might as well get some of this down, as it’s still reasonably fresh.
last weekend, memorial day weekend, i ran a hundred miles.
people do this all the time, it’s not some huge deal, but individually, to me, it was my first, and it’s a bit of a milestone.
people who’ve been in the sport a lot longer than me tend to say you either love it or you hate it and while i certainly did hate parts, now, a few days removed, i’m thinking that i loved it. generally, at least.
the human brain is remarkable. even sitting here with my foot in a boot so the tendinitis (stress fracture?) in my right foot doesn’t make me limp all over the city, i’m finding it difficult to remember the pain, the feelings of absolute bedrock despair that had me so close to dropping halfway through. our ability to look into the past and remember the good so much more vividly than the bad is pretty much the reason i’m convinced we’re able to collectively get out of bed in the morning. also, the reason i’ll likely do this again.
i came off a steep and technical 100k at the end of march feeling pretty good. i ran a decent time and after a week of recovery, resumed training pretty seamlessly. i had a solid training block that peaked out at a nearly 100 mile week two weeks before the race. i’d pushed hard to get the mileage those previous weeks, moving to a new house in the midst of that hundred mile week, and was ready both physically and mentally to take a week or two off to rest and prepare.
taper week one went fine, around 40 relaxed miles. felt good until monday, the week before the race when i woke up with a sore throat and a cough and knew i was in trouble. i'd overdone it on the 'yay i don't need to really train this week' seeing friends and drinking beer-a-palooza the week before and after suppressing my immune system with all the training i was now paying the price. i spent all week working from home, sitting on the couch with a fever and the flu, finally feeling ~80% human friday morning, when i made the decision to run. i threw my time goal out the window and just figured i would take it easy and aim to finish the thing.
pigtails challenge is put on by local ultra legend van phan who is a small asian lady with long hair that's almost always in pigtails. she's a monster and a machine, running everything and anything marathon distance and up. she started the race a few years ago because at the time there were no 200 mile races in washington. if that doesn't say enough, that inaugural year, she both directed the race and ran the 200 miler. legend.
the course is uninspiring. it's a gravel loop around a watershed surrounded by a chain-link fence in the suburbs of seattle. you can only see the water for about 10 seconds, going one direction. the rest of the time it's just some green things, lots of gravel, roads, cars, and other runners. i think i saw a deer. the loop itself is a very runnable 9.4 miles, and climbs about 900 feet. you start with a short out and back, and then do 10 laps, changing direction each time. it's no scenic mountainous point to point. there's a 200 mile, a 150 mile, a 100 mile, and a 100k all going on at the same time. when we started, the 200 mile guys had already been out there for 48 hours. what a bunch of tough motherfuckers. it really put light on the button all the 100 milers got that said "i only did the half."
there are a few local guys i kinda know from previous races and strava that i figure are gonna burn this thing pretty hot the whole way through. it's my first one, i don't know what to expect other than i'll slow down towards the end so i figure i'll just run comfortably and bank some time for when that happens. i run the out and back with a friend and it rains a little bit. there are probably 40 people doing the 100 miler and maybe 50 doing the 100k. we spread out pretty quick.
laps one through four go pretty uneventfully. my watch is on 60 second satellite pings to conserve battery so it's not much help for distance/average pace but i can tell from the lap time that i'm moving well. i focus on eating and drinking and just keeping it cool. "all day" i keep telling myself. i'm having sporadic coughing fits leftover from the virus and feeling more fatigued than usual in the early distances of the race, but there's no trouble breathing so i just keep moving. i begin to walk the slight uphills, running everything else. i probably average a mid 9 minute pace for the first 44ish miles.
lap five sees my lowest point of the day. my nutrition has gotten off and i feel horribly tired. i can feel my stomach full of water and gels but it's not going anywhere. i know i'll puke at some point, it usually happens, but i'm not sure when. my sister's come up from texas to be around the family for the weekend and joins me for this lap. it's the slowest of the whole day. it's gotten a overcast and a little muggy, i'm feeling really low, moving slow, and contemplating dropping at the 100k mark. we walk a lot more of the loop than i previously have and i just feel miserable. i eat an apple for the juice, spitting out the mush because i think i'll puke if i try and swallow it. i know the bad feeling and i know it'll pass, but it sure is taking it's sweet ass time.
