De Feet! (Pt2)

In case yesterday's post didn't make it clear, the only reason I altered from my game-plan of just walking around Wash Park, is because of my blister. The blister came on fast and furious. Without any way of knowing exactly what caused it, I changed everything to what had always worked - what I was used to. I was used to Injinji's sox inside my thin GoldToe socks, and I was used to running.
So I put on my old Vasque shoes, my old socks, and I started running.

Talon had suggested that Washington Park wasn't an easy course because it's too flat. You use the same muscles the same way all the time. A trail race uses different muscles and body parts in different ways. Trail runs are total body efforts. I can definitely feel that some parts that are usually sore after a run haven't been used at all. My right foot is bad.

I'm not sure how hot it got - I rarely look at the weather forecasts. It was hot, though. Quite a few other runners looked like they were suffering.

Lessons:
1) Count on meals zapping my energy, but I have to eat. I should stick to Muscle Milk and Safeway nutritional drink, plus what they have at the LT100 aid stations. No blowing through aid stations to save time, like I did at Collegiate Peaks. I need to stop and grab enough food. My crew can provide the nutrition drinks, plus the Tostitos and Doritos seemed to work real well. During regular living/training, I think of fried snack chips as poison, but for ultra events, they're great.
2) Moisture, especially sweat in bucket-loads, is extremely bad. It leads to injurious blisters and chaffing. I need to figure out foot-taping and use anti-perspirant and/or petroleum jelly profusely. I wonder if copious anti-perspirant on my feet would've avoided the blisters?
3) My plan has been to taper off my running and gradually switch to hiking, camping, and mountain climbing the three weeks before Leadville. This will get me used to walking and altitude. I could've used the adjustment to walking before Saturday, so I shouldn't be too discouraged.
4) I was surprised that staying awake wasn't difficult. Even though I didn't go the full 30 hours, I ran 76 miles in 23 hours, with only 4 hours of sleep, and I didn't feel like a zombie. Leadville will be worse, but this aspect doesn't concern me like it had.

Basically, two things thwarted me Saturday: severe, injurious blisters to my right foot, and severe chaffing on my butt.
Yep, my butt was so chaffed, red, and inflamed I had two symetrical streaks on each side of my butt-crack that were oozing lymph. If I'd continued, they would've eventually oozed blood.
My favorite Nike underwear just didn't cut it - not when I was sweating that much.
My Nike underwear looks at a glance like bike shorts. So I can strip down to my underwear and change shorts right in front of people and they don't know. But when sweating profusely, and sweat is trickling down into your crotch and down your legs, I think I need running shorts with a net lining.
So looks like I'll have to go to the next level of shedding my modesty. During Leadville, I'm going to have to change butt-naked. Since there's kids at certain places, it'll be hard to find the right places to change. If there's no kids, then I'll have to change into whatever I figure will work best, even if there's no privacy.

Like Paul Grimm told me, any time you come out of a training weekend with a lot more knowledge than you had before, you have to call it a success. Best to learn all this before Leadville.

My weight before the event: 170lbs.
My weight after, the next morning: 166lbs.
Sunday night: 169lbs.
So my weight hasn't yoyo'd so much. Sunday night, my legs were sore from swelling. I had to keep elevating. I road my bike and massaged and did yard work.

Oh, I have to stop refering to myself as "fat". My belly fat is gone and my love-handles are shrunken to almost nothing. But I'm still "old". That hasn't shrunken at all.