(And What | Learned From It)

ILLOUGHBY HILLS, OHIO, August 4, 2007—On a scorching day in

August 1987 in Germantown, Tennessee, I quit my high school crosscountry team. I walked away during a preseason run organized by the team’s upperclassmen. On that harsh August day, we embarked on an out-and-back eight-miler—a distance I considered at the time to be far beyond my limits. But I nonetheless joined the others, thoroughly convinced that I couldn’t withstand those eight miles. And sure enough, I didn’t. Intimidated by the distance and heat and lagging behind, I resolved within three miles of the jaunt that if this was what was expected of me, then no thank you. I stopped running and turned around, walked back to the school, and walked away from organized cross-country for good. Eight miles was too much. I quit.

Twenty years to the month after quitting a cross-country team I never really was a part of (or worthy of), I found myself finishing sixth overall in a 100-mile ultramarathon run on the hilly trails and paths of scenic northeast Ohio. The day’s heat had caused more than half the field to drop out. This race, the inaugural Burning River 100-Mile Endurance Run, brought 144 ultrarunners together at 5:00 a.m. on Saturday, August 4, and spanned up to 30 hours for some.

Reflecting on the experience of training for and running the Burning River 100, it is clear to me that this race was my destiny and a challenge I had to confront. It was an opportunity to face a significant challenge and prevail, as I had failed to do the day I quit cross-country. I had no choice but to enter the Burning River 100, to train harder than I could have imagined years prior, to risk failure, and to do what I had chosen not to do 20 years before: keep going.

The Burning River 100 entered my life at a particularly challenging time, as I dealt with the anguish, humiliation, and fear of unemployment after being unexpectedly laid off from my public relations job. (By the start of the race, I had found employment with a hospital system.) With the punny tagline of “Eracing the Past, Moving Forward,” Burning River provided hope and motivated me through

the 100-mile training weeks, the aches and pains of the back-to-back-to-back long tuns, the scores of two-a-days, and the anxiety of tapering. If this race, run on a naturally beautiful course, sought to erase Cleveland’s painful memories of the notorious Cuyahoga River fire of 1969, then it could also help me turn the page to a new chapter in my life, leaving behind the baggage of joblessness and the heart-wrenching regret of quitting my cross-country team 20 years earlier.

I look back on the experience as one of the most important of my life. This story is not for me. It is written out of gratitude for the Burning River 100 giving me a shot at starting a new life as a man who faced adversity, fear, and the nagging regret of quitting. With the love and support of family and friends, the inspiration of my running club, and the tenacity of my two pacers, I endured through the finish with a smile on my face and memories that will last a lifetime.

MODIFYING WHAT NATURE GIVES YOU

God didn’t bless me with overwhelming speed or the stature of an ultrarunner. He made me 6 feet, 2 inches tall and 175 pounds with big shoulders, relatively modest calves, and sizable upper thighs made for chafing. But he did give me two characteristics that all serious distance runners must have: abundant energy and extraordinary determination that I had discovered in college thanks to the influence of a girl I later married. I come by these characteristics honestly. I see them most notably in my maternal grandmother, who never was a runner but whose brazen spirit and endless energy could have carried her 100-plus miles if she had been so inclined in her younger days.

I don’t mean to suggest that I lack physical ability and am all heart—some Rocky Balboa type. I’m fortunate to have a durable body, healthy joints, and enough speed to have qualified for and finished the 2006 and 2007 Boston Marathons, in addition to other marathons and a few ultras. Three weeks before the Burning River 100, I had completed the Buckeye Trail 50K in Brecksville, Ohio, finishing seventh in a competitive field of more than 180. Going into the Burning River 100, I was running well by my own standards and felt that with my conditioning, on-course training, and determination, a finish in fewer than 22 hours was likely. Plus, having sought out the advice of a number of veteran ultrarunners, I had a good sense of what I had gotten myself into.

WHEN SLEEP SILENTLY SLIPS AWAY

It would be a stretch to say that I woke up on race morning because I hadn’t really slept much the night before. I was jittery from Friday night’s prerace meeting at the finish line in Cuyahoga Falls, and my mind was swimming with worries as I tossed and turned in bed. Had I chosen the right spots and contents for my drop bags? Would the unexpected soreness from my taper-week walking hamper my

performance? Would my pacers be on time and prepared? Would the forecasted 90-degree heat be a killer? Most important, was I ready for the 100 miles? When I practically leapt out of bed at 3:15 on Saturday morning, totally wired and nervous at the same time, I felt as though I hadn’t gotten even a wink of sleep. After dressing, caffeinating myself, and downing a bagel, I wrote my wife, Anne, a short note and placed it on the sofa. She would find it later that morning. In the note, I told Anne I loved her and that if I finished Burning River, it would rank as one of the three most important days of my life—behind my birth and our wedding.

