"In my second ultra, a 50, the special moment was the decision to walk the last 8 miles. I had such ambivalent feelings about it. Was I a failure because I had to walk? A success because I was going to finish? After a few moments of considering those ideas, I got down to brass tacks and decided I was going to enjoy those last miles. I just decided to enjoy them. And I did."
- Adena Shutzberg
On a good day, I sometimes feel like I’d like to run forever. In 2003, I decided to see if I could.
By then, I had run a number of marathons and I was beginning to get a little frustrated. I’d train for a year to try and run a fast race, but when race day arrived the weather would be too hot or too windy or I would be injured, so running at a fast pace was impossible.
But I still wanted to improve as a runner. I still needed a goal, some focus for my training. I could continue to work on my speed, and make another attempt at a marathon or try to improve my time in shorter races. If I wanted to do that, I figured I’d need to work harder on speedwork. Speed training is hard on my body, though it does pay off. But whenever I spent much time focusing on speed, I seemed to get hurt.
I had another choice. I could try to run farther instead of faster. My running club, the Somerville Road Runners, puts on a 24-hour ultramarathon and relay every summer on a 5K loop course around Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, MA. I’d volunteered at the race and I was impressed by the persistence shown by the runners as they staggered past in the heat. I wondered about competing in the ultra myself someday, just to see how far I could go.
Ultramarathoning would be new and interesting. In some ways, running an ultra would be an easier choice than trying to beat my times at the shorter distances I’d been running. I didn’t have to run faster. All I had to do was set a comfortable pace and keep going at that pace as long as I could. Every extra mile was a new PR.
Any run that’s long enough to tire me out consists of three sections. In the first part of the run, I’m still fresh, but I might struggle some while I warm up and I’m trying to find a comfortable pace. Towards the end of the run, when I get tired, I need to fight through that to make it to the finish. Running to near exhaustion is necessary to build my endurance, and it’s rewarding to meet the challenge, but it’s not really lighthearted "fun".
Then there’s the middle section of a run. It starts when I’ve warmed up and I’ve settled into a relaxed groove. Running gets easy, fun, and the relentless drone/drumbeat of my feet quiets the babbling that usually goes on in my head. That part of the run is one of the best things about running, and the longer I run, the longer that middle section can be.
I decided it was worth the effort to try to run an ultramarathon. Now I needed a plan.
The Midsummer Lights Relay was scheduled for June 20th, the summer solstice and also my 42nd birthday. Tom Derderian and the Greater Boston Track Club invited teams of up to ten runners to race from dusk until dawn over a 3.05-mile course winding around Deer Island in Boston Harbor. The team completing the most laps wins.
For the first time, people from SRR were putting together some teams to participate in the event. I was sitting at my computer, reading the messages on the club email list as the teams were organizing, and on the spur of the moment (more or less), I decided to run the race by myself.
The race seemed like a good way to ease into ultrarunning (if such a thing is possible). I thought it was a good idea to try a loop course first, so I didn’t have to worry about whether I’d have easy access to food, drinks, dry socks, or anything else I needed throughout the race. And if anything went wrong, I wouldn’t be any farther than a mile-and-a-half away from help.
I got in touch with Tom the Monday before the race. Since my relay team would consist of only one person, Tom kindly agreed to allow me in with a reduced entry fee, and so Team Ibuprofen was born.
I didn’t give the race a lot of advance thought before signing up so my training for it consisted of the base I developed while training for marathons. I had run five in the two years before the ultra, and a good number of 20-28 mile runs while I was preparing for them. The Boston Marathon in April 2003 was my most recent one. My only long run after that was a slow, meandering 30-mile run along Boston Harbor two weeks before the ultra, which I ran mostly so I could play with my new Timex GPS. That 30 miles was the farthest I’d ever run.
After I registered for the race, I spent the rest of the week having a wonderful time planning what I’d need to bring with me. I researched how to run ultras on the Internet and made lists of supplies that might come in handy.
I ended up packing a ton of stuff, way more than I’d need, organized into bags for easy access. I had a bag of food, a bag of medical supplies, a bag of extra clothing, a bag of "other stuff" (an MP3 player and other distractions), a couple extra pairs of shoes, and a cooler full of drinks and ice. I even packed a tent, in case I got tired and needed to rest.
