Big Cottonwood Marathon 2022

Overview

I had run the Big Cottonwood Marathon twice prior: 2019 and 2021. Both times, I raced it so I could (and did!) qualify for the Boston Marathon. It is a very downhill course, although the rollers starting around mile 19 have slowed me down all three years.

This year, however, my truck died the day before and that complicated my race. Luckily, I'll be sixty years old by Boston 2023, so I only needed to run a 3:50 to qualify and I ran 3:25:32.

This report is for my own benefit. Although I remember the details clearly as I write this, it won't be too long before I forget many of the details. My plan is to switch from running the Big Cottonwood Marathon as a Boston Qualifier to running the Tucson marathon. My MSCS advisor has moved to Tucson and running that race would be a good excuse to visit him. Additionally, Aravaipa puts on a good event.

Thursday: Albuquerque to Moab

I left Albuquerque around the time I thought I'd need to leave in order to arrive at Moab Kitchen around 4pm, i.e., just as they were opening. I love Moab Kitchen and I also found a great campsite just north of there last year that I was looking forward to returning to.

I did indeed get there shortly after four. I ate some food, made a business call, caught up on my email and was about to drive to the Gemini Bridges Road campground when I remembered that the last time I had tried to use four-wheel drive I had trouble shifting it in and out. So, instead of waiting until I absolutely had to have 4WD, I decided to check it in the Moab Kitchen parking lot. Uh oh. Not only was it exceedingly hard for me to get it into 4-Low, I basically couldn't get it, unassisted, back into 2WD.

After texting some friends for advice, I tried rocking the truck back and forth, and finally I got it into 2WD. Dodged a bullet! Gemini Bridges was out, so I chose to go to Klondike Bluffs Road instead. My truck sounded a little funny as I was driving, but I was harried and there may have been grooves in the asphalt. I couldn't figure out if I was imagining things.

I set up my tent, read a bit of Presto!, then went to sleep.

Friday morning: Moab to Spanish Fork

I woke up at my normal time and kicked myself for not having joined AAA. My buddy Jason's truck's radiator catastrophically failed a couple weeks prior. He had to pay a huge bill to get his truck towed. At the time, I had mentioned that I keep meaning to sign up for AAA (my truck is a 1998 with more than 200,000 miles on it), but I always forget. So, although it would have been better to have signed up well before heading out from Albuquerque, I used my phone as a hot-spot and joined AAA.

The noise I thought I had heard while driving the previous night had disappeared, or perhaps it had never been there or maybe even I had gotten accustomed to it. Regardless, other than running way too low on gas and having to pay around $6/gallon to get a few gallons at a remote gas station, the drive went well until I my truck failed to drive when the stoplight I was at turned green.

I was in the left-most of three non-turning lanes on highway six in Spanish Fork. I put my hazards on, then tried putting the truck in neutral and pushing it out of the way. It moved a little before it stopped and couldn't be pushed. Not by me solo and not when three large men volunteered to help. The transmission was fried and nothing I did helped.

I tried to arrange a tow through AAA but their system didn't work well, so it literally took hours while I interacted with them. Eventually my truck was towed to Tunex in nearby Springville. The Tunex people were nice and understanding, but not only did they need to diagnose the problem, they also had to find a replacement transfer case and drive-train so they could get me a quote. It was not going to be cheap, nor would it be done soon.

Friday afternoon: Spanish Fork to packet pickup and the hotel

Luckily, I was able to find a car in Springville that I could rent for a day at Turo. Sometime around 5pm, I was able to jog over to the rental car, drive back to Tunex, grab a bunch of stuff from my truck (including my food; I had chosen to drive north in a fasted state, because I figured I'd eat in the packet pickup parking lot around noon), then drive to packet pickup which was going to close at 7pm.

There was at least one accident that caused the freeway to crawl to a halt. I think there were actually two. It was a bit nerve-racking both because I needed to get to packet pickup by 7, but I certainly didn't want to get into a fender bender.

I made it to packet pickup around 6pm and then got checked in to the Residence Inn around 7pm. I had not yet eaten that day. I had previously planned on what I would eat and when, but that all got thrown out the door when my truck died. I wound up eating about 3,000 calories of food (including the highish-fiber oatmeal that was supposed to be my post-race recovery food) in an hour or so and going to bed.

Race Day, pre-race

My alarm woke me up at 3:15 and I drank a double espresso. I think I had fallen asleep around 9:30, so almost six hours. Had the previous day not been so hectic, my guess is I'd have fallen asleep about an hour earlier (and had my final calories several hours before that).

I had a little food at the hotel before the hotel buses drove us to the start. I immediately headed to the porta-potties and kept walking all the way to the end of them and the last one was unused. Yay.

I put on my sweatpants and a sweatshirt and wrapped myself in the space blanket from packet pickup. I killed time by reading a book written by the daughter of a Bataan Death March survivor. Around 6:15 (I think), I drank a double espresso. Sometime around then I also ate some basmati rice and took two 200mg ibuprofen tablets.

Initially I had planned on only taking 200mg pre-race and 200mg at the halfway point, but I had forgotten to do laundry before getting ready to leave Albuquerque, so I didn't have a lot of clean socks. I did, however, have a clean pair of very thin socks. I also didn't have any low-mileage road shoes, so I chose the Torin pair with around 850 miles on them (as opposed to my other pair with over 1,400) and decided the combination of ancient shoes and thin socks merited additional analgesics.

Poor Porta-Potty Position

The very trick that allowed me to get an open porta-potty fresh off the bus worked against me this time. Thinking I had plenty of time, I got in the closest porta-potty line to where I had been sitting. That was the left-most line. When there is a row of N porta-potties and N is large enough (e.g., eight or more), people at the head of any given line then typically advance to the first of up to three porta-potties ahead of them, specifically the one directly in front of them and one to either side.

