With A Little Help From My Friends

I get by with a little help from my friends

I get high with....SCRIIIITCH (record scratching sound)

Nope, that doesn't really work

On a loooong lonesome highway, 

East of Omaha.....SCRIIIITCH

What? No!

Hey yo, I'm just like my country, 

I'm young, scrappy, and hungry

And I am not throwing away my shot.....SCRIIIITCH

Closer, but not quite

Get up, get back on your feet

You're the one they can't beat and you know it

Come on, let's see what you've got

Just take your best shot and don't blow it- Tommy Shaw

Not really a Styx fan anymore, but that mostly works.

Yup, that's why I love to run Bunker Hill in the morning. Pic by Mile 90 Photography

Whew! Where to even start. Spoiler alert, I finished. I ran 100 miles. Well, there was walking involved, more on that later. Race morning started off a little iffy, I slept pretty well considering that my alarm was set for 3:00 AM. Yes that's my fault, I've got a morning routine that works so I stick with it even when the race starts at 6:00 AM. Right off, while getting dressed I noticed that the race bib that I'd carefully pinned to my running shorts the night before was on the back side of my shorts. I got that corrected just in time to wipe up the hot water that the Kuerig machine was spewing all over the counter because I forgot to put the cup under the spout. I was really hoping that the whole day wouldn't go this way. Everything else before the race went pretty well though. I'd assumed that the car was pre-disastered since a tire blew out on me the day before on my way to work.

Maddie asked "Why does Dad's pre-race pic look like a Nike commercial?" :-) Pic by Mile 90 Photography

I got to the lake 5:15-ish, hauled my portable aid station (cooler on wheels, camp chair, hugely stuffed duffel bag) also known as a drop bag to the shelter, drank more coffee and tried not to get too jacked  up while waiting the last few minutes before the start. Then we were off. I'm not sure if I was actually grinning like a goof or just felt that way, but I was definitely a kid on Christmas morning again (without the dread of having to go to church)! The Hawk Hundred course is 4 loops (25 miles each) of rough, rooty, rocky trails on the north shore of Clinton Lake in Lawrence, Kansas. I finished loop 1 just where I wanted, around 5 1/4 hours. I'd chatted most of the way with fellow runners, remembered to eat a lot, drink a lot, and eat salt sticks at every aid station. Side note, I also managed to poop in nearly every bathroom along the course (as well as a few places that aren't "technically" bathrooms, although they're certainly roomy). Hopefully there won't be anymore on that later. If that's too much info, this is likely your first and last time reading this blog. Oh, and also, Tour of Doodie. :-)

 Cruising the Red Trail on Loop 1 (pic by Mile 90)

I gotta tell ya, coming into the start/finish area between loops is what I imagine it feels like for a president, well you know a real president, to arrive at a fine hotel. Everyone is there cheering as you arrive, there is immediately someone there asking "what can I get you?", and people hand you food and drink with no expectation of you paying for it. It is definitely the rock star treatment. So, while I stuffed a PB & J and a guacamole filled tortilla into my mouth, my water bottles were refilled with my iced coconut water and a fresh baggie of dates/coconut shavings was placed into my hands. Deanna was there to wish me luck, so I got a hug and a kiss and kicked right back out onto the trail for loop 2.

Cactus Ridge on Loop 2, I grabbed my rain jacket as it started to rain when I left start/finish, but never needed it. Pic by Mile 90

Loop 2 was pretty much a replay of loop 1, just on a slightly slower speed. I hiked a little more but pooped a lot less (Immodium finally kicked in), a tradeoff I was more than willing to make. I SEEMED to be moving a lot slower than loop 1 though. I don't typically look at my watch during races (and not much in training either) so I wasn't sure but I would've guessed that I was pushing 8 hours on loop 2. As it turned out though, it took me around 6 1/2 hours. So, it was more rock star treatment at start/finish. I remembered to grab my headlamp (loop 2 is the only loop that you don't need a headlamp) and spare batteries. I should've grabbed my spare headlamp also. I didn't need the spare, but somewhere out there in the dark woods I realized that if my headlamp suddenly died, I'd need a working light just to be able to replace the batteries in the dead lamp. More importantly though, I forgot to chug my bottle of Starbucks iced coffee from my cooler. The caffeine boost may have improved my state of mind as Loop 3 wore on (and on).

