2024-06-01
tl;dr wet.
This was my first trail race after last year's UTMR DNF and continuing struggles with a mystery injury in my side. That was a blessing in disguise, as it forced me to start going to the gym. I now believe what I've heard many times: you can't just run, you have to do strength and flexibility (easiest for me via yoga) work too. This is doubly true now that I'm officially Getting Older. My side still feels strange sometimes (still no diagnosis - quadratus lumborum issues from slumping at my computer all these years?) but it doesn't seem to be limiting me, anymore.
Running volume dropped a lot, but the spring was a great success with the new base of regular strength work and yoga/stretching, and a focus on shorter, faster runs. I also intentionally lost 5-6 kg to see if that might also help avoid injury. I was able to improve on previous bests over shorter distances: I PR'd my half marathon by a couple of minutes and our SOLA relay race team did very well.
I ran 12 yards (50 miles) in 12 hours at the Witiker Backyard Ultra, which isn't a result I'm happy with for that specific event, but I was very happy to have managed the distance without anything worse than very sore quads (I hadn't been doing many hills or long runs, and the 100m up and down on each lap was a lot in that condition). I also am sure I broke my PR for average calories consumed per hour during a race, downing an entire pizza and lots of other stuff during the interlap breaks. (For next time: bring more changes of clothes and a sleeping bag - the roughest part was getting cold during the breaks, sitting around in a sweaty shirt or having to quickly layer up and down)
Two weeks out from the race I had a fantastic weekend climbing steep, at times rugged trails to the Niederbauen Kulm. I very much hoped that this, and the backyard, would sufficiently brutalize my quads to make it through the 4000m of climbing over 80km during the Mozart Ultra.
I thoroughly enjoyed some great staring out the window on the epic Railjet journey from Zurich to Salzburg. I grabbed some dinner and (along with everyone else in Salzburg, it seems) some food at the grocery store in the train station. It was a gorgeous walk through to the city to the race start area, beneath a massive castle on a cliff. Jordan booked a sweet room very close by and I got back to my dirtbag roots with a sleeping bag on the floor.
I got up early to collect my bib - before 5 but it was already light. It was raining.
We got on the shuttle bus and milled around the start. It was raining. I chatted to a friendly Australian, running his first longer-than-marathon race. Soon we were off! Jordan and I stayed mostly together for the first part.
I should have taken the cue from the people around me, who were all wearing shorts, or tights, but I stupidly left my useless Inov-8 "Ultrapants" on. I bought these for their only purpose, to technically satisfy the "rain pants" gear requirement for UTMB. I had thrown them in my bag when, last minute, the Mozart race added a long pants requirement. They do not offer any warmth or rain protection. Maybe the tiniest bit of wind protection before they get soaked, which is nearly immediately.
The course had been rerouted due to the terrible weather. I don't remember too much of the first part of the course, except that it was raining. I hit my big low going up the biggest climb to the Schafberg. I think I pushed too hard before this, and ran out of energy. Jordan blew by me near the end of the climb, having done a much better job on pacing an nutrition. I revived at the top with the help of some tomatoes with salt (who would have thought, but those really appealed!).
At the drop bags at Fuschl, I changed my socks and finally lost the ultrapants, which felt great. I actually felt cozy for a bit afterwards. I saw Jordan for the last time as he left here. I was feeling good on the next section - from the course map it looks like the big climbs are done and you'll be at lower, easier elevations. For a while, the trail skirts the lake and is very flat and easy - this plus miscalculation on my part as to how much was left made me overconfident. I was still raining, though.
It got muddier and rollier. Stretch of road were punctuated with some exquisitely squidgy sections through fields and forested hills.
Then, we hit some really gnarly muddy downhill sections.
Check out this Video of a very full stream on one of the descents. There were a couple of places here where a bad slip would have meant falling into this river.
On the second-to-last climb, things got real. It was getting late in the day, and the wind and rain picked up. I really started to feel cold, to the point that I was worried that if I stopped eating, I'd really be in trouble. The wind was blasting coming through a notch before the last technical descent. The long descent was a whole other kind of muddy. Mud running like hot fudge. Streams at capacity, some full-on wading required. On one of the rockier and steeper traversing downclimbs, a runner in front of me slipped and sobbed a bit before continuing.The potential danger of the situation kept me very focused and (relatively) fast on this section. This felt a bit like mountaineering where you really can't afford to stop or fall (I was totally soaked, it was getting dark) and getting down fast is the way to safety.
Once not as threatened at the bottom, I slowed quite a lot for the remaining few km. Luckily the last climb and descent was mostly stairs, except for one short but very muddy downhill section.
We popped out in the old town and before you know it I was in the shower! I finished in 13:10 or so, Jordan about half an hour before. It was still raining, as it had been since the race started (and, judging by how saturated the ground was, a lot before that).
I was tired, of course, from the distance and the extra mud antics, but the only injury was a gnarly blister which I'd vaguely noticed early on but had forgotten about. It got infected over the next few days, to the point that I couldn't really walk on that foot! Some disinfectant cream from the doctor did the trick - next time wash and disinfect this sort of thing better.
