2013 TARC 100-Mile Mud Run / Deathmarch Report

It's now a little over a day since I took my last painful step on the extended mud pit that was the 2013 TARC 100-Mile Run course (otherwise unofficially known as the world's longest Tough Mudder), and I am no less ambivalent about how things went.  So this is a little more detail about how it was, and a little less clarity about how I felt. 

First, a little background.  Originally, I had planned to run the Old Dominion 100-Mile Endurance Run, in keeping with what I've done the past two years to prepare for Badwater (running the MMT 100 and the OD 100 back-to-back).  Unfortunately, I was sick with a pretty bad stomach bug the day before the race, and ultimately decided not to start.  It was a tough decision.  I would have liked to have posted here that in spite of being on my back on the floor in the airport in Bogota, Colombia, en route from Bolivia back to Washington, DC, crippled with stomach pain and drained from way too many trips to the bathroom, I managed to bounce back less than 24 hours later and finish a 100-mile race (and maybe even finish well).  On the other hand, that may have been too close to an outright miracle for it to have been even a remote possibility, and, in the interim, the race could have turned into a painful, miserable, injurious struggle. 

Enter the TARC 100, which had me at least a little more (but still not entirely) at peace with my Old Dominion DNS.  Two weeks after OD, and a month before Badwater, the timing of the race made more sense than the timing of OD.  Based on the course description - relatively tame trails with little elevation gain/loss - it seemed as though it could be a "fast" 100-mile race, which would be a good complement to MMT, which is a much slower, more technical run.  As Massachusetts' first 100-mile run, though, there was the element of the unknown.  There could be something terribly wrong with the course measurement, or markings, or organization otherwise that could have made it an ordeal.  And usually, the first time around, these events have those sorts of problems.  But the materials that were available online were detailed and thorough, and it seemed as though the race directors had everything covered, so it seemed like a risk worth taking.  Plus, at $60 to enter, including a really nice finisher's jacket, the price was right.

Pre-race logistics went as well as could be expected.  Patrick and I left from Aberdeen on Thursday evening after work, and although it rained steadily for most of our drive up, we missed any potential tornadoes or flash-floods that the weathermen were threatening.  We crashed at my friend Steve's friend Nate's place in Charlestown, slept for most of Friday, and left for the park in Weston mid-afternoon on Friday, encountering minimal traffic along the way.  After a quick run to the little grocery store and bagel place in Weston, we parked, endured a strangely long and slow line to check in and pick up our bibs, and then got dressed and ready for the race.

At the pre-race meeting (6:30 p.m. meeting, with a 7:00 p.m. race start time), the race director warned us that he had run the entire course earlier in the day, double-checking the markings, and due to the heavy rains over the past few days, there would be mud.  Not everywhere, but parts of the trail hadn't drained, and probably would not drain entirely.  He recommended just running straight through it, as opposed to rock-hopping, which was potentially slippery and dangerous.  You could say that we were fairly warned.  But running one 25-mile lap of the course, in daylight, on fresh legs, is quite different from running four consecutive 25-mile laps, at least partially in the dark, as we would all soon find out . . .

We counted down backwards from 10 to the start, and right on time, we were off.  A lead pack of about 10 of us were together for the first mile or two, but the pack began to splinter as the runners looking to win the 50-mile race really took off.  Glen, Jack, Patrick, and I were all fairly close together during the first 4.5 mile loop, and we chatted a bit about this and that (including Badwater, which Glen will be running for the first time this year, with Ian Sharman as a pacer, apparently).  For my part, it was a decent start, and I was in no particular distress.  We passed the start/finish area on our way out for the next 20+ miles of the first loop, only slightly muddy from a few relatively minor puddles.  Our false sense of security had been established.

The next section of the course was far more representative of what the entire race would be like, and was a mud-ridden, bubble-bursting nightmare.  Ankle-deep, shoe-sucking mud pits about every quarter mile, coupled with flooded streams that, in the worst cases, were waist-deep on a short person like me, ensured that our feet would be forever wet, and our footing would be never stable.  Since we were all still feeling reasonably good, we plowed through most of it with reckless abandon, but I could hear comments that this would not last, and we wouldn't be running this way later in the race.  When I ran through what appeared to be a puddle that turned out to be more of a stream, with giant, jagged rocks at the bottom, and nearly twisted my ankle as I planted my foot awkwardly on a rock and plunged waist-deep into the cold water, I was more than inclined to agree.

While the leaders gained a little bit of separation from me during the first lap, for the most part, I held my ground, even as darkness fell, and the mud hazards became even more hazardous, as it was even less likely that you could tell what you were stepping in before you stepped there. I came through the first 25-mile lap in just over 4 hours, all in all not too disheartened by the caked-on mud from my knees to my feet, and pleasantly surprised by how awesome the power-line cut looked against the reddish night sky (my most significant regret relative to this race is not getting a picture of that).  Maybe this would turn out okay.

And then, somewhere within the first 10 miles of the second loop, things started falling apart.  My stomach had been unhappy with my level of exertion for the first loop, but I kept putting food and drink in, and hoping that it would eventually level out, get tired of protesting, and fall somewhere in the background noise that is the typical ultramarathon aches and pains.  Instead, it was gradually worsening, and it soon became apparent that I would need to enter survival mode. 

