An account of my first (and only) successful 100-miler.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Henry Davip THOREAU

car or find a younger girlfriend in an effort to feel better about their

lives. In my case, I could not afford a decent sports car, and since I was already married, I did not think that my wife would approve of my getting a young girlfriend. So what I did instead in an attempt to cure my midlife crisis was to foolishly announce to my friends that I intended to train for and complete a 100-mile ultramarathon. How I got to that desperate point in my life, and what I learned from the journey, is the purpose of this story.

M ost men who have a midlife crisis go out and buy a shiny red sports

My preultra days

Being skinny made me a better-than-average distance runner most of my younger life. I was on my high school cross-country team, although I was far from the best runner on the team. Still, I could average just over six minutes per mile for a 10K race in my prime.

In college, I trained for and ran two marathons, finishing both in about 3:12. Although that is a relatively good time, it was not quite good enough at the time to qualify me for the Boston Marathon in my age category. More important, I finished both marathons feeling absolutely miserable. My legs went into immediate cramps, and I nearly vomited on both occasions. You see, those marathons were run back in the days when we wore cotton running clothes and low-tech running shoes and did not know anything about pacing or hydration. We simply ran as hard as we dared for the entire distance and let the chips fall where they

may. Walking for any part of the race was simply out of the question—it was, after all, a running race.

At about this same time, I happened to read an article about ultramarathons and a handful of crazy people who ran races of 50 miles or more. I distinctly remember thinking at the time that ultrarunners must be superhumans and that I could never run any distance more than a marathon. I also vowed after my especially painful second marathon that I would never run another marathon again. As it turned out, I kept that vow for nearly 25 years.

After college, I continued recreational jogging for several years while in the military, and I also entered a few 10K races. But eventually the demands of my work and newfound hobbies resulted in my running less and less each year. Upon leaving the military, I acquired a job that I still have today and that consumes nearly 60 hours per week, most of which is spent sitting at a desk and staring at a computer screen. I eventually stopped running entirely and started gaining weight. Although I could see myself quickly losing conditioning and stamina, I really did not miss running all that much, and I turned my attention to other hobbies. I also became incredibly bored with my life as I began to approach middle age.

Then one day, while I was stuffing my mouth full of food in the company lunchroom, an older colleague mentioned that he was going to enter a marathon race to be held in seven months and that he hoped to complete the race in four hours. I thought back to my glory days in college when seven-minute miles were almost effortless, and I foolishly assumed that with just a few months of training to get the rust out of my joints, I could easily get back into my previous shape from 20 years earlier and break four hours in the marathon with no problem. Feeling quite cocky, I boldly proclaimed to my colleague that I would enter the same marathon and would give him a run for his money. I was 47.

Once I started running again, I was horrified to discover that much of the extra weight I had gained over the years would not come off, no matter how hard I trained. I also discovered that due to the inevitable march of time, my body had slowed well over two minutes per mile. Suddenly, a four-hour marathon was looking quite optimistic, and indeed, when the marathon race day finally came, Iran a disappointing 4:25, and my colleague beat me handily.

Icontinued training much harder over the next year, and L also started including walking breaks into my long runs on the advice of my colleague, who had been following Jeff Galloway’s run/walk program. At first, the idea of intentionally walking during a race or even a training run seemed incredibly wimpy to me. But my aging joints and limited training time made long training runs of 20 miles or more impossible without some walking.

When the same marathon race came around the next year, I had trained much harder, but I still managed to finish in only 4:01:30. That was an improvement for sure, but nowhere near the marathon times I had run in college. That is when

I realized that the days of running a marathon in the low three-hour range were long gone for me and that it would take an exponential amount of additional training to shave off even a few extra minutes in the marathon. More important, Lalso found running marathons on pavement and elbow to elbow with thousands of other runners to be quite dissatisfying. And the cutoff times on some marathon courses are so generous that people who are downright obese and clearly out of shape are still able to power walk the distance and brag that they have “run a marathon.” In short, marathon running had lost its cachet for me. I needed a different challenge and a better way to set myself apart from the crowd.

The e-mail that changed my life

A few months later, an old high school friend called me and asked if I would be part of his 12-person team for the Hood-to-Coast relay run. He explained that this was a 195-mile relay race from Mount Hood, Oregon, to the Oregon coast. I readily accepted the invitation, thinking that it would be an extremely challenging test of my endurance.

