Thirteen to Thirty-ish Miles

Running that XTERRA half marathon last October, I learned several things:  (1) I was really starting to enjoy trail running, (2) I should confirm that the safety pins holding my bib number on the front of my shorts are safely closed (you only need to be taught this once) and (3) my plan of not running any long races before the LT100 (so as to make my introduction to the ultra-running world all the more dramatic) was impractical and counter-productive. 

Initially, the thought of skipping the usual progression (half marathons, marathons, 50-K's, 50-milers, then 100's), and jumping straight to the 100-milers, strongly appealed to my -- some might say -- overdeveloped flair for dramatics (Incredulous Person upon hearing that I'm preparing for the LT100: "WHAT?!? You've never even run a marathon before?!?"  Me, casually, with feigned puzzlement, "Why, no, no I haven't. Should I?"), and of course, plainly exposed my -- some might also say -- overdeveloped ego and vanity. 

However, that XTERRA race last fall showed me that I could benefit from at least some race experience prior to the LT100 because a race environment is appreciably different from a training environment.  All the other runners, the nervous energy, the aid stations, the crowds, these are all major distractions that can take you out of your own groove and prevent you from running your own race.  And over the course of 100 miles, that could be disastrous, I've heard.  So, I abandoned my vain and dramatic approach, and decided to run a medium-distance race to get some more experience.  I wanted something longer than a marathon, so I chose the Golden Gate Dirty Thirty in Black Hawk, CO because the distance and terrain (~7,700' vertical gain) would make it a great training run.

To give myself something to shoot for during the Dirty Thirty, I set a challenging but achievable goal of seven hours.  Then, because I can be somewhat methodical (I've heard other adjectives used), I determined intermediate goal times for each aid station based on my overall seven-hour goal and my anticipated pace for each segment.  If I could stick close to each aid station goal time, I would hit the thirty-mile finish right at seven hours.  I figured this would be great practice for coming up with a "race plan" and seeing how well I can stick to it. 

On race day, I wrote the aid station goal times on my forearm with a sharpie, and off I went.  Early on in the race, I bumped into a buddy, Patrick Thiessen, and we ran together for a good while.  He's a good runner and had me at a pace slightly faster than I would have run by myself, so I reached the first aid station ahead of schedule.  I felt fine though, so I didn't mind being a little ahead.  About twelve miles in, I settled into my own planned pace, and Patrick ran on ahead.  Things were looking good.

This is when I first started congratulating myself for having such a great race plan, and executing it so well.  And, yes, for those thinking ahead, "pride doth come before the fall."

I reached the second aid station right on schedule, pausing only to pat my own back.  Continuing on at my planned pace, I cruised into aid stations three and four almost exactly on schedule.  Leaving the final aid station, with about seven miles to go, I mentally reconfirmed that my planned pace would bring me into the thirty-mile finish right at seven hours.  Everything was coming together perfectly.

Then... approaching 28.5 miles, according to my Garmin GPS watch, I came upon a volunteer course marshal who was directing the runners which way to go at a particular intersection.  He was standing next to a mileage sign confirming that we were at mile "28.5."  Pointing me in the right direction, he cheerfully said, "Looking Good!  Just under three miles to go!" 

It took a couple seconds for his words to register in my brain, but when they did, the word "three" hit me like a brick to the head.  According to my Garmin and his sign, I was at 28.5 miles, meaning I had one and a half miles to go to finish this Dirty Thirty.  Something was not right.  I slowed down and squawked, "What?!?"  He repeated himself in an even more encouraging tone, which in my growing confusion, I took to be sarcastic.  My brain whirled with the inconsistency between what I was hearing and seeing.  In a mental haze, I continued running on, trying to sort it out.  How could I have almost "three miles to go," when I thought I only had a mile and a half to go?  I considered the only logical possibilities:

• the volunteer was a sadistic liar;
• both my Garmin and the mileage marker were wrong, possibly intentionally, just to screw with me;
• the GPS satellites had strayed from their geosynchronous orbits, again, possibly intentionally, just to screw with me.

I spent a full three or four minutes seriously considering each of these possibilities before the truth hit me like a second brick to the head.  I had screwed up. The race, though called the Dirty Thirty, was not a thirty mile race at all.  It was a 50K race, that is, a 31.1 mile race (I guess the "Dirty Thirty-One Point One" didn't have the same poetic ring to it).  I admit I knew it was a 50K, but the lovely sing-song rhyme of the race's name made me forget this little tidbit of information, and thus I made my race plan based on thirty miles. 

Now I was in a bind.  I realized I had about 2.6 miles left to go, but in my perfect race plan I had only allotted myself enough time to run 1.5 miles.  I didn't want to give up on my seven-hour goal just yet, so in a bit of a panic, I tried to do some quick mental math to figure out what pace I would need to maintain to make it in time.  If you've ever tried to do mental math while panicking (and/or after 28 miles of running) you know that your arithmetical accuracy is going to suffer a little.  So, I was a bit skeptical when I concluded that, according to my frantic calculations, I needed to maintain a pace of 6.8 furlongs/cubit in order to finish in seven hours.  Somehow, even in my hazy brain, that seemed off.

