First 50 Mile: Heartland 50 2012

“I hope it rains its ass off on you all night, and I hope you have to poop twice.” My husband had quite the way of sending his wife off into her first 50-mile race.

His well wishes were based on the two concerns that I voiced on the 2.5-hour drive to Cassoday, Kansas for the start of the Heartland 50. First, I worried about rain. Every few minutes I checked the radar on my phone. The 100-mile runners—who started 12 hours before the 50 milers at 6 a.m.—had been hammered by several waves of heavy downpours and lightning throughout the day. Now, one final wave formed south of Wichita and pushed its way up the Kansas Turnpike, taking precise aim on Cassoday.

My other concern was the night-race element of the Heartland 50. Because the 50- and 100-mile races are run on the same out-and-back course, the race organization made the decision in 2011 to start the 50-mile race in the evening. That way, the 100-mile runners would have more people on the course to keep them company, and both races would be hitting the finish line within the same window.

Starting a race at 6 p.m. brought with it a host of questions: How do I eat during the day? What will my body do when it’s time to go to bed but instead I’m four hours into a ten- or 12-hour run? And what if I got into the kind of situation that Rick had encountered in one of his night races, involving multiple trips off road to … well … poop?

Thus, Rick’s wishes were bestowed upon me as we approached Cassoday, Kansas, “Prairie Chicken Capital of the World”. So it has been said, so it shall be done.

Somewhere Under the Rainbow

At 5:20—forty minutes from go-time—race director Kyle Amos attempted to call the pre-race briefing to order in front of an ominous curtain of billowing clouds and blackened sky. But as the strong gust-front hit the huddled mass of runners and gumball-sized raindrops smacked each of us in the face, he waved his hand in the direction of the muddy parking lot. “Go. Run back to your cars.” We all scattered.

For the next 30 minutes I sat in the Jeep, covered in goose bumps, trying to remind myself that at six o’clock I would start running 50 miles. It didn’t feel like it was going to happen. As the torrential downpour gave way to a steady rain, runners reemerged from their vehicles and moved back toward the start/finish area. It was time.

Rain moves away from the start of the 50-mile race.
(Photo Joell Chockley)

After the short briefing, the rain tapered to sprinkles, golden sunlight broke through the clouds in the west, and a full rainbow arched over the course. Kyle stood in his quiet way beside the timing clock, waiting for it to turn over to 12:00. We waited in awkward silence for some kind of indication that we should start running, and finally Kyle simply shooed us off: “Okay, you’re done. Go. Go run.”

We ran a quarter-mile on pavement, then turned onto the mushy gravel roads that would become so familiar over the next 50.5 miles. It occurred to me that I hadn’t used the port-a-potty to empty my nervous bladder before the start of the race because of the rain, so when I spied a stand of cedar trees—an oasis in the middle of the open prairie—I jumped at the chance for concealment. “You have to pee already?” laughed someone. “Yup!” I replied. By the time I came out of the trees, the entire field had passed me and I was in last place.

Over the next couple miles, I focused on trying to catch back up to the mid-packers, where I could see the orange shirt of Justin Chockley. We both had the same finishing goals (10 hours for a really good race, 11 hours for an okay race, 12 hours at the very least) and Justin planned on running as close to me as possible. This was fine with me, though I know what a rare thing it is for two people to be able to run together for the whole distance of an ultra. Regardless, I cruised through the field, trying to keep myself from going too fast, until I finally caught up with the orange shirt.

Sprinkles of rain gave way to overcast skies with sunshine filtering through. I swiveled my head left and right, taking in the many tones of orange and brown in the short-grass prairie, set off by the oranges and yellows of the setting sun. A pack of coyotes sang in the distance. Sparrows flitted across the road ahead of us. The wind—so often brutal out here—was relatively light and at our backs.

I looked at my Garmin and discovered the first five miles were already gone. For a moment I thought the watch must be malfunctioning, but eventually accepted the blessing of having fallen into a happy trance for the first 10% of the race.

As the sepia tones around us faded to gray dusk, Justin and I chatted comfortably and did our best to rein in our pace to 9:30 min/mile, in spite of the downhill trend to the course. It was on one of the longest downhill sections that the constant jarring elicited my first need to head off-road for a bathroom break. I told Justin that I would catch up. Poop Number 1: half way to fulfilling Rick’s wish.

I reached the Battle Creek aid station (mile 8.2) under the cover of complete darkness. Justin was still there. Phil Sheridan filled my water bottles with plain water, Stacy Sheridan gave me one of her patented hugs, and Justin and I headed back out into the night. Soon after leaving the aid station, the road lurched uphill and went from mushy mud to shoe-sucking mud. We pushed the hills at a power walk and ran the downhill sections. Unfortunately, those downhills got my gut rumbling again. I let Justin go for what would be the last time and headed into the ditch. Number two Number 2.

The Darkest Road

Alone. Fenced in by darkness. The wind picked up from the south and fluttered the top of my hat like Chinese water torture.

The course picked its way downhill from mile 10 to mile 16.8. I ran easily and tried to work through what was going wrong with my body while forever scanning the fences on either side of the road for an opening or a gate—anywhere I could get away from the road. Other runners were noticing my frequent trips off the road and I really didn’t want anyone keeping score. I was eating a Tri-Berry GU every 30 minutes. Taking an S-Cap about every 1.5 hours. Drinking plenty of water from my two handheld water bottles. So why was my stomach blowing up? I blamed the late hour. I blamed Rick for jinxing me. I blamed every single bit of food I had ingested in the last 48 hours.

The negativity built up until I wondered if I should even keep going when I reached the next aid station. I held that thought for a few seconds, turning it over in my mind to see how it felt.

Then I was powerwalking on a stretch of highway in Death Valley, my feet matching time with the determined steps of Tony Clark. One hundred and thirty-five miles through Death Valley with considerable intestinal distress, and he never complained.

And then I was standing in front of Rick Mayo at one of his many ultras, trying to be good crew and asking him questions and searching for the right food options and worrying about how he would keep going in spite of the discomfort he was experiencing. But Rick never stopped.

My conclusion, as I climbed over a pipe gate to contribute to the collection of cow pies: shit happens. This might slow me down, but as long as I kept eating and drinking, it wouldn’t stop me. Keep your baby wipes close and just keep going, I told myself. (Yes. Pun intended.)

Crew Logic

When I hit the Lapland aid station (mile 16.8), Rick and Justin’s wife, Joell, met me with quiet concern. Justin had relayed my situation when he came through a few minutes before. After my water bottles were filled at the aid station, we dug through my bag for ideas. Mostly the bag was filled with GU, with the exception of a couple Clif Shot Bloks and some Sport Beans.

“It’s the caffeine,” Rick decided. “It’s speeding everything up.” I was in a contrary mood, fairly determined that nothing was going to correct my situation and resigned to spending the rest of the race making regular trips off the road. But I accepted his diagnosis. Joell rushed back to the aid station to try to find some non-caffeinated gels.

“This is taking too long,” I said impatiently. Rick dropped a GU Brew tab into one of my bottles—the first time I’d had an electrolyte in my water during this race—and I left, apologizing for leaving before Joell could return.

