Westerwald 50K Race: After Actions Report
Our tears have been shed, but Jesus has wiped those tears away and provided comfort that passes all understanding. Karen we will miss you…
50K Race After-Actions Report
The LT Rengsdorf posted the results of the 50K run last Thursday on their website. There was a total of 108 runners, 17 for the 31K run, 91 for the 50K run.
Out of the 91- 50K runners, 55 turned in their finishing times at the end of the race (it was optional). Based on these results, my 6:23:34 finished placed me 43rd out of 55 – so I indeed was not last :-)
The fast times (recorded):
Male: 4:32:30
Female: 5:19:30
That said and done let me remind you that this is not a competitive race, it was all about finishing and having a good time.
I didn’t overly train for this race, if anything I was less prepared than the previous two years. I did do pretty good with my pre-race routine. I tapered, sort of, reducing my mileage the last two weeks. I got a couple good nights sleep the days prior to the race and ate pretty healthy.
We left a bit earlier to drive to Rengsdorf the night before, which had us eating dinner by 7:30 p.m. instead of an hour later like last year. I think contributed to a good nights sleep the night before the race.
I ate a smaller breakfast than normal two hours before the race, but drank a lot of water – I think helped get me off to a good start. I pushed a little harder the first half of the race and started drinking sooner. I did get behind on taking in calories which caused me to crash around kilometer 33-34. I recovered well by taking in a lot of calories and was able to continue running for much of the race.
I didn’t have any cramping and, although my quads were unhappy from all the steep downhill’s, they held up pretty well. I attribute this in part to taking a salt tablet fortified with calcium and magnesium every hour. I did miss an hour, whereas it is interesting to note that I crashed in the hour after this – I don’t know how much this contributed to my wall.
Under lessons learned: I think for future races I need to start taking in calories sooner. I also need to experiment more with the salt tablets – they seem to help.