Lookout Mountain 50 Miler: DNF

The second DNF of my career and both have come within the last year. Maybe bit off a bit more than I could chew, maybe underestimated the difficulty of the course, maybe wasn't recovered from the 40 mile mountain run 2 weeks ago, maybe was doing long term damage to my sacrum, or maybe I am just a gigantic panzy...... this race was horrible.

I woke up with a sore lower back but kinda just wrote it off as sleeping on it funny. Was certainly nothing to tweak out about but I made a note of it. A dull, aching pain. It felt fine the first 10 miles of the race but was still a dull aching pain. Our first 7 miles were straight down Lookout Mountain, followed by 3-4 miles of flat running, then 7 miles straight back up. The pain went from dull and achy to sharp. Gotta keep pushing.

We hit the 18 mile aid station in good spirits. Everyone else seemed to be in a panic and losing control, but Mason and I were chilling. I was slightly concerned about whether or not my sacrum would hold up but we were going to find out. This next section buried us though.

We were told the next aid station was about 6 miles away and 9 miles later we finally hit mile 27 aid station and that was a rough section. I was thinking in my head holy cow I am not sure this thing is going to hold up. We were surprisingly only an hour ahead of cutoff and entering the supposedly "toughest part of the course". 

About half a mile in I brought up what we were both thinking and had the tough conversation about maybe this one doesn't get done. Sucked. It was depressing. But I had pretty much made my mind up about it and was fully convinced I had a stress reaction in my sacrum, and not being sure whether or not we were going to finish in time put the nail in the coffin.

We walked back to the aid station, very slowly, called my wife to pick us up, and got made fun of by the volunteers. It was a good time. We got back to the hotel and showered off and went or a beer and a bite to eat. Not quite the celebration we were looking for but still felt pretty good after 7 hours on the mountain and eating gels.

I think there were a few wrong approaches taken to this race, but the main takeaway is to always prepare for the worst and hope or the best. I thought this would maybe be an 8-9 hour day and quickly realized we were probably looking at more like 14 and using headlamps.

The good thing is I actually recovered pretty quickly and was back running in two days. Made me feel like a huge panzy though for throwing in the towel....