with Marty Brounstein at the start with Julia Hemme at the startĪfter a few pictures, a bathroom stop, and a quick announcement by Peter, we were off into the dark.
DANIEL CASTLE RUNNER DRIVER
Success! I was one of the lucky ones to have a short commute to the start (15 minutes) and a driver (my uncle and Julia). Marty and I quickly left the house at 4 am so we didn’t wake up the kids as that would be a bad start to the day for all.
The time goal I decided was Palisades by sunset for no other reason than to make sure my crew had a time to be somewhere. I was going to try to stay away from the gels unless I needed them. I was going to take 1.5 water bottles down per hour. I was going to eat PB&J early in the race until I couldn’t as I knew that these calories would be important. I packed up my salt tablets, Huma gels, Honey Stinger chews. This had gone over well on my 20+ mile runs. Now it was 8 pm before the race and Steve Rowbury took over while I started loading my fuel, 100 calories of CarboPro mixed with 100 calories of Tailwind. Jacob and Shiloh at runner check-in Friday I think I can say “us” as I feel more like an ultrarunner now and less like a marathoner if you know me. But he enjoys seeing all of us crazy people. He is a 2:40 marathoner and just thinks this isn’t really running. My uncle, Marty Brounstein, was going to support also. One of my work colleagues, Julia Hemme, was going to crew me and super pacer Steve Rowbury, fresh or not so fresh off the 11 th place finish at the Kodiak 100, was going to make sure I made it from Van Norden to the finish. So, on Friday at 4 pm, I got home from my last conference calls and wrapped up the work for the week. So then how fast do you start? How fast do you go in the middle? How do I run 62 miles through the mountains? In the night? Maybe in the day? So many unknowns to answer so is it best to not think about it? I guess that was the approach I took in the end. I had a great meeting with Coach Fain on the Sunday before the race and basically, we threw out the pacing schedule altogether. The prep for the race kind of got pushed to the side by other priorities.
The week before the race, I had an intense 4-day meeting in Truckee with my work team that started with early days and late nights (maybe a few too many beers). I got about half done and thought I would just finish some time this week, but it was now 8 pm before the race and I still didn’t know what to tell my crew or pacers where to be when.
A couple of weeks ago, I began making an Evernote page and studying the pace times for the middle of the pack and also for the top 20. The longest run I had ever done was the TRT 50 miler and that was over two years ago. I was in great running shape, but had no idea what I was going to do for nutrition, pace, etc. I wasn’t that nervous and to be honest, I hadn’t really prepped mentally like I had in the past for other first-time race distances. It was a bit of a strange prep week before the race.
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