Between Lapland and the 25-mile turnaround at the Teterville Road aid station, I made two more pit stops, but it began to feel like things were slowing down. I stopped eating the caffeinated GUs. The electrolytes in the GU Brew seemed to be helping, as well. Even though this 8-mile section runs mostly uphill, I was moving well and my mood was greatly improving. Now, front-pack 50-milers, along with 100-milers, were coming back toward me from the turnaround. Receiving and reciprocating encouragement created a welcome distraction.

Overhead, the clouds cleared away to reveal a vivid blanket of stars. The thunderstorm complex that had plagued the 100 milers all day continued to march north and east, pulsing with lightning on the horizon. For a short window, the wind dropped off and it went almost completely calm. Puffs of condensed breath billowed and hung in front of my face, harshly illuminated by my headlamp. The turnaround aid station pulled me in, and now I was actually smiling.

Fill-up at Teterville aid station
(Photo Rick Mayo)

At the Teterville aid station, Rick and Joell procured a handful of non-caffeinated GUs for me. Justin was just ten minutes ahead of me, so they were working together to crew us. “The hard part’s over,” Rick told me as I trotted away from the aid station.

Leaving Teterville, I was carried forward by adrenaline and a downhill section. Headlamps appeared on the road ahead, and through a combination of powerwalking and running, I would catch up and pass. Most of the people I caught up to were probably 100-milers well into the last quarter of their race, but it was still a great motivator.

A few miles outside of the Lapland aid station, I caught up to a familiar face. This runner—whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch—chatted with me for a short distance when I left Lapland the first time, but I had to let him go when I took another one of my side trips into the prairie. Now I caught up to him and we fell into strong powerwalk / run intervals. It was good to hear a voice other than those in my head. While we were walking, I realized I hadn’t had an S-Cap for a while and the ones in my race vest had disintegrated. I asked if he could spare one, and instead he handed me a small Ziploc bag full of S-Caps, saying he had more at the aid station. At the bottom of the hill into Lapland he hit a rough patch and told me to go on. I didn’t see him for the rest of the race, but hope he had a good finish.

"The hard part's over."
(Photo by Rick Mayo)

Zombies

I was in and out of Lapland with more non-caffeinated GU and some “real” food that Rick stuffed into my arm sleeves, as well. After leaving Lapland aid station, you follow a well-maintained gravel road before turning west onto a chunkier, two-track gravel road. As I approached the turn, two runners stood there. They appeared to be waving glow sticks at me. A dog was barking. I wondered if the dog was threatening them, or if a skunk or other nefarious creature was blocking their path. Before I could catch up to find out, they took the turn and continued up the hill away from me.

As I stared ahead at the two runners, I realized fatigue was setting in. At this point, it was 1 a.m.—long past my usual bedtime. The runners must have been a 100-miler and his pacer; one ran upright, the other seemed to have a slight lean or limp. The reflective strips on the back of his jacket flashed at me, and soon my wary consciousness turned the scene into some freakish, jerky, stop-motion animation, sped up, with frames missing. The runners in front of me became living crash-test dummies. My five-year-old daughter Adrian has had nightmares about such things, and for a moment it became my living nightmare.

At last, the zombies disappeared over a ridge, and I was left alone with my single spot of light in the center of the dark prairie.

The mileage clicked over to 34 miles, and I was now in the twilight zone of my training, running farther than I had ever run before. I played with timed intervals, but my running intervals didn’t last very long and I grew discouraged. I had to make one more trip to fertilize the ditch (though this proved to be the sixth and final of that kind of detour). Then I hit a stretch of road where I had to urinate every 10 minutes. The wind turned to the west—straight into my face—and picked up to more than 20 miles per hour. It was still a warm night, though (about 52°F), so as long as I kept moving, I never felt chilled.

Around mile 38, I’d had enough. I was in the middle of the first of two major climbs. The wind, the darkness, and the climbing all combined to make me reach a simple conclusion: “It’s time to finish this thing.” My legs ached, but they were not destroyed. My mind was tired, but not extinguished. I pulled the brim of my hat down low over my eyes, focused just a few feet in front of me, and shifted into a determined, shuffling jog.

Every now and then, I’d glance up and see a runner a long way in front of me. After what seemed like just a few moments, I’d look up and see the same runner just a few feet in front of me. “That was neat,” I thought the first time. So, I did it again. Soon I was working my way uphill through the shoe-sucking mud outside of the Battle Creek aid station. And then, I was at the aid station. After getting a bottle refill from Dennis Haig, he sent me off saying, “Have a good finish—because there’s no rides from here on out!”

Finish

Finish. Just finish. Just get there. I can run at an 11 or 12 minute pace. I can power walk at a 13 to 14 minute pace. I can sing a song. I can see the lights of Cassoday—but I cannot let them draw me in because I know they are still miles away. I can tell other runners “good job”. I can sing another song. Citizen Cope. Son’s Gonna Rise. Singing out loud, the wind carrying my words away.

“A son’s gonna rise in a mile. In a mile you’ll be feeling fine. In a mile you will see, after me, you’ll be out of the dark. Yeah, you’ll get your shot…”

The cedars where I peed. Getting close. Now pavement. Now. Finish.

I found a “sprint” on the pavement—an 8- or 9-minute mile. I veered off the pavement into grass, through the chute, across the timing mats. Ten hours. Thirty-eight minutes. Rick gathered me into his arms and I didn’t want to let him go. Justin was standing there, hands on his knees. After losing him at mile 10, we finished within a minute of each other. I leaned over to shake his hand and my own hands fell to my knees and we stood there, unwittingly mirroring each other: two spent runners, two first-time 50-mile finishers.

(Photo Joell Chockley)

Waking from a Dream: FlatRock 50k

A nightmare. About three miles from the halfway turnaround point on the 50-km course, a runnable section of trail gave itself over to a relentless series of boulders, rocky descents, and scrambles across drainages. At any other moment, this would have been a welcome challenge for a trail runner, but for the last hour, my metabolism had been steadily plunging downhill. Now I flailed to maintain third place in the women's race, even as doubt crept in that I would finish at all.

Two miles before, at the 9.6-mile aid station, I hastily filled my single water bottle and headed off into the woods. I had been focusing on staying close to the lead women, but at this point, gradually, my thoughts turned inward and I acknowledged something that had been going on for a while. Things were not right. I had been eating a gel every 20 minutes, for a total of 300 calories per hour. That’s close to the 350-calorie limit they say an average athlete can burn per hour during exercise. Normally I stick to a gel (100 calories) every 30 minutes, but have had some issues with maintaining energy levels on training runs, so I ramped it up an extra 100 calories for this race. By the time I went through that 9.6-mile aid station, though, my body was slowing down. I felt dizzy. Nauseous. Sleepy. Weak.

I reassessed and waited 30 or 40 minutes for my next gel, deciding I needed to space them out a bit. Meanwhile, I just kept trying to move forward, and drank as much as I could.

