(And what | learned from it.) BY MARK KRISTULA

trail running, though I’ve certainly fallen a lot—an awful lot, to be honest. If anything, I got dragged onto the trails by my friends in Los Angeles’s Griffith Park, and I’ve been tumbling along ever since.

Indeed, after six years of scaling the park’s mountainside trails, I have mastered the art of crashing to the ground fully outstretched like Superman, only to spring back to my feet and keep running, my palms scraped raw to the bone, blood slowly oozing down both knees toward my dirt-encrusted, never-goingto-be-white-again socks.

Still, in terms of racing, with 19 marathons, innumerable halfs, and a plethora of shorter distance races, I was most assuredly a road baby—always was, always would be. Oh, there was no denying the benefits of hill training for marathons. It definitely helped me qualify for my first Boston in 10 years. But racing on trail— let alone completing a 50-miler—was always simply beyond my self-imposed limited abilities. Or so I used to think.

S ACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA, April 7,2012—I can’t say that I fell naturally into

ES Eo *

After a group field trip to the redwoods in far Northern California to race the

first ultra, the OTHTC High Desert 5OK Ultra & 30K, held annually the first Sunday in December in the high plains of the Mojave Desert.

My friends were more than a little taken aback by the race I had chosen for my first 50K. Given my difficulty with the terrain in Griffith Park, they couldn’t even begin to calculate the number of times my feet would fly out from under me as I traipsed through the deep, uneven Mojave Desert sand, the cascades of loose rocks, and, most challenging of all, the deep ATV-created trail ruts.

Adding to my mental strain was the fact that I was used to well-marked city marathons. I had certainly never done a race where I would know I was on the right path only if I saw pink and yellow intertwined ribbons dangling precariously from two successive desert bushes. Simply put, I could get lost in a really bad way.

Even though I was racing only five miles longer than your standard marathon, I was advised to change my methods of training and add in back-to-back long runs over the weekends, eventually reaching a split of 24/16 miles over both days. I was also told to eat during my run: eat, eat, and then eat some more.

The additional running proved easy enough, but the eating—not so much. I was a boy devoted to his GU energy gels. I also thoroughly believed in the law of eating while racing that states: everything solid that goes down your throat during a race will eventually come right back up.

Despite the new training regimen and the marked increase in my weekly mileage, I made it to race day in one piece (with nary a scratch on my knees to show for it!). If only the race could have started a half hour later instead of in pitch black.

The moment the race started, the top of my left shoe caught the top of a speed bump in the parking lot at the starting line, and down I went. Bam! That fast! Talk about being sucker punched! But then, of course, true to form, I sprang back to my feet like a jack-in-the-box, ready to run. No one even made mention of my bloody knee until a volunteer asked me if I needed first aid—13 miles into the race. “Oh, no,” I said (as nonchalantly as possible). “This kind of stuff happens all the time.”

The real problem came at mile 24. After an interminable nine-mile climb, I finally reached the crest. That was when I made a near-fatal error and allowed my eyes to take in the glorious spread before me.

Out of all the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, baked potatoes, clusters of pretzels, and bowls of M&M’s, I zeroed in the tiniest piece of sliced banana and swallowed it whole! I almost threw up on the spot! “GU and I, GU and I!’ I repeated to myself almost as if it were a mantra. From now on, it would always be nothing but the GU and me.

Six miles later I finally hit terra firma again. I was never happier to know the firmness of road for my last mile. Instantly picking up my pace, I crossed the finish in 5:33 (oh, so careful to avoid the speed bumps the second time around), convinced that I had run the absolute worst race of my life.

Other than not falling on the actual course, I couldn’t find one good thing to redeem my effort. Then my friends, who of course knew more about ultrarunning than I, told me that I had done fairly well. Really? I had definitely entered a new world. The standards I had previously clung to as a marathoner would never again apply.

Following my brief flirtation with ultraracing, I returned to the solidity of the road in early 2011. But soon enough, my friends were hankering for another field trip, and I was ready for a second brief excursion into the badlands of trail racing.

Once again, I was given fair warning about the trail conditions for the Holcomb Valley 15-Mile Trail race held at Big Bear Resort in mid-June at a starting altitude of 6,500 feet. Having grown up as a foreign service brat in Bolivia, Colombia, and Mexico, I was hardly concerned about a little lung chugging. But running single-track trail made up at times of almost nothing but beds of uneven rock definitely caught my attention.

Having made my peace with the fact that I would have to walk the most difficult parts of the course, I managed to make fairly good time, especially on the fire roads that reached a height of 8,212 feet. Indeed, the hardest part of the course came near the very end of the race. A mile and a half from the finish, I became convinced that I had mastered the art of scanning for loose rocks and debris. Unfortunately, I still hadn’t mastered the art of picking up my feet.

