Recap of Tillamook Burn 50 Miler

 I honestly put my best foot forward in training for this race. I rarely missed a workout and I did weeks of Hill prints and back to back long runs on the weekends, I even had a trial race couple months before to dial in my nutrition and my equipment. All that said and done, I did get a cold the week before the race and leading into the race, I woke up that Saturday and that was the best I’d felt in five days, but I was still at 75% of healthy. I generally get nervous for races and I get excited/nervous feelings, but, I didn’t have that going into this race. My only thought was “I’m guess I’m going to go run 50 miles tomorrow“.

I was apathetic to the race and all the effort that I put into getting there. I woke up that morning and went through the motions and even at the beginning of the race I was not focusing on how I wanted to run. All I could think of was getting to the finish line. I’ve never felt so indifferent to erase.

The course started off beautiful crossing a river into a single track. The group I was in immediately started walking at the single track and I feel that kind of set the pace for me that day. I was fine walking. I didn’t really have a desire to leapfrog people. The Tillamook rainforest is gorgeous and green and lush and everything I thought it would be. What I failed to understand is that within a rainforest you can only really be in that area. You don’t see a mountain up ahead of you. You don’t see in the distance really. There are a few times on the course you do but they are few are far between. 24 miles into it I felt like I’d seen the scenery for a long enough. I don’t know if that was just my indifference to the course or if I would’ve felt that way in higher spirits and with a better attitude.

The second or third aid station goes to a big parking lot and honestly I almost ran out of that aid station the wrong direction because the course markers weren’t super obvious to me and I literally went through that aid station and had a similar issue where the course cut back just slightly and then followed a new trail, but after being on the trail for 8-9 hours, I wasn’t really sure which way I’d come from or which way I should go. Throughout the entire race there were at least five times where I double backed the trail just to check the course markings and that’s something I haven’t experienced on a race before. They had arrows going in the direction that you should go, but they often were paired with arrows from a different section of the course going the opposite direction and this just made it really confusing. I think they could’ve added mile markers onto the arrows just to give you a little bit of reference to which way you needed to go. There was one intersection that definitely needed a marker and it did not have one. It crossed a motor cross track and it’s entirely possible that someone swiped it as a joke, but it did create some questions and uncertainty for the course. This event had less than 150 people for the 50 mile course which is pretty small and over 50 miles it’s easy to get spread out and that also lead to uncertainty because you didn’t always see a person ahead of you or behind you. In fact there were periods of 30+ minutes that I didn’t see a single soul around me. That definitely took away from the right race feelings that you normally get. Although the race was somewhat friendly for support people, friends and family you didn’t have any of that support on the trail. That’s not uncommon for a trail race but at least you usually have your fellow runners. I would say that this race was well organized, but there was definitely areas that could be approved on. I think the course markings definitely needed to be more obvious.

The aid stations were well stocked, and I definitely appreciated that. I will say that it is a rainforest and in Oregon, which means that there can be tough weather and it just happens that for the 50 mile race stay it was pretty consistent rain and I saw a lot of people very cold and in a lot of layers. So if you are planning on doing a race in that area of the US highly recommend lots of layers, giving your support crew dry layers and having things like hand warmers readily available to you it could always go the other way where you actually need less or lighter clothes, but it definitely taught me many lessons on this course.

All in all I learned that training is very important but recognizing your motivation as training progresses is even more important because at the end of my training for this race I felt very burnt out. I think I made several mistakes in my training for this race. I think that my mileage and my running workouts were sufficient and effective but my nutrition and recovery lacked. And as much as we want to believe that our running workouts are the most important thing leading into a race recovery and nutrition are equally important and actually may have a bigger impact than just the running training.

With every race, there’s always a new lesson and new things discovered about yourself and I definitely took away many lessons from this race that I hope to improve upon for my next race. I’ve also taken over a month to reflect and recover and that’s been helpful as well.

I think I sustained a small stress fracture during the race and I think my nervous system was exhausted. I also think I dealt with a little over training syndrome, which has made getting back to running very difficult and even the recovery I feel from strength workouts a challenge.

Slowly, my body is starting to recover and to return to normal and it’s just taking it one day at a time. I’m trying to take lessons away from my experience and improve my nutrition and really develop a diet that works for me and yeah. It’s disappointing to have a bad race and it’s disappointing when you feel like you put in the training and your body doesn’t respond on race day. But it’s the reality of being a runner.