“But at my back I always hear/ Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;” — Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
The day I turned 29 last week, I slipped into some running shoes, clipped on a lightweight backpack and ran out into the dawn streets toward the bus station. I felt tightness in my tendons already. Would I be able to run the miles this year?
Most of us follow some birthday traditions in our lives: blowing out candles, accepting presents, getting together with friends for drinks. Such rituals foster good times, but also lend significance to the otherwise capricious passage of time. They put a brave face on the reality that each birthday brings us one year closer to that inevitable appointment with the reaper. Well-rounded and wholesome-minded souls might be unperturbed by this truth — for them a birthday is another milestone in a roadside built up with monuments to their accomplishments.
For those of us who are prone to rumination, for questions about the road not taken, there is something irrevocable and unsettling about suddenly becoming a year older. It’s the feeling of walking down the hall and hearing a thousand doors slamming shut behind.
So, I am not this person that I was supposed to be. Why haven’t I done that yet.
In the face of such questions, my solution is to inject significance into the day with a challenge: running the distance, in miles, of my age in years.
This is a challenge that my dad has been doing for a while now — albeit these days, he is also biking and kayaking to finish the miles. When he turned 50, he did run 50 birthday miles.
He started me running, biking and kayaking on my birthdays as I grew up.
I tried my first all running day when I turned 19, freshman year of college. I had meticulously planned an out and back course, only to find a freight train parked on the tracks, 8 miles into the run. There was no way around, and the fact that I could here the train engines running made crawling under the cars a sketchy prospect at best.
I reluctantly turned around, staggered up to my dorm room with 16 miles logged, and went online to map out the last three miles that I had to run.
I went on to run birthday’s 20, 21 and 22 on that same bike path, though I went in the opposite direction to avoid the possibility of getting hung up in the same way.
The experience of running the birthday miles built my confidence for my first marathon, which I ran at age 22.
For the next couple years, I skipped the birthday miles because I’d have a marathon within a month or so, and counted a marathon distance instead.
Once I turned 27, I had to run more than a 26.2 marathon course. I was in North Carolina, not in great running shape, and camping with some friends on the Appalachian Trail. I planned to skip the miles, and yet, when I woke up early, I found myself in running shoes, with plans for a short run along the trail. The trail run turned into 17 miles with a big climb above the Nantahala River valley. Then when I got back to the tent, with everyone starting to wonder what the hell had happened to me, I announced that I would be running 10 more miles later that day, which I managed to hobble through in Smokey Mountain National Park.
I turned 28 while I was visiting Yosemite with my Dad, who I recruited into being my support driver. This time, I added a 2,000 foot climb on the road out of the park, and though I ran slowly, I ended up feeling fine right afterward.
A month later I was in Washington, and tried my hand at the North Olympic Discovery Marathon, which follows a bike path along the coast. There are no 2,000-foot climbs, but there are some steep little creek valleys to climb out of, and it can get hot. My 2:55 finish was a personal worst out of seven marathons, but it was fast enough to win the race.
I am going to run the race again this June, but I am terrified that some running hotshot is going to swoop in out of left field to kick my butt.
My birthday miles plan incorporated the marathon course so that I could get a psychological edge for next month. It helps to know the enemy ahead of time.
After I ran down to the bus station (1.6 miles), I made a connection that took me to the marathon start line at 7 Cedars Casino.
The casino was still closed up as I ran beneath the awning where the race had started last year, and clicked my watch. I had 2 liters of water on my back (too much), a couple Clif bars and a banana for fuel, as well as rain jacket squirreled away to guard against the possibility of precipitation. Luxury! If it rained on race day, I planned to tough it out in my race singlet and try running myself warm.
The fact that I had all this weight on my back, wasn’t really racing, etc. should have dialed down my competitive side, but I had set the watch, and couldn’t ignore its judgement. I didn’t allow myself to turn the watch off when I made bathroom breaks or went to grab food.
I chided myself for my brittle stride. Groin and achilles tendons were tightened up after a week of faster, longer, runs. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t will my legs to turn themselves over as fast as I wanted. I checked my watch with growing trepidation. I’ve gotten slower! I’m going to lose this damn marathon next month.
The course left the woods for the town of Sequim, where I brushed past high schoolers going to school on foot, bike and skateboard. There were also a number of elderly walkers — Sequim is extremely popular with retirees. On the outskirts of town, a sign announced that the trees overhead were frequented by bald eagles. I looked up, and saw none, though the snowy peaks nearby fir the bill as far as inspirational scenery I saw plenty of more gray-haired pedestrians negotiating the pavement with canes and walkers.
Yep, I thought. Keep moving. That’s the thing.
Movement is an obvious metaphor for life. Our feet can take us in many directions, dictated by circumstance, dictated by whims. As a runner I think of the fact that just about any long distance I’ve undertaken has had both highs and lows, moments of drudgery, thrills of discovery, disappointments and sometimes the realization that I am more capable than I had imagined.
I’ve often thought of the birthday miles as important because they recreate hardship, represent, overcoming the weight of years. Yet as I ran past the farm fields outside Sequim, I thought of how oppositional this thinking was. Some miles are better savored than conquered. If you aren’t having at least a little fun out there, you are doing something wrong.
On this particular run, I enjoyed seeing the buds coming out a little bit more on the trees. I enjoyed crossing the bridge above the Dungeness River, the waters running swift with snowmelt. Inevitably, I came back to the stiffness in my tendons and my strides.
Unfortunately, the hardest part of the course was still ahead. For a couple miles, creek drainages form a series of deep cuts into the landscape, creating severe ups and downs. I lost all semblance of graceful stride as I ground my way though the inclines. Finally, I emerged at the top of the last climb, about 6 miles out from the finish line. I was too shot to enjoy running down the hill.
I crossed the trestle above Morse Creek, and in another mile I was running along the shoreline for the final stretch to Port Angeles.
I took a quick stop to admire an enormous river otter that was frolicking out in the waves.
When I started up again, it was at an awkward lurch.
My watch was at 3:37 when I hit the finish line. If nothing else, it was still faster than Paul Ryan’s personal best marathon, so that was something. I clicked the watch off.
I still had to run 1.6 miles, climbing 300 feet of streets to get to my apartment.
This climb can be a bear after a long run. Nonetheless, I used the same motivation I’ve been using all year, which is to imagine the big Cascadia Subduction earthquake rattling the ground beneath my feet with tsunami sirens howling in my ears. As the vengeful wave curls toward the city, I keep running. I race the surging water as it climbs the streets after me. Sometimes, it races past my ankles at fifth street, but I always make high ground just before it knocks me down and rips me out to sea.
It may seem morbid that I enact this little scenario literally every time I run up that hill, just as dark, that I have the inevitability of death on the mind when I run birthday miles. Yet it is strong motivation for me to know that I can only do these things so long before I slow down and eventually stop. When I ran up the hill fleeing death in the form of an insurmountable wave crashing at my feet, I had a goal: to get home with a minimum of screwing around. Sometimes that’s the best you can ask for.
Getting food, medical supplies and other gear ready for my first 100K trail race (unsupported)
Preparation
The Plain 100 is an Ultra Marathon in the Cascade Mountains near Stevens Pass Washington. Runners can choose to compete in a 100-mile event or a 100-kilometer (62.1-mile) race. I signed up for the latter.
True to the name, Plain is plain. There are check in stations, but no volunteer or race staff will feed, water or otherwise aid you along the course (to accept aid is to drop out.) They won’t even tell you which way to go. You will have a map and directions and you should figure it out. The food you eat is what you carry in on your back, the water you drink is what you find along the trails.
The trails are almost entirely rugged single track, made for dirt bikes., The 100K has about 12,000 feet of elevation gain (about 24,000 feet of gain for the 100-miler.)
I knew that to do this race, I stood a high chance of becoming lost, miserable, exhausted, shattered — and there was a good chance I would drop out.
So why?