Thursday, I went out for my traditional pre-race short haircut so I’d be as cool as possible and to help me focus on the task ahead of me. Then Friday finally arrived. I left work at about 1 PM, had a big lunch, and went home to pack and take a short nap. I dressed the same way I would for a normal long run. I put Bodyglide on my thighs as usual. I also stuck a Compeed on the hotspot on the ball of my right foot to avoid blistering. The finishing touch was the headlamp my wife gave me for my birthday just before I headed out.
At about 6:45, I got in the car and drove to Deer Island. The island, formerly the site of a jail, now hosts a modern sewage treatment plant and a small park. I parked my car at the bottom of a hill, and then I walked up a path to meet Tom at the registration table on top of the hill. He showed me an article he’d written about my ultra attempt for the Winthrop paper. That was a bit odd – no one had ever used me to advertise a race before.
Runners who were part of a team had a lot of downtime during the night to look forward to while they waited for their turn to run, so they pitched tents around the park and settled in. I decided to go without a tent because the weather was pleasant, just about ideal for a June race. It was clear (unusual that spring), in the 60’s, and there was hardly any wind.
Like most small races, things were pretty informal. There were no bib numbers or timing clocks. Tom gave each of the 10 teams a multi-colored light wand to use as a relay baton. The wands were fun toys, but they turned off automatically every 10 minutes. All night long, we had to keep turning the wands back on while we ran.
At about 8:25, as the sun set, Tom played "Taps" on a harmonica. We all stood there waiting until he said, "That’s it – you can get started now," and then we took off.
I went out at a comfortable pace, running the first lap alongside some of the slower relay runners while I learned the course. I planned on slowing down as the night went on.
The start/finish line was at registration, on the peak of the highest hill on the island. From there, the course wound gradually downhill, past the parking area at the bottom, around the island, and back up to the start. The course was mostly concrete sidewalk, with some asphalt sections in the park. There was some dirt alongside the concrete, but I decided not to risk twisting an ankle. There was one other small hill early in the loop around the island. There was a sharp turn at the bottom of that hill that got more difficult as the night went on.
At the end of the first mile, the SRR relay teams set up camp on a flat, grassy space near the entrance to the sewage plant. Mile two went through the sewage plant on some fenced-in paths, and then around the southern tip of the island. Mile three ran alongside a breakwater on the eastern shore before turning to go up the hill back to the start.
There was quite a contrast in the views, depending on which way I turned my head. As I ran counter-clockwise around the island, to my right was Boston Harbor, with beautiful views of the Boston skyline, ships, the ocean, and Winthrop. To the left, the Deer Island Waste Water Treatment Plant was interesting in its own, industrial-technical-institutional way, with 170-foot-high egg-shaped digesters adding an other-worldly touch. Luckily, the sewage plant didn’t add any special odor to the event.
After the first lap, I began to use a tip I had read online. I alternated 5 minutes of running with 1 minute of walking to make it easier for me to keep going for an extended period. I also walked the 89 yards from the 3-mile marker up to the finish line, the steepest part of the course.
My main goal, the one I told to my friends, was to still be running at dawn. I had dreams of completing 50 miles (actually 52, since only complete laps counted towards my score). That would require averaging 30 minutes per lap. If I did it, great, but I wasn’t going to risk doing a crash-and-burn to meet that goal in my first ultra.
Once I began walking, I lost contact with the rest of the runners. It got dark, and a booze-cruise appeared offshore. The lights on the ship added to the festivities, but the loud karaoke was annoying. The party shut down around midnight. After that, we ran on in relative quiet.
I mostly ran on my own through the night. Ten runners (fewer after some teams dropped out) scattered over more than three miles didn’t make for much company. Every time I passed the SRR encampment, I got cheers and offers of beer, and those perked me up. I also looked forward to the attaboys I got each time I climbed the hill to the scoring table, and to coasting downhill for a bit after that. SRR’s Eric Forgy did his weekend long run on the course (he ended up doing 7 laps) and he ran with me for a while.