The upside of one person having the choice of three porta-potties is that it lessens the chance of a line being completely held up by someone taking a longer than usual time in a potty. It does, however, require each person at the head of the line paying attention to make sure that each line is still moving more-or-less fairly. The downside is that a line can stall if the person at the head of that line doesn't understand this de facto protocol, is distracted or simply doesn't want to take any stall except the one directly in front.

All else equal, the lines at either end of a row of porta-potties will move at two-thirds the speed of the interior lines, because the person at the head of the line will only have two porta-potties to choose from, while the person at the head of an interior line has three. I knew this, but still chose to stand in the left-most line, figuring that since I had plenty of time, two-thirds speed would get me in and out with room to spare. I was wrong.

The line I was in stalled. I think the person at the head of the line not only wasn't considering the diagonal stall as a possible choice, but he also wasn't noticing that people from the adjacent line were taking the stall in front of him repeatedly.

Drawstring Disaster

It had been cool enough that I had chosen to not take off my pre-run outer layer, so I still had my pre-race bag with me, and the drop off for that was back up the hill. I decided it was more important to pack my bag and get it dropped off and get back to the start line than attempt to take another poop.

Unfortunately, when I went to tie up my bag, the string broke. I asked the person shoveling bags into the truck if he had a spare bag, but he didn't and directed me further up the hill. I went all the way up and nope, nobody up there had spare bags either, but there were several people who also had broken strings.

I extracted the two pieces of string from the drawstring portion of the bag, tied them together and then asked a woman for assistance. She offered to tie my bag while I held it, but I politely asked her to hold the bag while I tied it so that if it came undone and I lost anything (and my phone and wallet were in the bag!), I'd only have myself to blame.

I then descended to the bag-drop truck and handed them my bag and found my place in line. With little fanfare, the race started at 6:45.

The Race itself

Waiting in line for the race to start I was a little concerned by the possibility of my bag either opening and disgorging some of its contents or losing the tie that had my bib number.

If the bag was intact, but without a bib number, would I be able to find it? Probably; they'd presumably set it aside and I could identify it, or perhaps they'd open it and find my wallet. Similarly, if my wallet or phone slipped out, I'd probably be able to reclaim them, too.

Before the race started I felt like I probably could poop if given the chance, but I didn't feel like I needed to.

Once I crossed the starting line, all my anxiety disappeared. The initial downhill grade is steep enough that it takes me a little effort and concentration to adjust my cadence and stride so I'm getting the "free downhill", not fighting it, but also not running out of control.

Before the race had begun, I was chatting with another runner and he mentioned that the aid stations would have gels. With that in mind, I lightened my expandable waistband by removing five of the seven gels I had, figuring I'd just take them from the aid station. I think that was the right thing to do, but it did mean that my gel consumption was less predictable, because not all aid stations. I would have known that had I researched it pre-race, since it was well documented on the Big Cottonwood Marathon website.

Bam!

About nineteen miles in, I knew I had to take a porta-potty break to poop. As I feared, eating as much as I did the prior evening caught up with me. I was in and out fairly quickly, but a bit distracted as I tried to tie my running short drawstring as I ran. I was still running a little to the right (i.e., where the porta-potties had been) of the road when I tripped and hit fairly hard.

My left knee took the brunt of the impact, but I also managed to scrape my right knee and bloody my right palm. I was able to get back up almost immediately and resume running. I had taken an additional 400mg of ibuprofen at mile 13 and by now it was kicking in, so I didn't have that much discomfort and didn't limp, per-se, but my gait was slightly affected.

Excuses, excuses

This year I was three minutes and sixteen seconds slower than last year, but my average heart rate was ten beats per minute slower. I think that had I been able to eat on the day before like I had planned and gotten to sleep when I planned, I wouldn't have needed the porta-potty. I also think that I slowed a little before I resigned myself to making that stop and I suspect that had I not made the porta-potty stop I wouldn't have fallen.

So, did my truck's death the day before prevent me from PR'ing? Maybe. On the other hand, it took me 1:29:50 to get to mile 12 this year and only 1:28:08 to get there the year before. Mile 12 was long before I took the porta-potty break, so presumably I wasn't slowed as much by GI distress and definitely wasn't slowed by the fall (that hadn't yet occurred) in my first 12 miles. On the other hand, last year my heart-rate was around 150bpm at mile 12, but only around 135bpn at mile 12. My average HR was still around 150bpm on my 24th mile last year, but had only crept up to 140bpm by during my 24th mile this year. I believe my HR data suggests I was being held back a bit at the end, but I'll never know.

FWIW, had I finished fifteen seconds earlier, I'd have been 3rd in my age group. I'd need to take off an additional five minutes and seventeen seconds to have taken 2nd AG and another six seconds after that to have been first in my age group this year. No truck problems probably would have given me 3rd AG. I think 2nd or 1st AG would have been a coin-flip.

On the other hand, nobody my age or older finished before I did, which is what I call—tongue in cheek—beating the old people. Whee!

Aftermath

The injury to my left knee was minor, but sufficiently uncomfortable that I used ibuprofen for several days after the fall. I fell on September 10th and the last time I used ibuprofen for my knee was midnight between the 16th and 17th. The scab on my knee finally came off on October 13th, almost five weeks after the fall. Normally my scabs go away in two weeks.

Luckily, it was an injury to the outside of my knee and not anything internal to my knee itself. Although I didn't do a big hike a week after the Big Cottonwood Marathon due to being stuck in Utah, I did do the AA50k 13 days after and the Tour of the Rio Grande 15 days after.

I have added this aftermath section so that if I ever review this report, it'll remind me to not fall on asphalt, especially when accelerating in a road marathon. It could have been much worse.