For the remainder of the second loop, I tried slowing down, I tried eating more, I tried eating different things.  I tried every trick I could think of to stabilize the situation, but no matter what I did, I couldn't find a way to run for more than about five minutes at a time without feeling like my stomach was going to explode, reducing me to a slower-than-normal walk that offset any of the gains made from running.  Pushing through the stomach pain only made the inevitable crash worse, as it demanded even more nutrition than my body could reasonably provide in that state.

In this condition, the goal became to make it to at least 50 miles, as that would be two complete loops, back at the start/finish area, where my drop bag and the car were, and where I could most comfortably end what was rapidly becoming an unmanageable ordeal.  I made it back to the start/finish area at around 10 hours, for a 6-hour second loop. 

I tried to console myself with the fact that everybody was hurting now.  Hurting from 10 hours of constantly wet, muddy feet.  Hurting from intense darkness from the tall tree cover and minimal light from the crescent moon.  Hurting, in some cases, due to slipping and falling (when I passed Jack, who eventually dropped, his entire thigh was bandaged, due to a "run-in" with a tree stump). 

But at the rate at which my condition seemed to be worsening, all of this was little consolation.  More than likely, the fact of the matter was that, in spite of this being two weeks after my digestive catastrophe, I had lingering effects of the stomach bug, or some other bug in my system.  But either way, my stomach rejecting everything, and the random aches and pains that weren't race-related were indication that I was sick.  Every step I took was going to be more stress on a sick system, and going to be just a little bit more difficult and painful than the one before.

So I had a decision to make.  Drop now, or keep going?  The race director gave me the typical (albeit very energetic) "it's a nice morning just go out and walk the first 4.5 mile loop and come back here and see how you feel" line, and there is definitely a part of me that responds to that.  There's also a part of me that responded to his interaction with another runner on the verge of dropping, when another person commented that the race director should show the runner the basket with all of the bracelets of the runners who had dropped (apparently, 60 people had dropped after the first loop).  The idea that it was still possible for me to finish, albeit slowly and painfully, and keep my bracelet on my wrist, instead of in the basket prematurely, had its appeal, and of course, everybody there at the race, and associated with the race, was pulling for me, and for everybody else, to at least finish.

But stopping had its appeal, too.  At the rate that I was going, barring a miracle turn-around, it could take the next 20 hours to finish the last 50 miles.  20 hours is a long time when you're sick and tired and far from home, and, in the grand scheme of life, there are people and places that might be more deserving of your attention (for starters, Sunday was Father's Day).  And even in the event that no long-lasting damage occurs as a result of the struggle, it's still not likely to be very much fun in that state.  20 hours of what was shaping up to be meaningless suffering without a point seemed more unappealing than it ever had in any race that I had run to date.

But since I was there, and, perhaps on some level, because I hadn't given Old Dominion a try, I felt very marginally motivated to at least give this a try, against all odds, knowing full well that it would be a huge struggle ahead.  After half an hour of laying out in the morning sun, warming up and letting some food digest, I went back out there.  It took me nearly an hour and a half to walk the first 4.5-mile section of the third loop.  My stomach vaguely protested, my legs felt weak, and now that I was walking and my feet had been wet for that long, my toes were even more painfully waterlogged and/or blistered (I wasn't about to take my shoes off to see).  People were passing me, and I had no energy to keep up with them, much less pass them back.

Still, I persisted, and walked through a little over half of the loop, before I got to the Ripley 2 aid station, where there was a conspicuous doctor and equally conspicuous cots.  I took this opportunity to eat and lay down, since the doctor said that I didn't look so good.  I spent about half an hour there, and coincidentally woke up just as Snipes was sitting down at the aid station.  I got up to talk to him, and he immediately got on the "follow me and we'll finish the race" soapbox, to the chagrin of the doctor. (I later found out that Snipes and the doctor had disagreed about some things on the last go-around, so perhaps that was part of the motivation behind his response.)  As much as I didn't want to, and as much as I clearly expressed to Snipes that more than anything in the world, I just wanted to stop, I followed him and his pacer Christopher out of the aid station and onward.

We spent the next 7 or 8 miles of the loop jogging slowly on the flat sections, walking the uphills, and walking the muddy sections.  I was hanging on, but barely, and I knew in the back of my mind that sooner or later, Snipes was going to drop me.  And in the last three miles of the loop, he did, directing Christopher to stay with me at least through the end of the loop.  The company for part of the loop was nice, but at the same time, it was a constant nerve-wracking experience to wonder when my body would fail and when I would get dropped.

I reached the start/finish at the end of the third loop, mile 75, and I was in significantly worse condition than I was at 50 miles, and dropping was significantly more appealing.  I knew that Patrick was having a good day, since I saw him near the end of my third loop, and that he would be finished soon.  It was now a little over 19 hours into the race, and, at the rate Patrick was going, based on where I saw him, I figured that he would be finished in the next 10 or 15 minutes (and, as it turned out, I was pretty close to correct).  I could have just stayed at the start/finish, waited for Patrick to come in, and packed up and left.  We could have been on the road by 4 pm, home by midnight, in time for a good night's sleep in a real bed, with a full Sunday of life outside of this mud-coated fiasco.  And, in the grand scheme of life, this all seemed very sensible and reasonable.

But again, the race director told me to just give it a try, and everybody was pulling for me (and everybody else) to give it their all and finish, and again, in a very marginal sense, these forces won out, against every part of my will that was screaming loudly "stop stop STOP!"  I tried my best to brace for the worst. 

The first 4.5-mile section took me an hour and forty-five minutes this time - immensely painful, considering that it took only 35 minutes in the good old days of the first loop.  I was getting passed worse than before.  Everything hurt.  At least the weather was nice - sunny, clear, and not too warm in the shade.

