Tsali Frosty Foot Fest 50K

Plans kept coming unraveled in late December, early January. ALTAR was canceled because of the snowstorm, Nantahala Fria 100 mile was postponed due to date conflicts and I backed out of the double ALTAR attempt because of bad weather. So, I ended up running the Tsali 50K again this year, which was not a bad thing because it raises money for breast cancer research. However, I live 30 minutes from Tsali and am burned out on running there.

I asked Tony to drive me there and I am glad I did. It started snowing hard and by the time we got to Tsali everything (including the roads) was white. The Frosty Foot lived up to its name. Snow, ice, brisk wind, frozen ground and never getting out of the mid 20s all day.

The race was very well organized and all the volunteers were so cheerful despite standing in the middle of the woods freezing. My performance was okay. I ran 9 minutes faster than last year, but I have been training for 100s with a lot of uphill speed walking, not for a 50K. My legs felt very slow, but I felt good all-in-all all day. Only two issues: I kept having to blow the water back out of my Camelback hose because it froze very quickly and I got a very nice hip bruise when my foot caught a root sticking up and I landed on the (frozen hard!) ground. (I got up quickly to make sure no one had seen it.)

For my own future reference, the clothing choice was perfect. I only got cold on a couple of occasions when the wind hit me hard. (Brooks LSD thermal velocity pants, two layers under Brooks jersey- Massanutten long sleeve and a CWX, Brooks Vapor Dry 2 gloves).