Race Report: 24 The Hard Way (2013 USATF 24-Hour National Championship)

First, let me make one thing clear: running as many miles as possible in 24 hours, on the same loop, over and over again, is its own special type of hell. If you're looking for a "good time," look elsewhere. The race ends only when either the clock stops, or you give up. Until that point, your reward for completing a mile is . . . the chance to complete another mile. Your reward for fatigue and pain is . . . more fatigue and pain. 

So why, on earth, you may ask, would I want to do this? Well, I've been pretty quiet about running this race, because for me, this was a very personal endeavor. Here's why:

My introduction to ultrarunning was a 24-hour race (Around the Lake in Somerville, MA in 2007), and I was instantly and irrepressibly fascinated by what could be possible under such unusual rules. How many miles could somebody run in 24 hours? More importantly, how many miles could I run?

Since then, I've run ultras at many other distances, up to and including 135 miles (Badwater), but the 24-hour race always held a special appeal to me. In my mind, it continued to be a pure challenge of human limits, and one that I continued to want to test myself against.

And I did, several times, with mixed results. After a strong second-place, 111-mile performance at the Back on my Feet 24-Hour Race in 2008, under brutal heat and humidity, with virtually no shade, I failed, not once, not twice, but three times at the North Coast 24-Hour Race (the USATF National Championship race in 2010, 2011, and 2012), each time failing to make it more than 70 miles before throwing in the towel, deciding that being rewarded for my pain with more pain was no longer tolerable.

But after Badwater this past summer, and my huge comeback in the last 65 miles, I was soaking in the pool at the Vdara in Las Vegas with Chris, who's been around since I started this crazy ultrarunning thing, and when he asked me what was next, I paused for a minute. I considered the fact that I was pretty healthy and strong for once, and that the 24-hour riddle still felt distinctly unsolved. So then, with little hesitation, I told him, "24 The Hard Way - 2013 USATF 24-Hour National Championship."

So I trained with focus and confidence for the next few months, consistently racking up the miles, pushing the tempo runs, and concentrating on quality recovery. A week away from the race, I still felt a little uncertain about how this was going to go down. I would be flying solo, and with so many prior failures, history was not on my side. But on paper, I was going to show up rested, healthy, strong, and the wiser for my mistakes. Here was my opportunity; time to make the most of it.

I arrived in Oklahoma City and navigated all of the pre-race business with no major hiccups. I even got in some quality time at the Oklahoma City Monument (highly recommended if you've never been - a truly artful, tasteful, and meaningful memorial). 

One thing that I didn't do (and here is where the self-critique starts) is set very specific goals. I had a vague idea in my mind that 120 miles would be decent (at least a PR), 140 miles would be nice (solid total, and 5 miles more than the minimum to make the US 24-Hour National Team), and 160 would be super-awesome (but probably too hard). But I didn't really cement these in my mind, and I didn't hang too much of "success" on their achievement. Really, I just wanted to run respectably for 24 hours, and not drop out early, as was historically the case.

And so, a few minutes before 9 a.m. on Saturday, 25 October 2013, all of the runners gathered on the bridge just outside of the Bluff Creek Park loop, the 0.9675-mile monster that we would all battle for the next 24 hours. Make no mistake about this: while Chisholm is a gracious race director and an excellent host, the course was definitely doing this "the hard way," and not just because of the asphalt surface (traditional for a 24-hour race). With 50+ feet of gain/loss per loop, the elevation change added up to about 5000 feet over 100 miles, which eventually becomes significant. The weather was overcast and in the mid-50s at the start, but it steadily got colder overnight, and, after the afternoon rain, this was not the direction anybody wanted the temperature to take.  All of these conditions put together meant (to me, anyway, and certainly in retrospect) that this was a day to race against the competition, and survive, and not to set records or otherwise be a hero.