Even though I barely skimmed the top of an embedded pebble, that was enough to send me into orbit. Convinced that I would shoot right back up per my usual MO, the altitude must have had some effect because my left calf muscle began to spasm uncontrollably. All I could do was lie there writhing. Honestly, were it not for a helpful hand offered to me by a fellow runner’s pacer, I might not have made it back on my feet that day.

From there I could smell road and found myself in a near sprint to the finish. I finished in 2:50:33, good enough to get fourth in my age category. But more important, I had managed to stay mentally positive throughout the race.

ES Eo *

The notion of racing 50 miles had always held a certain mystique for me, far more so than finishing your standard 50K. Perhaps it’s the fact that 50 miles seems right on the precipice of being a runable distance while running 100, not to mention 135, miles, seems to cross over from the realm of mere endurance to sheer survival.

My sister, Mike, the Ironman athlete in the family, was the first to plant the seed of doing it. In 2005, Mike suggested we train to race the JFK 50 held annually the Saturday before Thanksgiving in Boonsboro, Maryland. At the time, I told her flat out that she was nuts. Still, Mike persevered.

She even completed the 50K Hat Run, held in Susquehanna State Park, Maryland, in a very respectable sub-six hours. In fact, having gone off course by three miles, Mike wound up running 37 miles in under six hours instead of 31. Unfortunately, that proved to be enough to put an end to Mike’s 50-miler aspirations.

The family glory would be all mine—if I wanted it enough.

And so it was that once I settled on racing my first 50-miler in 2011, the JFK 50 was the logical choice. Thanksgiving would be a real feast that year—as long

as I made it through the dreaded Appalachian Trail without breaking an arm, a leg, my neck, or worse. ES Eo *

The mountainous Appalachian Trail, which stretches more than 2,000 miles from Georgia to Maine, makes up the first 15 miles of the JFK 50. This is followed by 35 relatively flat miles along the C&O Canal and rolling country roads.

Due to the difficulty of the AT’s boulderlike terrain, runners are allotted 4 1/2 hours to get off the mountainside. Given my experience at Big Bear, I figured that I would be off in 3 1/2 to four hours. Then I would just have to throw in an easy six-hour 35-miler. What did I know? Obviously, nothing!

With 10 minutes to spare, I was the last person to make it off the mountainside before the 15.5 mile cutoff. Miraculously, I never took a spill on any of the most dangerous sections of the AT. Rather, the more runable sections proved to be my downfall. Egged on by a sense of false confidence and the knowledge that I had to make up for lost time, I tried to pick it up on the most runable portion of the AT, only to trip over my feet three times within a span of 30 seconds.

I made it to the 27.1-mile cutoff near Antietam with eight minutes to spare. With each runner I passed, I was assured that we would all make the next cutoff, the Christmas-themed “Miracle at Mile 34” at Snyder’s Landing. But glancing at my Garmin, the 8:00:00 cutoff loomed like the foreboding tick of the nuclear war doomsday clock.

I had just managed to eke out one last burst of energy to pass three or four additional runners when a race official moved into my path, seized me by my shoulders, and told me I was done for the day. “What the . . . ?” I was aghast.

Thad missed the 8:00:00 cutoff by five minutes. I had been close to making it, but the race official said point blank, “I’ve been pretty lenient all day, but I’ve got to call it this time.”

Those few words made it all the worse, especially since I knew that I could have finished the race in the allotted 12 hours. I just knew it. But I suppose in retrospect we all felt that way. This made the short ride back to the start even longer than the eight hours we had spent out on the course. Indeed, it was damn near interminable.

The hardest part of not finishing the JFK 50 was having to admit to my first DNF. The phone calls home to friends and family hit even harder. While I felt like a total failure and a loser, to my surprise I had never known more support and encouragement. Just running 34 miles was victory enough, they said.

And that was true, of course, but only to a point. Like it or not, [had come up short by 16 miles and left the challenge unfinished. I didn’t make any decisions that day or the next, but I knew. I would have to make another attempt at 50 miles, and this time it would be the American River 50, the race that seemed made for me. After all, the first 27 miles or so were on road. Ah, road!

If there was one benefit from attempting to run the JFK 50, it had to be the strong mileage base I had developed. Now I was not only able to improve the pace of my long runs but also able to increase my weekly mileage. Fortunately, the training for the AR 50 came off without a hitch.

What changed most the second time around was my approach to both the training and to my preparations for the race. This time around, I was able to find more training partners for my long runs (including one new friend who introduced me to Vespa, an endurance formula derived from the Asian Mandarin wasp). More important, I was headed up to Sacramento with a two-person crew and two pacers. And believe me, they were determined to get me across the finish line—not only within the allotted 13 hours but in one piece.

