Been looking forward to this race for a long time. After my DNS at San Diego 100, good race at Pikes Peak, HELLA training, the week delay due to Joaquin, and many other life events that I didn’t choose to include here, I finally rolled into Camp Shenandoah on October 7th, 2015 ready for my debut 100! Got ma race packet, got ma stuff ready, talked to Horton (who then donned his invisibility cloak and was not seen that weekend), unsuccessfully tried to take a nap, lied down in the sun and looked at the mountains that I would get to run in soon. Listened to music to calm myself, got songs stuck in my head, drank water, ate, waited, sat. And then STARTED.
I started off conservatively, letting Brian Rusiecki, Brad Hinton, and some other guy go ahead. The rule to follow is to STAY COMFORTABLE, and I was. I ran in a group of 5 guys, talking about random stuff, looking at the leaves, laughing at the sudden downpour of rain that would continue the next 2 hours or so, started to run into the dark. It was FUN. Up the first climb we went, taking it easy but running most of the gradual trail. Then up the steep fire road. I walked. I’m good at walking. Everybody fell behind. I hiked. I’m good at hiking. I punched my bib at the top of Elliot Knob and looked out through the wind and rain to the lights far below. The big downhill off of Elliot Knob was a blast. The rain that fell earlier made the rocks super slick, and either because I was an idiot or because of my wonderful Salomon Sense Softgrounds, I was soon all alone—rolling downhill comfortably and quickly. The next while passed uneventfully, and I emerged with some other guy at mile 22. CREW. Here’s where it got rough. It was getting late; I had some headlamp troubles that actually didn’t matter but I thought they did, I felt bad. Nausea. SLOWWWW. I moved slowly and lonely all the way to mile 40. My wonderful crew helped me again, giving me another headlamp and forcefeeding my nauseous stomach, and up I went alllll the way up that bigass climb.
The next while passed uneventfully, and I emerged with some other guy at mile 22. CREW. Here’s where it got rough. It was getting late; I had some headlamp troubles that actually didn’t matter but I thought they did, I felt bad. Nausea. SLOWWWW. I moved slowly and lonely all the way to mile 40. My wonderful crew helped me again, giving me another headlamp and forcefeeding my nauseous stomach, and up I went alllll the way up that bigass climb. I was moving incredibly slowly, but somehow caught up to Brad Hinton near the top. I guess I wasn’t going that slowly. As soon as that happened, I felt much better. Soup. Rolling fire road in the INSANELY thick fog. Me and Brad stayed relatively close together, and soon saw the Reddish Knob Aid Station! Bliss. That was the Hokie aid station, manned by none other than the great Jordy Chang, Trevor Stewart, Butch, and the guy whose name I can’t remember. Spirits came back, and after wandering with Brad to find the punch in the fog and making it to the turnaround, things got better.
First half summary: slow, nauseous, dark, foggy, bad, slow. But not that slow I guess. Still moving/eating a lot.
Clapping Jonathan started pacing me at mile 52. Our motion resembled an exponential curve, with time on the x-axis and speed on the y-axis. By the time the sun came up, we were in 3rd place and were finishing off a stellar roll down the big ol downhill to mile 66. I was feeling like Lance Armstrong felt like when he had a blood transfusion in the tour, except I didn’t have a blood transfusion. It was the pepperoni! And pacers. And sunlight, because I am partially photosynthetic. I picked up Leif at that aid station and we worked our way through the GORGEOUS fall morning, up and down the ridgeline through leaves and righteous views. Through AJW’s aid station we went. In his loud and encouraging voice, AJW said I was making up time on 2nd place! We hiked strong uphill, we rolled downhill. In no time I was at mile 80, getting a new pacer, eating more pepperoni, drinking more mountain dew, getting BUTCH as a pacer.
Clapping Jonathan started pacing me at mile 52. Our motion resembled an exponential curve, with time on the x-axis and speed on the y-axis. By the time the sun came up, we were in 3rd place and were finishing off a stellar roll down the big ol downhill to mile 66. I was feeling like Lance Armstrong felt like when he had a blood transfusion in the tour, except I didn’t have a blood transfusion. It was the pepperoni! And pacers. And sunlight, because I am partially photosynthetic. I picked up Leif at that aid station and we worked our way through the GORGEOUS fall morning, up and down the ridgeline through leaves and righteous views. Through AJW’s aid station we went. In his loud and encouraging voice, AJW said I was making up time on 2nd place! We hiked strong uphill, we rolled downhill. In no time I was at mile 80, getting a new pacer, eating more pepperoni, drinking more mountain dew, getting BUTCH as a pacer.
We hiked strong uphill, we rolled downhill. Then came the HUGE climb up Elliot Knob. We told jokes. We told stories. I admired the view that the golden curtain of leaves occasionally afforded. It was pretty slow-going up this climb, but Butch kept me moving. Then the big downhill. We pushed through the glorious fall landscape to mile 95, where my excited and helpful crew told me I was 90 seconds behind 2nd. What??? Went straight through the aid station and ran as hard as possible the last 5 miles. Up we went, down we went. Sprinting! Although it turned out to be only 8-minute miles, I couldn’t believe we were moving so fast. I never saw the guy in front of me until we burst out of the forest with ¼ mile left and there he was, 200 meters in front of me. I ran so hard, but Andy Vermilyea escaped with 20 seconds to spare. It was crazy. Dramatic. Fun. Exciting. Finished 3rd in a time of 20:58:37. Happy. Waddled to the shower. Ate. Slept.
