How I Did Not Finish the HK100

The HK100 has been my training focus for the past few months and I DNF'd on Saturday. It was disappointing. Where did I go wrong? Why did I give up? Do I have any regrets?

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Moments of the Week (Jan 15-21)

• Jero does not have a good track record with foreign languages, however, over the past few months, he has stepped up his effort, made an impression on his teacher, and had a recent assessment to prove it.

• Lea and Jero spent the weekend doing what teenagers do in our neighborhood bubble. I love it when they can still be kids.

• Getting paperwork sorted can be so difficult. Not in Hong Kong. I expected a long queue, a lot of paperwork, and questions to make a "Declaration" and get papers apostilled. Nope.

• Lately, Maricar and Feris spend every free moment reading. This weekend, who finished Light Bringer from the Red Rising series and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo? Who finished Insurgent and Allegiant of the Divergent series?

  

  I promise to share photos from the race at some point…

I’m Writing a Memoir

Thanks for the input.

Last week I asked you to vote on three potential book titles. The winner, with 68% of votes was Beyond the American Dream: A Family’s Unscripted Journey Abroad.  

The other two split the remaining votes.

Heads up. In a week or so, I’ll have two different book covers to share and would love your feedback. But in the meantime, if you have ideas for visuals or designs to go with the title, send them my way.

On The Move

Run With Me on Strava - 59.72 mi, 9,865 ft

This week was all about carbo-loading and running the HK100. I Did Not Finish (DNF). Below is my post from Strava, summarizing what happened and my takeaways from the experience.

At what point do you call it quits?

The strategy going in was to start conservatively and keep my HR around 140. I was confident in a sub-16 and potentially a sub-15.

Out of the gates, I flipped a switch and went into attack mode to take advantage of the road and avoid getting stuck behind slower runners on single-track trails. 15 miles and two and half hours into the run, I slowed down the pace, knowing I had a lot of race ahead of me. Unfortunately, the damage to my legs was already done. With the weather and elevation changes, it was the equivalent of going all out on a marathon, burning my legs and then trying to run two more marathons.

My new conservative pace worked for about two hours until the cramps and muscle spasms progressively got worse. It hurt on the flats, it hurt more on the climbs and then even more on the descents.

It was at 4 or 5 hours into a projected 16-hour race, that I started to ask myself, what do I need to finish? How can I turn this around? And also, at what point do I quit?

I told myself I would continue to take it slow and milk all the checkpoints. In my limited ultra-running experience, I learned to give it an hour and check back in. Each checkpoint break became longer, hoping that if I gave my legs rest and rubbed enough ointment, I'd be good to go. My numbed legs would work for all of half a mile out of the checkpoint and then it was back to a walk.

On approach to checkpoint 5 (Kei Ling Ha), 57km, I told myself I was done. I took an hour in the aid tent hoping for a miracle. After the medic asked me a half dozen times, are you going to drop out? I got annoyed and decided to push ahead. I felt okay for the next mile and then my legs started to lock up again so I went back to walking.

At nine and a half hours in, I've had a lot of time to think.

I did the math of how long it would take me to finish the next 45k and what grit I would have to channel. I asked myself what I wanted to get out of this experience. What would it mean to finish?

In the end, I told myself a story. This was no longer a race. It was one step after the other; a mental battle. Not fun in the least. I screwed up early and tried to right the ship with no success. With another 16 hours before the cut-off, I was confident I could finish, but at what cost? The satisfaction of finishing was not worth it. I'm here to run and this is not running. I'll live to fight another day and do it right.

As these thoughts were circling in my head, I saw my friend Matt backtracking on the trail because of a serious knee injury. He was done. No question about it. I gave him a big filthy hug, possibly shed a tear and said, let's go home. I was happy.

Some Takeaways

How did I make a rookie mistake?

The adrenaline and my competitiveness got the best of me.

I was in Wave 2 of 5. When my wave started 5 minutes after the first group, I quickly put myself in the front as we were heading on to a single track trail. Then, I got stuck behind the tail end of wave 1. I decided to to pass what felt like 100s of runners, one by one for the next 5k. This was risky business. While attempting to pass some of the early runners, I went up a bank, lost my balance, fell on my back and hit my head. It was only dirt, but it still shook me up and lit a fire in me.

I proceeded to pass runners when I could, knowing that I’ll have my chance to let loose once we hit the asphalt. When that time came, I got carried away, passing each runner on the road and thinking I won’t have to sit behind them once we got back on the trails. HR during this time was hovering at 165 which means I was pushing. I carried over my killer instinct and attacked the early hills. By the time I decided to slow down after Ham Tin, the damage on my legs was done and it was downhill from here.

What went right?

• Eating and nutrition. I stuck to the 250-300 calorie-an-hour goal and my stomach and energy were great.

• When I decided to call it quits, I accepted my mistakes and was confident in my decision.

What are the lessons? Potential areas for improvement?

• I made the cardinal mistake of introducing something new on race day. Knowing it was going to be hot and humid, I took SaltStick. Two an hour. Did it help? Did it trigger the cramps and locked muscles? Regardless, I should have experimented BEFORE and not during the race.

• I didn’t respect the weather, the course or the distance. Even if I thought I was feeling good and had a good balance, I should have stuck to the plan. Take it slow.

• I had good weekly mileage and tapered well. The month leading up to race day, I had one trail run. This is unacceptable.

What do I regret?

I regret not being able to run most of the course on race day. Running is fun. Pushing hard and suffering while running to see what your body can do is fun. I did several recces with Marc and felt confident that if I could just get to the second half in decent shape, I could push. I never got that chance.

What were some of the highlights?

• The sky was clear and the views were spectacular. They really were.

• When I called it quits, I was so happy, I had to hide my glee out of respect to the runners that were pushing on.

• No injuries, just sore muscles, a scratch here and chafing there.

• Nutrition was on point. However, in the future, I’m going to pass on the Haribo rolls. My jaw is tired from all the chewing.

• It was a great training cycle with the weekly KipMovin sessions and several grueling, but enjoyable trail runs over the past few months with Marc, Matt, and Harry.

If you made it this far, here are some random thoughts and events:

• Maricar and the kids watched the HK100 live stream at 8am and witnessed me push the pace out of the gates, flying passed all the other runners. It’s so embarrassing. Who does this guy think he is?

• On the way to Hoi Ha, there is a small beach. I stubbed my toe on a rock, it triggered a cramp in my leg calf, I let out a scream and fell into the sand. I sat there for a few minutes while volunteers helped me stretch it out. After this point, I felt any uneven step could trigger another cramp.

• Whenever I went to an aid tent, I was surrounded by 3-4 medics. I think they were bored and looking for something to do. When they heard that it was just my legs, they looked disappointed.

• There was one male runner who wore only running commandos and used one pole. Several female runners were letting their cheeks hang out. Is this intentional?

• When I decided to quit, I was 100ish of 2000. There were so many people pushing on. They are impressive. I got starstruck at the start line seeing all these trail runners I see on social media and follow on Strava.