LT100 2007 - Start to Mayqueen

I didn't sleep well leading into the LT100. I didn't go to bed early enough. I was getting about 6-7 hours of sleep. This is fine for some people, and I can do this if all I do is work in an office, but when I'm doing extreme physical stuff, 8 hours of sleep that include some REM is essential. I don't think I got any REMs the few days leading into the LT100, and I got no sleep the very night before.
A full dose of Sominex was two tablets. Thursday night, I took three. I still didn't get REM, but I did sleep, even though I woke frequently. The walls of the Anytrails lodge are paper-thin. Every vehicle that went by, especially those obnoxious diesels with the roaring exhaust and rattling engines, woke me up.
Friday night, I repeated the dose, plus I downed a beer, which I had said a couple of hours before I wasn't going to do, but I was so wound-up I drank one with dinner.

Lesson 1: I don't care if you have to take freakin' narcotics, take something strong that will knock your ass out. You can use prescription meds two nights before the race, but the night before is risky. Narcotics take 10-30 hours to wear off. The night before the race you should probably only use OTC meds.

Two of my crew came early on Friday. That wasn't just awesome, that was almost essential. They went to the LT100 meetings with me, and we had a last-minute meeting-of-the-minds.

The other two crew-members came late. So very late that it ended up hurting very badly. I had needed to go through the crew vehicle (my CR-V) and show them where everything was. I never had that opportunity.
Friday night, I wasn't sleeping but my eyes were closed. The sound of my CR-V came and it parked. I was wide awake then. No one came in so I assumed it must've been someone else. Then I heard voices. The walls of the Anytrails Lodge are paper-thin, and you have to have some windows opened at least a tiny bit for ventilation. I don't know how long the voices talked out there 30-60 minutes. Finally they came in. It was my crew.
Without having had the opportunity to meet with them during the day and go through the crew vehicle, I started trying to do a last-minute data-dump for them. Too much info too late at night. I don't know if anything I said could absorb. There were items in my CR-V which I needed during the race that I told them of and they apparently never knew those things were there.

Lesson 2: Do a dress-rehearsal with your crew and crew-vehicle before the race. Don't wait until Leadville – do it in Denver.

The evening before, I thought to ask if they could bang on everyone's doors at 2:30am, since everyone at the Lodge was running. So at 2:30am, we got our wake-up. That allowed us to get dressed, get downtown, check in, get coffee, eat my measly breakfast of two trail nut bars and drink a Muscle Milk.

The weather was perfect. Perfectly perfect. I was wearing a yellow sleeveless jersey and a long-sleeve over that, with a fleece headband over my ears, and my bicycle gloves. Some people wore tights, but that was overkill. Tights are harder to take off, and since we're running, legs shouldn't get cold – they're doing all the work.

There was no moon. It rose at noon and set at 10:24pm, so it was long gone in the late morning.

There were too many runners. I didn't push it at all. Probably should have a tad while heading down the "Boulevard". Once we got to the singletrack around the lake, it was a traffic jam. It wasn't too bad at first, but about four miles from Mayqueen it got severe. Several of us were wasting energy putting on the brakes or running slower than our most efficient speed. Passing was possible, but there were about 100 people to pass, literally. You couldn't see the head of the line. Until finally I got a glimpse. It was a tall blonde walking with her arms out to each side blocking the entire trail. I thought, “Wow, how rude. She can clearly see not a soul ahead of her and can hear a stampede behind her, yet she has the gall to block the trail. I'd move aside in such a situation.” Then a woman next to me said basically the same thing I was thinking. I told her it was one person blocking the trail, but we had to wait a bit for the trail to bend just right and then finally she saw that I was right. So she said to hell with it and started running off-trail alongside everyone passing everyone. I followed. The trail became too impossibly narrow and we had to duck back in, but then we did it again and got in front. Wow, so much easier to trot along without effort – much faster than everyone else.
The bizarre thing is, I think the woman thought she was doing all of us a favor. Often new people make the mistake of heading out too fast and run out of energy. She should have realized everyone's most efficient speed isn't the same as hers and just let everyone run their own race.
I probably lost 8 minutes to traffic, and because of all the breaking, I lost energy too.