03:43: Woof! Big day!
Woke up at 02:00am for the big dance. I was honestly a bit nervous about this one in the context of hoping it went well for David (especially after Fuji not working out), as well as safety (the road did not look fantastic for some of the run, from street view), and also my own ability to complete the run without totally wrecking my (more important) commitment over the weekend with the Everesting attempt just 4 days later.
I had a light breakfast, some leftover baguette and a maurten bar along with coffee and 100mg caff gum and 1000mg tylenol and 600mg ibuprofen.
We left right around 03:00am with Edwin, as planned, and drove about 15 minutes over to the start. We hadn’t been there yet, so I wasn’t 100% sure what to expect and what we found was an empty parking lot for a small museum that seemed to be kind of fenced off. We eventually found a way down to the water, where the tide was extremely low, so we basically just stepped into the very quick-sandy mud and called that good enough, took a quick video/photo and then started the watches and headed out.
I was very glad we were starting early as there was very little traffic for the first stretch going out of the city. We were chatting nicely, though it was a bit spooky at times, but mostly just quiet, dark roads. A few dogs here and there but nothing problematic. We passed a little mall-parking-lot-amusement park and a lot of truck stop kind of places on the outskirts of the city. Not much else to report except that this section felt fairly long before sunrise. We did see one very large frog (PR sized) hop across our sidewalk. Speaking of which, it was mostly sidewalk, though a few very sketchy sections of basically running in the right line of the highway.
Also worth noting that I had planned to fast for most of the run, ideally around 4-5 hours, similar to the big Tokyo run, and the start to eat if I got super bonky. This seemed fine and the effort felt very light in the first few hours.
We took our first stop right around first light, before true sunrise, just before 06:00am, as there was a grocery store and the guys wouldn’t let us in until exactly 06:00am (actually a few minutes late). Grabbed some cold waters and refilled bottles and then headed out. I was drinking LMNT from this point on. My HR was 121 (avg) for this first 2h15 chunk (23km, 299m+, net up).
It started to get warmer as the sun came up, but not terribly so. Spirits were still high though the roads were definitely getting more crowded on the next piece. We stopped after 1h30 (129 avg HR, 14.6km, 138m+, net down) and this time got ice as well as water and loaded up our shirts and bottles w/ ice cubes before we left. I had maybe half a can of coke at this point (~4h00 in), but this was the only calories I consumed until about 7h30.
From there, our running sections stayed shorter, closer to 1 hour than 2. I still remember mostly feeling fine, if a bit bored, all the way until about 7h00. The next stretch (from about 5-6 hours) my HR was significantly higher as it started to get quite hot, 9.2km, 133 HR, 98m+, net up, but I don’t remember it feeling particularly hard. Probably just a reflection of the heat building up. I was drinking a decent amount of LMNT but nothing crazy, maybe 1L every 2 hours or so.
Also, we saw a wild sloth up in a tree at some point in this middle chunk that a cyclist had spotted -- that was cool. Also some very green parrots.
On the next stretch, I crossed some sort of line. The chunk was 9.6km, 137 avg HR, 109m+ (net downhill), but I remember arriving to the little Terpel gas station feeling extremely bad in a hard to describe way, probably a combination of overheating and bonking. I decided this was a good time to break my fast (7.5 hours, about 64km). I ate an entire bag of fruit snacks (~300 cal) and drank a 20 oz coke and ate a protein bar (already thinking about recovery) which was another 250 cal or so. I cooled off in the AC of the gas station and iced up and then felt quite a bit better after that and left to catch up to David, who had left a few minutes before me.
At some point, I saw a sign that mentioned a road detour to Colon and was a bit concerned but didn’t see anything else for a while. I did notice that the road got much quieter and then finally I saw signs that said “road closed 500m, 200m, etc.” and sure enough, it was closed. Luckily, there was a small pedestrian path around the construction, but Edwin had to go back to the other highway and meet us on the other side of the road work. Also, luckily, there was a gas station right on the other side of the construction where we stopped again (this stretch 34’, 5.5km, 148 HR, 13m+, net down). David got some noodles and I just refilled water and iced and then we were off.
It was quite nice for a while without much traffic but as we got close to Colon, the wind seemed to shift and was behind us so we had no convective cooling which was a huge problem. My HR was MUCH higher here (150 for the next stretch, 5.6km 42’, 22m+, even) and did not come down much leading into our last stop at a DQ just a few miles from town. We got slushies. Noteworthy is that my HR did not come down very much (119 avg during the 20’ break there, even in the AC).
Finally, we had less than 4km to go. We walked the first 5 or 10’ as we were finishing our slushies (during which time we saw a huge Crocodile in a stream right next to the sidewalk) and then jogged very slowly the rest of the way in. Colon seems like kind of a shit-hole but at least there was a sidewalk for most of it and eventually we ended up on a nicer street w/ a little park in the median and ran a bit quicker for the last 800m or so all the way to the statue right on the ocean and climbed down a few rocks and dipped our feet in the Atlantic.
This was a project many years in the making -- I’m pretty sure David Wilder and I were scheming about it in high school or right after almost as a joke, and then I remember when Wardian did it and thinking I really out to go give it a run at some point. I’m very glad Staley helped me make it a reality as it is a very cool line to run and an excellent first trans-con and a cool looking map.
That said, the route itself is pretty miserable. This one is begging for a decent bike path or something to connect these two cities, but mostly it’s very busy roads, tons of trash, and not super scenic. I’m very glad we did it and it was a fun and challenging adventure, but it’s not a great route, honestly.
The obvious crux is the heat and humidity (beyond the traffic). If I were to give someone beta or try this again (I won’t), I would recommend leaving at like 10pm and shooting for 6-8 hours overnight with a safety/support vehicle behind you as we did, but having all your gear in the car and doing it supported so you don’t have to worry about stuff being opened and you can keep stops short.
A massive day, very proud of my body and stoked to have David as a friend for this big adventure.
Total 80km, 9h53 total (8h07 run time), 808m+.