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Well, after a whole lot of training and a lot of anticipation, I finally got to run the Mohican 100, a 100-mile trail run in central Ohio, and the first national 100-mile trail championships.

This whole thing started about two years ago, when I started doing long (30+ mile) day hikes with my friend Ray. We did the JFK 50 together. That led to the Laurel Highlands Ultra (70 miles) six months later. On Ieva’s and my last big road trip, I kept up my long runs. Finally, in December, I decided that I might as well give a 100-miler a shot, since I had such a good base, and had done so well during the last race.

You can read about a lot of the training in my previous posts in the running category. Basically, I felt fairly ready for this race, but I was acutely aware of the fact that there was a lot more that I could have done to prepare. In the end it came down to time — I was already spending 20 hours per week getting cardiovascular exercise, and neither my marriage nor my business would withstand much more. I did what I could, and hoped that it would be enough to get me to the finish line. If I happened to have a stellar day, and did everything right, maybe I’d get a good finish time, too. I figured that sub-24-hours would be great, but I’d be happy with 30 and an official finish.

The weather conditions turned out to be perfect. 70 degrees and partly cloudy, which is truly a blessing in Ohio in mid-June. The race took place practically on the summer solstice, so that would minimize the night running as well, which can be a little demoralizing.

I was fairly nervous for this race, which is pretty unusual for me. I haven’t gotten this uptight about something in a really long time. I think that I had so much effort invested already, and so many friends and family knew about it, that I felt quite a bit of pressure to pull it off. It would have been very difficult to go home empty-handed after such a long training cycle. I don’t know if I would have had another in me, since I’ve really been wanting to spend more time climbing.

I made a lot of mistakes in the first half of the race:

• I went out too fast for the first 25 miles (everyone did).
• I couldn’t carry enough food and water between aid stations. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t be seeing my crew that often during the first half of the race, and I didn’t have a pack or big pockets. I only had one small hand bottle, which wasn’t quite enough.
• I didn’t take in enough salt until mile 50. This was just plain not knowing the difference.

After paying a little for those mistakes, I had the incredibly good fortune to run into Paul Schmidt, a very cool guy who has more ultramarathon experience than anyone I’d ever met (56 or so completed 100-milers). He had a bad achilles tendon, and was considering whether it was worth it for him to continue the race. When he heard about how my race was going, he offered to run the rest with me. He’d gain a partner, and I’d gain a ton of experience.

It felt like a bit of a gamble for me to drop my strategy and start following someone new, but to be honest, the thing that I wanted most out of this whole experience was to gain an education, so I figured this was the best thing that I could do. Off we went.

Paul was just a fountain of good advice. He’d tell me what I was doing wrong, and what to do to fix it. I’d obey despite any of my own instincts, and he was always right. It only took a few iterations like that for me to just resign myself to following whatever he said. Ieva laughed when I described the previous 20 miles: “Sensei speaks, I obey.” It was pretty funny, because I was just hanging on behind him, absorbing everything that I could.

Some of his advice sounds kind of obvious, but it’s hard to emphasize how true it is when you follow it to the extent that he’s talking about. I’m probably not going to run ultras quite the same way ever again as a result. Here are some of the more important ones:

• It takes a lot of salt to run an ultra. Paul’s rule of thumb was one Succeed! capsule for every 30 oz. of water. That’s only about one and a half hand bottles. He emphasized that whenever your stomach gets really upset, it’s probably lack of salt. I followed this for the second half of the race, and it helped immensely.
• It takes a lot of food, too. When you’re feeling even a little down on energy, you must throw food at the problem. Preferrably sugar or some other kind of carbs. I went with home fries and pizza for a lot of the second half, with the occasional ice cream sandwich. In the end, I needed to eat so frequently that I just kept a bag of food in my hand at all times. Water in one hand, food in the other.
• You have to run all the time if you don’t want to walk most of the time. Paul runs practically everything — up hills, down hills, flats. This was completely counter to a lot of what I’d read and trained for, and was one of the hardest points for me to accept. He’s right, though. You can run efficiently up hill if you need to, and it’s worth it to avoid breaking rhythm if you’re serious about making good time. Otherwise, you’ll just walk almost all of the second half of the race. It doesn’t really feel any worse to run than to walk, and you can tell yourself that you’ll get done sooner, too.

I actually liked running all night. I was prepared for it mentally, and it had a cool seriousness to it — you knew that you weren’t doing something run of the mill. We really started reeling people in during this section. He had said to me earlier that the race only begins after 100km (63 miles). I thought he meant in terms of effort. Then I realized that he also meant in terms of competition. That’s when you really start racing.

Can I take this opportunity to mention how much my crew rocked? My Mom, Dad, and Ieva stayed up the whole time and provided support, warm food, gear, foot rubs, you name it. They were the absolute best. It’s hard to emphasize what a selfless thing it is to crew for someone running a 100-miler. They say that “crew” stands for “cranky runner, endless waiting.” Thank you, guys.

You get a big mental boost when the sun finally comes up. I probably should have pushed harder and kept the pace up, but I was running alone at that point, I had no close time goals left, and honestly I just got lazy. I trudged and jogged the final 10 miles.

It took a while for it to sink in that I was finally done. It was hard to believe that I was finally allowed to stop running. After all, I’d started running, then watched the sun come up, then watched the sun go down, then watched it come back up again. I felt pretty good. I sat in a chair, had a big breakfast and a beer, and hung out with everyone for a few hours before heading back to the hotel for a nap. My time was 28 hours 39 minutes. I came in 20th in the championships out of 28, and 62nd overall out of 135.

When I got to the finish line, I whispered to Ieva, “you know, that was a really good experience, and I’m very glad that I did it, but I don’t think I’m going to do one of these ever again.” OK, maybe that was a bit hasty, but I’m definitely not going to do another 100-miler for a while. Ieva and I had a talk a month or so ago, and it didn’t take much for me to realize that it would be a lot more fun to work at pushing my climbing as far as I can with my wife as my partner, rather than going out and running by myself.

I’m really looking forward to applying a lot of what I’ve learned from this experience to big walls and long climbing days. Maybe someday after a lot of good climbing years with my wife, I can come back to 100-milers and work on my times.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 26th, 2005 at 12:24 am and is filed under Running. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.