2018 Minnesota Voyageur 50-Miler
When most people think of Minnesota, warm weather is not the first thing that comes to mind. But on this day in late July the temperature in the Duluth area was around eighty degrees Fahrenheit, about average for that time of year. I knew ahead of time what the temperature was going to be like and that there was a chance of rain. What I failed to take into account was that fact that Minnesota summers are more humid than the the dry summers I was used to in California. So, because I didn't think about this ahead of time, of course I didn't start eating salty snacks and swallowing salt tablets until after I cramped up so badly that I was on all fours, crawling backwards down a hill, thirty-eight miles into the Minnesota Voyageur. Once I'd survived this section of the race, I gobbled down pickles, chips, and potatoes dipped in salt at the aid stations and drank often which seemed to help mitigate the cramping a little. I chugged along through a steady downpour for the next few miles, and by the time I crossed the swinging bridge in Jay Cooke State Park, the sun had come back out. With only three miles left to go, I thought the worst was behind me and I was home free. Dream on, sucker. The course was out and back, and immediately after crossing the bridge I remembered that the first two and-a-half miles of the trail, which I was now retracing, had a lot of roots, rocks, and loose dirt. The rain had essentially turned that section of the trail into a two-and-a-half mile mud puddle. At one point, I ran down a dip that was about seven or eight feet down and back up. I lost my balance on the slippery terrain during my descent, and came crashing down, ass first, into the mud in the pit of this trough. The fall immediately triggered another round of leg cramps and I was once again in a world of hurt. I tried to get up but it only made the cramps more intense. I didn't know what to do so I just laid there. I must have looked pathetic lying there in the mud not being able to get up. I didn't know how the hell I was going to be able to finish the last mile-and-a-half of this race. I couldn't even move, and I still had to slide through another mile of this muddy mess before the course left the trail and followed a paved bike path to the finish line for the last half mile. After a couple of minutes I came to my senses and started thinking more rationally. "They're just leg cramps" I said. "It's not like someone broke your legs with a baseball bat". There was no way this race was going to end with me laying in the mud and having the letters "DNF" (did not finish) next to my name in the results because of some cramping. I was better than that. I mustered what energy I had left and pushed myself off the ground and onto my feet with my arms. I continued on the muddy trail with reserve, slowing my pace, grabbing onto tree branches to keep from slipping, and occasionally stretching my legs to ease the cramping. Relief and extreme elation kicked in when the pavement emerged. I hobbled down the bike path and finally made a right turn onto a residential street, where I saw the finish line at Carlton High School at the end of the block. As I got closer I could see my dad and sister, who had come out from Michigan, on the sidewalk cheering for me. After another hundred yards of hobbling, the Minnesota Voyageur was finally in the books.
2019 Tahoe Rim Trail 100-Miler
It was approaching 3:00 AM as I climbed wearily up the dark trail towards the Bull Wheel aid station. I was going on twenty-five hours without sleep and had covered seventy-two miles of the Tahoe Rim Trail 100, my first 100-miler. Within the last hour or so, exhaustion had set in pretty hard. After ten minutes of sitting in a camping chair at the aid station unable to slip into unconsciousness, I stood up, thanked the volunteers, and disappeared down the trail into the night. It was a beautiful, cloudless night in Tahoe, and the moon shined brightly overhead. But everything was beginning to look the same to me. The sky, the stars, the trail, the distant mountains, the trees, it all looked like one blur. Then bits of songs and movie scenes began playing in my head and my focus deteriorated. I was plodding along, unaware of my surroundings, caught up in the dream like state that I was now going through. Then things got real very quickly and I stopped dead in my tracks. What I saw, hanging from a branch right in the middle of the trail about twenty feet ahead, was a shining bright orange ribbon, one of many that had been marking the course every half mile or so. You would think this would be a good thing because it meant that I was on course, but the problem was I had already passed by this ribbon thirty minutes prior. There were no forks or turns on this section of the trail, so this could only mean one thing; I somehow got turned around and I had been backtracking for who knows how long. I was in trouble. How far back had I gone? And how come I hadn't seen any other runners for so long? Something was very wrong. I began walking forward very slowly, almost as if I were afraid to approach the ribbon. After passing by, I continued walking for about another minute or so, trying to figure out what I should do. I would have liked to have waited for another runner to come by so I could ask them which way I was supposed to go, but there were none to be found. I felt helpless and I finally decided to just stop. Then I saw something in the distance that instantly caught my attention; lights. Lights from other runners. And they were moving away from me. I started chasing them down, running in their direction. I slowly began to realize that I had not gotten turned around at all. I was going in the right direction all along, but the lack of sleep and fatigue had brewed up a storm of hallucinations and temporary panic. I looked up and the sky was once again filled with stars, the moon cast a bright glow on the trail, and the beauty of a gorgeous night in the mountains was again upon me. My senses were firing and I was more alert as I came over the top of the hill and looked on at the lights of Incline Village resting below in the distance. There would be more battles fought from that point to the finish line, but in that moment, I reveled in my victory in the hallucination battle as I began running down the winding trail towards Diamond Peak. "Twenty-three more miles to go" I said.