Back at the start/finish, now with just over 20 miles to go, the excitement should have been palpable.  But at this point, I'm not even sure that my heartbeat was palpable.  I was a weak, broken zombie, stomach churning and toes burning.  The race director described the rest of the race as "just a long run," which struck me as the equivalent of telling somebody who's just eaten 80 hot dogs that he could easily eat another 20 more, since he already managed 80.  But apart from the previous 80 hot dogs, he did have a point.  I lingered for a bit, ate some food, and prayed for it to digest so that I would have the energy to keep moving. 

Meanwhile, Glen, who had just finished, gave me a "c'mon, this is your Badwater training!" and then jokingly offered a young girl that he was talking with (apparently another runner) as a pacer, which of course she wanted no actual part in.  I'm sure that he didn't mean for it to come off as taunting or insulting, but in his post-finish-line glow/delerium (they're nearly the same thing), and in my 20-more-hot-dogs state, it felt awful to hear, and was definitely filed away in the "retribution later" section of my brain (maybe my opinion will change between now and Badwater, and it won't stay there, but for now, there it is).

Not wanting to hear any more, I got up and staggered forward, getting ready to gradually jam those hot dogs down.  Strapping on the headlamp, I felt particularly defeated, knowing that, barring a miracle, I would be passing that way again in the dark (the volunteers were confused as to why I thought that I needed it, furthering the sense of abandonment in this ordeal). 

On my out-of-the-way walk to get my headlamp (bad planning on the drop bag location), I saw Patrick on the massage table, and the race director commented that he'd been there for the past two hours (which I found out later was only marginally exaggerated), and that I shouldn't let him get too comfortable.  Patrick said "don't worry, take your time," but I never explicitly said to him that I was fully anticipating another 8 hours before I would be back, and I think he mistakenly assumed that I was making a comeback, rather than death-marching it in.  I apologized to him then, and I'll apologize again now.

And then, I was alone again, marching down the trail, stomping through the mud.  As people inevitably passed, I moved to the side of the trail, hands on knees, defeated.  People generally offered help and encouragement, but my universal response to how I was doing was simply "bad," and I didn't take anybody's help.  Then, at one point, as I was bent over, I heard a girl who passed say "hop on the train!" and maybe it was the expression, or some combination of interesting colors and shapes in my blurring vision, but I figured, why not, I'll try one more time to get some momentum going.  I ran with Hillary for a little while, and we chatted about this and that, which was a welcome distraction.  At one point, I got ahead of her, and she apparently waited for her father, who was also running the race, to catch up, so I left her behind. 

Maybe I should have waited too, as it would have slowed the pace, but instead, I kept going, hoping momentum would take over, and not too long after, I wound up reduced to a walk again, as if that were really a surprise.  So eventually Hillary passed me again, and I tried one more time in vain to keep up, although I knew it wouldn't happen.  And then I knew I'd be walking in the next 15+ miles.

I'd say that the rest of the race was entirely nondescript ever-darkening woods, mottled with foot and stomach pain, but there were a few other things that stood out.  After Hillary passed me, and I eventually made it to the next aid station, her father showed up at the aid station just as I got there - apparently she had left him, too.  He asked if Hillary had passed me, and I said yes, I wasn't feeling so good.  Then the guy that he was running with at the time made a comment about how he "raised his daughter right" and he joked that he would never let her date a guy that couldn't keep up with her.  Again, not entirely meant to be an insult, but in my state of abject misery, the insinuations that a.) I was somehow trying to "date" her because I was running with her for a little while, and b.) I was just some jackass trying to do this run to look badass, and not somebody who legitimately works hard at and trains for this sort of thing were deeply insulting.  Strike one. 

Meanwhile, the aid station volunteer asked if I needed my hand bottle filled, and I didn't have the patience at this point to try to explain to her I wasn't sweating at all, and water wasn't going to help my condition.  When I told her no, I didn't need my bottle filled, and she insisted anyway, I handed it over, then went over to the table in the meantime to try to eat something.  After I had finished eating, I asked for my bottle, and, a minute later, she still wasn't finished filling it.  Immensely frustrating, since she was prolonging my pain, and I didn't really need it filled in the first place.  Strike two. 

As I stood there staring while she fumbled with the bottle, "raised his daughter right" guy, in his own stumbling state, stepped on my left foot, right on my toes, where they were the most raw.  Strike three.

I don't remember which choice word was my knee-jerk reaction to the blinding pain, but I know that I immediately grabbed my hand bottle from the aid station volunteer, uttered another rude phrase, and marched off as quickly as I could.  The worst part was that I knew that I couldn't keep up that fast-walk pace, and that they would eventually catch me and pass me.  And they did.

So I spent the last portion of the race very frustrated, somewhat humiliated, and entirely alone.  Somewhere in the last five miles, I finally was no longer getting passed, which was some consolation - at least at this point, nearly everybody was walking. 

And, in a final moment of petty retribution, as I navigated the mud pits that were cruelly, unintentionally placed about a mile from the finish, ensuring that all my efforts to wash my shoes in the clean streams would be defeated, who did I pass but Hillary's father, struggling because "he hurt his foot," to which I responded "we all hurt all of our feet a long time ago."  Of course, he meant, and clarified, that he had done something particularly bad to one of his feet somewhere in the last mile (which would have meant less than three miles from the finish), but whatever.  In the miserable turtle race that close to the finish, I was going to struggle to the finish line ahead of him, rather than waiting up, since, based on our previous interaction, I knew that he would do the same for me.

