How to make ultra running (even more) awesome: An open letter to The North Face Endurance Challenge Series

How to make ultra running (even more) awesome:  An open letter to The North Face Endurance Challenge Series

Let me begin by saying that I have deep philosophical disagreements with much of what I’m about to write.  I feel, on a visceral level, that the greatest things about running in general and ultra running in particular have to do with running’s participatory nature.  What moves me is watching runners come face to face with their personal limits, struggle, hurt, fall down, get up, and push against those limits as hard as they possibly can.  It’s awesome to see regular girls and guys who are going to come out of a race a bit wiser and a bit tougher than they were before – to know that, in however small and irrelevant a way, they will have experienced the triumph of our human spirits over our weak and fallible bodies.  It’s cool to know they will come out of the race with a story to tell, and to know they will most likely tell it repeatedly, no matter how much it annoys their non-running friends.

That was a long-winded way of saying that I don’t give a crap about what happens at “the pointy end” of the field.  The experiential nature of running that interests me seems to be less and less prominent as a runner becomes more and more proficient.  The experience and exploration of self is replaced by base competition, and to be frank, you don’t need to run 50 miles to have a competition.  A few hundred meters will probably do.

Instead, I’ve always liked romantic amateurism, but as Sally Edwards recently pointed out on a podcast with Trail Runner Nation, romantic amateurism is a truly stupid business model.  Money in sports is all about spectators, and you won’t find many red-blooded Americans with the patience to watch skinny people in baggy shorts jog for half a day at a stretch (case in point, curling is a far more popular spectator sport than ultra running).  If you want spectators to be interested in distance running, you need something more special.  To address that need, Edwards pointed out five things she considered to be critical for generating interest in a race, specifically used during her creation of the California International Marathon.

1) TV coverage, which is potentiated by

2) Celebrity athletes, who join the race because of

3) Prize money, which is given by

4) Corporate sponsors. 

Oh, and apparently it’s important to have

5) A great course (fortunately, “great” is in the eye of the beholder.  Seriously, who wants to run toward Sacramento?)

Given that I’d heard of the CIM before listening to the TRN podcast, I have to grant that Edwards is probably close to the mark.  On the other hand, given that the only runner I recognized on the 2014 finisher list was 10^th place David Laney, whose name I only know from his ultra results, I’m not sure that the Celebrity Athlete criterion holds much water.  More to the point, the lack of fame on the finisher list reminded me of a truism from Michael Lewis’s book Moneyball.  Fans don’t come to games to see their famous players play; they come to see their winning teams win.

From the athlete’s point of view, ultra running is a solitary endeavor – the notion of team is essentially absent from the sport.  However, it’s quite possible for a team mentality to be generated in the mind of a running fan.  The typical high school cross country scoring system (one point for first place, two for second, etc., team with the lowest overall point total wins) allows fans to cheer for one team of runners in competition with other teams.  Our natural human propensity for tribal in-group / out-group psychology feeds right into that support.  That support could create great interest in ultra running, if only someone could create teams to match a part of our personal identities.  Enter The North Face Endurance Challenge Series.

One key to human identity is our sense of place.  There’s a reason that the Yankee’s, for all their success, still primarily draw fans from New York.  Part of this is certainly the ease of access – if you want to see a Yankees’ game, it helps to live in New York – but the identity of place is probably a larger influence.  New Yorkers consider themselves to be part of New York.  They consider the Yankees to be part of New York.  And so, despite wild differences between million dollar baseball players and the denizens of The City, New Yorkers consider those players to be part of their tribe, and they support them accordingly.

The Endurance Challenge Series is perfectly placed to take advantage of this primal aspect of human nature.  In order to create teams that draw from the identity of place, the ECS need simply invite the top six women and top six men from each of it’s regional races to compete as a team in the December championship race outside San Francisco.  Instantaneously, and for the paltry fee of a few plane tickets and hotel rooms, the ECS would have Team Washington lined up to race Team New York, Team Wisconsin against Team Ontario, and the dark horse Park City Team thrown into the mix.  Perhaps add in international teams from Trans Gran Canaria, UTMB, or the Australia 100K.  Play the team identities properly through social media, and people from Denver to Salt Lake would get excited about the Team from the Rockies.  Midwestern runners would start trash-talking Team Canada.  Everyone could be happy that the Mason-Dixon line still separates The District from The City, and we could all stand back to watch the US vs. Europe argument rage.  Add in prize money for the winning team, and you have enough drama to get traditional media deeply interested.

