Disclaimer: I'm writing this over a year after the race.
Disclaimer 2: This was both my first race ever and my first ultra ever, and it was not pretty.
As I've disclaimed above, this was my first race ever. I'd read Born to Run and I'd done some trail runs in Marin County so I was good to go right? Right? In a way, yes. In many other ways, no.
The actual race-day happenings are pretty inconsequential (and boring) compared to the journeys to and from this race, so I'll just summarize the race in one sentence here:
Race summary:
My IT band started hurting and did not stop hurting from miles four through thirty-two, and I crossed the finish line in seven hours and twenty-three minutes.
The important stuff:
From the perspective of a layman, an expert, or anyone else, picking a trail 50K for the first running race of my life was a bad idea. However, I have no regrets! This race marks the beginning of my running life, which still exists a year later.
My training for this race consisted of short, hard runs on a bike path near my apartment in Larkspur, Saturday long runs with the SFRC group, and some solo trail runs in the Marin Headlands.
I didn't really know what I was doing, so I injured my IT band pretty terribly. On the run where it really got bad, I had to limp down from the top of the Wolf Ridge trail (up by all the old WWII turrets) back to the Tennessee Valley parking lot. That was just so, so painful. I was walking sideways because it involved less knee-bend.
Following this incident was five weeks with no running, including biweekly physical therapy visits that didn't seem to help much. I saved myself by the grace of the almighty orange cylinder (praise be the foam roller!) and got back out there to finish training.
Two weeks before the race, I did one last long run of about twenty miles. Right at the end, my other IT band started hurting. "Not a big deal," I said. "It will be fine," I said. I had a very painful day of hobbling through the Marin Headlands.
The inexplicable thing about this whole endeavor is that I actually had a really great time running through the pain with all my stranger-compadres out there. The rest is history. I'm still here a year later, and running is still good to me. I think I will keep doing it!