Instead, I found that the 195-mile relay race was in many ways much easier than running a marathon, since each runner on the team ran a total of only about 18 to 20 miles broken up into three segments and spread out over 36 hours. So completing the Hood-to-Coast relay run still left me feeling dissatisfied and looking for an even bigger challenge.

Then, something happened that would change my life forever. After the Hoodto-Coast race, our relay-team captain sent all team members an e-mail telling us about a fellow from California named Dean Karnazes, who had entered the Hood-to-Coast race on the spur of the moment and had run the entire 195 miles nonstop by himself. It seemed inconceivable to me that anyone could run that far solo, let alone do it at an average pace of under 13 minutes per mile. I felt that I had to learn more about this incredible achievement.

At the time, I had no idea who Dean Karnazes was, but I subsequently learned that he is an elite ultradistance runner who has run 200 miles on several occasions. (In 2006, he ran 50 marathons in 50 days in 50 states.) I was so intrigued by his Hood-to-Coast solo run that I sent Dean an e-mail and asked him some questions about his ultradistance running. He was kind enough to reply, and his response caused me to begin a serious search of the Internet for anything I could find on ultradistance races.

Teventually discovered a number of Web sites about ultrarunning as well as a listing for dozens of ultraraces around the country. And I learned for the first time that there are four common ultradistances (50 kilometers, 50 miles, 100 kilometers, and 100 miles), with a smattering of irregular races in between. I was especially delighted to learn that almost all of these ultraraces were on scenic trails through

the woods and far away from the typical marathon crowds. I have always loved camping and being in the outdoors, so trail running sounded like just the thing for me. And although I knew that running ultradistances was bound to be painful and difficult, I took comfort in the fact that I had spent many years in the military and had plenty of practice at being miserable and exhausted in the woods.

What really impressed me were the ultrarunners’ race reports I found posted on the Internet, which made the scenery, camaraderie, and physical challenge of these ultradistance trail races sound incredibly satisfying. And my heart leaped for joy when I saw the cutoff times for ultraraces. For most 50-milers, a runner needs to average only 15 minutes per mile to keep from being disqualified, and for many 100-milers, a runner needs to average only 18 minutes per mile. For some reason, it had never before occurred to me that one trick to running twice as far as a marathon is to do it at half the speed of a normal marathon pace. Heck, I thought, /5 to 18 minutes per mile is just a recreational walking speed! Even at middle age and with my diminished level of conditioning, I could do that all day long!

After a couple of additional glasses of wine to steel my resolve, I decided then and there that I would enter the world of ultradistance trail running. My plan was to attempt a 50-mile trail race in the year of my 50th birthday, and if that experiment went well, my ultimate goal was to conquer a 100-mile trail race soon thereafter. In the back of my mind, I thought that if I could reach those two goals, my life would be complete and I would finally feel satisfaction with my life’s accomplishments.

Becoming an ultradistance trail runner

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Henry Davip THOREAU

Soon after deciding that I would become an ultradistance trail runner, I contacted several trail runners on the Internet and asked for training advice. I also joined an ultrarunning club that has a good Web site with race reports and training tips. And, of course, I subscribed to Marathon & Beyond magazine and enjoyed its many articles on ultrarunning.

What I found was that ultrarunners are an extremely friendly group of folks who are quite willing to share training tips with novices like me. Ultrarunners also have a marvelous sense of humor about themselves and their rather crazy sport. I very much enjoyed the correspondence I had with these talented runners, and much of their advice was invaluable to me in later races.

But one thing I noticed among at least some of the more accomplished ultrarunners is that their lives seemed to be consumed with trail running to the exclusion of everything else. For some of them, literally every weekend is spent either on a long training run of 25 to 40 miles or in an ultrarace somewhere in the country. Some runners even run a 50-mile ultrarace on Saturday and another 50-miler on Sunday. A handful of others have run as many as a dozen or more 100-mile races in a single year.

While I generally enjoy running and being around other runners with a similar interest, I long ago concluded that running is not that much fun and that living, breathing, and talking about running every day gets rather tedious. Therefore, I decided that I did not want running to consume my life and that I wanted as much balance and moderation as possible, even though I fully realized that “moderation” and “ultra” are terms that do not usually go together. I therefore set two restrictions in my quest to run 50 miles and eventually 100 miles. Specifically, I vowed that my weekly running would never go above 50 miles and that in the off-season (such as the Christmas holidays), I would run the absolute minimum necessary to keep from losing too much of my conditioning. That minimum turned out to be about 15 miles per week.