There’s another key aspect to team racing that could raise spectator interest in ultra events and shorter distance races as well.  From a spectator’s point of view, the typical distance race is half over the second it becomes clear that the leader won’t set a world record.  It’s perhaps 95% over as soon as the winner crosses the line.  Interest lingers a bit as the second and third runners finish, but then drops to zero while the vast majority of athletes run through the end.  A focused team competition, with team prize money, would break the myopic spotlight on the records and the first finisher.  All of a sudden the fates of leading teams depend not just on the first or second or tenth finishers, but possibly on the finishing place of runners struggling and bonking deep in the mid-pack, a scene that elicits drama for hours rather than minutes. 

Further, the team focus could span years much more smoothly than the focus on single athletes.  There’s no reason to think that Sage Canaday and Dakota Jones will both be healthy and interested in battling it out at the championship race this year, much less next, but every championship race for the next twenty years could feature Team Wisconsin battling Team Australia.  The decade long rise and fall of one team could be discussed and analyzed.  The consistent presence of a runner on another team could be noted and admired.  The possible end of a third team’s long also-ran status could be argued and debated.  Teams easily allow long-term story lines in a way that single athletes rarely do, and those long-term stories are compelling.

Now for the cynical part: the great thing about this scheme is how little it costs The North Face in return for how greatly it could increase the stature of the Endurance Challenge Series.  The North Face doesn’t have to pay the athletes in question, much less sponsor them.  You don’t have to care if the same athletes make a team year after year or if a stream of new faces appears – media can make a story either way.  You don’t even have to be responsible for maintaining or managing the teams; the regional races automatically create the teams anew each year, and the top runners who might make the teams will be managing their own training already.  All you have to do is continue your existing races and at worst pay for travel expenses, warm-up suits, and prize money for a few runners.   At best you could get the teams sponsored by local businesses (the Goldman Sachs Bears!) and the prize money covered by advertising dollars.  Also, while most of these benefits are aimed at raising the profile of the championship race, the competition to earn a spot on the regional teams should raise the profile of the regional races as well.

While I’m not entirely comfortable with the evolution of ultra running into an increasingly professional sport, I was struck by one more of Sally Edwards’s arguments.  She claimed that the increase professionalism of triathlon had given rise to an increased number of races and level of interest, which had in turn elicited a much higher extent of participation amongst amateur triathletes.  I’m not sure if the correlation is actually indicative of causation (does the NBA increase the number of high school basketball teams, or simply feed off them?), but the argument is convincing enough for me to propose the ideas above.  Regardless of how these sorts of changes might impact the culture at the top level of the sport, an increase in access and encouragement for regular runners is worth pursuing. 

So, The North Face ECS, if you want these ideas, I’ll sell them to you for a penny.  Note: actual penny not required to complete transaction. 

The Other Ten Percent: Bear Mountain 50 mile, May 2nd, 2015

And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy.

-Kahlil Gibran

Just before 5:00 AM I stood in the cold dark by the Bear Mountain Inn, surrounded by tiny pockets of light thrown by headlamps and fire rings and strings of electric bulbs.  As the clock ticked down the announcer called for the first wave of runners to gather at the starting line.  I positioned myself at the back of the corral, my shoulder blades quite literally touching the cold metal barrier.  My plan was to go out softly and try to run easy all the way to Anthony Wayne at 41 miles.  I wanted to arrive there without feeling too beat up.  If I managed that, then I would race hard over the last ten miles to the finish.  It wasn’t much of a strategy, but it was what I had.

Coach Jimmy Dean Freeman is fond of saying, “An ultra is ninety percent mental, and the other ten percent is in your head.”  What he means is that a runner’s physical capacity is fully determined well before he or she reaches the starting line, and that virtually everyone on that line has the physical capacity to finish well.  The deciding factor between running well or failing from that point forward is the mental – or more importantly, emotional – strength required to push the body into the depths of that physical ability for hours and hours.  A race of this distance on this terrain is virtually guaranteed to provide plenty of physical pain and exhaustion.  As runners, it is up to us to float above that pain, grind our way through it, or succumb, and all three are possible.

My mother is a psychologist and councilor.  She told me once about a training course she took that covered psychosomatic strength and weakness.  In one of the sessions the participants held out their arms at ninety degrees from the shoulder and gripped a heavy weight in the extended hand.  They closed their eyes and told first a truth, then a lie.  With the truth, they could hold the weight steady.  With the lie their hands trembled, or even dropped.  The cognitive dissonance confused the brain and interrupted the neural signals that keep the muscles firing in their arms. 