But of course, this is a championship race, and none of that stopped anybody from trying. So while I stayed within myself for the first 6 hours, running comfortably and barely pushing, the leaders were surging ahead. I was feeling okay, and getting comfortable with the loop, but I could feel (vaguely, since it is hard to tell where anybody is in a race like this) that I was losing ground. This was disheartening, and was further complicated by the fact that I couldn't quite get the nutrition right. My energy felt a little low, I had to pee too much, I wasn't eating enough, then maybe I was eating too much . . . On and on like that, and even though I kept going, the "comfortable groove" that I was hoping to settle into would never materialize.

All the while, I tried to suppress the negative thoughts. "Jeepers, that first hill feels like a mountain now." "Oh great, somebody else is passing me." "Yuck! Here's that spot that smells like poop again." But when you are forced to submit to the same stupid (albeit tree-lined and generally pleasant) scenery for hours and hours, you lose some mental resolve. It didn't help (alert: more self-criticism) that I hadn't been getting as much sleep as I would have liked in the week prior to the race. Not that I was falling asleep on my feet, but I just didn't have the mental energy to turn that negativity around.

But I kept putting one foot in front of the other, putting on a good show for the crews hanging around the start/finish in their makeshift tent-city, while each time I would cross the line and pass my lonely duffle bag, sitting in the grass on the side of the path, and wish just a little bit that somebody was there to encourage me, hand me fruit snacks, or even just tell me what lap I was on. Eventually, I started feeling bad for my bag, which got rained on, and then the rain froze on the bag overnight. Sometime shortly after that, I considered the possibility that I might have been losing my mind.

For everybody else's part, they were plenty courteous. Aside from one runner being rude to the start/finish folks when there was a lap count issue that affected everybody early on, and another runner who very aggressively requested AN ENTIRE CAN of Red Bull overnight, all of the other runners, including the race director, were encouraging each time that I passed. And that's all well and good, but I've heard all of that before. That brutally unbiased observer, to give me the straight story, wasn't there, and I found my resolve waning and drifting.

And so, struggling with the cold and low energy, at around 9 p.m., about 12 hours into the race, I stopped in the start/finish tent, and stared at the leader board. I was somewhere low on the list, with my 75 miles, and I imagined that everybody else was still going strong and charging hard. Laying down, under blankets and harsh floodlights, against the background hum of the generators, was what I knew how to do, and it seemed as though this would be yet another failed effort.

But I couldn't sleep, and I didn't feel that bad, so I got out there, this time in a jacket and long pants, and resumed running, about 45 minutes later. And just like that, I was back on track, knocking out the laps on the dark, dark path. 

About four hours later, my energy started falling, and with it, my confidence. I wasn't going to be able to keep this up. I stopped again.

And again, 45 minutes later, I was up and running. I marveled that not once, but twice in the same race, I could make such a significant comeback. Better yet, my legs barely felt sore, and my feet were plenty comfortable in my Nike Pegasus 29+ "Team" shoes, in green and white, which I added yellow laces to as a tribute to G-PACT, my Badwater 2013 charity, and the disease which my little sister struggles with. So maybe I could do this.

And then, another four hours passed, and I found myself with no energy, and little will to continue. I had been trying to make six laps an hour, but it was getting difficult, and having fallen off twice already in the same race gave me no confidence in my ability to continue. I had no idea what mile or lap I was on. All I wanted was for the clock to stop and the race to end. I wanted to stop running.

My stomach was shut down. The same water that I had drunk an hour ago was sloshing in my stomach. I grimly contemplated that this must be what gastroparesis feels like, and was darkly amused that I had inadvertently managed to connect to the disease and the charity cause by inducing it in myself. At the same time, I reasoned that people, including my sister, could live (albeit uncomfortably) with it, so I may as well keep on running.

And that I did, pushing through the blinding low points with slow jogging or walking until the lights came on again. I was getting a vague sense that I might be passing people and moving up in the standings. That was encouraging. But I had given up on any mileage goal. I just wanted to keep moving forward, mostly to prove that this beast hadn't won again.