From my reading in running magazines and on the Internet, I fully realized that many runners would consider 15 to 50 miles per week to be barely sufficient to prepare for a regular marathon, let alone an ultramarathon. But given my minimal free time and the soreness of my aging joints, 50 miles per week for my maximum ultra training was the number I settled on, for better or for worse. Since most 100-mile races have a 30-hour cutoff time, this meant that I would eventually be asking my body to run as far in 30 hours as I would normally run in 14 full days of my hardest peak training. I knew that running 100 miles would be on the extreme outer edge of my ability, but I thought it was just within my reach.

In addition to limiting my weekly mileage, I vowed that no matter how badly I wanted to achieve my ultrarunning goal of 100 miles, I would never do anything that would cause permanent damage to my body. I had read too many stories of ultrarunners damaging their kidneys, going into a coma from heat exhaustion or hyponatremia, or sustaining countless other serious injuries in an attempt to complete an ultrarace or achieve a personal record. Since this was only a hobby for me, and one that I knew I would not be particularly good at anyway, I was not going to risk undue damage to my body just to put an ultra-finisher’s medal on my shelf.

Using a version of Jeff Galloway’s run/walk technique that focused on frequent use of power-walking breaks, I was eventually able to push my longest training tun to 38 miles. I then began to taper and set my sights on my first 50-mile race. I selected the JFK 50-miler in Maryland because it seemed relatively flat and easy compared with others I had read about. Unfortunately, two days before the

race, I got a very bad case of the flu. Determined not to throw away all of my hard work, I foolishly entered the race anyway despite an air temperature at the starting line of 32 degrees with a 20-mile-per-hour wind. I had gotten almost no sleep the night before due to chronic coughing. It did not take long for me to hit the Wall and drop out of the race at 27 miles with extreme chills, a bad cough, and severe diarrhea. But I had gotten my feet wet in the ultrarunning world, and I knew that with better health and warmer conditions, I could probably achieve my 50-mile goal.

Within a few months, I entered another 50-mile race with warmer weather and a generous 13-hour cutoff, but also with several stream crossings along the course and much hillier conditions. Although I struggled badly with severe nausea at 30 miles into the race, I was able to recover enough to finish. My disappointing finish time was over 12 hours and much slower than I had hoped for based on the quality of my training, but I was nevertheless reasonably content to have completed the first part of my ultra goal.

My first try at the Umstead 100

After getting one more 50-mile race under my belt, it came time to prepare for the big challenge—100 miles. I searched the Internet for quite some time to find what I thought would be the easiest 100-mile course in the country. I chose what many ultrarunners consider a cream puff of a course—the Umstead 100 near Raleigh, North Carolina.

Umstead is a good first 100-miler for several reasons. First and foremost, it has a very smooth running surface consisting of finely crushed gravel and clay that has been machine packed onto a very wide horseback riding trail in a state park. Consequently, runners need not worry about spraining an ankle or tearing up their feet on rocks and roots, which is a common problem in many trail ultras. In addition, the Umstead course that year consisted of 10 laps of 10 miles each inside a state park, which means that no support crew is needed because all runners pass by their own parked cars every few hours. There are also a couple of additional manned aid stations with toilets on each lap, making this the most convenient and comfortable 100-miler I could find. Finally, there is only one intermediate cutoff time at Umstead at 90 miles into the race, and that cutoff is very loosely enforced. Many ultraraces have several strictly enforced intermediate cutoff times along the course, making it easy for a weak runner to be disqualified early.

The only bad part of Umstead is that the race is held in the beginning of April, which means that all of the heaviest training for the race must be conducted in the coldest and darkest part of winter, and training also must be done during the peak of flu season. Consequently, arriving at Umstead 100 percent healthy and fully trained can be difficult.

In the months leading up to the race, and contrary to my earlier promise, I did allow my training to consume my life. All of my free time was devoted to training runs, including a 30-mile slow run with generous walking breaks about every third weekend in the four months leading up to the race. I even began arriving late each day for work and putting off much-needed tasks around my house in an effort to squeeze every extra minute of training time that I could out of each week. I hoped that this extra training would enable me to suffer less during the race itself.

On a sunny, cool morning in April 2004, race day finally arrived. I chose a very conservative pacing plan with plenty of walking breaks from the beginning. My goal was simply to squeak in under the 30-hour cutoff time. I chose that goal because my nonrunner friends would not have the slightest idea what a respectable time was for 100 miles, so there was no reason to kill myself trying to impress them with a fast time. To my friends, 100 miles on foot was unthinkable in any amount of time. So my main goal was simply to finish just under the cutoff time and check this task off my list of crazy things to do before I die.

