When Ben had decided that he wanted to run Robbie, both Ben and Ryan trained hard for about 4 months prior to the race. They ran long distances for a while, then when it came closer to the race they started running in the foot hills where the race would start.
When race day was finally here on April 17th they were ready, well so they thought!! Both Ben and Ryan finished the race but they said that it was nothing like they had trained for. It was much much harder than what they thought. Ben ran pretty good up hill but when the course started down hill this was when the race started giving him problems. He ran all five miles down hill with a cramp in his left calf. At this point he did not want to stop to rub it out he just wanted to keep going to finish. As the race is a total of 13.1 miles, uphill and down hill. Anyway they finished at about 2 hours and 29 min.
Right after the race Ben felt pretty good, he jumped in the creek at the end of the race to cool off while Ryan and his wife went off to go find some food and drinks. Once Ben had cooled off this is when things turned a little ugly!
Ben was suffering from heat exhaustion, he was puking all the water and Gatorade he had drank during the race. This was NOT fun for Ben. He was all ready really tired from the race and then puking on top of that wore him out really fast. He had absolutely NO energy for anything. After about four hours of puking every half hour, we decided that it was probably time to take him to the ER and get him some fluids and medication. Once we were able to get him to stop puking and fluids back in him he was good to go.
After all of that Ben says he is going to run Robbie again next year and he will be better prepared, he will train harder and hydrate himself weeks before the race!!