29 hours and 12 minutes later, this whole stupid thing was over, and I was soaking my legs in a bucket of warm water along with all of the other busted-up people at the finish line, trying in vain to scrub all of the mud off.  I'm pretty sure some of it is still permanently embedded in my skin. 

Patrick had moved my drop bag closer to the finish area, but I had no idea that he did it, and he wasn't there, so I spent 10 minutes searching for it where it used to be (sort of far from the finish line), when it was actually sitting three feet behind me the entire time. 

Right after finishing, I had this new mess to deal with.

All around me was that vague glow of the exhausted pride and relief of the finishers, who had made it in just ahead of the 30-hour cutoff time, but I wasn't sharing in it.  Patrick and I both had to get home, and my extended wilderness escapade had put us way behind schedule.  I made myself as presentable as possible, and within 40 minutes of my finish, we were in the car and headed home, via the caffeine-aided buddy-driving system (Patrick took the first couple of hours, and I took the rest, since it turned out that he hadn't slept much at all after he finished). 

We both made it back to our respective lives in one piece, and I spent the rest of the day cleaning up the car and organizing stuff and visiting with my family - you know, normal human things that don't involve meaningless suffering without a point.  Also, sleep.  After 46 straight hours of consciousness, sleep is good.

That's the story, and I'm still ambivalent about the entire thing.  I do think that very few people understand what a deathmarch in an ultra really is, and this is perhaps an opportunity to clarify that.  For the most part, an ultra turns out one of three ways for a person that runs it: 1.) Better than expected (faster and/or less painful), and a pleasant surprise, 2.) More or less as expected, give or take a bit, or 3.) DNF.  Very rarely is it the case that somebody is on track to perform far worse than expected, but continues anyway, instead of taking a DNF. 

The reason is that, as the above has most likely illustrated, when you're doing awful in a way that isn't going to respond significantly to ad-hoc attempts to address the problem (broken bone, sprained ankle, stomach illness), the only way to make progress is to reduce yourself to the slowest possible forward progress that you can manage under deteriorating conditions, and hope that that pace is good enough to at least make the finish cutoff.  This is significantly different from having a "bad patch" in a race, working through it, bouncing back, and maybe even going through the cycle a few more times before finishing.  There is no bounce-back.  There is only struggle and pain until you reach the finish line - or drop out.  And most people drop out.

And not only is a deathmarch a miserable experience in the moment, due to the associated pain and suffering, but it's also, at least in my mind, the antithesis of what running is about.  Not because you're most likely walking, as opposed to running, but because it takes away from the feeling of freedom that is one of the things that makes running so awesome.  When a run is going well, you feel as though you're in control or even transcending what you thought was possible, to make it from one place to another under your own power, at your own pace.  When you're deathmarching, you're a slave to an unresponsive body, forced to play by its slow, miserable rules if you want to get anywhere, which, considering the amount of pain, a large part of you doesn't want to anyway.

So I have the distinction of being one of the few people with the "guts" or "toughness" or whatever you want to call it to finish a race under those conditions.  And I'm pretty sure the record will show that this was the worst that I've ever finished in an ultra, since I finished 54th, out of 64 finishers, just 48 minutes ahead of the 30-hour cutoff time.  And I did feel some sense of satisfaction in receiving my finisher's jacket and belt buckle.

But at the same time, what was the point?  The race was almost uniformly un-fun past 50 miles, and the only thing I wanted during the second half of the race was to stop running.  What did I really gain from that sort of torture?  Who did I hurt or disadvantage by continuing the way that I did, for as long as I did?  The awareness of the wonderful things in this world, like showers and soap and blankets and clean sheets and people that truly love and care about you, intensified as this ordeal progressed.  Why willfully forsake those things to "accomplish" something that, from many perspectives, could be characterized as stubbornness at best, and stupidity at worst?

I don't really have an answer for any of that, and at the end of the day, this is a classic "agree to disagree" situation, which, in retrospect, was heighted by the "backup plan" nature of the race (Old Dominion was still the race that I wanted in my heart) and unfamiliarity with the course (which, by the way, although appearing to be spaghetti on paper, was immaculately marked, and you would have had to have been an idiot to get lost, and that's coming from somebody with a history of getting lost), both of which weakened my resolve in the face of adversity (although the absence of those factors wouldn't have really helped my stomach situation).

Amidst all of the perceived negativity here, I would like to point out, here in this fine print, that anybody who can mark a course that is this confusing with absolute clarity, so that not even I get lost once, is an amazing race director.  Also, that if the course had been dry, it would have been much faster and more fun.  So congrats, race directors - you did awesome.

So one last clear, unambiguous statement before I leave this for good:  Badwater is about a month away now, and if this experience had any value at all (which is still debatable), it showed that if I can persist to complete a race in a situation in which I have barely the capability to, and virtually no interest in doing so, it should at least mean that for something that I do care about, like Badwater, something awesome is going to happen, no matter what condition I show up in on race day (but hopefully, due to lessons learned here, and a little good old-fashioned luck, it will be much better than this go-around).  So if you'd like to support that sort of effort, make a donation to my Badwater charity, G-PACT, here:

http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/DavidPloskonka/david-ploskonka-badwater

And now, back to life . . .

The Best Run I Never Did

DISCLAIMER

All activites detailed in the following blog post are, as far as you know, and as far as any physical evidence that you have access to suggests, entirely fictional. Any cuts, bruises, scrapes, or torn clothing of anybody's bearing a striking resemblance to anything described in this blog post are, to the extent that you can prove, entirely coincidental.