Good question. I wanted to push something and I wanted to see if I had the mettle to do a long distance mountain run. Having run a 50-mile race the last summer, I felt the need to go up a rung.
I have spent weekends this summer running trails in Olympic National Park, and have enjoyed figuring out how to run and power-hike the long switchbacks and how to turn my legs over quickly on the downhills. Some of my best runs were between 30 and 40 miles and included up to 8,000 feet of elevation change.
I planned on doing a 100K that had aid stations. A major mountain climb would be OK by me, though I’d hoped not to do over 10,000 feet of it. Unfortunately, several of the 100Ks in the Pacific Northwest were already booked up by the time that I decided to move. The Plain 100 was the only race left.
I sent an email to race director Tim Denhoff, asking if he thought a newbie ultra-runner like me had the chops to take on Plain — even the truncated 100K version of it. After he sent me an extensive description of the challenges of carrying food and water on a tugged course he wrote, “Tom, I want you to consider what I’m telling you, not discourage you from coming and giving it your best shot. Hope to see you at Plain!”
When I got to race headquarters at the Lake Wenatchee Rec Club for the mandatory meeting the day before, there were just over 30 participants who showed. Only eight of these were running the 100K. I felt Junior Varsity next to the 100-milers.
I spotted one or two longhaired distance gurus in the crowd, but they were the exception. Most of the runners had a sleek, efficient haircuts and the bearing of attendees at, say, a business management convention. The runners I talked to did seem to have well-paying professional jobs, such as mineralogist and lawyer. It is tempting to wonder whether the same competitive instinct that helped them succeed in business also motivates them to thrash their bodies in the primal competition of ultra running. But I’m just a kayak guide. What would I know?
The runners were at ease swapping war stories from previous races, commenting on notorious runners they’ve encountered through the years. Many pulled out their phones during their conversations to check out each others stats on the Ultra Sign Up website.
At my table, there was a man from British Columbia, from the UK, and Japan — who was based in Seattle now.
They pulled my name up and apparently the computers had already projected that I would win the 100K. The computers get it wrong a lot, I heard
Race directors Tim Stroh and Tim Dehnhoff gave us a war room-style briefing, complete with oversized maps on the table for us to pore over elevation differences and watering holes. There would be a few check in stations along the course to make sure the runners were coming along and not getting eaten by Bigfoot, but these would offer no assistance. We would give the stations our race numbers and tell them “I’m a warrior!” when they asked “What are you?”
I hadn’t studied the maps much beforehand and now I was playing catch up, marking my own map with a pen as the presentation went along.
There were two long waterless sections for eight miles and a 14 mile section that would include a 5,000 foot climb. I run further than this without water all the time on the roads. On the trails, I knew it would be another matter. Tim Stroh, said he personally carried a gallon up the mountain and drank all of it.
The water was just one piece of the gear, clothes food puzzle that I was putting together. The main question was how I would have everything I needed without an elephant on my back.
Here’s what I threw in my pack:
Food
It was bette to have too much than too little. I had bonked on a couple of previous runs when I tried to cut the pack weight down and came up short of fuel in the last miles. I was determined not to repeat the same mistake for the big race, but in retrospect, I went way overboard.
Six peanut butter flatbread burritos (two with raisins)
Twenty Oreos
Two Gerber baby food packets (bananna oatmeal)
One Clif Bar
Three chocolate bars
Six packs of sports gel
Eight sports drink tabs to add to water
Three Kind bars, hickory smoked with almonds (Thanks Mom and Dad!)
Two other energy bars from the pre-race goody bag.
Multiple empty Gatorade bottles and one half-full bottle of juice.
I ended up eating two of the burritos, one full chocolate bar, the cliff bar, 16 oreos, three or four gel packs, the granola bars, 1 gerber pack and two of the Kind bars.
Clothing
This was to be another crucial part of the game, especially because the forecast called for rain, and there were bound to be extreme changes in how warm or cold based on elevation or effort
I carried:
A synthetic T-shirt
Ball cap
A North Face shell
A fleece
My Fargo-style synthetic fur hat with ear flaps.
Compression shorts
Synthetic socks
Zero-drop Altra running shoes.
Other Stuff
A backpack to put everything in (borrowed from a friend as my normal pack tore a strap at the last minute)
A headlamp.
A Luci solar light (backup)
Extra batteries.
An SOL micro bivvy sack with heat reflective sides (for an unplanned night in the woods.)
A nylon pack cover.
A med kit that included gauze, band-aides, athletic tape and a small tub of petroleum jelly.
I ended up carrying map and directions in a see-through plastic portfolio that I carried in one hand for quick consultation along the trail. The system I had rigged seemed comprehensive, but I soon realized that it was amateur-hour compared to what other runners had.
When it came to mental preparation, I had some, from the 50-mile race I’d run last year, to numerous trail runs throughout the summer. But the fact remained that this was the longest, hilliest run I’d ever attempted. Also, I should have invested more time going over the maps, not just for the race course, but getting there.
Disaster
It was 5:00 a.m.: the race start time, but I was not at the starting line. I was driving way too fast over dark country roads, wondering where the hell the starting line was.
I loosed a steady stream of invective as I tried frantically to look at the map and drive at the same time, and then call a friend to get me better directions off the internet. The feeling of failure felt like a weight crushing down on my chest.
This is what you get for being sloppy and stupid and cocky and now you’ve wasted your whole summer running and you’ll have to tell all your friends that you didn’t run the race because you’re such an idiot. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
Just as I had begun to resign myself to the idea that I had really screwed the pooch, I saw a truck coming up from the other direction.
I flashed my lights and stuck my hand out the window.
The truck stopped and I saw a guy with a headlamp stick his head out the window.
“You know where the starting line is?” I asked.
“I was wondering the same thing.”
I decided to follow him. Somehow, within 15 minutes, we found the turn, which was on the other side of the road then the directions (because I’d gotten turned around somehow.) The runners were already on the course with headlamps shining in the dark. We were the assholes spraying them with dust as we drove by.
When we got to the start line, were 37 minutes late. The director allowed us to proceed ahead. It wasn’t the first time someone had started the race early. It was not a promising start, but it was a start.
Recovery
The two of us started running together in the dark. His name was Phil. As luck would have it, he was one of the six runners who were only doing 100 miles.
As our headlamps swung together through the dark, we talked about ourselves. He was 48 and administered psychological screenings. I talked about my travels and work as a guide. Talking about anything was far preferable then fixating on our late start. We also were able to coordinate navigation together with him looking at the written race directions and me looking at the race map. Eventually, we let ourselves talk about how freaked out we’d been that we were going to miss the race.
If I’d been running alone, I might have told myself that the race was hopeless and that it was stupid to go out and get lost in the woods for a race I wasn’t ready for. I might have been tempted to run hard up hills, trying to catch the competition. Though this would have felt satisfying at first it would have been bad for my energy long-term.
Instead, I ended up walking the steep hills along a switch-backed road into the mountains. I was going a little slower than I planned, but I didn’t know what was ahead and it seemed wise to go conservative at the start of the race. Phil guessed that we would be out there until around midnight. This seemed insanely late to me, even though it was close to the time that it had taken other ultra-runners to go that distance.
Yeah, but I was going to run down the hills faster than the other guys, I thought. I held onto this illusion that I was going to finish early for long into the race.
Dull illumination crept up behind the clouds as the morning spread over the land.
Soon we were at the top of Maverick Saddle, which was the first check-in station, and the beginning of the trail running.
“What’s your race number?”
“Three!”
“And what are you?”
“I’m a warrior!”
We left the roads for the Mad River Trail and the rocks and roots that would fill up the hours to come.
Striking out
We took our first water break out of the Mad River. I drank right from the source, raising my torso so that the water could run down my throat without choking me.
We turned onto the Hi Yu trail and climbed onto a ridge line. I was starting to feel energy from the trails, which was the thrill of moving myself over the rough terrain, maintaining momentum. I pointed out a few thimbleberries growing along the side of the trail and we grabbed them.
