by Earl Blewett
Crunch, crunch, crunch! That’s how 29 hours or so went by for me last weekend. The ankle-deep, dry oak leaves on the Ozark Trail were impossible to escape for most of the race. Only a few places on the trail were bare plus the roads at the end. If you stopped and listened you could tell if another runner was catching up to you or if you were coming up on someone ahead. I finished, but it was slow and ugly.
When the announcement of a new 100 mile trail race to be held in Missouri came out I signed up for it right away. I had been looking for an October or November 100 for 2009. I don’t deal well with heat so I like to do my long run that time of year. I’d also done the Berryman Trail Run in Missouri several times over the years. The Ozark Trail makes up part of the Berryman loop and is both scenic and quite runable. The downhills aren’t too steep or technical and the uphills aren’t too long.
I did not have a good training year. We are demolishing and renovating part of our house as well as adding two bedrooms and a bathroom to the back. I spent a lot of time working on that instead of running or biking. I got sick at my old race, the Lake McMurtry Trail Run (50 km) in April and dropped down to the 25 km. I was entered but missed the Berryman Trail Run (50 miles) in May due to a bad case of contact dermatitis (cleaning up the yard for construction). To cap things off, I ended up aggravating old tendon injuries when I felled two trees and dug out the roots to make way for our underground power, phone and cable lines. That killed biking from August onwards and limited swimming. So spring and summer pretty much sucked for training although I did regularly force myself to get up at 5:30 am and run 10 miles. It’s in the 80’s F, even at that time with high humidity but that’s as good as it gets in Tulsa in the summer. I did a 25 mile run in the mountains in Montana (Devil’s Backbone) and ran 25 miles on trails in Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, Canada in July but that was it for long runs all summer.
My plan for last minute training was to use two local 50 km races that were quite technical to get ready for the ups and downs of the Ozark Trail then to finish off with an easy 50 miler to improve my endurance. An easy 50 miler, so that I could hope to recover from it in time for the race.
So in August I began training at first light on Turkey Mountain in Tulsa, for the Turkey and TATUR 50 km Race to be held September 13th. This was quite enjoyable as Turkey Mountain is covered in oak and other trees. It is a ridge that rises from 600 to 900 feet on the west bank of the Arkansas River in south Tulsa. I live a few miles away and used to train there a lot. I had a map of a previous years T & T race and used it to run some 10 – 15 mile training runs. Race date approached quickly so I only managed a few runs. The race day was very warm to start but rain began within 30 minutes of the start and continued for hours. The course was muddy and treacherous but I had a good solid run. Unfortunately, I fell and injured my left knee later in the race.
The second technical race was to be the Flat Rock 50 km in Independence, KS, only two weeks after T & T. I run it or volunteer at it most years. My knee seemed to have healed enough to run the race so I did. It had rained the night before the race and the course was slick but cooler. I had a good run, finishing strong in the best time since 1999. However I fell twice, once on each knee, and they were sore. I had another two weeks, supposed to be active recovery, before the next long run.
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