Day 3,683 —Sorting Through the Footage and Reflections on the Berryman 50 (55) 2024! Part 2 —

 I felt sore today but had no problem starting my run. Of course, my big toe still had a cut, but I barely felt the pain when I put my foot down.

I was trying to decide if taking a salt bath would have much of an effect, or if I should spend less time on my feet until my toe heals, but what does that really mean? I cannot stop running, and I have been taking it easy and recovering all month. I did the marathon not too long ago (less than a month) and the 100 miles about 6 weeks ago, and I have felt like I spent all my time after the 100 mile recovering for the marathon, and now I have been recovering for this 50+ miles.

Reflections on the Berryman 50 (55) Part 2: Snakes on the Path

Lap 2

         I wasn’t in a hurry to start, but seeing Joel run off without me made me feel like I needed to catch up immediately. I started doing the math in my head, figuring out how long it should take me to catch up. I filled up my water bladder and put in some Nuun tablets. I had been mostly just drinking water, but I needed something else. It was getting hot, and I didn’t want to have a repeat experience of the Marathon.

         I immediately started strong in the second lap, only to start feeling more and more dehydrated. I slowed down and drank more, but I wasn’t loving the taste of the Nuun tablet and finished my hydration pack with 3 more miles to go before the next aid station. My distance was confused because I finished the first lap around 28.5 miles, so I was trying to remember how close the first aid station should be.

When I realized how many miles I had left without water, I kept my pace slow. No reason to get even more dehydrated.

I ate chips and spent a minute drinking a lot of water and ginger ale. I was back in good spirits and talked to another runner who had watched my last video and had run in the Ozark Foothills with me  recently. He was super encouraging and talked about how he had his sweat tested and now has been using a hydration substance called “the right stuff” that has a lot more salt in it.

         I first thought about how much I used to see salt stains on my clothes and hats from my sweat, but I don’t see those types of stains anymore, so I thought I was swearing less because of how much less salt I am regularly eating, but now I am not sure. I went from being very hydrated to hitting the point where I thought I kept pushing it a little longer, I would end up getting sick.

        

         Now, I wonder if I would even catch up to Joel at all, and then a couple of miles before the Brazil Creek aid station, I found him. We were about 12 miles from the end of the race, and I was in good spirits having caught up with him and had finally caught my second wind and was feeling hydrated. Yet, why not finish the race with Joel? We had driven together, otherwise, I would be waiting at the trailhead until he showed up, and at this point, I wasn’t going to finish that much faster than him. Maybe 30 minutes, maybe a little more, but not much.

         So I took it easy and walked with Joel. He was killing me on the walking, so I ended up having to push it a little on the downhills and straights. This was Joel’s only second 50-mile race and his longest distance ever with the added miles. We walked/jogged together for the next hour before we were joined by two other runners: Dalton and Andrew. They kind of joined our struggle bus, and we talked and Andrew shared some of his recent accomplishments. He recently got a new job, graduated from college, and got married. He was having a good month. Dalton was from Arkansas and spent a lot of time at Boal Shoals Lake, which I used to frequent as a kid.

We all stuck together and paced each other up until the last mile when Andrew was like we got to run it in! And so we did, pushing it almost all the way to the parking lot. Andrew and Dalton finished together, and I waited a few seconds for Joel, but he wanted to record my finish, so we didn’t end up running it in together.

I finished at 12:34:02, which I thought was especially awful since I thought I had finished at 10:09:00 last year but I was so wrong. Last year I finished at 10:45:41 and the year before that I was at 11:22:00, so still my slowest time but not as bad as I thought.