That stretch between the 9.6-mile aid station and the turnaround at mile 15.2 is long—too long for a single water bottle. I rationed, and eventually ran out of water about half a mile from the aid station. By the time I made it there, my stomach had made no improvements. I was now in fourth place, and there was nothing I could do about it. Angel Clark greeted me with her son Anthony and my kiddo. Tony Clark handed me a coke. I swallowed it down, but it sat like a rock on my stomach, just like everything else I tried to eat. I got my drop bag and unwrapped a Honey Stinger Waffle, filled a second handheld water bottle for the return trip, said Thank You, and left.

A few steps out of the aid station, I took a small bite of the waffle and recoiled. It turned to powder in my mouth. I folded it in half and tucked it into my race vest pocket. For the next hour and a half, I alternated between walking and forcing myself to run the flat, smooth stretches. It was nice to see the rest of the field on the out-and-back, greeting and being greeted by friends. Several called out my position (“Fourth place!” or “Eight minutes back from first!”) and I thanked them politely, though I knew at that point I wasn’t running a race against other people. I nibbled tiny bites of the waffle and drank and drank and drank.

If too many calories wasn’t the problem, then it was dehydration. The technical nature of the course kept my head down and concentration on not falling, so I probably wasn’t sipping water as often as I usually would. I hadn’t peed at all during the race. If things didn’t turn around for me before I hit the next aid station, I told myself I should probably sit down and drink until I did urinate. I thought, You’re going to DNF, aren’t you? I started to believe it.

Then: I remembered wishing that—just once—I could run a race with no IT-band pain and no ankle pain. And here it was. My legs felt fine. After a full year of ITB pain, it had finally decided to let me go. I couldn’t throw away this opportunity. I started to run.

A little while later, I peed.

Resurrected

Eventually, I reached into my pocket and the waffle was gone. I am not sure if I ate it all or if it fell out of my pocket. I went quite a while before I started back on the gels again, but even when I wasn’t eating, my energy gradually returned. I found a good rhythm. Half a mile from the 20.8-mile aid station, my body was gradually letting me back into the race as I woke from the nightmare.

I drank down another cup of Coke at the 20.8-mile aid station. Life continued to soak back into my limbs. Three miles later, I came up on the next aid station where I was offered more Coke, but I felt good and just wanted to keep moving.

Somewhere along the way I ran into Justin Chockley and Luke Hoskam. We walked and chatted for a short distance—then I took off, feeling like I was being chased. About ten minutes later I heard something moving in the woods behind me, and was relieved to see it was Justin. We would push and pull each other for the remainder of the race, and it was great to have the company.

Pushing to the finish with Justin

Those last three miles that seemed “not so bad” on the way out turned to misery on the way back. Lots of stepping up and stepping down; uncertain footing; scrambling up through a crevasse, sliding down on gravel—all on tender, tired legs. Looking back at my splits, those miles were just as slow as the “nightmare” miles, even though I did everything I could to keep trotting forward. Justin and I both eyed our watches, knowing the seven-hour mark was approaching. We pressed forward.

At last, we hit pavement for the last 0.75-mile stretch to the finish. Justin took off at an 8-minute pace; all I could manage was a 9 for most of that stretch. Adrian ran out a short distance from the finish line to meet me, turned abruptly to run, and skidded on the gravel, skinning her hand and knee. I stopped, brushed her off, got her centered again, and then completed my run to the finish line with her on my heels.

FlatRock 50k: 6 hours and 56 minutes.

I have struggled to quantify the difficulty of this course. Yes, it’s tough. The trail follows a rocky bluff and consists primarily of a flat, limestone base. There is not a whole lot of dirt. In some places the rock is crumbling, in other places it is broken into foot-sized pieces. If the trail is going up or down, that usually means negotiating uneven “stair-steps” made of rock. Like a needy child, the trail constantly demands your attention—but it was attention that I didn’t mind giving. The terrain is rugged and beautiful, and (when I had juice in my legs) it was a joy to run. But for the ill-prepared, bonking, or injured runner…it’s a bad dream.

A Letter from Home

Dear Kristi,

I know that you have been regarding your upcoming 50-mile race with some healthy trepidation. In your preparation for the Heartland 50, you have had the opportunity to see a lot of beautiful things and experience the best and the worst of training. I just wanted to send you this note to ask you:

In the middle of your race, will you remember the time you found yourself at the planned turnaround point of a training run, but there was a steep, 0.25-mile-long hill in front of you … so instead of turning around, you kept going up?

Will you remember the time you walked in the front door from a four-hour run feeling guilty about missing out on a lazy Saturday morning with your five-year-old daughter … only to find her sitting on the dining room table, a big smile on her face, crafting your own personalized drop bag (“…for all your gels, Mom…”) out of a paper grocery sack, colored Sharpie markers, and Elmer’s glue?

Will you remember the day your legs were tired and you stayed up too late drinking margaritas with friends … but you still went out the door into a penetrating mist just to put another 13 miles on your legs?

When your legs feel like lead and your feet are blistered and it’s the middle of the night and the wind won’t stop blowing and all you want to do is find a warm place to curl yourself up into a stinky, defeated ball … will you remember the time the thunder rolled through the treetops and the trail turned to slop under your feet and you felt like you could fly?

I hope you can remember — and if you don’t, I hope someone who reads this blog will, and they might remind you when the time is right. Because the hours of training are not just about tearing down muscle or building cardiovascular strength. The training is also about stashing away these memories, the moments in time when you chose to make yourself stronger, to work toward this goal, and it’s about the spiritual experiences that make every bruised toenail, sour stomach, aching knee, and stinky load of laundry well worth your time.

Love,

Me

Psycho Psummer 50k

Somewhere on the second loop of the Psycho Psummer 50k trail run, I admitted a deep-seeded fear of that course. Well, fear may be too strong. Perhaps wariness is more appropriate.

This wariness dates back to February 2005, when Rick ran the inaugural version of what has become the Trail Nerds’ signature race, Psycho Wyco Run Toto Run. That first event dawned dreary, with off-and-on rain, and—of course—soul-sucking mud. Watching Rick scramble up rutted-out hillsides and push himself to exhaustion on his way to his first ultra-distance finish, it occurred to me that something was just…not right…about this course.

Since then, I have met the summer and winter Psycho twins on my own a few times, but only for a single loop. Not two loops. And never three. Oh no. Never three.

It was by design that my first ultra took place on a different course. Maybe if I had more time to train out there—maybe then I would have taken it on the first time. But without proper preparation, I didn’t trust myself to head out for multiple loops of self-flagellation.

The week after the War Eagle 50k, I felt that I could take on the world—and so I set my sights on Psycho Psummer. Six weeks between races felt optimal. Recovery went well. Training peaked with a 45-mile week (including an 18-mile long run). After that week, I had some assorted foot and ankle issues that prompted a slightly more exaggerated taper than I would have liked, as well as some last-minute shoe experiments. The Wednesday before the race, I got a new pair of trail shoes, took them on a four-mile test run, and decided to go for it…but still wasn’t fully committed until I registered the morning of the race.

When we set off for our first loop at 8 a.m., the sun was shining, humidity felt moderate, and the temperature was in the 80s. The first few miles seemed slow, and my legs felt good, but I had purposely tucked myself a good distance behind Mindy Coolman (who essentially owns this course) during the opening 100 yards and insisted that I must maintain patience. After about three miles of hilly bridle trail, the course shifts onto cambered, shaded singletrack dubbed the “Boy Scout section”. Three weeks before on a training run with Rick, this section had put my feet and ankles into a very bad place and tempted the ITB out of remission. So when we were cruising this section at a 9-minute pace and my feet felt happy, I relaxed and really started to enjoy the run.

