You're Doomed!

I ran the Fells race at the end of March this year. It was one of my slowest 50Ks ever. You're doomed!

~Words of encouragement from Damon, accomplished ultrarunner and my own long-distance running guru.

Nevertheless, I can't say I didn't know what I was getting myself into. The Fells is a state park reserve that starts about half a mile from my house. I could be at a trailhead for the very trail that we ran today in less than a mile. I know these woods like the back of my hand, or at least pretty well. Although I don't usually run on the Skyline Trail (I usually run the shorter, flatter, and less technical Reservoir Trail), I have run it before. Let me tell you one thing about this trail: it is pretty much impossible to overstate its difficulty. The whole, entire thing is covered with rocks, roots and all kinds of perils to ankles and those with poor balance in general. The hills are not long, but they are steep, they are everywhere, and they are often un-runable both on the way up and the way down. There are spots where you're climbing down 10-foot rock faces, or balancing on the spine of a smooth, rounded glacial boulder. Although it is well marked with painted arrows and blazes, it is still very easy to get lost. I have never been able to run more than about 10 or 12 miles in these woods without completely frying myself. It sounds like I'm exaggerating, but I'm not: these are the most technical trails I've ever run on (not that I'm an expert).

And yet, I signed up for the "ultra" division, mostly because of how flexible it was. You could run 24, 32, or 40 miles; whatever you felt like. And anyway, this race had the greatest web site I'd ever seen. I just had to sign up and do it up right.

Bonus points for funny captions for this photo: What thoughts are going through my head at this moment?
I showed up at the top-secret starting location (classified information to keep too many cars from showing up for the limited parking at the trail head). The other racers were a mix of ultrarunners and adventure racer types. You could tell by their hydration systems what group everyone belonged to: ultrarunners had hand-helds and belts, adventure racers had camelbaks. Everyone was decked out in their Sunday race best from Eastern Mountain Sports, and I was a little self-conscious in my hodge-podge of $11 Red Sox beanie, thermal bike jersey (for the pockets), rash guard (ssssshhhhhhh, it's meant for surfers to wear under their wetsuits, but my mom bought it for me thinking it was a long-sleeved running shirt, and it actually WORKS well as a long-sleeved running shirt), and running tights that I had put on soaking wet right out of the washer this morning. The only thing I'd done right were my ugly-as-sin the trail shoes.

Because days are so short this time of year, the race director was letting people leave early if they so desired. A couple of people requested to leave at around 7:30, and Bogie (the race director) held a tiny, little cone-shaped device right in their faces and pushed a button. An air siren went off right next to their ears. "What the hell was that?!" one of them asked.
"It was my bike horn!" Bogie said with a giant grin. "We're professionals here! We do it right!" So the two racers went ahead and started running.

I got together with a group that planned to leave at about 7:50, but one of them got in line for the bathroom, and I didn't get the memo. There was a bit of confusion about who was leaving when, and because I didn't get the memo, he wrote 7:50 next to only my name. "Are you going to leave with your coffee?" he asked.
"Well, no. I was going to ask if you had a trash..." I said, feeling like a fool. Where was everybody? Why was I all by myself?
"Are you leaving or not?" he asked.
"Ummmm, I was going to wait for them..." Time was ticking away, 7:50 had already come and gone.
"Well it's you're time," he shrugged. "You're written down as having left at 7:50 whether you're here or not..." Then he blew the air horn in my face. I didn't know what to do, so I stepped one step past the gate to stop cars from driving on the trail, the "starting line." Now that I was on the course, I stood there waiting some more. Finally it became clear that someone was breaking Claire's Number 1 Rule of Public Pooping: Don't, so I decided not to wait any longer and left all by myself.

Loop 1

Weather (usually cruel, wet, and cold), elevation, length, not paying attention and getting lost will make this a painful DNF for many ... many ... many MANY racers.
~From the Release of Liability on the event's web site.

