Act Two – Into the unknown

The portable lights splashed opaquely into a hungry overcast morning. Just after 3AM.  A few hundred ultra-runners milled about at a place called Squires Castle.  An abandoned edifice.  A country house from the age of robber barons, stripped to its solid skeleton, keeping watch on a hill in a park.

I fiddled with the race app to see if I could start it somewhere near the actual start time and somewhere near the actual start line and then wrangle it back into my slant pack.  It appeared to have rained recently.  The grassy field of the start was thick with wet.  Headlamps, chest lamps, glow stick, flashlights switched on, glowing a centipede of people out of the park and onto the road.

…

My morning started with some urgency and excitement.  I did that thing where you set the alarm accidently to PM instead of AM.  I meant to rouse myself at 1:20 or so.  I’d have a solid 45 minutes to prep and get to the buses.  My subconscious, attuned or blessed with its own inner timetable sent me a message at 1:46 AM that something was wrong and I bolted out of my brief bed in a mild panic.

I did my best to spray paint my undercarriage with liquid bandage, throw my stuff on and get out of the hotel in the time I had.  I had my stuff all laid out.  It wasn’t an emergency. Just an urgency.

My wife and I had driven out the straight line from Massachusetts through Connecticut, New York, across all of the rolling rock of Pennsylvania and into Ohio in the morning.  It took about 10 hours.

I picked up my bib and stuff and was listening to the race briefing when Mike and Kevin rolled in from Detroit.

We had a nice dinner at one of the craft beer places in our host town of Cuyahoga Falls.  We caught up and traded stories.  It was good for my wife to see that these people I’m always calling my friends are actual people, actual friends.

A person with family and friends can accomplish many things.

I was committed to doing this thing, but they had the experience and were committed to me doing it as well.  I was buoyed by the confidence in them that they were going to get me to the finish.

I checked them into their hotel.  I prepped my gear.  I set my alarm incorrectly.  I got into bed and slept hard until my subconscious alarm tossed me onto the floor.

The busses didn’t leave until after 2:30.  50 or 60 of us sat around at the corner in the dark waiting for the school buses to come along.  I noted with the buses and the early start my day would stretch out another 5-6 hours on top of the race itself, bleeding uncomfortably into that second 24 hours.

Not much sleep.

I felt out of place.  These hard-looking guys in running sandals and lumberjack beards full of deep confidence.  Mostly people were silent but those talking told stories of other, harder adventures, days without sleep, broiling, freezing adventures – the stuff of the ultra-universe where the unimaginable is common currency.

There wasn’t much chatter on the ride up to the castle.  Folks dozed and checked gear.  I futzed with the race app.

…

The first 20 miles were mostly on roads.  I jogged along with the pack chatting as best as I could with people.  They would ask me where I was from.  I would say “Boston”, and remind them that we had a race they might have heard of.  Some small thing inside me screaming “No really, I AM a real runner, really.”

The deeper question was always how did you get into ultra-running?  Back in the pack the stories were similar to the stories we have all heard.  They were told to lose some weight by a doctor.  They ran a 5k and were hooked and the inevitable cascade of events found them here on this road shoulder in Ohio at 5 o’clock in the morning.

I had on my road Hokas on for this first section.  My old slant pack held two bottles and I carried one.  The third bottle was empty of fluids but had individual baggy servings of my current energy drink mix F2C Endurance, some Endurolytes and a small tube of lube.  I also carried a flask of Hammer Gel, as a backup source of energy.

Depending on how I felt I could switch between one 24 oz bottle of water and one 20 oz bottle of F2C. One on my hip.  One in my hand.  This gave me 44 ounces of fluid to get between aid stations.

I took some hike breaks on the hills when everyone else did.  I had no preset cadence.  Just taking it easy and biding my time.  I wanted to stay in a low effort level, stay on top of my nutrition, and just relax, don’t overthink it.

I dug out an old Suunto watch and added an ‘Ultra-mode’ where it only smapled GPS every 60 seconds.  It made the battery last but also was wildly inaccurate.  I reluctantly carried my iphone with me in the slant pack with the RaceJoy app.  As much as I hate racing with a phone (and a battery charger block), the app made it easy on my pacers, so I acquiesced.