I was running happy as we came to a clearing. A large group of runners were walking this section and, without any thought at all—just going with how I felt—I passed them and continued onto the singletrack. Moments later, I heard Mindy call out from behind me, “How’s your IT band doing, Kristi?”

Crap! I passed Mindy. She was undoubtedly going to win the women’s race, and I knew I’d be lucky to crack the top ten, and I did not by any means belong in front of Mindy.

Mentally flogging myself, I continued on at a comfortable but brisk pace. I was in and out of the Shelter 11 aid station in about 20 seconds and prepared to head down Fall Down Hill. At that point, Rick Troeh’s footsteps and voice appeared behind me and we chatted as we took the steep switchbacks and hops over logs at what seemed breakneck speed to me.

The hill spat us out onto the bottom of the Wyandotte County Lake dam, undoubtedly my least favorite section of the course for a number of reasonably valid reasons: 1) it’s grassy, and I hate running on grass; 2) it’s a steep hill and the course runs diagonally across its length—going up; and 3) it’s completely exposed, and that translates to windy and cold in the winter, sunny and hot in the summer.

I survived my first pass of the dam at a good power-hike speed, though, and continued onto the singletrack to Shelter 14… and the Three Hills section. Many of the runners around me were chatty, happily anticipating the end of their first loop. I mentioned to one out-of-town runner that there might be a few hills ahead. Shortly thereafter, the chattiness had died down as a clump of runners focused on grinding up the bridle trails.

When I rolled into the start/finish area to refill my race vest with GU and E-caps, my mom informed me that I was hurting. She could tell, she said, by the way I ran in. “No, I’m fine,” I insisted. Temperatures were well into the 90s by now, so I took the bandanna off my head, filled it with ice, and tied it around my neck. With fresh ice in my bottle, as well, I took off for the second loop.

As soon as I got away from the crowd at the start/finish area and back onto the bridle trail, I knew she was right: I was hurting. There was a hot spot on the back of my left heel, so I pulled over and readjusted my sock and lacing on that foot. Once moving again, I acknowledged significant discomfort where my shoe was pressing into the bottom of my outside anklebone on the right foot. And about a mile later, the left ITB seized up on a downhill—officially out of remission.

In spite of these red flags, I moved well until I hit the Boy Scout section. That’s when things started to fall apart. The cambered nature of the trails had my right foot (the uphill foot) angling straight into that sore spot on my anklebone. The IT band hurt. I fell into walk-run intervals that increasingly favored the walking. I was eating a gel every 30 minutes, and that seemed to be working: the stomach felt good, and I didn’t feel terribly low on calories. I was salting with the E-caps without any particular schedule—just making sure I had one or two every hour or whenever I started to feel crampy.  But on the Boy Scout section, my back and sides began cramping hard. I responded by upping the dose to one or two with each GU.

Meanwhile, I could feel myself falling apart. Negative thoughts didn’t creep in. Instead, they busted down the door and assaulted me. The first loop felt relatively effortless. I told myself I hadn’t gone out too fast—it was just these points of pain that were slowing me down now, and those weren’t really a result of poor conditioning. They were pre-existing conditions that I had been aware of weeks before the race. This was exactly why I wouldn’t commit to the race until the last minute. I was running in brand-new, untested shoes. I shouldn’t have signed up for the race. I shouldn’t be here. What’s the point?

At Shelter 11, I grabbed a few S-Caps since I had given away some of my E-caps to another runner a mile earlier. Then I took Fall Down Hill as fast as my ITB would allow: not very fast. Next, a trip across the surface of the sun (a.k.a. the dam hill), with my head down, glaring at the brittle, brown grass and wondering how long it would take before someone flicked a cigarette and set fire to this slope. My ice bandanna was almost melted.

On the singletrack between the dam and Shelter 14, I looked up to see Rick on the side of the trail taking pictures. It was the first time I had seen him since the beginning of the race. I ran past him without a word, hoping he would follow me but also hoping he wouldn’t. When his footsteps fell in pace with mine, the emotion broke loose and I shot back at him, tearfully, “I need someone to tell me whether this is important or not.” For the next few minutes, I walked, bitched, and gave my IT band a good hard whack with a clenched fist. Runners passed me. The tirade concluded as we approached the Shelter 14 aid station with Rick saying, “No! You can’t quit. Go.”

At the Three Hills section, people finally stopped passing me. That’s because there’s no one left behind you, I drolly told myself, though I knew this wasn’t true. There wasn’t anyone visible in front of me, either—the field was just spread out at this point. I started moving a little more steadily even though I was climbing hills, and it occurred to me as I swallowed another one of the borrowed S-Caps from Shelter 11 that those were working better than the E-caps.

Looking up at the last hill of the loop, I spotted three runners picking their way along. Something Tony Clark had texted me the night before—about catching a runner on a hill during the second loop—came back to me and I realized this was going to be my last chance to make good on that promise. I took the hill at what felt like a run, hit the top, and cruised down to the start/finish. The area was packed with smiling, cheering 10- and 20-mile finishers, and Adrian sprinted up to meet me, took my hand, and ran with me to my drop bag. As I refilled my pack with GU, she asked me, “Mom, do you have an IT band?”

I smiled. “Yes, I do.”

Adrian nodded, and then informed me: “I don’t.”

Ice in the bandanna, ice in the bottle, a handful of S-Caps, and I was off for loop three before I could even think about it. That second loop ended so positively that all the frustration of the Boy Scout section had been forgotten… at least momentarily.

On the third loop I was ready to roll but resigned to something slightly slower. The IT band hurt and the right ankle hurt where the shoe was pressing, but another issue was getting shuffled into the deck: blisters. I didn’t dare look at them, but two large blisters had lighted themselves on the sides of both big toes and were becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

I took more time at the aid stations, enjoying the kindness of all the volunteers. At the Road Crossing aid station, I stuffed the most glorious bowlful of ice down my shirt. At Shelter 11, more ice and a cupful of warm Coke. At Shelter 14, the coldest ice bandanna on the course. At Shelter 10, Coke with ice was the delicacy.

On the approach to Shelter 11, I recognized something was amiss inside my right shoe. The blister pain had turned into an odd, rippling sensation. I sat down at the aid station and poked at it through my shoe. “I think it’s popped,” I said to anyone who was listening. Then I got up and hobbled down Fall Down Hill using only the side of my foot. Not being able to put my foot down evenly was distressing. I’ve never had blisters like this, and they’ve never popped on their own, and I had no idea how long this burning pain was going to last. I could not run a step of Fall Down Hill. When I got to the bottom, I sat down and took my shoe off to confirm that it was popped and, I suppose, to assure myself it wasn’t worse than I thought it was. Nope, no blood. Just a juicy, popped blister.

Luke Hoskam came across the drainage ditch and asked me, “Is it popped?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he said, “keep going.”

That’s all I needed.

