Monday, October 15, 2007

Heartland 100 Brief Report

I ran the Heartland 100 on Saturday in Cassoday KS and managed to break Eric Clifton's course record; I ran 14:26 and his record was 14:30. 5 time winner Mark Henderson from Texas was 2nd (I believe about 17:35) and Carrie Sauter from Maryland won the women's race in about 20 hours. Carrie ironically was also using the race as a training run for ATY, though she will be well warmed up by the time I start my 24 hour race, since she is doing the 72 hour event in Arizona. The results should be posted in the next day or so (http://www.ksultrarunners.org/).

My biggest worry prior to the race was wind, and there was plenty of that on Saturday, along with some lightning, rain, and a brief period of hail. But, the rolling prairie lands of the Flint Hills turned out to be a beautiful place to run. While I think of Kansas as being flat, it was nice and rolling the whole way. I believe the course has 6000 feet of climbing (and descent) so it never gets boring at all.

This was primarily a training run for ATY, and in that sense it went well. I stuck with my plan of walking 5 minutes per hour the whole race except for the last 2 hours when I became concerned about missing the record. I ate one gel every 25 minutes the whole race, and drank water the whole way rather than any sports drink. For salt, I just took a pill each time I started to feel cramps starting; it probably worked out to about 2 per hour. I believe the high temp was around 78 degrees, so that should be about the same as at ATY (hopefully minus the wind).

Overall a very well organized event put on by some very dedicated volunteers. The course markings were perfect and my wife Judy had no problems getting from one crew station to the next. The whole vibe was great and I'd highly recommend this race to anyone looking for a more lowkey 50 or 100 mile experience next fall.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Paul,

Congrats on the Heartland win! Nice when you can bust out a "training run" and break a course record...

-Jasper

Anonymous said...

Wow - great job, Paul! Congrats on the win and the course record!!

Looks as if your training for ATY is working out just right!

Sarah

WynnMan said...

Hey good work Paul, this is great confidence going into ATY.

Bedrock said...

Paul,

Congrats on the successful training run and CR at Heartland.

Shad Mika said...

Congrats on the run!!! I came across your blog on-line and linked to it on mine. Hope that is ok. I ran the Leadville 10K with you. Keep up the good work. Shad......

Ben, aka BadBen said...

What a great plan and record run at Heartland. Everyone else that has tried to break the record there always goes out too fast.

It was nice seeing the little of you that we saw at the aid station. Good luck at ATY.
Happy trails,
Bad Ben