I am awakened by a firm shake and look up to see the stern face of a security guard. “You can’t sleep here.” What am I doing here? What’s the score? I let out a minute long cough, somewhere between covid and a death rattle and mumble, “excuse me?” “You can’t sleep here, this is the lobby of a casino.” Some recognition begins to come back. I’m cocooned in a -20 degree sleeping bag but shivering like someone withdrawing from heroin. I crawl out from my chrysalis, emerging not like a butterfly, but a caterpillar still in the mush phase and look down to see that I’m wearing a pair of cutoff fleece Christmas pajamas, which probably doesn’t help my “I’m not homeless” case. I’m at the Fortune Bay Casino, somewhere between No Man’s Land and Bum Fuck, Minnesota, also known as the finish line of the Arrowhead 135. And it’s been one hell of a journey.
The Idea
I’ve been running ultras for around 9 years. It all started 20 years ago, when I started running on the road to improve my fitness (after smoking a pack or two a day for many years). 5ks became 10ks became half marathons, but after a 19 mile run that nearly killed me, I said that I would never run a fucking marathon. Then I ran a marathon and said after the finish that I was 1 and done. Then I ran a trail “marathon” which ended up being 30 miles. My legs blew up after 25 miles (I didn’t understand anything about pacing), I had to shit in the woods, and I walked it in. I told myself if this is what an ultra feels like, I will never run a fucking ultra. Then I ran the Mountain Masochist 50 miler in November of 2014. The Mountain Masochist is a point to point race and halfway to the finish, you can access the buses that drove you to the start line and your drop bags. It’s also a very convenient place to drop out. I reached those buses and said that I’m fucking done. How can these people run up and down these mountains and still have legs that work? I sat there for 10 minutes when another runner came through who was clearly having a much worse day than me. He was dry heaving and stumbling and his family met him there, refilled his bottles, gave him some antacid, and sent him on his way. I remember the runner’s young daughter urging the runner’s wife to hurry up so we can meet daddy at the next aid station with her telling her daughter, “we have plenty of time, daddy’s not moving very fast.” After witnessing that, I told myself that there was no way that I could quit. That guy was in much worse shape than I am. And I picked myself back up and began climbing the next ascent. During those last 25 miles, I discovered my love for ultras. It would suck, everything would hurt, and then I would have sections where I felt good and could actually run. It felt like so many deaths and resurrections. It wasn’t a race, but a path of spiritual enlightenment, where everything in my life was stripped away to just my pain, my grit, and the mountain. It was misery but it was also ecstatic. And the beer after the finish never tasted so good.
Many years later, I learned of winter racing from Scott Kummer on the Ten Junk Miles podcast. The stories were interesting, but I didn’t give much thought into actually running a winter race- it was a niche cubby hole in an already niche sport. Then I listened to Scott’s interview of Scott Hoberg regarding his misadventures at the ITI 350. After listening to Scott Hoberg’s tale of perseverance, hubris, enlightenment, and sleep deprivation induced delusion, I knew that I had to try winter racing.
My plan at first was to put my entry into winter racing on the backburner for a little bit. I figured I could wait a few years while I still had some speed in my legs until I was a little older. But then in June of 2022, after being hobbled by a back injury, diagnosed with facet joint arthritis of the lower spine, being told I should not run again by a doctor, and dropping out of Western States after waiting 8 years to get in, I decided it was time to start my winter journey. Because what better way to say “fuck you” to the doctor that told me not to run again than to use my back to run with a sled for 135 miles in dangerously cold weather?
The Preparation
I signed up for the West Virginia Trilogy in October. It’s a three day stage race, with the first day being a 50k, the second day being a 50 miler, and the third day being a half marathon, which the race directors, Dan and Adam, designed after 3 Days of Syllamo. It’s one of my favorite races, feels like a family reunion, and involves 3 days of camping (and drinking) at the start/finish line. I figured that it would be a good race to test my back and that if I had to drop out I would have a great time anyway. The Trilogy went better than expected, and I eked out a 2nd place finish (by some 40 seconds over the course of 3 days and 90+ miles).
Because the Trilogy went well, I then mailed in my application for the Hellgate 100k++ on the trip home from the Trilogy. Between 10 and 20 miles into Hellgate, my back was hurting so bad that I wanted to quit. However, I made friends with the pain and managed to run a personal best and top 10 finish, despite being significantly slowed on the downhill portions of the course. Buoyed by my performance, I knew that Arrowhead was a go. And then began the shopping.
