FAST WOMEN

Running, like any other sport, has its extremes. On one end, I think of what my mother told me when I was 14 and heading out the door for a three-mile run during one particularly hot summer: “Okay, but if you start to sweat, stop.” Mom was never particularly athletic and still does not know how she ended up with a kid like me.

On the other side of the spectrum, I think of Janice Anderson, who completed six 100-mile races in 2000 and will be doing “only” her second 100-miler of the year on June 2 this year. (I’m writing this on June 1.) In a sport where people consider running four 100-milers in a year to be extreme (they refer to it as a “grand slam”), Janice has not only gone two better but has run most of them pretty fast, winning and setting course records in four of them.

Janice lives in Kennesaw, Georgia, with her husband Craig, an architect who hopes to complete his first 10K this year, and her three dogs—all shelties. Janice is president of the Atlanta Track Club—the organization that oversees the running of The Peachtree road race, the largest 10K road race in the world, in addition to a dozen other races scheduled each year.

I was able to catch up with Janice, last year’s USATF female ultrarunner of the year, just before she headed to Wisconsin for the Kettle Moraine 100-miler, where she finished second woman, in 20:50. There’s little space in her life for distractions such as interviews. I got her just as she had to pack, go to bed early, and get up early so she could be at work before 7:00 A.M. to get in a full day before her 3:45 flight to Milwaukee.

Janice works full-time for Home Depot, with the job title of Chief Engineer in the information systems department, which works on warehouse systems for Home Depot’s distribution center. She seems to have a lot of responsibilities, with six people reporting to her. In short, she’s got a “real” job. With only two weeks vacation per year (what’s wrong with American companies, anyway?), it’s difficult to schedule her weekend races. They almost always require a quick dart to the airport (fortunately, Atlanta has flights to everywhere) on a Friday afternoon, followed by a Monday-morning return to work, no matter how tired she is. Her five-year anniversary with the company this year will provide an extra week of vacation and some welcome relief from that schedule.

IN THE BEGINNING

Janice Anderson, 35, was born Janice DeHaye and grew up in Huntsville, Alabama. Other than an occasional “y’all,” neither she nor two of her three brothers have any trace of a Southern accent. She doesn’t know how this happened, as both her parents have thick drawls.

A fast high school runner with a 5:02 for 1,600 meters, she attended Troy State University, partly because she wanted to be coached by Ed Sheehan, who was there at the time. Before she even arrived, he left for a coaching job at Harvard, and she never really flourished in college in the way she had hoped. “I ran in the 4:30s for the 1,500,” she said. “That was all I did on the track. I made it to Division II nationals in cross-country but missed being All-American by a half second. It was so close.” To be fair, her college career was cut short by graduation. I didn’t ask how she managed to get a computer science degree in three years, but I’m guessing she’s one of those people who could have been anything she wanted.

When she was 24, Janice was one of the youngest ever to be named to the U.S. 100K team. Her fastest conventional 26-mile marathon is 2:54, which happened in 1987 at the Rocket City Marathon in Huntsville. In 1989, she ran in the World 100K Challenge but not as part of the U.S. team. It was the first time she had ever run over 40 miles in her life, and she’s been doing ultras ever since.

Last year’s six 100-milers were an experiment of sorts. “I wanted to see how my body would react to that kind of quantity,” she said, sounding as if she didn’t know better.

Last year’s 100-mile races were, in this order: Rocky Raccoon, Umstead, Massanutten, Mohican, Vermont, and Arkansas. She broke 19 hours in five of them, the one exception being Massanutten, which was the least runnable of the bunch. Janice says she does better when the races don’t have such difficult terrain—which may sound obvious, but some athletes are known to thrive on tough ground. Sue Johnson is one such runner and handed Janice a rare defeat at Massanutten. But Sue was the least of Janice’s problems for this particular 100-miler. For starters, the weather was awful. Two thunderstorms complete with hail unfolded during the race, which led to a lot of “blowdowns”—trees that have fallen on the course. Then, just before 75 miles, she fell and broke her arm near the wrist. “It was obvious it was either broken or seriously damaged in some other way,” Janice said. “It was so swollen it looked like I had a lemon in my arm.”

For those last 25 miles, every time she encountered a “blowdown” she had to stop, put down the flashlight she was carrying, maneuver over the tree, and then pick everything up before continuing. Just for an extra kick in the teeth, neither the weather nor the arm was the worst aspect of this particular event. “I had smashed my knee into something at about the same time, and it really hurt to run. It was worse than the arm.”