Finally, the last lap came around, they handed me a flag with my number on it, and I had the next six minutes to run as much of the loop as I could before time was called. Part of me wanted to slow down or stop. But a better part of me wanted to prove, one last time, that the 0.9675-mile monster hadn't gotten the better of me. I pushed one last time up the mountain, one last time down the hill, cruised one last time on the never-ending straightaway with the maddening hill near the end, and ran one last time under the Christmas lights, still generator-lit at nearly 9 a.m. Two minutes. Push push. Then, at last, the gun. Relief. Who knows how I finished. Who cares. I could finally stop running that loop.

I trudged unceremoniously to the finish area with another runner, chattering about the race as if it hadn't been pure torture that had just ended a few minutes ago. 

And then, when I reached the finish line, and saw the results, I experienced an appropriate mix of elation and disappointment. My last surge had impossibly propelled me to third place overall, just seven miles behind the winner, and a mile ahead of Connie Gardner, of 2010 North Coast "why did you stop?" fame. But alongside that was the disappointment that I had made "only" 133 miles, narrowly missing the 135 minimum mark needed for US National 24-Hour Team consideration. 

But joy won out, and I thanked the race director copiously, before I sauntered over to my duffle bag to lug it, by myself, to my rental car, where I would go on to change my clothes, sleep in the back seat of, drive to an Indian buffet where I would eventually stop eating due not to being full, but fatigue, sleep some more, repack my stuff, and ultimately drive to the airport to catch a flight to Detroit for a work trip. Cage the Elephant was generally right:  "there ain't no rest."

Overall, a few days later, I have mixed feelings about this race. On the one hand, this is almost the most miles that I've run at one time, and certainly the fastest that I've ever run a distance this long. But my legs aren't trashed at all. This may be the first time after an ultra when I was back to normal running the next day. So I left something on the table. And with that "something" being 90 minutes of stoppage time, it's hard not to think that what I left on the table might have been the win, and the auto-qualifying spot on the US National 24-Hour Team.

But ultimately, I accomplished my basic goal - to legitimately push my limits in a 24-hour race. I survived, and, in spite of some errors, turned in a pretty solid result. 

And going forward from here, I feel even more optimistic about the future. The good thing about leaving something on the table is that you know that there's more out there, and greater potential to reach. Based on this performance, I am now more confident that, if not this year, some year soon, I will be toeing the line at the 24-Hour World Championship Race, proudly wearing "USA" across my chest. 

And beyond that, who knows. But there has to be something, and that's still a huge part of the appeal. 

So on this, my birthday, and the start of a new year in my life, I'm excited about the road ahead - especially since, health and powers above willing, I will be running it.

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 . . .

Week in Review: 20-26 March, and National Marathon Race Report

Okay, running the numbers:

20 March - 11 miles (79 minutes) around Canton, Fells, and whatever. Highlight was all of the people standing around freezing, waiting for their free first-day-of-spring Rita's (of which I was one after my run).

21 March - 13 miles (89 minutes), out to the Fed Hill run and back, not exactly running it with the group, which, given how I felt after yesterday, was not exactly bad.

22 March - 9 miles (60 minutes), Tuesday Night Track - workout of 4x(1000 @ 5K pace, 200 @ mile pace, 400m jog @ 8:00/mile pace) represented a minor miracle, as I went 4:25, 4:30+ (watch stopped), 4:30, 4:25, first time ever that after being "done," I actually came back and hit the paces.

23 March - 15 miles (105 minutes), on a rainy, vaguely miserable Wednesday night run from Canton, with tack-ons at either end. Wasn't entirely feeling this one, but wasn't feeling bad, either.

24 March - 10 miles (73 minutes), as part of my mini-taper for National, at APG, where I included a little run up and down a stupid-steep Barkley-style hill, which, given the climbing shape I'm in, didn't feel bad, and made me really wonder about doing the race for real . . .

25 March - 5 miles (35 minutes), still tapering down, passing a fire on South Clinton Street on my way back, dropping the "pace" quarter 7 seconds below 7:00/mile pace, which maybe meant plenty in the tank, or no sense of pace (yesterday's run ended with a 6:17 mile, so I was hoping the former) . . .

