Afton 25km Trail Run July 3rd
 
A Race Report by Deirdre Hassett
A few years ago on a road trip in Cuba, my friend and I used to play a game tactfully called ‘Spot the Big Irish Potato Head’. This involved sitting in a bar and picking out people with hearty peasant features, milky white legs and livid scarlet shoulders and nose. When they opened their mouths, we got points for correctly identifying the sons of Fionn McCumhaill. No points if they were wearing a county hurling jersey.   Well might I laugh now. I’m not sure of my own distant heritage but I certainly look 100% Irish. Maybe not a daughter of the Fianna, but I’m short and built like a milkmaid; more importantly I have no capacity for tolerating heat and I sweat like a fat man in a cake shop.
Sweating is not only an occupational hazard here in Minnesota, it’s a fixation. There are long discussions at every run about how much one is sweating, who is sweating the most, whose clothes are the sweatiest, etc. There is probably some inbuilt method to this as hydration is crucial – taking in electrolytes is not just performance enhancing, it’s vital to stay going. The summer temperature in Minnesota veers into the thirties and the humidity routinely into the seventies, giving a perceived temperature which is higher still and which makes you feel like you’re running in a sauna. Apparently, as you acclimatise to the heat, you sweat more. Happily, I’ve teamed up with some exceedingly sweaty ultra runners, including the two Igors (both Russian) and Eric (of Nordic lineage) for my weekend long trail runs who all sweat impressively and grumble incessantly about the heat. It’s all relative – you just need to find someone marginally worse off to make things seem bearable.
There was a road half marathon in Minneapolis on July 4th called ‘Red, White and Boom’, which I was (thankfully)* dissuaded from doing in favour of the Afton Trail Run the same weekend. The course winds around the beautiful Afton Alps state park about half an hour from Minneapolis. The terrain is a mix of prairie (grass tracks) and more technical snowshoe trails and single track and the race is one of the highlights of the trail running season in Minnesota. Red, white and booming described my face pretty well about half way around the Afton course. I’d been hoping to race hard at this one so in honour of laying it down, I wore my Athenry AC singlet, along with a pink hairband. Somewhere between the red and the boom, my face veered between fuschia (hairband) and puce (singlet). 
 

Afton Trail 2010

How fast was I planning to run? Predicting your time at a trail race is difficult for a novice. It depends on the course, the terrain technicality, the hills – and the heat. A couple of years building up your quad strength and power on the hills doesn’t hurt either. Liking to bite off more than I can chew, of course I set my expectations high. I figured about 2:20 would be a possibility. Compared to my previous race at Superior in May, the terrain seemed a bit easier – not as technical and not quite as many climbs, so I figured I should be several minutes faster than at that race (2:33). 
The temperature was already sailing upwards when we started to run at 7:30am (the 50km racers had already been out for an hour at this point). Minnesota is notorious for its humidity, and today was no exception. You could feel the heat steaming up from the prairie. The first km is fast – downhill on gravel - and I enthusiastically took off like I was being chased by wolves. First mistake.   After about 5km and on a long nasty uphill incline, I felt dreadful . A stream of people passed me – which doesn’t usually happen, in that I normally manage to judge a steady pace. My heartrate was explosive. Nothing for it but to rein in a bit and get back on the trail. I slowed down to a more manageable pace, still being overtaken. I was HOT. This was hard.
The inner voices nagged at me. I could just run easy. Have a rest. Sit in that nice cool(er) grassy verge. I really want to wait for Kami (just done racing 50 miles two weeks previously) and Igor (raced IM Iowa the previous weekend) who are enjoying a gently aerobic (if sweaty) trot together some minutes back.    I self check. No injuries. No pains. My stomach is rock solid. I’ve got a water bottle, electrolytes and some gels. I’ve spent 50 bucks and tapered for a week to get out here. There is a burger and a technical tee and a Big Medal with my name on it about 19km away. So I dutifully obey the inner nag and treat it as a long nasty tempo – I move my legs as fast as possible (which is pathetically slow) and Keep on Going. 
There were only two water stops over the 25km and I was very glad I’d chosen to carry a bottle. I managed to take in nearly two litres of water over the course of the race, with electrolytes, which I’d never have managed from cups. In fact, while wrestling with a jug and an overzealous volunteer at one of the aid stations, I heard someone bellowing my name (to my immense surprise). Paul Holovnia of the Twin City Running Team (see photo below) who took part in our legendary trip to the Superior Spring race spotted me from the sidelines and was roaring encouragement. This unexpected cheerleading far from home really brightened up my day. At the end of the race, Paul gravely presented me with a bottle of Finnegan’s Irish Amber Beer (brewed in St. Paul, Minnesota), in honour of my lineage, from his cooler. I was torn between delight and anxiety that I’d have to drink it out of Irish politeness (at 10:30am, in 30 degree heat and in a marginal state of dehydration, I was not keen to start drinking beer). 
In the second half of the race, as always, my spirits picked up. I was hot, yes – but hydrated as best I could and relishing the switches between prairie and the cooler wood and snowshoe trails. A long shaded flat stretch along the river encouraged me to pick up my pace. Watching my Garmin, it still seemed woefully slow, but I kept ploughing on and started to pick people off again. Four or five kilometres from the end, I was flagging and just focussing on plodding to the finish, when two irritatingly chirpy girls closed in behind me, very close on my heels. I’ve learned to hate trail tailgaters who run right behind; it’s kind of like having someone in the swimming pool lane behind you smacking your ankles. I offered to let the first one overtake but she declined. I was not happy. I had no idea of my race position, but doing the maths, having two girls overtake me now was not going to help. They trotted along behind brightly discussing how close to the end we were and whether there were any more hills (and as I grimly thought, Biding their Time). I Would Not Surrender. Fortunately (sort of), we met a big hill, where I dug in deep, dropped the Gossip Girls and took off at pace into the snowshoe trails, where to my surprise, I caught and overtook another girl. From here, I ran like I was on fire, over the last agonisingly unshaded km of prairie, to the finish. The thermometer read a neat 90 degrees (32 deg. C). 
Finishing time: 2 hours and 26 minutes (9:28 pace per mile) – I was a bit disappointed with the time but was 11th woman and in the top quarter of a field of 250 people, so I probably did as well as I could expect given the circumstances. And I was pretty happy I was not out running the 50km race (like my friend Val, who finished in a super time, just over 5 hours in third place). The finishing medal reads ‘Strength-Passion-Endurance-Fortitude-Discipline-Pride’. I love it. It embodies everything I’d worked for in the race – sometimes (well, always for me) it’s not about raw talent or speed; it’s just about knuckling down and getting through. And it’s red. So it matched my face.
You can see a little bit of the run here (this is the nice easy running but HOT prairie bit!). Keep in mind that this is a 50km run on trail in 30 degree heat when you see the lead guys moving by.
 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWnOiY5hrVE
 
And for a cautionary tale of what happens when you don’t get the hydration right or the heat just gets to you, check out the link for this unfortunate runner’s report of the Afton 50km race:
http://ultramarathonvirgin.blogspot.com/2010/07/no-more-crawl-left.html
*The Red White and Boom half marathon went off at 6:30am the next morning; was as hot and even more humid, and it rained for most of the race. And the scenery was not as good. At that point I was happily tucked up in my bed listening to the torrential rain on the rooftops.

Afton Trail 2010