I never took the phone out during the race but I could hear it telling me the miles and, yes, your cheering came through at odd intervals.  It was interesting to be hiking along in the dark and have ‘yee-haa!” or a horse whinny randomly blast out of my hip.

The app ended up being useful, especially at the end when my Garmin died.

The morning was cool and wet, not raining, just misty and humid.  Good racing weather.  The mist swirled in our headlamp beams as the sun rose slowly.  This part of the country is situated quite far west in the eastern time zone.  The sun wouldn’t break the horizon until 6:30.

I felt ok.  I had learned through my training that it really doesn’t matter how you feel in these long sessions.  If you feel bad it will change.  If you feel good, that will change too.  You just center yourself in the now and run as you feel.

The first aid station rolled by without incident.  The volunteers were great.  I told them what I wanted, and they did it for me.  I grabbed a PB&J and some pretzels.  They let me jump the line at the porta-potty and I did that thing I do in the morning.  All systems functioning normally.

When we finally got into some single path trails I was celebratory.  Here was my happy places.  The swoopy trails were not terribly technical.  We hit a couple creek crossings and my shoes got dunked but it was all good.

Mike and Kevin met me at 25 and I was feeling great.  The sun was up and I dropped my lights with them.

We hit a long canal path section as the morning rolled on.  I dropped in with a group of experienced runners who had a plan.  They were running a ‘casual’ 24 hour finish race.  Since the weather was good they were going knock out the first, easier sections at an easy pace and that would give them extra time for the hard stuff in the dark.  Sounded good to me, so I just hung with them.

The canal path turns into a bike path as it follows the Cuyahoga south.  It was heavily trafficked with bikers and walkers.  It was open to the sun as well.  Not much cover.  We were passed by the local cross-country teams doing their summer workouts all youth and fitness, shirtless in the Ohio sun.

The sun and the heat were noticeable, but not hot like you would complain about.  Mid-70’s to low 80’s with the sun coming in and out.  I stayed on top of my salts and fluids and ate something solid at every aid station.

The route was canal path, bridle path, roads and trails.  Bridal paths are horse roads.  A bit like fire roads.  Wide groomed dirt roads with piles of horse poo every so often like organic mile markers.  The trails were single path at times with roots and fallen trees but not many rocks.  Much of the trail follow the blue-blazed Buckeye Trail that loops around Ohio.

As I worked my way into the 30’s and 40’s we got into some of the harder sections that would repeat the same story over and over through the course of the race.  The trail, or road would be rolling along, rising and falling.  Long sections of shallow ups and long sections of shallow downs.

There in the middle of the race there were lots of rock ledge sections.  One long bike trail section had these cool stratified rock ledges rising all along the side.

Then we’d get a steep drop down a path to a creek crossing.  The sort of steep where you had to dig in a little and brake your descent.  There would be a rock hop across a shallow creek then chin scraper up the other side.

There were probably 10 or 15 or these throughout the race, each one 100 – 500 feet.

It got to the point later where I would say “Oh crap, we’re heading down again, I know what that means.”  On these slopes there were a lot of trail breaks built into the sharp slopes and lots of stairs of landscaping ties at odd angles and random treads lengths.

There weren’t any mountains but there were plenty of these sharp 300-500 ft dips in and out.  There was plenty of road and bridle trail, but where is was hilly it was very hilly.

Mike and Kevin met me again at 37.  I was still strong and happy.  My undercarriage was starting to chafe up, but what can you do?  I lubed as best could.  I switched out of my road shoes and into the Speed Goats because I heard the next section was a technical bit.

I really didn’t know the course.  It seemed like a wasted effort to try to memorize every section prior to the race.  Instead as the race progressed I organically absorbed the highlights from the other runners.  I learned that before we got to 50 there was a section called ‘the bog of despair’ where apparently you had to run through some sort of gnarly swamp feature.  I attempted a joke about ‘rodents of unusual size’ but it fell on unappreciative ears.

The bog feature was a narrow single path through a valley.  If it had been a wet season this might have been a despairing foot of sticky mud, but on this day it was merely a lumpy foot path with a couple creek crossings.