I sensed that Phil wanted to be more conservative and take more walks on the uphills than I did. He had more race experience than I did and maybe he was right to go slower. But it wasn’t right for me to push him to start his race faster than the race he wanted to run. I told him it had been awesome running together this far and then started running down the trail.
In a little while, I started catching runners.
The boost of confidence I got from passing people balanced out my nervousness that I would be on my own after I left Phil.
The other runners ran beneath ponchos to keep out of the rain. I waited to put on any rain protection because I worried about getting soaked from sweat. Still, I knew that it if it kept raining, I would eventually have to stop and put new layers on. The process would sacrifice time and sacrifice heat.
I drank from streams and lakes directly, not bothering to treat the water — most of the runners weren’t willing to sacrifice the time. These hydration stops were vital, especially leading up to the long mountain ridge section, which would go for miles without water sources. Nonetheless, I was keenly aware of the minutes going by as I stopped to fill bottles in my pack. I played leapfrog with other runners as I made these stops, and they made stops of there own. Every stop also put my body temperature into a tailspin; I would try to pull out by gunning my engines harder on the trail.
The veteran ultra runners were far more efficient with their re-watering and refueling than I was. They seemed able to drop their bottles or Camelbaks into streams and pluck them out without breaking stride. The fact that I had a rain cover on my pack added another layer of slowness that cut efficiency.
Cold
Cold finally caught up to me on the way to 6,820-foot Klone Peak. With the light rain falling, I knew it was only a matter of time before my core temperature took a dive. I shed my soaking shirt and put a windbreaker over my naked chest. The jacket kept the whipping winds at bay while the armpit zippers offered some ventilation to prevent things from getting overly clammy.
Some of the runners in front of me were already doubling back down from Klone. “The climb sucks, but the view is worth it,” one of them told me. Of course, when I got to the summit, all I saw was a cloud blanket.
Going back down the mountain, the trail went through burned out forest where there had been a wildfire the previous year. There had been no Plain 100 in 2015 due to the flames. Now acres of charred branches whistled ominously in the wind, a post-apocalyptic landscape worthy of The Road. The trail lead to a series of switchbacks on a long descent toward the Entiat River. Every turn was banked with concrete blocks for the dirt bikes who used the trails.
I’d read accounts of runners struggling not to slip on these blocks, and indeed I did feel as though I needed to pay more attention to my steps as I went through these sections. I was relieved to find they were far more manageable then I’d anticipated.
The narrow trail rut did cause some trouble, because my left foot always came down at a funky angle.
I focused on my running form, twisting my body so that my legs followed into the curves. The repetition of switchbacks distracted me from fatigue. I could see the Entiat River valley emerge through the fog, but it was still a long way down.
I passed two runners on the descent, then popped out at a paved road where there was another check in station. There were a couple of turns coming up that seemed ambiguous to me, and the other runners who had done the race before gave me guidance.
“How’s your race going?” I asked one man with a handlebar mustache. “I’m cold and wet and not having much fun,” he replied. He was doing the 100 miles. We were maybe 33 miles from the start.
Eventually, I got back on the single track and started going downhill.
I knew I could refill water at Tommy Creek, just a bit further ahead, and planned on stopping there, but wasn’t sure how far ahead it would be. I’d planned to delay eating until this refill point. But a sudden feeling of fatigue helped me decide to stop. This meant taking off my pack and messing with a bunch of stuff while other runners caught up to me. Of course, when I ran for a quarter mile further, I came right up to the Creek and had to stop again to fill my water stores before the long climb up Signal Peak.
“Noob move,” I muttered.
The Lonely Climb
Several other runners had picked there way down over mossy rocks to the river bank, and I got race news from them.
At least two of the top runners had gotten lost and wasted a bunch of time going down the wrong trail. The race directors had let several of the hundred-mile people know that they had a shot at finishing before the 36-hour cutoff, but there could be no lollygagging.
“I haven’t been lollygagging,” one women answered tersely. Indeed she hadn’t. I recognized her from much earlier on the race course moving at a much slower pace than me. She must not have broken her stride much at all in order to catch up.
“We’re probably going to finish the 100K around midnight,” another runner predicted.
Most of the runners seemed encouraged by this, though I felt the opposite way. The 100-mile runners were happy to take a break to refuel or nap in their cars, then slog out the remaining forty-odd miles. I was intimidated at the prospect of all those hours running in the dark.
The next 14 miles included a 5,000 foot climb to the top of Signal Peak and no water on the trail until Billy Creek. I remembered Tim Stroh saying he carried at least a gallon of water up the mountain. In the cold conditions, I decided to carry a little bit less.
I started up a long steep grade at a brisk hike. It was too steep to run it worth anything.
Switchback after switchback, I climbed alone. Despair began to show its ugly face.
What if I’m on the wrong trail?
The thought was unlikely, but carried deadly menace. A 5,000 foot climb in the wrong direction would almost certainly mean I would drop out of the race. I would have to carry my demoralized body to the last checkpoint and hope someone would still be there. My thoughts went to the tiny reflective mylar bag I’d stashed in the bottom of my backpack. That might be my home for the night, curled under a log somewhere, clenching myself for warmth.
I could see the jagged sides of the mountain ridge in front of me — there was plenty of hill left to climb. The sinking sun shimmered off of wet leaves in the valley below and cast a rainbow above the hills.
“That’s beautiful,” I said, waiting for the inspiration to carry me uphill. But the worries were stronger.
I’m through with this crap. What’s the point?This is physically damaging, mentally isolating and it doesn’t do a damn for anybody. There are a million other worthy things I could be doing right now.
Each time I thought I had reached the crest of the ridge, I found out that there was another switchback to climb. The wind became colder, making me put my jacket on.
The trail didn’t climb forever. It started going down where it merged with the Tyee Ridge Trail, the trail on the map. I was on course.
“Thank God!”
I immediately saw another racer in a blue jacket emerge from the trees. I recognized him from earlier in the course when he’d helped me with directions. He had gone to a spring a quarter-mile off the trail to refill his water stores. My relief grew. If there were someone else I could navigate the darkness with, I felt far more comfortable.
“I’m glad to see someone else out here,” I said.
“Yeah. Me too.” he replied.
“One thing I know is that I want to be off this damn ridge before nightfall,” I said.
We stuck together for about two miles until I felt a fresh surge of confidence and started running downhill faster. I used the written directions to take me onto Billy Creek Trail just as the orange light left the mountaintops and troubled grays began their creep across the landscape.
Slow Misery
I made my way past the next check in station station with a new burst of confidence. There were a number of switchbacks going down soft needles, that I was able to run aggressively. Soon I passed two other runners with their headlamps on, right as I went past two turns that I’d worried about missing earlier.
“Hey you might want that,” a runner warned me. The headlamp I’d been carrying in my map case had fallen out somehow.
“Thanks,” I said, feeling like a complete idiot.
When I announced that I was doing the 100K, the runners told me it must feel like I was the horse smelling the barn. Only about 14 miles left, one told me. That didn’t sound bad at all. I pictured the last segment of one of my training runs from the top of Hurricane Ridge to my apartment in Port Angeles, Washington. It had been about that far.
“There’s about a thousand-foot climb in four miles.” one of the runners remarked.
Details. I thought. Surely that was nothing compared to the 5,000 feet I had ascended earlier. I was about to find out.
The temperatures began to get warmer as we got deeper into the valley, boosting my confidence more.
The feeling of confidence first began to falter as I began pushing through thicker vegetation, that forced me to slow down and watch my step. I stopped for a quick drink and eat, allowing the two runners from earlier to pass me again.
The drop off into Jimmy Creek brought some of the steepest trail I had run yet that day. Under the narrow illumination of my headlamp, I ran down loose, jagged rocks, mindful of the drop-off on the other side. Switchbacks slowed me to an almost walk. I re-passed the two other runners shortly before we got to the creek below
It was no use though. I had to fumble in my pack to refill water for the first time in 14 miles; my two followers simply popped their bottles off their chest holsters and started running again.