26 March - 27 (?) miles (181 minutes) - Okay, fine, 26.2, I guess, but with the last-minute course changes, lack of course markings, and the numerous GPS tracks reading even longer than GPS tracks typically do for this type of race, I question the accuracy with which the National Marathon course was certified. Also, dozens of times during the race, I felt bad enough to want to quit. Water under the bridge now, though, because I didn't quit, and redeemed myself after last year's debacle here.

Total Time: 622 minutes
Total Distance: 90 miles

Officially, my longest week distance-wise in 2011, capped off with a "marathon" that was 4.5 minutes short of my PR, feeling no particularly debilitating ill effects (cripplingly cramped left calf aside, but that will hopefully work itself out in time enough for my now-traditional 10 or 11 mile Sunday "recovery run"). The hidden stat here is that from 17-23 March (or up until my mini-taper), I logged 113 miles in 7 days, which might actually be a record for me (although granted, 40 of those miles were slower trail miles during the MMT Training Run).

But anyway, enough paralysis by analysis, and on to the race report:

Ever since the spring of 2006, when I entered the National Marathon on a whim, in spite of having crashed spectacularly at mile 17 of a 20-mile run just a week prior, and taking the entry mostly because Charm City Run was giving it out for free with the pair of Asics that I bought there, then proceeded to run a 3:08 and change on the then stupid-hard course that actually put runners on a rolling highway in PG County at and around the 20-mile mark (their attempt at simulating the "Newton Hills" at Boston, but really, the effect was just to make both runners and the stopped traffic irritated) . . . deep breath . . . the National Marathon has been, to me, the first running rite of spring. It's the race where I've reaped the first fruits of cold, wet, dismal days of winter training, it's the huge confidence boost that I need heading into Boston, and it's the race that I've vowed to return to every spring, from then until one of us dies.

All that said, it's been good to me, with (from 2006 forward, not on the same course every time, since the course seems to change every year) times of 3:08, 3:03, 2:59, 2:56:32 (my PR) . . . and then last year. Last year, I was supposed to pace the 3:00 group, and I gave it my best effort through 16 miles, at which point I tanked, took a bathroom break, walked a bit, and finally wound up finishing around 3:15. Which, still, compared to other crashes I've had in marathons, was a far gentler one, but, with the stakes being higher, an emotionally damaging one.

Naturally, this year, I jumped at the opportunity to pace 3:00 again. Because in case you haven't noticed, a major theme of my 2011 is redemption (if such a thing is possible) from my many failures in 2010, this being one of them. Last year, I raised the stakes here and failed, but this year, I would need to succeed to return this race to its rightful glory in my mind.

With the ghosts of last year flitting through the fog in my mind (the result of a full week of an average of 3 hours of sleep per night, something that really needs to change), I drove down at way-too-early-in the morning, and couldn't help contemplating all of this. In the pacer/elite tent before the race, I did my best to sound cheerful and confident about the prospect of hitting my ambitious 3:00 goal, while I stood next to elites (such as Falls Road's own Christine Ramsey, who went on to win the half in 1:17:01), and fielded questions from people who clearly thought my marathon PR was much faster than 3.5 minutes under the pace I was trying to hit.

To make things more interesting, nobody else wanted to take 3 hours. Sure, nobody else was signed up to do it, but considering that we had a 3:05 and a 3:10 group, surely somebody might be willing to step it up a few minutes . . . Nope. 3:00 is definitely one of those "mental block" sort of times, that seems infinitely faster than a 3:05, and adds to the pressure of the pace.

Finally, to raise the stakes as high as they could conceivably go, I would be carrying this stupid pace flag (perhaps I'll update with a picture here) and wearing a balloon on which I wrote "3:00" tied around my waist, two annoyances that had the potential to take their toll. And let's not forget the orange "3:00" bib on my back, making me a moving target for the entire race.

As we stood shivering at the start (well, lots of other people were, but I've developed quite a bit of cold tolerance this winter, so I was fine in a short-sleeved pacer shirt and shorts), I was up-front with the group that assembled around me. I told them that I had broken 3 hours here twice, on a similar course, and that I believed that, barring a bad day, I could do it again today, but no hard-and-fast promises. They joked that they would get me through it (and in a way, they did), and after a disorganized, several-minutes-late start, it was time to throw down.

