There's really no place I can start this race report other than thanking the vast number who made it possible. Kyle Amos told me before the race that anyone who is able run a hundred miles should count themselves very blessed & lucky that they are even able to attempt something like that, and I definitely do thank God for all he's blessed me with, physically, mentally, life-situationally, and most certainly friends to see me through this. Brian Longfellow & Jenn Bernstein, my pacers & crew. Debbie Webster, Julie Toft, James Barker, Colleen Voeks & Deb Johnson, my cabin & van buddies, unofficial crew & hug buddies. Paul Schoenlaub, Stuart Johnson & Lee Hess, race directors/coordinators extraordinaire. Nolan Ming, fellow runner who was my unofficial pacer for part of the night. Ben Holmes, Gary Henry & Darin Schneidewind (and many more) for inspiration to actually attempt this. Kyle Amos & Danny Miller (and many more) for advice on how to not die doing this. Webbie, Shelley Flones & Sophia Wharton for making sure I wasn't dead or dying afterwards. Those two random ladies to let me basically put my whole weight on them to hobble the 50' from the finish line to a car. Stacey Amos, Tony Clark and all of the many aid station workers, radio operators, volunteers, National Forest Service folks & Bass River Resort staff who made this race possible. THANK YOU. Much more to say, but (hopefully) I'll let the story tell itself.
As a couple of my previous race reports have mentioned, the OT100 has predominated my thoughts for a few months now. First 100 miler, kinda strange it would do so, eh? Makes it rather difficult to know where to start, since the whole story probably begins back at the end of July - February - previous October - ok, if I was really trying, I could link it back to the 4th Quarter of 5th grade. We'll see where this goes, but one thing's for sure - it will be long. :-P
Left for Bass River Resort Thursday night with Debbie, James, Julie & Deb. All of our luggage + my race supplies + aid station supplies made for a very full van - I had to sit on the topper to get it zipped shut. James put up very well with conflicting opinions about driving & directions from us peanut gallery folks, and I enjoyed the healthiest chicken burger Sonic had to offer + Cherry Limeade. Drive was shorter than Google reports - we took 2 (3?) wrong turns + dinner stop & still made it from West of the 435 belt in Shawnee to Bass River Resort in under 5 hours. Note: if you're arriving in the dark, while BRR has big signs, they're not lit and easy (so we're telling ourselves) to miss. And I don't think we did too horrible of a job waking up Lee, Stuart, Paul & Cindy unloading into the cabin. (SORRY)
You know you never sleep well the night before a race, and two nights before is the time to make sure you get a good nights sleep, right? Well, I hadn't been sleeping well all week, but did that night! Got up around sunrise, Webbie had brought an egg bake so had 4-course breakfast. Stuart & Lee went out to finish marking the course (rains the previous weekend had disrupted their marking time table), Paul was chopping down trees to feed into his printer for race packets, and everyone else went for a run on the OT while I packed drop bags.
Bit of a dilemma with drop bags. The first crew access is at mile 17.6, Sutton Bluff, which is where our whole crew would be working the aid station. The next is Brooks Creek, mile 43.5, which I wouldn't arrive at for at least another 6 hours. Based on that, I suggested to my crew/pacers, Jenn Bernstein & Brian Longfellow, that they didn't need to come over Friday night but instead could leave Saturday morning & not meet me until Brooks Creek, around 4 in the afternoon at 24hr pace. HOWEVER, cell phone service at BRR was basically non-existent. I could get a bar on our porch with Sprint, but Verizon, T-Mobile & something else were all dead for the weekend unless you drove a mile back up the road. I had planned to leave my crew box of supplies with Webbie and have Jenn/Brian call her to meet up & get it, but that was looking less likely. So I made a game-time decision to put all of my perceived "needs" into a large drop bag for Brooks Creek, and all of the "wants" into the crew box, to be left at our cabin at BRR. Also packed small drop bags for the two aid stations that could have them prior to Brooks Creek, but not afterwards, figuring on being crew-dependent. Being my usual type-A self, I made an annotated list of what was in each bag/crew box, and if you're interested, I uploaded it to the files section of the OT100 Yahoo! group email list.
Colleen arrived, everyone got back from the run, showered, and we all got busy stuffing race packets, making signs for the Sutton Bluff aid station, and lunching. I believe there was some stapler drama, but that is not my story to tell. :) I had developed a suspicion (but can't remember the rationale behind it) that diary products were causing me stomach/bowel problems on long runs, and was cutting them out in the 48hrs before the run (down from my usual 1/3+ gallon of milk per day - seriously). I pooped less during the race than usual, but am not sure if I can fully assume causation here. Was eating every 1-2 hours - chicken noodle soup, raspberry applesauce, egg bake, powerbars, OJ, bagel + hummus, not sure what else.
