A week ago I finished my running of Tom’s Run - a 200 mile relay race hosted by the Coast Guard. It is run from Cumberland, MD to Washington, DC along the C&O Canal towpath. I had set out to run the back hundred - from Williamsport, MD to the end. I managed 63.8 miles over about 20 hrs. It is not the result I’d hoped for, nor the experience I’d prepared for, but it was unlike anything I’d ever done, and I’m thankful for it.

I don’t think it’s particularly useful to dwell on the pain - both of the distance and the injury I sustained. Yes, it eventually brought me to a standstill, sapped my strength, and overwhelmed me. But pain is part of this sport, and you either accept it or find something else to do with your time.

Nor do I think it is particularly useful or even cathartic to relive each leg of the run - not many people will run that entire distance, and experiences will vary so radically that a recounting serves only to document, not instruct. It is a beautiful run, punctuated by hordes of bloodsucking insects, breathtaking scenery, and miles and miles and miles of flat runnable trail.

Instead, I find myself returning repeatedly over this last week of introspection to two aspects of this run which have offered me insight into myself. And, although there is a risk of narcissism in revealing them, there is also much here that may resonate with others who’ve done, or will do, similar things.

I’d prepared myself over many long runs, through accounts of other runners, and through other conversations, for emotional intensity. I knew that as the miles and hours piled up, the regulating functions of the external self begin to break down. I’ve been there, I know this, and it is one of the aspects of this sport that fascinates me. This run was something different.

Partly because of the anticipation of running my first hundred, partly because of the injury I sustained early on, and partly I suspect because I simply anticipated it, I started to lose emotional control about 45 miles into the run. It was subtle at first, elegiac or nostalgic in turn, tempering my perception of what was going on. I tried to hide it - perhaps not as successfully as I thought at the time - from my crew.

As my time on the trail grew, I would find myself suddenly and completely lost in myself, tears streaming down my face, gasping for breath, before slipping as suddenly in the other direction - face and spirit hardened, focused, determined. It seemed as extraordinary then as it does now. I began to ascribe great value to little things, things that in the everyday world would mean nothing: the precise distinction between a half a mile and three quarters of a mile or the temperature of the air.

Everything became raw and unfiltered. It’s what I want from this sport; it’s one of the reasons I do it. But, faced with it - unrelenting, unmediated, pure - it is awesome.

By the time I stopped, at 3:15 or so on Saturday morning, I had nothing left. That too was a first, and perhaps the deepest learning from the experience. Rhetoric aside, humans do have limits - they’re not the ones we think, or even necessarily the ones we aspire to, but we do have them. The question always must be: have I found mine, and is there something even beyond that?

I had a four person crew on the trail with me. According to the rules of the run, I always had to have a biker with me, which left three people to pack and unpack, navigate to the next aid point, to provide medical help, nutrition, motivation, humor, and compassion. All this is fairly standard stuff for long distance running crews. Nothing in the actions themselves was unusual.

I am, by nature, an introvert. I gain my strength from solitude, and therefore ultrarunning is an ideal sport for me. I can spend many hours alone on a trail and feel energized at the end. So, running with a crew was a new thing for me. I had a little taste of it earlier on a fifty mile run, but with only one person and lots of time between meetings.

It is commonplace in race reports to praise one’s crew, their efforts, dedication, and sacrifice. All true for sure, and the depth of my gratitude is - currently - inexpressible. I hope that someday I’ll find a way to repay it. I truly hope so.

This run taught be something that I needed to relearn - about myself and those I’m lucky enough to call my friends. I rediscovered that there is a world of difference between the casual and the profound, the surface and the deep, and the ephemeral and the solid. I spent 20 hours learning anew how to appreciate friends - not as people you like and enjoy spending time with (as important as that is), but as fellow explorers of limits and extremes, as people who see what is really there, and to whom you have only your unvarnished self to offer.

These people now know who I am. For one whose relationships are guarded and few, this is - perhaps - the greatest gift the pain of those twenty hours could bequeath.

Long distance runners must run for themselves. There is no room for pretense otherwise. They must decide when to start, when to stop, how far to go. And only they know why.

This experience has added to my why. I strive not only to know myself, my limits, my mind, but now - also - to connect to those that matter. Like a fish suddenly released from an aquarium into the sea, it’s scary but limitless. What more could anyone want? Or need?

"I wasn’t a truly genuine trail ultrarunner until March 7, 1992 at the
Wild Oak 50 near Harrisonburg, Virginia.  It was a rainy day and
simultaneously, while I was piddling on the run, chewing on an energy
bar and washing it down with Mountain Dew, my nose was dripping and I
farted.  That was the ultimate defining moment in my trail running
career, if not my entire life."
- Bob Boeder

"Perhaps the genius of ultrarunning is its supreme lack of utility. It makes
no sense in a world of space ships and supercomputers to run vast distances
on foot. There is no money in it and no fame, frequently not even the
approval of peers. But as poets, apostles and philosophers have insisted
from the dawn of time, there is more to life than logic and common sense.
The ultra runners know this instinctively. And they know something else that
is lost on the sedentary. They understand, perhaps better than anyone, that
the doors to the spirit will swing open with physical effort. In running
such long and taxing distances they answer a call from the deepest realms of
their being -- a call that asks who they are ..."
- David Blaikie

"The people that I have met are not foolish; they are aware of how
tired and cold and hungry and frightened and hurting and discouraged
and disoriented and how possibly injured they will become. They know
they will face great physical, mental, emotional, and possibly
spiritual challenges as they make their way to the finish. This is
what they are racing against. This is their challenge. This is what
I admire."
- Carolyn Erdman

"The race continued as I hammered up the trail, passing rocks and trees
as if they were standing still."
- Red Fisher, Wasatch '86

I woke up this morning at 5.43, and instead of grunting and going back to sleep, I reached over, turned on the radio, and watched the clock move towards 6am. As the nine resolved into a zero, I thought ahead one week. That’s when I’ll be starting: 6am next Friday.