There was a fair amount of climbing through the 40’s and it was starting to feel like work but I was moving right along and feeling good.  I was trading places with a oncologist through most of the middle part of the race.  I showed him how to do a 12-24 walk run cadence on the shallow inclines to save energy and still keep the pace.

With the good weather and good trail conditions I was moving right along without pushing too hard.  Everything was copasetic.  No issues.  No surprises.  I knew from my training I had 50 miles in me.  Now I was approaching the real race.  The undiscovered country.

I put the swamp of despair in my rearview mirror and rolled, strong into the 50 mile station where I would pick up my pacers, change my clothes and the ‘fun’ would commence.  It was early afternoon.  Some of those isolated storms wandered by to block the sun but never broke rain on us.

Act three – The reckoning

I was 66 miles in.  Kevin had just pulled me through the ledges and an exposed rolling road section.  I was starting to hurt.  I knew I needed to keep fueling to keep the energy up.  But, the heat and the effort were taking their toll.

Kevin ran with me from 50 through 66.  Mike picked me up there.  We kept pushing through to the Pine Hollow aid station at 70.  To get to Pine Hollow they make you run up these two steep “Sound of Music” hills.  It’s a bit of a kick in the head because you can see and hear the aid station, but you have to climb these hills to get there.

Everyone kept telling you to keep drinking and keep eating.  As it got hotter the PB&Js and pretzels weren’t as appealing.  The cold watermelon was awesome.

Kevin was telling stories about all the famous ultras he had run.  He was trying to convince himself to sign up for the Barkley.  I told him that was just plain stupid, which obviously made him want to do it more.

But mostly I was quiet.  I was working.  My stomach was getting a little yucky.  It was starting to be hard work.

I had been pushing food.  Mostly watermelon because it tasted so great in the afternoon sun and helped me keep my fluids up.  I was happy to be peeing again.  Last recorded pee break was around 30 miles.  Kevin and I had worked hard over the last 16 miles.  It wasn’t a super hard section, but it was exposed and hot.

At the mile 70 aid station, Pine Hollow, a big one that you passed through multiple times, I was having a low point.  I was slumped in a chair staring at the grass wondering how I was going to keep moving.  The sun was getting low.

I tried some awful coffee to try to wake up and a few slices of watermelon.  The watermelon was so good in the heat.  Mike was going to get me through the night, through to 91.  He was working hard to get me up out of the chair and going.

They asked if I wanted some lube.  I said ‘What’s the point?’ my undercarriage was shredded.  Kevin joked that I should cut the bottom out of my shorts and ‘free-ball’.  Periodically chills would pass through me and I’d shudder.  Not chills of cold, more like chills of trauma and exhaustion.  The longer I sat the worse I felt.

I had changed my clothes at the 50 mile aid station and gotten a fresh shirt and shorts.  I kept the Speed Goats on and left the socks.  My feet were sore but didn’t feel too bad so I didn’t want to mess with them.

Shaky, bitchy I pushed my complaining legs upright and began to hike out into the afternoon sun with Mike.  Another big chill wracked me to the core and something shook loose.  I bent over and sprayed the grass with watermelon and coffee.  I got up what I could and dry-heaved for a while.  Mike said, “Well, that’s a reset, let’s go, walk it off.”

30 miles to go.  I was shutting down.  Chris the runner.  Chris the athlete had left the building.  Chris the broken was in the hands of his crew.  Now the grim work of survival began.  In a 100-miler, this is where the race starts.  Every step, every footfall, was undiscovered country for me.

Act four the crew, and the work

The next loop, with Mike, was a short one.   Only 4.4 miles.  Mike was excited.  He was chatty like a kid the first day of school.  We hiked a bit after I christened the grass at the aid station while I tried to recover my bearings.

That was the first time I’d every thrown up in a race in my life.

I felt good once I got my stomach cleared and we made good time running the downhills and hiking the uphills.  But I knew I was living on borrowed time.  Without calories and water it wasn’t going to get easier.  It was going to get worse.  I had to figure out how to keep hydrated and get some fuel.

The nausea came in waves.  Mostly at the top of the hard climbs.  Just thinking about gel or sports drink made my stomach flip.  I wouldn’t take any F2C or hammer for the rest of the race.  I couldn’t.  Instead I tried to sip water. If I could stay reasonably hydrated I could keep moving on my fat stores.

