I have heard many ultrarunners say that their goal for a certain 100 mile race is “just to finish.” After this weekend, I know that there is no such thing as “just” finishing a 100 mile race. Out of 279 runners who started the Burning River 100, only 143 finished. Finishing itself is a great achievement, regardless of time.
I know this now. At the start of the race, I was entertaining notions of running sub-24 hours. I had it in my head that this was a relatively “easy” course, I had the confidence of running 100 miles in 22:33 at a 24 hour event, and somehow I thought that being able to run 5 miles in 90 degrees meant that I was heat-acclimated.
The race started at 5 AM on Saturday in Willoughby Hills, OH. Nathan and Heath drove me to the start, and it was so nice to not have to worry about directions. After making it through the slowest moving porta-potty line ever, we started off for an initial 10 miles of rolling hills on road. I walked a minute out of each ten as well as some of the steeper hills. I met up with Mike Dacar, a running buddy from Durham, and ran several miles with him. It was great to catch up! We moved onto some trails which were rolling but not technical. Mike started having stomach problems so I went on ahead. He would follow just a few minutes behind me the whole race, finishing not far behind.
After a few more miles of rolling trails, I was a little concerned because my legs had started getting tired as early as 10 miles in. I reminded myself that I could run a very long way on tired legs, but I was still feeling down—plus it was already getting hot. Then we hit a section of singletrack and I felt like I came to life: this section was more technical with steeper hills, but to me this meant fun and interesting while using different muscles. I imagined that I could tell who was more of a road runner and who was a trail runner, as a few of us moved steadily up the pack while others seemed like they were moving backward.
There were signs leading up to the next aid station (mile 23.4) in rhyming form, which I enjoyed. The first said “Ignore the heat.” While inspiring, this may not have been the best advice since I should have adjusted my plan to allow for the heat. I had a freezie pop which helped to cool me down.
I started running with a woman named Amy from Colorado who had previously run Leadville, Western States and Vermont—so she was a bit out of my league. I enjoyed her company though, so I stayed with her longer than I should have. We hit trails that weren't technical or particularly hilly, so there was no place that forced us to walk and we ran a good bit. Finally we came to a section that was exposed to the sun with only a few patches of shade here and there. It was probably 80 degrees by now, so I made a point to walk some of the shade patches and let Amy go, which I should have done sooner.
I hit the Station Road Bridge aid station (33.3 miles) in a little under 7 hours, and was still thinking I could run 24 hours. I took a minute at this aid station to lose my shirt and bandage some blisters and Ashley whipped into action, taking over dealing with my nasty feet. I made a comment that my quads were cramping as I sat down, and she immediately started rubbing them. She was amazing!
I headed back out again, except now it was getting really hot (the high was 88 ). The volunteers were wonderful (and there were over 400 of them!), even following me around at aid stations with icy sponges pressed against the back of my neck. Heat wasn't a factor in my New Year's 24 hour race, and in that race I ran strong until mile 94 when I became very nauseous and was forced to walk the last 6 miles. The nausea came much earlier this time: it started at mile 43. I knew I needed to keep eating, so I got a piece of pizza from the Snowville aid station, which sadly had no snow.
While Burning River was a wonderfully well organized race, the pizza they had was not good. I walked a while to force it down and so I broke out of my rhythm. My walking breaks were very long and my running periods short. I felt crummy and twice tried to stop: once under the pretense of stretching and then just to sit on a log. Luckily, this section was full of mosquitoes who punished me for stopping and forced me to keep moving, however slowly. I knew that sub-24 hours was no longer a reasonable goal, and wondered whether I would even finish. I decided to just focus on getting to the next aid station where I would meet my crew and could regroup before heading out again. Since the section took me so long, I ran out of water and was dehydrated by the time I reached Boston Store at 49 miles.
My crew went into a flurry when I arrived, even buying me a popsicle. I think I spent 25 minutes at this aid station to sit in the shade, eat my popsicle, drink, take an electrolyte capsule, drain blisters and use the bathroom. It was the first time I had gone in 2-3 hours (a long time for me) and it was definitely not clear and copious, so I needed to drink more. The next section was only 4.4 miles but I went ahead and carried two water bottles: one with water and the other with diluted gatorade. I drank both and peed twice in this section, so I was doing better. It was a good thing too, because my crew was discussing when and how they should advise that I drop out if I didn't get rehydrated.