END DISCLAIMER

Before I begin this little story, I'd like to briefly explain (but not justify) why on earth I would do something so downright stupid. Let's chalk it up to things being "weird" lately, being unsure of what to do with myself, part of me not really wanting to go home, part of me looking for a challenge as a distraction, part of me wanting to accomodate others at my own expense, and a whole lot of "let's worry about that later." And there might be some other stuff. But for the moment, that's not really the point, and in any case, what may have happened may have happened, and its only use now is as a teaching point going forward. With that . . .

A week ago today, I left my car parked at the Park and Ride at the I-95/I-495 intersection, en route to North Coast via carpool. I had originally planned to long-term park at Greenbelt, only to find that all of those spots were taken. So, in the interest of not holding up the trip, I drove to the next available place for leaving a car, parked in what may have been a somewhat questionable manner, and continued on my merry way to my race, and then Israel, all the while, in the back of my mind, I couldn't help thinking occasionally that I wasn't sure how I was going to get BACK to the car.

You see, it turns out that there is no service (other than private taxi, maybe) to that Park and Ride. And nobody was going to be around to pick me up and take me there. So, I decided to walk. From above, on Google Maps, the route seemed walkable. I arrived at the College Park Metro Station at around 1100, after a 12-hour flight, a 2.5 hour layover, and another hour flight.

Not to spoil the surprise too much, but to illustrate what happened, here was my actual route (sorry, HTML, like most basic features on Blogger, is "borken"; you have to copy and paste):

http://www.mapmyrun.com/routes/view/51736190/

The squiggle on the screen is pretty much meaningless, especially without the topographic view, so allow me to explain what happened. But first, let me mention that I was carrying all of my stuff from the trip (about 40 pounds of whatever), some in a backpack (about 10 pounds), but most (about 30 pounds) in an awkward shoulder-slung duffle bag, thereby increasing the baseline agony by about 30%.

The first thing I did, predictably, was to go the wrong way from the metro station. At this point, it wasn't raining very hard, so the consequences, other than the time it took to walk a little over a mile all the way down to the anything-but Good Luck Road before I realized my mistake, were minimal. Of course, right around the time that I realized what I did wrong, the rain started coming down harder. I took cover under a bus shelter, hoping that it would pass. Half an hour later, it did not. I decided that I was going to have to move, and move quickly, if I was ever going to get back to my car. I put as much stuff as I could inside as many plastic bags as I had at my disposal, and, when the rain let up slightly, I made sort of a break for it, as fast as one can break with that much extra weight.

Keep in mind, that if you're in the rain long enough, there is no such thing as a "light rain." It's either raining or it's not. Eventually, you get soaked all the way through. This eventually happened somewhere between the Metro Station, where I started, and the University of Maryland College Park campus. This was about when the rain temporarily stopped, although not long enough for any of the standing water to dry, so I was getting sprayed by passing vehicles about every five minutes or so, ensuring that my clothes (a button-down plaid shirt, and "destroyed" skinny jeans - this will become relevant in a bit) never got any dryer.

In retrospect, the walk through the UMD campus was the best part of this misguided journey. Although at this point, a little over halfway through the trek distance-wise, I was getting tired, and shifting the duffle bag from shoulder to shoulder more frequently, the terrain (other than the blasted climbs from one side of campus to the other) was pavement or concrete, a luxury that would soon pass . . .

. . . when I reached the first questionable part of this route. On the map, it appeared that there was a road cutting behind one of the agricultural buildings. In reality, there was . . . behind a fence that separates UMD's agricultrual utopia from the rest of crappy old regular nature. Seeing as to how I was right near the entrance, and getting caught here would cause far greater problems, I instead chose to bushwhack along the fence into a neighborhood bordering ag-world. There was a semblance of a trail that somebody may have once used for this purpose, but it was long-since overgrown, and there were plenty of opportunities to cross mini-streams and get thorns in my sandal-shod, ill-protected feet (and, for good measure, one branch-poke in my right eye that dislodged my contact lens). I snuck around the side of somebody's house (I don't think they were home anyway), then dashed through the yard into the public street before anybody but the mailman across the street (who, like everybody else in the world, clearly didn't care that I was walking along soaking wet with huge heavy bags) was the wiser.

Now it looked like smooth sailing - up the road in the neighborhood, cut through the wooded area behind these houses, Park and Ride, profit. Except that as I began to climb yet another stupid hill, the realization that this wooded area was probably part of ag-world hit me. Which meant more fences, probably. As I cut down to the pool (also marked off-limits, but guarded only by a gate to stop vehicular traffic), the fences came into view, and I just about cried and gave up hope. I dropped my bags on the front step of the pool house and sat for about fifteen minutes, being wet and sad and thinking about admitting defeat. As if the universe knew it had me on the ropes, it started raining even harder. Then I decided that I had come too far, and victory was so close on the map, that I needed to at least try to find a way through. I left my bags and scouted the area. To the right of the pool house was a lower section of fence, thanks to the buildup of sand and other silt-like material in front of it. Conveniently, the barbed wire on the top was down.

I thought a few times before I did this. I double and triple-checked the map. I lowered my backpack to the other side of the fence, hesitated, brought it back over to the legal side, and did a test-climb of the fence. I knew that once I dropped my bag on the other side, there would be no going back, and I had no idea what was coming next. But knowing that I could climb over the fence gave me at least some confidence that I might really be able to get back if I needed to.

