The Badger 50-Miler Part 2: PR or DNF

There were about a hundred or so of us in a pack as we made our way over a small bridge just outside of the park and towards the Badger State Trail.  I had gotten caught up in the moment and realized shortly before crossing the bridge that I had forgotten to queue up my GPS watch.  After all, it wasn't something I was exactly used to doing.  After several months of contemplating, Sam brought to my attention that Garmin Instinct GPS watches were on sale.  I took advantage of the deal and in June I began using a GPS watch for the first time in nearly two years.  As the course left the streets of Belleville for the trail, I started talking to this dude who was a local guy doing his second ultra.  We were only about a mile in, which for me is pretty early in a race to be chatting with people.  Normally I prefer to take some time during the first five miles or so to find my groove when I do ultras, but we were having an engaging conversation, so it felt good.  His name was Dylan.  He had done a 50K once before and this was his first 50-Miler.  He was a younger guy and attended grad school nearby where he studied fungi.  I immediately thought of Sam because although she majored in psychology, biology remains one of her lifelong passions.  We ran side by side and continued chatting as we made our way along the course.  The terrain we were running on was a wide dirt track which was dissected by a grassy strip down the middle.  Although the ground was smooth and gentle, I decided it was best to wear my Hoka Speedgoat trail shoes for not only when the terrain became less pleasant, but also for extra grip.  We soon came upon the first aid station, which was at a junction where the trail meets a back country road.  Dylan stopped at the aid station, so we parted ways for the time being, and I continued along the course, which had deposited me onto a short road section.  This part of the course was a bit of a detour.  The original route was set up in such a way that we would continue on the trail and run through the Stewart Tunnel.  The tunnel lied about a mile or so up the trail and was approximately a quarter of a mile long, however it was closed off due to flooding issues.  It was also deemed unsafe to run through due to the poor condition of the ceiling section.  This course detour on the road would take us around the Stewart Tunnel and we would eventually pick the trail back up after bypassing the tunnel section.

Despite some rolling hills, the road section was pretty decent.  I caught up with a few other runners: Skip and Gavin, both from Indiana, and Brendan, a college student from the Chicago suburbs.  The four of us motored along together for a little while and we soon arrived at the Hollywood aid station, where I had been hanging out the night before.  Many of the volunteers were still there and taking care of us while operating on two or three hours of sleep.  Some of them recognized me from the night before and asked how my race was going.  "So far so good" I answered.  So far so good, but I was only nine miles into the fifty-mile distance.  The course was an out and back route, turning around at the junction where the trail meets Town Center Road in Monroe.  How would I feel when I passed through this aid station again at mile forty-one?  Only time would tell.  With my water bottles topped off with UCAN and water, I resumed forward progress down the straight, flat trail.  The next several miles offered nice vistas of farmland and rolling green hills.  The surroundings were pretty typical of rural recreational trails in the Midwest.  The route mainly traveled through farmland with a tunnel of trees and brush surrounding both sides of the trail.  When a majority of the forest was cleared out for farmland back in the day, they spared the trees surrounding the trail to add shade and a wilderness vibe to make the experience more enjoyable.  Occasionally there would be a rock wall on either side of the path and there was the occasional railroad bridge above as I passed by underneath.  I kept Skip, Gavin, and Brendan within eyesight, but the next several miles were run solo.  After another road section I heard footsteps coming up behind me.  "Hey, what up?" I said without turning my head.  "Hey, is that Liam?" the voice answered.  It was Gio, a member of the TJM Nation, who I had met the afternoon prior at the race HQ in Belleville County Park.  He had traveled from the Denver suburbs to participate in the 50-Miler.  We chatted for a brief moment before he continued on.  As I continued along, Gio, along with Skip, Gavin, and Brendan slowly faded away in the distance and were eventually out of sight.  I glanced at my watch and noticed my pace had been steadily slowing over the last few miles.  Dylan soon caught up with me and we exchanged some small talk but soon, he too was down the trail and out of sight.  I tried to not let my slowing pace derail me, knowing that it was to be expected that I would slow down as the race went on.  Still though, I had not reached the halfway point of the journey.  Skip, Gavin and Brendan eventually ran past me coming the other way, so I figured it would be coming up soon.  Sure enough, within a few minutes the aid station at Town Center Road appeared in the distance.  I was greeted enthusiastically by the volunteers when I arrived, one of them being Azam, another notable TJM Nation member.  Although I still felt good, I acknowledged to the group my concern with the fact that my pace had steadily slowed over the last several miles.  They assured me that I had plenty of time to finish and that I should not worry.  I knew they were right, but still, my mind dwelled on the thought of getting a DNF (Did Not Finish) because I didn't make the cut off time.  I knew I would finish if I just kept moving, but would it be fast enough?  We would have to see.  I ate a couple of Pop Tarts, and with my water bottles topped off, I headed back down the trail to tackle the second half.  All I had to do now was get back in time for the cut off.  I just hoped that I could do it.