Mike and Kevin did the math.  All I had to do was keep moving and I would finish.  I had plenty of time with my strong first half.  Mike started the mantra that we would carry through the next 30 miles.  “Just give me 3 miles an hour, that’s all I need.”

Mile 75 was the low point for me.  I was done.  I hadn’t been able to take anything for over an hour.  It was dark.  I had nothing.  The guys wrangled me into a dry long sleeve shirt and threw a blanket over me as I sat and shook with chills.  They were trying to get me up, get me going, but I couldn’t move.  I told them I needed to sleep a little.  They gave me 10 minutes.

I didn’t want to quit.  I just wanted to rest a bit.  But if those guys weren’t there I might have laid down and never gotten up.

Eventually I was able to peel myself out of the chair and stumble on into the night.  I knew from the trail chatter that the race got hilly and hard through the 80’s.  Mike set to hiking and I fell in behind him.  I just kept his feet in my lights and kept moving.  This was the drill that would take us through the night.

Mike would set the pace and I would dutifully hike along behind him.  My legs were gone.  My hips were gone.  I was single minded.  3 miles an hour.  That’s what I had and that’s what we did.

Mike managed to get some noodle broth into me over the next 20 miles.  Not a lot.  A few hundred calories, but it helped me normalize.  I was able to keep sipping water as we went and with the cooler night temps I was keeping up.

I had no balance left whatsoever.  Every time I turned my head I’d weave 3 steps in either direction like a drunken sailor.

Mike’s favorite episode was me trying to rock hop across a stream and ending up wedged head-down crumpled between two boulders.  After that he held my hand on the creek crossings!  Every time we’d cross that creek we knew we had another one of those climbs straight up the other side.

I kept moving, kept hiking, and we kept beating that 3 mph mark as the race app called out the miles in the dark Ohio night.  Mike would say “When was the last time you took some water?” and “Stout climb!”

I wasn’t feeling so bad.  I couldn’t run but I had found a certain stasis.  I wasn’t miserable per se, just a low buzz of exhaustion.  Mike and I talked and hiked, hiked and talked and slowly over the night the hours clicked away.  I never thought about finishing.  I just stayed in the moment and followed Mike.

Every step inevitably closer to the finish.  Every step one step further than I had ever run before.

As we pushed through the hard sections I started being able to take a full cup of noodles and broth.  It was salty, warm and awesome.  I still got small waves of nausea and even a random dry heave at the top of hard climbs but I had turned the corner.

We didn’t get passed as much as I thought we would. Mostly it was relay runners who would pound past and apologize for being relay runners.  Towards the end we saw a lot of back-half 50 milers.  You could either run the first half or the back half of the race as a 50.  Surprisingly we did still pass people once in a while.

When Mike and I looped through the Covered Bridges aid station that we passed through twice Iwas really surprised to see how many runners were behind us.  This was the Pirate themed station.  Mike was annoyed with me because I kept finding chairs even thought he wanted to roll right through.

It wasn’t bad like it had been earlier.  I was recovered and moving, just spent and exhausted.

Mike started to go quiet on me as we pushed through the hard stuff in the 80’s and hiked into Sunday morning to meet up with Kevin who would take me in.  I still couldn’t run but  we were keeping 3 mph or better consistently.  We were through the hard stuff and back onto rolling roads for most of the rest of the race.

Kevin Picked me up at 91.  I was in good spirits.  My head was clear. Somehow in my head I kept thinking it was a 100-mile race and forgetting that it is actually over 102 miles.  Even this late in the race I refused to talk about finishing.  I stayed on task.  Hiking through the streets of Cuyahoga Falls in the morning dark

with Kevin out in front setting a strong pace.

Somehow Mike didn’t figure out the new phone battery pack and my iphone w

ent dead at the 91 mile aid station.  Everyone watching me on line, which probably only included people in Europe saw me stop and dead-end at 91.  I missed the comforting voice of the race app calling out the miles.

There were rumors about one last climb before the finish and a set of stairs.  Sure enough, in the high 90’s we had to push up a couple significant hills in the dark.  I was struggling on these.  My legs were gone.

