More Miles is a backyard ultra located at Camp Monidokan in Knoxville, MD. If you’ve run C&O Canal 100, same place but different course. Instead of the towpath, you run a 4.16 miles loop around the camp every hour with the winner being the runner who completes the most number of loops (or yards) and is the last man standing. The odd mileage is to let runners do an exact 100 miles in 24 hours. The yard is an out-and-back route with 137 feet elevation gain/loss per mile or 569 per yard according to my Garmin. While not technical, this is a hella lot of vert for a backyard race especially considering there’s no alternate night loop. There’s camping available at start/finish, however my family were the only ones to take advantage of this.
Goal Setting
Setting goals can be a little tricky for a backyard race. Unlike normal races, the format is structured with no clear ending distance so the goal is to go as far as you can. I made the mistake of setting a distance goal in my first race (100 miles) and once I reached that, I stopped even though I could have continued longer. Coming into this race, I decided to set a goal of “a few more” yards once things became hard instead of having a distance target. I thought this would give me the best chance of going as far as I was able. While I didn’t expect winning would be possible considering how stacked the field was, I thought I might be among the last 5-6 runners and hoped my competitive juices would kick in late boosting me to a couple more late yards.
My son has started to dabble in ultras and was the one who actually chose this race as he wanted to do a backyard style event. My 1A goal was to help him out during the race.
Welcome To My Yard
Short loop courses are not for everyone. The primary advantage is that you get to know it very well especially out-and-back courses like this one. The better you know the course, the more efficient you can be on it. You know when to run and when to walk. You’ll then start to learn which sides of the trail to use depending on the direction. And if you go far enough, you’ll know which rocks to step on and where that annoying root is that’s likely to trip you up. This knowledge dramatically destresses things as you move along. After the first couple yards, the chance of you going off course is zero and you can just focus on putting one foot in front of the other.
My strategy to further reduce anxiety was to note times at certain landmarks. This way I knew how I was doing for my 55 minute yard. It took me a good 4 or 5 yards to finally dial this in. I had a couple extra landmarks picked out during the first couple miles, but ended up not using them as I went along. I liked having more in the last mile for extra reassurance and just in case I was distracted and missed one though that rarely happened.
- 9:30 – transition from trail to road at campground
- 12:30 – Mile1
- 23:00 – top of first steep section across the road
- 28:00 – turn around
- 39:00 – Mile 3
- 43:00 – transition from road back to trail at campground
- 47:00 – left turn, blaze on tree, bench
- 52:30 – Mile 4
- 55:00 – Start/Finish
The thing to keep in mind about the course is that there’s a bit more uphill on the outbound section. Coming back in to the finish is lots of smooth, runnable downhill that you can make up time on.
Some Thoughts on Pacing
I basically backed into my target yard time of 55 minutes. I figured I would need 1-2 minutes to swap bottles and grab food. Then another 1-2 minutes for a gear change or brief stop in a porta-potty. This would give me about a 2 minute buffer to get back over to the starting line without feeling rushed. There was probably only one stop where I had less than a minute of “free time” and that was due to a bit longer in the porta-potty.
My belief is that slower yards and less turnaround time is better for sustained endurance than quicker loops and more time sitting around camp. I don’t think resting for an extra 5 minutes makes up for the additional effort it takes to gain that time. By that same logic, it would be better to run 40 minute yards and have 20 minutes of rest time than a 50 minute yard with only 10 minutes rest. Few people do that because it’s much harder to run 40 minute yards. They convince themselves that 50 minutes is fine because it’s “easy” when in reality 55 minutes is better because it’s even easier.
Now there are times when it makes sense to run faster yards: fixing your feet, extra time in the porta-potty, complete change of clothes, etc. If you’ve got a problem, it’s worth the extra effort out on the yards to get it fixed. If you’re rolling along fine though. . . slow and steady.
The Backyard Vibe
The best part of a last one standing race is the community aspect of the format, which is very similar to timed races. The biggest difference is that all runners get together at least once every hour so you have more time to chat with others than most races. The out-and-back nature of this course provides an additional opportunity to interact with others and it’s always a little boost to give and receive encouragement.