The weather was near perfect, and things went well through the first 50 miles. As I started my sixth lap and crossed over the 50-mile threshold for the first time in my life, I began to tire quickly as the sun set, and my stomach began to get a

Wahl er a

UMSTEAD 100 MILE ENDURANCE ee

A nice lodge serves as race headquarters of the Umstead 100, within 50 feet of the start/ finish line. Runners gather in the lodge before and after the race. A fireplace inside usually has a fire going on cold race nights, and there is a large kitchen where food is organized for the race.

little queasy, but things still seemed reasonably under control. Upon completing 60 miles, I took another brief rest break and thought I was fine. But as I stood up from that rest break, my legs suddenly felt like lead. It was all I could do to walk, and even then, the best I could muster was a staggering 30 minutes per mile. My stomach was suddenly quite upset, and small blisters on the balls of each foot began to bother me more and more with each step. I pushed on as best I could to the next manned aid station at 64 miles and collapsed into a chair, feeling so miserable that I was unable to eat, drink, or relax.

For some reason, I had hit the Wall big time, despite sticking to a careful plan of hydration and carbohydrate intake that should have worked. Here I made the mistake of assuming that once I ran out of energy and began to fall badly behind a minimum pace of 18 minutes per mile, I would never be able to punch through that fatigue barrier and regain any of the time I had lost. So after several agonizing minutes pondering my dilemma and finding no relief from my nausea, I decided to drop out of the race and have a race volunteer take me back to my car.

When I awoke the next morning in my motel room and realized that I felt much better than I normally do after a mere 50-mile race, I instantly knew that Thad given up too soon. As luck would have it, a week later on an ultrarunning listserv I belong to, many ultrarunners related stories of hitting the Wall and eventually breaking through that fatigue to finish the race in a remarkably good time. Some runners even told stories of lying down and sleeping as much as one full hour during a 100-mile race and getting up to finish well under the cutoff time. I vowed then and there that if I ever hit a low spot during my next attempt at a 100-mile race, I would not give up so easily but would instead take a nap or do whatever else was necessary to regain my composure and complete the race, even if that meant missing the cutoff time.

The Umstead 100—take two

In April 2005, I arrived at Umstead for my second try. This time, I had better long training runs due to a relatively mild winter. And once again, in violation of my earlier promise to keep moderation in my life, I had devoted nearly every spare minute of my free time during the three months before the race to some type of training. I also had a lot more confidence, having completed four slow but successful 50-mile races over the past two years and having made it through flu season completely unscathed.

The racecourse had been changed slightly so that it now consisted of eight laps of a 12.5-mile loop. That was fine with me—the fewer laps, the better. As for pacing strategy, I again set as my goal simply to finish in under 30 hours. It is hard to find experienced ultrarunners who can advise you on how to just break 30 hours, because most of the good ultrarunners are well under that time. But I

Umstead 100 runners start each lap going down these broad terraced steps, and they end each lap running up these same steps.

finally found a very helpful running club president on the Internet who had finished several ultras but who did not have finishing times in the elite category. Her advice to me was to average about 15 minutes per mile from the start of the race until sunset, switch to power walking all night long at no less than 20 minutes per mile, and then finish the race with whatever energy I had left when the sun comes up. She swore that if I followed that plan faithfully, I would finish in reasonable comfort and with a small time cushion to spare.

As I prepared to go to bed the night before the race, I was feeling optimistic. But then I saw the weather forecast on the evening news and my heart sank. Unlike the year before, when it had been a sunny 75 degrees with low humidity during the day and a mild 55 degrees at night, the forecast for this year’s race was periodic rainstorms, 20-mph winds, and dropping temperatures throughout the day, culminating in nighttime lows in the 40s. I tossed and turned much of the night and even awoke and got out of bed on two occasions with severe anxiety attacks. I thought about the pain that I was about to face over the next 30 hours and wondered whether I had made a mistake in trying this distance again. But I eventually managed to get about five hours of restless sleep.

The next morning, the awful sound of my alarm clock woke me, and I crawled out of bed dreading the 30 hours of torture that I knew lay ahead. I drove to the

race site in the dark, parked my car, and nervously sat there for 20 minutes in a feeble effort to calm myself and keep weight off my feet for as long as I could before the race started.

