The Wapack Water Stop

In this post:

• Pain Update
• The Wapack Water Stop
• Baystate Training Update

Pain Update

In my previous post, I set up an epic battle between myself and that nagging pain in my back and hip which was largely blamed on too much enthusiasm in my running.  What I sort of didn't mention was that running is only a partial contributor to my condition.  I'm also cutting and splitting firewood, and lugging a chainsaw into the woods to cut a trail on our property.

All this bending and lifting and generally using a good portion of my bodily strength in odd positions also takes its toll on my joints.  Holding a chainsaw to cut fallen trees on uneven terrain is a form of backwoods yoga.  It's both a sign of my continued improvement, and also a source of pain and stiffness when I do eventually find my new, improved limits.

So take my whining with a grain of salt.  It comes from a place of pain and fatigue, and my brain isn't always good at remembering all the things I did leading up to the pain and fatigue.  Happily my wife is pretty good at remembering and reminding me how I got into such a state.

Wapack Trail Race Water Stop

Due to various life events, it's been a few years since I've been able to help out at the Wapack trail race.  For those who aren't familiar with it, it's a small but very challenging race that runs out and back on the Wapack trail over four mountain peaks.  About 18 miles in total, with nearly 4,000 ft of up hills and an equal measure of downhills.  I've never actually run the race, but I have run the whole course in shorter sections.  This year I got the call to set up the water stop in the middle of the trail.

Access to this section of the trail is very limited.  In the 9 miles between Windblown ski area and the Mount Watatic parking area, there is only one spot where it's possible to drive a vehicle right up to the trail, and that involves travelling over half a mile of gravel road that is no longer maintained.  A week before the race, I was in the area and scouted out the road.  It had some pretty significant washout:

The basic problem is that it's a narrow road and only half washed out, so one side of my truck has to ride on the portion of road that's still in reasonable condition, while the other side bounces along in the bottom of the washout.  This makes it vulnerable to any high spots in the transition between normal and washed out road.  It was still somewhat passable, but in spots I had to choose between scraping the bottom on the middle of the road, or scraping the running boards on the side of the road.  There were more heavy rains a few days before the race.  I feared further washout may have occurred.

There were two ways to deal with the situation.  One would have been to get a bunch of people together on race morning and carry the 10 gallon coolers full of water on foot up the half mile of steep gravel road.  10 gallons of water weigh about 80 lbs, plus the weight of the empty cooler.  The other way would be to assemble a few volunteers the day before the race with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction, knock down the offending high spots on the road, and use the material to fill in the worst of the low spots.  Suffice to say, we chose the option that involved implements of destruction and use of 4WD-LO.  And so it was that 30 gallons of water was delivered on time on race day to the water stop.

You can add shoveling and raking gravel as well as lifting 80 pound, 10 gallon water coolers into the truck to the list of things I'm doing and then forget about when I complain about pain.

As for the race itself, there was an exciting back and forth battle for the win between a guy who was better up the hills vs a guy who was better on the flats.  They came into the water stop together, and seemingly took a brief truce to refill their water bottles and drink some Gatorade.  That is until the guy who had been a few steps behind coming into the water stop decided to resume the race without warning, causing the previous leader to toss his partially consumed water cup and rush off in pursuit.  I found it rather amusing.  The third place runner came by a number of minutes later.

There's also an interesting anecdote about the leading woman runner.  She took her time re hydrating, and carefully placed her empty cup into the garbage can nearby.  While this was happening a male runner came by, grabbed a water cup on the run, gulped it down, and tossed it on the side of the trail.  The leading woman picked up the tossed cup off the trail and put that in the garbage while sighing something about "Boys!", before casually running off to resume her race.  I expect she went on to win ahead of all other women in the race, and she seemed like she was just having a casual morning out in the woods.

While the race went on I found myself increasingly fidgety and wanting to be in the race.  This race has been on my bucket list for years but I've never been in good enough shape to dare to enter it.  Usually, I get over-enthusiastic in my spring and early summer training, develop over-use injuries, and then put my dreams of the Wapack trail race and fall marathons on hold for another year.  It may be time to make a more determined, more deliberate attempt at this race next year.  It sort of feels like it's reached the point of now or never.

Let me describe fidgety.  When fellow club member Paul came by the water stop for the second time, we started to talk, and rather than hold him up I chose to run about a half mile with him.  Paul is not only running the race, he's also the race director.  He was helping with the road repair the day before the race, helped with race setup the morning of the race, ran all 18 miles and 4,000 feet of elevation gain of the race itself, and helped to clean up afterwards.  He's in his late 60s and I was running pretty fast to keep up with him for that half mile.  I can't wait to be almost 70 so I can have his level of energy.

After jogging back to the water stop, I then ran the same section with Chris, another fellow club member and host of the runrunlive podcast.  After the last runner had gone by, I ran the same section a third time to retrieve a length of yellow "CAUTION" tape we had previously strung up at a fork in the trail to prevent runners from going the wrong way.  In all, my step counter claims I covered several miles working a stationary water stop.

One final anecdote from the race:  One runner came into the water stop with his jaw hanging open in surprise.  How did we get the truck up here?  he asked, after introducing himself as the director of the spring Wapack and Back race.  "Magic" I said, and then went on to tell him about the crew with implements of destruction that was working the previous day.  It seems the spring race chose the option to carry water in on foot.  He was very thankful that they might not have to do that again next year.

After all the runners had gone by, we broke down the water stop and drove to the finish line to partake in pizza and snacks while watching the runners come in.  I had hoped to help with the post race cleanup, but my body had other ideas.  After hours of boundless energy and enthusiasm, I was reminded that my last chemotherapy infusion was less than six months ago.  There is an emerging pattern that if I go well beyond my limits, I will still get what feels like chemo side effects.  So I left before all the runners had finished to go home and lay down for a few hours.

Baystate Training Update

After a few hours of laying down, I felt well enough to get out and go for a six mile run.  As mentioned previously, I signed up to run the Baystate half marathon on October 20th to celebrate the first anniversary of my cancer diagnoses.  All indications are that I will crush this race, but it's likely I'll be taking a nap afterwards.  Not too shabby considering all I've been through in the past year.

Yesterday I woke up at 6am, and was out the door at 7:15 for a 10 mile run and couldn't dilly dally because I had to be back home and cleaned up in time to dial in to a 10am meeting.  (side note: If you're over the age of 50, you can refer to video conferencing as "dialing in", because I am old enough to remember and have used a rotary dial phone).  This was sort of a dry run for race day where I'll have to be up early, drive myself to Lowell, and be ready to race at 8am.  Waking up and running weren't a problem, but there may be some digestive issues I'll need to address.

After my previous post, I expected to have to cut back on my running pace and mileage and focus on strength training exercises for a few weeks.  In reality, I did cut back my pace and mileage for about a week, and did my strengthening exercises once, maybe twice.  After that, I went out and ran 33 miles in a week, which also including some time spent working in the woods with a chainsaw.

Let's put that in perspective.  Prior to this year, I hadn't run 30 miles in a week since 2015.  I've had seven 30-mile weeks so far in 2019.  I have to go all the way back to 2013 to find a week where I ran more than 33 miles in a week.  When I talk about running the Wapack trail race and marathons in the not too distant future, it's not a pipe dream or bluster.  It's simply looking at my current running performances and assuming I'll continue to improve if I keep training and avoid injury.

I'm running better than I have in years.  My Garmin is producing hard data to back that up.  The fact that I'm doing this while continuing to put all sorts of chemicals into my body to fight cancer just blows my mind.  I'm as curious as anybody to see how far and how fast my body can eventually go.