At this point chafing in my shorts had worsened to the point that I had resorted to carrying my petroleum jelly in my jacket pocket. I reapplied, fumbled some more with clothes, and also with a headlamp strap that wouldn’t tighten properly. Eventually, I tied a knot in the thing, which seemed to work.
The trail left Jimmy Creek and started following the slow ascent through the Mad River Valley. The section where I had expected moderate difficulty was proving massively hard. The narrow confines of the headlamp beam only gave me so much time to anticipate and react to trail obstacles. Moreover, my muscles that had felt strong only half an hour ago, now seemed jelly-like and reluctant. I tried to run, but could only manage a fast walk.
Just four miles! I thought And then it’s literally all downhill. It was maddening to find my body, which had seemed to do so well on the downhill section earlier, suddenly rendered slow and stupid.
I heard the Mad River rushing below and desperately wanted to refill my bottles, but I found nowhere to get down its steep banks easily.
Eventually, the path crossed a small stream. I took off my headlamp and leaned over on my belly so that I could drink directly from the water. This required me to lift my head up periodically to get the water down. As I raised myself to swallow another mouthful, I found myself looking at a large toad sitting on a stone nearby.
I thought, I had drank enough, but at the next stream, I found myself drinking all over again. I was peeing plenty, but I couldn’t shake thirst.
I wouldn’t say I was hallucinating at this point, only that my mind was extremely motivated to see mundane things as things that were helpful to me. A circular cut through a log looked a lot like a trail sign announcing the end of the climb — until I got closer and saw it for what it was. Leafy branches looked like trail signs also. This happened several times.
I crossed the Mad River, drank again, peed again. I looked around a campsite for the road leading up to the last check in station at the top of Maverick Saddle.
The chafing was bad, causing me to tighten up my stride in fear of a bad rub causing fresh pain. I soon saw a jeep parked nearby and recognized the trailhead where I had started earlier in the morning. The check in was a couple hundred feet down the road, a Search and Rescue guy standing outside a truck. There were maybe four miles left in the race.
“Are you OK, Man?” he asked. That wasn’t exactly reassuring to mine ears. I must have looked worse than I thought. The last thing I wanted was to get pulled at the course this close to the finish line.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I just hit a wall in the woods back there. I’ve come back from worse.”
Of course, I nearly wandered off in the wrong direction, before I stopped myself and forced myself to look at the map more carefully. I checked my compass to make sure I was going south (and I was!) and then started jogging awkwardly along the cobbled road, downhill toward the finish.
Soon I heard footsteps coming up from behind. The cool light of another headlamp beam splashed across the road in front of me, and I knew I had company.
Finisher
At first I started to run harder, but this felt pointless.
A glance over my shoulder into the bright light revealed about my pursuer.
“Say, you wouldn’t happen to be the guy in the blue jacket from earlier?” I called.
“That’s me,” the man said. “The name’s Ray by the way.”
He ran up alongside me and I matched his pace. Since he was doing the 100-miler, not the 100K, he felt less like my competition. Soon I felt the funk that had slowed me down earlier start to lift. There was no way I wasn’t going to finish this race.
I told him about the crash I’d felt earlier when I was going up toward the Saddle.
“You probably went too long without eating,” Ray told me.
Indeed, I had lowered my food consumption for the long waterless stretch so that I wouldn’t have to drink so much. Another difference, was that running with someone else made me feel stronger, much in the same way that it had helped when I ran with Phil at the beginning of the race. Coincidentally or not, my lowest portions of the race had come when I’d been running alone.
Now, the two of our headlamps swept together across the gravel road, and the added light made me feel more confident about what was in the path. Ray also had a small flash light in one hand to reduce the distracting contrast between light and shadow.
We made the final turn that indicated we had about three miles left.
I felt more than able to run the rest of the way in, but I did make a few stops to walk with Ray, who had helped me with directions several times along the course. His headlamp had started flickering, and I would have felt crappy about leaving him to run the course behind me if I went ahead. The spare flashlight probably would have covered him, but still. Whatever minutes I could have shaved in the last few miles didn’t seem to matter after 18 hours on the trail.
At the top of a small rise, we started running again.
“I’m going to finish this race as a runner,” I said.
A lighted tent appeared. around the curve. We continued up toward the light where a couple of people were preparing soup and burgers.
“Is this the finish for the 100K?” I asked.
“This is it.”
I eased myself into a chair.
It was 12:12 am, a full 18 hours and 35 minutes from when I had started — 19 hours 12 minutes from official race start time. I was fourth place out of eight racers, two of whom had dropped out. Winner Kyle McCoy finished the 100K in only 14:45. Steve Slaby won the 100-mile race in 29:22.
I let the volunteers serve me some minestrone soup, while Ray had a burger.
Many of the 100-mile runners were sitting inside their cars parked nearby with the engines running, trying to warm themselves. Here and there a door would open, a headlight would flick on, another runner would start off down the gravel. They had miles to go before they slept.
Afterthoughts
From the comfort of the chair at the end of the race, it was easy enough to speculate as to whether I could have gone on to run those remaining miles with the rest of the 100-mile crowd. It is even easier to speculate from the comfort of my room as I type these words. Ultimately, however, that is a test that only the miles can prove — just as only the miles could prove whether I was capable of running 100 kilometers to begin with. The Plain does offer the option to 100K runners who want to upgrade to the 100-mile mid-race, but I was in no mood to find out that night. For one, my chafing was pretty bad. Not having studied the map for the last section of the race also left me vulnerable to getting really lost.
Going as far as I had did give me the luxury of learning from mistakes and trying to be better prepared and more efficient for the next competition.
Some lessons for me included the idea of managing water and food more efficiently with a rig that has front pouches available (or even stashing more stuff in jacket pockets)
I would be tempted to get a Camelbak or similar hydration system for my next race, though chest-mounted bottles would work nicely too. A laminated map with a chest lanyard would be another efficient thing to have in order to help navigation. Also, next time, I will remember that directions to the start can be just as important as directions on the race course.
Another lesson I took away is that it can be immensely helpful and enjoyable to share the miles with someone else instead of trying to push through alone.
I ended the race with an abundance of food, almost half the amount that I had started out with, including four smashed up Oreos, most of the gel packs, two chocolate bars, a baby food pack and four of the six burritos. I never used any of the drink mix tabs except for the ones that I had put at the bottom of my empty water bottles before the start. The amount I had would most likely have made it for a 100-mile race, and if I did another unsupported competition, I might use the about the same amount of everything.
I didn’t end up using either my spare fleece, the mico-bivvy sack, or any of the first aid stuff aside from the petroleum jelly, but I don’t regret bringing any one of those. In a race when anything could have happened, including a twisted ankle on a cold dark trail, it was nice to have a measure of security.
Photo via Shane Olson, posted on Facebook. This was not my finest hour in terms of running form.
It was just past 6 a.m. and I had gone through about a mile of the Minnesota Voyageur 50 Mile Trail Ultramarathon.
There were other runners ahead of me, chatting cheerfully as we maneuvered down and out of gullies, over crisscrossed roots and rounded stones that lurked for unsuspecting ankles.
They talked about the familiar faces they had seen at the starting line and the faces they didn’t see. They talked about who was running the Hardrock 100 out in Colorado this year, the merits and demerits of various other ultras that they had run.
I had nothing to add. They were the vets. I was the noob, who had never raced longer than 26.2 miles. Their bodies looked harder and more finely tuned than mine, while their banter expressed the confidence and familiarity with trail racing that I didn’t have.
All of these could have been signals that I should start backing down my pace, but slowing felt wrong.
I ran downhills especially hard, using a race strategy I had picked up from an ultra marathoning guide by Hal Koerner. Leaning forward spurred my momentum and forced my legs to turn over fast in order to catch up.
“Whoa, there’s a guy who likes his downhills,”
“I’ll take any free momentum I can get,” I said.