I had one of those "if this isn't nice, I don't know what is" moments at the start of loop 2. The top of Sanders Mound is completely covered in wild sunflowers right now, and in the misty cloudy sky, it was a beautiful/memorable sight. I had a similar moment in the dark towards the end of the interminable loop 3 when I paused while crossing Marina Road and just gazed at the stars in the beautiful night sky. Odd what you remember of 30 straight hours of running (well, moving).

I don't consider myself anti-social. I enjoy meeting and chatting with other folks on the trails. It's part of what makes these events so memorable. Many of the best people I know in this world I've spent time with out running through the woods. That said, over the years I've noticed that when I'm struggling out there, I do much better if I'm alone. I think that my brain can only handle so much concentration, and when everything hurts it takes almost all of my concentration just to keep running. I can be hurting, but really being intent on moving as quickly as possible, but if I get momentarily distracted by someone or something, I tend to immediately slow to a walk. It then takes me a few moments before I can get locked back in to running, or at least the closest thing to running that I can manage. For that reason, I intentionally kept to myself as much as possible for loop 3. I'd noticed that my knees were stiffening up at the end of loop 2, and that continued to worsen throughout loop 3.

I was chasing the sunset on the blue trail, but it was completely dark a few miles before I reached Cactus Ridge (about 8 miles in). Once the trails are dark, the only world you're aware of is the world within the light of your headlamp. It's kinda cool, kinda creepy, but also a little disorienting. I'm able to run well at night with a headlamp if I have reasonably fresh legs and fresh batteries in the lamp. But as my legs and the batteries wear down, my speed really drops, especially on technical (rooty, rocky, hilly) trails. Cactus Ridge has a few runnable (non-technical) sections, but I hiked nearly all of it. I managed to run quite a bit of Bunker Hill and Goodwin Loop as it's all grassy and smooth. From when I left West Park Road aid station to the start/finish (12 miles) though, I doubt that I ran more than a few steps.

Bunker Hill on Loop 3, pic by Mile 90

I left West Park Road aid station feeling pretty good as the great volunteers and the awesome food never fail to pump me up. I started out with a pretty good power hiking pace and kept it up for several miles, but I was definitely slowing when I hit Lands End aid station 5 1/2 miles later. The 6 1/2 miles between Lands End and the start/finish is where I fell completely apart. This section of the white trail is always a bit of a beat-down. It is very rocky with lots of short/steep ups and downs. At this point I was barely moving and the downhills were ridiculous. I adopted a tree-hugging strategy. Whenever there was a rocky or rooty step-down of more than a few inches, I would grab onto the nearest tree for support. I was fearful of stumbling down the rocky inclines if I didn't support myself. It felt like someone had inserted red-hot golf balls behind each of my knees, also my left kneecap was really barking at me. I began looking at my watch and I realized that I was really burning up the hours that I'd stored away when I ran the first two loops pretty efficiently.  I remembered leaving West Park Road aid station at 10:00 PM and I figured that at my current pace I'd be lucky to finish the loop by 3:30 AM. That's just 12 miles in 5 1/2 hours, which is more time than it took me to run my entire first loop! Quickly doing the trail math (meaning you don't carry the 1, round up twice when calculating current pace, and estimate that you will slow exponentially by the square root every hour, even though every root on the trail is round not square), I came to the unmistakable conclusion that I could not complete loop 4 within the cutoff time. I actually thought about this later after the race, and I was fairly accurate, but only if I kept moving at that slow pace. At that time, I had no reason to think that after 21-ish hours of slowing down that I was capable of speeding up again. So, I gave up. Just that easily. After all of the physical and so-called "adversity" training, that was it. My fuzzy brain said "math doesn't lie dude", so I said "OK fine, I'm done". I began stockpiling all of my best rationalizations for quitting into my mental outline of the next entry in my RubeRuns blog post. Oy! Time for a PLOT TWIST!