Soon, the announcement came for runners to assemble at the starting line, and after a few brief words of encouragement from the race director, the starting gun sounded, and we slowly surged into the darkness.

I intentionally started slowly and settled into a very conservative run/walk pattern. I also did my best to ignore the surprisingly humid morning weather. My initial nervousness was eased considerably by some humor from a runner in front of me. When asked by his buddy what race strategy he intended to use, he replied: “I made up my mind last night that if I get hot, or cold, or tired, I’m going to quit!” Everyone within earshot broke into laughter, since we all knew that some or all of those very symptoms would soon be upon us and likely would last for hours.

As the rain came and went throughout the day, two short sections of the course became very muddy, but most of the course drained well. Still, everyone ran with wet shoes and socks for the majority of the day. In the late afternoon, a brief rain shower poured down on us, and this time, the temperature had dropped enough that the rain had almost turned to sleet, causing my exposed skin to become red. Upon reaching the start/finish area and completing 50 miles, I jogged to my car to get some gloves and a jacket and headed back out on the course before my muscles could tighten up.

A Umstead’s wide trail and nice footing make it the perfect race for runners doing their first 100 miler.

Entering the twilight zone

A short time later, the sun began to set, I switched on my headlamp, and I entered the night portion of the race that I dreaded the most because it had already conquered me once. Sure enough, the more that darkness descended, the more my energy began to drain. I tried to convince myself that this was not happening again and that any fatigue was just psychological. But the fatigue got worse and worse until I knew it was not just my imagination.

At 58 miles into the race, I sank into a chair at an aid station and felt completely spent. In addition, the high wind and 45-degree temperature caused me to begin shivering uncontrollably despite my layers of warm clothes. I buried my head in my hands and dejectedly said to myself: “I can’t believe I’ve hit the Wall again, and this time six miles sooner than last year!” I made up my mind to shuffle the rest of the way to the start/finish area, take an hour nap in my car with the heater on, and try to finish one more lap so that I could at least tell my friends that I had gone 75 miles, which would be some small improvement over the prior year’s failed effort.

I also did two other things that, by pure luck, turned out to be extremely helpful. First, despite nausea, I forced myself to eat a banana. I don’t usually eat bananas during races, but I knew that I needed some nutrition, and a banana seemed like the blandest food at the aid station and the least likely to make me throw up. Second, due to extreme discomfort in my leg muscles and joints, I decided to take some of what ultrarunners refer to as “vitamin I” (also known among nonrunners as ibuprofen). I had never taken ibuprofen during an ultra before, and I had sworn before the race that I would not use painkillers because they can be dangerous when your kidneys are already under extreme stress. But when you are absolutely miserable, promises made under more comfortable conditions are easily broken.

I eventually rose to my feet and slowly walked away from the aid station into the dark with visions of my warm car waiting for me just three miles ahead. About a half mile after I left the aid station, a runner came alongside me, slowed his pace to match my staggering shuffle, and began talking.

My meeting with the talker

When a runner is exhausted and trying to concentrate on not throwing up, nothing is more annoying than having another runner who feels relatively fresh pull alongside and try to strike up a spirited conversation. I thought this runner was going to do just that, and I remember thinking, Oh, no! Here I am, cold, exhausted, and sick to my stomach, and to make matters worse, I’m stuck next to a talker who probably wants to tell me his life story before he sprints off to finish the race. But what happened instead was nothing short of a miracle.

Rather than asking me lots of questions or bragging about his running accomplishments, my companion instead spoke in calm, measured tones about the race itself. And he spoke without any expectation of a response, as if he were just relating his inner thoughts to anyone who cared to listen. It was his first 100-miler too, and he marveled at how this race attracted people from all walks of life and all levels of ability. He mentioned that during the day, he had been running with everyone from housewives to elite athletes, with each person trying to beat the distance. He also noted that the stars were beautiful tonight and that the wind had died down considerably since we left the last aid station, making the air much more comfortable. And perhaps sensing that I was struggling, he mentioned that we had “plenty of time in the bank” from having completed a good first 50 miles and that just a brisk power walk from this point on would still bring us to the finish nearly an hour under the cutoff time.