I paused on a steep slope and Kevin saw me teetering backwards.  He rushed back down the trail to catch me but I was able to right myself and avoid an awful, slow-motion tumble back down the hill.

We came to that stair section.  It was hard but it had a railing so you could lean in and use your arms.  My head lamp and flashlight had been steadily dimming.  The sun was coming up now with just a handful of miles to go as we emerged onto the bike path that would lead us  to the finish.

All we had was Kevin’s watch to go by and he thought there was less than a mile to go.  Turns out we were off a bit and the finish seemed to take forever.  It didn’t matter.  I had been hiking for the better part of 17 hours and a few more didn’t matter.

I hiked to within a couple hundred feet of the clock and managed to drag out a shaky jog across the mats.  26 hours and 44 minutes.  10 hours of running and 17 hours of hiking!  I got my buckle and sat in a chair.  I look like hell in the photos.  Like a paraplegic in a wheelchair.  Like a broken old man.

There was nothing triumphant about this finish.  I was tired and glad to be done.  I would have liked to have done better but I gave the race what I could and I didn’t quit.

The credit goes to DirtDawg and Just Finish for knowing what to do.  It helped so much to be able to not worry about any logistics.  To be able to just pick your feet up and put them down.  It simplified the effort.

…

We walked back to my hotel.  My wife had dutifully stayed clear of the race like I asked her to do.  I talked the front desk into giving me a key.  Kevin and Mike took off to get home.  I stripped off my foul clothing and laid down.  I passed out immediately.  I remember my wife waking me up at some point but all I could give was slurred words.

I slept until noon.

When I got up I carefully cleaned the raw skin on my undercarriage and lubed it up with antibacterial ointment.  Kevin and Mike told me the trick was to lube up all the raw bits before you get into the shower and they won’t sting as badly.  It worked fairly well.

I showered up and went off with Yvonne to a cheesesteak sub and a beer at the finish line brewery.  Then we went to see a movie.  I felt pretty good.

…

It’s just about a week later now.  I haven’t run yet.

I’ve been moving along fairly well all week.  We slept over Sunday night and we drove back Monday.  I even did some driving.

I volunteered at a habitat for humanity build on Wednesday, swinging a hammer and carrying boards.

I’ve been super tired all week and have been eating a lot.  I rode my bike twice.  My legs seem ok.  My undercarriage itches as it heals.  I had a bruise on my shoulder from hugging that boulder in the creek crossing.

I went to give blood Friday night and they wouldn’t take me.  My iron levels are too low.  That’s never happened before.  My chemistry is still a bit goofy from the race apparently.

…

What’s the summary to this campaign?  What are my thoughts?  What can we learn from this?

First, 100 miles isn’t that hard.  I mean you have 30 hours to do it.  I think anyone who trained well and had a good crew could finish.  I could have kept hiking for a few more hours.  Once you hit that low point it doesn’t get worse.

Second, the training was cool.  I learned a lot about my body and what I was capable of.  I think the big base I’ve built up with these slow, high-mile weeks will pay off in whatever I choose to do next.

Third, a good crew is invaluable.  These guys were champs.  They just stepped in and took over.  All my decision making was handled and all I had to do was follow.  Get a good crew and you can do anything.

Fourth, your body can adapt to anything.  It’s your mind that holds you back.  Even coming up on 56 years old my body adapted over the training cycle and figured it out.

Could I have done better?  Honestly, I don’t know how much going out slower would have helped.  I think it’s just such a long time to be on your feet that you’re going to hit the wall at some point.

Would I do it again?  I don’t know.  I don’t get it.  I know I can do it.  I always figured I could do it.  I just don’t feel the emotional draw of it.  Never say never but I’m in no hurry to do another 100.

What would I have done differently?  I think I should have practiced more hiking, especially on steep hills.  That was something I used a lot in this race and didn’t do much of in training.  I might have worked in more hiking early in this race, especially when it got hot, but I’m not sure how much of a differenct it would have made.

That’s it.  Adventure complete.  I ran my first 100 miler. I finished.  I got to spend some time with some friends.  I got to have an adventure with my wife.  I got to run further than I had ever gone.  I got to throw up.

I’m going to call that a successful outing.