AM- Well, I didn't think that I was going to accomplish what I did today at all. I signed up for the McCoy Flats Death Race about three months ago. This was before I became really sick with my type 1 diabetes, and ended up losing about 15 lbs of muscle. This race was really interesting, because it started at 6 am, everyone has to run four miles in one hour, and start again every hour, on the hour. So if you finished in 40 minutes, you have 20 minutes of rest before you start your next four miles. The winner of the race is the last man standing! My plan was to stay right around 9:00-10:00 minute/miles, which I actually was able to stay quite consistent with. Started out with about 80-90 participants, and it slowly dwindled down to about 7 of us by 1 pm. Temps were right around 100 degrees, and it was very hard to stay cool out there today. From early in the morning, I really tried my best to stay hydrated and eat enough to fuel me, but not too much to where I would start having extreme side aches throughout the race, since I only had roughly 20-25 minutes left after each round. By 2 pm, I had ran definitely ran the farthest ever in my life, and there were only four of us left in the race. I felt strong until I hit our 9th round, which was 36 miles. At this point, I just wanted to be done, but I did my best to stay mentally tough and discipline myself to stay in the fight. Once we were on our 10th round of the 4 mile trail route, I could tell that Jason Holt, who came out for the race from South Ogden was hurting pretty bad, because he basically started cramping and walking from the start of the 10th round. It was just Casey McKee, me, and a younger lady from Heber, Utah. Jason ended up dropping out on this 10th round, which meant that I would for sure get top three. Once I got to about mile 3 of this 10th round, I basically hit the biggest wall of my life. Combining with the heat, dehydration, muscle cramping, I knew that I was going to be done after this 10th round. Since Casey finished this 10th round before me, and I that I came in before the lady from Heber, we just decided to end it there, with Casey taking first, me taking second place, and the lady taking third. Once I finished my 10th round, I headed straight for the ice water trough that they had for us there. (Really thankful they had this for us!). Anyways, really glad that I did this race, even though I will need some extreme recovery and food/water intake for the next couple of days. I am also really happy with my results of reaching the farthest I have ever ran today with 42 miles. (this is because the course was about 4.2 miles every round, so a little farther than the standard of 4 miles, like they said.) Ultra marathons are definitely a beast in themselves, and a lot different than any type of race that I have done!
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