At about 4:00 a.m., Anne and I began the 20-minute trip to the start at the historic Squire’s Castle of North Chagrin Reservation in Willoughby Hills. Needless to say, it was a quiet drive. We arrived at the start at about 4:30 to find runners and crew members, armed with headlamps and flashlights, meandering about in the pitch-black darkness. I kissed Anne good-bye and immediately signed in. After talking with a few friends, I walked to the start in a grassy field behind Squire’s Castle and stayed put for the next several minutes as runners got in position and, like me, fiddled with their gear and retied their shoelaces.

At about 4:55, the race director, Joe Jurczyk, made a few remarks, asked for a moment of silence for a Burning River entrant who had died while serving our country in Sweden, and led in the singing of the national anthem. At exactly 5:00 A.M., the gun went off. It was still pitch-black dark, necessitating a flashlight as we crossed the field and got on the quiet, two-lane Chagrin River Road, which we would stay on for nine miles before entering the South Chagrin Reservation Polo Field and remaining on trails for most of the rest of the race. Running down Chagrin River Road at about an eight-minute-per-mile pace, I listened to my Sony Walkman and surprisingly felt relaxed and happy.

THE HALFWAY CRAMPS

Other than a few stomach cramps, my suddenly dead Walkman at mile 10, achange of shoes at mile 18, and slightly achy legs from the early road section, the first 50 miles were largely uneventful. Right around mile 45, after stopping for a trailside pit stop, I took my first Advil to relieve the aches and pains and continued my journey on the single-track Buckeye Trail. It was in the early afternoon, as I approached the halfway point, that my chest began cramping because of the now 90-degree heat. The cramping seemed to worsen with every breath but wasn’t debilitating. Still, I was concerned and felt a bit of a crisis. [had never experienced pain in my chest and for a short moment feared the worst—I was having a heart attack. As I continued running, I decided that the pain was not, in fact, related to my heart since it was to the right side of my chest. It was cramping, coming and going with little warning. One second I felt fine; the next second the cramping came like a lightning strike.

A The author entering the Station Road Bridge aid station (miles 30.3 and 36.3) in the Brecksville Reservation. The temperature by then was well over 80 degrees and climbing.

At 2:35, I descended the Buckeye Trail onto Hines Hill Road, only about 200 yards from the first Boston Store aid station (mile 51.7), a literal hotspot, and 15 miles from picking up my first pacer. I needed relief from the heat because I knew the next eight miles would be a virtual Dante’s /nferno. I downed cup after cup of fluids, ate some stale peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and lukewarm grapes, and took great pleasure in a girl dousing my body in ice-cold water. Just before I departed, a volunteer packed my hat with ice and told me it had worked well for those in front. Sure enough, the ice did the trick for me, too. My chest cramping subsided as I cooled down, if only for about 15 minutes. By the time I was at the top of the quite nasty Stanford Road hill, where the asphalt was literally melting, the cramps were back and stayed with me for a while. Needing a pick-me-up after climbing the hill, I quickly called my parents, who I knew were worried, to check in and let them know I was OK.

The chest cramps nagged me on that first Boston Store loop, and they nagged me as I made my way from the second Boston Store stop to the next aid station at Pine Lane. But I wasn’t alone in my discomfort. At about mile 54, just before the beautiful Brandywine Falls, I passed a runner from Alabama who had slowed to a walk. “How’s it going?” I asked. “It’s just too darn hot,” he said in his southern accent. He started running again and got a few steps behind me as we introduced ourselves only by where we lived. “No question about it,” he said, “this race is

A Located in the heart of Cuyahoga Valley National Park, the Boston Store aid station (miles 51.7 and 56.5) was a virtual Dante’s Inferno. A number of runners dropped from the race at this aid station.

harder than Mohican,” referencing the Mohican 100-mile race in Ohio’s Mohican State Park. “Yeah, if you’re from Alabama and say it’s hot, then it must be hot,” I replied. I later found out that my friend from the Yellowhammer State dropped.