The ring leader of the pack I’d caught up with reminded me of a pit bull. He had a barrel chest, flesh marked with aggressive tats, black spiral gauges jammed through his ears.
“This is the easy part of the race,” Pit Bull said. “It’s a lot harder on the trip back.” Watch out noob. You’re going to get destroyed.
We had 25 miles of course to run between the high school in Carlton, Minnesota and the Lake Superior Zoo in Duluth, a race which included a few dirt road and asphalt segments. At the zoo, we would turn around and ran back the way we came.
I stayed on the runners’ heels as they swapped their war stories.
We crossed the St. Louis River on a historic swinging bridge in the center of Jay Cooke State Park. Clouds of mist drifted off the water and glowed golden in the early morning sun. As the sun rose, the day would get hotter — the National Weather Service predicted highs in the lower 80s. Runners were going to get heat exhaustion, stumble and slur their words as they lost control of their own bodies. I knew it because I’d seen it when I volunteered at an aid station last year.
Pit Bull had just remembered the story of a hotshot marathoner, he had run a 2:30 or something, who had come out to run his first Voyageur and was completely demoralized when he saw the enormous hills, the vast expanse of sun-blasted waste where the course went along the power lines.
“He couldn’t believe it,” Pit Bull said, though he admitted that the young blood had still run a decent race.
I had a suspicion this story was aimed at me.
“I’ve already scouted the race course,” I said. This was was true, in that I had done my best to follow printed maps and directions. It was also true that I had gotten lost more than once, and missed out on the all-important Power Lines section of the run, the section which is supposed to be as much of a proving ground as Heartbreak Hill for the Boston Marathon.
I knew the runners in the pack probably thought I was doing a jackrabbit start and that the course would show me the error of my ways soon enough. They might have been right, but pride made me want to prove them wrong, maybe by beating a couple of them.
At the second aid station, I started my eating and drinking regimen with cups of water and Powerade along with some potato chips to keep my salt levels from tanking. Soon, I appreciated how running an ultra could be an eating contest as well as a foot race.
The pack dissolved as the trails flattened out. Pit Bull went ahead. I stayed with some slower runners, but started picking them off before we got to the ravine at Gill Creek. I wanted the downhill to myself. There was a drop through narrow single track. I leaned forward where I could and took rapid, mincing steps around the obstacles. I caught up with Pit Bull near the bottom and slowed.
We used trees to swing ourselves around switchbacks. I threw my body weight in the direction my feet had to go. We splashed across the stream at the bottom and started power hiking up the steep climb on the other side. Running up the slope would have been no faster, and would have taken far more energy.
At the top of the ravine, there were more smooth, flat trails. I hit up another aid station for Powerade, potato chips and watermelon slices. I passed Pit Bull and others in his gang. It wasn’t that I expected to stay ahead of them, but I also felt that if I didn’t run hard in the places where I felt strong, I would be cheating myself out of the race I was supposed to run.
The sun was still low for the first passage through the power lines. But it was already warm and the humidity was considerable.
I allowed myself to slap up against dew-covered brush to cool down.
The hills were steep, slippery clay. Painstaking to go up, dangerous to go down. I tried to keep the momentum on, ended up falling on my ass and rolling over. The fall had kept me sliding forward, so from a competitive point of view, it hadn’t been so bad. I got up and went back to working on the controlled falling, throwing my weight into turns the way that I had cross country skiing this winter. Just as I felt pride at how well, I was doing, another racer blasted by me, somehow staying upright when by all rights he should have eaten dirt. There was a stylized Canadian maple leaf on the back of his race shirt. The name for this runner was Canada Dancer, I thought; he can tango with gravity in places where everyone else would have fallen off their feet.
We went back and forth over the next few miles. Just when I thought I had lost him for good, he would reappear behind.
Pit Bull caught up to both of us, and we made up a running troika. Their energy helped keep me feeling competitive.
At about 16 miles, we came to a steep slope of red pine and spruce where the race officials had put a rope up so we could pull our way up the grade.
I stuck with the two of them through a long downhill section, but when the course started going up, they pulled ahead. I lost sight of them at the next aid station. Not wanting to be left behind, I grabbed slices of watermelon off the table to eat, stuffing them down while running at the same time. It was one of those problems of multitasking kind of things because I went off the race course. I wasted at least a quarter mile figuring out that I’d screwed up, retracing my steps and getting back to where the orange ribbons led to the Skyline Parkway on the way to Duluth.
This aggravation got me running hard. I was sure I’d lost Pit Bull and Canada Dancer for good. Should have paid more attention, dammit.
The anger at my mistake faded into fatigue and with 23 miles down, I became aware that my legs were really tired and aching. If they hurt this much now, I had no idea how the hell I’d finish the race.
The race came the Spirit Mountain Ski Resort where there was an overlook above the city of Duluth. Beyond the grain silos and container ships stood the aerial lift bridge, the gateway to Lake Superior. Last year, I had fixated on that same bridge coming down the last miles of Grandma’s Marathon, knowing that I would be finished when I got there. This year, I could see the bridge and know that as soon as I got down to Duluth, I would have made it halfway through the race.
My legs pounded down the trail through the ski resort. The faster runners began coming from the opposite direction. I began giving out the courtesy nods, the “Looking good”s and “Nice job man.”
Finally, I saw the white tent set up outside the Lake Superior Zoo. It was the turnaround.
I raised my fist. I’d run the 25 miles in about three hours and 55 minutes, which meant that I was running slower than four-hour marathon pace. For a fifty-mile all-terrain race, I was not complaining. I allowed myself the luxury of coming to a complete stop, even as one other runner passed me. They were giving out ice now, so I put some under my hat. I gobbled down more melon, pickles and slices of canned potato.
I started up the hill, feeling much better than I had minutes ago. Now I watched the stream of runners who were behind me.
“Nice job man!”
“You’re killing it out there!”
I shot the good will back at them, though I tried not to spend too much energy being a cheering section. Sometimes I just gave a thumbs up. I said, “Thanks, you too,” a lot, until I decided that it made me sound too much like a phone autobot, and settled for “Rock on,” which helped pump me up too.
The heat grew oppressive. Whenever possible, I ran on the shady side of the trail. I knew I had to keep eating salty things or else I would cramp up. I couldn’t slack on the water either.
Amazingly, my stomach didn’t revolt against salted watermelon or Powerade followed by pickle juice. Another miracle was that I didn’t feel any sudden need to take a dump, an issue which has often plagued me on marathons and on training runs.
I did take a couple of tumbles, which resulted in awkward falls. I worried that my brain was getting energy starved and made note to get more Powerade at subsequent aid stations.
The run took me back over the railroad tracks and on the trails. No one was in sight of me, front or behind. This was tough, because other runners were an important source of motivation. I ran like I was doing a job, but not with the vigor that comes with competition.
At 34 miles in, the trails were well graded, but I overlooked the tree root waiting to snag the tip of my shoe. It dropped me like a sack of bricks. One good thing about running alone was that nobody heard the ugly torrent of profanity I let loose. The dragging fall had put a serious rug burn on my shoulder. There was a bleeding, inch-long gash on my hand, with a gross flap of skin swinging off of it. I pulled the skin off and kept running.
I worried that it would be rude to the runners behind me if I get blood on the ropes for the upcoming ravine.
I went down the hill backwards, being careful with the hand, and trying not to go so fast I’d lose control and burn my hands on the rope.
I sloshed back across Mission Creek, dunking my hat in the water as I went. The volunteers got me pumped up again. They filled my canteen with ice water, too much for me to drink at once, but excellent for spilling on myself as the heat went up. I felt strong coming up the hill to the bike trail. Then I popped out of the woods.
Black tarmac. No shade. The next aid station was just ahead and I spilled the rest of the ice water down my neck as I got close.
At the aid station, a familiar sight. Pit Bull was there. Had he been coming up from behind me, or had I just caught up to him. I hadn’t remembered seeing him coming up the slopes at Spirit Mountain. Now I had no idea. Pit Bull finished getting watered and took off.