Tick tock, or in this world of digital,”…. ….”

I ran 20 miles yesterday as my final long run before the 100 in two weeks. I mixed things up a little, partially to test out a couple of things (like whether or not I’d hurl drinking Ensure (turns out: no)) and because I wanted to go easy and slow (and so ran just with water and s-caps instead of Accelerade). I left in the late afternoon and finished 4 hrs +.

It was, without a doubt, one of the worst runs of my life. I can’t explain it. I mean, I know what variables were different, but some of what went wrong just couldn’t be so easily explained away. It is true that my legs could still be wiped out from the 50M a few weeks ago; that going from a protein based drink to water confused my body’s chemistry; that introducing something like Ensure further confused me; that dinner and wine from the previous day still hadn’t processed; that I didn’t take an Advil; and that I forgot (how, I’ve no idea) my glide.

But 12 miles in I was done. Feet hurt, ankles hurt, attitude pinwheeled from ecstatic to depressed. In other words, a truly crapalicious slog.

My mental game around the 100 hasn’t been a problem. I’ve been all systems go. This worries me a bit, so I’m going to ratchet back and give my body (and my mind) a little time to pull themselves together.

Then. Well, then, I’m back in the game.

Every runner, or at least every runner of a certain sort, has in his or her mind crucible runs. These are explorations more than anything. They are self-designed to lay bare what makes you do what you do. Crucible runs aren’t necessarily about distance; they may be about terrain, or those you’re running with, or speed, or whatever. But all share a common characteristic: success or failure. One or the other. Crucible runs don’t allow for gray areas.

My first crucible run was in 1998 with the marathon.  My second, in August of last year, was Catoctin.  Saturday was my third - 50 miles.

With Deb riding and handling logistics, and on the hottest day of the year so far, we started at 5.30 on Saturday in Brunswick, MD and finished 13 hours and 7 minutes later in Washington DC.

Like all moments before you put that foot forward and step into the unknown, I approached Saturday with a combination of excitement and trepidation. I knew that mentally I was ready, physically - with my recent achilles problems - I wasn’t all that sure. I didn’t sleep well the night before and when the alarm went off at 3.30 I was happy to get up, grab a shower, slam back a double espresso, throw a not insignificant amount of gear into the truck and get going. Deb was ready, her bike already in her yard waiting for me. We threw yet more gear in, and got underway.

We arrived at Brunswick at about 5.15. It was cool, dark, slightly humid, and smelled overwhelmingly of spring. It was nice. We spent a few minutes getting me prepped, going over the strategy for the next 13-14 hours, and we got underway.  Deb took the truck and leapfrogged me to the next checkpoint, and then planned to ride back to me.  This technique, by the way, worked pretty well for the entire day.

It was great way to start the run. My headlamp lit up a nice oval in front of me, and I could focus on that while listening to the wildlife waking up. Just as the sky started to lighten, I saw a couple of deer herds, and then there was an absolute cacophony of hoots, whistles, squawks, grunts, banging, and overall auditory mayhem. It sounded like everybody was waking up and the same time, and everyone had - upon opening their eyes for the first time -  seen something unimaginably surprising. I ran for a few miles just marveling at it all.

And for the first couple of legs I was sufficiently distracted by my surroundings to ignore the little twinges of pain that are part and parcel of all of my running ventures. Deb would appear out of the long green tunnel ahead of me, come up along aside and we’d talk until we hit the transfer point. We got very good at getting the basics of my survival worked out before the heat hit.

Then the heat hit.

Taking a cue from Tom’s Run last year, I ran all of the segments after about 11.00 until the end with a bag of ice under my hat. Deb would arrive just as I was realizing my former ice could be used to cook ramen, and I’d swap it out for a new bag and carry on my merry way. Ice was critical, and it will be in a month as well.

The running itself was as it always is for me: slow, steady, disciplined. I adopted a 25/5 strategy for the first 25 miles, and although I had planned to keep that going until the end, the heat was simply not going to make the possible. Deb and I agreed to slow me down to a 20/10 approach and see how that went. It went fine, but I found myself adopting more of a 15/15 in the last 10 miles or so. Partially it was the heat, and partially I was just damn tired.  I did the first half in just under 6 hrs, and the second half in a little over 7 hrs.

There were a couple of relay races going on on the course which screwed up my mojo a bit. People flying past, doing their 6 or 8 mile leg. I so much prefer to run without any distraction, and these folks made some segments really, really tough.

The scenery was gorgeous. The entire course was along the C&O Canal, and the bluebells, and dandelions, and even the stinging nettle was in full and glorious bloom.

Surprisingly, it’ll require a little more effort to tease out of this run everything I want to, while recognizing that sometimes a run - even a crucible run - is just a run.