{"id":1301,"date":"2014-07-13T21:09:05","date_gmt":"2014-07-14T05:09:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrisrivard.com\/?p=1301"},"modified":"2014-07-13T21:09:05","modified_gmt":"2014-07-14T05:09:05","slug":"thermonuclear-reactor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrisrivard.com\/blog\/thermonuclear-reactor\/","title":{"rendered":"Thermonuclear reactor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mt. Hood 50 miler race report –\u00a0https:\/\/gobeyondracing.com\/races\/mt-hood-50\/<\/a><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/165172284
\n<\/a>(Watch died a few times during the day…)<\/p>\n

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.
\n\u2015 Marcus Aurelius, Meditations<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

tl;dr<\/strong>
\nI literally enjoyed every second of the race. Truly enjoyed it as in, I relished the entire experience… except for the falling… but I’ll get to that part.<\/p>\n

It was close to 32 \/ 90 \u00a0deg on Saturday and very dry and dusty on the Pacific Crest Trail. I brought along\u00a06 frozen bottles of Tailwind, carried them with me in a cooler and divided them at the start among 2 drop bags.\u00a0I only swapped\u00a0one of them at the first aid station and didn’t touch the others the entire race. \u00a0My strategy for the day quickly moved to 1 bottle of water, 1 bottle with Nuun (electrolyte drink) and sodium caps. \u00a0I was checking my hands to see if they were swelling at all (too much sodium, retaining fluids) and if so, I skipped an s-cap delivery and drank water or diluted Nuun. The best thing that I learned\u00a0is that my stomach is like a thermonuclear reactor…meaning – I took in calories all. damn. day. Half a peanut butter and jelly sandwich\u00a0and a piece of banana at every aid station worked for me all day with no issues. A theme I gathered from a few other runners was that they were getting nauseous. I felt that a little bit early on when I was only drinking Tailwind – I think it was because I was intaking too much sugar and it was too hot. My body couldn’t both process the sugar and sweat off the heat. That’s my theory anyway. When I switched to water I was good to go.<\/p>\n

I was most concerned\u00a0with my stomach going into the race. If I couldn’t keep calories going in, things can go pear-shaped quickly\u00a0unless you puke and reset (I’ve heard). I started with a couple of gels and some Clif blocks,\u00a0then found that the PBJ’s were what my stomach wanted. It was like throwing logs on a roaring fire all day.<\/p>\n

Highs:<\/p>\n