“You’ve gotta be careful,” one volunteer told me. “The hottest section of the course is coming up.”
“The power lines,” I said.
“Yep. You should stick with Jon,” he said. “This is his 10th time on the course. He knows it like the back of his hand.”
If I caught up with Pit Bull, I decided to try and run with him a bit, at least for a couple miles.
The trail wound around some curves, and I bombed down several hills. Finally, I saw Pit Bull coming up the next rise. I power hiked after him. Then followed at his heels for the next descent.
“Hey, they say I should be following you because you know this course,” I said.
“Well, I’m going to wade in this stream for a little while,” he said. “You’re doing a great job. Looking good, man,” he said.
“I’ll probably see you later down the course,” I said. But I didn’t.
I already marveled at how much I’d wanted to show him up earlier in the race. Now, instead of schadenfreude, I felt bummed that he wouldn’t be running with me. He was a serious runner with a lot of ultras under his belt. But this wasn’t his race.
The heat had dried up almost all the mud beneath the power lines by the time I came through the second time. This made me less likely to fall going down the hills, but that heat packed a wallop also. I could feel heat bouncing back from the clay beneath my feet as cicadas buzzed in the hedges. I splashed more ice-water on my neck as I lurched up one hill with my hands on my knees. At the summit, I could see a familiar white shirt with the red maple leaf. It was Canada Dancer.
I didn’t know if I could catch him, but I would to try.
I economized on time by addressing my need to pee while walking uphill. This I managed without splashing myself, though splashing wouldn’t have stopped me.
I was becoming quite the disgusting creature out there, belching, farting, cramming more and more food down my gullet so that I could creak and groan under the miles I had left.
Canada Dancer was just as ruthless on the downhills as he had been earlier in the race. I no longer trusted my shredded muscles to hold me up if I let loose. Thus, my quarry pulled away on each downhill. But I hiked aggressively up each up-slope and I closed in on him bit by bit.
When the trail left the power lines, we didn’t have the slopes any more and Canada Dancer didn’t have his secret power. We overlapped briefly at an aid station, but I let him go so I could grab more fuel. Half a mile later I caught him on the trail.
It was going to be smooth trail for a couple miles, so I knew I had the chance to put distance between us before we came up to the ravine and he tore up the downhill. I felt another wave of strength and used it to cruise the trails with a road-runner’s stride.
The next aid station met me with a surge of “Looking good”s and “You’re right up there!” The last one made my ears perk up. Did I have a shot at the top 10?
I still worried about Canada Dancer making a comeback, so when I got to the ravine, I risked putting some forward lean into the downhill. On the upward slope, I ran as much as I could and power-hiked with my hands on my knees. I thought I heard something moving very quickly down the trail behind me. Maybe just squirrels in the woods, I thought.
At the top of the ravine, it was flat trails again so I knew I could open up my stride again and try to put more distance between myself and my pursuer. My energy was flagging however, and I couldn’t put out the same intensity as I had earlier. Less than 10 miles to the finish, I knew I ran the risk of thinking the race was over when it wasn’t over, celebrating prematurely and losing my edge.
I pretended that I was running a 60-miler with plenty of trail left to cover.
The course popped back onto the bike path and there were no more helpful shadows from the trees. I was not feeling good.
I focused on keeping my awkward, tired stride rolling on the grassy margin of the trail. A sudden needle of pain stabbed into the side of my right knee. I lurched, kept running. It had been a sharp but brief message, a kind of ghost pain, the kind that sometimes goes away if I keep moving — unless it doesn’t. The pain signal had me wary, but it didn’t re-emerge for another quarter mile. Now I felt something was consistently off. Something was messing up my stride. Pretty much all the stories I’ve read of successful ultra runners have a messy injury somewhere amidst their races, and this was nothing compared to some of their wounds. I definitely wouldn’t stop running.
My mind was starting to drift as the trail went back into the woods. A shoe-catching root almost brought me down.
I creaked past the Forbay Aid Station — the place where I had volunteered last year.
I was grateful to everyone working the tables, people who greeted me with a “What can we get you?”
“I need more calories,” I announced. “Starting to feel a bit loopy out there.”
“When was the last time you peed?” a woman asked. “Uhhh…it was back near the ravine.”
“What color?”
“White.”
“Then you’re doing a lot better than a lot of people who come through here. Plus, you’re speaking in complete sentences and you’re not staggering around, slurring your words.”
So don’t be a freakin’ crybaby.
I had less than six miles to go now. My form sucked, but I didn’t feel motivated to push myself. It looked like I had ditched Canada Dancer and I was going to finish this thing alone.
The last aid station was by the St. Louis River where whitewater kayakers played in the rapids near the swinging bridge where a crowd of spectators had gathered to watch them. The volunteers cheered heartily as I came up to fill my canteen one last time. The effort of starting to run again was painful, especially in my knee. I lurched like a wounded animal.
“Man, I feel like a million bucks right now,” I announced to the crowd.
Then I got back on the swinging bridge: “Excuse me! Coming through! I’m running a 50-mile race here.”
Gnarly rocks and twisted roots waited on the other side of the river. I had already decided to take it slow and save my strength for the final stretch of flat waiting for me on the other side. But someone was closing in.
I took a glance over my shoulder and saw Canada Dancer about a hundred yards back. He was not taking it slow over the rocks and roots.
I forced myself to grub over the terrain as fast as I could, felt speed returning, some fragment of fight left in my legs. Maybe I could hold him yet.
The footsteps were right behind me now. I followed etiquette and gave him the trail.
“Long time no see!” he said in a voice that was completely evil.
His legs and arms were a blur as he ran. No, he didn’t run, he flowed. Rocks, roots and trees slowed him not a bit. It was like watching a magic trick.
“Way to make a fucking comeback,” I called after him.
I came around the next turn and there was a hundred feet of empty trail in front of me.
“Sonofabitch,” I said, feeling grudging admiration.
I had mostly given up catching Canada Dancer that one last time, but I kept my pace up. You never know when somebody could turn an ankle and the door of opportunity would open.
The route went up one last hill and then I was on the hot asphalt bike trail. I opened up my stride yet again. In the distance, I saw the red maple leaf rounding the last stretch before the finish line. Too far to catch, but I was going to finish this like a racer. Scattered applause from spectators crossed my awareness. A cop was holding up traffic so I could run across the road. I couldn’t hear what he said, but it sounded encouraging. I swung my arms so my legs would move, forcing myself closer to the line until I crossed it. Eight hours, 19 minutes and 30 seconds, 10th place.*
Someone gave me a mug. I limped away from the line like a wounded animal, but there was a big, stupid grin on my face. I found a shady place and got off my feet. Finally, I rested.
*Top finisher was Jake Hegge of Onalaska Wisconsin in 6:49:33. Scott Jurek, Famed ultra runner and Minnesota native son, still has the course record of 6:41:16.
This is an open letter to you runners that I see out there on the same roads and trails that I run on, runners who wear the same running shoes, and some of the same clothes, who I will nod to in recognition of our kinship but who seem to deliberately ignore my friendly gesture, whose faces are stone and your hearts cold to a fellow runner.
What’s the deal with you guys?
When I say “hey,” or give some small but solemn nod that recognizes you for being out there, you just keep on trucking, like you never saw me or wish you hadn’t. It kind of hurts.
I’m the one who extended the simple gesture of courtesy and respect. And somehow, I’m the one who feels like the asshole after you run by with (can I risk stereotyping here?) your Under Armour tank top and earbuds. I am usually not in the mind to feel like an asshole, and transcend the negative feelings by hating you intensely. This is still not healthy, and running is about health. Thus, I will attempt to work my way out of this dark pit of anger by examining possible explanations for why you snubbed me.
1. You were way too in the zone
Of course! I see it now. You were just sooo in the zone baby, that you couldn’t spare the minutest energy for anything besides running your hardcore best. Nope, not even a nod. Was someone coming the other way? Whoa, sorry Brah, I was getting my cardio on too hard to even notice.
