Why Run 100 Miles?

I'm not (terribly) ashamed to admit that I have wept during a training run. It was about 6 hours in, on a run I had called the Wheeler Pass Triple. I named it because the 46 mile route is three times up and over a 12,300' pass on the Ten Mile Range that separates Breckenridge from Copper, CO. When I reached my wife, Jennifer, at the turnaround point for the final lap of the torture test, the 11,000' of total ascent had broken me down and I had decided that it was no longer fun. But Jennifer had put it in my training plan for an upcoming 100km race in a few months and I'm generally better off taking her advice. In retrospect, this type of breaking down is part of the training process, because in the process of attempting to finish something really big and really hard, at some point, most of us would rather not be doing it anymore. It's part of mental conditioning, so it's all good. I guess a little whining and yes, even a few tears is fine, and getting to that point and persevering through it is part of the process of improving and figuring out how to get through the toughest parts of a race.

If you invest enough time in anything, I guess you’re bound to get philosophical about it. Why do I do these things which are time-consuming, exhausting and sometimes painful? I’ve asked myself and have been asked this question many times since 2011, when I ran my first triathlon. The Olympic length triathlon (Swim: 0.9 mile; Bike 25 miles; Run 6.2 miles) felt so far beyond my abilities when I signed up for it in January 2011, but I found I enjoyed the training process, attaining a high level of fitness and proving that elite physical gifts are not pre-requisites for trying and possibly completing these types of events. After putting in the training, by race day the challenge was actually quite approachable and I felt I should have entered the more challenging Half Ironman distance (double the Olympic), but it was a great introduction to training process and the endurance racing scene. 

So first, why did I board this crazy train (All Aboard…Ha Ha Ha Ha - rock on, Ozzy) in the first place? I am pretty sure I can trace the origin to browsing in a bookstore in Glens Falls, NY one afternoon in 2004. At that time, Jennifer and I had just started getting serious about longer hikes and mountain climbing and I picked up a book about climbing all 46 of the 4,000’ mountains in the nearby Adirondack (ADK) mountains...in Winter, no less. Since we had only climbed a few of the peaks in ideal Summer conditions, at that time, doing them all in Winter seemed like an outrageously impossible feat to achieve. But dozens of people had done it. I mentioned it to Jennifer, without fully thinking through the ramifications, and soon enough, as she does, she started planning out the individual bites needed to consume that elephant. This would continue as a repeating pattern for us. I dreamily mention some not-even-close-to-thought-through idea and Jenn would start planning the details to make it actually happen.

Well, we completed the ADK Winter 46 a few years later -- Jennifer joining an elite group of less than 100 women who had achieved this particular feat at the time -- and soon were looking for the next big challenge...what’s the next adventure that will help remind us to fight the inertia of falling into the trance of everyday life? This brought us to Colorado for a week in 2009 and then again in 2010 for seven months to climb all 58 of the 14,000’+ mountains in the state.

For additional reading, we published this account of that adventure in the ADK Peeks Magazine in 2011.   

Returning to our home in Upstate NY in November 2010 after our Colorado 14er adventure, Jennifer and I were left with profound life perspective changes to process. Just a few years earlier, we thought we had found our "forever home" in Lake George, NY. Now we are envisioning a less traditional and a more nomadic view of our future, endeavoring to see and experience as much as we can, while our good health allows.  Personally, I found myself in search of the "next adventure" that would push my physical and mental limits and provide the sense of personal fulfillment and learning that our mountain climbing challenges has provided. In January 2011, I signed up for the Lake George Olympic Triathlon, which would be run in September, and kept going from there. In 2012, we sold our house in NY and moved to Colorado, full-time. In 2013, I ran the Leadville Trail Marathon and my first ultra-marathon, the Run Rabbit Run 50 mile trail run in Steamboat Springs, CO. In 2014, I completed my first full Ironman distance triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run) and my second ultra-distance trail race, the Ultra Race of Champions (UROC) 100km (62 mile) in Copper, CO. It was in the training for this race that the weeping incident occurred. I think it was not coincidental that it was also the race in which I felt strongest for the longest.

And last year, Jennifer and I hiked in the Khumbu region of Nepal and summited two 20,000' (6000m) peaks near Mt. Everest and I ran the San Juan Solstice 50 mile trail race. For 2016, I have on my calendar a repeat of the Ironman in Grand Junction, CO in May, and in an effort to bring relevance to the title of this post, I will attempt my first 100 mile race in June at the Bighorn 100 Mile Trail Race in Wyoming. More on this in a subsequent post.