I should mention that coming into this race, in spite of the high mileage and low sleep I was running on, I was feeling strong. The question was whether or not I had rested enough to be "fresh" enough for this distance at this pace. My longest run this year up to this point at a pace comparable to what I'd be doing was 15 miles, and even then, I wasn't trying to sub-7 all 15 miles. (Of course, if you believe the Brooks-Hansen philosophy, 15 miles at a fast-enough pace - which mine probably wasn't - is sufficient to run fast in a marathon, but I digress.) The point is, I had no idea how my body was going to respond to the accumulated fatigue at that pace beyond 2 hours. Today, I suppose, was a good day to find out.

I told the group if anything, I would go slow and pick it up, and, true to my word, we crossed what was, by vague consensus of GPS tracks and course markings, the first mile in a little over 7:10. Slight panic, as this was about 20 seconds too slow, but felt comfortable. We came through the GPS-consensus second mile (because there was no 2-mile course marker) on a 6:30 mile - oops. After a (GPS-measured; again, no course marker) 3rd mile at 6:35, I remarked that we needed to slow down, which was not just because the pace was too fast, but also because I started feeling hints in my legs that it might be difficult to sustain this.

Sure enough, somewhere between miles 4 and 5, the pain started. Shifting pain, in my quads, in my hips, just above my knees, just on the tolerable side of crippling, and a sign that I was clearly not "fresh" coming into this effort. This was where the thoughts of dropping out begain, every couple of minutes, as the pain pulsated and radiated. Here I was, with my 10-dollar Wal-Mart watch which just tells you the time, and no mile markers on a slightly-changed course, making me slightly uncomfortable with my progress at any given moment, surrounded by a bunch of GPS freaks, checking their watches literally about every 30 seconds and judging me, while the flag was creating unnecessary tension in my arms, shoulders, and neck, and the stupid balloon was periodically getting caught on runners behind me, pulling me back ever so slightly ever few minutes, trying to run an evenly-split near-PR time. When I thought about it that way, the thought of continuing was distinctly unappealing.

Nevertheless, thanks to this week of training, including Monday's Fed Hill run where I sped up on the way out to Ft. McHenry to pass some idiot in Nike Frees who thought he was going to house me, and Tuesday's track workout, where I came back from the dead to goal pace by the end of the workout, I had a few mental tricks up my sleeve. I made minor form adjustments to shift the pain. On the hills, I mustered my best form, powering through the uphills and riding the downhills, ultimately bringing the group back to me every time they started getting away (and there were definitely a few close calls).

At around mile 9, I passed Keith Knipling, and we made small talk about last week's training run, and then I took off - minor confidence boost. Of course, we were still not even halfway through the race, and the 1:30 half group had long since passed us (who knows what they ended up running), so emphasis on minor. And then, a man in black in headphones came up alongside me, and asked me if we were on pace. I said "I think so," and he said "you're my bus to the end," and okay, way to raise the stakes a little higher here. I felt like telling him what I had told my group at the start, that I had no idea how long I would hold on. But for some reason, the way he said what he said (and the fact that he immediately put his headphones back in, and probably wouldn't hear me) prevented me from saying it. Shortly thereafter, on yet another long, straight stretch of the course, where the apparent lack of progress makes quitting an attractive option, Ryan McGrath was on the sidelines, yelling at me to "pace that 3:00 group," and that was just enough to get me over what, in retrospect, was probably the point where I was in the most danger of dropping.