THE INTENSITY OF HEAT IS RELATIVE

At about 90 degrees, the heat was pretty intense. The melting asphalt on Stanford Road at about mile 53, my dry mouth, rumors of several dropouts, and the empty water bottles I handed to aid station volunteers for refilling in the afternoon hours told the story of the fairly hostile conditions we faced. But heat is relative. The heat we faced at Burning River would have been a cakewalk for Badwater or Western States 100 runners, and I think this perspective kept me going, especially during the chest cramping.

Going into a 100-miler in August, I knew that the heat and the hilly terrain, to say nothing of the actual distance, might be major factors, which is why my number one goal for the race was to survive it. A running friend of mine, 57 years old and a tried-and-true ultrarunning veteran, told me it was a game of survival. To illustrate the point, he asked me, “If you were in a plane crash and civilization was 100 miles away, would you curl up in a ball and die, or would you get to civilization come hell or high water?”

Wyatt Homsby

“Get to civilization,” I told him.

“Well,” he said, “you have to approach a 100-miler the same way. It’s going to hurt you badly and make you want to quit. And you have to survive it.”

And so survival was my approach to the Burning River. No matter how hard Thad trained and prepared, the race would throw challenges my way: hills, night trail running, and the elements. To cover those 100 miles, I would have to survive each of them through the finish. The good news was that I didn’t have to beat anyone or anything except for the course. It was me versus those 100 miles, and I was bound and determined to prevail.

HAPPY DAYS ARE WHEN TED STARTS TO PACE ME

Besides surviving the course, I had a goal of getting to mile 65.7, also known as the Happy Days Visitor Center parking lot, with some gas left in the tank. At this appropriately named aid station, the dynamics of the race would change as I would pick up my first of two pacers, Ted Friedman. From Happy Days, Ted would run with me to the Pine Hollow aid station (74.4), where my wife, Anne, would be waiting for me, and then on to mile 80.4. Her moral support and the food and supplies she brought would be crucial, especially as the darkness approached and those final 25 miles loomed.

As a general rule in ultrarunning, you mustn’t get too far ahead of yourself. I learned quickly that the short-term goal is to put one foot in front of the other, and the long-term goal is to get to the next aid station in one piece. Thus, my focus was to keep going and ultimately make it to Happy Days. I knew getting there would be challenging. Heat exhaustion, a terribly nasty hill after the Pine Lane aid station (60.8), and a long, lonely stretch of road and towpath leading to a seemingly endless trail connecting to the Happy Days parking lot would make the journey anything but easy. The fact that the longest I had ever run was 52.2 miles never really occurred to me when I thought of the challenges of getting to Happy Days—13 miles beyond that point.

Fortunately, when I left the Pine Lane aid station at 4:35 p.m., I felt well fueled and upbeat. I found great humor in one of the volunteers, a leathery, middle-aged fellow, claiming that he had taken 50 Advils at a 100-miler that spring. I ran from Pine Lane, power walked up a nasty hill on the Buckeye Trail, and ran most of the rest of the way on those lonely stretches of road and towpath. At one point as Iran down the trail connecting to Happy Days, I called my brother, Will, for some company, and we talked for three or four minutes. The topic: our beloved New York Mets. Finally, I reached the aid station at 5:40 p.m., 12 hours and 40 minutes and 65.7 miles after starting. There stood Ted, with his wife, Tami, and their three sons, all cheering. Were it not for some hot spots on my feet that diverted much of my immediate attention, I might have become emotional at the sight of the Friedman family. In 100s, I found, you need people.

Iknew I would need a pacer, if for no other reason than I dreaded the thought of being alone on the trails at night, but I didn’t know exactly how he would help. Ted wasn’t an experienced trail runner, but he was a solid road runner who had run one marathon, the Rock ’n’ Roll in Phoenix. Most important, Ted was a good friend. A few days prior to the race, he had offered to accompany me on those 15 miles after a last-minute course change forced the need, in my mind, for a second pacer. I was thrilled to have Ted on board and knew that he would do an outstanding job, but even my high expectations fell short of what Ted ultimately brought to the experience. Not only did he keep me motivated and optimistic, but he was an incredibly strong walker. When we weren’t running, we walked at a pace much brisker than I had thought would be possible at this juncture.

IS ATOP 10 FINISH POSSIBLE?

