The 2024 Kodiak 100-miler and A DNF Deep Dive

When I paced my friend Jose at the Kodiak 100-mile ultramarathon in October 2023, it was a fun and fulfilling experience.  I got to take a nice long road trip to Big Bear Lake, hang out with my friends in the mountains, help someone achieve their goal of completing their first 100-miler, and have my own ultramarathon experience by traversing thirty-three miles through the wilderness.  Another exciting part of the experience was Angelica, a member of Jose's support crew, told me she was signing up for Kodiak in 2024 as her first 100-miler, and wanted me to pace her.  It seemed like an exciting opportunity and I said yes right away.  We kept in touch, and by the time the 2024 Kodiak 100-miler rolled around, Samantha, Aidan, and I had moved to Laguna Niguel about a month prior.  I had been talking a lot with Angelica earlier that week about the upcoming adventure.  I met her crew members, and we talked a lot about where we would meet up, what time we would get together at the aid stations, and what we would have ready for Angelica in terms of food and supplies.  You know, all the fun stuff that comes with helping someone get through their first 100-miler.

I was awake at 3:00 AM on Saturday morning, October 12th 2024, staring into my bathroom mirror, half asleep, preparing to head out to Big Bear Lake.  By 3:45 AM, I was out the door with a backpack on my shoulder, running shoes in one hand, and a steaming hot cup of coffee in the other.  Big Bear Lake was still a two-and-a-half hour drive away, but it was much shorter than the seven hours I drove last year from Sunnyvale.  Angelica's journey had started at 1:00 PM the day before, and her crew members, Carmen, Nancy, and Randy had arrived with her in Big Bear that day.  The plan was for me to meet up with them at the Doble Camp aid station at mile sixty-five.  Angelica was projected to arrive there at around 7:30 AM, but with 100-milers, you never know.  Things can change quickly.  I was hoping to get there well in advance of when she arrived so I would have some time to lounge around.  As I drove along the dark highway, I was refreshing the tracker on my phone to check her progress.  It indicated that she had been at the aid station at mile forty-five for several hours, which was a little concerning, but I kept driving, hoping she was hanging in there okay.  I had just started driving up the winding road into the mountains when a text from the group chat with her crew popped up on my phone.  Carmen had confirmed that Angelica dropped out at mile forty-five.  Apparently, she had been having stomach issues throughout the night and couldn't consume any food without feeling overwhelmingly nauseous.  This happens sometimes during ultramarathons.  When our bodies are in motion for extended periods of time, and our system is overworked, all of our energy goes into keeping us moving, even energy that is normally used to digest food.  If runners in this state eat a certain food that doesn't agree with them or their eating patterns go astray, this could result in an upset stomach and low energy levels from lack of fuel.  Then on top of that, the Kodiak 100-miler course is at an average elevation of 8,000 feet.  Elevation sickness has also been known to cause nausea in addition to headaches.  In Angelica's case, she had left the aid station at mile forty-five, thrown up on the trail twice, and made the decision to backtrack two miles to the aid station, where she spent some time in the medic tent, and later dropped out.  

It was a bummer and I really felt bad for her.  She had been training for this race all year and she was really hoping to go home with a finisher's belt buckle.  The crew and I were exchanging texts with her and offering words of encouragement.  I wouldn't be able to work my pacer magic today, but I was looking forward to getting up to the mountains to see the gang and hopefully help Angelica feel better about the situation.  Once I arrived, the whole team, Angelica, Randy, Nancy, Carmen and I, went to Grizzly Manor and satisfied our appetites with pancakes the size of dinner plates, something Grizzly Manor is widely known for.  After breakfast we hung around the condo that Angelica rented for the weekend and had a good conversation.  We let Angelica voice her frustration and disappointment, offered her encouragement, and congratulated her on her effort.  She had been been awake for over thirty hours and had ran through the night, so when she was ready to take a mid-morning nap, I bade the team farewell, and headed back home.

In retrospect, I think Angelica made the right move when she decided to hike the two miles back to the medic tent.  Considering it was her first 100-mile attempt, and given how awful she was feeling, the alternative could have been much worse if she chose to keep going.  Sometimes we just have to listen to our bodies.  As time went on, Angelica came to terms with her DNF and developed a more positive sentiment towards what happened that day.  This was good news, but one of the reasons why I felt so badly for her was because I too had been through two similar situations this year with The Canyons 100K and the Cool Moon 50-miler.  I know how much it stings.  DNF stands for Did Not Finish.  No runner ever wants to see those letters next to their name in the race results.  Between my two DNFs and my involvement with Angelica's DNF, 2024 was seemingly becoming the year of DNFs in my reality.  That's not entirely negative though.  Of course it sucks to not finish a race, but there is a silver lining to DNFing an ultramarathon.  It can provide some valuable learning opportunities.  Just like every other type of failure in life, most people go through a whole grieving process when they don't finish an ultramarathon.  Here are the phases, as I see them.

The first phase is the disappointment and "woulda, coulda, shoulda" phase.  This is when the runner is disappointed in themselves or the situation, and they're asking themselves "what would have happened if I had done this or that differently?" or they're saying to themselves "I could have kept going" or "I should have done this or that" or "I should have kept going".  The next phase is typically the "I did what I could, and I'm okay with what happened" phase.  This comes after the runner releases their frustration and disappointment and is coming to terms with the situation and making peace with it.  It doesn't make sense for us to needlessly beat ourselves up for not being able to finish a race that seems unfathomable to most people.  At some point, we have to accept the outcome, understand that things happen for a reason, and try to understand what went wrong and what we learned from the mishap.  The last phase is the "okay, I'm ready to get out there and try again" phase.  Pretty self explanatory.  At this point, the runner has made peace with the DNF, hopefully learned some valuable lessons, and is ready to give it another go.  All three of the DNF grieving phases are equally important.  In my opinion, it's good to release frustration and disappointment when I DNF a race, or fail at anything in life, for that matter.  Keeping those feelings bottled up is unhealthy.  If that negative energy isn't properly released, it lingers for longer periods of time and delays us from moving on to the acceptance and let's try again phases.  It's also important to learn from our mistakes, and not give up on our goals.  2024 may have been the year of DNFs for me, but I'm thankful for what I've gone through.  Everyone grieves over these kinds of things differently, but this is the way I feel is best to do it.  Onward and upward into 2025, and let's see what kind of adventures it brings!