The rest of the time I was alone except for relay runners going by and some people who were fishing along the eastern shore. I was surprised by how long the fishermen stayed out there, well into the early morning. Still, I expect they were much more surprised by the runners continually passing through their normally quiet fishing spot.
Most of the course was lit well enough. There was a dark patch at the southern end, with an eerie beep emanating from the shadows to warn off boats. There was another dark section along the eastern breakwater, just before the turn to climb up to the finish. I could see the reflection of my headlamp in the eyes of the animals clambering around out there. I never figured out what animals they were.
I stopped at the car every two laps to top off my water bottle. I visited the Port-a-Bush regularly throughout the night, which showed I was drinking enough. I was drinking Accelerade, which has a 4/1 carbohydrate/protein mix. The protein in the mix was supposed to help keep my body from burning muscles for fuel.
After 18 miles, I started taking GU each time I refilled my bottle. I munched on a few almonds at the later pit stops, mostly for salt, but partly because I’d read the Vitamin E in almonds was good during a long race. Other than that, I didn’t have much to eat. The bagels, Power Bars, and beef jerky stayed in the bag. I wasn’t nauseous, but the idea of food wasn’t very appealing.
Towards the end of the night, the Accelerade began to bother my stomach. I kept refilling my bottle with Accelerade, but I started drinking water with my snacks at the stops and that helped some.
I had a couple of ibuprofen before the start. I had two more at about three and six hours into the race. I also had a few electrolyte pills as the night wore on, and I refreshed the Bodyglide on my thighs as needed.
The running went pretty well. I kept under 30 minutes per lap for the first 20 miles or so, but I knew that wouldn’t last the whole way. The 7th and 8th laps were a transition period. After that, I slowed down to a 10 minute/mile pace when I was running. Even with running slower, the walking, and the breaks at the car, each lap still took less than 35 minutes. I felt I’d be able to keep to that pace as long as I could keep running at all.
The pain from the pounding built up to a certain point, but never got too bad as long as I kept my form. If I started to sit back on my heels too much, the ITB in my right knee would remind me to stop. My achilles tendons were a little more sore than usual, but it wasn't unmanageable.
Staying alert was less of a problem than I had feared. What got to be a problem as the night wore on was staying motivated. I ran into a small, cold patch of fog every so often and that would pick me up a little bit, but the feeling faded quickly. The rest of the time I knew I could keep running, but I sometimes had trouble remembering why I wanted to. I started to let myself walk up the shorter hill, and my regular walking breaks began to stretch on for 15-20 seconds past the beeping of my watch before I went back to running.
When I reached the end of another lap at 2:30 in the morning, Tom asked me if I needed anything. I muttered "Dawn," and then I headed wearily down the hill yet again.
I made it through 13 laps (about 40 miles), and then it was late enough in the race to begin planning for the end. I knew I could get in two more laps, but adding a third lap would be tough. If that last lap would have gotten me over 50 miles, I might have gone for it. Given the situation, I decided to leave well enough alone and just make sure I finished two more.
Along the backstretch of the second-to-last lap, the sky finally lightened in the east. Bob Ross from SRR pulled up alongside during a walking break. He stayed to chat with me and that helped get me through the next running section and to the end of the lap.
On the last lap, I picked up my pace a bit since I knew I was finally almost done, but I was very careful to make sure I ran slowly enough so that running one more lap was out of the question. As I passed the SRR camp, I asked Joe O’Leary to meet me at the finish to take a picture, since I was sure he would get there faster than I could.
Finally, after 8 hours, 7 minutes, and 10 seconds and 46 (well, 45.758) miles, I was through! I stopped on the hilltop at the finish and stood there, basking in the feeling of not running. That feeling was interrupted almost immediately by an attacking swarm of mosquitoes, but once again Bob Ross came through. He lent me his long-sleeved shirt for protection and we took the trip down to the SRR camp. Everyone was packing up to leave, but I wasn’t quite ready to go so I went by myself back up to the finish to watch the dawn.
The race ended when the sun came up. It was a fine, sunny spring morning. I had no idea who won, where they were from, or how many laps they finished, nor did I care. I just stood there, enjoying the view from the hill as the morning sun reflected off the ocean and the Boston skyline, and enjoying my well-earned sense of accomplishment.