I love running on these trails. Since you simply can't go fast on the rough terrain, I have oodles of fun hopping from rock to rock, swishing back and forth on switchbacks. I feel like a video game character. The series of bridges at the right I call the Super Mario Bridges because, well, that's who they make me feel like. If I stand on them for too long they'll sink into the quicksand and I'll go flying into the air shrugging and the player and kicking my little feet. All of the leaves were off the trees now, and all over the ground, which sometimes made it slippery or hard to see the roots and rocks, but they were all covered with that kind of delicate frost that looks fake. It was pretty. Even though I was alone, I was really enjoying myself. The sun was really bright, and sometimes it was hard to see the blazes on the trees, or distinguish white paint from frozen puddles, but I was finding my way okay. Or, anyway I was until I wasn't. I had been running on a section where the trail followed my usual rount, but suddenly all the white trail markers had disappeared. I walked back a few hundred yards, on the trail to where I'd seen the last white blaze, then turned around, and... there were no more. I went back and forth for several minutes before I finally saw a rock sitting under a bush with a white stripe painted on it. This was the trail?!

That's when things started getting hairy. The ascents were steep, steep, steep, and the descents were more about not pitching forward and breaking your neck than running. My GPS registered me as standing still more on the descents than the ascents. Really, the second half was more like hiking than anything else. I'd been overtaken by some of the group that I'd tried to wait for at the start, and I was having a heck of a time keeping up with them. They were adventure racers, and this was the only reason I could think of that they were not following the Number 1 Rule of Ultra Trail Running (as designated by me): Walk the Uphills. I would have let them go, but I was afraid that I might miss the turnoff to go back to the start/finish area and sign in as having finished the loop. I needn't have feared, though, because it was very clearly marked with arrows spraypainted on the ground, and laminated printouts stuck to signposts in case you were too dumb to understand "TO START -->" on the ground.

Alright, I have to admit it, I'm a bit thick. Runners were responsible for putting down the time they finished each loop. Was that the time of day? The cumulative time since the start? Time taken per loop? Not to mention, since my Garmin doesn't actually tell time, and was set to autopause when I was stopped, I didn't have any of this information. So I just wrote down the same time as the guy in front of me: an hour and thirty-eight minutes. It was probably totally wrong, since I and I alone had left at 7:50, but whatever.

Loop 2
You can break your neck or your spine and be paralyzed. -- You can fell [sic], get wounded and bleed to death. -- You can lose one or both eyes, become paralyzed or disabled. -- You can get dehydrated if you do not drink water and electrolyte drinks.
~From the release of liability.

I was still feeling fresh. Actually, I was pretty surprised. I haven't done much trail running since I decided this summer that training for a 50-mile race was a stupid idea, so in theory all my little stabilizing muscles should have been out of shape, right? The connective tissue in my ankles should have been weak and ready to snap every time I rolled off a rock. The hills should have been kicking my ass. Instead I felt fresh. As much as I hate to admit it, the few times I've gone trail racing since I started weight training have been much, much easier. So there is some truth to what Angry and Rocketpants say about strength training being good for endurance sports, but don't tell them I said so. My running volume has also nearly doubled in the last few months, so it could be that too...

Coming out of the aid station I fell in with the adventure racers again. There were only two of them, a man and a woman. The woman, whose name was (I think) Jen, had been the race director of the "Run Like a Girl" trail race. It was a race that I'd almost gone to, and I don't remember why I didn't. But in the parking lot before the race Jen had given me a t-shirt that had been left over from the race and asked me to wear it. I'm a total t-shirt whore, and I think that being given a t-shirt by the race director exempts me from the Number 1 Rule of Race T-Shirt Etiquette: Thou Shalt Not Wear the T-shirt from a Race that Thou Hadst Not Finished. Anyway, I feel that I should at least give her a plug here.

