 We were mostly on the Centennial Trail the entire time but for about 14 miles (31 to 45) the trail became motorized, and the wide muddy and rocky road was a lot less fun to run on. Right around the time it got dark it rained for a few minutes, and it was cold enough to need to put my rain jacket on, but it only lasted for a few minutes. DYK and I passed each other about a mile from the turnaround, so I was excited about that, since if by some miracle I could make up a half hour we could run together and I could get the benefit of pacing. I felt pretty good at the turnaround, drinking a bunch of ginger ale (by this point, as in most races, my primary source of both hydration and fuel). Changing socks also felt delightful. I filled one bottle with my Powerade, and appreciated the no nonsense command from the aid station volunteer to chug the remainder.

 

 

And then I ran back in the other direction. The climb out of the turnaround was slow. The road section was slow. I remembered to take a couple caffeine pills, which I think helped me to hallucinate less and have fewer endless nonsensical thought loops during the night. I listened to Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright and enjoyed it.

Back around mile 74, my second time at my drop bag, the sun came up. I changed shoes, dropped my lights and my long-sleeve shirt and continued on. I was spending more and more time at aid stations, and my pace was becoming closer to 3mph than 5mph. The sun coming up didn't immediately rejuvenate me, in fact I felt like my caffeine wore off and my thoughts started going loopy for a bit. Changing my shoes turned out to be a bad idea, since my new shoes (La Sportiva Jackals) made my heels bleed.

 I trudged on. I wasn't getting passed by many people, so everything was fine. I passed back and forth with one 100-mile-virgin who was also no-crew no-pacers for a few aid stations, and then ran much of the last 10 miles with JL, whom I camped with Friday night. 

 

I finished in 28 and a half hours. I told M the day before the race I'd be ecstatic with anything under 26 hours and not disappointed with anything under 28. Given that the race is actually 105 miles rather than 100, I'm pretty happy with my performance. I really do wish that I could run a decent second half: if I can do a 12-hour first half, I should be able to do a 14-hour second half, right? But given that my previous four 100-milers in a row all took me 34 hours, I think 28.5 isn't too bad.

Next up in 100-milers is Mogollon Monster in September. It's rugged, and the course used to be more like 106 miles. Going under 26 there would be excellent.

 

Notes: 

• Should you run this race? Maybe if you're from the Midwest and this is one of the closest races with real vert. If want a difficult, small-town, out and back race in the mountains in the middle of the country in June, than Bighorn is better than Black Hills on nearly every dimension.
• Pre-race communication could be improved, even (especially?) in a pandemic year. Both me and my friend sent unanswered e-mails in the months before the race.
  
• Aid stations could be improved. 
• Ice would be heavenly (multiple aid stations seemed car accessible and/or were based out of big RVs, such that ice could be brought in easily and kept cool.) 
• Boiled potatoes and salt in addition to just potato chips for more substantive offerings.
  
• As I say after nearly every race, all flavors of ramen noodles taste nearly identical, so why not go with the one flavor that's vegetarian? (Soy Sauce)
• Please don't run out of size small finisher shirts. Clearly we provided that info at registration and got a starters shirt in the appropriate size; just use that same info for finishers shirts?  
  
• Kegs were great, but having literally no food suitable for vegetarians at the finish line was weak.
  
• The scenery was nice, but it wasn't spectacular. I was expecting better based on my previous roadtrips across South Dakota. The coolest parts of the Black Hills (to me) is the granite spires that pokes out of the top of them. We didn't go near any of that. Maybe if the race was a point to point instead of an out and back? I'm no expert on the area (clearly you'd have to go around the Black Elk Wilderness) but the Centennial Trail does just keep going south for many more miles from where we turned around... 
  
• I really need to put yellow Gator/Powerade in every dropbag.
• Pacers. Pacers are good. I just did a silly statistical analysis, and pacers save me an average of 2 hours and 40 minutes, controlling for distance and elevation gain. More on that in a later post.
• If you're a no-frills (no crew, no pacers) racer such as myself, this race is actually doable without renting a car.  The RV campground and race check in is a half-mile from the race start and finish. Uber/Lyft didn't seem to want to work when I arrived at the Rapid City airport, but that may have been a fluke. Even if not, there are shuttles available, and taxi services in Rapid City and all over the Black Hills if you plan ahead, and Lyft worked from Rapid City to the airport on my way home no problem. All this was much cheaper than renting a car given current rental car prices.
  

 After the race I stayed with M and DYK in Deadwood. It's very touristy (t-shirt shops and gambling), but they have beer. Sunday I caught a ride to Rapid City, which has a pretty nice walkable downtown. I got some Nepalese food and bought a book from the local bookstore before flying home.

The Van Buren Boys of Rapid City