A thought on pre-race fueling for ultras, that may not be that popular. I really think the emphasis on eating a lot and drinking constantly in the 24-48 hours before an ultra is overblown. Carbo-loading in based on the theory of packing in glycogen stores, but even a trained endurance athlete who has depleted and then supersatured their glycogen capacity has, at most, 90min of fuel stored in that format. The rest is coming from fat stores and what you take in during the event itself, and since it typically takes 24-48 hours for your body to convert excess calories into stored fat, eating for that purpose is not logical. Eating a lot in the day beforehand may pump up your glycogen stores, but not in a way that is really going to affect your overall performance in anything ultra distance. In fact, I think it kind of hurts me - if I start off TOO well fueled (or hydrated), I feel fine longer into the race. What's the problem with that? I don't get into a habit early of eating & drinking, because I am seriously not hungry/thirsty and have a much harder time making myself take things in from the get-go, where a consistent fuel intake from the start would help me much more. I would conjecture that fueling during a race is much more important than pre-race, and it might behoove me to sometime try an ultra where I start out, if not hungry, no more fueled than I would on a regular day. Similar with water - it's hard to drink when I'm not thirty, but if I start out supersatured, by the time I can finally make myself down decent quantities of water, I'm in hydration-debt & working to make it up. I'm definitely not saying that I or anyone should enter an ultra calorie or water deprived, but I think that, as long as you have a reliable watering & fueling infrastructure in place for an ultra, it might be fine to enter a race with no difference in your intake than on a regular day. And it might also help prevent bonks, as per my above reasoning - if you're consistent from the start, you won't reach that all-too-familiar point where your pre-race loading runs out and your body is transitioning to primarily using fuel taken in mid-race. Would love to hear thoughts on this, and can back up some of my points with articles - please let me know if you want me to dig out that info.
Back to the narrative. Hiked the quarter mile over to the main lodge at BRR, where packet pickup started at 2p. The lodge had Wi-Fi! I helped hand out packets a bit while checking email, listservs, sports scores, Plans/blogs, and generally finding my powers of concentration zeroing out as the actual race schedule of events started. was very grateful to find a well wishing email thread on the Hawks list. :)
Dinner from 4-6p in the lodge was pretty good - white flour pasta with both veggie & meat sauces. Green beans that I assume were from a can with bacon (Colleen didn't realize the latter & I got to induce a spit-take later :-P) Wheat, white & rye rolls, and pre-dressinged (ranch) iceberg lettuce salad. And brownies. And pink lemonade. Most racers had arrived by dinner, and Paul gave the pre-race briefing afterwards on the porch since the weather was so ridiculously nice. Yes, for November 7 in Missouri, race weekend conditions were highs in the 70's, lows around 50, 5% chance of rain (didn't happen) and, as weather.com put it, "abundantly sunny". Most of the briefing had to do with course markings & directions. There's more than a few events on the OT100, and quite a few flags/markers out. Ours were orange & silver striped - both tape & flags, and the whole thing was on the OT, so their blazes were along the whole course as well. They reported the course as quite extensively marked, with examples of all the marking materials and directions about specific sections. Fortunately, while the previous weekend was very wet, the course had dried off in the warm week & was in good shape. The first 20-40 miles of the trail had sustained extensive storm damage in the spring, and the OT Association had done an amazing job cleaning it out, but there were still a lot of downed trees & root holes to report. Also, the last 3 miles of trail leading into BRR had yet to be completed, so we would finish coming in on a gravel road.
Actually managed to sleep about four hours that night, after three hours of tossing about. Since the race is a point-to-point, buses take you from BRR to the starting point. There's no parking at the start, so you either have to take the bus, or be dropped off - no space (or permit) for vehicles. It's about a 2-hour drive from finish to start, so the bus left at 3:30a. Nice, early morning preceding an all-nighter, eh? Also, the buses are school buses, so no on-board potty. We did stop for a pee break at the side of the road about halfway down, though. And there were port-o-potties at the start. Buses arrived at around 5:15, folks either milled around nervously or sat on the bus where it was a bit warmer, Paul gave 15, 10, & 5 min warnings, and we were off. There was something unique & cool about the starting "gun", but I forgot what it was...