Right, then. Keep going. I put the shoe back on and crunched my way across the damned dam for the last time. “How am I going to keep going when I can’t even roll my foot evenly?” I asked myself. The answer Self gave me was this: If it hurts when you put pressure on the blister when you walk, just force pressure on the blister and get over it. So, I pressed my big toe down into the bottom of my shoe and walked harder. Eventually, I was back on singletrack and jogging. And then, it didn’t really hurt any more. The un-popped blister on my left foot still rang out with each step, but I was finally moving at what could be called an efficient pace, and I was almost home.

When I hit that last hill, I took off and sailed to the finish line, adrenaline wiping away everything I had been dealing with for the last 20 miles. Coco gave me my medal, race-director Ben congratulated me, and I punched him in the shoulder.

“Damn you,” I growled.

His voice cracked when he replied with a smile and mock defensiveness, “What? It’s a good course! It’s just a little hot…”

So, I finished in 7 hours and 29 minutes. I had hoped for something a little closer to seven hours, and I most definitely had dreamed that I could run without silly strength- and muscle-imbalance problems like IT bands and ankle/foot pain. Some day I would like to run a race and only be at odds with the burn of genuine fatigue.

But this time around, I am happy. Because I know how low my resolve sank—and yet I managed to find the finish line.

First 50k: War Eagle

Somewhere south of Joplin, Missouri, the prairie buckles and sighs into the pines and oaks of the Ozarks. Fifty-degree springs push up from the ground, chert crunches underfoot, and Ovenbirds send their pulsing song from every wooded slope. In this landscape, I am at once filled with peace and energized with possibilities in the wilderness.

The Ozarks are the backdrop for the War Eagle Trail Running Festival. The 50-km, 25-km, and 10-km events utilize the extensive trail system in Hobbs State Park-Conservation Area, located about 25 minutes east of Rogers, Arkansas. The park boasts an excellent nature center where organizers stage the start/finish area.

Rick and I traveled here for the first War Eagle 50k in 2011. He ran the race while Adrian and I crewed. From the support side of the race, I noted beautiful trails, friendly and helpful volunteers, and easily accessed, regularly spaced aid stations. When I decided to run my first 50k, the 2012 War Eagle was the right race at the right time.

The Idiot Band

My Free State Trail Marathon race report highlighted in excruciating detail the struggle with my left iliotibial band. After Free State, I took a week off running to recover the IT band and shake a respiratory infection. Three weeks post-marathon, I ran the Rock On Lake Perry half marathon at full effort and angered the IT band again. In spite of a gimpy knee—and, more challenging, my daughter’s fifth-birthday celebrations—I trained through that next week and posted 40 miles. I took a couple days off, and then my remaining runs through the taper were, to my surprise, pain free.

During the taper, I prepared myself mentally by accepting this reality: Somewhere around ten miles into the race, my IT band would begin to hurt. Pain would intensify but couldn’t get much worse than I experienced at Free State. I would encounter a two-mile downhill stretch around miles 13 and 25. This downhill would be excruciating, so I would need to move as quickly as possible on the uphills and flats to make up for lost time. Then, eventually, I would finish the race, hopefully right around six hours after I started.

The Man Said “Go”…

…So I went. At 6:30 a.m., the shivering 50 and 25k’ers shuffled forward a short distance through the Visitor Center parking lot and organized single-file onto the trail. The front half of the 50k women’s field grouped together quickly and settled into a comfortable 9- to 10-minute pace on the opening downhill miles. I hung with some of them, trying to take advantage of their experience as local runners; they knew which hills to walk and which ones to run.

I worked to keep my brain turned off as fresh legs carried me forward, but doubts stubbornly crept in. So many miles—miles I had never run before—lay ahead. My legs moved effortlessly now, but I knew that sooner than later they wouldn’t move with such freedom. Cramps were starting low in my gut. And very subtle, brief twinges in the left knee reminded me that time was already running out for this adrenalin-laced, pain-free section of the race.

These negative feelings wrapped around me. I stayed on the heels of a group of runners, trying to slow my breathing. My gut rolled and cramped again. “You are nowhere but right here, right now,” I told myself, forcing away panic. “You are right here, right now.” I couldn’t worry about what was going to happen. I could only deal with the piece of trail immediately in front of me.

We hit a steeper climb about a mile from the first aid station. The local runners were on their toes, pushing it at a 9-minute-per-mile pace. I fell back to a hike. If my stomach was going south, I needed to correct the situation. I tipped back my bottle and drank as much as I could stand. When I hit the flat, dirt road to the first aid station, I settled into a steady jog and finished off the water. Already the cramps eased, and by the time I re-filled my bottle at mile 6, the stomach issues were forgotten.

Reality Accepted

“Okay, there you are,” I thought, and glanced at my Garmin. Seven-point-three miles. That’s how far I made it without IT-band pain. And once it arrived, it took a strong grip and hung on doggedly the remainder of the race. Sometimes it would ease for a mile or so, only to return, and a few times it sent a jolt of an electric kind of pain that scared me. But since I had accepted the discomfort as my reality long before the start of the race, it actually came as a relief when it happened. Now I could run without any anticipation. Just me and my malfunctioning leg, out for a run in the woods.

“Aid Station to Aid Station”

I have heard this phrase plenty of times from veteran ultrarunners, but it didn't make sense as a strategy in any of my other races. A marathon: that, my mind could comprehend. But add on an extra five miles: I was overwhelmed. And suddenly “aid station to aid station” made perfect sense.

The War Eagle course has aid stations lined up roughly three miles apart, and I found myself leaving one aid station immediately looking forward to seeing Rick and Adrian three miles later. Knowing they’d be there at the end of that section kept me moving, and I really didn’t start thinking about the finish line until I left the final aid station.

So, with that strategy in place, I ran as steadily as I could. Ate a GU every 30 minutes. Drained a water bottle between each aid station, and occasionally plopped in a fizzy GU Brew tab. Salted about every 90 minutes, though these came a little more frequently and irregularly toward the end. I only used the aid stations to fill up my bottle and relied entirely on gels for nutrition. Rick met me at each stop with a buffet of supplies laid out in the back of the Jeep, so I could grab and go without slowing down.

That hill at mile 13 and 25 did to me what I had expected: the first time down, I was involuntarily vocalizing the discomfort; the second time I was just numb. Temperatures had risen from around 60°F at the start to the low 80s, and the higher angle of the sun baked me between the Piney Road aid station and the final Townsend Ridge Road aid station.

At the bottom of the long hill, as I wandered beside a shady, cool stream, I looked at my Garmin to see the mileage: 26.8. “Hey, I’m an ultrarunner…” I thought groggily—and promptly tripped over a root.

Coming out of that creek drainage, the trail went up for a little over a mile before leveling out to the final aid station. The dull ache of muscle fatigue had just started to kick in, though it was difficult to gauge that discomfort over the sensations in my knee, as well as my ankles that voiced their complaints over the uneven terrain. The trail was very runnable ("...too runnable," I thought to myself a few times), but the small rocks made each foot placement variable and uncertain.

I reached the aid station and dully accepted the assurance that I had about two miles to go to the finish line. I gave Adrian a sweaty hug. About half a mile later, I hit an intersection guarded by volunteers. “That way to the finish,” they said. Then, another intersection: “About a mile to the finish.”