I survived the race without any blisters and with only minor chafing on my thighs. The next day I was a little sorer than I would usually be after a marathon, but I had run slowly enough that I didn’t feel all beat up. I rested for a few days, and then Tuesday morning I went out for an easy 3-mile run. In comparison, it seemed to go by in no time at all!
By the next week, I felt fully recovered and ready to go back to my normal routine while I figured out what I wanted to do next. I still hadn’t found how far I could go, and after my success on Deer Island, I was ready to push things further.
A 50-mile race seemed like a good next step. I found the Vermont 50 online. It’s a trail race for runners and mountain bikers that is held in September. There’s also a 50K on a shortened version of the course.
I grew up in Vermont and I always liked going back there to run. Traveling to the race wouldn’t be hard. Running on softer dirt trails seemed like it might be easier on my body. So I signed up and started training.
Race day was about two-and-a-half months away. I didn’t really do anything special before the Midsummer Night Relay, so I didn’t plan much extra training for Vermont. I decided to use the SRR 24 Hour Ultra on August 1st as a training run, and that would be my only really long effort before September.
I wanted to finish recovering from Midsummer Nights and go into the 24 Hour rested, so I didn’t do any long runs in July. I did enter a few shorter races. Towards the end of July, I did two 10Ks in one day, something I had never done before. I was in Vermont on vacation and I ran a 10K in Swanton in the morning. After the race, I was talking to some Canadians who were heading down to Goshen for the trail race at the Blueberry Hill ski area. I knew from doing that race twice before that it was a monstrously hilly course, but I felt good and thought it would be good training for the 50, so I went, had a lot of fun, and beat my previous best time for the race by two minutes. I noticed that I recovered quickly from those races, something I credited to extra endurance from ultrarunning.
I also started doing some running on the trails in the Middlesex Fells near my home. Those trails aren’t mountainous, but they do have plenty of the difficult footing I needed to prepare for the 50. I learned from running on the rocks and roots in the Fells that I needed shoes that were more protective than my regular running shoes. I bought a pair of trail shoes with a hard plastic plate in the sole and a built-in gaiter to keep trail debris out. They weren’t terribly comfortable and the gaiter made it hard to get them on and off, but the shoes worked well on the trail.
For the 24 Hour, I was the first runner for a relay team made up of people from SRR doing their long training runs, one after the other. I started when the gun went off at 7PM and ran through the night. I completed 14 laps around the lake for a total of 44.2 miles before I handed off the baton. Even though everybody on the team was running at a leisurely long run pace, we finished as the first place mixed team. It did help that we were the only mixed team.
I fit in two more 22-mile long runs before it was time to go to Vermont. By now I’d built up enough endurance so that 22 miles was far enough to be a good workout, but not far enough to wipe me out. I ran the last one three weeks before the race. The day after I finished that run, I felt good enough to take the risk of jumping into a 3-mile race. I had never dared to race so soon after a long run before. I surprised myself and ran a 19:15, which would have been a pretty good time for me even if it wasn’t right after a 22-mile run.
My training was going well, but I managed to find plenty of other concerns to keep myself busy. Like always, I wanted to have as much as possible planned in advance. Then when race day arrived, I could just follow my checklist and I wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting anything.
The race was going to start and finish at the Ascutney Mountain lodge, so I got a room there for the night before and the night after the race. The room wasn’t cheap, but if I stayed there, I could be sure I would make it to the start on time, and I knew I’d have a place to collapse afterwards if I needed it.
I asked Mark Bates and Karen Matteson, friends of mine who lived in Vermont, if they wanted to help out by meeting me at various places on the course to restock my supplies. I wanted my own sports drink, the Accelerade with the extra protein, and I wanted the energy gels I was used to, but I didn’t want to carry along a whole day’s supply. I also wanted the comfort of knowing there would be friendly faces along the way to cheer me on. Mark and Karen signed on as my crew, and we spent some time printing maps and directions and going over them to plan how we would get together before and during the race.