I managed to keep up with Jen and her adventure racer companion for a few miles where we exchanged the usual information: where are you from, what races do you do, have you ever tried... etc. Then I told them that if I tried to keep up with them any longer I'd be in trouble later on. That was the last time I would have company on the trail.

There was a spot about a third of the way around where Bogie had set out jugs of water. I eyed them as I passed, but my water bottle was still 2/3 of the way full, and I'd only drank about 2/3 of a bottle on the first loop. I decided not to stop and ran on. Big mistake. I was moving slower this time, being slightly more careful with my footing and in general I didn't have the same spring in my step when I got to the really tough terrain in the second half. The temperature was above freezing now, and although I was still cool I have a rare talent that I can sweat buckets even when I'm freezing. I'd run out of water when I still had a few slow miles left to travel before getting back to the car, and I was getting thirsty. I sucked desperately on my water bottle and all I was able to pull out was air. By the time I got back to the start/finish area I was parched.


I had found Jen's Adventure Racing Buddy's number lying on the trail, and had carried it some three miles back to the start, planning to pin it on the sign-in sheet for him, but when I got to the parking lot he was standing right there. I called out his name (it was written on the number), and handed it to him. He, Jen, and another adventure racer (I could tell by her camelbak) were standing around looking worried. "Is everything okay?" I asked.
"Did you see a girl out there? She's young... She must have missed the finish," the third adventure racer said. "She was wearing a blue jacket."
I thought really hard, I thought I did remember a little girl that matched that description. She had been about 8 years old. "Is she blond?" The woman nodded. "I think I do remember seeing her..." I said, "... but I can't remember where. I'm so sorry."

"Well if you do see her, her name is Tori. Can you please tell her how to get back to the start?" My god, I was thinking, how is an 8-year-old going to follow blazes if experienced trail runners are having trouble spotting them??? And who lets an 8-year-old run a race alone in the woods??? "It's her first race too..." the woman lamented as an afterthought. No shit! I thought.

I drank all the water I could swallow, ate some snacks, and signed in. Again, I didn't know what time to write on the sign-in sheet. My garmin said I'd taking about 3 hours and 30 minutes to get this far, so I added 5 minutes for good measure and hit the trail again. I vowed that even though I hate children, if I found Tori at any point on the trail, I would take the shortest rout back to the cars with her. When I did eventually find Tori, 90% of the way through my third loop, she had been found by the third adventure racer. "We found her!" she said relieved. I looked at the girl, she was blond, wearing a blue jacket, and young, but she was about 16 years old, not eight. I was relieved on so many levels.

Loop 3

Also you are aware that if you drop out you have to have enough cash with you to be able to call a cab.
-From the Release of Liability

I was feeling absolutely... fine! I know you won't believe it, I didn't either. Sure, I was moving at a snail's pace and being ever more cautious with my footing, but when it came time to run again it didn't take superhuman will power to overcome inertia and start running like usually happens in the later stages of an endurance event, especially a tough one like this. Normally, after about 8 or 10 miles on these trails I'm tripping over rocks and almost falling ass over teakettle, letting out ugly yelps and grunts every 5 minutes. I'd run over 16 miles so far on a trail that I'd never dared to run more than once in a day and I had only tripped or slipped bad enough to make an embarrassing noise once or twice. What the hell was going on here?!

I had a theory that it might have something to do with the Advil I'd taken before the race. I never take ibuprofin before a race or important workout because it thins your blood, lowering your hematocrit (red blood cell density in your blood), and impairs oxygen delivery. But this morning I anticipated having "womanly problems," and figured it would be a good idea to stay away from my VO2 Max on a long day like today anyway, so I'd popped a couple of Advil. I can stand the pain of running 31 miles straight, but I will NOT stand the pain of non-athletic cramps. Could the Advil really be the reason I was feeling so great? Was it the weight training? Was it the fact that I've been running 5 days a week? It certainly wasn't the easiness of the course!