With only about a mile left in loop 3 someone came up behind me for the first time in hours, in fact I'd sort of assumed that I was the only person left on the course still doing loop 3. When Miguel first came up behind me I noticed that the light of my headlamp had shrunk to the size of a pie plate on the ground. When his light was behind me, all I could see was my shadow on the ground, not much help for nighttime running. When I asked, I was surprised to hear that the runner he was pacing was on his 3rd loop too. Poor bastard, I thought, he'll never make it either (he did). I told Miguel that since I was going so slow and was only on loop 3 that I was done and wouldn't go back out for loop 4. He was having none of it. This is what I love about ultrarunners. You may have heard how supportive and encouraging they are (and they are!), and Miguel is among the best in both of those categories, but I fully expected a response of "Bummer dude, sorry to hear it.", instead I got "No, you're not!" I gave him my airtight logic for why I couldn't make the 32 hour cutoff and he seemed unimpressed. "It will turnaround." he said, "I know, I've been there.", "You've got way more than enough time.". I mostly just didn't respond as I was too tired, and besides what he did know about it (he's only won, what 2 or 3 hundred mile races), I mean whoever heard of your legs feeling better the further you went? That's when I noticed that the red-hot golf balls behind my knees seemed to have cooled and shrunk just a bit and I was able to negotiate the rocky step-downs just a bit better. Great, I thought, now that it's too late, my legs are coming back around. I told him thanks but no thanks. As they disappeared into the night, I returned to my pie plate-sized world of despair.

As I grumbled/stumbled into the start/finish area, I turned off my very dim headlamp. I didn't want anyone to notice as I gathered my stuff and slunk off into the night. I knew that telling Sherrie that I was done wouldn't be easy after all of the help/encouragement she'd given me over the last few months, but she'd get it. Math doesn't lie. I couldn't finish in time. Why prolong the inevitable? As he promised, Miguel had already spread the word that I was coming in, that I would try to quit, and that all I needed was a pacer. Little did I know, but Sherrie (and practically everyone else that I told that I wouldn't be using a pacer) had foreseen this, and she already had a plan. Bring in the closer.

In case you don't know, a pacer is a runner that is allowed to run with you in the later (usually from mile 50 on) stages of a long race. Their job is to be the runner's brain (which tends to get squishy and soft), to be sure the runner is eating, drinking, staying on course, and not wallowing in a self-pity party in a pie plate-sized world of despair (love that line!). I did not want or plan to use a pacer in my first hundred mile attempt. I didn't want to put that burden on anyone that I liked or even disliked, because I suspected that I would be reduced to a whiny spoiled brat after 75 miles (picture Spaulding, Ted Knight's son in the movie Caddyshack). I have to admit that I was surprised at how many people told me that not using a pacer was a really bad idea, but that more or less hardened my position. I could have taken a hint when I looked at ultrasignup.com and saw that there were 59 pacers registered for the 60 registered 100 mile runners. I know that some runners had multiple pacers, but that's still a lot of folks using pacers. But I knew better, I'd do it my way thank you very much, and that's pretty much where it stood at mile 75 (although Josh had sort of hinted at a possible latenight pacing duty that Sherrie thought might be needed when I'd seen him that morning).

Sherrie found me before I could get to my drop bag and was asking how I felt. I gave her my airtight reasons for quitting, complete with my carefully calculated trail math for backup. She too, seemed unimpressed. She laid out the plan for me that Josh had been waiting for hours to pace me because he really needed more training miles for his upcoming first hundo attempt (which I knew to be true, even with a soggy brain). She said that things would turn around and that I'd be able to move again, it was just a matter of time (which I also suspected might be true, as the red hot golf balls behind my knees had seemed to disappear over the last 1/4 mile). The capper though, was when Deanna (who I'd suggested would want to stay away from the later stages of the race because she might feel sorry for me and tell me it might be OK to stop) told me that I'd spent the whole summer training for this thing and that I should get back out there and finish it. Well, Josh had indeed been waiting a long time, it was 3:30 AM (wait, what was Deanna doing here at 3:30 in the morning?) after all. I sorta felt like I could maybe run again, they'd been filling my water bottles and stuffing grilled cheese sandwiches in my hands since I got there. My squishy brain said "OK, sure, hand me that Starbucks!". So off we went for loop 4.