In addition to my internal motivations, I am also encouraged by a wife who puts plans behind my ideas, trains me, crews me on long training runs and races, and feeds me what I consider the ultimate high-test, pescatarian diet. I am proud of the team we are in these pursuits. I am also inspired by my parents. The memory of my father who committed to put himself through to an advanced degree in his 40s, while working multiple jobs to support his family and imprinted the fact that "you need to pay your dues" to achieve what you want. My mother, who raised me and passed along her love of nature and who cheered me on through my first Ironman a couple years back. I'm also inspired by the place I've chosen to live, Colorado, in which a supremely active and conscious-living culture resides which nurtures the active lifestyle and love of being outside. I've had the honor of befriending, training with and pacing a local legend in the ultra-racing community, Tom Schnitizius. In our chats, I continue to learn more about what he's done in his 15+ years running ultras, including being one of a very small handful--57 as of 2015--of ultra-elites that have completed the Rocky Mountain Slam, not once, but twice! I've loved being able to experience the famed Leadville 100 twice with him as a pacer and this year I'm excited to pace him in the granddaddy and arguably the hardest of all 100 miles races, the Hardrock 100. It will be Tom's fifth running of Hardrock.

 Ascending Hope Pass in the Leadville 100

Tom Topping out on Hope Pass

Getting out on these beautiful and difficult courses that I've read about is a great experience, but it's spirit of the community of racers (the professional elites, as well as the rest of us), organizers, volunteers and local communities that is a huge draw that brings me back. As much as we are competitive, there is an indelible sense of community out on the trail and helping hands are almost always generously offered. We all are sharing a common and rare experience, understanding that what we are attempting is really, really hard to do and the vast majority of us are not so much competing with the person next to us, but rather with ourselves to finish in the allotted time, which is generally between 30-48 hours, depending on the course. Conscious of it or not, we all are making a huge commitment to ourselves and living out the words of Ken Chlouber, the gritty founder of the Leadville 100 Trail Race, "You're better than you think you are. You can do more than you think you can. Commit not to quit." You don't have to run ultras to incorporate these motivational words into many things in your life. At some point, we all have to decide whether to commit to a goal for the outcome that we want, or give up. Some decisions are self-imposed like succeeding in school or career, practicing to play an instrument well, learning a new language, committing to do more to help others, or overcoming a harmful addiction. Others are imposed on us such as persevering through an illness, loss of employment, relationship problems, or loss of a loved one.

Finally, I've found that I enjoy the learning process of how to approach these races. I have found that pushing the body and mind to their extreme limits is a great way to understand how they work. I suppose it's similar to a car crash test…you have to ram it into a wall at high speed to understand what it's capable of, how it operates at its limits and how to improve its performance. Over the years, I've experimented with various training, nutrition and race approaches, and continue to learn what works and what doesn't for me. Early on, I studied proper running technique and altered my stride and approach to ease stress on the body to reduce risk of long-term injury.

I'm comfortable in the water, having been a lifeguard in high school, so thought that the swim part of triathlons would be a strength for me. However, I had to learn techniques for swimming in open water vs. in a pool.

HTS Full Ironman Distance Triathlon Start

Trust me, if you haven't swam distances in open water, it's a whole different ballgame. It's very easy to panic and very hard to swim in a straight line. In my first triathlon, Jennifer was watching the start from shore and counted several swimmers having to be rescued just 100 yards from the start, likely due to panic.

Last year, I made a change to my nutrition strategy. I normally do not run into GI distress during races, but it can be the downfall of many endurance athletes during a race. Through my last triathlon, I had relied predominantly on energy gels and other energy supplements high in glucose and other simple sugars.

May 2014 Triathlon Nutrition Plan

Reading up on nutrition, I switched to primarily fueling with "real" foods during a race, starting with the UROC 100km race in September 2014. I've found success in this and will save details for a future post. And this year, I've been studying up on and training with maximum aerobic heart rate (MAHR) in mind. The objective being to train more often at a lower intensity in order to keep the body in the fat-burn zone. Even lean athletes have many thousands of calories locked up in fat stores, so it makes sense to tap into those stores for long, endurance activities. The body effectively ceases burning fat once you surpass a certain intensity threshold (different for all of us) and get into the "cardio-zone". However, it takes time and training (months) for the body to become an efficient fat-burning machine. We'll see if this has any meaningful effect on my races this year.

So yes, there are reasons beyond just pure insanity that motivate some people to attempt to run 100 miles. Mine are many and some of which I'm probably not consciously aware, but these are some: quest for adventure, the camaraderie of ultra community, testing the limits of body and mind and honestly, one of the biggest joys is The Finish. It just feels amazing to stop at the end of a suffer-fest. I suppose the Yin Yang thing has merit...pleasure and pain are indelible partners. You know the saying, "Why do you keep banging your head against the wall? Because it feels so good to stop!" It definitely applies here.  And finally, Edward Wymper, best known for his first ascent of the Matterhorn in 1865, wrote, "My scrambles amongst the Alps have repaid me, for they have given me two of the best things a man can possess--health and friends." I like that.

Please don't hesitate to drop a comment here. Even if you just think I'm nuts, go for it. I promise there will be no tears.

Stay tuned for future posts on some of the topics I've mentioned here, and training and race reports, as well as other future adventures. If you made it this far, thanks for your interest!