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The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
 
Moose Mountain Marathon Trail Report (Superior Hiking Trail, North Minnesota)
 
Oh God. Well, there are only so many ways to say ā€˜I ran twenty six miles and I ate a lot of gelsā€™. For a trail marathon report, this extends to ā€˜I ran twenty six miles up mountains*, fell over a lot, and I ate a lot of gelsā€™. 
 
So here we go: Moose Mountain Marathon ā€“ 11th September 2010.
 
It was memorable and made more so by a day spent crewing and cheering for the hundred mile runners who started their odyssey (including blood, sweat , mud, wet and 8,000 metres of elevation gain) a whole 24 hours before me. 
 
Iā€™ll tell you the literal version at the Christmas party. For now hereā€™s the literary version.
 
Cramer Road to Temperance (in the style of ā€˜The Roadā€™ by Cormac McCarthy)
 
Cramer Road: 7:30am. The Girl wore a red t-shirt. The Pacer was small and thin, in his sixties. The fog was so dense that you could barely see a few feet away.  Cold, wet, mud covered men stood huddled shivering around a fire in a barrel. Women in ski jackets tried to warm them and feed them soup. The trees made black shapes behind them. Have you come far? Twenty five miles or so. Iā€™m entering the marathon while I pace the Runner. Itā€™s going to take a long time. We have to keep moving. The Girl looked at the weary Hundred Mile Runner who belonged with the Pacer. He had been travelling across mountains all day and night, from Gooseberry Falls to Tettegouche, via Finland to here. He had twenty six miles left to travel ā€“ Cramer Road to Lutsen. You can make it, she said. Iā€™ll see you out there soon. They disappeared into the dark forest. Soon after, the Girl followed. She moved steadily through the mud and water, clearing roots and trees and logs. Trees dripped silently. She couldnā€™t hear or see anyone in front or behind. The Finish was still a long way away.
 
Temperance Aid Station (mile 7.9) (in the style of ā€˜Father Tedā€™)
 
Background of enthusiastic applauding people. Deirdre (who has a condition, prevalent in runners and triathletes called ā€˜Aid Station Touretteā€™s Syndromeā€™) thinks: Oh, thereā€™s Holly ā€“ she must have been up all night at that aid station. How cheery she still is, bless.
 
Holly: ā€˜Hello, Deirdre! Will you have some Heed? Or a brownie? Ah, go on. How about some gels?ā€™ 
Deirdre: ā€œArse! Feck! No Heed! Water!ā€ (She tries to fill bottle with Heed. Empties out Heed over self. Fills bottle with water. Spills water over shirt. Throws arm warmers at another nice helpful lady. Trips. Exits out of aid station, muttering.)
 
Temperance via Sawbill to Oberg (mile 19.1) (in the style of Bridget Jonesā€™ Diary by Helen Fielding)**
Saturday 11th September
 
128lbs (Betty Crocker Clinic), gels 2 (ugh), calories in total today: about 500 so far (not bad), calories planned post race: about 50,000 (hurrah!)
 
9:25am Just leaving aid station. Is lovely trail run. God, look at all those lovely men standing there. Yum, lovely trail runners, all fit and ā€“ gahhhh! Lovely men all lined up peeing. Mustnā€™t look. So unfair also, all that saved portapottie time.
 
9:28am Time for another chocolate gel. Mmmmm, is surprisingly good. Would be good with chocolate croissant. And cappuccino. And a nice sit down. Wonder if they have Baileys flavoured Gu? Could have with oatmeal. Or vodka. 
 
10:50am: Am running very fast. Am really moving it here! I am a paragon of fitness and virtue. Must be fitter than I thought. Have got to be running sub eights ā€“ I ā€“ gaahhh! Is bottom of hill! 
 
10:51am Running uphill is so horrible. Am puffing horribly. Whatā€™s that? Is girl passing me. Is so unfair. She must weigh about ninety pounds. And is wearing running skort. And bra. Maybe that is key?   Lose two pounds and run faster by wearing less clothing. RaceReady marathon shorts useful but so unflattering. Bum size of small island, all those pockets filled with gels. Will buy running skort for New York Marathon. Hmmmm. Will be super hot and speedy in super fab marathon skort. Yes, will run with Ryan Hall and all sorts of hot American super running legendā€“ GAAAAARGH!
 
10:51am Fell off boardwalk.
 
