Stone Kitten Trail Run

On Sunday, I hopped in my car and headed over to Ipswich, MA to preview the course of the Stone Cat 50 Miler. The race itself will consist of four 12.5 mile laps, so I decided to do 2 laps as this week's long run. Since the course isn't marked yet, I ended up missing a few turns and probably did around 23 miles total.

My first impression was that this will be a great course for a first 50 miler. The terrain is flat and relatively soft, consisting mainly of singletrack and doubletrack trails through the sort of New England forest/meadow/swamp terrain I grew up with. There's definitely enough variation to keep things interesting along the way, while still having all the aid/support benefits of a loop course. I saw six deer along the way, and found this cool section of abandoned road, complete with a town border marker from the 40s or 50s. My only tentative concern is that a few sections of the trail had been inundated by nature's voluntarist hydrological engineers. Perhaps the race course won't include those sections or the water level is lower in November... Anyway, I did remarkably well at running with wet feet using my Injinji socks and inov-8 Roclite 295 shoes, with only one very small blister.

Part of the course overlaps with the Bay Circuit Trail, a 200 mile trail on the outer fringes of Boston. It's kind of scary that the first thought that flashed into my head after finding out about this is "Hmmm, I wonder if I could set a speed record for that." I have at least a year or two ahead of me before I'd be in shape for it, but after a while you start to believe that no distance is truly too far.

This run also gave me the chance to experiment a little bit with ultra nutrition. Unlike a marathon where you can run off of stored energy, an ultra requires that you down a substantial number of calories along the way. This time I tried having a large PB & J halfway through, and I guess I don't have any complaints. I also hydrate using slightly dilute Gatorade, and use electrolyte tablets if I'm running in hot conditions.

As I sit here the day after, I'd have to say I feel pretty good - a little foot and leg soreness, but not feeling very stressed. I'm still a little under the weather from my cold last week, so I'll just take everything one day or one run at a time. Based on my run yesterday, I'm aiming for somewhere between 8 and 9 hours for the actual Stone Cat in November.