The final stretch to the visitor center rolls mostly uphill, but something that struck me as astonishing was happening: My Garmin was occasionally registering 8-minute miles, and the pain in my legs had disappeared. Part of me wondered if I should slow down in case I wasn’t giving Rick and Adrian enough time to drive to the finish line. With all the anticipation, that last mile dragged on, but the sound of distant cheering pulled me in. At last I crested the embankment, hit pavement, and—six hours and five minutes after I left—there was the finish line.

Life After Ultra

The race itself went smoothly and was generally unremarkable. The part that surprised me, instead, was how I felt after the race:

This year’s Free State Marathon left me completely drained in the days following the race. So, I expected to be exhausted and useless for at least a week after War Eagle. Instead, I rode an incredible endorphin high for the next three days, struggling to fall asleep and bouncing out of bed in the morning.

As a general rule, I finish my races dehydrated. But the night of War Eagle, I was lying awake with a headache, chills, and a diminished appetite—symptoms, I eventually realized, of low sodium (and too much water).

Recovery was not what I expected, either: I thought I would finish the race absolutely hobbled. The first 24 hours, the affected left leg was difficult to bend—but by Monday, I was able to run with minimal pain in the IT band, and Wednesday I had a completely pain-free five-mile run.

And one final effect of running this race that I hadn’t anticipated:

I can’t stop thinking about the next one.

The Berryman Incident

On May 15, our family greeted a rainy dawn on the Berryman Trail near Potosi, Missouri. In a steady downpour, Rick headed off for his fifth running of the Berryman 50 Mile. Adrian passed out in her car seat on the way to the first crew-accessible aid station, and stayed that way through Rick's first 25 miles. This made me feel like a seriously organized and upbeat crew person, since I could focus my attention on Rick. Plus, for the first loop he really looked like he had the cruise-control switched on, running with the front-runners and not needing much other than a few Gu packets.

It was when he rolled into the start/finish area at 25 miles that things started to go wrong.

I had Adrian parked in her child-sized lawn chair. I had an adult-sized chair set up next to her, under the shelter of an information kiosk, with a towel laid on the ground and a pair of shoes—with laces amply loosened—waiting for Rick's feet, plus a pair of socks turned inside out—just the way he likes it. I had the Gu he needed. Everything ready to go.

But as he approached my mini aid station, Rick tugged at the sternum strap on his hydration pack, and the cylindrical clip that connects the strap to piping on the pack itself came loose. This is not supposed to happen.

Rick and I looked at the broken strap for a half second before he pushed it into my hands and I dropped to my knees, trying to shove the stupid clip back onto the piping of the hydration pack. Adrian tried to help. Rick and I started to squabble. Adrian said she was hungry. Rick and I snapped at Adrian. Adrian whined a retort.

Rick grabbed his spare handhelds out of my bag and went to fill them up. Fourth (formerly fifth) place jogged through the start/finish and off on his second loop. I gave up on an immediate fix for the pack and hastily transferred as much Gu, salt, and other supplies as possible into the handhelds. Rick snatched them from me and left at something less than a dejected jog.

That would have been the time to stop and collect myself, but instead, I went to co-race director Victoria to ask if she had a screwdriver or some sort of wedge-like implement. She kindly lent me a multi-tool. Adrian watched with interest as I tried to wedge a pair of needle-nose pliers into the cylindrical clasp on the strap while attempting to maneuver it onto the piping. Just as I heard my daddy's voice say, "You should never point sharp objects toward yourself," the pliers slipped and jabbed into the fleshy part of my left hand between the thumb and index finger. Finally, somehow, I got the damn pack fixed, loaded it up with as many running supplies as I could find in the bag and Jeep, and Adrian and I rushed to the next aid station.

I delivered the pack to Rick about 8 miles from the start/finish area, which he happily accepted and then quickly disappeared into the woods. It would be about another 8 miles before I saw him again at the Brazil Creek aid station. Feeling like my job was done, Adrian and I headed to the Brazil Creek campground. I couldn't think of anything else he would need, and Adrian needed to get out and play, so we put on our rain gear and went to the water crossing. Adrian proceeded to play in the creek and get herself thoroughly soaked.

My spirits were pretty good when Rick crossed the creek, though I was disappointed to see that another person had passed him and when Rick came across the creek, his spirits were not very good. Then he asked for ibuprofen. Apparently, this is the ibuprofen that he had asked me for about 20 miles before. The ibuprofen was in the locked car, about 300 yards away. He jogged away from me and Adrian—who was still collecting rocks in the creek—without taking the keys. Kicking into hyper-active crew-person mode with an overwhelming sense of urgency, I tried to pull Adrian quickly away from the creek and sprint to the car at the same time.

This operation is not possible.

Child wants to play in creek. Mother/crew person wants to sprint. Child will win or will be dragged kicking and screaming in the other direction.

I tried to pick her up and carry her a short distance, but she went limp and slid out of my grasp. "Hurry," I tried to encourage her. "We need to help Daddy. You want to help Daddy, right?" She nodded and started to follow me. Thinking she'd stay on my heels, I moved faster. Then I turned and saw her standing in someone's campground, 50 yards away, talking to a strange dog. I yelled. She froze. I doubled back, pulled her along a little farther, and looked back to see Rick pulling at the locked door yelling something in my direction. Finally I made it back to the Jeep—without Adrian, who was standing frozen in the middle of the drive engaged in a staring contest with a grandmotherly marathoner who had kindly decided to try to help by keeping an eye on my child.

I couldn't find the ibuprofen. Rick snapped at me. I snapped back. I found the ibuprofen and slapped a few pills into his hand. We exchanged a few unpleasantries. My mind registered the dismayed "I'm not getting in the middle of this" look from one of the volunteers.

"Go run," I said to Rick.

He related something to me about hating where he was at and not wanting to do this any more.

"Get out of here. It's not going to be any more comfortable in Leadville!" I shouted as he wandered up the path away from the campground.

I felt sick to my stomach as soon as I said it. I think I muttered, "Sorry." and "Thanks." to the volunteer. I turned back to the car, looking for Adrian, and didn't see her. Panic washed over me. "Dammit, where did she go?" I dashed around the car and found her on the opposite side. I gathered her up and set about changing her out of her wet clothes. We were running out of options—at this point just about everything I had brought was wet and/or muddy. I found some dry clothes for her and set her back in her car seat, consoling her—even though she was remarkably calm—and beating up myself on the inside.

As I settled back into the driver's seat, I tried to collect myself. It was at this inopportune time that my mom called to check on Rick's progress. Hearing her voice sent me over the edge. I completely lost it. I sobbed and blathered and snotted all over the place. Adrian started to cry. I finally hung up and turned again to Adrian.

"Why are you sad, Mommy?" she asked.

"Because I can't be everywhere at once, but I feel like I should," I said. "I love you and your daddy very much."

We drove on to the next aid station, about 4 miles as the Rick runs. By the time we got there, Adrian and I had collected ourselves. The ibuprofen had kicked in, so Rick looked much better when we met him a little way down the trail. Adrian ran him into the aid station and then saw him out. She gave him a big hug. He told me, "I might still get under eight hours."