Allow me to explain my concern over not making the cut off time.  This was my third 50-mile race and the other two I ran had taken me twelve and a half hours and a little over fourteen hours.  One of those was virtual.  The cut off for this race was twelve hours.  Given the relatively flat and gentle terrain, the timing was logical, but twelve hours is a little on the aggressive side for a 50-mile cut off.  This meant one thing: I would either have my best 50-mile time yet, or I would get a DNF.  Pure and simple.  PR or DNF.  Those were my two choices.  I had experienced various waves of self doubt over the last several miles, but during the early miles of the return journey, reality set in pretty loudly.  To quote Kevin Hart, "shit got real".  As I plodded along, my mind drifted to a particular sketch from Kevin Hart's "Laugh at My Pain" comedy show in which he tells the story of when he threw a birthday party for his five year old daughter and hired a guy to dress up like SpongeBob.  Apparently things didn't go as planned, and Kevin got into a heated confrontation with SpongeBob because the guy kept taking the top of his costume off and smoking cigarettes in front of the kids.  So, Kevin told him to put the goddamn costume back on and put the cigarettes out "before shit gets real out here".  Shit was getting real out here.  Not because I was about to get into a fist fight with a guy in a SpongeBob costume, but because I was worried that I would have the letters DNF listed next to my name in the race results.  At this point I was on pace for about a ten and a half hour finish, but I knew that I would gradually slow down as I kept going.  After departing the Gutzmer Road aid station at mile thirty-seven, I began doing some pretty hardcore trail math on my cell phone calculator.  I had about a half marathon's distance left to cover and I calculated that I would need to maintain around a twenty-six minute per mile pace to finish on time.  I was averaging well over that pace and even if I slowed dramatically, I'd be moving faster than that, unless something unthinkable happened.  By the way, after all that, SpongeBob then proceeded to curse Kevin out and inform him that he was fresh out of jail and he was only there to get paid.  I laughed to myself out loud on the trail as the sketch flashed through my mind.  As the miles clicked off, my concern over not beating the cut off time gradually melted away.  I kept doing trail math, and each time I knew I could maintain a faster pace than the one I needed to finish in twelve hours.  I felt mentally lifted as I drifted into the Hollywood aid station at mile forty-one and took a seat for a few minutes to be off my feet.  The crowd was giving off great energy, and just before I left, Holly, Dan, Kyle, Myself, and a few others raised a toast with shots of Fireball.  It was one hell of a send off.