At the start, I was wearing two layers on top, both thin technical, shorts, SmartWool socks, Mizuno Wave Ascends, and my Camelbak waist pack. No gloves, tights, hat, etc. Headlamp for the first 20min (which gratefully were being collected at Grasshopper Hollow) My pack held a liter of water, and I had two Hammer Gel flasks, container of S-Caps, small stick with duct tape wrapped around it, two extra Gel packets (to be given away/used for emergencies), a trio of extra AAA batteries, and a printed, folded & sandwich-bagged list of course waypoints, just in case.
The start was very bunched up - there's about 30' of clearing between the road & the trail, not even enough room for everyone to be off the road at the start, and needless to say, unless you were up in the front 5-10, you were walking for at least the first 5min. Had to keep telling myself that it's a long race, not to get impatient, take it slow, and I did - for the first hour. I was just so relieved to finally be running again after my taper that I picked it up a notch, and felt like I was cruising along pretty well. Got to know Tommy Roias, who had run some of the other ultras I'd been at, and Carina Winkler, who was a SIUE grad student from Germany and running not only her first 100, but her first ultra of any kind.
I can rather lump the whole first 40 miles together - tough. Like I said before, there was clean up from storm damage, but the first 40 miles were really tough to run. Besides skirting the huge root holes all over the place, there were still numerous trees to climb over, the trail was hard to find, and it was quite uneven - mostly cambered rather than smooth cut, with oodles of hidden rocks under the leaves, and almost no flat sections - constant either/or on the ups & downs. I was continually surprised in checking my times at the aid stations how slow my actual pace was. Tommy, who I was with for most of the ways into Brooks Creek, thought we were putting down miles somewhere in the 10min range, while in actuality we were barely holding onto 13s. Having a sub-24hr goal, I was trying to gain some margin during the daylight before the inevitable night slowdown, but couldn't without pressing much harder than was smart.
Was great to see Kyle & Stacey Amos and Tony Clark at Grasshopper Hollow (8mi aid station), along with their special "Gary Henry: 2 Picture Limit" sign. Got lost for 3-5min after Grasshopper when the course encountered a Jeep Road - this was actually included in the pre-race briefing, but still it took 5 of us to figure out where to go. Course's largest water crossing at Bee Fork (mi 14.2) was cool, deep (2') and refreshing. View coming in to Sutton Bluff was amazing - from up on the bluff, you could see & hear the aid station from over a mile away. Was great to see Webbie, Julie, Colleen & James there, and made sure to get hugs from them all. Ended up running with the lead female for most of the first 40mi - Carina for the first 10, then some other lady, and then eventual winner Rachel, who pulled away a bit before Brooks Creek. Started "hallucinating" early - got kind of lonely/bored, and everything looked like a person/aid station - the large moss rock is the top of a tent, right? Was already getting some muscle soreness by mile 25, and while the official race packet says there are NO NS-AIDS at the aid stations, I asked if there were any "unofficial" ones at Johnson Hollow. They found a Tylenol for me, which I was most grateful for (Paul & Stuart, please don't disqualify me!). Really would have liked to grab one of the horses at that aid station for a few miles as well. :) Had my tunes in my drop bag for Gunstock Hollow (34.8mi) - plan was to make it the first third on my own, the second third with music, and the last third was a pacer. :) Really just wasn't feeling all that great - everything was working - legs, stomach, head, etc, but nothing was great. As I put it, "everything's in the green, but just barely". Worried me because I knew if (when) anything started getting explodey, I didn't know where I could pull some reserves from, but consoled myself with thinking it was good race management that everything was declining at equal rates. Also, heat started coming in mid-afternoon (high of 75), and I was drinking a lot more than planned. Got super scared when my pack went dry halfway through the 8.7 mi stretch from Gunstock to Brooks Creek.
Was nervous coming in to Brooks Creek - would Jenn & Brian be there? They had left that morning, and had to make an unplanned stop at BRR plus get new directions from there to Brooks Creek, and I was running about a half-hour ahead and what if they had encountered unexpected problems on the way and there was no cell phone service and and and...they were there! I think it would have been a huge mental blow to me if they hadn't, but it was SO SO SO GOOD to see them. They had everything there all laid out so that once my mental checklist disappeared I could just look & point (great idea!), made sure I ate & was fueled, helped me not to forget my headlamp, chatted me up & generally just gave me such a boost.
