Training Run Report: Chocolate Bunny 50k

The days leading up to this year's Chocolate Bunny were somewhat nerve-wracking. The Park Service had scheduled to do a controlled burn in the area we were to be running, so we didn't know if the usual Chocolate Bunny route would be runnable. As if running a 50k on MMT trails in the dark isn't hard enough, I don't think a cloud of smoke and smoldering tree branches would have worked to the runners' advantage. After careful deliberations with the Forest Rangers and a good rainfall the night prior to the race, Race Director Tom Corris got the email out indicating that the original Bunny route was a go.

The route was to take us from Route 211 East to Powell's Fort Camp, aka miles 58.4 to 89.3 of MMT100. This run is perfect training to get accustomed to running the nighttime portions of the MMT course. You get to run it on fresh legs and rested (if you like), but still in the dark so when you're hallucinating at 3am on race day, you at least know that the dancing gnomes up on Short Mountain were not there during your previous encounter.

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Runners gathered at Powell's Fort Camp and carpooled to the start at Route 211 East. We got in a quick group picture, contemplated how much the temps were going to drop throughout the night, and we were off at 7:45pm.

2009 Chocolate Bunny runners

Robin came up from GA to visit DC and run the Bunny for her MMT training

We had 9.3 miles to cover before our first aide station (by the way, I am noticing I spell it "aide" and not "aid"... is there a difference? Do I care? Do you? Didn't think so...). We had a decent climb for the first 5 miles or so, then some downhills and a nice easy cruise up Crisman Hollow Road, followed by another ascent up Jawbone Gap Trail. Amongst others, I was running with John Cassilly during this section, and previously during MMT Training Run #2 he led us off-course at this very spot. Needless to say, we were very astute to make sure we didn't do any unnecessary miles as we came up Jawbone.

Vince Bowman and Robin Meagher running on one of the few MMT road sections

I got into the first Aide Station of the night (Moreland Gap) in a little over 2 hours. Robin had fallen back a tad, so I waited for her to catch up since I knew Short Mountain was next on the agenda and it's never fun going that alone. I spent probably 15 or 20 mins at the aide station, plenty of time to cool down and realize how cold it actually was outside. I thew on my longsleeve, refilled my hand-held bottle with Hammer Perpetuum (possibly using this as my nutrition during MMT), admired the unusual sight of Kiristin Corris wearing bunny ears and posting to Twitter with race updates, then headed back out onto the trail.

Me to Kirst: "Did I just get twotted?"

Short Mountain is notorious for the ungodly amount of rocks that cover the trail. The climb up Short Mountain isn't difficult in the slightest, but after 8 miles of closely-spaced and deliberately-placed steps (wow, that rhymes) and some serious inversion/eversion of the feet, it is obvious to see why a good number of people drop from MMT immediately following this section.

Heading up Short Mountain

So sue me, it was dark.

A few miles into Short Mountain, I noticed that I was starting to get into a funk. Perhaps it was the combination of the late hour and not moving at my preferred pace, but I knew that I needed to pick up the pace a bit and zone out to get back into the game. I pulled away from the group and was now alone with my thoughts (and my flashlights too, I guess). At one point as I was running along the ridgeline I looked out to the west and saw the lights of the houses in the valley. It reminded me of a skydive I once did at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve in Eloy, AZ - silent, dark, and with a gorgeous view of the lights below in the distance. After a minute of staring out into this, I remembered I was supposed to be running and I got back to it.

Typical view for the night, although the flash lights the trees too much and takes away from the beauty out in the distance.

Coming down off of Short Mountain and into Edinburg Gap for Aide Station #2 of the evening, the crew was noticeably more quiet. Maybe it was the lack of twittering? Perhaps, but at this point I knew I too was starting to feel the late-night drowsiness so I sat down and popped a caffeine pill (along with a ginger root pill and an electrolyte pill - if only I had glowsticks to make the picture more complete). The caffeine seemed to perk me up and the ginger calmed the hints of an uneasy stomach, so off I went to make the ascent up to Woodstock Tower.

Camera flashes in the eyes do not help with night vision, FYI.

The initial climb out of the aide station was a bit slow moving, but once on top of the ridgeline the footing was noticeably easier than Short Mountain and that equated to a much quicker pace. I got into a nice groove, passed a few folks and sang to myself to keep my brain from wandering (the rocks were turning into turtles, so I could definitely tell I was getting tired). At one point I ran into Brad Hinton running towards me. He had been holding down the #2 spot in the race, but apparently had gotten lost and turned around, losing over an hour due to backtracking. After passing a few runners and wondering why there were so many hikers out at this time of night, he finally recognized me as a familiar face and quickly turned himself around and headed in the right direction. He later dropped at Woodstock Gap, the next aide station, but I don't blame him with all the extra mileage he got in.