I took a look at the list of "stuff to bring to an ultra" that I made before Midsummer Nights. Now that I had a little experience, I was able to cut out some items I knew I wouldn’t need. Then I added even more things back in. I was going to be running on trails a long way from anywhere, so I wanted to make sure I’d have everything I could possibly need.
The race allowed me to have a pacer run with me for the last 8 miles if I wanted. I thought about asking someone to pace for me in case I needed the help, but I finally decided that was one thing I could do without.
I drove up to Brownsville, VT the day before the race. I wasn’t worried, but I was anxious. I wanted to know whether all my training and planning was going to pay off.
When I got to the Ascutney Mountain lodge, I stood outside for a minute, surrounded by forest-covered mountains, and I soaked in the autumnal beauty. When I lived in Vermont, I took the fall foliage for granted, sometimes even resenting it as a harbinger of winter. Now, it was glorious to see.
Then it struck me. "Yikes! I’m about to run 50 miles, and there’s nothing around here but mountains."
I checked in to the lodge, and then I went down to pick up my race number and t-shirt. This race was important to me, so I wanted a memento. I splurged on a fleece shirt with the VT 50 logo. I took it all back to the room, and then I tried to get some rest before dinner.
The race committee puts on a meal for the runners and the bikers at the Brownsville town hall the night before the race. The only other option in town to help pass the time was a visit to the general store, so I went to the dinner. For the most part, I sat and listened while I ate. I was amused by how easy it was to tell the bikers from the runners, partly because the bikers were more gregarious, but mostly because the bikers looked fit, with muscular legs, while the ultrarunners looked like they could use an extra serving or two of food. The major topic for both groups was the forecast for race day, which called for lots of rain.
I woke up before dawn Sunday morning and I went to the start for the 5:30 AM pre-race meeting and a pre-race snack. I was wired up, excited to finally be at the start, and ready to go. The anxiety was a good feeling, unlike the pre-race jitters I had to deal with while I was worrying about whether I was doing everything I needed to do to prepare. No more decisions, no time for doubts. All I had left to do was run.
At 6:15, the first wave of bikers took off. The remaining bikes left, and then the runners followed at 6:40AM. It was about 60 degrees and cloudy, good running weather - if the rain held off.
My only goal was to finish, so I started at the back of the pack. I began by alternating 5 minutes of running at a comfortable pace with 1 minute of walking, a plan that had served me fairly well at Midsummer Nights and the 24 Hour. But those races were in the Boston area, on relatively flat urban courses. When I got to the first long uphill section, I started running up. Then I took another look at the mountains and I realized that there was no way that I could run up all of them at anything resembling "a comfortable pace". I changed my strategy to another I’d read about online. Instead of running by my watch, I started running the downhills and the few flat stretches and I conserved my energy by walking up the mountain trails.
I was about five miles into the race, about an hour after the start, when it began to rain. By the time I reached the third aid station, about 12 miles into the race, the rain had turned into a downpour. It was the first of the three aid stations where crews were allowed to meet their runners, so Mark and Karen were waiting there, trying to stay dry in their car. When they saw me, they jumped out into the rain, refilled my bottle, and asked me if I wanted dry socks. I thought about it, but in the heavy rain changing socks seemed pointless.
It got worse. The rain wasn’t the biggest problem, though I was always soaked through for the rest of the day. The biggest problem was mud. When you take hours of pouring rain and dirt trails in the mountains and add mountain bikes to churn up the trails, you get mud, lots of it. Within a short time, everyone but the lead bikers was wallowing in a sea of mud.
For a while, I tried to avoid the worst of the mud and water as I ran along. But that was impossible. Finally, I came up to yet another lake of mud of indeterminate depth. I looked down at it, and I gave up. Instead of making even a token effort to keep my feet clean and dry, I just plowed straight through. It was oddly liberating.
Later on, there wasn’t any option. To get ahead, I had to wade (or slide, if I was going downhill) through the mud, which had been churned by the bikes to the point where it was often shin-deep. From time to time, I’d smash my toes into rocks buried out of sight underneath the surface of the mud. I was thankful for my trail shoes. Some people had their shoes sucked off their feet, but the gaiters built into my shoes had a death grip on my feet, so my shoes stayed on while I plowed through the mud.
