Frozen Gnome 50K

In past years, I have found that I struggle with the winters here in Wisconsin. I often tend to eat more, drink alcohol a little more, and also not be quite as active as I am in the spring and summer and fall months. I struggle with less daylight and sunshine and also with the kind of terrible and ugly weather that Wisconsin winters can provide. Take, for example, last week's freezing rain. Not only did I have three sick kids at home, but the weather resulted in school being canceled and some of my office hours being altered due to the terrible road conditions. If you ask me, there are few weather patterns worse than freezing rain. I mean, visually, it's just kind of ugly, plus the mess the roads are in just adds stress and anxiety to all of us.

This winter I decided to try something different. Normally I would play basketball in the winter, but now that we have six-month-old Emerin at home, I have a new early morning responsibility. I take the morning shift to feed her which allows Ellie to get a little bit more sleep and gives me some quiet time with that little girl. Unfortunately, this means I can't join the crew at Kiel High for Tuesday and Friday open gyms. I needed to find something else to do to keep me busy and motivated. I came up with the idea of running a winter trail race. As I said, I've never run much in the winters, instead focusing on basketball and weightlifting and other stuff. And winter trail races are an entirely different animal. But I decided to give it a go.

Back in October I signed up for the Frozen Gnome 50k, a race held in Crystal Lake, Illinois, at Veteran Acres County Park. It was fun to train for it, believe it or not, as I had to try out different layering techniques for my clothes, try to figure out a way to keep and get better traction on my feet, and even figure out a new form of nutrition for during the run-since water bottles tend to freeze when it's cold outside.

The training went well this winter! I spent quite a bit of time out in the woods after my kids were in bed. I only wiped out once on an icy sidewalk...although it was a doozy of a wipe out! Sometimes I was really, really cold and underdressed. Other times I was shedding layers to prevent any excessive sweating that could really cause issues. On only one occasion was I actually a bit worried when I was out in the woods. I tried to cut straight through the woods from one trail to another, but the sun was setting, and I quickly was a tiny bit lost. Luckily, I had my phone along. While it's kind of like cheating and shouldn't be relied upon (besides, they freeze and lose battery life quickly in the cold!), I was very thankful for technology at that moment!

Looking to the actual race, I was hoping to finish the Frozen Gnome 50k in about 4 1/2 hours. I also had a goal of finishing in the top three...maybe even winning the race.

On January 7, I ran the Gnome. It is a loop course, in which we repeat the same 10K loop five times. While there wasn't a lot of snow on the course, there was a lot of ice--some slippery ice, some ice that I would describe as slippery and lumpy, and some crusty ice. Also, it was exactly 2° at the start of the race. At the start of the race I found a decent pace and was in fourth place for the first loop. The first three miles had me very concerned, since I was absolutely freezing-from my fingertips to my face to my toes.

As that first loop concluded (a 10K or 6.2 mile loop), I had warmed up and eventually moved into third place. As I worked through the second, third, and fourth loops, the first and second place runners seemed to put some space between us. I could no longer really see them at all. I felt good for the majority of the run and just tried to keep moving forward one step at a time.

Finally, as I started the fifth loop, I set a goal for myself. It seemed I was never going to catch second place, let alone first place, and I was fairly certain I had a big lead on fourth place, so there wasn't really anyone chasing me from behind. Because of these factors, I had every reason to just kind of take it easy on that last loop. I would call it "Mailing It In"...kind of just settling and quitting, so to speak. But for some reason I was motivated to keep working. So I set a goal to finish that final loop in less than 55 minutes. That goal kept me honest and kept me working. A couple times during the run and during that final loop I wanted to just walk, but instead I kept running, because I wanted to keep myself honest, as I said. Well, it ended up working, and I was rewarded for it...

One part of the course is a little out-and-back section, where you see other runners who are either ahead of you by a couple minutes or behind. As I was leaving this out-and-back with about two miles left in the race, I happened to pass the runner who I thought was in second place! I had about five minutes on him. Had I lollygagged on that final loop, he might've actually passed me back! I found out after the race, when talking to him, that he had stopped to go to the bathroom and that's when I passed him. Because of that, I had no idea I was in second, but I was rewarded for keeping my effort honest. I finished the race in 4 hours and 10 minutes, good for second place. It was a very rewarding run...one of the most rewarding races I've done. Within 10 minutes after finishing, I got cold for the first time. After a change of clothes and a quick nap in my truck, I was good to go with the rest of the day, and I was very happy that I had the opportunity to run and that I had tried a new kind of adventure.

Besides reinforcing to many of you that I'm a bit of a crazy person when it comes to running, what is the point of the story? I think there are two. The first one is that you can't be sure how anything is going to turn out. You just need to keep working and giving it honest effort, and more often than not you'll be rewarded for it. The second point is to think about weaknesses in your day-to-day life or times of the year when you struggle with health. Address those issues-don't ignore them. Work through them, improve on them, and appreciate the reward that they'll provide! Who would have thought that running 31 miles in single digit temps on a lot of ice and frozen mud could actually be fun?!