Heartland 50 Recap

It's done and man am I glad it is.  Saturday at 6pm we started the race and just before 1:15am on Sunday it ended.  I wasn't able to run as fast as I wanted but I was still very happy with the race overall.  It's always good to have goals when you go into a race but sometimes you learn very quickly that you may have to reevaluate on change on the fly.  When the race started, the plan was for Josh, Brandon and I to hang together and try to be right around 8min/mi pace.  2 other guys hopped into our group and were running with us.  One of them even started pushing the pace abut 4 miles in and opened up a 400m lead on us pretty quickly.  I wasn't concerned as it I knew 50 miles was a long way.  We ended up catching him at 12 and he hung with us until 17 and then we never saw him again.  From the very beginning my heart rate was higher than it should have been for going the pace we were going.  It concerned me a little but I knew there was nothing I could do about it so I tried not to worry about it.  I did take a 5 Hour Energy 45 min before the race so I'm wondering if that had something to do with it.  By mile 10 I was beginning to feel a little crampy in my left hamstring. Through all of my training I had never cramped or got even close to it.  I was taking in endurolytes every 45-60 min so cramping wouldn't be a problem.  Brandon started cramping a little bit at 20 miles so he backed off the pace.  Josh and I continued on without any problems until we hit 29.  Right before 29 I felt like my right quad was starting to cramp, as I slowed to a walk to try to stretch it out it completely locked up on me.  It took me 2 or 3 minutes to work it out so we could keep moving.  By the time we got to the mile 33 aide station I hadn't had any more problems so we just refilled water bottles and kept moving.  From 33 to 42 is probably the toughest part of the course as it is constantly up and down.  Josh and I stayed together until 38 when we began to seperate a little.  I was still worried about my quad cramping again and didn't want to stop at all.  Josh thought he was going to have to stop at 42 for a quick bathroom break and so I just went ahead by myself at 38 and didn't look back.  I was able to maintain a pretty quick pace over the last 12 with my last 5 averaging 7:50/mi or so.  When all was said and done Manhattan guys swept the top 4 spots in the 50 miler.  I ran 7:14, Josh ran 7:32, Brandon came in 7:56 and Barry was 8:53.  Great experience and even though I may have told the guys differently after the race, I'm not ruling out the possibility of doing a 100 at some point.  Props goes out to Dave Krishock, Aaron Avery and Frank Dayton of Manhattan for finishing the 100 and earning their belt buckle.  It was Dave's 5th and Aaron and Frank's 1st.  Also, thanks goes out to my Dad and brother Luke for helping us through the aide stations. Made things a lot easier.