Christmas Camp Day Seven: The Big One

The final challenge for Christmas Camp 2008 was to run the longest mileage on the last day after accumulating 70 miles of fatigue in the body over the previous 6 days. Oh yeah...sign me up! :-)

6 Christmas campers opted to run loops at the Glendoveer Fitness trail loop: 2 miles of nice chip trails passing around a golf course with large Douglas fir trees. The trail was in great shape...really only mushy in one or two sections. The other campers did an out and back on the Wildwood trail to handle the remaining snow.

For the "loopers" to get 30 miles we needed to do 15 loops. Youch!
But it went by surprising fast especially with almost no rain. It was great having the car as an aid station every 2 miles with food, water, change of clothes, porta-potties and the every present squirrels. Note that it appears the water fountains are turned off for winter but this would be a great place to do tempo runs in the spring or summer. As well, watch those squirrels: close to the biggest, most aggressive Sciuridae I ever care to meet. Carried off all our empty GU packets and I think were trying with the hand-helds! They could easily beat up our dog Hagen!

After warm-up for the first 6-8 miles making good use of the portable toilets (Imodium to the rescue :-) ), I was able to pick up the pace and hit 20 miles in 2:57.

I then caught up to Trisha and with a strange guy giving her pause I did the next two loops with her. Once the weirdo hit the road, I picked up the pace again and hit the marathon in 3:57 (a little cheating as these are running time with limited aid station time included).
2 loops to go. I started working again and finished out in 4:32 pushing down the nice downhill to the 30 mile finish.

Then I did some "extra" with Ronda and also back out to take some pictures of Trisha finishing strong. This was Trisha's first 100 mile week and only THIRTY miles further than her previous long week...awesome! She is going to rock the Surf City Marathon in a month!

For fueling, outside of 4 gels, I went with about 1-2 oz of yams or sweet potatoes and a turkey slider (turkey breast slices wrapped around either avocado or olives) per loop. Seemed to really keep my stomach good and provided the needed power. Thanks Mark!

We all spent some time running with friends (thanks to Mary, James and Sarah for coming out...future Christmas Campers I think!), with fellow campers and by ourselves either in quite reflection or rockin' out with the tunes. Great way to end the year.

Christmas Camp 2008
Thursday Dec 25 - 7.1 miles (11.4 km)
Friday Dec 26 - 13.2 miles (11.4 km)
Saturday Dec 27 - 15 miles (24.2 km)
Sunday Dec 28- 22 miles (35.4 km)
Monday Dec 29 - 5.1 miles (24.2 km)
Tuesday Dec 30 - 8 miles (12 km)
Wednesday Dec 31 - 32 miles (51.5 km)
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Total of 18 hours for 102 miles (164 km)

Great way to spend vacation :-)

Happy New Year all and see you on the road and trails in 2009!