Forget about tire pulls or sled pulls (we had no snow in Virginia before Arrowhead) most of my preparation involved reading race reports from the past and exercising my credit card. I definitely spent more time on Amazon, Army surplus and discount outfitter websites than on the trail. More on what I bought and what worked, didn’t work, or didn’t get used later.
After purchasing and receiving the RM Gear destroyer roll up sled, waist harness, and bungee cord, I decided that I would test out the act of pulling a sled by attaching the waist harness and bungee to the running stroller that I had used when my kids were smaller (there was still no snow in Virginia). This was an unmitigated disaster. Even running on the slight uphill road in my neighborhood, the stroller would quickly gain speed and overtake me, yanking me forward, or if I used the hand brake that I had detached and extended to be able to run with, it would stop and yank me backwards. A few times when I was able to stay ahead of the stroller, it would veer into the curb, flip over, and take me down with it. I’m only glad that my neighbors know that I’m a bit of a lunatic already and didn’t call the cops thinking that there was a child in the stroller.
A few days before the flight to Minnesota, I decided to do a test run at my local park using an actual sled despite there being no snow still and it being 40 degrees. Not wanting to besmirch my pristine race sled with dirt and gravel, I used my kids’ sled and threw in a 25 lb plate weight in it. I ran with the sled attached both to the RM Gear waist harness and an old UD vest, which would allow me to pull more from my upper back. It was only a 3 mile run, but it was hugely insightful. I ran it while wearing what I planned on wearing for race day-- a synthetic base layer, with a merino wool midlayer, and a patagonia nano-puff hoody. I learned that for me, merino wool was not a good option. It stayed wet much longer than the synthetic layer, which was dry by the time I got home. Also, the UD vest was much easier on my back than the waist belt. To complete the look of a total maniac, I also tried the cold avenger mask and realized that although I would bring it with me, it made my face so juicy that I feared what would happen in -20 temperatures.
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| A fashion statement with a cold avenger and shorts |
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| Training in deep winter in Virginia |
The Start
After sprinting through the Minneapolis airport to make my connecting flight to International Falls due to my flight from DC being delayed, I arrived in I Falls on time and was able to head to gear check immediately (after stopping at the motel to pick up the Esbit tablets I had delivered) so that I could get that part out of the way and then spend the next 36 hours incessantly packing, unpacking, and repacking my sled.
The next day around dawn I was able to take the sled out from Kerry Park for a confidence-building test run of 3 miles out and back on the race course. My rental car said it was -18 degrees. Everything went well. I learned that I would have cold toes for several miles before they would warm up. Amazingly, the sled pulled so much faster on snow than it did on grass and gravel. I was going to use surgical gloves as a vapor barrier on my hands, but my hands got so sweaty that I decided not to (more on that later). I also used the OuterU face glove, which kept my nose and cheeks toasty but resulted in significant icicles in my eyelashes and eyebrows. During the race, instead of using a thermometer, I was able to use eyelash ice as an indicator of how cold it actually was.
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| Maybe he's born with it, Maybe it's Maybelline. |
Here’s the gear that I was wearing at the start of the race. It was largely the same gear that I used throughout the race. The only things that I changed were: 1) liner gloves at MelGeorges, 2) socks at MelGeorges, 3) balaclava at MelGeorges, and 4) several buffs.
- Patagonia capilene Highlands Sky 40 base layer
- Ultimate direction vest over base layer and under mid layer (for holding any items, like phone and batteries, that needed to stay warm)
- Patagonia mid layer from West Virginia Trilogy
- Patagonia nano puff from Hellgate 100k (would have preferred one with a hood, but used the one I got for free).
- Amazon Chinese brand compression shorts
- Amazon Chinese brand synthetic tights
- Craft windproof and water resistant pants
- Ankle length Feetures synthetic material sock
- Calf length Feetures merino wool sock
- Altra Olympus 4 (with duct tape held on by shoe goo at the toes)
- buff around neck
- buff on head
- Amazon Chinese brand fleece balaclava
- OuterU face glove
- Dermatone applied aggressively on face
- Ultimate direction vest over outer layer to pull sled
- RM Gear waist belt (for storage and to pull sled from hips if back got tired)
- Outdoor Research Alti Mitts
- Army surplus wool liner glove
I used an Army surplus duffel bag and modified Coleman cooler on my sled. In the cooler, I had two 1 L Nalgene bottles in insulated sleeves, 2 20 oz hydroflasks, and a 20 oz soft UD bottle as well as all my snacks.