The downside is it’s a very unforgiving format. The clock is always running and you really can’t afford to have a bad hour or your race is done. You also get back to the start/finish (and your ride home) every hour so all it takes is one or two low points for the convenience of quitting to outweigh your desire to continue. (Guess what ultras are known for besides great aid stations?) Now add to this that there is no official end to the race and it’s easy to mentally spiral out of control.
Father versus and Son
The true highlight of this race was that I was able to run it with my son. While we both run, we don’t run the same paces. He’s young, fit, and fast. I’m old, mostly fit, and not so fast. More Miles LOS allowed me to spend a lot time with him doing what I love most. We started the first yard about halfway back in the pack (57 runners started) and were immediately forced to a walk as everyone funneled down to the double track trail. It was then slow going on a buttery smooth downhill. We quickly learned the lesson that we needed to be in the front to start each yard. I got to spend the first couple minutes of each yard running near him before he pulled away and I was then passed by most of the field. We would chat in between yards and then line up and do it all over again.
After yard 11, he said his feet were bothering him and that he was going to target a 100k finish or 4 more yards. I told him I had things dialed in, to just tuck in behind me, and I’d get him around the course. After that yard, things had deteriorated a bit and he was now thinking 13 yards, which would be a new distance PR for him. Apparently, that yard went well enough that he shifted back to a 15 yard target. It was hard, but he gutted it out and got his 100K done. To say I’m proud would be a huge understatement. If only I had his grit and determination when I started out.
Flicking The Switch
With my wife and son off to a well earned night’s sleep, it was time to go to work. The deceptive thing about backyard races is that they start out easy. Oh so easy. Like I can do this all day easy. It’s when the sun drops and the stars come out that things start getting more challenging. I started slowing down a bit as I reached my landmarks. Not too much. Maybe twenty seconds here, thirty seconds there, minute at the turnaround. I had maybe a half mile of easily runnable terrain that I had been walking up until this point. The bottom portion of the drop from the turnaround, a little section right before the end of mile 3, and then the middle part of the driveway where the slope flattens out a bit. These were time banks where I could make up time if needed. I was running more of the course, but my effort levels were still in the “easy” category.
I finished up yard 18 (75 miles) and remember sitting in my chair at 1am feeling . . . unmotivated. Now I’ve had lots of low points throughout my ultra career (oh, so many!), however this was a new low for me. Not a new low as in a deeper low, but a new one as in different. Physically I felt fine. Mentally I was doing well, too. It’s not like I didn’t want to get up and go run another 4.167 miles. It’s just . . . I dunno. So I mentioned this to a couple other runners when we started out on yard 19 and Patrick was like just get motivated. Haha. As if it’s something you can just turn on and off at will. Wouldn’t that be great? But he wasn’t wrong either. It really only took a couple minutes for me to flip my motivation switch.
Chasing 10K
I am rather obsessed with running hundred milers. This blog is named for my quest to complete a hundred hundreds (100×100=10K). Now I had specifically not targeted this as a goal going into the race as I didn’t want to limit what I could do. But it was deep in the middle of the night and I latched onto this goal as a drowning man would a life preserver. And just like that I was back. I had to run a bit more of the last 6 yards, but I was still finishing with the clock reading 55:xx. It wasn’t necessarily easy, but I was still able to walk some of my bankable sections. Workmanlike is probably the best way to describe it. My wife and son woke up and were able to see me start my 25th yard and quickly turnaround for my hundred mile finish.
At the end of the day, I’m deeply satisfied with my race. No, I didn’t push through “a few more” yards at the end. In hindsight, it was a poor goal to set for myself because that’s not who I am and not why I do these races. The whole point for me of doing a bunch of ultras and getting good at running long distances isn’t to suffer at the end. It’s the complete opposite of that. I’m not looking to push my boundaries or win races though sometimes those things occur. I want to have fun and perform to the best of my abilities. And 24 yards on that course was most assuredly my best race regardless of whether or not I could have done a couple more yards. It strongly goes against why most people gravitate to ultras in the first place, however sometimes good enough is good enough.