Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅰ

That’s not running in the mountains, that’s living in the mountains

Photo by Brandon Siu.

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Hello and welcome to that time I decided to dip my toe in 100-mile races. Head first.

I wrote this race report in 2021, so it’s obviously not a recent experience, but it will be new to you. The omission of the race’s name is on purpose, which I hope you will forgive. This is Part Ⅰ—the preamble, early miles, and my first low.

You can now read the whole thing in one place:

Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems [Full]

introduction: dumber things have been done by smarter people

The anxiety that had me hoarding weather apps on my phone wasn’t so much about temperamental mountain weather as it was about treacherous footing and/or hypothermia caused by same. Thankfully, with an hour to go before the 8 p.m. start, the rain had already thinned to a drizzle, and the forecast (all seven of them) was for clear skies tonight and the next couple of days.

I’d never had to check the forecast for the next couple of days. But if any 100-miler warranted a 50-hour cutoff, it was this one: 11,000 meters (36,000 feet) of elevation gain, remote and rugged terrain, high altitude. On the plus (?) side, there were only eight aid stations at which to lose time.

As for reasons not to sign up, there was the nearly threefold increase in duration between my longest race to date (17 hours) and this weekend-long monstrosity. A huge leap, until you look at the even huger “run-up” to it: The sheer volume of training this race would require was in striking disproportion to what I could pull off without injuring myself.

But I really, really wanted to run it. It was my dream race, my fantasy ultra goal from back when my longest run was a half-marathon. So when I signed up, I adjusted my perspective: I wasn’t going to train for a race; I was going to train as much as I (safely) could. The result was that I showed up at the start healthy, and 100 percent ready for, like, 60 percent of the race.

❝Being ready meant being able to answer in the affirmative that all-important question: Is it worth it?

—Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It?

I’m going to spoil the ending now because this isn’t about the ending anyway: Late that Sunday night, I did cross the finish line—as the slowest runner to complete the course. One hundred miles of relentless climbs and merciless descents, 50 hours, 10 minutes of sleep. No crew, no pacers, not even music to distract me or keep me awake. I had gazed into the abyss and it had spoken to me with the voices of a hundred sitcom characters (more on my auditory hallucinations later).​

✚ ✛ ✙

Before I continue:

This was a dumb thing I did, choosing this race as my first hundred. It was an emotional decision—one I do not regret, and hopefully you will enjoy the story that came out of it. But I do not wish to glorify gratuitous risk-taking or parade my struggles on the course as fodder for inspiration. The fact that I finished a race I had no business starting should not be interpreted as a testament to the power of the human will, but merely as evidence that sometimes people do stupid things and get away with them.

So, should you start feeling inspired while reading this, respectfully, quit it.

Now on to the stupid thing.

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§1 me & the mountain

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1.1 suffer well

Train butt off: Done. Spend months studying course: Done. Show up in best shape of life: Done.

Arrive at start last-minute because packing is too hard: Double-done.

✛ ✙ ✚

I wish we’d drive faster, but it’s not my car’s suspension we’re decimating over the wet cobblestones (and we’re already flirting with the speed limit). I’m in the passenger seat, frantically patting my pack for anything unzipped, untied, or unfastened. The eight-liter Salomon ADV Skin is surprisingly light for everything I’ve stuffed into it, but it’s bursting at the seams. I’ve never run with so much stuff before. Warm- and cold-weather clothes, food, light sources and batteries, a first-aid kit, and various other pieces of equipment—everything fits but barely. And it took forever to pack it, which is why we’re running late.

We arrive at the start with just enough time for me to receive my mandatory GPS tracker, along with the silent scowl of the volunteer handing them out. IT’S TOO MUCH STUFF!, I want to shout at him, but of course, it’s my own fault I didn’t start packing sooner. While wondering where I could possibly put the tiny blinking device, I realize two of my pack’s pockets remain entirely unused.

“Ten, nine, eight—”

Well, no time for reorganizing now. It’s 16 minutes after sunset as we pass with little fanfare under the inflatable arch.

There are only about 50 of us trotting through the small town’s streets, and I’m convinced I’ll be the one to suffer the most. I can’t imagine anybody here is less fit to run this race. It’s oddly comforting to know that all I need to do for the next 50 hours is suffer well—because what greater ambitions could I dare have?

The drizzle that used to be rain is now indistinguishable from mist. As we exit the town and funnel single-file onto the steep forest singletrack, I’m careful to avoid the drenched vegetation flanking the narrow trail. I don’t want to get wet because I don’t want to get cold, because I know that, once allowed in, the cold will be harder to keep away. I am, however, diligently wetting my insides. Chilly-and-drizzling doesn’t compel me to drink water like hot-and-sunny does, but I know hot-and-sunny doesn’t have a monopoly on dehydration.

I mentally pat myself on the back for paying attention, but my overeager brain is tripping over the line between being smart about this completely new experience and greatly overthinking it. “Don’t get cold”: that’s a thing. “Stay hydrated”: also a thing. “Blink longer as a preemptive measure against sleepiness”: not a thing (as far as I know).