I picked up Ashley as a pacer at mile 54.5. I was still nauseous and had to force myself to eat. It was hot and I walked a lot. I was starting to worry that I could slow down so much as to miss the cut-off time of 30 hours, so I asked Ashley to push the pace when we walked. There was a good bit of technical trail in this section that wasn't really runnable, at least at this point of fatigue. There was also some road, but the pounding was painful so I walked most of this too. Poor Ashley got stuck with the worst shift in terms of how I was doing: she kept trying to make conversation but I usually only gave her one-word answers. I managed to pick up the pace a little towards the end, mostly because I was worried we would run out of daylight before getting headlamps. As we came into the Happy Days aid station (63.9 miles) I made a list of no fewer than nine things that I wanted to accomplish at this aid station. I never would have remembered them all, but Ashley did!
Heath took over pacing duties at this point. The sun set just as we left, dropping the temperature considerably, and I finally figured out how to manage my nausea. I would force myself to eat about 100 calories worth of food even though I had gotten to the point where I wanted to throw up as soon as the food touched my lips. I walked while eating and until my stomach would settle somewhat (this was usually 5-10 minutes) and then if the course allowed, I could actually run the next 20-25 minutes nearly nonstop. Heath was very familiar with most of the trails we ran, which was helpful especially since it was completely dark. I was thrilled when we came into the Pine Hollow 1 aid station and saw that Nathan and Ashley had been able to get me a Papa Johns pizza since I couldn't stomach whatever the race was serving. Heath and I kept moving, covering a total of ~17 miles for his scheduled shift at a much better pace than I had maintained since mile 40.
We came into the Covered Bridge aid station where I would switch to Nathan as a pacer-- except I had sped up so much while running with Heath that we arrived at this station a full half-hour earlier than I expected. We missed Nathan on the way in by just a minute and then couldn't find him, but Heath managed to even look excited about tagging on an extra 5 miles to his shift, which was already the longest one. The next section had even been made out to be the toughest one on the course. I had wanted to get another slice of Papa Johns but really just wanted salt so I got some raman noodles and we were off again.
I didn't think the trail was too bad: the main challenge was that it was muddy and since it was dark you couldn't see the mud until you were already sliding in it. There were some steep hills in it, but not as bad as some of the earlier hills, which made me feel like I was losing my balance because of their steep grade. After I had spent the last 40 miles feeling like throwing up, the catharsis finally came so quickly that I didn't even have time to aim for the side of the trail. I don't know how many times I vomited as I stood there, but enough that my abdominal muscles were cramping by the time I was through. I walked awhile but was soon able to run again and generally felt better. My shoes were soaked through and I had the sense that my sock was scrunched up, so I wanted to fix it when we got back to Covered Bridge. But the sock was fine: I would discover at the finish that it was actually the skin of my foot that had folded over on itself, looking like a deep cut and forming a painful blister on the ball of my foot.
I dropped off the hero Heath and picked up Nathan for the last 15-16 miles of the race. A good bit of this section was road, which hurt more on the bottom of my foot (which I think is maybe bruised as well) and so I couldn't run as much of it. Nathan and Heath had both told me that I had moved up in the standings at every checkpoint except one (the one at mile 49 which was my low point) and was now 70th or so. I decided I wanted to shoot for 62nd, because my race number was 62 and I just thought that would be fun. I also set a new time goal of sub-27 hours, which only required a 20 minute pace to the finish. It was good to have Nathan with me at the end, because he pushed me to run even when I didn't want to and told me that I was running strong whether or not I actually was. We came up to the long set of stairs two miles from the finish that I had been dreading for months and found that they weren't that bad: since my limiting factor was now the blister on the bottom of my foot my muscles didn't mind the stairs too much. The last mile was road. It hurt but I still ran a good chunk of it Heath and Ashley joined us for the last 100 meters and I crossed in 26:27 to receive my first belt buckle from the race director.
Some stats:
64th overall, 15th female
~14 packs of shot blocks consumed
7 blisters
0 tears (but I wanted to)
100.8 miles
3 awesome crew members
I'll post pictures on facebook because the blog doesn't seem to want them!
-Jordan