Still, I knew that all but a quarter mile of the remaining course was downhill.  And I was feeling good on the downhills.  So, unable to calculate how fast I actually needed to go, I just switched off my brain, which was annoying me at this point anyway, and I just ran as fast as I could (which wasn't too fast) for the remaining 2.6 miles.  I hit the finish line (31.1 miles) at 6:54.

Lesson for me and other novice runners out there:  it turns out that, among the other important factors worth considering when preparing for a race, the actual distance is pretty significant.

Inspired

I’m not a runner.  

Until about ten months ago, I’d never run more than about six miles in a row.  Sure, I’ve jogged through a recreational BolderBoulder 10k or two, but that was my max distance.  It never occured to me to run any farther, and my 42-year-old body was just fine with that. 

Despite this, I now find myself a mere eight weeks away from running 100 miles through the Rocky Mountains in the Leadville Trail 100.

The short explanation for this unforeseen turn of events is I'm running it because my older brother Tim ran it last year.  Tim would say that I'm doing it because every time he tries something new, I have to try it too, and see if I can do better.  For example, when he tried to be a cowboy, I just had to be a cooler cowboy with a sweet vest and scrunched hat.


The Wild West circa 1971.

While there is a sliver of truth to his pet theory -- he is after all an accomplished ultra-marathoner and I am undeniably a coat-tail-riding neophyte -- it certainly doesn't capture my motivation in this case. 



The longer explanation is this:  Ten months ago, Tim assigned me the duty of pacing him for 10.5 miles over 12,600’ Hope Pass in his first attempt at the Leadville 100 last August. 


LT100 2010: Paul, Erin (pacers), Skyler, Spencer, Laurie (crew chief), Tim (runner) and me (pacer)

Note, he didn’t ask me, like he asked his other pacers, Paul and Erin; he merely told me my assignment.  He assured me that the three-day backpacking trip I’d done a few weeks prior was sufficient training, and I believed this lie.

So, last year, on August 21, 2010, I found myself climbing up Hope Pass with my brother, carrying his hydration vest and food and lying right back to him – “Not much farther…” “I can almost see the top…” “You’re looking great…” etc.  Of course, none of that was true.  In fact, after 50+ miles of running, he wasn’t looking all that great.  The altitude had taken its toll on him (a flat-lander from MI) causing his body – both his stomach and his quads – to rebel ferociously. 


LT100 2010:  Tim lubing some tender spots 30 miles into the race

Finally, at one point during the climb up the pass, with his leg pain becoming intolerable, he decided he’d had enough.  I sensed it coming for the previous couple miles based on his constant grimacing with every step, his audible moaning and grunting and the occasional knee-buckle and collapse.  He plopped down on the side of the trail and announced, through gasped breaths, that he was "done."  He said he simply could not continue up the mountain.  It was too much.  He just couldn’t get his legs to work.  Everything hurt intensely.  And even if he could move, he would never make the strict cut-off time at the Twin Lakes Aid Station. He told me he appreciated that I was trying to motivate him, to keep him going, but it was no use.  HE WAS DONE.

Tim’s not a quitter.  So for him to plop down and say “No mas” after all his training, all the money he’d spent, all the people who had travelled a long way to support him, AND to do this in front of ME, his younger (sweet-vested, scrunched-hatted) brother, of all people, he must have felt like he had reached the utter bottom of his well.  Dried up.  Nothing left.  Done.

I let him sit there on the side of the trail for a couple minutes (30 seconds really, but I told him it was two minutes), fed and watered him, and then explained to him that even if he wanted to quit right there on the mountain, he still had to get to the aid station where he could quit more formally.  So, he might as well keep moving forward.  And that’s what we did. 

We made it up and over the pass eventually, and Tim began to feel better.  The thought of quitting seemed to grow dimmer, like we left it on the other side of the mountain.  I knew we were up against the clock, so we upped the pace accordingly.  With a heroic final effort, he made the cutoff at the Twin Lakes Aid Station with no time to spare, and rather than quit there as he had planned, he changed shoes, fueled up and continued on into the dark night, as I knew he would, with Paul pacing him. 

And he kept going for about 24 more miles and nine more hours. 

Unfortunately, due to a miscalculation in distances, he eventually missed the cutoff time at Fish Hatchery (mile 76.5) by only a few minutes and was dropped from the race.  But to me, despite this disappointment, the real message was loud and clear:  His well was A LOT deeper than he realized.  

In my head, all I could see was the image of him moaning on the side of the trail announcing that he was “done,” but somehow finding it within himself to continue on for almost an entire marathon’s worth of mountain running through the middle of the night.  I tried to imagine a runner toeing up to the starting line at, say, the Denver Marathon, and before the gun even went off, feeling utterly spent, like he couldn’t take even one more step, yet somehow finding the strength to run the marathon anyway.  That level of mental toughness seemed inconceivable to me; an entirely new concept. 

And the really wild thing was… I saw many runners who had the same experience my brother had – the necessarily painful but rewarding experience of finding out that their respective wells were much deeper than they knew.  At some point during that race, almost every runner doubted whether they could go on, whether they would finish.  But they pressed on anyway.  The word I thought of that night, the word that still continues to resonate in my head today is “inspiring.”

No, I’m not really a runner, but I am curious to find out how deep my own well is.  That night I was inspired to find out how far I can go after I think I can’t go any farther.  

On August 20 (and August 21), 2011, I hope to find out.