Feral Hog 50k Rucksack 2022
Overview
I was the only rucker, so I finished first and DFL. My official time was 7:39:12.6
Why?
I normally don't like to do events during Balloon Fiesta. I make an exception for the Mt. Taylor 50k (this year, 2016) and once for Canyon de Chelly (2014), but my plan is to do some serious ruck racing after I turn 60 and I decided this would be a good training.
In fact, I thought that having an actual race hanging over my head would keep me from drinking too much alcohol and eating too much junk food during Balloon Fiesta (unlike last year). That most definitely didn't happen. Race day came with me hoping there wouldn't be any serious competition so I would not have to push myself.
Turns out, there were no other ruckers, so all I had to do was finish before the cutoff to get first place, although if I finished within nine hours (according to the website) or eight hours (the time limit I was told when I had five miles to go) I'd get a Feral Flask.
Reprieve?
On Wednesday, three days before the race, Mary and Mike (the race directors) sent an email with the subject
Trails Currently Un-runnable - Warning Order for Possible Race Cancellation
It explained that there has been an unseasonably large amount of rain and that the trail couldn't safely be marked. Knowing that the weather forecast was for more rain, I thought it would be canceled, and I ate and drink on Wednesday as if I had dodged a bullet.
However Thursday morning we were updated:
Feral Hog is a go!!
What wound up happening was a compromise. The first half of the 25k was substituted for the second half of the 50k. This may have made the course a little tougher, because the second half had less elevation change, I think.
Team RWB
Three fellow Team RWB members (Roleen, Rhoda and Brianna) were volunteering and one was running the 25k (Kathy). I haven't done much with Team RWB lately, so that made seeing them especially sentimental.
Rain
It did indeed rain all day, although there was never a downpour. At it's lightest it was basically a mist. At its heaviest it was constant, but not pelting. I heard thunder only once and never saw lightning.
The rain did necessitate me running with the rain-cover on my pack. That made access to my pack's contents sufficiently awkward that I only got into it once, at the halfway point. I had a temperature sensitive toothache and the hot miso I was drinking was irritating it. To get to my ibuprofen I had to untie my belt, take the pack off, set it somewhere stable, remove a couple straps that held the rain-cover on, and unzip a side pocket. The "somewhere stable" is a little tricky, because even though the pack itself only weighed a little more than twenty pounds, that could have been enough to push over one of the lightweight poles holding up the canopy over the smaller aid station.
So, the rain was annoying in and of itself, however…
Mud
The mud was worse than the rain. Some of the mud was caliche, which can be super slippery and can also stick to shoes, adding weight and weird padding. This race was one of the few times I half-heartedly wished I had a video camera recording some of the terrain. It was nuts.
Since there was little time pressure on me, I slowed down quite a bit anywhere the footing was dicey. I still managed to fall in the mud once, when I simply underestimated the slope and slipperiness of my path. Sure enough, I wound up with some caliche mud stuck to my leg for the rest of the race (and the drive home).
Chafing
I normally wear two panty liners on my back when rucking at speed. These both lessen the chafing and suck up extra blood from chafing. However, when training I put them on using a mirror and at the Bataan Memorial Death March I have someone else apply them. For this event, I did it myself, without a mirror and may not have gotten one of them positioned where it would do the most good.
I also had to take my pack off at an aid station so it could be weighed. I'm pretty sure one of my pads shifted when I did that, because I did get enough chafing afterward to slow me down. It's not excruciating to have a pack sliding up and down on raw flesh, but it something I feel with each step and the faster I run the more I feel it, so there were sections of the course in the second half where I could have run faster but chose not to.
Too Much Salt?
There was plenty for me to eat, and each aid station had hot miso. It was about fifty degrees Fahrenheit and raining, so I had plenty of miso at each stop. I don't know why, but pretzels were especially appealing to me, so each time I left an aid station I grabbed a handful of them.
As the event progressed, my fingers, and later my hands, started swelling. At the end, when the race directors were considering throwing out the remaining miso, I volunteered to drink the amount my finisher's cup would hold. By then my swelling was pronounced, but I knew I had peed regularly and figured that I'd pee even more since I also had a beer and twenty-four ounces of rice milk.
This is the first time I have had significant swelling in a long time. I assume it was from all the salt I was consuming. I don't normally take salt supplements, although I often drink some Tailwind as I run. Lately I've been too broke to keep buying Tailwind and this course had free Heed, but I don't like heed, so most of my liquid was miso, and the liquid in pickles. I started with about fifty ounces of water in my bladder, but only drank about ten ounces of it; I wasn't sweating much considering my slow pace, relatively lightweight pack and the constant cool rain.
Other than the swelling, I had no discomfort and although I was going slowly due to chafing and mud, I was not sluggish. So I don't think I had hyponatremia or kidney or liver trouble. The fact that the swelling decreased steadily after the race was over reinforces my belief that I wasn't at risk of injury due to the swelling, but it is something I would have been concerned with if were only a quarter of the way done with my race when my hands were as big as they were. It's definitely something for me to watch in the future.
An Excellent Event in Trying Circumstances
My hat is off to Mary and Mike. They put on an excellent event with very uncooperative weather. Presumably it would have been much easier for them to simply cancel than to do the reroute. I am glad that they didn't. Race Directing is a hard work. Putting on a race in New Mexico immediately adjacent to the Mt. Taylor 50k has to be tough. I applaud the addition of this race to our locale.
Previous Years
I was able to find links to the three previous Feral Hog 50k rucks that were held in Ohio:
I do not know the area, but Wikipedia shows Batavia's elevation as 594 feet, but a race report from 2018 mentions hills, creek and river crossings, and 1,618 feet of gain in the first 20.31 miles, so the Ohio course appears to be comparable to the New Mexico one (Ohio having more water crosings, New Mexico being at a higher altitude).