But at that time, I was far from out of the woods. Questions about the pace and the distance (everybody's GPS was consistently reading 2-tenths long, and increasing, relative to the mile markers, from about mile 5 onward) were mounting within the group, and all I could say was "I think we're on track." When we hit the half (or what they claimed to be the half) in 1:29:45, the mood within the group shifted, and I let out a perhaps-not-too-kind "there you go" in response. Assuming that the half mark was approximately correct, this was dead-on for 3:00, and everybody knew this, and suddenly, other runners in the group were offering me water and food (headphone man in black especially), and perhaps believing in the group. We pushed through to the pivotal straight stretch between mile 16 and 17, where I crashed this year. I'd be lying if I said that I didn't feel borderline about doing that this year. But oddly enough, a little magic trick I discovered here was to picture myself doing push-ups on the Perfect Pushup gadget (which I've been regularly doing since the beginning of the year), and imagine the pain of the last few. Somehow, this resulted in transfering the perception of pain at least partially from my legs to my arms, enough that I could convince myself that I was fine to keep up my current pace.

And as we passed into mile 18, and the "good" waterfront, I could feel the strength gathering, and the confidence in my pace, in spite of the physical pain, increasing. There was no way to guarantee that I wouldn't, dozens of times between now and the finish, experience the blinding pain that I felt during Club Challenge, and be on the cusp of quitting, but with about 8 miles to go, and the group gaining strength and passing all those people that went out too fast, I had this under control.

We went over the bridge without incident (sigh of relief), although I could feel my legs getting wobbly over the metal grating on the downhill, and passed the 20-mile mark in 2:16, leaving us with 44 minutes for the final 10K, and well within our goal. Still not out of the woods, though, because the nearly three-mile section along the non-scenic Anacostia, with the cold wind in your face, and the particularly cruel "turn around the bucket" at the end, was just ahead. The group, gathered behind me in a tight pack now, was pushing me through this, and as I gained momentum in this section, I could feel others start to drop back. Not surprising, since the 20-mile mark in the marathon separates the men from the boys. The man in black stuck by my side (as he had since we met - disconcertingly enough, he would actually say "excuse me" as he passed other runners to stay right on my shoulder) through this ordeal, and while I could feel my mental resolve weakening, his dogged persistence strengthened my stride with every step.

At last, we left the waterfront, and continued on the rolling road to the finish. At Mile 24 (the marker, anyway), man in black (whose name, by the way, was Daniel) thanked me for my effort and ran off, and I told him to "go for it," and one other guy, who had joined the group mid-stream after fading from his early race pace, went off with him, assisted by a bandit pacer. This left me entirely alone, as the cruel waterfront section had, predictably, caused everybody else to fall off. From here, it was a game of calculating pace against the mile markers, without the aid of the GPS-obsessives, so when I hit 25 miles at 2:50 and a few seconds, it seemed as though I had plenty of time to at least go 3:00 and some seconds in the last (mostly uphill) mile. Unfortunately, somebody's estimate was wrong, as I crossed the line, alone, in 3:00:12, 13 seconds slower than technically acceptable "pace" time, although nobody, except for the two guys who broke away from the pace group, passed me in the second half of the race.

I gratefully accepted my medal, and now, overcome with fatigue and apparent electrolyte depletion, staggered forward, coughed violently for several minutes, and then experienced the most painfully debilitating cramp in my left calf that I had ever felt, which caused me to sit down at the edge of a tent, and not get up for at least 15 minutes. In a way, this was not bad, as it was a good position for me to welcome those from my pace group who made it in near their goal time, and to chat with Keith, who finished in 3:09, and who fortuitiously had salt tablets to give me to ease the cramping. After what felt like far too long, I hobbled back to the armory to collect my things and hobble back to the car, wherever that was.

So as I write this, I assess "mission accomplished." While I would have liked to have a finishing time that looked a little prettier in the results, the fact remains that I have never felt like quitting more times in a race, but then not actually done it, than in today's race, and using every mental and physical trick in my book, I pushed through the proverbial wall, and restored this race to its former glory in my mind. This performance gave me the confidence that if I can keep up my training, and go into Boston on fresh legs, a PR (at least a small one) is well within reach. So now, if the cramping in my calf (which, in retrospect, I think I may have experienced following my 2:59 at this race) would just subside, I could go about the business of building for Boston, starting with my traditional 10 or 11 mile Sunday "recovery" run . . .