Not long into our 15-mile adventure, Ted told me that I was running sixth or seventh in the race and that a frontrunner had dropped out at Happy Days. Throughout the day, I had heard many different reports of my place, from fourth to 10th, and so Ted’s report left me guardedly happy but not yet ready to get too excited. Still, I couldn’t help but relish the thought of a top 10 finish as we entered the Kendall Lake aid station (71.7), where I devoured a cold but delicious slice of pizza and refilled my bottle. Ted and I then walked up the long, grassy, cross-country trail going away from the lake before running through a wooded area and up the famous Sound of Music Hill (featured in the August 2007 issue of Runner’s World) to find Anne and an exuberant group of volunteers cheering me on at the Pine Hollow aid station (74.4). The time was 7:37 p.M., and I had been on my feet for 14 hours and 37 minutes and three-quarters of the total distance.

At that point, I soaked up support like a sponge. I knew Anne was proud of me and was ready to offer whatever help she could. She brought my eyeglasses, which I switched into for fear of my contact lenses drying late in the race. She also brought a second headlamp (I had picked up the first one at Happy Days), some ginger ale, and a thermos of hot chicken noodle soup—a terrific source of sodium, carbohydrates, and protein. I didn’t need the shoes she brought. The soup was too hot to eat at Pine Hollow, so I decided to carry the thermos and sip on the soup once it cooled.

Over those 15 miles, Ted and I talked about everything from running to life. I could tell that he was excited to be out there with me and was enjoying the experience. Not long into our run, he told me that he felt ready to try his first ultra, probably a 50K, and was sorry that he couldn’t pace me to the finish. This news surprised me a bit; Ted was nervous about pacing me, but clearly the unfolding experience—being in the woods on a single-track trail as the night fell—had left him bitten by the ultrarunning bug. His enthusiastic discovery of this new world

of distance running that so few even know about inspired me. Thanks to his good company, those 15 miles, which I had feared would be a supreme personal and physical struggle, proved to be an altogether enjoyable experience. We arrived at the first Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station (80.4) at about 9:20 p.m. From there, Kenny McCleary would pace me to the finish.

WAY TOO MANY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FINAL 20 MILES

Weeks before the Burning River, I had stewed quite a bit over those final 20 miles, haunted by stories I had heard of incoherent, hallucinating runners staggering, even collapsing, from exhaustion, barely making it to the finish or not making it at all. A good friend, one of the toughest runners I have ever known, once told me that he had dropped in a 100 at mile 95 because of a knee injury. Would such terrible things happen to me? Faced with the final 20, would I feel on the verge of triumph or defeat? Would I be mentally coherent? Would I cower under the challenge, as I did when I quit the cross-country team? Was I man enough to stare down the final 20 and cover the distance?

With no prior experience and the shaky confidence of a first-timer, I had convinced myself that the final 20 miles would be life’s ultimate challenge. I had feared that Kenny would see me at my worst, forced to pull out all the stops to get my tired, broken-down body across the finish line and never again wanting to pace another poor sucker who had gotten himself in over his head. My bleak view of those last 20 miles was indeed the cowardice of the boy who had quit on his cross-country team chipping away at my determination, creating fear in me, forcing me to question my own manhood and whether I had the right stuff to endure—or no stuff at all.

As I sat at the first Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station, devouring a plate of cold macaroni and cheese while Ted and Kenny talked and I got sprayed to keep the bugs at bay, I felt not even a hint of fear. Far from exhausted, I felt wired and completely locked in and focused on the goal at hand: finishing this damned race. Some describe this state as being in “the zone.” Twenty miles separated me from the finish, and come hell or high water, nothing would stop me from getting to downtown Cuyahoga Falls.

Leaving the first Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station, I embraced Ted and thanked him. But time was of the essence, and Kenny and I headed out with a treacherous 4.1-mile loop on the rocky, hilly Perkins Trail. I had learned that a running friend of mine, Tim Clement, the eventual third-place finisher, was about four miles ahead of us, and I wanted to somehow catch him—a lofty goal considering that Tim was a highly accomplished ultrarunner. But first, we had to negotiate the Perkins Trail section, which proved to be the hardest stretch of all. We slowly ran out of the aid station and made our way into the woods, where a

series of steep drops, creek crossings, and rocky sections, together with pitch-black darkness, forced us into a walk to avoid injury. This slow section felt like a slap to the face. With 80 miles down and 20 to go in the dark, I wanted to keep running, but risks had to be minimized at this stage in the game. Better to carefully walk Perkins than run it and potentially go down with an ankle sprain.

