Photo: Steve Pierce
November 14th was the fourth time I had been granted the privilege of running in Bills Bad Ass 50K. I'm not much of a Ultra running but the BBA50K has become the highlight of my running for the year. The race is put on by Wild Bill and Chef Bill as a free race to give back to the local running community each year. The course is 6 loops of the Perkins trail plus going up Oak Hill. Both of the Bills offer words of "encouragement" with a bull horn to the runners as they complete each loop. Along with several runner who have not entered the race running loops make for a fun atmosphere. This year they had a karaoke set up for anyone who wanted to sing a song between laps.
My running and other training had been slacking due to injury since I got back from racing in Gravel Worlds in August. My longest run was only 10 miles so I knew that it was going to be a long day.
My Fueling plan would be to use Hammer Nutrition products that I use during all of my training and in racing. I carried my usual mix of Perpetuem and HEED in my bottles. My strategy was to grab a new bottle for each lap and have an Endurolyte between each lap and every other lap have a Hammer Gel.
My time for the race in the past have been 6:36, 6:16, and 6:20. Since I have not been training properly for the race I was hoping to break 7:00 hours. My split time goals for my laps were 55, 55, 55, 1:00, 1:15, 1:15 plus the 15-20 minutes to complete last mile up hill. I was surprised that I was very close and ran 53, 53, 53, 1:01, 1:10, 1:15. My finish time of 6:20:33 was 25 seconds faster than last year and good enough for 30th place.