Thad never fallen on a run in my friend Laura’s presence, so she became my first recruit. I instantly knew that the horrors of the dreaded Appalachian Trail would stay at bay. My friends Nancy and Emilio also agreed to come along. Nancy had previously crewed not only AR 50 but Western States and Badwater as well. Her husband, Emilio, who would be one of my two pacers, had not only paced previous top five performers but had run the race himself several times. As for my second pacer, our friend Victor is such a good trail runner that we call him simply “the goat.”

Since the first 27 miles were essentially on paved road, I assumed they would be a breeze (well, as breezy as you can make a 50K). I met up with my crew for the first time eight miles into the

Ah, the carefree road during the early miles of the race.

& ° & S Qo

race. I was in good spirits, as the first of Laura’s iPhone video interviews would attest, but I was also determined to maintain an Indy 500 pit-stop demeanor and keep all my aid-station breaks as short as possible, especially while I was running well and without any difficulty.

Soon enough I was faced with my first tactical decision of the race: to pee or not to pee. This was the question that began to consume me as I closed in on the half-marathon mark. After all, there is nothing more frustrating than knowing that all the people you passed in the start of a race are now whizzing by you while you’re stuck, well, taking a whiz. Fortunately, my bladder cooperated, and I was able to time things so that I had the use of what turned out to be the condominium of all port-a-johns. It even had a sink!

Just when I had experienced the euphoria of bladder relief, I was more than a little panic stricken by the onset of a dull ache in my right adductor. It was the perfect example of an injury that never comes up in training but can easily derail a race and lead to a DNF. (Of course, I had already done that, so a DNF here was definitely not an option.) My only hope was that, given the slower pace of an ultra, I might be able to run through it. And so, onward I went.

There was only one mean off-road climb in the first 50K, straight up a mountainside somewhere around mile 18. It was the kind of climb that made everyone ahead shift into hiker mode, and I quickly followed suit. Needless to say, my sense of rhythm and forward progress was severely curtailed, and the experience served as a stern reminder that the real challenge still lay ahead: 20 miles of unrelenting trail.

My first taste of extended single-track trail came from Beals Point (26.53 miles) to Granite Bay (31.67 miles). Fortunately, this coincided with picking up Emilio as my first pacer. Emilio was good at steadying my nerves, especially when I began to feel pressure from a field of runners starting to back up behind us.

[hit the 50K mark at about 5 1/2 hours. That was when I realized for the first time that even if I walked the entire next 19 miles, I would still manage to make the 13-hour cutoff time. This in itself was a mental victory that I would cling to throughout the rest of the day.

When Victor took over from Emilio at Granite Bay, I had my first encounter with poison oak. From the mud-encrusted gutter we were running in to the grounds on either side of the gutter, to the branches and trees that encumbered us—it was everywhere! As for the rocks, boulders, tree logs, roots, and small streams that define a technical course—they were everywhere, too!

Rather than have Victor pace me in the traditional sense, I used him as a visual scout. Every five seconds, Victor would bark out the name of the newest impending danger, giving me just the half second I needed to make an adjustment. “Poison, rocks, roots,” became our mantra. The runners behind me could only marvel at the way we carried on—in Spanish!

Only a mile or two into running with Victor, I entered a death-march phase where every step I took required an all-out exertion to keep my jellylike legs from falling out from under me. While I had been warned about hitting a wall around the 30-mile mark, I was still surprised by the suddenness of feeling simply spent.

Another new problem to deal with was my weakening left calf muscle. I had been near religious in my efforts to stay fueled and win the electrolytes battle by taking an electrolyte capsule every hour on the hour. But just the same, my left calf muscle (clearly by now my Achilles’ heel in ultraracing) was starting to twitch whenever it touched down on any kind of loose gravel or free-standing rock.

That was when we came upon the smallest of streams that would require fording—well, not exactly fording. It was more like taking some very wide steps over a bed of uneven rocks surrounded by a few puddles of water. But for me, it was the equivalent of crossing the Delaware on a cold winter’s night.

A fresh pack of runners had started to congregate behind me—yet again—but I just didn’t have the strength or grace to step aside. Instead, my focus was solely on the upright, jagged rocks before me. I carefully turned my ankles this way and that, positioning my feet here and there. And I almost made it across—almost.

I was just about to spring back and push off on my left leg to gain leverage on a rock that would let me clear the stream when my left calf muscle finally gave out and kicked into spasm mode.

Down I went, falling backward uncontrollably, certain that I was about to know a whole lot of pain, when seemingly out of nowhere, eight arms (no doubt attached to four very disgruntled runners) shot up to catch me in midair and propel me forward on my

<4 The initial carefree spirit was followed by intense concentration on the trail.

way! I couldn’t believe my good fortune, and I graciously let every single runner who was currently bunched up behind me run through, perhaps 10 to 20 in total.