As I believe the indomitable John Storkamp has said, you pack all of your insecurities on your sled. If that’s the case, I must have had a neurotic breakdown. Here are all the items on my sled that I didn’t use:
1. 3 long sleeve base layers
2. 3 long sleeve mid layers
3. Patagonia fleece jacket
4. Marmot puffy jacket
5. Army surplus wool sweater
6. 3 pairs of tights
7. 1 pair of compression shorts
8. pair of ski pants
9. Christmas pajama pants cut into shorts
10. Army surplus extreme weather hood (w/ synthetic fur)
11. Gaiters
12. Cast socks
13. 8 pairs of extra socks (only used 2, probably should have used more)
14. KT tape
15. Too many extra batteries (for headlamps)
16. 2 portable battery chargers (in case one didn’t work)
17. 6 pairs of extra glove (only used 1)
18. Extra blinkie red lights
19. 2 backup headlamps
Not to mention all of the required gear that I was carrying, which I also did not use. Oh, and a single beer in my cooler (for emergency purposes only). I was carrying an entire camping goods supply store on my sled.
So, since this is ostensibly a race report, I guess we should get to the start of the race. Even though, as with all races, ultimate success is 90% preparation and 10% perspiration and in this race that perspiration can kill you.
For whatever reason, I think that it is a common experience in people to have a specific panic dream where you are in school or college and find out towards the end of a semester that you never attended a required class. I had this dream a lot, even years after graduating from any schooling. I’m not sure if this dream is as common amongst runners, but nowadays the missed-class panic dream has been replaced by the panic dream where I am in a race and I can’t make it to the start line. A series of ridiculous unfortunate events transpire so that I am late to the race and can’t start. Well, I felt like I was living this dream at the start of Arrowhead. I arrived at Kerry Park about 30 minutes early, with the temperature being around -20 degrees. I tried turning on my spot tracker in the car and it wouldn’t light up. Oh well, I would bring it to check in and hopefully they would be able to assist me I thought. I then got my sled out of the car and tried to put on my Ultimate Direction vest-cum-harness. However, I was significantly more bulky as I had a soft flask between my layers causing the front snap, which would keep my vest attached to my body as I pulled my sled, to fly off. Shit! I turned on my high powered waist lamp to search around my rental vehicle for the snap. I searched for several minutes and fortuitously found the snap behind the wheel of my vehicle. Now, however, I needed to try to reattach it with 10 minutes until the race start. Stupidly, my vehicle was already locked and I didn’t feel like trying to dig out the keys from where I stashed them in the sled. So instead I tried to reattach it in the frigid cold, eventually needing to remove my outer gloves and liners to use bare hands to make the necessary fine finger movements to get the snap reattached. 5 minutes until the race start. I ran into the check in building, found someone that was able to get my spot tracker working, and heard the fireworks go off signaling the start of the race. I thought to myself, what the fuck am I getting myself into if I can’t even get to the start line in a normal fashion. However, I comforted myself by telling myself that now was the easy part-- I only needed to put one foot in front of the other…. for anywhere between the next 30 to 60 hours.
The Plan
I planned to treat the race like a backyard ultra. I would run for either an hour or 4.16 miles (whichever came first) and then take a 5 minute rest where I would go back to my sled and eat and drink. I had done over 170 miles at the Capital Backyard Ultra previously and knew that this strategy would keep my legs relatively fresh, while allowing a regimented schedule for eating and drinking, and would put me on a decent pace for a relatively fast finish. This plan worked perfectly up until MelGeorges. Afterwards, because of the frustration with my inability to complete 4.16 miles within an hour, I had to abandon the backyard ultra strategy.
The First Fuck Up
It’s almost comical that this race has a supported division and an unsupported division, where there is very little difference between the two. In the supported division, there are only three aid stations-- the first being Gateway-- a gas station where you can get hot water and buy gas station items, the second being MelGeorges, which is a cabin where volunteers will make you delicious grilled cheese, but is probably the cause of most DNFs with racers hearing the siren song of warm food, warm air, and a warm bed. The third is a teepee in the middle of nowhere where you can get hot water but no food. All of the aid stations are about 30-35 miles apart.