The Fireball shot carried me along nicely.  That is until I came upon the road section that served as the detour around the Stewart Tunnel.  In the early stages of the race I had no issue with this section, in fact it was rather pleasant.  This time though, it was a straight up suck fest.  My pace slowed dramatically as I was forced to walk over the rolling hills on the back country road.  Every step hurt and my progress was sluggish at best, even on the downhill sections.  I was no longer worried about not making the cut off.  At this point, I was just in a lot of pain and wanted to be done.  It was time to dig deep and use that psychological strength I had brewing to get through these next few miles until I was back on the trail.  I eventually cleared the final aid station and got back on the trail for the final three and a half mile stretch.  Norbird, one of the volunteers at the final aid station, wrapped a cloth dunked in ice water around my neck, which put some life back into me.  With a mile and a half left, I came up behind an older looking gentleman using trekking poles and walking at a swift pace.  By the way he was moving, I was pretty sure he was a hundred-mile runner.  In the early stages of the race, several hundred-mile runners passed by me going the opposite way on pace for around a thirty to thirty-three hour finish.  Some looked pretty alert, others were so wrecked that all they could do was give me a blank look and a nod when I offered kudos.  This guy was one of the more alert guys.  I found out that he was indeed doing the hundred-miler, and get this, he was seventy-eight years old!  I gave him a knuckle pound and continued on past him, but the inspiration that I felt from that brief encounter was enough to keep me moving steady until I reached the final stretch, where the course leaves the trail for the streets of Belleville.  As I ran through the park and towards the finish line, I could hear the loudspeaker:  "And now we got Liam, who came all the way from Sunnyvale, California, completing his fifty-miler".  I threw my arms into the air in celebration and crossed over the finish line in eleven hours and sixteen minutes.  Scott Kummer put a medal around my neck and I immediately gave him a big hug and thanked him for putting on such an awesome race.  As mentioned earlier, during this race I was faced with two options: PR or DNF.  I thanked my lucky stars that nothing crazy happened and I was able to have the first option as the end result.  I wore a big smile on my face as more people offered hugs and kudos.  Skip, Gavin, Dylan, Gio and Brendan had also killed it out there, and I was super happy for them as well.  Not too long after my finish, Ian, the seventy-eight year old hundred-mile runner ran across the finish line sending the crowd into a roaring frenzy.  After enjoying some free pizza and beer in the finish area and hanging out with the rest of the crowd, I returned to the motel, cleaned myself up, and told Sam the whole story over the phone.  The next day was Monday, and the first day of month end close for July, so I had to multi task by working about three quarters of a work day from a Starbucks in Janesville before traveling back to O'Hare International Airport to catch my flight back to San Francisco that night.  

Another great ultramarathon experience in the books.  Every year brings new races, new adventures, and plenty of stories to tell.  I had a lot of fun traveling back to the Midwest, getting a fifty-miler in, and getting to know so many awesome people from the TJM Nation.  The story about the Badger 50-Miler experience would continue to linger in my head for weeks afterwards, not just because it was such great fun, but because I've been so damn busy, that I'm just now getting this piece written three and a half weeks after the race.  Oh well.  Time to get ready for Broken Arrow!

   

The Badger 50-Miler Part 1: Fun Times In Belleville

A soft chime abruptly woke me up from my half-asleep, dream like state.  My legs were stretched out as far as they could go underneath the airplane seat in front of me, and I laid back, head off to the side, facing the aisle.  The flight crew announced that we would be landing in about twenty minutes.  As I yawned and rubbed my eyes I looked out the small window across the aisle.  It was about 6:15 AM local time on Saturday morning, the darkness had disappeared outside, and the rising sun was firing orange light across the sky.  My redeye flight from the San Francisco airport to Chicago had been fairly uneventful, but my journey would not be ending here.  After we landed I would be jumping into a rental car and driving two and a half hours up to the town of Belleville, Wisconsin.  From what I could recall, the only real time I ever spent in Wisconsin was when I used to go up there on weekends to snowboard at Devil's Head and Alpine Valley back when I lived in Chicago.  The drive was around two hours, so it was an easy day trip.  Based on some research I had done prior to hopping on the plane in San Francisco, Belleville was a town of about 1,800 people and was presumably, by all accounts, your average Midwestern rural town.  I would say probably 95% of the time it's a pretty quiet place.  It's a small community with a simple way of life, and nothing overly exciting really happens there.  Except for this upcoming weekend.  From Saturday morning until Sunday evening the Badger Trail Races put on by the Ten Junk Miles podcast based in Chicago were coming to town.  This meant that 400 and something runners from all over the country would be pouring into this town of 1,800 people over the weekend.  The Badger is a fairly new race, having been created in 2019.  The hosts of Ten Junk Miles had spent a lot of time logging miles on the Badger State Trail and loved the community so they said "why not create our own race, right here!"  Since then, the races have received overwhelming support from the community.  The towns people liked that these folks were coming to visit their area and support their businesses.  The positive response from the town as well as runners from the inaugural Badger Trail Races prompted the creation of two more events; the Last Dot Standing 24 hour race in October, and the Sugar Badger Trail Races in May.  As a result, Belleville has become somewhat of a tourist attraction within the Ten Junk Miles nation.

