DATE: November 15, 2008
LOCATION: McKinney, Texas
My friend Tim Lawson ran this race in 2007, but had some issues and only ran 79 miles in the race. This time he wanted to do better. So after having run a 24 hour race in March, I decided to joing him. The venue had changed (it moved from Grapevine to McKinney).
Tim and I flew to Dallas on Friday and checked into a hotel near McKinney.
We spend the night and got up early to take a bus from a local school to the park where the race was held. When we got there we got our bibs and go ready for the race.
In the months prior I didn't think I needed a ton of training, I thought that I could get by with amount of maarathons I had done. I did an overnight run a few weeks prior to help with training. I now realize that doing a race like this takes a lot of special training and a lot of time. I was not adequatly preparred for this race.
One thing everyone realized very early on was the fact that the one mile loop had a 75 foot clip towards the end. This caused problems later in the night.
When the race started it was nice and cool and sunny. It was the National Champioship 24 hour race that year and it was cool to see some world class runners like Scott Jurek. I started running pretty good. My splits were pretty good. I hit the marathon mark in about four hours. I hit the 50 mile marker in about 8:40 (give or take). I hit the 100k mark in record time of 11:06, and in the first 12 hours I had run 66 miles.
From there things went down hill. Once the sun set the weather got very cold. It dropped to about 25 degrees overnight, and I was feeling sick. Tim had already dropped out. And after 16:25 and 83.45 miles I decided it was smarter to drop. I found a spot and took a few hour nap. After that Tim and I watched as the race finished.
After the awards were handed out Tim and I returned to our hotel room and got some pizza and a good nights rest, before returning back to Portland.
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