After my first 50 miler: day one

Feeling somewhat better today, both physically and mentally. I took a cool bath last night, slept for 12 hours, and got a massage this afternoon, all of which helped with the former.

As for the latter, it probably has to do with a few of things. First, I think there is a relationship to the physical aspect: your body is no longer screaming at you to stop doing whatever it is you've been doing, which your brain translates into a strong sense of aversion.

Second, it feels like the brain tends to forget about the bad parts more easily than the good parts. I don't know why that would be, but yesterday I remembered my feelings during the race that I never wanted to run an ultramarathon again. Today I can only remember remembering those feelings.

I trust my memory, so I'm still not chomping at the bit to sign up, but I'm guessing that with each passing day I'll probably forget a little more. Eventually the sense of accomplishment will outweigh the memories of pain (or my brain will convince itself that those were actually good memories). I'll again throw better judgement to the wind and fork over a good amount of money for the privilege to suffer for hours on end, subsisting on the most contrived and dubious foodstuffs, and in the company of like-minded masochists.

This process seems to be pretty common among endurance athletes. Again in my bag of shwag from the race I received a copy of the lastest issue of Ultrarunning (this one October 2009). In this issue Susan Farago covers the Leadville Trail 100, specifically the story of 15 Austinites who put together an informal club targeted at training for this event. When Susan asked club member Joseph Moore about his finish:

"The first thing I said when I crossed the finish line was 'That was the dumbest f***ing thing I've ever done. I'm never going to do that again.' That was three days ago. Today, I'm already thinking about next year's race."

I suspect this will mirror my thoughts pretty closely. Better not to think too much about it now though.

One thing that did lift my spirits today was this: every issue of Ultrarunning includes a list of finishers and times from the prevoius month for every official ultra marathon in the United States, and some international ones as well. It's amazing to me that there are so few ultra marathons and ultra marathoners out there that this is even possible (consider that the complete results listing for a single big "standard" marathon would take an entire issue by itself). Anyway, my previous ultra was the Skyline 50K, and low-and-behold, there I am on page 53, right smack in the middle of the pack. Pretty cool!