2020 St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra 38-Miler
It was an absolutely stellar night in the Minnesota wilderness. The only sound to be heard was my sled being pulled through the snow behind me, and I was enjoying the tranquility of the midnight winter air as the snow glistened in the moonlight. Lights emerged in the distance and I suspected this was likely the checkpoint at mile twenty-two of the St. Croix Winter Ultra, where I would be required to bivy down as part two of our winter survival skills testing. Part one was at the beginning of the race where we needed to show that we knew how to boil snow for drinking water using a camping stove. After passing the bivy test, I got the okay from a volunteer and prepared to head back out onto the course. Everything seemed to be going pretty well and I was feeling confident. Until I heard a volunteer say that the temperature was seven degrees below zero Fahrenheit. I let out a burst of nervous laughter. "Are you shitting me?" I asked. "Nope, my car thermometer said minus seven. You guys are badasses!" Two miles down the trail I took out my phone to take a selfie, just for the fun of it. When I looked at the picture afterwards I was shocked and, quite frankly, a little terrified. In the movie Goodfellas, after the Lucchese Crime Family robs Lufthansa Airport, the mastermind behind the robbery, Jimmy Conway (played by Robert DeNiro) essentially murders everyone who participated in the robbery for fear of them becoming rats and turning him in to authorities. There's a scene where the police find Frankie Carbone, one of the robbers, dead in a meat truck, frozen solid. That's pretty much exactly what I looked like in this picture, except I was smiling. Since I had been outside in the cold for several hours and generating a lot of body heat, the warmth that my body was giving off had crystalized with the frigid cold air and now a layer of frost covered my beanie, my eyebrows, my eyelashes, the buff I was wearing around my neck, and the collar of my jacket. Reality had set in. It was seven below zero and I was out here in wilderness at 1:00 in the morning on a winter night in rural Minnesota. During the pre-race briefing, the race director advised us that we would likely be "questioning our life choices" around the time that we reached the check point. He wasn't kidding. Suddenly, this didn't feel fun anymore. It felt scary. What the hell was I doing out here? If anything were to happen to me out here it could potentially be hours before I reached warmth and safety. I would have to wait until someone found me, then the only way I could be transported to safety was by snowmobile. I decided to stop running and walk so I could get my head straight. After a few minutes I was able to wrap my mind around this whole scenario, and I reminded myself that panicking in any situation in life, especially in the middle of an ultra, is only going to make things worse. "This is exactly why we were required to bring winter survival gear" I told myself. "In case something goes wrong". I also reminded myself that I was feeling good, physically. In fact, despite the frigid sub zero temperature, I was wearing just enough layers to feel comfortable, and I was neither hot nor cold. It was all in my head. It can be easy to break yourself down psychologically during an ultra, and I couldn't let that happen. I kept telling myself that I was fine, and eventually I just started laughing out loud about how insane this was. And just like that, it was onward and upward another fourteen miles to the finish line.
No comments:
Post a Comment