Greenland 50K Trail Race

MK Ambassador Josh Fuller checks in with this race report:

Greenland 50K

It was the morning of April 19 and it looked to be shaping into a wonderful day of running.  My girlfriend, Cassie, and I had rolled out of bed at 5am to make the drive from Denver to just south of Castle Rock for the 8am start of the Greenland 50K.  It was calm and there seemed a bit of chill in the air.  Maybe foreshadowing the punishment to come, maybe nothing but another spring morning in Colorado.

Needless to say, I was a bit nervous.  This really came as no surprise as I find myself nervous before every race, but the feeling seemed amplified this morning.  I hadn't gotten very good sleep the whole week, and I wasn't in the sort of shape that I should have been.  There was absolutely nothing I could do about it now, so I focused my energy on just going for a little 32 mile jog, with the added bonus of having a number pinned on my shorts.

Before every race I set both primary goals and secondary goals, and this one was no exception.  Firstly, I was going to finish in less than 5 hours.  I had done some research and knew that if I had a good race, I should be able to place in the top 15 out of 113 runners signed up to start.

It was all a blur, but I managed to put Vaseline in all the appropriate places and soon found myself at the starting line, ready to go.  The magic words were given and the whole pack lit out like a herd of stampeding cattle.  The course consisted of four 8 mile loops with the finish right where the start was.  There was an aid station at the halfway point of the loop and another at the end of the loop.

The first lap went well and seemed to fly by rather quickly.  I was wearing a new pair of shoes and I could feel a minor blister beginning to develop on my foot after the first 8 miles.  At the culmination of one lap I didn’t see Cassie with my drop bag and a change of shoes, so without even stopping I headed out for lap number two.   The second lap went pretty well as my body was still pumping out adrenaline from the start.  My foot was starting to really bug me at the end of the second lap, so I was elated when I saw Cassie with my other shoes.  I did a super quick change and I was headed for lap three.  I wasn’t at the aid station for three minutes before I was on my way.  A quick glance at my watch and it said 2:18:00.  A whole 12 minutes ahead of schedule and 16 miles under my belt.

I rode a pretty good runners’ high to the aid station at mile 20, but a rather mean headwind coupled with the uphill first half of the lap was beginning to take its toll.  After mile 20 I slowed down considerably and started to walk the up hills.  At the end of the third lap, mile 24, I wasn’t looking forward to the rolling uphill/headwind section that was to come and walked a fair amount of the front half of the loop.  I was getting pretty worn out and with only one lap to go, and knew that the 5 hour goal was going to be close.  I knew that it was going to be super close, maybe even unattainable.  I pushed into the aid station at mile 28, got some water, and talked myself into running when my legs weren’t really having it.  The last 4 miles were painful as I was running about 8 minutes per mile trying to make up for lost time.  As the finish line neared, I passed a couple of people, a couple of people passed me, and with 2 miles to go I decided that there was no way I was going to make 5 hours.  I told my legs that if they had run this far already they might as well run on in to the finish line.

As I crossed the finish line and glanced up at the official race clock I noticed what I thought was an error.  No, that couldn’t be right.  My official finishing time was 4 hours 59 minutes and 45 seconds.  There is always good mixed with the bad when setting goals and I learned that I finished 24^th out of 85 finishers, and 3^rd in my age group.  Not the top 15 I had hoped for, but there’s always next year.