I had heard from my running buddy, Jeremiah, that the course was hilly but I was a little surprised when I picked up my packet on Friday and found that it was billed as the "Toughest 15k in the South". I quickly dismissed the phrase as marketing hype and decided that I'd just start the run the next morning at a my sustainable pace of about 9 minutes a mile.
Friday night I was concerned about many things including eating right, getting enough sleep, my wife who was supposed to run but was sick, getting up on time, and my injuries. I had 2 injuries that concerned me: a groin pull that at times prevented me from lifting my left leg very high and my right knee which was sometimes in enough pain to keep me from running at all. Nevertheless, I set my goal to run it in something under 90 minutes.
Saturday morning came and I was up on time and feeling pretty good, but I wouldn't really know how good I felt until I tested the knee when I was warming up. The warmup up went ok. There was some pain in my knee but I figured it would be self-numbing as I got started with the race.
I don't know if it was adrenaline or not, but when the race started I was running without stress at an 8.25 minute pace for the first 3 miles. I know now from looking at the elevation chart on www.mapmyrun.com that I was going gently downhill for a lot of that part of the race.
Mile number 4 was good and flat, but I could tell that my pace was beginning to fade. It was during the 5th mile that the hills began and it was at about 5.3 miles that I encountered the wisdom runner who said "Good luck on Stone River Young Man".
Then it happened. We turned the corner off Shiloh Drive on to Stone River and there it was before me: the never ending hill. For the next 2 miles we climbed and climbed. Nearly 400 feet. Not a lot for you big mountain guys, but it was a lot for this Southerner who'd never run more than 6 miles at any one time. About 2/3 of the way up something funny happened: I ran out of juice. The only thing that kept me going was my buddy, Jeremiah's words, "Just don't stop. Whatever you do, just don't stop." So I kept running, but I was going so slow that a tall guy walking went right past me. I had to laugh a little inside about how that picture must have looked.
Well, I made it to the top of Stone River without stopping, but unfortunately for me the roughest part was ahead. You see, I have this problem with my right ankle collapsing to the inside when it is overworked and from about 7.8 miles to 9.0 the Statue to Statue course descends about 500 feet and that puts a lot of extra stress on your legs. All that time my ankle was collapsing, collapsing, and collapsing with every step. It wasn't terribly painful at the time, but I knew I would pay later because of the damage I was doing.
To add insult to injury there is a 100+ foot climb in the last 0.3 of the race, but I managed to meet my goal and finish in 89 minutes and some seconds. It was bar-b-que time! But the worst was yet to come...