Well, sorry Brah, I totally can’t accept this one. If you were so totally in that zone that you didn’t register another human being coming up the road —probably the first in miles where I live — you’d have tripped over yourself a long time ago, or even swerved into a semi truck. I’d give you a pass if we were on a track, but these are the roads and you wouldn’t last long without some capacity to notice what’s around you.
FYI, I can push myself hard too, and guess what? Even in the most brutal, blistering workout I’ve still been able to make some kind of nod of acknowledgement to a runner coming from the other direction.
The point about awareness being necessary for survival runs both ways. If you literally couldn’t see me coming because you were completely wrapped up in the Jason Mraz playlist blowing through your earbuds, there are going to be problems when that truck backs out of the driveway in front of you.
2. You’re too badass to nod.
Nod to another runner? Hah! No other runner is worthy of my nod. The roads are where men crush each other to win glory. To nod is weakness. Glorious competitive men show no weakness. NEVER!
So this sport definitely gets its share of the Type A crowd. I’ve also seen many of the same very competitive people shake hands with their competitors at start lines of innumerable races, hang out with each other and even share a cool down jog afterwards. Respect need not be obliterated by competition. Such gestures like the ones I just mentioned and the nod add a layer of meaningfulness to the sport, and make it more appealing to me then if it were merely about sprinting to the front of the pack and to hell with the rest of ’em.
3. You’re too cool to nod.
I suspect that there’s another faction, though I lack direct evidence, that has an iconoclastic bent. These are the people who make a point of not saying “how are you?” because they know that statistically most of us don’t actually give a damn when we ask the question.
Is the nod a gesture with very little effort behind it? Guilty as charged.
It’s just a gesture, just like saying, “Have a nice day” or “I’m sorry for your loss” are gestures. However, such gestures are also conspicuous by their absence. When you leave me hanging after I give the nod, I feel cold inside. It’s the same as if you told me, “Have a bad day. Dick.”
You can keep running feeling cool about yourself, but you could also listen to the Beatles who would tell you, “it’s a fool who plays it cool by making his world a little colder.”
4. You think I’m trying to hit on you.
Hey, sorry to burst your bubble, but this nod’s not just for you; it’s for everyone out enjoying the fresh air like I am. It has nothing to do with how attractive anyone appears in form-fitting runner’s apparel. I’m not asking for a phone number or a too-long hug. Just a damn nod.
5. You’re just a terrible human being.
This is what I assume by default, when some one denies a nod, whether it’s true or not. Hopefully it’s not true. If it were, I would suggest that you look deep within your withered soul and try to find some good so you can cultivate it. Maybe some day you will realize that your fellow humans have as much claim on your attention as the heart rate metrics streaming from your performance watch.
6. You legitimately don’t know that nodding is the right thing to do.
I think a lot of you nod-less plodders look kind of new to running, so maybe I should cut you some slack. I won’t tell you the absolute worst things that I’ve thought about you.
But I will say this: Running ain’t just a way to work on cardio before you hit the weight room, and it’s not just about beating everyone to the finish-line (though it’s nice to try.)
You can also add color and enjoyment to your experience by noticing your fellow travelers in fitness. I dunno, maybe you could even run with one of them sometime.
The nod is really just an opening to a much larger, communal aspect of running, the kind that you see at cross-country meets, over post-race drinks and through the years of fellowship between groups of friends that get together for weekly runs year after year.
When I nod to you, even that brief acknowledgement should tell you that we do share something as we run across this disconnected/ connected world.
I woke up with the sound of howling wind bending the tree branches, the patter of rainfall on the roof of my Minnesota apartment. Temps were supposed to be in the high thirties that day. I was also planning to hit the trails for a weekly long run, putting in the miles that I’d need to compete in a 50-mile trail run on July 25.
If I was going to race this thing, I was going to have to train ruthlessly, to laugh at rainy days, hail, heat and other obstacles that stood in my way. I ate my large oatmeal breakfast and procrastinated the next couple hours inside reading Robert Frost poems.
Finally, at 11:30 am, I knew I could wait no longer, lurched outside with my guts sloshing from the big meal and started jogging up the pavement towards the woods. Nothing cramped or puked, so that was a good start.
I wore my Boston Marathon tech shirt, running shorts, a thin balaclava and my iridescent orange shell. I placed a small tube of Vaseline in the right pocket, along with some athletic tape (to prevent chafing and to splint any catastrophic ankle sprains respectively.) For the left pocket, I put a small baggie full of Trisquits. There was a compass strung around my neck too. It was probably unnecessary, but what the hell?
Soon I was cooking underneath all of my gear as I ran uphill.The rain had turned even the tiny streams into torrents, surging brown and furious as they flushed sediment down the slopes. One of these would almost be good for a kayak run, I thought, thinking of my new eight-foot whitewater boat that I was itching to use.
I traded the pavement for a logging road leading up into the woods, felt the ground squelch beneath my feet. The shoes would get soaked real thorough-like on this trip.
I kept running uphill for about a half a mile until I reached the Superior Hiking Trail (Also called the SHT or SHiT.) I turned north,towards nearby Leveaux Mountain and Oberg Mountain. I planned to run up the two of them and loop back home. This particular section of woods had a lot of maple trees growing and that meant that it was prime territory for wild leaks. I saw huge clumps of them, glowing radioactive green amidst the dull colors of the leaf litter.
I also saw puddles. Sections of the trail were completely submerged. It was possible to scamper delicately from root to rock to board and cross these areas with dry feet. This took too much time and there were too many puddles so I adopted a “fuck it” attitude for them.
The water splashing up my legs was cold, but not frigid and a nice antidote to the sweaty heat I was building up inside my shell.
I scrambled beneath the cedars at the base of Leveaux Mountain where the roots made for fancy footwork, jumped a fallen tree and bombed down a steep hillside to the Onion River, which was wild with rapids. Newly submerged boulders seethed with foam.
I ran up the other side and through another mile of puddles until I got to the parking lot at the base of Oberg. There was the loop I was planning to run; there was the sign pointing to the Lutsen Mountains ski resort in 6.8 miles on the SHT. I had to climb over Moose Mountain on the way. How ambitious was I feeling?
I pulled the Triscuits out of my left pocket and munched them while I pondered this. The run left a few permutations, including just going as far as Moose Mountain in less than three miles and turning back, or running down the ski slopes and down to the bike trail that could take me back to my apartment in eight miles.
I decided I’d figure these things out as I went.
Going past Oberg took me beneath two-hundred foot basalt cliffs on a windy downslope.
Trail running sometimes feels less like running and more like skipping and dancing. It really does.
I find myself putting my feet down to a weird rhythm and flinging my body around in a way that — well it isn’t dancing — but it feels like I’ve tapped into the harmony of the trail. You can call that a bunch of sentimental bullshit, but I mean it. The trail is my dance partner.
I know I look far from graceful out there, I flail my arms and I fall down plenty, but I love trail running for its weird contortions. There’s the stutter step before hopping a log, there’s twisting a foot at a weird angle to land perfectly between two roots while angling my body to divert my momentum away from the tree trunk. How satisfying it is to use mind and body together in order to navigate a sudden dip in the trail. The same principles apply to mountain biking, sking — well pretty much all the sports, but with running it’s just you and the shoes doing the work.
The trails are a nice change from road running where consistency of form is crucial to success. Out on the the trails, I feel at liberty to be delightfully irregular. I will jut an arm out to balance myself on a steep curve or drop into a crouch after a steep jump. I will swing my head out of the path of a tree branch before it slaps me in the face. I even switch to power hiking on the steepest hills, where I find that I can keep the same speed at a walk as I can hold running and with less effort.
Trails are obviously much slower for me than the roads, but I also feel like I can stick it out for longer on trails where there is plenty of variation in form an intensity. Those windy trails only let me go so fast in places and sometimes I’m happy for the enforced break.