I had a great time getting to Gateway. The sun came out and temperatures warmed up to a balmy -10 degrees. The ice from my eyelashes melted away. I was able to remove my jacket and just run in 2 shirts. As I pulled into Gateway, I saw Scott Hoberg preparing to leave. I wished him happy trails (and secretly hoped that I would be able to catch up to him, not to beat him, but to hear some of his tails). He would be the last runner that I would see the entire race.
As a rookie running this race, my advice would to be to plan out what you are going to do and what you will need at Gateway ahead of time. Stop there before the race and look at the layout as well as what they have to offer. I wasted way too much time in Gateway-- I ended up buying a cup of vegetarian tomato bisque, an Ensure, and a Monster energy drink, a combination fit for a meth head tweaker-- and despite spending too much time at Gateway, failed to accomplish the most important thing-- changing my socks. Avoiding macerated feet (aka trench foot) was a priority and yet off I went down the trail with damp socks like a big dummy.
The Second Fuck Up
On the way to MelGeorges, as the sun set and the frigid night embraced the trail, I noticed some tingling in my fingertips. I was listening to some classic horror fiction podcasts-- Algernon Blackwood’s “The Wendigo” and William Hope Hodgson’s “House on the Borderland.” However, these stories were broken up into chapters in different podcasts and the Apple podcast app playlist feature is horrendous. The chapters would not play in order and I kept having to remove my wool liner glove to go to the right chapter. Once I noticed the tingling, I stuffed my hands in my Alti Mitts and let them warm up. When I arrived at MelGeorges, I decided that I would switch out my wool liner gloves-- I would remove my Army surplus rough wool gloves (which were also the cause of me eating too much wool as I shoved food in my mouth) and replace them with a pair of Smartwool liners, the kind that allows you to still use a phone with your thumb and index fingers. Here’s what they don’t tell you, though-- the technology that allows a phone to sense the heat of your finger to be used with the glove on also allows the cold to get to your fingers. Even though I never felt tingling in my fingers again during the race or had any issues with dexterity, a day after the race I noticed numbness in both of the tips of my thumbs and index fingers-- exactly where the touchscreen contact points were. So, like a big dummy, I gave myself (probably mild) frostbite on the very tips of my fingers because I wanted to have easier access to my podcasts.
The Maceration
At MelGeorges, I decided that I would remove my shoes and change my socks. As soon as I did, I knew I was fucked. Even though I hadn’t felt it on the trail yet, my old friend maceration had come back. The balls of my feet were zombie-like- shriveled and white. The only way to fix them would be to rest for several hours and dry them out, which in retrospect may have been a better decision, however I had promises to keep and miles to go before I sleep. So, I tried to warm and dry them the best I could near the wood burning stove, dry out my shoes as best as I could, and put a fresh coating of petroleum jelly on the old zomb-feet. (I also had a blood blister on my big toe almost the size of my big toe, but that was not my biggest concern). Having finished too many races and runs with painful macerated feet as the result of running in downpours, I knew the pain that awaited me but also that I wouldn’t let that pain finish my race.
The Minnesota Hot Pocket
The section between MelGeorges and the Embark teepee was interminable. I looked forward to the hills. Hilly and mountain running is my forte. I was quickly disabused of this notion. Pulling a sled up the short but steep hills, with a thrift store worth of clothes in weight, was tough work. And then when I would get to the top and try to run down, the sled would get ahead of me and go out of control. While I could have sled down some of the hills, I was apprehensive to do so in the dark and some of the hills were not steep enough to sled down.
And then between 3 and 6 am, I became unbearably sleepy. I was less than 24 hours into the race and had no reason to be as sleepy as I was. However, I think it was because my eyesight was so limited by all of the facial gear that I was wearing combined with my eyelids sagging closed under the weight of my lash-cicles that made it impossible to stumble forward a few feet without drifting off to sleep. I decided a shiver bivy was in order, and I laid on top of my sled for 5 minutes with my eyes closed. I don’t think I ever actually got sleep, but that was enough. I got up and was moving forward without falling asleep any longer.