Time wore on, and other than the occasional dog walker, hiker, or racer coming in the other direction, I saw nobody. I had my iPod in my pocket, but I didn't really feel the need to listen to it, even though "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" was stuck in my head, having replaced Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song" which was stuck in my head on the last loop. When I wasn't trying to remember what came between the line "Eeeeeverywhere you gooooo..." and "But the prettiest sight you'll seeeeeee, is the Christmas wreath that will beeeeeee, on your ooooown frooooont dooooooor!" (or was it Christmas tree instead of wreath ? Why would you have a Christmas tree on your door? Maybe it was beside...), I was scanning my body to see what hurt: nothing. My muscles, joints, and EVERYTHING felt fine. I'd told myself that I could drop out after 3 laps, or 24 miles, if the course was too hard. But it wasn't too hard.

Still, that last 8 miles would take an awfully long time. The sun was getting low, and I'd flipped my sunglasses on top of my head. It felt like it was getting late. I didn't know it, but it still wasn't 1:00. I felt great now, but how would I feel after another 8 miles? Would I still be able to negotiate the tough trail if I started to get tired? What if I fell and sprained my ankle, or worse? What was I trying to prove? I KNEW beyond a shadow of a doubt that I could finish the 32 miles, I just didn't know if I should. If I slogged through 32 miles, it would probably mean digging really deep into my reserves. My workouts would probably be really crappy for a really long time if I went for that full loop, and I was really enjoying getting faster for once.

Left: My feet leaving the ground, even on the uphills, despite being half way through my third loop.

...But still... It WOULD be nice to get in 1 more marathon before 2008 is out... As long as I was running 24 miles and feeling good, I might as well make it a marathon. Better to finish 26 miles feeling good, than finish 32 feeling like crap. So I decided that when I finished the third loop I'd write my finishing time on the sign-in sheet, indicate that I was done, and run a final 2.2 miles unofficially. There was a spot about a mile from the start/finish area where the trail hit a road, and that road was about a mile from my house, all down hill. I figured that I could just run home, and then get a ride back to my car.

Above: My butt looking big, but I SWEAR it was just my stocked pockets!; Below: My butt, this time way more butt and way less stuff in the pockets. Notice: These are the pee pants (the ones that show pee stains well), and there are no dark spots in my crotch!

I'd run out of food (gumdrops, orange slices, and crystalized ginger) about half way through the third loop, and I was hungry when I got in to the start/finish area. But still, I wasn't bonking. I felt fresh, just sick of running this stupid, cruel trail all by myself. Maybe it was that, for the first time ever, since there were no aid stations, I'd been drinking accelerade the whole time rather than re-filling with Gatorade? Was that why I felt so good?

Left: No caption contest here, I remember exactly what I was thinking – You're going to take my picture NOW?! On an uphill at the end of my third lap?!?!?!

On the sign-in sheet Bogie had written in huge letters "I MEANT THE TIME OF DAY!!!" So I pulled out my cell phone (which I'd carried with me since the web site had warned me that I'd need to call my own cab if I needed to drop out), and checked the time. 1:30 on the nose. I had covered 24 miles in an incredible 5 hours and 40 minutes! I wrote "1:30 PM --- DONE! THANK YOU" next to my name, then I grabbed some cookies and another bag of candy from my car and set out for my bonus mileage.

The above image is what you get when you follow the "Results" link on the web page. If you look closely you'll see that there's no Claire, but there's a Blair Badass Mofo.

Loop 4
There are about 2 possible shortcuts -- people caught off the white Skyline trail ( on shortcuts) will be posted on this website ( in disgrace , of course :-)
~ From the Course Description on the race web site

Suddenly running home seemed like a stupid idea. Running on pavement would probably make my poor legs hurt more than the last 24 miles of running had, and what if no one was home to give me a ride? What if I was locked out? I could just run out along the trail for 1.1 miles, then turn around and come back. Or better yet, I could take the flatter Reservoir Trail out for 1.1 miles and then turn back. But I decided that I'd started on the Skyline Trail, and I should finish on the Skyline trail, even if I wasn't really finishing.