Once we touched down in Chicago, I shuffled my way through O'Hare International Airport to the rental car counter.  I checked in, got my keys, jumped into the Mitsubishi Outlander I rented, and began the trip north.  I made it about thirty minutes outside of Chicago before drowsiness set in.  I suck at sleeping on airplanes.  It's hard for me to get comfortable and I'm usually in and out of consciousness, rather than fully asleep.  I decided it was best to pull off the freeway for a snooze before I wind up in a ditch.  A couple of hours later with my energy partially restored, I carried on through the countryside.  I crossed over the state line into Wisconsin and the terrain was flat and green with farmland and silos dominating the horizon as far as I could see.  I was excited to be here but I missed Sam.  Thanks to her hard work with growing her business, she had a lot of new pet sitting gigs lined up, one of them happening this weekend.  The Badger Trail Races offered every distance from a 100-mile ultramarathon to a half marathon.  Something for every runner, as I like to think of it.  Sam surely would have enjoyed running this course.  I missed her, but I knew she'd be cheering me on in spirit from back home while I progressed through the fifty miler, which started at 6:00 AM the next morning.  After a filling brunch at an IHOP in Janesville, I eventually arrived in Belleville.  It was early afternoon and the hundred miler was in full swing.  The runners began at 6:00 AM in the town of Orangeville, near the Illinois/Wisconsin border.  From there, they would make their way along the Badger State Trail through Belleville, turn around at the aid station at Dot's Tavern, head back to Orangeville, then come back again to the finish line in Belleville.  Once I pulled into town I headed for Belleville Community Park which served as the race headquarters and the finish line for all distances.  I parked across the street and as I walked through the park I spotted in the distance in front of me the Ten Junk Miles Racing inflatable banner situated next to the park pavilion, which had been transformed into an aid station and packet pick up area.  I met Kyla, the wife of Scott Kummer, who was the main host of the podcast.  She checked me in and handed me a bag with my race bib and lots of goodies inside.  Although Kyla is not a runner herself, she plays a key role in the making the races run smoothly.  She does a lot of work behind the scenes like assembling race packets, checking in runners, and overseeing the merchandise shop while being a wonderful support system for Scott and us runners.  As I mingled with the spectators and volunteers I recognized a lot of names from the podcast and was having fun putting faces with names.  Hundred mile runners passed through the aid station set up in the pavilion which was at about mile thirty-nine.  Some looked fresh, others looked beat up, but they were all still moving.  

