Nephew Conquers the Funeral 50mile

Congratulations to Inov-8's Ben Nephew! Ben had an interesting weekend at the inaugural New England Ultras. The NE ultras are yet another collection of incredibly challenging yet beautiful courses set amongst the backdrop of the Vermont countryside in Pittsfield. RD's Sherpa John and Andy Weinberg's network of races will test the mettle of any seasoned runner.
Ben took on the grueling Funeral 50miler and put the proverbial nail in the coffin! But not without a fair share of challenges along the way. Ben describes his account in his race report. Read More...

Pittsfield VT Funeral Run 50 Miler (with Bonus 20 Miles!)

My initial goal race for the end of my season was going to be the Stonecat 50 miler. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to commit to the race before registration closed due to my work schedule. As I started to look around for other races, I got an email from Sherpa John that the Pittsfield VT 100 and 200 mile races were going to include a 50 mile JV race. The timing worked out for me, and I quickly decided to run the rugged 50 miler on 11/2. John sent out a course map and elevation profile, and it almost changed my mind. I had run 13 miles of the snowshoe marathon that he helped to organize this past winter, and ended up stopping there. That course was stupid hard for a snowshoe race, and when it started raining hard, I couldn’t think of a single reason to keep running. The 50 mile course included some the same terrain as the ss race, so I knew it was going to be a very long 50 miles with almost 14,000 ft of climbing. Most of the uphills and downhills were over 10% grade, and the thick leaf cover made the downhills extra challenging. However, it didn’t seem as bad when I realized people were signed up to do eight 12.5 mile loops for the 100 mile, and keep going for another 100 on a road loop for the 200 miler!
I can’t really start the race story on Sunday, since I started running on Saturday night. When I got to the race site to camp out the night before, I realized that one of the 200 milers, John Bridges, might want a pacer. After I grabbed some dinner at the Pittsfield General Store and set up my tent, I threw on some running clothes (a lot of clothes, it was 20 degrees!), and hit the road with John, whom I had never met. I’ve actually never paced anyone, much less someone 140 miles into a 200 mile race! Although the 10 mile loop was considerably easier than the 12.5 mile trail loop of his first 100 miles, it still involved a 1600 ft climb over 2 miles. This section was walked, but we ran the rest of the loop. John and I talked the entire first loop, and I was amazed at how well he was doing. Although he tried to scare me off of a second loop, I told him I was either going to run with him, or freeze in my tent. We didn’t talk as much on the second loop, but John was still running very well. It was a clear sky, and with the lack of any light pollution in Central VT, the stars were incredible. Despite walking the 2 mile hill, we ran those 20 miles at about 12 minute pace. According to Sherpa John, the penultimate 10 mile loop was John’s fastest of the race. At the end of the (last) day, John Bridges ran 200 miles with about 43,000 ft of climbing in under 70 hours. Unreal.
After that literal warm-up, I jumped into my tent for 4 hours of sleep. Some of the 50 milers had started early to get back to Toronto, so I took my time in getting all my supplies in order. The race staff gave me a hard time about this, but it worked out great. I waited long enough to start the race without a headlamp! My biggest mistake of the race was getting some sort of preconceived time stuck in my head, which ended up being 2 hour loops. The first loop felt pretty easy, and I ran 2:03. The view from the top of the first climb was fantastic, and I hope someone took some pictures at some point over the weekend. With only a handful of racers, it was a pretty lonely 12.5 miles, especially when some of the other runners had headphones on. As with the snowshoe course, the trail was well marked. There were some pretty muddy sections, but most weren’t very long.
On the second loop, I started to slow. Although it felt like my time would be similar to the first tour, I ran 2:11. I tried to eat and drink more at my halfway stop prior to the third loop, but the cold temperature (20-30’s) was killing my appetite. I drank as much of my ice tea and Gatorade mixture that I could, and brought my coffee cake muffin with me out on the trail. Despite my efforts to keep up the calorie intake, I started to fade on this loop. I walked sections I had been running, and started to feel light headed. I ended up somewhere around 2:21, and I took some more time at the start/finish area to ensure that the last loop would not be a death march.
I’m not sure it was the Coke or not, but the last loop felt much better. I had decided to hold off on drinking Coke until the final 12.5 miles, but maybe I should have tried it on that third loop. Although it was only about 3-4 minutes faster, it seemed quicker. However, my quads did start to cramp about an hour into the loop, possibly due to low electrolytes from a lack of Gatorade. I ended up backing off a bit, and my muscles settled down. Towards the end of the race, I passed one of the Toronto runners for the second time, and one of them almost hit me with a stick when I told him how fast my first loop was. We both laughed, but for a moment, I thought he was serious! With my three refueling stops, my final time was 8:56, which I am pretty pleased with given the difficult course and my bonus 20 miles the night before. As with any ultra, you don’t need a large race field to make a difficult race, and this will have to go down as my most difficult ultra race.
While my race fueling could have been better, my shoe selection was perfect. I wore the 318 GTX the entire race, my feet never got wet in any of the mud holes, and no blisters. The crazy thing is, I’ve had this pair for about 2 years, and they have received a ton of abuse over the winter and spring as my snowshoe and mud sneakers. I would expect that the Gore-tex would have failed somewhere after a while, but I can still stand in a stream and come out with dry feet.
I’d like to thank Sherpa John and rest of the Pittsfield race staff for the incredible effort it took to support such long races. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a race where the staff to runner ratio is 2:1!