At one point, on an unusually steep uphill section, the mud was so slippery that I couldn’t get enough traction to make the climb. I had to stop and find a stick long enough and sturdy enough so I could jam it in the mud deep enough and use it as a support as I climbed.
It was tough on the runners, but even worse for the bikers who weren’t at the front of the pack. Their bikes couldn’t make it up the hills in the mud, and it wasn’t safe for them to plow downhill, since they were totally out of control. A lot of riders quit. I passed some of the ones who didn’t, doggedly carrying their bikes over their shoulders as they trudged towards the finish.
Coming into aid stations was always fun. They were the only markers to show me where I was on the course. My favorite aid stations were located on mountaintop meadows, where they provided a short respite after a long climb. At the aid stations, I could have a shot of energy gel, refill my bottle, and get a bit of encouragement from the volunteers before heading on.
I kept it simple, and stuck with gels and sports drink throughout the race. They were enough to keep me going so I didn’t have any real bad patches where I ran out of gas. Other people ate the solid food available at the stations. Things were going well enough that I didn’t want to risk an upset stomach, though the smell of the hot soup at one station was very tempting!
I was pleased with how well I held to my pace. In an ultramarathon, most people settle into their own pace and just keep going, never speeding up much. Unless you’re up front, the race is more about competing with yourself to hold on as long as you can instead of trying to outdo the other runners. If you can keep going, inevitably you’ll start to pass people.
Starting at about 20 miles, I began to pass some of the people I’d let go at the beginning of the race. Whenever I saw someone appear ahead of me, there was no urgency to catch them. I knew that if I stayed patient and kept doing what I was doing it was just a matter of time before I’d run them down. That was very satisfying. In the meantime, they were helping pull me along. I wasn’t going to win anything, but I felt like I was managing my race well.
The course was well marked most of the way around. There were yellow tags with black arrows to direct me around turns, and to reassure me that I was on the correct path.
At one point in the middle of the race, a downhill stretch of single-track trail fed into a dirt road at an angle. The correct route was a sharp cut back to the right, one that was impossible for a bike to take at full speed. As I approached the turn, a bike whizzed by and zoomed off in the wrong direction, followed by two runners. When I got to the turn and figured out that they’d headed off incorrectly, I was able to yell loudly enough to get them to turn around.
The positive karma I built up there didn’t keep me from getting lost later in the race. I was cruising along a road, pulling ahead of a couple of runners I’d caught up with at the sixth aid station. I hadn’t seen a yellow tag for some time, but I wasn’t worried until I saw a police car in the road ahead of me with its flashers going. That was usually a sign of a crossing, not just a turn. At the same time, I could just hear the runners behind me yelling. I turned and saw them waving, back up at the top of the hill I’d just descended.
I realized that I must have missed a turn somewhere, and headed back uphill. Unfortunately, by the time I got back, the runners who had been following me had disappeared. I continued on, hoping to find the correct turn, but I never did.
As I backtracked, the road became less familiar, making me think I might not be retracing my path correctly. I was relieved to see a biker off in the woods to my left. I asked him where he was on the course, and he told me he was about a half-mile past the seventh aid station. According to the rules, I was supposed to get back on the trail where I got off. I decided I would get on the trail where the biker was and head backwards until I made it to where I lost the trail, and then I’d turn around. By doing that, at least I’d know I was on the trail somewhere, not wandering lost in the mountains.
I ran up and down a few hills and backwards through the seventh aid station, running in the opposite direction of a number of very surprised runners and bikers. After a few miles, I started to get anxious about finding the right spot to turn. By now, I’d run over 30 miles forwards and a couple miles backwards, and I was not thinking as clearly as I needed to. I got to the road crossing with the police car where I first realized I’d gotten lost, which meant I’d done a big loop and I still didn’t know how far I had to go to get back to where I first got lost. Since I didn’t really know where I’d left the trail, I talked myself into thinking I’d spent enough time wandering around, and I turned and started towards the finish.
A few people passed me soon after I started heading forward again. That made me think that I might have skipped ahead and gotten in with some faster runners. I figured I’d worry about finishing first, and sort out the results later.