After some time I made my way over to the Hollywood aid station to hang out with the crowd over there.  The aid station derived it's name from Holly Lindroth, a co-host of the podcast, who was the aid station captain.  Which means that she would spend the entire weekend managing volunteers, sleeping in a trailer here and there, and doing all that she could to ensure that us runners would have a badass time out there.  The aid station was nine miles down the trail from Belleville Community Park but thirteen miles away by car.  I drove along the country roads through more Wisconsin farmland before entering a residential neighborhood in Monticello.  I passed by a few houses and came upon a small factory before the street came to a dead end at the trail.  The bustling aid station was set up near the end of the road on the trail side with music playing and lots of provisions including massive bottles of Jeppson's Malort and Fireball which were available to runners if they chose to partake in such shenanigans.  After spending more time chatting with people and cheering on runners, I headed up to the town of Verona, ten minutes outside of Belleville to check into my hotel.  I was staying at a Super 8 Motel and the room was pretty basic, but I wasn't going to be spending much time in there over the weekend, so I didn't really need much.  As long as it was quiet at night, the shower worked, and there were no bed bugs, it was fine by me.  It was definitely better than the motel room that Sam and I stayed in earlier in the year while on a road trip, which had holes burned in the bed blanket from cigarettes.  I unpacked and took a shower, but I was eager to get back to Belleville and cheer on more runners and hang out at the aid stations.  Once I was back in town I popped into J&M Bar on Main street to have some dinner.  I wondered if I was going to get some weird looks from the locals because I wasn't from around there, but then I remembered it was race weekend.  Other runners were hanging out inside and the locals told us how excited they were for us as I nibbled at my fries and chicken strips.  People were stoked about the fact that I had come all the way from California and it took a little longer to get out of there than I had originally planned because I was having fun chatting it up with people inside the bar.  Once I made it back to the Hollywood aid station, the party in the middle of nowhere was still in full force and this time around, runners were coming through at both the forty-eight mile mark and the ninety-one mile mark.  The course route was an out and back and out again, so runners passed through this aid station three times.  The runners who were passing through for a final time had nine miles to go and were going for a seventeen or so hour finish, while some of the runners coming through the forty-eight mile mark were in dire need of help.  We had one guy who sat there for a while and was planning to drop because his feet were in such bad shape.  Holly fixed them up with some first aid tools, but there's a big psychological factor involved when it comes to moments like these.  In real life situations outside of ultra running, it's not realistic to be positive all the time.  I've learned the hard way over thirty-five years that it's not healthy to bury negative feelings and minimize physical and emotional pain.  Instead of repressing negativity it's better to acknowledge it and find ways to overcome it.  But when someone is on the verge of quitting a hundred miler, there's only room for positivity.  If they say it's too hot, tell them they just need an ice soak and they'll kick that race's ass.  If they're scared because their feet are battered, tell them their feet will recover eventually and they'll be fine.  Sometimes the right words at the right time can be what ultimately gets a runner to the finish line.  

By the time I left the aid station at 10:30 PM to go back to the hotel for the night, the runner with the battered feet was still sitting in a camping chair at the aid station, so I'm not sure if he was able to go on.  As I drove along the pitch black road, I passed an intersection with the trail and saw the beams of headlamps from more runners in the distance making their way to the aid station.  During the drive I thought about how fun it was to be the guy cheering on runners at the aid stations instead of running myself, for once.  Watching these hundred mile runners chase the finish line, some for the first time, was an inspiring experience and the fact that I was possibly making a difference in their race by giving off good vibes was a powerful tonic.  My thoughts were interrupted when I had to abruptly hit the brakes.  About a dozen glowing eyes appeared in the road out of nowhere, and when the car came to a stop I saw in the beams of the headlights that I had almost taken out five or six racoons who were just chilling on the pavement, apparently oblivious to the fact that they had come inches away from meeting their destiny on this lonely dark road.    I slept surprisingly well that night and was in a dead sleep when my alarm went off at 4:30 AM the next morning.  There was a McDonald's right next door to the motel so I went through the drive thru and got some coffee and a couple of sausage burritos, which I wolfed down during the fifteen minute drive to the start line.  I arrived just as Scott, who served as the race director, was beginning the pre-race briefing over a PA system.  A few hundred mile runners came through the finish line, finishing in around twenty-four hours and after the national anthem was played, us fifty mile runners made our way up to the start line beneath the Ten Junk Miles race banner.  I briefly chatted with a few people I had met the day before and at 6:00 AM on the dot the horn went off and we charged across the start line through the park and towards the trail.