I like goals. "Yes, you will! Go get it."

And he ran off into the woods.

When the race clock clicked over to 7:59, I looked at the clearing in the woods near the finish line and saw my husband bursting triumphantly from the vegetation. Adrian did her trademark run to the finish line with her dad. Rick got his traditional beer and a buckle. He got his sub-8-hour finish, just a hair off of his personal best on this course, and 6th place over all.

Like pain, the chaos of crewing is quickly forgotten. I always beat myself up when I think I have fallen short of helping Rick in an efficient manner. The fact that he told me he needed ibuprofen and I completely missed it still bothers me. The fact that I was standing at the water crossing playing with Adrian instead of at the car where the race supplies were also bothers me. It makes me insane that I ran away from Adrian and chanced her getting hurt. I hate how we bickered, especially in front of the ever-helpful and dutiful volunteers, who were spending the entire day in the rain and really didn't need any more cloudy attitudes to pull them down.

But the experience also made me reflect on the wonder of the ultrarunning community and how graciously fantastic its members can be. This was the first time in crewing many races that I felt short-handed. Almost always there is a friend to step in to help, no questions asked: someone to hand my child to while crossing a barbed wire fence at Rockin' K (Tony Clark); to play in the rocks with Adrian while waiting for her dad at Michigan Bluff (Stacy King); to walk down a long, steep, dark and spooky road to meet Rick at Green Gate while I took Adrian back to the hotel for a much-needed nap (Angel Clark); to rush from aid station to aid station through the Arkansas hills to keep track of my husband as well as her own when I couldn't even get to the race (Tiffanie Bevan); to chase my daughter across the prairie as a form of entertainment (Laurie Euler)...

I have been extremely lucky to be surrounded by good people who very easily could have looked the other way when I struggled to attend simultaneously to the two people I intensely love.

Thank you.

"Just a Marathon"

Rick & me before the start of the Free State Trail Marathon
Photo by Gary Henry

My name is Kristi, and I am a SOUR: Spouse of Ultra Runner.

I have spent countless hours watching my husband, Rick, suffer, bitch, smile, and cry his way through five years of training and running ultra marathons.

The prospect of running my first marathon-distance race this April paled in comparison to his accomplishments. There would be nothing "ultra" about my marathon. Just 26.2 miles through the woods. The kind of distance that he covers on training runs. It's nothing - right?

The mileage seems so common in our household that I just couldn't get my head around the fact that 26.2 miles is a long distance for my own body to run. Part of me knew better: While standing in the port-a-potty line before the race, I commented to experienced ultrarunner Gary Henry, "I think I will be respecting the distance a lot more in about five or six hours."

Strangely enough, my biggest concern going into the race was getting through the first three miles. Rick, who has run and/or paced at this race every year since the inaugural edition, reported that the opening section of the marathon course went cross country, over swaths of grass—exactly the kind of running that I like the least. I also knew that by the end of those three miles, I would know whether all of my little nagging pains were going to stay away or come along with me for the remainder of the race. Once I got over the first three miles, I told myself, then I'd be on the single track trails that I really enjoy and everything else would take care of itself.

At the starting line, I hugged my mom and my daughter, Adrian; kissed my husband and wished him luck (he was also running the marathon); and started running when race co-director Ben Holmes said "go". As the pack of runners strung itself out over the grass, I had that lovely lack of sensation that adrenaline brings. Up ahead I saw Rick being pulled to the front and found myself assessing his competition—a spectator even while running my own race.

I did a quick system check: no pain in the ankles, feet felt good—none of the nagging pains were with me yet. I checked my Garmin and saw I was running about a 9 minute pace. Breathing was OK and my stride relaxed, so I decided to just roll with it. The course took a lolly-pop loop around a water-treatment lagoon and Rick swung by me on his way out of the loop, in the lead. "...need to slow down," he gasped as we slapped hands in passing. "He does, or I do?" I asked myself.

Adrian had a big smile on her face and was clapping when I ran past her again before heading into the woods to pick up the single-track. The first three miles were done, and all was well.

Heading onto the single-track after 3 miles
Photo by Dick Ross, seekcrun.com

What mud?

Being a SOUR also carries some big advantages. One perk is having a personal shoe tester. I give Rick a hard time about his "shoe fetish". It's not uncommon for me to walk in on him shopping for shoes on the Internet—and it feels like something I shouldn't interrupt. The Kearney UPS delivery lady knows us well and sometimes gives me his shoes when she stops at my office, just to save herself the stop at our house later in her route. It seems excessive, but the more I run the more I understand. Luckily, I can usually take his recommendations and follow his expert advice. He rarely leads me in the wrong direction.

Inov-8 X-Talons after 26 miles
Photo by Rick Mayo

So the shoes that Rick bought for me for Christmas—Inov-8 X-Talons—were firmly laced to my feet the morning of the race, because he assured me they would be the best at handling the mud. These shoes have a very minimal upper, with mean, nasty lugs on the bottom. The only trick is to make sure they stay laced snugly, as the laces have a tendency to loosen up when the shoes get wet. (Rick tried to swap out the Inov-8 laces in my shoes for laces that would stay put, but I didn't let him. As it was, I only needed to tighten the laces once, about 10 miles in.)

Two inches of rain had fallen on the course in the days preceding the race, so there was a good quantity of wet, black mud pits on the trail. Most of the pits also had standing water in them, so it was a splishy-splashy kind of mud. I quickly learned that the mud pits were no place for a heel strike. When I planted my heel, I felt the earth gripping and sucking my shoe into its sticky embrace. From that point forward, I took short, quick, tippy-toe strides straight through the center of the pits and eluded the mud's appetite for shoes.

"What mud?" I loved these shoes.

A little help from my friends

On a training run with the Lawrence Trail Hawks a few months ago, Nick, Gary, and Coleen led me onto the fabled Red Trail to help me prepare for that section of the Free State course. "This is a place where you can really make up some time if you know what you're doing," Coleen told me.

Her words were in my mind as I danced over the fractured slabs of rock along the shoreline of Clinton Lake. Barely recognizable as such, this was the Red Trail. Other runners trotted the short sandy sections and slowed to teeter over the slippery rocks. I kept my head down and moved as fast as I could, trusting my shoes to keep me upright and being thankful that the Hawks had taken me this way before.

You have a lovely aid station, but...

At the KUS aid station
Photo by Gary Henry

Another thing I have learned from five years as a SOUR is the power of aid stations to eat a runner's time. So my objective was to say "thank you" to the wonderful volunteers, but use their services as little as possible. Rick encouraged me to obtain my own Nathan hydration pack, so equipped with 70 ounces of water on my back I was able to bypass most water stops and aid stations without a refill.

At the first stop by the Land's End aid station, I grabbed a fistful of cantaloupe and a fistful of pretzels and ran off into the woods. It felt so good to have something to munch on other than the Gu I carried in my pack. I also left that aid station feeling energized, but a glance at my Garmin told me that I was close to leaping off into the great unknown: I was nearing the mileage of my longest training run this year (about 12 miles), and I could already feel my body anticipating a cessation of movement. "Not yet," I told my bones and muscles, and forged on.