Fortunately, this was one of the few times she elected to have a pacer for the journey. She usually prefers to go it alone the entire distance (“It allows me to zone out better”), but this time a fellow everyone called “Muffy” (actual name: Reed Lanaham) was with her for the last 25 miles. Her time was 28 hours and 40 minutes.

This year’s Massanutten was a much less painful experience. Janice ran about 26 hours in nice weather and won. As an indication of how difficult the course is, Courtney Campbell, often under 15 hours for 100-milers, finished first for the men in just under 20 hours.

ROCKY THE FAST RACCOON

If Massanutten was her record for most time “on your feet,” then Rocky Raccoon was the quickest and easiest of the six races. Nothing seemed to be going right except that she was hitting her splits faster than ever. As usual, she had flown in just the night before.

Starting the race, it was cold, and she was unaware that she had a nosebleed. She kept wiping something from her nose, but the dark gloves she was wearing kept her from seeing it was blood. “At the first aid station a volunteer let me in on the secret,” she recalled. She got some tissues, and the problem eventually went away.

Later on in the race, her small flashlight went dead. Fortunately, she waited a little while for someone to catch up to her, and he lent her his spare. I wonder what would have happened without the flashlight delay, as her finishing time of 16:03:30 is the fastest 100 miles ever run on a trail by a woman. The flashlight-lender, a Mr. David Jones, ended up five minutes behind. The legendary Ann Trason, who handed Janice her only other 100-mile defeat in 2000, went after that time and came up 46 seconds short in the Vermont 100 Miler.

Training for these events consists of an endless cycle of a four-week recovery, followed by a short buildup, followed by a race, followed by another recovery. The most difficult training cycle started with the Arkansas 100, followed by a 50-miler two weeks later. Usually, Janice gets up to around 80 to 100 miles per week during her buildup, which includes three-hour training runs when she feels up

to them. She doesn’t go by distance but rather by her watch, with a 17-mile loop, and then adds on until the watch reads three hours. All we know for sure is that it’s at least 20 miles and no more than 25.

None of the 100-mile races she ran in 2000 would count among her worst experiences. Here’s a quick list of some of Janice’s most trying races:

• On her honeymoon in 1994, she ran a 100K race in Italy. The races in Europe start in the afternoon for some reason—this one at 4 o’clock. Some time shortly after nightfall, an Italian official decided Janice’s husband (Craig, who was her crew) shouldn’t be allowed on the course. Right around 50 miles, she started getting sick and was looking for Craig, and she couldn’t find him. Everyone in the vicinity spoke nothing but Italian, it was dark, she wanted her own drinks and food, and no one could explain to her what had happened to him. It was an ugly next couple of hours while she struggled in. “I was very upset,” she recalled.
• On one of her attempts at the Western States 100, she made it to 80 miles when she couldn’t run another step without puking. She had to drop out right there.
• She was hospitalized for a week with kidney problems in 1997 after Western States. They never clearly determined what happened, but she developed a severe infection and swelling in her kidneys. It took a long time to get back to normal.
• On her first 50-mile trail run at Big Horn Mountain in Wyoming, she arrived at the 50K mark and started complaining about how badly the race was going to Craig, who had come to meet her there in their car. It was very hot, and she was ready to drop out. He quietly started closing all the doors and windows of the car, locked everything, and started to drive away without her. She said, “Wait! I want to drop out.” He told her she should stay in and drove off without another word. She finished three hours later.

100s FOR 2001

Janice plans to continue running 100s. She likes 100s because, for some reason, she has the ability to run hard at the end, especially on the trail.

An injury sidelined her for four weeks in March (probably a needed break) before she built up to run Massanutten again. Eventually, she wants to run all the 100s in the United States at least once. Some of them she is not entirely looking forward to. Recall that she prefers a more runnable course. Runs like the Hardrock 100 in Silverton, Colorado, do not appeal to her.

Also somewhere on the horizon she wants to run the length of the 2,160-mile Appalachian Trail. She would have to take a leave of absence from her job, which isn’t in the picture any time soon, but she really wants to do it before she gets too old. Her goal is to run it in under 70 days, which would be the fastest ever by a woman. She says the existing record is somewhere around 100 days. Dave Horton, the former men’s record holder for the trail, has been encouraging her to make the attempt (see www.extremeultrarunning.com for Appalachian Trail records).

A special brand of ambition, combined with the degree of perseverance and success we’ve seen from her thus far, adds up to Janice Anderson being a name we’d all better get used to seeing at the top of trail run results.