Having stood still for so long, I’m now shivering violently. I check my map about 24 more times just to make sure that this is actually the correct trailhead. All that indecision has made me inordinately sleepy on top of the clear delirium. As I’m about to start moving onto the trail, I see a small stream of light coming from near the base of the tree up ahead. Then the light is gone. My mind races as my body continues to shiver. What the fuck could that be? Is it another runner squatting down to take a shit? But why would they turn the light out? Are the hallucinations starting already? Then a strange thought comes to my mind. I’m remembering the bushman of San Francisco-- an infamous homeless man who would hide behind a bush down by the touristy Embarcadero part of the city and who would jump out to scare unsuspecting tourists. Now, I’m sure that there’s a bushman of Wenatchee just waiting to jump out from behind that tree to scare me and perhaps panhandle some of my Clif Bars. Slowly, needing to move, I approach the tree waiting to be surprised. Then, my headlight finds what awaits behind the tree and with the insanity of the scene, sanity starts to return to me. It’s just two fellow racers, lying face up in the mud on the side of the trail, rain pelting their faces, settling in for a nap. I shuffle on by and wish them a good nap. It’s at that point that this race starts to feel like home for me. Everyone that is out here has that special type of crazy in them that makes them think that running 100+ miles, without any support or markings, while drinking out of streams is their idea of “fun.” These are my people. The kind that think that lying down in the muck face up in the rain for a nap is a good idea. And it was a great idea. If I wasn’t already verging on hypothermic, I would have joined them. And it just so happens that about 10 miles from the finish, both of the dirt-nappers would come flying by me on the long downhill section obviously rejuvenated.
Though I felt better after that, the second loop of this race was tough. Much tougher than the first loop, which on paper was much longer and had much more elevation gain. In fact, I’d say that the first loop was actually fun, not “fun” like the second loop. Despite being experienced and successful when starting slow, I went out fast on the course. The first 9 to 10 miles are on fire road, my forte, with most of it going uphill at a relatively mellow under 10 percent gradient. I knew that perhaps I was a little too exuberant when I ran into the first Search and Rescue checkpoint- Maverick Saddle- in first and second place with the eventual winner of the race, Ian, who would go on to get a sub-24 time and the second fastest finishing time ever. Smartly, I let him go on ahead as I had to fill my water.
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| A nice view. Not from the race, of course, as my phone died early, but from the previous day's scouting run. |
I then settled in with a small group of runners, enjoying the scenery and the cool temperatures. That was until I felt a bunch of stings on my ankles. Looking down, we were being attacked by bees. All three of us took off up the trail faster than any runner has gone in a 100 mile race swatting at our legs. The swarm had got us all. I counted at least 6 stings on my ankles and legs. At the finish line, the race director Tim Stroh, would tell us that after getting reports of most of the runners getting stung, he hiked up to the location and found a small hole between some rocks that contained a mound of thousands of writhing bees. He said that he was able to get a rock and was able to toss the rock on top of the hole, effectively plugging it, while quickly retreating downhill, which saved about the last 6 runners from getting stung. For a race supposedly without any support, that’s some heroic aid. Despite trying to make sure to remove the stingers, my legs would be in pain for approximately the next 25 miles. It wasn’t too bad-- just felt like the stinging nettle portion of Highlands Sky multiplied by ten. At one point, as I approached the high point of the race on Klone Peak, I realized that my body might be having a small reaction from the stings as I had difficulty making a fist due to swelling in my hands.
Following Klone peak, there was a loooooonng downhill section. About halfway into the downhill, I came upon the second SAR checkpoint. Let me stop to talk about these checkpoints for a second. While the race is remote and self-supported, the closeness of SAR personnel make it, in my view, probably safer than most other racers where some drunk aid station volunteers might be really good at dishing out some M&Ms but less good at saving your life. In this race, the SAR personnel won’t offer you any aid unless you are dropping from the race and need it. Also, though, they’re not just neutral but are actively trying to make your race harder. At this checkpoint, the SAR personnel had a grill going throwing off some entrancing aromas. Underneath a canopy, they had set up a formal table setting with chairs, a table cloth, place settings, and poured glasses of red and white wine. It was a good gag. Luckily, this early in the race there was no appeal. My favorite, however, was at another checkpoint where the trail came out to a two way intersection. We had to choose which way to go-- right or left. On the map, the trail looked like it went straight, so I figured I would choose right which was only a slight right. Another runner, Yngwie, was in front of me, confirming my decision. Luckily, he was much better at reading a map and noticed we had chosen poorly. The trail actually did continue on straight. It was impossible to realize this by sight, however, as the SAR personnel had set up their tent directly in front of the trailhead, blocking it from view and necessitating a walk around the tent to find it.
Some miles later, after more downhill, I reached the foot of the hardest climb of the race-- some 4800 feet in less than 6 miles. Before starting the climb, as warned in the pre-race briefing, I stopped to fill up my water at a stream crossing. This would be the last time that I would use a water filter. None of the locals were filtering their water and trying to filter each time was taking much too long. Even though I probably ended up drinking a lot of dirt, leaf matter, moss, and maybe a bug or two, it’s now a week after the race and giardia has not reared up. The climb was long but I enjoyed it. It was at this time, though, that the rain started, an omen for what was to come that night. I actually used my cheatin’ sticks for the first time here, put my head down and grinded up hill. It was probably the most euphoric I felt all race. As I climbed, I created a dialog in my head between myself and my 5-year-old son where I was teaching him the lessons of doing hard things. My imaginary 5-year-old took those lessons much better than my actual 5-year old would, who would have probably called me crazy and asked to be carried.
