Bob Mann: 2020 Mesa Falls Marathon

Sat Aug 22, 2020

2020 has certainly been an interesting year for just about everybody. My progress towards 50 states is no exception. I began the year with 47 states complete. In January, signed up for marathons in the remaining 3 states. I was to run in Nashville TN in April, then Ashton ID in August, and finally Newport RI to close it out in October. Well, Covid-19 hit early in the year and everything went to hell. The Nashville Marathon was delayed until the Fall and then ultimately canceled. The Newport Marathon suspended registrations and then ultimately canceled. The Mesa Falls Marathon in Ashton, however, kept an eye on the situation, but never canceled. With just a few weeks to go, the race made an announcement that the event would go on as planned, with added social distancing and mask-wearing requirements. I'm not terribly surprised, since this is a tiny race in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere. It's much easier to stay socially distant and safe in a small town in Idaho than it is in larger, more densely populated urban areas. So finally, 8 months after my last marathon in New Mexico, on Sat Aug 22 2020, I ran the Mesa Falls Marathon to make Idaho the 48th state in which I have run a marathon.

Not long after the New Mexico marathon, I had decided that I wanted to finish off my last few the right way. For anyone who has read my Race Reports from the last few years, it is apparent that I have not been training all that well for quite a while. So I had dusted off an old 18-week training plan from back when I was actually halfway decent at marathon running. The plan started in December, which was 18 weeks before the Nashville race. Well, of course, that race never happened. I took a tiny bit of downtime in March when the race was called off, but I quickly resumed training. In fact, I logged more than 180 training miles in both May and June. It was only the third and fourth time I had ever reached 180 miles in a month and the first time I had done so consecutively. I completed the first half of the year with 900 miles, which is the most I had ever done in half a year. Working from home (and thus not having to spend time commuting) freed up a lot of extra time to run. So my training had gone very well, and I wasn't going to be able to use lack of training as an excuse any more.

I had actually signed up for this same race once before. It was in 2014, but that was the Summer that I first had sciatica. We had planned a trip to Yellowstone National Park around that marathon, and we ended up going on the trip anyway, even though I wasn't capable of running the race. We did the same thing here, planning another trip to Yellowstone around this race. We flew to Salt Lake City on Thursday and drove up to Ashton. We went fly fishing on Henry's Fork of the Snake River on Friday and I did my normal pre-race warm-up run. I had to get up nice and early on Saturday for the race. Thankfully, we were staying very close to the bus pick-up spot. We were driven out into the Targhee National Forest, and then we ran the distance back to town.

The race began at 6:30 in the morning, shortly after the sun had come up. It was rather cool at that hour, around 45 degrees. But it would certainly warm up as the day went on. The temps later in the afternoon were to hit close to 90, but I was hoping to done long before it reached that level. Still, I started the race with gloves and a long sleeve shirt, both of which I took off as the race went on.
The altitude at the start was about 6200 feet, which is certainly more than I'm used to at home in New Jersey. But as with previous Rocky Mountain marathons, I'm not sure I really felt it. There was also a persistent haze and smokiness in the air caused by faraway California wildfires. You could definitely feel the smokiness in the air, but again, I'm not sure it affected my running. I started off with a 9:34 pace in the first mile and picked it up a little from there, as the course went slowly downhill. I ran 9:22, 9:18 and 9:19 in the next three miles, then began to rein it in and slow down a bit. By Mile 7 I hit a good groove around 9:50 per mile and kept it there for a while. I passed the halfway point around 2:07, which is comparable to where I'd been the last few years. I was comfortable with that. I was feeling fine and making good progress.

While the course had been flat or downhill until Mile 17, it took a sharp turn upward at that point. Mile 17 had been my slowest mile of the day so far at 10:20, then Mile 18 was quite a bit slower (11:27) and Mile 19 was quite a bit slower still (12:56). There was much walking involved going up that long hill. I was able to regain a little speed after that, but despite all the training miles early in the year, I was still quite spent. The last 6 miles were along rolling hills through farmland. This was Idaho, and there were plenty of potato farms around. My pace wasn't great here, but I kept moving. Eventually we made it back to Ashton and on to the finish line. I crossed the line at 4:35:33. Not all that speedy, but good enough to get the job done.

I am very thankful that this race took place. I would love to have finished my 50 state quest in 2020 as originally planned, but all things considered, I'm happy to just get this one state checked off this year. The course itself was beautiful. We had passed a spot at about Mile 11 that overlooked Lower Mesa Falls (thus the name of the race). I paused there briefly for a pic or two. There was another downhill stretch a little later on that ran on a trail overlooking the Warm River (another offshoot of the Snake River). It was one of the more picturesque races that I have done. And with just 127 finishers, it was one of the smallest.

Maggie, Jillian and I enjoyed the rest of our week in Idaho and at Yellowstone. And since I successfully crossed Idaho off the list this time, there probably will never be a third visit to this part of the country again.

So now I just have two states to go. Hopefully they will happen in 2021. Tennessee in April and Rhode Island in October. That seems like a long way away. But this whole process has taken 15 years so far, so what's another 14 months? I'll be patient.

And now the photos. Click any image to enlarge.