Victor handed me off to Emilio at Rattlesnake Bar (40.94) for the final stretch. Perhaps I wasn’t quite the exuberant camper that my friend and crew mate Laura had first documented through her iPhone videos, but I was happy.

This last section of the race was perhaps the most visually majestic, with water crashing down over rock formations to create swirling rapids. But to be honest, I wouldn’t have noticed a thing if Emilio hadn’t forced me to stop momentarily and take in the grandeur of it all. “After all,” he said to me in Spanish, “the race is yours.”

At 47.6 we hit Last Gasp, the final aid station, which prominently displayed a banner proclaiming, “Don’t stop now or we’ll kick your ass!” Emilio reminded me that this was the last possible place that you could be pulled off the course. Fortunately, that was no longer an issue.

Glancing down at my Garmin, I realized that if I could haul myself up the two-mile climb to the finish, I had a chance to break the 11-hour barrier. And why wouldn’t I? I was back on road, baby!

While I can’t say we peeled up the hill, we definitely stepped up the pace and found ourselves passing a plethora of mentally determined runners whose legs had given out well before their spirit had. Still they trudged on, and I knew we would all be finishers that day.

The elation I felt upon crossing the finish line was stupefying. As exhausted as I felt, | was instantaneously rejuvenated, perhaps not quite ready to run another 50-miler on the spot but pretty damn close. Then, just as quickly, my knees started to wobble, and I began to stagger about.

Once more, even after I was done racing, I was dependent on my crew, this time to guide me to our van. Laura, Nancy, Emilio, and Victor had come through for me in more ways than I could count. They truly proved to be the missing ingredient to my success.

As to my more personal rewards for finishing, not only did I get my coveted Patagonia finisher’s jacket, I never fell once!

And what | learned from it

It’s all mental. From perhaps being a little mentally deranged to begin with, to being mentally tough, not to mention maintaining a mentally positive attitude throughout your training and, most important, throughout the race itself—it’s all mental! Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Well, they can tell you anything, because every runner has a coach inside yearning to be

It all culminated
in sweet personal
victory!

set free, but don’t be fooled by imitation coaching. Again, it’s all mental.

Ultraracing involves a lot more than simply increasing your mileage and finding some challenging trails to throw into your weekend runs. You have to be willing to push your limits as you move into your brick weekends, but you have to be judicious as you balance murderous hill runs with flat, easier-paced, next-day runs.

Just as long runs for a marathon are designed to increase your body’s physical endurance, your brick weekends serve to remind you that you’re going to be out on the course for a very long time (in some cases what may feel like an eternity). You’ll begin to experience how your mind can play games with you—and over the course of time, you’ll begin to discover how to fight back and persevere.

But the most important mental process of preparing to race an ultra is taking a step back to consider all the imponderables associated with your ultra event. If you’re a fall-down, stand-up kind of guy like me, the first thing to consider is the course you plan to race. Is it too technically challenging for your first outing? The JFK 50 certainly was for me, but it

© Facchino Photography

was a hometown race for me in many ways, and the lure of being able to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family was a large draw.

My other error in choosing the JFK 50 was that I let the AT’s difficulty consume me before I even got there. In many respects, I was mentally defeated before I even took my first step. While I got off the mountainside without breaking an arm or having to be airlifted, that was hardly any kind of victory with 35 miles of running before me.

In contrast, just knowing that my first 50K of the American River 50 would be on road gave me an assurance in my training that only grew as race day approached. I had no doubt that the last 20 miles of trail would hold innumerable opportunities for stumbling about and other such hijinks, but knowing that I wouldn’t be pulled off the course was an incalculable mental boost.

From electrolyte capsules to Tecnu to Vespa, I felt prepared for any mishaps that might befall me, but nothing put me more at ease than knowing that I had good friends along for the journey. Not only did I have experienced crew members and two top-notch pacers, but I knew they would do anything to get me across the line. (I’m sure that was in part because they couldn’t bear the thought of my bellyaching about “Shoulda, woulda, coulda” for months on end if I failed to finish my second attempt at 50.)

If you’re running an ultra where crewing is permissible, do whatever it takes to secure the rights to your friends’ free time. After all, it’s only one weekend out of the entire year. There has got to be some way to guilt them into it. (Speaking of guilt, you may want to try family first.) Then allow yourself to be taken care of.

Sure, it may feel odd at first, but trust me, they will make sure to bring you back down to earth once you’ve crossed the finish line. Equally as important, do your part to make sure your crew members are treated right. Take them out to dinner the night before, maybe even spring for one night’s hotel stay.

As for race day, remember that your crew will respond to your mental energy. So be respectful, but most important, be positive and have fun. Believe me, your crew will have fun, too. And it really should be a fun, positive experience for all involved—especially if you surreptitiously already have a follow-up ultra event in mind. /¥