Oberg Mountain to Lutsen (in the style of Deirdre Hassett)
Okay, I give up. I had really intended to write this section in the style of Harry Potter. But I donā€™t think Iā€™d have managed to describe the end of the race with justice (she exclaimed sorrowfully).
 
The reason Harry Potter came to mind (and also The Road) is the sheer magic of the Superior Hiking trail ā€“ especially on a foggy day like the marathon start ā€“ running alone through twisty narrow dripping woods, with muddy obstacles to trick and trip at every angle. Thereā€™s even a bit of magic to the names.   I found myself reciting the list of 100 mile aid stations like some kind of mantra:
 
Tettegouche. Finland. Cramer Road. Temperance. Sawbill.  Oberg. Lutsen.
 
Whole sections of the race were subsumed in that fantastic runnerā€™s Zen, where your whole being is so busy concentrating on the trickery of the course, that miles and chunks of time pass by without notice. Bouncing up and down over rocks and roots and slippery wet boardwalks, the running is an organic parcours. Iā€™d ran the Oberg to Lutsen section before, as it was the turnaround for the spring race here ā€“ my first trail race in Minnesota this spring. So I was aware of the terrors of the climb up Moose Mountain which lay along the seven miles of trail between me and a fine lunch. When I got to Oberg, a couple of friends who were crewing for the 100 mile racers were waiting to cheer me on, so I rock starred my way through the aid station, delighted with the boost. I like to set the twenty mile point of the marathon as a mental marker for being on the home straight, a psychological flag which has worked well so far. Iā€™d set Oberg as being this point (despite there being seven miles and well over an hour of running to go), and it did the trick. Taking off to climb towards Moose Mountain, I tried to pick up the pace. I fell into running with another marathoner who started lamenting the hills ahead and estimating that we wouldnā€™t break five hours. Probably right, I thought ā€“ or it would be very close ā€“ but I wasnā€™t about to go down without trying. All of a sudden Iā€™d dropped him and was alone again (if you think you can or you think you canā€™t, youā€™re right).
 
Some fast power hiking and a mile or two of undulating slog through dark woods and I was up over Moose Mountain and on the home straight ā€“ the happy but tricky descent to Lutsen. Tap dancing my way downhill and around a corner I nearly ran into a woman who had come to almost a halt. ā€˜Think Iā€™ve blown my quads out with the downhillā€™ she lamented, hobbling geisha style.   I comforted her with the short(ish) distance left of trail ā€“ about five km to the road, and a few hundred metres beyond that to the finish. I didnā€™t have the heart (or malice) to tell her it was all rocky downhill. That left me ā€“ third! Iā€™d been fourth for a while, after being passed by my friend in the running skirt early on in the race. This put new fire in my legs, and I scrambled and slipped my way down the trail to the road into Lutsen, with just one spectacular WWF style smackdown on a muddy boardwalk (leaving the kind of bruises that causes your doctor to enquire about your domestic situation).
 

Chris - Sawtooth

Chris - Sawtooth

Third, third! I chanted and sprinted all the way up the road from the trail head to the race finish at the Caribou Lodge in Lutsen. With the mix of 100 mile, 50 mile and marathon finishers, it was quite a long day for the finish line officials, but I relished my sprint up the finish chute, with Vale and Brian (who had already finished second and first respectively in the hundred mile) there to cheer me in. 4:58 on the clock brought me in under my goal time of five hours (and in retrospect, a drier day without the ankle deep sloshing and slippery descents might have taken several more minutes off).
ā€˜Youā€™re the second womanā€™, one of the teenage girls on the finishersā€™ desk reported in a bored fashion. As I discovered later, my friend in the skirt (who turned out to be very nice) had taken a wrong turn somewhere and added two miles to her race. 
The usual disclaimers apply: A small local race; all the faster runners were in the longer races etc. But Iā€™m confident that having taken my first ever prize at marathon distance, I should be able to repeat this winning feat in New York on November 7th. Especially since Kara Goucher and Paula Radcliffe are busy having babies. The coast is clear. One down and one to go.
*2000m in total elevation gain - thatā€™s six times the climbing in the Connemara half marathon, folks.
**I took surprisingly well to the voice of Bridget Jones, so much so that I was tempted to write the whole article Bridget style...except that it would probably wear thin quickly for about half of the club (the non thirty-something female half). 

Moose Mountain Marathon Map

Moose Mountain Marathon Map

Deirdre

13 years 5 months ago

Of course I forgot to mention that you'll all be inspired by my race report to donate to my fundraising effort! http://www.mycharity.ie/event/deirdre_hassett_2010/