Usually the sunrise on any long race is life affirming. My body yearned for the sunrise. However, as the ice-crystal laden sky began to brighten, I hit the worst part of the trail that I had experienced. Goddamn moguls. Seemingly for miles. Up and down with my sled violently jerking me forward and backward. I cursed Scott Kummer for introducing me to winter running on his podcast. I cursed Ken Krueger for being so seemingly nice but ultimately cruel and letting me in this torture contest. I cursed the Inuit for having 50 names for snow when the only name that I recognized now was fuck you.
I was in a dark place which is not somewhere where I usually go. I usually subscribe to the notion that if you portray happiness even if you feel like shit you will feel better. However, I was alone. There were no aid station workers, other runners, or spectators to portray happiness to. Nothing but inward looking despair.
However, I held out for this one tiny glimmer of hope. Back at the Gateway store, one of this race’s spectacular and selfless volunteers, Emily, had told me despite the race advertising that the teepee would only have hot water, they would also have some food there. With my buff, balaclava, and hat blocking my hearing, it sounded like she said “something pockets.” My mind grasped onto this idea of some type of pocket food being available at the teepee. I was so hungry for some hot food-- I had already sickened of all the food that I was carrying, and the only food that I still craved, Twinkies, had long since been consumed. I began concocting an elaborate story about these “something pockets” in my mind. I began calling them Minnesota hot pockets. I figured they would be a Minnesota speciality-- something similar to a West Virginia pepperoni roll or a New Jersey pork roll. Sure, even though I’m a vegetarian, I negotiated with myself and decided that I would allow myself to eat some delicious meat on this special occasion. Goddamn, these Minnesota hot pockets were going to be a delicacy that would revive me from this dark place where I found myself.
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| Reach out if you smell a sponsorship deal like I do, Nestle. |
The last five miles into the Embark teepee were the longest of my life (only to be replaced by the last mile before the Fortune Bay casino some hours later). The signs that the teepee aid station workers had put out were fucking with my head. (They were placards with a picture of a leaping fox and excerpts from Robert Frost poems as I learned later but at the time I couldn’t figure out if they were even connected with the aid station and thought they were the work of some sadistic, schizophrenic land owner). But the thought of that Minnesota hot pocket kept me pushing forward.
Finally, I arrived at the teepee to aid station workers festooned in fox costumes. “Can I have one of those hot pockets?,” I implored. The fox looked at me strangely. “Do you mean Embark energy packets? We have some of those?” And the Embark packets were great. I downed a maple flavored one right there and mixed another coffee-maple flavored one in one of my Nalgene bottles with hot water. However, I cannot begin to explain the disappointment, even if the embark packets were objectively great. I sat in the teepee for several minutes and filled all my containers with hot water. One of the bikers in the teepee began to wax poetically about the existential nature of this race and the pain and cold and hardship being a distilled microcosm of human existence. Not now, I thought-- there was still another 7-10 hours between me and the finish. Another 7-10 hours where the pain would just be pain and the cold just the cold and not some grand metaphor. It was time to get on with it.
The Finish
When I toed the starting line, I had told myself that there would be a time out on the course where I would just want to finish. At the same time, I told myself that I knew after I had finished, there would come that familiar emptiness that accompanies so many long sought after and thought about adventures after you complete the goal. I told myself that it was important to be in the moment and not just think of the finish line.
That was good advice, but so hard to implement in practice. My macerated feet were screaming with every step. It was difficult to breathe. I had put this down to using the chest harness and had switched to the waist belt, but after I finished I learned this was cold-induced lung problems. So, I started playing little games with myself. Run to that tree. Keep your mile under 20 minutes. Count the patches of yellow snow. Anything to distract myself.
As the second night fell, I welcomed some hallucinations. The snow capped trees along the side of the trail became spectators cheering me in. They were wearing bonnets, but maybe that was the style in this part of Minnesota.
I would see lights in the distance and kept imagining that it was the casino. It never was. I would not see the casino and the finish line until I was within several hundred feet of it. Some 37 hours and 37 minutes later, I had arrived. One of the many kind volunteers took my sled from me to walk me into the casino. After so long pulling the sled, I felt like I was still pulling it-- phantom sled syndrome. I had finished in third place in the foot division, but more importantly I had completed the Arrowhead.
I was an absolute wreck after the race. To make matters worse, I learned that the casino did not have any hotel rooms available and a cab back to I Falls wasn’t available until the morning, which led to the homeless/drug addict scene that played out in the beginning of this race report. Luckily, however, after learning of the situation, the casino let me and several other racers who were in the same situation sleep on the public area couches.
