Twenty miles in and I'm already exhausted. It's not supposed to be like this, but I guess a 10-mile-long climb to start the race will do that. What kind of stupid hobby is this? I think back to the first 100 Mile I finished back in 2015—then I was exhausted by mile 25 and went on to finish (granted, it took almost 32 hours), and so maybe I can do it again.
It wasn't to be. Though I did the first 28 miles at a comfortable pace just under 14 minutes a mile, I gradually slowed. The cutoffs caught up to me: I cleared the mile 41 aid station two hours ahead of the cutoff; I left the mile 52 aid station an hour ahead of the cutoff; and then I came into the mile 66 aid station five minutes after the cutoff.
The race was a grueling, if beautiful, 20 hours in the mountains. I have to say, with a little shame, that I didn't enjoy much of any of it. There were a couple moments of brilliance: the way, at sunrise, the light threw orange patches across the pine forest floor; the relief of seeing a food tent after an interminable climb; the full red moon. But mostly it was misery. The highest temperatures ever recorded in the area, a bit of smoke lingering in the air from a nearby forest fire, long exposed stretches in the sun, the dry air and altitude I'm not used to (coming from humid, sea-level Philadelphia), and of course the climbing—the race had 20,000 feet of vertical, nearly all in the first 66 miles. (So I'm glad to say that, even if I didn't finish all 100 miles, I did get all the climbing under my belt!)
I thought about dropping out all along the way, particularly during those long climbs. Funny how once I hit level ground I started to think I'd be okay. But in the end the decision got made for me. Or did it? Now, days later, I find myself wondering if I could have just pushed a little harder, gone just a little faster, made that cutoff, and then gone on to finish. The distance of time makes you forget.
Some regrets: My brother Charlie was planning to pace me, and I was meeting him at mile 66. Because I was by then hours behind schedule, he jogged down the mountain to find me around mile 62, and we walked up together. So he did get some nighttime mountain "running" in, but I still feel bad that things didn't go as planned. And then there's the fact that I probably won't get a Western States qualifier in this year. I DNS'd Laurel Highlands back in June because of an injury, and now I DNF'd Pine to Palm. The only remaining qualifiers I could conceivably do have a long waitlist (but of course I still added myself to two of them).
Somewhere along those 66 miles I told myself I'd never run again. It's no fun, anyway. That must have been during one of the climbs. Of course I'm going to run another 100 as soon as I can.
I recall the words of the grizzly, seasoned ultrarunner, an older guy, who drove me and my brother down the mountain after my DNF. "Yeah, you never know how it's gonna go," he said. "Every day is a new adventure."
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| Midmorning in the mountains |
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| Poison oak along most of the trails. I did my best to avoid it, but as I learned a few days after the race, I failed at that. |
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| One of the exposed climbs |
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| At the mile 50 aid station, instead of just letting me die like a normal person, they made me run a mile up the mountain, retrieve one of these flags, and then run back down to the aid station. |
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| Morning light catching on the trees |