Able to hold off on the use of my headlamp until Highway DD (51.0mi), where I was told I was running in the top 20(!) but shortly after I headed out from that aid station, the enormity of going the whole night in the dark when I'm tired and rather alone began to hit me, and I started walking a lot, very mentally down. Tommy caught & passed me, and then Nolan Ming, who I had passed about 10miles before, caught me as well. We chatted briefly and then he moved on ahead, and after he got about 100 yards, I realized how much of a boost I got just from that passing encounter and caught back up to him, where I begged him to let me stay with him until I got my pacer. He was agreeable, and is one of many who saved my race. I stayed with him for about 15miles in the dark, and not only did he save us from getting very lost twice, but he kept the pace going well, me mentally focused, and brought us into Hazel Creek. Without him, I may have well dropped due to the mental downs by that point, and I owe him a big debt of gratitude.
Brian & Jenn had been doing a bit of conspiring, and rather than Jenn taking me the 13mi from Hazel Creek to Berryman, she was going to hold back b/c of flu recovery, and Brian was going to take me from Hazel Creek all the way to Henpeck Hollow, which is further than a marathon. Brian, and experienced road marathoner, had told me before that he didn't understand how/why I would go on a training run further than a marathon, and he certainly wouldn't unless he got a medal for it, so I was very pleasantly surprised by this. Got a makeover at Hazel - traded out the chafing Camelbak waist pack for the Nathan one, changed shoes, shirts, re-lubed, etc. As I told Jenn in the video she took of me, I was having fun "off and on". Right IT band a bit sore, left shin tweaking a bit, the chafing on the back, but no blisters.
Nolan took off ahead of me, as did someone else who came in behind, but Brian & I started out and quickly caught that guy. It was so good to have him along - we chattered about anything & everything, walked the ups, ran the downs, and ran most of the flats. He kept me mentally strong and moving and I can't really express how night & day different it was to have him there. We found out at Machell Hollow that I was in 11th - I'm not used to so many folks dropping, and this rather surprised me, since we hadn't passed anyone. Didn't find out, however, how to pronounce "Machell" - even the aid station folks didn't know. Brian & I kept going strong, and about 2.5 miles out of Berryman, we saw headlamps ahead. Started to strategize a bit, and told Brian that we were now running until we caught them & were past them out of site. The runner & pacer were walking medium-slow, and I was remembering the Andy Henshaw Leadville report of "you gotta break their heart". If I really was in 11th, and they were 10th, oh man, I wanted that top ten & wanted to go by them in such a fashion that they wouldn't even think of trying to stay with us. Perhaps a bit harsh, but having something competitive to obsess over at this point really helped. Came into Berryman in "stealth mode" - trying to deflect our lights on switchbacks so we were less visible, talking only quietly, and generally trying to gain as much margin as we could. I was probably rather ridiculous coming into Berryman when I was jogging up trying to shush all the folks cheering by putting my finger to my lips and shining my headlamp at my face. Sorry! Got more food down at Berryman, another "just in case" Ibuprofen - though really nothing but my shin was sore, and I hit it with IcyHot. Kyle told us that basically everyone was walking at this point, so I felt good about our run-walking & being able to hold on to top 10, maybe even move up a bit.
Took off out of Berryman before the "11th-formerly-10th" folks made it in, also running to appear strong as we passed them (there's a 1/4 mi out-and-back from the trail to the aid station). Brian noticed after a half-mile that my waist pack was empty, and offered to go back to Berryman to get my bottle, but I wanted to keep going & told him to forget it - I could make it in with just aid station supplies (bad idea). I was getting very paranoid - stopping & shushing Brian every now in then because I thought I heard voices, making him check behind us for headlamps, and generally being ridiculous. Kept me focused, though? BUT, about a mile out of Billy's Branch (mi 88), we DID see headlamps behind us, moving strong and running. Tried to hold them off, and got in & out of the aid station about 15 seconds ahead of them, but they caught us soon after. Then...my shin exploded. Really, it did so before they caught us, but what was tender and sore before now was having sharp pains with each step. Massaging it didn't help, Ibuprofen wasn't doing anything, and I could barely step on it without gasping. We went from a strong run-walk to slow hobbling in about a half-mile - downhills killed, flats hurt, only inclines felt mediocre. I remember Paul Schoenlaub telling me on a run back in June that the only two reasons he would drop in a 100 were if he was in a life-threatening situation or risking causing himself permanent damage, and I didn't think either was the case here, so I kept hobbling on. It was around 4a now, and I had known since Highway DD that my 24hr goal was gone, but I had still been hoping to get under whatever Paul & Stuart end up setting as the "silver standard", and keep my top 10. That quickly changed to "finish" - I don't know how to spell DNF, not for my first 100.