The volunteers at the race were fantastic. It sounds corny, but the act of being at a race that lasts 60 hours and helping all of us wretched racers either finish or drop out safely is a much harder job than just putting one foot in front of the other to run this race. A special shout out to Emily, who gave my huddled and wheezing ass a puff from her inhaler, to Gretchen, the female on foot record holder at Arrowhead, who tried to get me a hotel room and sorted out my clothes from my sled, and the sleeping arrangements with the casino, and to the guy who went down to my sled to cover me with my -20 degree sleeping bag (even though in my sleep deprived state, I didn’t recognize my sleeping bag).
Also, everyone says that the runners in a race that are slower but consequently spend more time on the trail are tougher. I think that’s true for the most part. However, there’s a big difference between spending more time on a beautiful trail with temperate weather than spending an extra night or two in northernmost Minnesota in bone freezing temperatures. Those runners that take 50+ hours to finish are another breed of hardass motherfuckers entirely.
So, how does the Arrowhead stack up in the pantheon of hard races? It’s hard to say. While you are in it, every race that you are running is the hardest that you’ve ever run and I thought that several times between MelGeorges and the finish. However, unlike many other races, I never once thought about quitting (at the same time, this is because trying to quit is potentially more difficult than just moving forward). It was objectively cold as fuck, yet I never felt uncomfortably cold and realized how efficient our bodies are as furnaces. I think the toughness comes from how little room for error there is. You have to be physically fit, but more importantly you have to be dialed in at logistics.
Overall, I think Ken and Jackie have managed to maintain a race that is hard as hell and not a given when you take to the start line, and thus intimidating, but at the same time is in the realm of possibilities for most runners who have the fortitude to show up. Like the Plain 100, it is a race that I would run every year if I lived closer, but certainly not a one and done for me. After all, I do need another qualifying finish for the ITI 350.
Food Ratings (out of 5 stars)
1. Clif Nut-Filled Bars - 0 stars
Frozen solid almost from the get go. Only good for wolf defense.
2. Gummy bears - 1 star
Frozen solid quickly, but makes for an adequate hard candy.
3. Dot’s pretzels (honey mustard flavor) - 1.5 stars
Too damn crunchy and flavor is too strong when you don’t want to eat.
4. Potato chips (dill flavored) - 1.5 stars
I couldn’t stop eating these in my motel room before the race. During the race, it tasted like I’d imagine moose pee would taste. (Next time, it’s original flavor all the way).
5. Chocolate-covered espresso beans - 2 stars
I thought that I solved the mystery of life when I bought these-- calories, caffeine and deliciousness! They were functional, but not worth the hours of stale coffee breath on the trail.
6. Peanut butter packets - 2 stars
These were great, until they froze and I couldn’t squeeze anything out. I guess I could have warmed them near my body, but I was too inpatient.
7. Cashews - 3 stars
Salty and fatty and delicious. However, difficult to accurately deliver to your mouth while on the trail with gloves on. Had to pick cashews out of all my race gear and clothing after the race.
8. Reeses peanut butter cups - 3.5 stars
My absolute favorite candy of all time. While at my office, I can eat 200 of them from the candy bowl. They were even better when partially frozen. However, against all odds, after munching on them for over a day, they tend to become too sickly sweet.
9. Pop tarts (cinnamon flavor) - 4.5 stars
I would bring multiple flavors next time. Hard to get sick of these. Only stopped eating them after I ran out.
10. Twinkies - 5 stars
Should be the top of the food pyramid in winter racing food. They have a delicate, sweet flavor that is hard to get sick of. In the cold, they have a fudgier rather than spongy texture and a creamy mouthfeel.
Top 3 pieces of advice for rookies
1. Splurge on a good pair of insulated mittens. I used the Outdoor Research Alti Mitts and they were single handedly the best piece of equipment that I had bought. It’s great piece of mind to know that you can warm your hands up at a second’s notice.
2. Bring an instant meal with you that you can make with hot water, whether it be oatmeal, ramen, or some camping freeze-dried food. You will thank me when you reach Embark teepee and they are out of Minnesota hot pockets.
3. The Arrowhead facebook group is a great resource in preparing for the race. However, what works and doesn’t work is a highly individual experience. Test out what works for you in the best way that you can prior to the race.