His calm optimism had a mesmerizing effect on me, and deep down inside, I knew that what he was saying was right. The wind had died down, the air did feel warmer, the stars were pretty, and I did have a nice cushion of time in the bank.

lalso soon realized that slowly and imperceptibly my companion had quickened his pace while he had been talking to me, and I had subconsciously quickened my pace as well to keep up with him. It was at about this same time that the sugar from the banana kicked in to give me some extra energy and the ibuprofen kicked in to temporarily mask the pain in my legs. Suddenly, I no longer wanted a nap. Instead, I wanted to finish the damn race!

Just like that, I was back in the game. My energy had rebounded enough that I thought I could complete another 12.5-mile lap at a pace that probably would be sufficient to keep the cushion of time I had built up thus far. I also felt that if I could make it to mile 75 without falling apart, then maybe—just maybe—I could hold myself together with more ibuprofen and careful fueling long enough to complete two more laps after that.

When we reached the start/finish area, the talker, whom I had initially dreaded and who had ended up being such a quiet inspiration to me, said that he would be waiting to link up with a friend who intended to pace him during the rest of the race. Not wanting to stop and risk my leg muscles cramping up, I decided to keep going without him, so I filled my water bottles and started on another lap by myself. I was not to see him again for the rest of the race.

Demons of the night

For much of the rest of the night, I shuffled completely alone down the trail in total darkness, save for the small circular funnel of light from my headlamp. It was during my next lap that I began to face a new demon that I had not faced before in a running race. That demon was the almost uncontrollable desire to sleep. I

found myself drifting from one side of the trail to the other as I would briefly fall asleep while jogging. These catnaps probably lasted only a few seconds, but I could not stop them even after downing two caffeine tablets.

To make matters worse, I soon began to hear what I thought were the speeding footsteps of a runner bearing down on me from behind, and I thought for sure that I was about to be run over in the dark. Each time I heard these footsteps, I would whirl around with my headlamp and see nothing but blackness. It was apparently the gusty wind in the trees or the sloshing water in my water bottles playing tricks on my ears, but it was disconcerting nonetheless, and it happened several more times during the night.

Later in the night, my eyes began playing tricks on me as well. I had trouble keeping them focused, and my headlamp created crazy shadows on the side of the trail so that I sometimes could not tell where the edge of the trail ended and the woods began.

Around 2 A.M., [heard a rustling noise off to the side of the trail. I glanced into the woods expecting my headlamp to reveal the glowing eyes of an animal—maybe a rabbit or a deer. Instead, I saw what appeared to be a clearing filled with a large patch of daffodils, and as I stared at them for a few seconds, they simultaneously were sucked down into the ground.

There are no daffodils along the Umstead racecourse, let alone daffodils that are sucked into the ground when you look at them. I instantly knew that I was hallucinating, because I had experienced strange visions from extreme fatigue many years before when I was going through night patrols during my army Ranger School survival training. I decided then and there that no matter what I thought I saw or thought I heard, I would keep my attention focused directly ahead of me and concentrate on not letting my pace slow.

One lap slowly led to another, and fortunately my pace did not slow and my stomach remained stable. To my surprise, mile 75 felt about the same as mile 70, and so did mile 80. They were all just a blur of constant but bearable discomfort, and I tried not to think of how far I had left to go for fear of psyching myself out.

After many more bananas for extra energy and many more doses of vitamin I to relieve the dull aching that kept creeping back into my leg muscles and joints, I rounded a bend in the trail and suddenly realized that my headlamp was no longer necessary and that the faint glow of sunrise was on the horizon. I had for the first time in my life run all day and all night, and I had survived to experience anew morning.

Facing the new day

Some experienced ultrarunners had told me that once the sun rises, my energy level would return just like someone flipping on a light switch. But that did not

happen. I was just as tired and miserable after sunrise as I had been before, except that I could now see much better. After I stared at my watch and did some rough math, my spirits were buoyed by the realization that even if I kept my current slow pace, I would probably finish the race with about an hour to spare.

Once I realized that a successful finish was all but in the bag, the race became downright boring. Soon, I had just one 12.5-mile lap to go, and all I wanted to do was get it over with so I could go to my motel and take some weight off my feet. That final lap seemed to last an eternity, but the sun was shining and there were a few straggling runners still out on the course whom I could share my misery with as we shuffled along stiff legged.

About two miles from the finish line, a man was walking his dog along the same road used by the runners, and he saw the small signs posted along the course that said “Umstead 100.” He asked me what the runners were doing, and I told him that we were running 100 miles.

“Oh,” he replied, “so you are adding up the mileage of each of the runners until the group’s mileage totals 100?”