Compounding my problems were the now slower pace means I was generating very little body heat, and I began to get very cold before two long. Brian & I talked about it, dropped it, talked about it, dropped it, and finally when I was shivering constantly and somewhat dizzy still about 2 miles from Henpeck, we stuffed some Snickers down my gullet, he gave me his extra shirt, and he gallantly ran ahead to the aid station to procure extra clothes for both of us. I kept stumbling forward, but was scared. I knew if I had a conscious choice, I was going to finish, but as dizzy and cold as I was, I hoped I didn't pass out. Had my arms tucked into the body section of my shirt, was holding it up over my mouth to breath in, furnace-like. Snickers helped a lot - I got less dizzy, at least. Brian made it back before a half-hour had passed with lots of clothes, and got me bundled up. We hobbled into Henpeck barely making 30min miles - I would stop & crouch every half-mile or so for a minute - the five miles from Billy's to Henpeck took us just over 2:20. The sun was up by Henpeck, so I was warming up. Tried to put some more food down, and I honestly don't remember what, if anything, I had. Took a bunch more pocket Snickers though.
Jenn & I set out after 10min, hobbling along, and she had the great idea to grab a tree branch as a cane for me. That helped in some rough spots. After two miles of barely making headway, I got impatient and told her that as long as the pain was the same amount, I might as well run as best I can rather than walk. That lasted all of 4 minutes, as while I could run as well as I could walk (and thus move faster), I had no mental juice to sustain the effort. Was surprised that really no one had caught me, as slow as I was moving - only two people thus far. That last seven miles on in just plain sucked though. Moving so slow, not feeling up to talking, sleepy - Jenn was an angel for putting up with me. Thankfully, the last 3.5 miles were on gravel, so the terrain was smoother than I could move a bit faster. If I was in any runnable shape, I could have easily put down sub-10 on those - my legs felt quite fresh, so add frustrated to the list. People started catching & passing, and I went (by my count) from 13th to around 28th. Not that it matters at this point. Hobbled, hobbled, hobbled, down the road, along the back side of the resort, across the field, along the horse pasture while people were cheering. Turned the corner with 50' to go, handed Jenn the stick and tried to run - made it two steps, and settled for a hopping, left-foot dragging shuffle across the line & in. 28:44. I made it.
Kind of a blur after this - got my buckle, gave Jenn & Brian their thank you gifts, hugged many people, probably ate some things, stubbornly insisted on going back to the cabin to shower (which involved using many weight-bearing shoulders and crawling up stairs), "packed" (threw things into tubs), and went back down to watch Gary Henry finish. Checked the results, and saw I was 18th - guess more people ahead of me dropped, plus a few who passed me that I thought were racers must have been pacers. Happy about that placing, but feel kind of weird about it. Turns out only 56 of 136 finished - 44%. The winner said it was harder than Leadville(!) I kind of wonder about the causes of the low finishing rate. I know the course was tougher than expected, but I also wonder about the entrant pool. From what I've heard, this race had a lot (40%+ of the entrants) of first-time 100 milers. Carina, who I mentioned earlier, had never done further than a marathon. I heard about another guy who had never done further than a half-marathon - including in training. Just makes me curious to what extent the low finishing rate can be attributed to 1. Heat 2. Tough Course 3. (related to 2.) Cut-Offs being too strict 4. Atypical entrant field
I am definitely coming back next year, and hope this is the start of a 10-year streak for me. What will I do differently? The main thing is alter my pacing - the last 60 miles were quite runnable, analogous to what I'm used to at Clinton Lake but with longer hills. I (and everyone, I expect) just beat ourselves up so bad on the first 40 that we couldn't take advantage of the latter 60. Once I get a couple more 100s under my belt to make sure this is possible, I plan to take the first 40 as easy as I can, regardless of pace, and see about hitting the last 60 hard(er). Other minor changes - Biofreeze in the med kit, Ibuprofen in the S-cap container, different waist pack since I'm tired of the chafing from my main one, carry an extra layer at night. Not much. Take away my shin problem & the hypothermic problem (mostly) disappears, and take away the push on the first 40 and the slowness (hopefully) on the last 60 is lessened for an overall better time. Looking forward to Rocky Raccoon in February now. :)
There's probably more to say, and I may add it at some point, but thank you again to all who made this possible. Brian, Jenn & Nolan, without whom I wouldn't have finished. Debbie, Ben, Gary, James, Kyle, without whom I wouldn't have started. And my God, without whom it wouldn't even be possible.
More Photos / Videos courtesy of Jenn!
