Pigtail's FlatAss

Wow, I'm feeling like a slacker. I guess it's time to get a bit caught-up in the blogworld.

After Hellgate, I took 2 weeks completely off from running. Sascha and I were both getting that little running itch by the end. So I decided to run Pigtail's FlatAss 50k last Saturday. It's a great, fun little flatass near Seattle, out and back on a rails-to-trail, 22 miles paved, 9.74 miles dirt. I ran it last year and enjoyed myself, so thought it would be fun again - a great cruiser to get back into running.

It started out easy enough in the cold rain as Sam Thompson, Brock Gavery, Bruce Hoff, Alex Swenson, and I just kinda cruised along. By mile 9, Alex and I had unintentionally gapped everyone else while chatting about geeky stuff like running. About mile 12, Alex had to stop to pee, so I continued on and knew I would see him soon.

I made it to the 15.87 mile turn around in 1:59, turned around and started the nice oh-so-gentle downhill back, with Alex about a minute back. I kept cruising along solo, stopping at mile 22.6 to re-fill my bottle and noticed Alex was still about a minute back. Hm, this is just a flatass, but maybe I'll throw in a little tempo to see what happens. So I did for 3 miles, looked back, and Alex was still there. I slowed a little for 1 1/2 miles, then decided to run 1 hard mile. Alex was still there.

With only 3 1/2 miles to go and about a minute lead, I figured I kinda had to go for the W. So I slowed a bit for the next mile to make sure I had a kick and Alex definitely reeled me in quite a bit. I picked it up again for the last 2 1/2, ran well for 1 1/2, then started really hurting the last mile. I was weaving, even had some tunnel vision going on - a first in a race, er, flatass, for me. Anyway, I weaved my way across the finish line in 3:52:18, a full 18 seconds ahead of Alex. I was dizzy and definitely a bit nauseous. Van cleared a chair for me right as I fell into it.

Eventually I felt good enough to limp to my truck and change out of my soaked clothes, then go back to the finish to cheer on other flatassers, eat some tasty chicken soup, and collect my really cool first place handmade pig finisher's medal and piggy bank - complete with 31 cents. Very awesome!

So, I didn't meet my goal of running an easy, controlled long run. Usually I'm good at holding back in training races, but I was completely lame and let my competitiveness get the better of me. So my body responded by being super-gimped up for the next 3 days. This was especially bad since Christmas Camp started on the 24th. But today, 4 days after, I'm feeling better. Lesson learned...again.

Sisters got about 8" of snow the past 24 hours.

Coming soon - more on Christmas Camp!