“No,” I said, “each one of the runners is attempting to run 100 miles by himself.”

“T see,” the walker responded, “‘so you must come back to this park over the course of several weekends until you have each accumulated 100 miles.”

“No,” I replied again. “Each runner is attempting to run 100 miles in 30 hours or less. We started yesterday at 6 A.M.”

The man stood there for several seconds in stunned silence, trying to comprehend what I had just said but not quite sure he had heard me correctly. I trudged on to avoid any further questions from him that might be tougher to answer, such as “Why on earth are you doing this?”

As I made the final turn and began the last half mile to the finish line, I glanced at my watch and saw that I would indeed finish with one hour to spare, just as the talker who had joined me briefly in the night had promised. I also began wondering what my emotional reaction would be when I crossed the finish line and reached my 100-mile goal. Would my eyes fill with tears of joy, as many ultrarunners have reported upon completing their first big race? Would I feel an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and euphoria for having finally conquered a triple-digit distance? Would I pump my fist in the air or let out a boisterous shout, as many runners do when finishing their first marathon or first big ultra?

Before long, the finish line came into view. And then, as if I were running in a dream, I slowly shuffled across the finish line and got my answer.

I did not feel euphoria. My eyes did not fill with tears of joy. I did not pump my fist in the air or let out a whoop of celebration. Instead, the only feeling I had was one of relief that I had finally gotten the 100-mile monkey off my back, coupled with considerable annoyance at myself for having put that monkey there

The author’s silver finisher’s belt
buckle with the Umstead race logo,
shown here nestled in the pine needles
of the course next to his worn-out
shoes from the race. Those finishing
under 24 hours receive a gold-colored
buckle.

in the first place. And it was definitely not a pleasant feeling of relief. It was instead the kind of relief that you feel when walking out of the dentist’s office after a root canal.

I limped to my car, slumped into a lawn chair I had placed nearby, and thought, So this is what it feels like to run 100 miles. It was not a good feeling. My legs and joints throbbed with an almost unbearable dull aching that would not subside even when lying down, and my stomach was so queasy that even cold water tasted horrible. When I thought about all of the elite ultrarunners I had read about who run multiple 100-mile races each year, I shook my head and mumbled under my breath: “What a miserable way to spend a weekend. Why would anyone want to do this more than once in a lifetime?”

Reflections on my journey

I expected that after a good night’s sleep and a good meal, my perspective on what I had just been through would improve. But it never did.

As I drove home from the race the next day, I thought back on the hundreds of hours of training I had put in and the hundreds of dollars I had spent on shoes, equipment, and nutritional supplements in order to reach my goal. I thought especially about all the time I had spent pounding out training miles instead of spending high-quality time with my wife or pursuing my other abandoned hobbies. In the end, I concluded that the physical, mental, and financial cost of the journey to complete a 100-miler had not been worth the rewards of reaching that goal.

About the only positive thing I can say is that finishing the Umstead 100 gives me bragging rights if I am ever at a cocktail party with nonathletes and the subject of running comes up. But I don’t go to many cocktail parties, and even when I do, I find that nonathletes seldom talk about running.

More important, my goal in running 100 miles was never to achieve something that would impress sedentary people. I could have done that by completing a marathon or even a half-marathon. My goal was really to impress myself in much the same way I had been impressed when I first read about people like Dean Karnazes and other ultrarunners who routinely completed 100-milers and made it

look easy. But I was not impressed with my 100-mile accomplishment, because I knew that I had barely made it by the skin of my teeth and largely thanks to a lot of luck and a lot of walking.

In fact, to this day, I am unable to tell people with a straight face that I have “run” 100 miles. What I do tell those curious few people who care to ask is this: on one occasion when I had perfect health, months of special training, cool weather, the smoothest and easiest racecourse in the country, and a lot of luck on my side, I was able to shuffle and walk 100 miles in just under the maximum cutoff time of 30 hours.

In the weeks that followed the Umstead 100, I experienced occasional bouts of depression and melancholy that would come and go without warning. What depressed me the most was the realization that I had given to ultrarunning over the past three years the most valuable thing I had, which was all of my limited free time. In return, I expected that ultrarunning would teach me some divine lesson about myself and that I would come away with the feeling that I had done something special that would make my life complete. But in completing 100 miles, I merely rediscovered two old lessons that I had already been taught many times before.