The summit of Moose Mountain was draped in freezing fog, buffeted by wind. I found shelter in a ski patrol cabin where I ate more of my Trisquits and left some crumbs for psychological sustenance down the trail. When I stepped outside,I discovered an untied shoelace and barely had the strength in my freezing hands to re-knot it. The trail wound beneath basalt overhangs, then it crossed some of the black diamond ski runs. The machine-made snow hadn’t melted yet, was still packed firm against the slope. I was loathe to take that ride to the bare rock and brush waiting at the bottom. I broke a tree branch and used it as an ice axe (well, more of a dagger) and kick steps into the snow. I was able to cross two slopes like this no problem, but met my match on a patch of wet brush. The reeds all pointed downhill and down I went.
I descended the rest of the way down the mountain with greater caution. In the disorienting fog without a map, I used my compass to point myself north in the direction of the ski lodge.
Up from the valley below came the roar of the Poplar River. And lo! What a beautiful stretch of whitewater. The rapids looked like a healthy Class III with no obvious hazards (at least until the deadly canyon narrows that waited further downstream.) I feasted my eyes and even took some time out to do a bit of scouting.
Verily, there was a bounty of exciting opportunities for my new kayak and I, but that is a story for another day.
The trail switched back over various bridges, so I could drool into the whitewater, then I veered off to climb a miserable scrub hill in the direction of the road I wanted. In a short while, this road goes back to the SHT right where it crosses the river again at the place I like to call You Will Die Falls. There are a series of cascades here, boiling with angry water. Maybe a real pro could take this on, but on a high water day like this the name definitely fit.
I went back to grooving and jiving my way up Moose Mountain when the hunger hit. I drank my remaining Trisquit fragments and licked the precious salt off my fingers. I drank out of a creek halfway between Moose and Oberg, putting my head down in the silty flow. I wouldn’t have done this a year ago, but I’ve heard from many authorities that the risks of contaminated water in the wilderness have been greatly exaggerated.
Soon after, I found a half-trampled wild leak lying in the trail where a forager must have dropped it. I ate the bulb. ‘Wonder how long I could live on these things if I stayed out here,’ I found myself thinking.
The bonk was definitely coming on now. I knew the slightly out of body, fairly stupid feeling that comes at the end of a long workout where I haven’t refueled enough. Basically, the exercise had stolen the glucose that my brain would have been using otherwise, and now my brain was taking a vacation in La La Land.
“La la la,” I sang to myself.
I pictured someone paddling on the easy stretch of river leading up to You Will Die Falls.
“La la laaaAaaughh!”
The brain was draining, but I was familiar with the feeling, and this made it easier to deal with. I tried not to think hard about anything and pooled all my mental resources onto the Tripping and Falling Avoidance line item.
There were still miles of muck to spat through before I finished. It would be at least a 20-mile day and would take up about four and a half hours. Though I was tired, I knew from experience that I had enough to make it through.
I crashed through puddle after puddle and the cold water splashed up to my knees. I was long past giving a damn.
A proper Thanksgiving, for me, has to start with a run.
Obviously, on a day that’s centered on consuming massive amounts of food, it makes sense to try to burn off some calories ahead of time. It is also helpful to get physically hungrier before sitting at a table where certain relatives will monitor your intake and ask questions like, “Are you sure you’re eating enough?”, when you don’t meet quota.
There is always something wholesome about getting out to breath the air, to take the scope of the land. But on a day like Thanksgiving, much of which is spent inside, sitting and watching other people play football, it is easy to fall into a daze of inactivity and cabin fever. I have an easier time accepting this when I’ve plopped a run into the bank a couple hours earlier.
My memorable Thanksgiving runs include the times in high school when I ran the 12 miles from home to my grandparents’ apartment with my dad. Later, I drove up to the 4.7-mile Manchester Road Race to spill my guts on the pavement against my college cross-country buddies. I also hit the roads at a local 5K when I lived in Wyoming. Even in a new place with new faces, it was comforting to keep the tradition going.
I left my apartment Thanksgiving 2014 with no plan in mind, one of my favorite ways to run.
There is plenty of territory to cover here on northern Minnesota’s north shore. The immense Superior National Forest, right outside my door, stretches up to the Boundary Waters and Canada. Some snowmobile trails in the nearby woods offered a good pathway to the wild. While there was some snow cover on them, there was not yet enough to accommodate the loud machines. The woods still belonged to the chittering squirrels, laughing woodpeckers and the hard breath of any runner who decided to puff up the grade from Lake Superior into the Sawtooth Mountains.
I thought about how the holiday had changed for me over the years. Once the kid who grabbed the turkey drumstick, I’d stopped eating meat in middle school. Some beloved faces left the dinner table as new ones joined.
Since I started living away from the New England in 2011, I haven’t been around for the family meals, though I’ve shared meals with new friends in new places and faithfully dropped a line to the old gang in Connecticut.
Unlike past years, I didn’t have an invite to anyone’s table (that’s what happens when you get to a new place, keep to yourself and read a lot.)
The tally of Grand Thanksgiving Traditions for 2014 stood thusly:
Thanksgiving Turkey? Nope.
Pumpkin Pie? Nope.
Macy’s Day Parade Viewing? Who cares?
Football Viewing? Ditto.
Shopping on Black Friday and or Thanksgiving Day itself? Hell no.
Sitting At The Family Table? Nope.
Sitting Amongst Friends? Nope.
Sitting At Any Table? Yes, a delightful meal for one consisting of butternut squash fresh-baked bread and stir-fry.
Calling in to The Family? Yes, I’d have a Skype chat with them later in the day.
Going Running? Hell yeah!
Seeing that running was one of the only common threads between past holidays made it feel even more important to observe the tradition.
Thanksgiving celebrates (among other things) the bounty of the harvest: think Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom From Want” painting from the Four Freedoms series: a happy family gathered around the table brimming with food.
If I didn’t have the bursting table in front of me, I could feast my eyes upon bountiful landscape of Minnesota’s north woods in winter.
There were the immense cedars that had raised their twisted arms to the sun long before the Mayflower caught sight of Massachusetts; solemn stands of spruce and balsam fir; the aspen and birch whose bark flashed white against the late autumn illumination.
My tracks joined those of mice, voles and squirrels. Somewhere in that forest, packs of wolves were out, still stalking their native territory.
As for human souls, I might have run clear to Canada without seeing one.
Not caring to stop, I passed by the trails I’d known onto new territory. Every time I thought about turning around, some glint along the trail ahead that would tempt me further. The snow got deeper as I got further into the hills. Sometimes the crust held; sometimes it broke. I slowed to an awkward shuffle.
Eventually, I came to Six Hundred Road — a well-kept logging road that I’d biked on months earlier. I knew I could make a convenient loop by hooking right to the Sawbill Trail leading back to my apartment. Boring mashed potatoes. Turkey stuffing. I looked left to where dark spruce trees flanked the snowy lane. Yes, I could do with a helping of that.
I knew that there was an intersection with another logging road in a couple more miles, one that would lead me back to civilization. I’d be committing myself to about 16 miles of running though, longer than I’d gone since June. But I didn’t feel like I’d had my fill yet.
I took the road to the left, letting icicles accumulate on my beard and mustache. The road climbed steeply to the top of “Heartbreak Hill” so-named because it had been the heartbreak of old loggers who tried to sledge timber up the steep grade.
In another couple miles, I came to the intersection with the other logging road, where I could look all the way down (about five miles as the crow flies) to Lake Superior.
I ran downhill for a few miles, and then split off onto the Superior Hiking Trail along the frozen Temperance River. I indulged in several stops to look at icefalls and appreciate the meringue-like formations in the frozen foam.
For the last course of my run, I made a point of running the rest of the way down to Lake Superior.
The snow had almost disappeared along the lake’s edge, but the lakeside rocks were shellacked with ice. Wisps of steam climbed into the single-digit air, and obscured the horizon into a dreamy blur.
I walked out onto a dock and stood there tired in the sun.