Aside from the frequent tripping on rocks and dropping of my flashlight and almost losing it as it rolls down the mountain, I made it through Woodstock Gap aide station rather uneventfully. I took another video during the final 5 mile stretch, but forgot that my headlamp looking into the cmaera wouldn't make for the best footage. Oh well, at least there is some commentary to go with it.

Blah blah blah, it's dark and I'm tired.

The final few miles seemed to go on forever, but I eventually came to the final (and steep!) downhill section. I had been able to run down almost all of the downhills of the night without disturbing my ever-healing IT Band, but this section was just too steep so I was forced to walk. I arrived at the Powell's Fort Camp parking lot a little after 3:00am, received my chocolate bunny from Tom (hence the race name), and finished with a time of 7:25. Not my best time for a 50k on MMT Trails, but given the darkness, my healing ITB and Short Mountain, I'd say that I'm pleased with it. It was an absolutely gorgeous night out and the Bunny went off without a hitch.

I enjoyed the spaciousness of my new car and rested for a bit while I waited for Robin to finish up. As you can see from the bloodshot eyes in the shot I took on the drive home, I clearly could have used a bit more rest, but I made it home safely so no complaints. Right now it is way past my bedtime on Sunday night and I should be sleeping to make up for last night, but I have priorities and I need to please my adoring fans (ha!). Thanks to Tom, Kirstin, Kris, Kristine, Walker and all the other volunteers for sacrificing their Saturday night (and Easter morning) so that we could enjoy our jaunt through the woods!

Bloodshot eyes - a byproduct of running, my natural high

MMT Training Run #2

The second MMT Training Run of the year was this past weekend, running south from Camp Roosevelt thru Gap Creek and north up to Woodstock Tower. I have been having some IT band pain in my left knee for the past two weeks, a result of running too fast (if that's possible) at Holiday Lake. I had hoped it would be well enough to run all 25 miles of the training run, but unfortunately that wasn't the case and instead I dropped at mile 16. I like to think that my decision to drop was one based off of sound reasoning for my health rather than the fact that there was beer at the mile 16 aide station. I'll let you be the judge on that one.

The gang

The run itself, when not in pain, was pleasant. I ran with Phil Rosenstein and got to hear stories and strategies from Badwater and his recent trans-American run. Shortly after leaving the first aide station at mile 8 my IT band pain came back and I was having a hard time lifting my left foot over/around the jagged MMT rocks (see below). I knew that backtracking to the aide station would be useless since they would have moved on to aide station #2 by that time (gotta love roaming aide stations), so I just kept moving forward and eventually made it to the next spot to drop, mile 16.

MMT Trails

Most of the day's fun was had after I stopped running and got to hang with Tom Corris and the rest of the drinkers... err... aide station volunteers. Tom found a deer hoof and it was immediately put to good use.

High five for the aide station crew!

Captain Hoof

And then of course the fun continued once we made it back to the finish line. Rick Kerby one-upped Tom's deer hoof and found a mounted toilet seat in the woods. Clearly it needed to be brought back to the parking lot social gathering.

Duty calls

Unsure of how to react to Rick on the crapper

All in all, another good day with the VHTRC crew. Sad that I didn't get to run the whole thing, but I went to physical therapy today and my therapist thinks my IT band will be good to go in no time. Until then I'll just try to enjoy my forced downtime.

Link to Kirstin's pics from the day.
Link to Q's pics from the day.

Training Run Report: MMT#1

The VHTRC (well, mostly Tom Corris) puts on a series of 3 training runs to prepare folks for the MMT100. On Saturday I braved the cold temperatures and ran MMT Training Run #1, a 30.9 mile run that runs approximately the first third of the MMT course from Buzzard Rock south to Camp Roosevelt.


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Now when I say "cold temperatures", keep in mind that I have lived in Maryland all my life, so cold to me is anything below freezing. Only once in a blue moon does it drop below 20 degrees. Well, as we carpooled to the start during the wee hours of the morning, I looked at the thermometer on the inside of the car and it read "-3". Negative friggin 3!

My face when I realized what I was getting myself in to

As everyone was gearing up and primping for the group picture (gotta look good!), the chest strap on my Nathan hydration pack broke right off. I rushed to get it back on somehow, but all I could fashion was a ghetto knot that kept the pack lopsided on my back. By the time I got my pack together, the picture was taken and everyone had been running for almost a minute. I darted off and rushed to get back to the folks that would be running my similar pace. Then came the first climb of the day.

Hooray for MMT climbs!