Surviving the lows

Near the KUS aid station
Photo by Kyle Gerstner

"Living through your lows will definitely prepare you for your first 50k," ultrarunner Larry Long wrote to me earlier today, after learning through social media of the low point I experienced during this race.

That sounds like a wise, reassuring statement to me now, in the comfortable glow 48 hours after the finish line. But when the Low hit me somewhere between miles 17 and 20, the thoughts going through my mind sounded something like this: "F--- ultras. A marathon is enough. No, this is too much. I'm going to death-march my way out of here and be very supportive and understanding of Rick from now on. Let him run these f---ers. He can have 'em."

Shortly after leaving the Kansas Ultrarunners' Society aid station—where Stacy Sheridan, Laurie Euler, and others gave me warm smiles and pumped up my disbelieving ego by telling me how "great" I looked—I started getting stomach cramps that I just couldn't figure out. Was it my abs? Maybe from my hydration pack? Was it my gut? Did I need salt? Was I dehydrated?

Reduced to a fairly miserable walk/jog, I wandered through the deep, dark woods and wished Rick was there to help me figure out what was wrong.

Then I switched gears from SOUR... to Mommy. In the week leading up to the race, I was plagued with dreams that involved childbirth. This, I suspect, is because I have always told myself that if I got through a med-free labor, I could get through anything. My pregnancy was the turning point when I decided I never wanted to be slow and rotund ever again, and I started running consistently 6 weeks after delivery. When faced with the prospect of giving birth, I did a lot of reading and research, and one quote stood out in my mind: "When you get to the point where you don't think you can handle the pain any more—that's probably as bad as it's going to get."

Hiking up a hill, cursing myself for running this race, that phrase came back to me. Of course, the famous ultrarunning quote, "It doesn't always get worse" also went through my mind, but I liked the childbirth quote better. My body won't give me any pain I can't handle.

About that time, David Wakefield—on his way to win the 40-mile race—power walked his way up the hill to me and gave me some much-appreciated, kind words of encouragement. He broke into a smooth stride away from me and I did my best to follow. Before long, I came up to the Land's End aid station (3 miles from the finish), swallowed some of the best-tasting Coke I have ever had, and jogged out of there with a mind that was much more well adjusted.

The finish

Photo by Rick Mayo

It occurred to me, as I turned off of the single-track and onto the gravel hill that leads to the finish line, that with all my visualization of running this race, I never visualized myself finishing. Then my eyes locked onto a three-foot-tall person smiling and clapping at the top of the hill. Adrian ran toward me, wheeled around, and ran me in to the finish. I crossed the mats at the finish line, turned, and gathered Adrian into my arms. Rick, long-ago finished and already in street clothes, dutifully snapped pictures. My mom informed me that he had won the race, which thrilled me because I never stopped thinking about him and wondering how he'd fared.

After resting in the grass for a few minutes, I looked up at my husband and once again sought his advice. "What do I do now?"

Photo by Rick Mayo

An Hour in Auburn: WS100 2009

The highest award of Western States becomes a self-assurance that celebrates this event before it begins. In spite of the distinction of that silver buckle, and perhaps because of it, Western States proves that honor lies not so much in reaching the finish as in daring to arrive at the start.

—Los Angeles Times, Opinion Editorial, 27 June 1985.
Read at the annual flag raising, Emigrant Monument, Western States Endurance Run.

Twin searchlights carved slices out of the black sky. I stood in the unnaturally green grass of the infield at LeFebvre stadium in Auburn, California. My two-year-old daughter clung to me, drifting between sleepiness, crankiness, and interest in everything going on around her. Random bodies lay bundled in sleeping bags nearby. Hits from the '80s blared from the PA system, and occasionally a disembodied voice broke in over the music to announce a name, a hometown—a Western States finisher.

About 300 yards from that finish line, in a dark corner of the stadium, there stood a chain-link gate. It sat wide open. Occasionally one or two people would emerge from the shadows, move through the gate, and begin their journey around the red track. Some walked. Some shuffled. Some limped. Others were able to muster a good stride. They'd round the final turn of the dimly lit track, drawn in by cheers and an ever-narrowing chute—only to be lost in a sea of light and bodies at the finish line.

It was some time between 4 and 5 a.m. The final hour for the sub-24-hour buckle. I strained my tired eyes to focus on that chain-link gate. The voices of the friends who had traveled to this place with us drifted in and out of my consciousness. One of those friends, Gabe Bevan, lay exhausted and satisfied on the infield grass. His wife Tiffanie had moved through the tears of joy and now worked to gently remove socks from Gabe's cracked and battered feet. I took a picture. Shifted Adrian's weight on my hip. Moved my gaze back to the chain-link gate. Then to my watch. Minutes peeled off the clock.

At 4:40 a.m., 20 minutes from the sub-24-hour cutoff, a mirage: Two runners jogged through the gate. One was slim, a little bounce in the way he moved. He peeled off his headlamp and tossed it at his pacer's feet. "Is that him?" I heard myself ask out loud... Then I became convinced. "It's him!" I squeezed my daughter, smiled at my companions, and made an all-out sprint toward the finish line. I hurried up the outside of the chute and watched the runner make his way down the backstretch of the track, tears coming to my eyes. "Adrian, it's your daddy! He's finished the race!" I snapped a few pictures. Then questioned myself. It wasn't his stride. It wasn't right. But it had to be him! "Go baby!" I yelled at the top of my lungs. He came around the turn. Then I felt a chill go down my back and up into my hairline and my vision narrowed. No. Not him. The announcer: "And here comes Jim Scott from Chico, California..." I pressed my back against the brick wall at the edge of the track. My throat tightened and I told myself not to cry. "Oh, Adrian..." I sighed. "Baby, that wasn't him." Her head rolled off my shoulder then snapped back and resettled under my chin. No two-year-old should be up chasing runners all night. Her eyes fluttered open then closed again. I slunk back to our group's spot on the infield and resumed my vigil, completely deflated.

Soon, I heard something I had not prepared for. Birdsong. The voices of robins and other unfamiliar Californian birds began to float in over the music being played on the stadium's sound system. I looked up and saw the sky turn from black to blue-black. Dawn was coming, and my runner was nowhere in sight.

Eight minutes before 5 a.m. Twenty-three hours and fifty-two minutes of running. Angel Clark was waving at me from her post near that chain-link gate. I think Tiffanie and Stacey said something that reassured me that this time, maybe, it was real. And then he was on the track. Still wearing his headlamp. Still running. I ran toward the backstretch, snapped a picture. It really was him. I ran back toward our spot on the infield and tried to hand off Adrian, still sound asleep, to Tiffanie. She immediately stirred and cried out. I grabbed her back and took off for the finish line. This time I moved into that sea of light and bodies and positioned myself just behind the chip-timing mat. I bent to my knee, stood a semi-conscious Adrian beside me, and took another picture. Then I screamed for him, "Go!" The videographer at the finish glanced down at me, smiled, and took a step back. I yelled again at the top of my lungs. I rose quickly to my feet and he piled into me—all sweat and stink and mud: the man I love. A Western States finisher.

(Thank you for taking me on that ride.)

Kristi, Adrian, and Rick at the WS100 Finish Line