I dropped my bags over the side, then my sandals, and then I straddled the fence. Mistake. While I was busy being preoccupied with the downed barbed wire, my pants caught in the barbs on the top of the fence. Perhaps I could have been more graceful about this, but as this was a major turning point, and nothing was going to stop me from gaining the other side of the fence, I pushed over, and ripped through my jeans and my boxers, about three inches down from the crotch along the inseam. There may be a few other catches in the seat of the jeans, too. Good thing they were "destroyed" to begin with - now I can wear them a bit more legitimately.

Smelling victory at last, I crested a small berm, and slid down the other side, cursing the awkward bags as I struggled to stay upright. Back on a road - hooray! A gravel road, of course, but one that was on the map, with recognizable landmarks on either side. I could even see where I was going to cut across . . .

And just to taunt me a bit more, I cut across right in front of the bee keeping zone of ag-world. Yes, somehow, even though it was raining, a bee stung my foot. Hooray. I pressed on towards - yep, you guessed it, another fence. This one was taller, and I was going to have to toss my bags over. Except not really, because, having learned that pretty much anything will stick on the barbs at the top of one of those fences, I just lifted them up and over, let them hang, and then rolled over the "safe" zone that I created with the bags, thereby not ripping my jeans any further. I had to damage the fence a bit to get my bags down, since I wasn't tall enough to lift the duffle bag high enough to get it off of the barb. So now one of them is bent down. And, for good measure, I decided to relieve myself on that fence, since I thought it would be the last one.

But wait - one more. The seemingly easy road from the area where all of the road construction equipment was hanging out to the Park-and-Ride was gated, and the gate was shut. Fortunately, this was a padlock on a chain, chained loosely enough that I could slide my bags through the opening, then climb up and over the chain myself (of course, not without the requisite cuts and scratches on the hands that come from this). Miraculously, my car was still there, albeit with a warning and a ticket on it for (allegedly) parking outside of a designated space. That's all for later, though - for now, my prize was braving 3:20 p.m. DC-area traffic in pouring rain (that means two hours to go 30 miles . . .)

So, to recap, that was an incredibly stupid 6+ mile venture that left me muddy, bruised, scratched, and stuck with thorns that I'm still picking out of my feet with tweezers. And probably it would have made a lot more sense to cab, or call a friend desperately for help. But then again, there are some situations in which you get in too far, and there's no turning back, and you're the only person you can rely on to pull yourself through. And really, in a situation that's this stupid, where you're the only one at fault, you really shouldn't drag anybody else into it. (Which in this case created this bizarre side effect of being, at a glance, part of civilized society, and yet actually drifting through the world as some sort of ghost, everybody looking right through you, having absolutely no idea what kind of trouble you're in. Although, in a less immediate way, that's not all that strange.) This was one of those situations. And while the overarching lesson is to keep yourself out of this kind of trouble in the first place, the secondary lesson here is that if you do find yourself in too deep, you've got to find a way to slog through that mud, and climb those fences, because sometimes, you're the only person that can (or should be expected to) help you. (Plus, in a strange way, that was all kinda fun . . . emphasis on "kinda" . . .)

Week in Review - 3-9 April, and Bull Run Run 50-Mile Race Report

Comin' atcha now with that blah blah blah:

3 April 2011: 8 quasi-slow Canton/Fells/Fed Hill miles (60 minutes) in the morning, and a faster reprise (9 miles, 60 minutes) in the evening.

4 April 2011: 1 stupid mile, in about 10 minutes, in bare feet around Patterson Park, carrying my dress shoes, with my keys and phone in my pockets, post-Sara's-recital, keeping the streak alive.

5 April 2011: About 9 miles (65 minutes) at TNT, including the following workout: 4x(600m hard, 200m jog rest, 400m hard, 200m jog rest, 200m hard, 200m jog rest). First run in Asics Pirahna SP 3s, 4.6-oz miracles which can be summed up with two words: SO FAST. Oh yeah, workout times: (2:02, 77, 37), (2:12, 81, 37), (2:08, 83, 44), (2:08, 81, 37). (Yes, note the trend of the first set being fast, then getting slower, then getting faster again - I really think I have a mental block about the track sometimes, but that's a topic for another post.)

6 April 2011: 16 miles (conservatively; 1 hour, 53 minutes), in part with the Wednesday night Canton Square crew, and in part on my own, running at dusk in dangerous places like East Monument Street, and being called a black boy's "n-word." Street cred, yo.

7 April 2011: Orioles magic, as they come back from 2-0, 4-2, and 5-4 to defeat the Detroit Tigers 9-5. Went there, saw it, bought a 40-dollar "on-field" official home team hat. Oh, and because my running streak needs to stay alive, 2 miles (15 minutes) around Patterson Park just before midnight, just beating the buzzer.

8 April 2011: Pre-furlough(-that-never-came) madness at work, combined with pre-Bull-Run-Run traffic that make a 2 hour drive take a little over 3 hours (thanks DC-area highways on a Friday at around 6), so this was another stupid mile (10 minutes), around the Hemlock Overlook camp.

9 April 2011: 54 miles; Bull Run Run 50-Mile in 7 hours, 28 minutes, 50 seconds, 10th overall, plus a mile and a half warmup (10 minutes) and a mile and a half warmdown (10 minutes), and later, a mile just because, well, you'll see in my totals . . .