A TECHNICAL GUY AS PACER ON THE MOST TECHNICAL SECTION OF TRAIL

Kenny’s value as a pacer quickly became apparent as we entered the dark woods, the only light coming from our headlamps. An engineer from my former home of West Lafayette, Indiana, he had carefully studied the final 20 miles of the course to the degree that his knowledge seemed almost firsthand. The seriousness of his approach to pacing instilled confidence in me at a time when I needed it. The Perkins Trail clearly was the most technical section of the course and slowed us considerably, especially as both of my iliotibial bands were by now inflamed. Even as we walked, I nearly sprained my ankle twice, and countless times both of us tripped but managed to stay on our feet. Meandering through the woods, this roller coaster of a trail seemed to go on forever. We decided that once we got out of the woods and had refueled back at the second Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station, we would try to make up some time on Oak Hill Road before entering another challenging section, the O’Neill Woods.

We ran into the second Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station (84.5), where I sat down for four or five minutes to enjoy a delicious bowl of salted potatoes and sausage that tasted worthy of anything Emeril Lagasse could pull off. All day I had been shoveling food into my mouth, not really enjoying myself until now. I told the volunteer who handed me my plate that it was the first food I had enjoyed all day, except for the banana nut bread at two morning aid stations and the ginger ale the organizers had graciously provided at my request.

Kenny and I ran out of the second Everett Road Covered Bridge aid station and held a decent pace down the dark, rural Oak Hill Road. Adrenaline coursed through my body. I told Kenny I could smell the finish, that “I want it.” If a brick wall separated us from the finish, I would have run through it. We passed a residential area and the historic Hale Farm, which I had greatly enjoyed during a training run, before entering the Buckeye Trail, crossing a stream, and making our way up a steep hill into the O’Neill Woods. Going into Burning River, I had dreaded the O’Neill Woods section because I knew that its technical spots and the extreme darkness would slow us. But I was in the zone and saw the O’Neill Woods not as an impediment or hurdle but as a mere trail loop that, upon completion, would put me 15 miles from personal victory.

THE PSYCHE STAYS TRUE

We ran the simple sections and walked the technical stretches, eventually arriving at the O’Neill Woods aid station marking mile 88.3. There, two friendly older men greeted us and offered lukewarm grilled cheese sandwiches, which I nonetheless happily accepted. The food here wasn’t quite up to Covered Bridge standards, but it still did the job, and we left O’Neill at 11:12 p.m., descending the treacherous root- and rock-laced Deer Run Trail and then turning onto Bath Road, from which we entered the mind-numbing towpath trail. I knew from my previous training on the course that the final 13 miles from O’ Neill to the finish— with long, boring stretches of towpath, technical trails including sections along a gorge, hilly roads, and two nasty sets of stairs at about miles 98 and 99—would be the most emotionally and physically taxing. Even so, I left O’Neill with a “Bring it on!” attitude and called Anne to let her know that we were only about two and half hours from the finish. If she and her parents, who came to see me cross, still wanted to be there at this late hour, they needed to leave the house at a quarter ’til one, I said. “How are you doing?” she asked. “I’m OK,” I replied. “We’re trucking along and will be coming in around 1:30 or so.”

On paper, three miles separated the O’Neill and Big Bend (aka Merriman) aid stations. Looking back on that God-awful stretch, the time it took us to get from O’Neill to Big Bend felt like an eternity. At several spots after passing through a well-lit, outlying area of Cuyahoga Falls, I could have sworn that Big Bend was, well, just around the bend, but it wasn’t. As we alternated between shuffling and walking, with my iliotibial bands quite painful and Big Bend nowhere in sight, my spirits began to flag. I had consumed the last of the soup and just wanted to get to the aid station, where I would reload on calories, pray for my IT bands to hold up, and maybe even rest for a few minutes. But where was Big Bend? Had we somehow wandered off course? I fretted and doubted whether we would ever get to Big Bend. Kenny kept his cool and urged me to keep running and hold together for just 10 more miles.

We finally came upon Big Bend, like an oasis in a desert, at 12:15 a.m. The 63 minutes it took us to get from O’Neill to Big Bend had felt more like six hours, and I reasoned that the mileage between the two aid stations was wrong (and it probably was). My sense of time was now out the window, but my spirits somehow remained intact. At Big Bend, friends and volunteers cheered for me and were front and center in attending to my every need. I don’t remember many details of my Big Bend experience, other than that we reloaded my thermos with Ramen noodles, I failed to eat enough, and on the ground I saw a passed-out runner whom I couldn’t identify because his crew was around him. The runner had been in fifth place and appeared to be down for the count. By now passing him, I moved into the fifth spot, reason for both celebration for getting ahead and