The problem was that my Garmin hadn't registered exactly 24 miles at the end of the last loop, it was more like 23.5, and I must have been more loopy than I thought, because I was having a really tough time figuring it out in my head. At first I thought I needed to run 1.7 miles each way, which worked out to be... what? Turn around at 25.1 miles. Yeah, that's it. But then a few minutes later I wasn't sure again. Wait... 2.7 miles; divided by two; plus 23.5 is.... 25 miles? Yeah! That must be right! Something still seemed fishy, but I figured that if I ran 26.21 miles or more, then I could technically call it an "ultramarathon" if I really wanted to split hairs. Right?

I ran an interminable 1.5 miles out, and an even longer 1.5 miles back, and arrived at the "finish line" without a soul in sight after completing 26.54 miles in 6:01:34 (that doesn't count all the time I was stopped, or when I was moving so slowly that Garmin THOUGHT I had stopped). In just over 7 months I had finished 6 events of Marathon distance or longer (1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). Why so many? That's twice as many marathons in 31 weeks as Bobby's done in his entire life. Because naked marathons terrify me, and the idea of a marathon at the end of an ironman makes my blood run cold. That's why. This year I wanted to do as many marathons as possible so that I wouldn't be so scared of them anymore. I wanted to be absolutely, positively sure that I could finish a marathon under any circumstances, trained or not, rested or not, part of a longer event or not. Marathons in ironmans still scare the shit out of me, but naked marathons now seem a bit more manageable.

The Finish
Bad things can also happen when you train for this race, when you drive towards this race or after you leave the race. So you know that trail or mountain running is not safe.
~ From the Release of Liability

I spotted several boxes of pizza sitting behind Bogie's car and had shoved have a piece in my face in one big mouthful when a couple emerged from their car to grab more pizza themselves. "How'd you do?" the woman asked.
"I'm done," I said. That was all that mattered.
"Yeah, I finished 3 loops, and that was enough for me," she said. She gestured towards her husband, "I cheated. He ran with me the whole last lap. About a mile from the end I started crying and saying I couldn't do it anymore."
"That's okay," I said. "It makes a much better story that way."
"Yeah, well if I did it again, I'd only sign up for the 8-miler," she said.
"If I did it again, I'd cheat," I told her.

When they left, another man I'd seen running in the other direction several times during the day came in. He was also calling it a day after only 3 loops. I'd noticed that most of the people had written "DONE" after their 3rd loop time on the sign-in sheet. "I just wasn't expecting it to be so hard!" he said. "I've only seen one other trail this technical, and that's at Wapack. There wasn't a flat section on that whole course!" I confused Wapack with Wasatch, which is a 100-mile race in the Rockies. "Yeah, I've done Wasatch once too," he said. It made me feel better to know that he was an accomplished trail runner and still thought that this terrain was difficult.
I gestured to the dirt stains that went down the whole front of his shirt, "You take a spill?"
"Just a couple," he smiled, meaning it had been more than a couple.
"And you're wearing those shorts so you can show off that sexy scab on your shin?" I joked. I was feeling pretty proud of myself for not falling.

By this point I'd shoved 3 pieces of pizza in my face and I was beginning to shiver. I went over to my car and drove the 3 miles home, during which time I: waited for a stop sign to change, made a turn when I should have yielded and cut a guy off, and swerved all over the road. I guess I was more out of it than I thought. I wasn't doing the post-marathon shuffle, though. When I got home I went to the bathroom, and my pee was ORANGE. Guess I should have had a bit more to drink.

So, kids, the lesson is: Don't drink and drive, but don't NOT drink and drive either.

Side note that has nothing to do with this post, but I have to share anyway: It's a sad, sad day when you start getting hand-me-downs from your cousin's 11-year-old daughter... and they fit.