The first aid station is a welcome respite from both the lulling monotony of climbing and the nerve-racking threat of being poked in the eye by a trekking pole. My own pair are still collapsed and secured onto my pack, but I’m going to deploy them shortly for the final and steepest part of the 1,700-meter (5,580-foot) first climb. They are a recent, almost reluctant purchase. I’ve been strictly bipedal for most of my life, including during races, and have been rather set in my ways—but not so much that I wouldn’t do a complete one-eighty for a chance to save some effort on the ups, spare my knees on the downs, or, as will be the case, keep my head above my ass on ice-coated boulders.

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1.2 meet lady longlegs

High up on the mountainside, I can’t tell where the mountain ends and the sky begins. The amorphous darkness is disorienting in an outer-space kind of way. The headlamps up ahead seem to have floated away into the inky firmament, or else this thing we’re climbing is seriously steep.

Since I can’t see how much farther it is to the top, I wait for the wind to tell me. Sure enough, it picks up when I get close. Once the terrain stops sloping upward, I know exactly where I am: On a saddle connecting two peaks, one to the north, one to the south. In front of me to the southwest, all the way down in a deep glacial valley, lies a tear-shaped lake. Near the lake, the trail joins a small river to twist and bend with through the valley.

More than three hours into the race, it’s time to wake up my downhill legs. I keep my poles out in a vaguely menacing way, occasionally stabbing the ground with them to help steady my uneven footfalls. It’s a steep, bumpy, grassy slope, which I’m descending uncomfortably sideways until I reach the lake and the grade mellows out. The small river to my left will be a close companion from here to the next aid station, 10 all-downhill kilometers (6.2 miles) away.

I lose the waterlogged trail several times among the many rills and rivulets that crisscross it, so I try to copy what other runners are doing. Hop, swivel, sidestep. Slip, shuffle, hop again. I’m surprised there are still so many bodies around me. Their presence spoils the experience of night running a little bit, but none of them are eager to chat, which allows me to regard them as a moving part of the landscape. I take note of one woman whose pace matches mine almost exactly, except she’s much better at following the trail. I call her Lady Longlegs (self-explanatory), or Legs for short. She’s accompanied by a man who can’t be her pacer because this race doesn’t allow pacers.

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1.3 melinda mae

Halfway down the descent, I notice a vague unease has quietly crept in and unsettled my previous “suffer well” attitude. I’m suddenly impatient, rushing through terrain and thought alike, wanting to get somewhere rather than be somewhere. I stumble, miss a turn, drop a glove. It takes me a while to figure out what’s wrong. There isn’t much that could be—my legs are still fresh, my mind is still clear, and nothing hurts yet. The race has barely begun.

Oh God, the race has barely begun.

Months and months of training and studying maps, and I’m just now beginning to comprehend the immensity of where I am and what I’m doing. I think I’m going to be sick.

My brain, helpfully: “Don’t barf on your shoes, you have to spend two more days in them.” Okay, that’s not not helpful, I guess. But it doesn’t make me feel less overwhelmed. “Then how about a good metaphor for tackling impossibly big tasks?”

❝Have you heard of tiny Melinda Mae,
Who ate a monstrous whale?
She thought she could,
She said she would,
So she started in right at the tail.

—Shel Silverstein, “Melinda Mae,” in Where the Sidewalk Ends

Good one, brain. We’ve got a stubborn person, a “whale” of a challenge, and, of course, the winning approach of breaking down the challenge into manageable chunks. It’s almost too on the nose: Melinda Mae is clearly about ultrarunning.

Except, tiny Melinda’s big accomplishment doesn’t sound all that inspiring now that I’m munching on my own “whale.” Daft, unhealthy, no fun at all—that’s how it sounds. And how much time do you think it took her to finish her meal—a month, a year? Nope, 89 freaking years, and the meat must’ve spoiled at some point, so she ate spoiled whale meat for 89 years. All because she thought she could and said she would.

Just as I did.

“Well, that was no help at all,” I mutter to myself as I drop the same glove for the third time. The urge to hurry, to keep busy, is masking the fear that my suspicions have been confirmed: My hardest training hasn’t been enough, I’m already losing the mental battle, the whale is simply too big, and WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THAT GLOVE.

All races have lows. Most are less dramatic than they feel at the moment, but is it at all surprising that working hard for something makes us vulnerable? Training—investing effort—is emotional. I remember how overjoyed I was when I found this one big hill (I live in extreme flatness) in a forest an hour and a half from my house. It was not an attractive place. Nobody went there because of the mosquitoes and the nonexistent trail. The deer that came to drink from the creek at the bottom and I were the only ones who appreciated the hill’s bounties. I would spend hours at a time going up and down as the forest around me grew darker, in secluded training of mind and body, the mosquitoes always there to make sure I didn’t get more than a minute of rest.

That’s what eventually pulls me out of my low—remembering my boring, unpoetic training. Working hard for something does make us vulnerable, but it also makes us stronger.

I finally take the time to stuff the errant glove into a pocket with a zipper.

A moment later, the mechanical hum of a hydroelectric generator cuts through the mountain’s rustles and whooshes, announcing the second aid station.

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Continue reading:

Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅱ

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed your time here, consider sharing “Carpe-ing a Couple of Diems: Part Ⅰ” or this newsletter with a friend. Then go find a small thing worth celebrating.

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