After reaching the summit of the climb, there was a long downhill section-- sometimes very runnable and sometimes scree covered. Soon, I was on the Mad River trail, which on paper was supposed to be easy and gradually uphill. Rather, it was lots of ups and downs. At this point I was running off and on with Yngwie and talk of the burgers that would await us at the end of loop 1 propelled us forward. On this section, my legs were starting to hurt and I slowed down as Yngwie kept moving forward ahead. My plan, as stupid as I knew it was, was to bomb the 6 or 7 mile downhill on the fire road to the end of the first loop. I stuck to that plan. I flew passed Yngwie on the downhill who despite apparently not having a lot of race experience was making the very smart decision of using hiking poles going downhill to preserve his quads. This would prove out about 3 miles from the finish when I would see him again, this time him flying by me and gaining many minutes by the finish. Still, I ran, hitting many 8 minute miles some 60+ miles into a 100+ mile race, and god damn was it worth it.
Saying that there is no aid in this race is not correct. The start and finish is an aid station where you have a dropbag but also the race director on the grill cooking for you to order. After 14+ hours of just Tailwind and Clif Bars, the veggie burger with pepperjack cheese and side of minestrone soup that he made me was a meal fit for the formal table setting back at the SAR checkpoint. Going into that aid station, I told myself that I had to limit myself to ten minutes. Thirty-five minutes later I was headed out onto loop 2 and into the dark night of my soul.
As recounted in the beginning of this report, loop 2 got “interesting” fast for a number of factors: 1. It’s now dark and you’ll be running most of the loop in the dark; 2. The trail is constantly up and down and riddled with moguls, making it impossible to find a rhythm; 3. You’re getting tired-- it turns out that having to use your brain to make choices about water and directions uses a lot more energy than running alone. I think I was more tired and sleepy on this loop than I was 48 hours into Ouray; 4. This year, it rained the entire loop. Visibility was awful and mud was plentiful. And it was cold. Stopping for five minutes to fill up water would result in violent shivers. The only way to stay warm was to keep moving; 5. You feel completely isolated. There was a lot of camaraderie on the first loop. On the second loop, there was barely any interaction with other runners. One runner passed me a mile into the second loop as I peeled off layers of clothing, I passed the 2 dirt-nappers and they passed me 25 miles later, and Yngwie passed me three miles from the finish. At one point, I convinced myself that the race had been cancelled and I was the only one left out there. The nappers had called it quits at the SAR checkpoint and everyone was warm and cozy at the finish line. After all, there’s no way that even crazy sadists like the race directors would allow a race to go on in these conditions.
Did I swear off running any more 100s during the second loop? You better believe I did. Did I question what kind of mental illness would make me actually pay money to endure such suffering during the second loop? Absolutely. Do I have a short memory, which is the human trait that allows women to have second babies and ultrarunners to sign up for subsequent hundos? Yep, I’m already antsy to find my next 100.
I’ll leave you with one story from my loop 2 travails. The mud had made it impossible for me to stay upright. Even using my poles, I was spending a lot of time on the ground. There was one particularly bad fall about 30 miles into the loop, where I went down on my left side, plastering the entire left side of my body from head to toe with mud. Still, I got up and hobbled on. Some time later (it could have been a half mile or it could have been 3 miles), I looked down at my left arm to see how far I had left to go. I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at. At some point I must have put on an arm sleeve with some stupid looking pattern on it and the arm sleeve was covering my watch. The only problem was that I’ve never owned a pair of arm sleeves. Nope, what I was looking at was my bare arm, with my arm hair matted into uniquely shaped clumps from the mud. It was horrifying. Even worse, I realized that there was nothing covering my watch but that my watch must have broken off during the last fall. Did it take me 20 minutes to decide whether or not to go back for the watch? It did not. It wasn’t even a choice as I kept moving forward-- the thought of backtracking and possibly or possibly not finding the watch too horrible to even dwell on. As good fortune would have it, as I sat at the finish line, another runner-- an actual trail angel-- would come in and tell the race director that he had found a Garmin watch, the one I had lost. I was super thankful even if I may not have seemed so at the time in my post-race stupor.
As I stated above, this race felt like home. I’ll steal a great quote from a former Plain runner-- it is like a “family reunion for the Tribe of People with Very Poor Judgment.” This year, the race felt even more intimate, as the “password” we had to give the SAR folks at each checkpoint was the answer to “Who are you running to honor?” We were running to honor Tammy, the recently-deceased wife of the co-race director Tim Dehnhoff. Despite not knowing Tim or Tammy, that added an extra gravity to this race-- a reminder every 20 miles or so of the shortness of all our lives. You can take that pathos and go one of two directions with it-- it either renders the race and all of the accompanying struggles as trivial in light of the very real tragedy of the loss of life and a loved one. Or, if you’re a member of the TPVPJ, it makes you treasure not just this race but the intrinsic value of doing ostensibly stupid and hard things. It’s quite easy, particularly for people in the socio-economic class of typical ultrarunners, to comfortably drive along in life, on cruise control until the highway abruptly ends. But that’s not where real beauty, real inspiration, and real experience is found. Those things are found in the margins and at the limits. Those things are found by taking an abrupt left turn off life’s highway into the dirt and heading to find out what is behind that mountain in the distance not knowing if you have enough gas to make it. The Plain 100 provides you with one of those opportunities and if you're a member of the TPVPJ, you'd be a fool not to take it.
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| Don't believe all the gobbledygook above. This is the actual reason why I run. |