Second half summary: Fast! (relatively). So fun. Exciting. Daylight. Beautiful. Helpful pacers. Super glad I didn’t blow up.
WHAT WORKED:
FUEL/GEAR - I stayed with gels and bloks the entire time, having caffeinated stuff starting around 2 am. A bottle of Tailwind and a bottle of water in between every aid station. A ton of pepperoni. Soup and salty stuff at aid stations. Didn’t get cold.
CREW- best crew ever. Pacers were great, having 3 different ones mixed up the personalities and kept me moving FAST. My lovely girlfriend Adrienne forcefed me pepperoni and aid station food even when I didn’t want to eat it. Had everything fast and on time, changed my shoes, stayed motivated. Best part.
AID STATIONS - perfect distance apart, had everything I could have ever wanted. How Clark could pull together such a world-class aid station staff with a weeks’ notice is beyond me. Y’all were awesome.
STAYING RELAXED - I ran my own race and it ended up being really good. Stayed comfortable until I had to push, that is the last 30 miles or so.
WHAT DIDN’T:
HEADLAMPS - bring more actual batteries.
NOTHING - really, nothing didn’t work. It all came together to make a really good first 100 mile effort. Maybe, in the future if I wanted to go faster I might go out a little faster. I had some energy left at the end. Experience will tell.
WHAT WORKED:
FUEL/GEAR - I stayed with gels and bloks the entire time, having caffeinated stuff starting around 2 am. A bottle of Tailwind and a bottle of water in between every aid station. A ton of pepperoni. Soup and salty stuff at aid stations. Didn’t get cold.
CREW- best crew ever. Pacers were great, having 3 different ones mixed up the personalities and kept me moving FAST. My lovely girlfriend Adrienne forcefed me pepperoni and aid station food even when I didn’t want to eat it. Had everything fast and on time, changed my shoes, stayed motivated. Best part.
AID STATIONS - perfect distance apart, had everything I could have ever wanted. How Clark could pull together such a world-class aid station staff with a weeks’ notice is beyond me. Y’all were awesome.
STAYING RELAXED - I ran my own race and it ended up being really good. Stayed comfortable until I had to push, that is the last 30 miles or so.
WHAT DIDN’T:
HEADLAMPS - bring more actual batteries.
NOTHING - really, nothing didn’t work. It all came together to make a really good first 100 mile effort. Maybe, in the future if I wanted to go faster I might go out a little faster. I had some energy left at the end. Experience will tell.
Thoughts:
Training- I firmly believe in my training. That’s what got me here. High-mileage WORKS. I’ve been reading a lot lately that everyone’s doing way more speedwork stuff, less vert, less miles. Avoiding overtraining, etc. I think/know that if you do it right (aka EATING and sleeping and building up) you’ll be fine. Fright of overtraining is silly, and if you’re not stressed out over a bunch of stuff that you don’t need to be stressed out about, you’ll be fine. Running more is better (at least for really long races). I’m right. Toughness matters. Strength is speed. That said, I did some good fast runs too. It’s important to vary workouts. And once that base is there, running less with more speed is good. Pretty much, run a lot and eat even more.
I loved the night start. Got through all the rough stuff I always go through at night in the first half, allowing for a great second half.
Clark Zealand is the best race director. He pulled together a 100 mile race one week after it got cancelled. Applause is necessary.
The ultrarunning community is SPECIAL. Everyone I talked to the whole weekend was helpful, encouraging, and supportive. All the runners liked running with each other. All the runners liked running. Virginia has one of the best trail communities around. Love it. And VTULTRA is the best.
Next up: Rest, concerts, fun. Then Hellgate 100k!!
I love fall.
Training- I firmly believe in my training. That’s what got me here. High-mileage WORKS. I’ve been reading a lot lately that everyone’s doing way more speedwork stuff, less vert, less miles. Avoiding overtraining, etc. I think/know that if you do it right (aka EATING and sleeping and building up) you’ll be fine. Fright of overtraining is silly, and if you’re not stressed out over a bunch of stuff that you don’t need to be stressed out about, you’ll be fine. Running more is better (at least for really long races). I’m right. Toughness matters. Strength is speed. That said, I did some good fast runs too. It’s important to vary workouts. And once that base is there, running less with more speed is good. Pretty much, run a lot and eat even more.
I loved the night start. Got through all the rough stuff I always go through at night in the first half, allowing for a great second half.
Clark Zealand is the best race director. He pulled together a 100 mile race one week after it got cancelled. Applause is necessary.
The ultrarunning community is SPECIAL. Everyone I talked to the whole weekend was helpful, encouraging, and supportive. All the runners liked running with each other. All the runners liked running. Virginia has one of the best trail communities around. Love it. And VTULTRA is the best.
Next up: Rest, concerts, fun. Then Hellgate 100k!!
I love fall.