With Superhero Josh! Casually saves my race, while getting in a training run. Pic by Mile 90

Sherrie had picked (or maybe Josh volunteered, I don't remember the details) the perfect pacer for me. Josh is training for his first hundred miler, just a few weeks away, but he generally prefers to hike (or power hike as we like to call it) rather than run. It's a very efficient low-impact mode of travel. We hit the trails, him leading, and me trying to keep up as he swung his arms back and forth like a pendulum and ate up the miles. Josh was also perfect because he is a constant ray of sunshine. I've never heard him say anything but positive things about anyone or anything.  If anyone could keep me from falling back into my pity-party world, it was him! And he did keep my spirits up the entire way. I don't even remember what we talked about (some about pooping, I think), but we gabbed the whole night and morning away.

Loop 4 ended up being a lot like loop 3 except the sun was rising (2nd sunrise for this run) as we hit Bunker Hill. I was able to make decent time until Cactus Ridge, where it just got too technical for my stiffening knees. After Bunker Hill, it was back to the white trail which had chewed me up and spit me out on on loop 3. We (well I, Josh could've cruised all damn day) did OK till Lands End, but those last 6 1/2 miles from there to the finish seemed to take forever. I had to go back to my tree-hugging on even the slightest downhill. They had to set up an extra passing lane on the trail for everyone that needed to go around me. I didn't much mind though, 'cuz I WAS gonna finish, and I WASN'T gonna let everyone down that helped me get to this point. I crossed the finish line in 30 1/2 hours (cutoff is 32 hours), not what I'd hoped for, but at this point ultrarunning is probably not my future vocation anyway. I managed not to cry when I finished, but only because I was too squishy brained to really comprehend any thoughts but "thank you" and "beer".

End of Loop 4, went with the double raised arm fist pump! Pic by Mile 90

It has been a great ride! I'd been thinking about this race since I'd committed to it 18 months earlier. It had been THE target on my calendar. It will certainly be nice to move on to the next thing (couch surfing?, doubt it), but I'm definitely gonna soak in the good memories/vibes for as long as I can. I owe so many people debts that no honest man can pay (thank you Bruce Springsteen) for all the help and encouragement they gave me along the way.

I'm not sure if I'll ever run another 100 miler though. I think 50's may be my max distance for a while. The thing is, I'll never be better trained, never be better prepared, never have better support, never have better running weather, and I still had to hike for half of the damn race. And I DON'T LIKE TO HIKE (at least when I'm supposed to be running)! I understand that no one except the gifted ones can actually run for 100 miles. I don't mind hiking some uphills or when eating or recouping, but I want to be able to run for at least 80-90% of the actual distance. The 100 mile distance for me means a 60 mile run followed by a 40 mile hike, which just isn't what I want to do. Maybe I could do a mountain race somewhere where hiking is the only way to go, the beautiful scenery would probably offset the hiking, we'll see.

Three of my four sweethearts waiting for me at the finish!! Pic by Miguel using Deanna's camera

Thank you all for reading and checking in with me on this journey, it has definitely been a fun challenge, struggling to put together a coherent paragraph or two after each step along the way.

I've noticed that in the past year or so that I've changed from referring to fellow Trail Hawks/Trail Nerds as "people that I run with" to "friends that I run with", and that's the best part of it all! See y'all down the trail. :-)


Loop 1 - 5:27:25
Loop 2 - 6:16:20
Loop 3 - 9:19:30
Loop 4 - 9:35:17
Total - 30:38:32