Mauri's Training

I just had the chance to run/walk the 50K River of No Return (RONR) Endurance Run with two other women, Claudia Russell and Karen Smith.  What an experience!  Ever since I ran the Ogden Marathon I never quite felt ready for this race. I seriously considered backing down to the 25K.  It wasn't until the night before, after they had a meeting for everyone, that I made a final decision. I went into it with no expectations and would do what I could do.  After the first few miles we started climbing up the first hill. We hiked up the hills and ran even ever we could. I loved looking down to the valley to see how far we'd gone up.  It seemed like forever to get to the first aid station (at mile 9).  It was strange to see food (fruit, potatoe chips, pretzels, etc...).  After snacking on a few things and getting our hydration packs checked and refilled we continued to head up some more to the next aid station. Once we reached that we were actually going to head down to a little ghost town called Bayhorse.  This was a great aid station.  There were spectators and so many volunteers.  The volunteers through this whole course were AMAZING!  They were there to help and do whatever they could for you.  We actually spent quite a bit of time at this aid station.  Karen's ankle and foot were bothering her so they taped it up tighter than it already was (she had taped it up that morning).  She had been struggling once we started climbing the first hills, but she was really hurting now. After we left the ghost town we had to hike back up to get back to the second aid station (it was an out and back).  Once we got there we were hoping to run since it'd be downhill from there to the finish.  Karen was really, really hurting!  She couldn't run at all. Long story short, we walked the rest of the way to the finish. We had actually walked 15 miles because we had hiked back out of the canyon.  It would have been nice to run down the remaining 11 miles, but Karen just couldn't do it.  This was a hard course because you were either going up the mountain or coming down.  The elevation got up to 8104 feet twice since we climbed two summits.  It took us over 10 hours to cover the course, but this was not a race about time.  We had made the decision to finish together so that's what we did.  Karen was hurting pretty bad and we didn't care how long it took us to finish. She did everything from using a tree branch as a walking stick, walking backwards and just walking slow. We came in close to last. I was just glad to be with two great friends. This race was well organized and the volunteers were more than amazing. It was great camping right next to the track/finish line. I loved watching others come into finish.  I really enjoyed the course and had a great day!