First, the Umstead race reminded me that most goals in life are not worth the sacrifice of the journey to get to those goals. I learned that lesson upon graduating from college, completing the army’s Ranger School survival course, graduating from law school, passing the bar exam, and achieving a number of other intermediate goals along the way. In each case, the journey to reach those goals was filled with sacrifice, pain, and disappointment that far exceeded any sense of accomplishment I received at the end. Why I thought that training for and completing a 100-mile run would turn out any differently is beyond me.

And second, the Umstead race reminded me that no matter how high I set my goals, thousands of people can reach goals that are even higher and reach them faster and better. On the day I finished the Umstead 100, I was third from last. The winner of the Umstead 100 race had finished in under 15:30 and hardly looked winded as he climbed in his car to go home for dinner while I was just finishing up mile 62. And many others who were running their first 100-miler that day comfortably completed the Umstead course in under 24 hours, which is viewed by many as the standard of excellence in 100-mile races and qualifies a person for a fancier finisher’s award.

In a word, finishing Umstead reminded me rather harshly that even when I give an endeavor every bit of my spare time and every ounce of my best effort, I am still mediocre. In the back of my mind, of course, I already knew that fact. Mediocrity is probably at the root of most men’s midlife crisis. Still, being reminded that he is mediocre is not something a man wants to hear as he coasts into the second half of his life.

My new midlife crisis plan

Believe it or not, some good news came out of all of this. The good news is that during the 29 hours of jogging that I did to complete the Umstead 100, I had plenty of time to think about a lot of things. And I came to realize that in looking back over my entire life, my fondest memories were not of my athletic accomplishments or my academic honors or my professional achievements. Instead, the memories I held most dear were of the simple times I have spent alone with my wife enjoying each other’s company.

On the drive home from Umstead, I devised a new plan for overcoming my midlife crisis, and I am confident that this plan will work. My new plan is to spend much less time running and much more time with my wife enjoying our limited free time together. You see, it occurred to me that if—heaven forbid—my wife were to leave this earth before me, I surely would not find comfort in looking through a box of ultrarunning medals or a drawer full of race T-shirts. Instead, the precious memories of time spent with my wife would be the only thing to comfort me until it was my time to go. So I vowed to make as many more of those memories as I can in the limited time remaining.

Not too long after I finished the Umstead 100, I began to implement my new plan by taking an entire month off from running. I was curious to see whether I would miss running after having done it so religiously for so long. Surprisingly, I discovered that I did not miss it one bit. When I stopped all running, I suddenly found myself with tons of free time that I never had before, and it was wonderful! I went out to dinners and movies with my wife. I read a book I had been putting off for well over a year. I caught up on several neglected chores around the house. And I awoke each morning to the pleasure of not having sore muscles and not having to constantly worry about how I was going to fit a training run into my day. When the month ended, I decided to resume running mainly to keep from gaining more weight, but it was all I could do to drag myself out the door and pound out even my greatly reduced training miles.

Inow run no more than 15 miles per week and generally enter only a couple SOK trail races each year, with my main criteria being that the races have relatively easy terrain and very generous cutoff times. I used to travel to races alone, stay in cheap motels, carefully plan my prerace dinner, and get to bed early so I could run the best race possible. Now, on those rare occasions when I enter a race that is far from home, my wife travels with me, and we make a weekend sightseeing vacation out of the trip. We stay in upscale bed-and-breakfasts, eat at nice restaurants the night before the race, and stay up late watching TV because the race itself has become totally secondary to the trip. I also often carry a digital camera with me during races and stop several times to record the scenery, and I seldom keep track of my pace. I am at least 10 pounds heavier and a minute per

mile slower than I was during my quest to complete 100 miles, but I must say that I have never been happier.

Final words of wisdom

If I could turn back the hands of time and take all of the hundreds of hours of ultradistance training to date and trade them for the same number of hours of high-quality time with my wife and family, I would make that trade in a heartbeat. I only regret that it took me so many years, so many miles of training, and so many ultraraces to reach that realization. I don’t mean to suggest that people should not have hobbies, including hobbies that require a great deal of dedication. But hobbies should always be viewed in perspective and should never totally consume a person’s life in the way that I had allowed ultrarunning to briefly consume mine.

If you have been searching for real meaning in your life and have contemplated making the leap to ultradistance races as a way to find that meaning, I recommend instead that you focus your precious free time on enjoying the company of your loved ones while you still can. I think you will find that use of your time to be far more rewarding than running all day and all night down a trail leading to nowhere. /¥\e