I was now 35 miles into the race, and I was starting to slow down some. The aid stations began to seem farther apart than I expected. Trying to run on the hard surfaces was painful. When I reached a section of the course that was on asphalt or hard-packed dirt roads, I could feel every step, from my hips all the way down through the soles of my feet. Early in the race, it had been nice to get out of the mud and run freely for a while. But running in pliant mud has its benefits. By the end of the race, pain was making me run just as slowly on the roads as I ran in the mud. What seemed like a pretty good pace in the mud was just a slow plod out on the road.
People always ask about the pain. "Doesn’t it hurt?" ranks above even "You’re crazy," and only slightly behind "I could never do that" in the list of things people say when I talk with non-runners about ultrarunning. Yes, it hurts, but it’s almost always pain I can ignore and keep going. Pain that I ignore long enough goes away, usually when it’s replaced by other pains.
I spent the final ten miles of the race slogging along, passing and being passed by Audrey Rue Nelson from Oregon. We waded through more mud, climbed more mountains, forded flash floods in the valleys between the mountains, and made silly remarks as we passed each other. I ended up finishing about 20 seconds ahead of her. I know it helped me to have someone to run with for the last stretch of the race. I hope it helped her just as much, because later I found that she really should have finished ahead of me.
Just when I was wondering if the race would ever end, I came out of a patch of woods and found myself running across a field on the side of a mountain with the finish line finally in sight down below. I took one last slip and fall on the wet grass, then ran down the hill and crossed the finish line, after ten hours, one minute, and 22 seconds.
I stopped in the finish chute and just stood there stunned, wet, and coated in mud up to my knees. I had to readjust to having to think about what I needed to do next, rather than mindlessly engaging in RFP (Relentless Forward Progress). Mark and Karen were there to help me get my jacket on and start moving again. I poked at the post-race barbeque without really feeling hungry, and then we went back to the hotel, out of the rain at last. Mark and Karen went home, while I went in for a shower, a bit of food, and a beer.
I got in the shower, hosed off the mud, and took stock. In spite of all the water and mud in my shoes, I only had one blister, and that hadn’t bothered me at all during the race. My feet were more beaten than usual, after bouncing off more than one rock buried in the mud. They were somewhat swollen and bruised, with some scrapes on the inside of both ankles from the opposite shoe rubbing against them while I ran. The left foot was a bit more battered, with two black toenails and some skin worn off between the toes. All in all, I came through the race pretty well. My legs were a bit more tired than they would be after a marathon, but recovery followed my normal pattern and by Thursday I could walk down stairs without holding on to the railing.
The mud was memorable. The next year, at the 2004 race, they were selling muddy brown "I survived the 2003 Vermont 50" t-shirts. After he finished the race, Sean Smith posted online that "I’d never seen mud do some of the things I saw it do yesterday." Doug Freese, who had run in all of the previous Vermont 50s, wrote, "Never here, or at any other place for that matter, had I experienced these conditions for such an extended time." Doug figures he lost about an hour-and-a-half to the mud.
The week after the race was over I got the splits from the timing company. They showed that while I was getting back on the trail after I got lost, I went from 29th place at the sixth station to 20th at the seventh station. I compared my time for the seventh leg to other runners who were going at a similar pace, and I figured that even with all the backtracking, I'd probably cut my total time down by about 25 minutes by skipping parts of the course.
Because I hadn't run the correct course, I emailed the race director and disqualified myself. That hurt a bit, but even if no one else knew, I would have known that I’d cut things short, and I couldn’t let myself get away with that. The race director fixed the results in one update, then lost track somehow while making another update. I’m not that much of a saint and it’s not like I won anything, so I left it at that and today I show up as a finisher in the results posted online.
In spite of my problems, I was very happy with my race. Running on the mountain trails was much harder than the runs at Midsummer Nights and the 24 Hour, but the course was beautiful when I found time to look around, even in the rain. I had an immense amount of fun dealing with all the challenges of the race, and I had a really good stretch of calm, meditative running going before I got lost. And I was still running when I crossed the finish line, so I still hadn’t found out how far I could go.