lap six sees the arrival on my friend ian who is training for western and is going to pace me the last half after running 75 miles at a timed event the previous weekend. this guy makes me feel like i'm being a petulant baby and i begin to feel a bit better. i'm not convinced i'm gonna keep going after this lap, but just figure i'll take it one at a time. we do decent time on this one, and at the end of it, i'm sitting pretty in third place.
lap seven my girlfriend joins the party to pace a lap and it happens. my stomach has continued to go south and somewhere around mile 65 i have a coughing spell that turns into more than a coughing spell and i turn into a human puke hose and projectile vomit a startling amount of liquid. and some of a quesadilla. a man in his sixties who's shuffling by says "looks like too much water amigo, stop drinking that gatorade shit" and has me empty the gatorade shit out of my bottle and gives me some of his water. ian keeps saying he wishes he had his gopro to film the puke and i immediately feel like a million goddamn dollars. we bust out the rest of the lap without incident and i'm back in the game.
lap eight is the fastest of the second half. i'm still moving well, but the knees are starting to have some weird pain along the outside that i haven't ever experienced before. mentally, i'm committed to finishing at this point and when we come up on my buddy in second place and pass him and his pacer, i get a kick of adrenaline, knowing i'm in second place. i'm babying my stomach after the puke, and am basically running on water, s-caps, bananas, a little soda, and the occasional gel now. i'm feeling tired, and the mind is beginning to wander. it gets dark on this lap. i change shirts when we get back to the start/finish area, put on a headlamp, have some redbull, and get ready for a fight.
lap nine is the hardest of the whole day. looking at splits after the race i see we were moving alright, but it felt like molasses. running with a headlamp is a blessing and a curse. on one hand you can only see what's directly in front of you, so hills and long straights don't seem so long, you just have your 5-10 foot illuminated reality there in front of you. on the other hand it's really hard to place where you are, and the sections just seem to go on forever. at this point i'm beginning to feel like i'm on another fucking planet. there's nothing left to process, nothing left to curse, just forward progress towards the end of this lap and the beginning of another. it's become a pronounced and defined state of what i love about long distances. the simplification of everything. one foot in front of another, for as long as it takes to get to the end. we wrap this lap up and my parents and sister are back, there to hang out in the dark close to midnight with a bunch of crazy assholes running a hundreds of miles and watch me finish. i almost cry because i want to be done so badly. i have visions of my bed and tall boy tecates (with a lime). i shiver like a winter leaf and feel like a baby.
lap ten blows by. saying it was easy would be stupid, but it didn't feel hard. it just felt like something i'd always done. my girlfriend joined again to pace and between her relishing in the opportunity to tell me what to do and ian's encouraging cajoling the lap seems easier than the rest. it's likely the delirum settling in. ian holds onto a redbull until we're halfway through the lap. "this bastard is carrot and sticking me" i remember thinking. it totally worked. i begin to audibly say goodbye to sections of the course knowing i won't have to see them again. this deep feeling of gratitude begins to well up inside of me. all day i've been in a state of awe that my body is capable of this, that the human form can do this incredible thing. a few years ago my feats of endurance involved bottles of booze and packs of cigarettes. i feel so grateful to have come out the other side of those years, of that destructive experience. it feels so surreal, those finals miles, to have come so far and to have so little left to go. the pain lifts, the mind clears, and i run hard.
the finish is sweet. oh man, so sweet. there's a the rd, a small group of volunteers, and my parents and sister. i get a belt buckle with pigs on it and give everyone a hug. i sit down for the first time all day and have some soup. my voice is gone, from the sickness and coughing, but i just keep telling people thank you. the rd for such a well run race, the volunteers for being there all weekend, my parents and sister for coming out to the world's worst spectator sport, my girlfriend for her understanding and support and ian for being a rock solid pacing machine.
i end up doing 19 hours, finishing 45 minutes back of the winner. good enough for 2nd place.
five days later and i'm feeling mostly fine. the experience shook some things loose but they're mostly settled. a guy at the middle aid station in the darkness enveloping the last lap asked me if i'd heard about the three types of fun. my fried brain said pizza? i said no. he said the first type of fun is where you know you're having fun. the second is the kind that you come to realize is fun after the fact, and the third is the kind that was never really fun at all. i smiled goofy and wandered off into the darkness, my headlamp creating the path in front of me. he told ian that i had crazy eyes, to make me eat more, and not let me pass out. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
i don't think running a hundred miles is all the first type of fun, but for me at least, it's certainly not the third.
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