Total Time: 812 minutes (not a very round number)
Total distance: 100 miles (a round number)

Before I get to the (probably epically too-long) race report, you'll notice that this was the week of stupid mileage. Lots of elsewhere-in-my-life activity happened that precluded some of the running that I had planned. On the other hand, I knew I had a 50-mile chunk coming in on Saturday, so ironically, even though this was officially my highest-mileage week in 2011, it was also, in some ways, my "easiest" week in 2011, relative to my recent activity. It was also a lot of fun, running stupid short distances at stupid times. Definitely not something to do as serious training runs all the time, but maybe something to incorporate now and then, because just running randomly for about 10 minutes is a different (and often surprisingly fun) way of doing business.

Okay, now for the race report:

I'm going to try to simplify and shorten as much as possible here, because in a way, Bull Run was a very simple race for me this year. Okay, fine, my goal for the race was a bit ambiguous and complicated:

1. Run at least as fast, or faster than last year (most likely meaning a time between 7 and 8 hours), but feel much stronger doing it.

2. Win prizes.

3. Have fun.

As such, coming into the race, with the help of the illustrious David Alan Snipes, I put together an all-male "team" to compete for the "fastest male team" prize (fleece blankets). The team was Matt Bugin (at Dave's recommendation), John Cassilly (Matt's running buddy), Jack Pilla (who won Vermont in 2009, in just over 16 hours, and who Sara, who was working the finish line aid station then, thought was me, because him and I look similar, although he is 52), and me. We were all looking to run in the 7-8 hour range, so I felt that our team would be pretty competitive, even with the "WUS" teams, which are typically stacked with the fastest runners, in the mix. This was all in keeping with goals 2 and 3 above (particularly the team's name, "Equipo de Deportes," or, in English, "Sports Team," the best I could come up with three hours before team registration closed).

The drive to the race was not fun, as it took nearly 3 hours, but fortunately, even though I showed up half an hour after dinner ended, I was still able to pick up my packet and eat leftovers in the lodge, while I caught the end of the pre-race briefing, and met with my teammates for the first time. None of us actually knew each other, other than online (except for Matt and John), so it was a little awkward and first, but being the non-psycho version of ultrarunners, we were all cool, and Jack's wife (who runs, but is still recovering from surgery, so was crewing for Jack during the race) was also cool, so I knew that everything would be cool. (Cool.) Jack and I retired to our respective cars early for sleep, and Matt and John slept in the cabins (although Matt got fed up with somebody's snoring in the middle of the night, and moved all of his stuff out to his car and slept there instead).

I woke up at 5:15, 15 minutes later than I do on a normal workday, after having gone to bed at 9:00, hours earlier than I do on a normal workday, so I felt a lot fresher than I usually do in the morning. After a disgusting breakfast of half a sesame-seed bagel with peanut butter, 3/4ths of a muffin, and some water, I ambled down to the starting line, and got up front with the rest of our team, which, although there was no requirement to do so, packed up to run together at the start.

It became quickly obvious that Jack was going to take off and do his own thing, but Matt, John, and I stuck together in a loose pack for about the first ten miles. This brought back cross-country memories, as we traded the lead, talked trash, pushed each other through the tougher spots, and turned on the intimidation factor as we passed other runners in a group. The trail got muddier and muddier closer to the turn-around, and both Matt and I were wearing MT101s (in black), which are awful on mud, while John was wearing some sort of heavy shoe with giant lugs, so he would pass us on the muddy sections, we would curse his lugs, and then scramble to make up the distance on the dry sections.

As the trail got dryer as we neared the 16-ish mile mark (the start/finish area, and beginning of the second out-and-back), Matt and I put some distance on John, and we chatted about running philosophy, work, life, the universe, everything. Matt and I are the same age, and although Matt hasn't been running ultras for as long as I have, I found we were very similar in a lot of ways, which was really reassuring, and a huge mental boost in a race like this. I probably should have mentioned, at the start, that goals 1 and 3 were potentially in conflict, in that running on the slow end of what I thought would be doable would be an "also-ran" performance, while running on the fast end would most likely be top-ten. So, in the interest of every race being a little scary (and therefore, on some level, a growth experience), the fact that I was running very comfortably with somebody who I could really relate to was mostly easing that fear. That said, Matt has a lot more experience on trails than I do, and he finished top-10 at Holiday Lake (my first-race-of-2011 learning experience/disaster), so there was still an element of intimidation factor, particularly at any point where he would temporarily take the lead, or zoom down a hill that I was approaching more cautiously.

Our comfortable pace continued towards the marathon mark (as it turns out, Matt's entered in the Boston Marathon this year - it will be his first one - do the similarities ever end?), and it was about this time in the race that we finally started to chase people down. In these races, typically the faster guys go out hard, slow down in the middle, and then find something left at the end. Matt and I had been going at a pretty steady pace all day, and while Matt was concerned that we would never see anybody, I reassured him that if we could hold steady, we'd gradually make up ground. Sure enough, we started picking off runners in front of us, including Keith Knipling as we climbed one of the short-but-vicious back-half hills. Matt decided that he wanted to pass authoritatively, so we bombed down the hill faster than I would have liked, but I was still hanging in, so, whatever.

