After 6 days, my legs are finally starting to feel back to normal. Mostly.
This past weekend I ran in the Pinellas Trail Challenge, a 46-mile ultramarathon that covers the entire Pinellas Trail, from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs, here on the Florida west coast.
To cut to the chase, I did well, but didn't finish. In about 10 1/2 hours I made it 40 miles before I decided to throw in the towel. What felt like an injury on the outside of my left foot was creeping, and I still had 6 miles to go.
That final 6 miles wasn’t even the biggest mental hurdle; it didn't sound that bad. But thinking about the 2+ additional hours it would take at my lethargic walking pace, that sounded impossible. Felt like I needed to sit down at any moment.
I've never been a big trainer, even for the few half marathon events I've done. And I mean that in the sense of having a schedule or plan to the process.
Even for this ultra there wasn't a particular plan. It seemed so wildly farfetched that I didn't bother trying to do a crazy schedule, with ramp ups and extra long weekend runs and intervals and the like. My training plan wasn't more complex than "try to run as much / as often as possible".
At the start of this year I decided to up my game on miles and consistency, and set a goal to do 1,000 miles in 2025. That's the sum total of my planning, though, for the whole year so far. It's simply been "run often, stay consistent". Not as a training build-up for this ultra, but as a way to stay on track for this annual goal without overtraining or getting hurt. So I considered that process “training”, but it wasn’t a targeted routine.
Anyway, I and three of my neighbors signed up for this ultra over a year ago. Back when that commitment was made, it seemed like fantasy how far in the future it was. No big deal, we'll train eventually. There was a feeling of "haha, isn't it wild we're on the schedule for a 46-miler?!" And it felt like it was so crazy — obviously we'd crash out somewhere on the path.
But my 3 friends all finished! Only lightly scathed. Super proud of all of them. No one trained all that much or very intentionally for this race, so it’s incredible that everyone had the grit and fortitude to get it done.
Considering that my longest run ever prior to this was probably 15 miles, my primary target at the start was to hit the marathon mark. I was locked in on 26.2 coming into Dunedin. I felt pretty confident about making it there, and told myself I'd reassess things once I crossed that objective.
We crept over the marathon mark and I felt alright, so reset the bar at the 50K (~31 miles). Didn’t think about anything else til I got there, then I’d about the next steps.
And once that objective was crossed, I felt perfectly satisfied with my achievement on the day. I had nothing else to prove to myself. Aside from hurting feet and general exhaustion, I felt okay though. So I figured I'd walk/run until it felt like an injury was incoming. So that's what I did: walked all the way up to Tarpon Springs and a few miles back before I called it.
As I laid around the house the next day, there was plenty of soreness and fatigue, but nothing a few slow days wouldn’t repair. I actually got out earlier today for 5 1/2 miles. Felt great.
I’ve already got a list of adjustments to make for my next long one like this. A couple of different decisions on clothes, shoes, and preparation and I’m certain I could’ve finished. And I don’t have any regrets about that. In fact, it feels good to know with confidence several improvements, and not many mistakes to correct.
I’ll make that checklist for next time. Oh, and maybe I’ll make an actual training plan, too.
Here are the final Garmin statistics:
Total time: 10 hours, 45 minutes
Distance: 40.03 miles
Calories: 4,551
Avg. Temperature: 79°F
Marathon time: 6:06
50K time: 7:48
Congrats on taking a big swing. Huge achievement, even with the DNF. Nice work!