El Scorcho Midnight 50k

It's over, what a run. My friend picked me up around 11 a.m. Saturday morning because we wanted to make it to Ft. Worth by 3:00 for packet pickup. Our ride to FW was pretty uneventful, we talked and listened to his wide variety of music. We picked up our packets and went to have a light lunch. We checked in to our hotel and then decided to check out the nearest REI. After returning to our hotel we grabbed a few hours of sleep before heading to the park. We got to the park around 10:30 to pick up our timing chips. After that it was just hang around until the Midnight start. The race started a few minutes late and we're off. This race is 10 loops around a 5k mixed surface track at Trinity River Park. I decided to do my best to run by feel. I settled into a nice pace and checked to see I was running around 9:30 miles. I felt like I could hold this pace for the entire race. It was hot, but it didn't feel that hot. But I was sweating profusely. I think the fact that it was night time deceived us some on how hot it was. I did my first lap in under 30 minutes and felt good. This went on for about 4 laps but by lap 5 I was starting to slow a bit. My main goal was to finish in under 6 hours with a secondary goal of sub 5:30. But I didn't know how the heat would affect me, so I was running more by the way I felt than by trying to hold those paces. I was starting to feel a bit nauseous by the 6th lap. I walked more during this lap than any other in the race. I decided to try and solve my problems by drinking more water and NUUN for electrolytes. I had made the mistake of not carrying any solid fuel with me. And I was sick of the Heed and Perpetuem that I had been drinking. I did this because they had said they would have "standard ultra fare." They didn't have anything solid until around the 7th lap and that was clif bloks and sports beans. I took a few bloks but they tasted terrible at this point, even though I've eaten them before without any problems, but I ended up spitting it out. I did start feeling better during the 8th lap, not great but better. I still had a chance to beat 5:30 and was running almost the total lap. On the final lap I would have had to run around a 29 minute 5k, I know, sounds easy, but not after 28 miles. Anyway I did try to run the whole lap, but started feeling bad again, so I walked just enough to push my finishing time to 5:32. I got my medal and some more water and sat down. After just a few minutes I was feeling better. After recuperating a bit, my friend and I decided to go back to the hotel and try to catch a few hours of sleep. It was around 6:30 a.m Sunday morning and we had been up all night. I couldn't go to sleep and so we left around 11 to go have breakfast. And then we headed back to Oklahoma. I'm feeling pretty good now, stiff, but otherwise no problems. I do expect to have trouble walking stairs tomorrow. Overall this is a nice race. It's different with it's midnight start, but other than that nothing special to me. I didn't get as bored as I thought I would running the same loop 10 times.