Elevation profile for the day - 7.7k ft of elevation gain

As we merrily ran along, perspiration turned to ice. Everything, and I mean everything, was frozen.

Notice the frozen eyelashes. And hat. And everything else.

Marlin and Marti on one of the few flat and runnable sections

Robin wanted a pic of her sweet mitts. They were indeed sweet.

Slightly rocky up on top of the ridge

If you haven't been able to tell, I got a little camera happy during my run. I just got a new camera and I figured people prefer seeing pictures and videos over reading. Well, at least my lazy ass does. So from here on out, less typing and more pictures. We froze. We ran. We conquered. Yay.

Gotta love the new skull gaiters

I'm tired. Who wants to stop and snap a picture?

The bulge under my jacket is my hydration pack. The bulge in my pants is... nevermind.

Hunchback of Notre Dame mode (the only way to thaw my frozen pack)

Aide station #2

Note the frozen solid stream.

Roxanne and Robin - my partners in crime for the day

Marti approaching the finish line / fire.

Warmth good. Mmmmm.....

Gary found Moose. Moose was lost on the ridgeline for a while. Oops.

New friends. Great times.

All in all it was a great day. Finished the 31 miles just a tad under 7 hours. Most folks stuck out around and did another 26 miles on Sunday, but unfortunately I had to duck out due to other plans for Saturday night. Either way, these MMT training runs are great prep for the race itself and I am definitely getting more comfortable with the course, both in terms of my abilities and my familiarity of the course.

May 16th. 100 miles. MMT trails. Bring it on!

Training run report - Boyer's Furnace 40-Miler

UPDATE 1/7: New pictures now included. One gross pic, so don't look while eating.

Sunday I had my first taste of the Massanutten Mountain Trail while participating in the Boyer's Furnace 40-miler. I chose to run 31 miles (50k) of the distance to keep my weekly mileage total a bit lower. I'm still ramping up my mileage after taking some time off in December due to injury, so it's important that I don't jump back into the mileage too quickly or I'll risk injury.

I carpooled down with my friend Amy (who recently joined Team Montrail, go Amy!). We left my car at the 31 mile mark then hitched a ride to the start from my coach, Mike Broderick. The usual VHTRC troublemakers were there, and by that I mean Gary Knipling was in attendance and was carrying around a Dallas Cowboys G-string. Why you ask? Well, it's Gary. That should be enough explanation.

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The 20 or so runners gathered for a quick photo and at 7:15 we were off. We headed out of Roosevelt Gap on the Eastern Ridge and started making our way north. The forecast was calling for rain in the low 30's, aka sleet, so I donned my big and bulky rain coat since I figured that would be better than getting hypothermia up in the mountains. After a mile or so I couldn't bare the claminess of my rain jacket so I stashed it on my pack, thus adding an extra pound or so to the 70 oz of water and other miscellaneous crap I was carrying. After I got done strapping my jacket down, I picked the pace up to catch up with the group I had been running with. I passed Amy and, with most of her running lately having been on roads, she ever-so pleasantly admitted "oh man I'm gonna get schooled." How right she was. More on that later.

I got into a comfortable pace with Coach Mike and Tom Corris. I was in good hands since each of them had run MMT 100 at least a few times, so they definitely knew the trails. At every trail intersection I'd get briefed on where we were and what time of day it would be if we were running MMT. It was extremely helpful since I had no idea where I was. Around mile 6 we caught up with Greg Loomis (the RD) and Keith Knipling. At this point we knew something was up. Either we were going out too fast or something was wrong with Keith. Apparently he rolled his ankle so he was taking it easy and slowly navigating his way to the nearest aide station. Oh yeah, the first aide station was at mile 17! Talk about true ultra perseverance.

The view from atop the Eastern Ridge looking west

The five of us continued on together for a bit and eventually Keith backed off. Smart move on his behalf I'd say. The trails were vicious that day. It's a difficult trail to run on the nicest of days due to the sharp jagged rocks, some of which are loose, that cover so much of the ground that it's nearly impossible to actually "run" on many of the sections. It takes the cake as the most difficult trail I've ever seen (although I'm still young and naive, so what do I know?). But to add insult to injury, the trail was covered in many spots with nearly a foot of leaves. Knowing that there were rocks, we had to shuffle through the leaves and feel our way through the footing. This amounted to some blazing fast 20 minute miles!