Then, when we got to the "Do Loop," a 3-mile circuit through leaf-covered, short, steep, zig-zagging hills, Matt fell apart. I didn't realize that I had dropped him until about halfway in, when I noticed that I was no longer hearing footsteps behind me, and I thought his calf was the problem. As it turned out later, his nutrition was the issue - not enough calories (been there, oddly enough, at Holiday Lake this year). So now I was running alone, with only the crew teams on the lake and the aid station volunteers as human life, and I was vaguely worried. I pulled back on my attack on the jack-knife hills, worried that maybe I would also burn out. After all, thanks to my unintentional taper, there was no way of knowing how much I had left in the tank - maybe I just felt good because several days this past week, I ran only a mile or two, but I didn't have enough to go 50 miles at this pace on this kind of training/rest. I recalled that we hit the marathon mark in 3:43, which would be on pace for a 7:06 50-mile - the aggressive end of my time goal. Finally, as I approached the aid station at the end of the loop, I decided to take the advice of an aid station volunteer earlier in the race, who, seeing me staring at the table with a puzzled look as I pondered which cookies to eat this time, and whether I needed to eat something saltier than that, told me that I was "thinking too hard." Bottom line was that I was feeling good, and I needed to just keep running.

So I did, and then I started passing the hundreds of people who were still on their way out. I smiled at each one of them and told them "good job" as they passed, because it's the good-person thing to do, and because I was wearing my Natural Vitality t-shirt and hat, and wanted to make my Badwater sponsor proud. (Incidentally, the cotton/hemp fabric blend for the t-shirt? Really awesome cool-ish weather running wear; who would have thought?) As I neared the 40-mile mark, I sensed that this could be where the big crash might happen, so I kept smiling and looking as strong as people were telling me I was looking, because that way, if there was pain, I wouldn't feel it. One woman asked me what it was like to be young and fast, and then told me that "it looked good on me." Other than that, no particularly memorable comments, just lots of runners showing a lot of grit in being out there for that long.

I reached the aid station 10 miles from the finish, still not having passed any runners in front of me, but a man at the aid station told me that there was a runner not too far ahead, so this spurred me on for the next 5-mile stretch. Over that stretch, I passed him, and I also passed Aaron Schwartzbard, one of the WUS runners that Matt had mentioned that he wanted us to pass, so I felt a little disappointed that Matt wasn't there to share in this kill (although it was a bit anti-climactic, because Aaron was dying and actually very politely let me pass, as I was power-walking an uphill, before I even got right up on him). I reached the last aid station, about 5 miles from the finish, still feeling pretty good, but really wanting to use the bathroom.

Here were the final gambles. I knew there were port-a-pots ahead, near the soccer field, but I didn't know how much distance I had on people behind me, or whether or not somebody would try to make a move. I also wasn't sure how much food I needed to prevent a late-race crash, a la Holiday Lake, and it would be awful to have this effort end with a 20-minute final mile (or 40-minute final two miles) and blow my race. I decided that 3 Oreos was enough food for 5 miles, and that I would play the bathroom thing by ear. As it turned out, the 3rd Oreo was either at my limit, or one too many, because I spent the last 5 miles on the verge of vomiting. I also decided that the port-a-pot, although very tempting, was something that I could handle after the 3-ish miles left to finish, and uncomfortably passed on the opportunity. I felt okay about this, because I had completed the previous 5-mile stretch in about 40 minutes, so if I could hit 40-ish minutes on this, I would be flirting with sub-7:30, and it's nice to be under a number like that. As I neared the finish line (which I knew because I remembered that the bluebells get denser about a mile from the end), I was finally relieved that the "crash" that I had expected from previous 50-mile races, had not come, and was unlikely to come at this point. On the last steep climb to the end, I passed Jack, coming down the hill after his race, who told me "no walking!" on the hill. So I muscled up the longest, steepest hill in the race as fast as I could, and as it turned out, this was a good thing - I finished in 7:28:50, 10th place (in the top-ten visor, as no prize money is involved here), an uncomfortably narrow margin ahead of the next guy, who finished just two minutes behind (and just over 7:30).

As it turned out, Jack finished in 6:49:57, 4th place, setting a new over-50-years-old course record by a huge margin, and John came in not too long after I did, in 7:37:10, good for 14th place. Then the three of us stood around and worried about Matt, who John had passed, and said that he looked bad. To our very pleasant surprise, Matt came jogging in at 8:01:02, 24th overall - not bad for his first 50-mile race. So now the waiting game began, because the all-male WUS team's fourth was supposedly a 9.5-hour 50-miler, but their fastest runner, Matt Woods, set the course record in a blazing 6:08:14. Finally, enough time elapsed that it was mathematically impossible for them to win, and we all celebrated with hamburgers, hot dogs, cookies (ew, SO MANY COOKIES), and, best of all, sitting down.

The fact that we won the team competition was especially gratifying, since the WUS team was trying to stack the competition to win the male, female, and co-ed awards. As such, they couldn't put all of their fastest guys in the male team, or else their co-ed team might be too slow. In any case, some of the race organizers vaguely resented this type of prize-engineering, so a team of four people who only vaguely knew each other, and had a collective 1 prior finish, but came together to push each other to better races, and ultimately winning, was the feel-good story of the two minutes when they were actually thinking about it. So there.

But the real bottom line in all of this (besides the fact that blankets are an awesome team victory prize, because we were all very cold) is that I felt really great for the whole race, thereby accomplishing goal #1, arguably the most important of my goals. In a way, I feel bad about my performance, because it was, by some standards, "lazy," especially considering how many people laid it all out there today at this race, and at the American River 50. On the other hand, I am still walking normally, and feel as though I didn't just run 50 miles, which is really important for training through and running well in Boston. And all of that (which wound up being really long, sorry) can be summed up in two words that are becoming staples of this blog lately: Mission Accomplished.