Running the Frosty 50

Or ‘the day reality bit me on the backside’

SUZANNE RAMSEY
College relations staff writer

Displaying my finishing award after completing the Frosty 50, a 31-mile race to be forever described as "one of the more miserable experiences of my entire life," although admittedly it was a very well-organized race with a nice T-shirt and other folks seemed to be having lots of fun.

“I need to find another way to abuse myself,” I told my husband, John, as we drove back from North Carolina on Jan. 5, where a few hours earlier I had managed to finish the Frosty 50, a 50-kilometer footrace in Winston-Salem.

The 31-mile race, described repeatedly thereafter as “one of the more miserable experiences of my entire life,” began at 8 a.m. on a chilly Saturday morning and included two horseshoe-shaped “laps” of Salem Lake.

It wasn’t the first ultramarathon I’d run — I’ve run more than a dozen in the past 15 years — but it was my first in more than three years and the first since turning 40 in November. It was to be, to use a cliché-ish word, a “milestone.”

It also was the first time in a long time, i.e. since “youth” substituted for actual training, that I’d run that distance in such a state of ill preparedness. In the months leading up to the race, my training had proved to be less than optimal.

Over the past three months — more specifically, since the end of cross country season during which I worked hard to keep up with 19- and 20-year-olds as coach of the Sweet Briar Cross Country Club — “Life” had gotten in the way and my running had been inconsistent.

I spent most of my free time traveling, sleeping in, Christmas shopping, taking walks with John and drinking lattes at Starbucks. I hadn’t stopped running; it just wasn’t at the top of my to-do list.

Nevertheless, when I saw an online advertisement for the Frosty 50 in early December, I thought, “That looks like fun” and promptly signed up. Of course, as soon as I sent in my $30 entry fee, my left hip started to hurt, necessitating a two-week outright ban on running. This was followed by a couple of holidays and a road trip to Kentucky to see John’s grandma.

When all was said and done, I’d run about two times since mid-December when “poof!” there I was standing on the starting line of the Frosty 50, worrying that I’d tied my running shoes too tightly, wondering whether I should have worn a jacket and questioning why I’d chosen to torture myself by running 31 miles before lunchtime.

Despite my starting-line anxiety, the race started out OK. I hooked up with a runner named Jenny from New Jersey and as we ran along the dirt path that circled Salem Lake we talked about our running experiences.

She was 40, like me, and had just started running about a year ago. In the preceding 13 months, however, she had run 11 ultramarathons — races longer than 26.2 miles — and two regular marathons.

She also pointed out that despite my lack of training, a fact that I’d admitted while the starter’s gun was still smoking, I seemed to be doing fine, as we were running an eight-minutes-per-mile pace.

About 10 miles into the race, as nice as Jenny seemed and as good a pace as we were keeping, I thought it best to drop off and slow down. We had, after all, passed the 10-mile mark in just 5 minutes longer than it took me to race the entire Virginia 10-miler in September, a race for which I was far better conditioned.

So I bid Jenny farewell — she would go on to finish second woman overall — and slowed down to about a nine-minute pace. Although I was a little tired and chilled due to my stupidly-fast start, everything seemed to be going all right until 18 miles, when my left calf cramped up.

To better understand how my calf felt for the next 13 miles of plodding around Salem Lake praying a limb would fall out of a tree and render me unconscious and thereby unable to continue the death march … er … race, imagine that you have inserted a golf ball under your calf muscle and with each step it rolls.

Add to that bunions, blisters, bone spurs and feet my doctor said are now utterly devoid of the natural padding you’re born with, and running long distances makes no sense at all. But that morning, quitting was not an option — the cramping would go away, blisters would heal, bone spurs and bunions could only be corrected with surgery making them a virtual non-issue, and I had to get back to the car somehow.

So for the next two hours, there was a good bit of walking and an internal debate that would make this year’s presidential candidates look like they were hosting a tea party instead of a knock-down-drag-out political contest.

“I don’t care!” wimpy me shouted as I slowed to a walk and eyed the finishing area far in the distance on the other side of the lake. “I do care!” the masochistic side would counter, and I’d pick up my pace as my calf muscle throbbed and the blisters on my feet started to burn.

And on and on it went — walk, run, walk, run, caring, not caring — until I crossed the finish line in five hours, 16 minutes. My reward was a die-cut metal snowflake with “Frosty 50 Finisher” engraved on it. I held it up and tried to smile as John snapped a photo, then I waddled to the car.

That afternoon as we drove home, I confessed to John that my ultramarathon days might be over. I’d have to rethink my hobby and, like I said, “find another way to abuse myself.” I’m thinking roller derby, but as I lay in bed that night, my legs so heavy and sore that just rolling over was a major effort, I was counting the days till the Holiday Lake 50K on Feb. 16 in Appomattox and thinking, “Maybe, just maybe.”