Masochist and Hellgate: Making Sense of Senseless DNF's
I could sort of rationalize the Masochist thing, with missing the cutoff by like 9 minutes at mile 42. I knew going in I would be slower than in '08 or especially '09, and that I didn't have enough quality training time post-toe fracture and post-Rainier and -half Ironman to really feel well prepared. But I had the comfort of knowing Hellgate was the bigger prize, and that I would have five more weeks to train. Surely the 42 miles at Masochist would also be a great training run. So after allowing a little more recovery time than last year (a lesson from '09) I got back in and did a couple of confidence-boosting 8-hour runs, each followed or preceded by 2-2.5 hour run as back to backers. That plus a good 16-day taper should have left me well prepared for Hellgate. But things just went awry early, and I missed the cutoff at AS#4 (official mile 22.5 and Garmin mile 24.9) by something like 13 minutes. From the start I was near the back, though I thought my pace was decent