At Veach Gap, mile 17, we descended into the valley and came to the first aide station. It was unmanned but Greg had gone out in the wee hours of the morning and dropped off the typical ultra fare: some water, soda, pringles, oreos, etc. (just another reason I love ultras - I can eat like a fat kid again!). There was a big ol' bag of double stuffed mint oreos. Mmm mmm mmm. I probably had a few too many, but hey, carbs are carbs! Tom had planted his car at Veach so he dropped there while myself, Mike and Greg continued on to the "dirt road" section of the course which lasted about 6 miles. I say "dirt road" in quotes because, according to my tour guide the RD, there used to be maybe one hunting cabin in this part of the valley and everything was dirt roads. Lately more folks have been purchasing second homes so the roads are getting paved. I could've sworn that we were in a recession and that most Americans drove SUV's... hmm... shows how much I know.

The dirt/paved roads were runnable until we hit the climb up onto the Western Ridge at Woodstock Tower. Sweet jebus that was a long climb (see the elevation profile below). Thankfully this was an ultra and running uphill is a no-no. Unfortunately walking fast uphill is no easy task either. The burning hip flexors showed us how out of shape we were after our holiday hibernating. Ouch.


As we headed south from Woodstock Tower we were presented with gorgeous views of the valley and also the Eastern Ridge that we just tackled. Not to say we didn't have similar views from the other side, we did, I just forgot to mention it. Most of the time I was up on the ridges I was playing a game with myself to see how long I could take in the view before needing to get my eyes back on the technical footing. I think my longest streak was about 1.5 seconds. Stupid leaves. The last 8 miles were similar to the first 17: technical, leafy and slow. When we hit mile 31 at Edinburg Gap, I was glad I had planned ahead and didn't have to run the last 9 miles. It had been a blast, but I was beat and I had gotten my fair share of time-on-feet and technical footing practice. It took us 7:18 to run the 50k distance. Definitely not a PR for me, but I needed those long, slow, technical miles to prepare for the upcoming ultra season, and you can't get better MMT training than running the MMT trails.

Coach Mike dropped with me and we sat there enjoying the aide. I was waiting for Amy to finish and figured she'd be about 30 minutes to an hour behind us, so there was plenty of time to chill and enjoy being out in nature. That's when Carter, another runner who had dropped earlier at mile 17 I believe, came up and asked if I was waiting for Amy. "Yeah." "Oh, did you hear what happened to her?" "F*ck." Remember when I passed Amy earlier and she said she was gonna get schooled? The girl is psychic (or maybe psycho, haven't quite wrapped my finger around this one yet). Around mile 6.5 she tripped and fell on either a sharp rock or a small tree that was recently cut down. She gashed her left knee open down to the bone. Luckily there were some runners 2 minutes behind her and they called an ambulance and arranged a meeting spot. Unfortunately that meeting spot was down the mountain at Habron Gap and it took them about 2 hours to make the hike down.

Getting some much-needed medical attention

Lesson to all you kiddos - watch your step.

I bolted down to the hospital expecting to see some poor, pathetic soul lying there all disappointed that she got rocked (literally) by the trail. Instead, this is what I saw:

Thumbs up if you got schooled by MMT trails!

She was in great spirits. Then again, she was getting some pretty sweet drugs and half her body was numb from the surgery, so I'd probably be in in a good mood too. Thankfully there was no bone, muscle or ligament damage. The tights she was wearing kept everything around her knee nice and together during the long hike down the mountain and they kept debris from getting into the open wound. The docs stitched her up and now her leg is immobilized for 10 days while the wound heals. After that the stitches will come out and she should be good as new and back to running like nothing ever happened. She's even still planning on running her first 100-miler, Rocky Raccoon, which is just 5 weeks away. The girl is a trooper, that's for sure! I'll be pacing her for that race, so I've got my work cut out for me (aka I'm the stump detector).

Amy's graphic illustration of how the day went

All in all it was an action-packed day. Up at 4am on little sleep, 2 hour drive, then 31 miles of super-technical footing and a little more than 6,500 feet of altitude gain in 7:18. Top that off with an unfortunate but hilarious trip to the hospital and the day definitely earned it's spot in the books. I'm still amazed at all the hospitality that was shown by the group of runners that helped Amy down the mountain, called EMS, and followed her to the hospital to make sure she was alright. The ultra community has some extremely caring and thoughtful individuals. The more ultras I do the more I realize this.

Thanks to everyone who sacrificed their run for the safety of others, and thanks for the good company from those that I had the pleasure of running with! With that, I'll leave you with a video depicting one of the many quotes of the day:

"It's just a flesh wound!"

How could I forget?

Apparently my brain is also in rest-mode right now too because I somehow forgot to mention the AWESOME news from last week...

I GOT IN TO THE MMT 100!

The number of applicants was way up from years past, so I got extremely lucky in being selected with this year's lottery system. Mark your calendars. May 16th I'll be running my first 100-miler! 5 months to train... it's on!

(currently seeking crew and/or a pacer. let me know if interested.)

MMT runners starting their journey (Photo: tomsperduto.com)