Another year, another great, smoky race. This backblast, alas, will be heavy on the details and light on the memories…you’ll just have to run it next year to experience those cherished moments of nonsensical jokes, midnightmountain musings, vibration devices, sleep-deprived photobombing, and Olde English stickers.

Race details

• 🛣️ 207.4 miles
• ↗️ 22,056 ft uphill
• ↘️ 22,501 ft downhill

For more details, check out the SMR website.

Team details

💨 Been There, Dusted That: Clockwork, Ramsay, Track Star, Theismann, Horseshoe, Prodigal, Mr. Safety, Henny Penny, Mohawk, and Steaks

🍆 Blue Collar Satchel of Richards: Suck Up, One Four, Parker, BOGO, Pierogi, Biner, Ma Bell, Torpedo, PBX

Results

As we suspected, the 9-man category was more competitive this year, and we had fun racing against a team from Charleston in particular who started at the same time as us. While we did not retain our title, we still placed, and even moved up a spot overall…eeking past Norm’s Maggots? We’ll take it. For full results, see webscorer.

Leg analysis

The following table links out to the BTDT team Strava legs. You might find this helpful if you plan to run one of these in the future!

• Runner 1: All trails. Leg 1 is a great start up Pisgah. 10 is the most technical, legit trail, lots of turns and creeks, and careens all downhill. 19 got subbed to pavement and was not fun. 28 is the sunrise at the summit leg.
• Runner 2: First leg 2 is trail through Pisgah, rest are paved. Two legs are narrow/ltd shoulder. Few turns. The last leg is super pretty, old world farmland.
• Runner 3: First leg 3 is half trail and pretty tough, rest are all paved. Leg 21 is a fun two-mile downhill bomber in the dark. Last leg 30 has lots of turns and busy, but pretty.
• Runner 4: All are paved. All legs have a few turns, 2 of them say CAUTION.
• Runner 5: The distance runner. All are paved. Leg 5 has lakeside view and a bridge. Last leg 32 is 10% unpaved, no shoulder. Few turns.
• Runner 6: First 2 paved, last 2 are mostly unpaved. Last leg 33 has a swinging bridge + “mind-altering” along riverside.
• Runner 7: All are paved. Few turns. Last leg 34 starts with swinging bridge. Pretty nice set of legs.
• Runner 8: First 2 are paved, 3rd claims to be paved but is really a downhill, deteriorated service road, and last leg is half trail. Nice views. A few legs have busy crossings.
• Runner 9: First 3 are paved, last is half gravel. Middle legs have a few turns. Leg 18 is through a science lab. The final Leg 36 is a bit of everything in the race: uphill, downhill, maze, gravel, backyards, great finish at the NOC.

Lessons learned

See last year’s backblast for initial impressions and a comparison against the Blue Ridge Relay (BRR), which many of us do in the fall.

The following After Action Report was in part developed the night after the race around an open fire and two bottles of bourbon, which all-in-all, I think is pretty impressive for how lucid it is.

Nutrition

• ✅ Went well: We had a lot of food. Dinner the night before/Chef Ramsay. Water cooler for the van vs. tons of water bottles.
• ❌ Not so well: Limited restaurants meant that it was harder to get new food, especially overnight into the final third of the race. Didn’t have real meals in the van for the later legs. Driver also didn’t have same amount of packed food.
• 💡 Ideas to try: Clearer expectations of what is shared food for the van. Checklist of meals you need for self-support in the van. Make sure we are all eating enough at the right times and drink electrolytes (not just water) after run.

Running

• ✅ Went well: Time improvements over last year. Team energy high despite setbacks.
• ❌ Not so well: More injuries or bonking later in the race. Held back during middle of the night legs because we were getting there too quick.
• 💡 Ideas to try:
  • Try to estimate pace more accurately, especially for the trail legs (can set that faster than you would a regular trail, because two are more just compact dirt roads).
  • Pace yourself on the early legs.
  • See nutrition for energy ideas.
  • Play around with the order of the legs…SMR doesn’t care if you run them in order, so we could put stronger runners on just some of the trail or long legs, but then not necessarily keep the exact order. Keeping the pod order (your group of 3) is more important.
  • Bring an extra set of running clothes to pick up an extra leg in case.
  • Also might want a blanket, it got kinda cold.

Training and recovery

• ✅ Went well: Team runs at Umstead and trackwork training. Stretching and foam-rolling during the race.
• ❌ Not so well: Less cross-team collaboration than last year.
• 💡 Ideas to try: More strength, elevation, and cross-training. Perhaps more regularly communicated training plan, but overall good job on putting out running opportunities, just hard to sync up.

Support

• ✅ Went well: Dedicated driver. Offline mode for spreadsheet. Only one person updating the spreadsheet.
• ❌ Not so well: We just hadn’t really thought about “support” before as something separate.
• 💡 Ideas to try:
  • For spreadsheet: make mobile friendly, lock cells, color code, make runner rotation and finish times clearer.
  • Have a support team. Horseshoe pointed out that he hadn’t done a self-supported race like this before, and having a driver was such a game changer. Things like not thinking about car, food, clothes, etc.

Van organization

• ✅ Went well: We had enough space, was able to consolidate like items together.
• ❌ Not so well: We had to take out the bins, which was ok but then was harder to find everything.
• 💡 Ideas to try: Start the race with a full tank of gas. Marker for water bottles. More explicit bin organization.

Logistics and planning process

• ✅ Went well: Cabin location was great and cheap.
• ❌ Not so well:
• 💡 Ideas to try: Communicating van pickup/dropoff times and departure times beforehand during a team meeting.

Photo album