Bosque Bigfoot 50k 2022

November 26th, 2022

My plan was to put my iPod touch on shuffle and run at whatever pace seemed appropriate for whatever tune was playing, at least after I ran fast enough to warm up.

The temperature was about freezing when we started. I chose to not wear a shirt so that I would spend less time futzing with my clothing than I had done a couple days earlier on Ed Thanksgiving's half-marathon.

I ran my first mile in 8:37 and my second in 8:36, then I settled into about a ten minute mile pace for the next few miles, finishing my first lap in an hour twenty minutes, with my heart-rate nice and low. In theory, I could maintain that pace for the rest of the race, but the hot-spot that I developed at Deadman Peaks returned.

All told I took 600mg of ibuprofen and had a double espresso before each of the eight mile loops, but I wound up stopping and cleaning my feet at least three times and did a lot of walking. My official time was 7:04:19, and although nobody my age or older finished before I did, two fifty-eight year olds (a man and a woman) certainly did.

This was my sixth time running this race, all but one of those were held the Saturday after Thanksgiving. The exception was held on February 13th, 2021 instead of the Saturday after Thanksgiving in 2020, due to covid-19. This was the first time it took me more than seven hours to finish. In 2018, I finished in 4:59:29, although I hadn't run a tough half marathon two days prior.