The psychosomatic test is a distilled version of what I would face over and over during the race.  Over fifty miles I would take between seventy and ninety thousand steps.  If my brain could convince just a few extra muscle fibers to fire on each of those steps, I would fly through to the finish.  If it couldn’t, I would slog along, the effort building with every step.  What determines whether on not my brain would perform are all of the ephemerals: happiness, confidence, resiliency, and adaptability facing off against sadness, confusion, loneliness, and rigidity.

I’ve run both ways in the past.  Just two weeks earlier in the North Face DC marathon an aid station volunteer had chided me for making the race look too easy.  I was twenty miles in, in third place, gliding along and chasing down the leaders.  It actually wasn’t easy, physically.  I was running against the edge of my ability, hot and tired and hurting, but I was running with the joy of visiting my sister’s family, the beauty of the day and the positivity of the other runners.  It must have showed.

I wouldn’t have that advantage in this race.  Just three days before I’d gotten the news at my job.  Not getting what I wanted was hard, but for many reasons it became far worse than that.  Hearing through the rumor mill hours before anyone got around to telling me directly made me angry.  It devalued the months of managing uncertainty and the effort of creating a base of support.  The patronizing consolations and realizing how deep the breach of trust ran finally shattered the thin veneer of civility I’d been able to maintain to that point.  I felt shocked, hurt, and adrift.  I try to remember how badly I lost my temper in the ensuing conversations, but the exact words refuse to arise from memory.

Afterward I drove to my refuge on the Watchung trails.  I burst immediately into a reckless sprint, no warmup, and burned over the first mile.  I stopped suddenly, wanting to scream.  Too suddenly.  I’m prone to cerebral hypoperfusion when I stop an intense effort, as my body maintains blood flow to the muscles and forgets about the brain.  My vision turned blue, narrowed, and I fell to the ground.  I bizarrely got up and started running again before coming to, only regaining consciousness as I crashed through a thicket and slammed into an old oak.  Blood dripped from my elbow, and I cursed it as it splashed on the ground.  Then I finished the loop.

With the Bear Mountain 50 mile coming on Saturday I knew I was in for trouble.  I couldn’t get my mind right.  I cancelled our reservation at the Bear Mountain Inn; I didn’t think I could run the race.  Then on Friday my buddy Andrew Siegmund texted, asked if I was ready to crush it.  I told him I was mentally wrecked, and he understood.  He told me to do it anyway.  I told him I would try to run, just to see if I could go fifty miles on spite and anger.  He told me to fly like Peter Pan instead.  I asked what he meant, and he reminded me: happy thoughts.

I set my alarm for 2:30 am on Saturday morning, but woke up at 2:20.  I was quietly thankful that the alarm wouldn’t wake my family.  I drove north, and there were no distressed thoughts or worries this time, not like last year.  There was only a yawning, empty sadness.  I wanted the black night to be comforting, but looking out at it only felt like looking in a mirror.  I saw grey hair and stubble, blank eyes and a wrinkled face.

I caught the last shuttle from Anthony Wayne to Bear Mountain, arriving at the start/finish at 4:20.  I milled around, picking up a bib and arranging my drop bags.  I tried to be sociable, honoring the connections I made with Lena in DC, Sue and Maya at the Skydive Ultra, Adam and Eric at the Hurl Elkhorn, and Karen at Cayuga Trails, but mostly my attempts fell flat.  I did chat a bit with an Ironman triathlete named Rob, who has a two-year old daughter and another on the way.  We joked and commiserated about the difficulties of parenting while training for ultras, and glorified the hot coffee offered up by volunteers in the predawn chill.  The conversation felt almost human and almost real.

At the 5:00 am start I jogged off behind the first wave of runners.  I had no intention of overrunning the early miles.  I held back on the first rocky climbs, and soon the lead racers from the second wave came streaming by, their headlamps shining through the dark.  I let them go.  I knew I would see most of them again, and I did.  Over the first twenty miles of hilly, broken ground I passed each one of them and many others, one by one or in bunches, the race unfolding exactly as I intended.  I still felt sad, but I felt strong.

On a different day, after a different week, I think I could have kept it up.  I wouldn’t have won – the talent in the field was far to deep for that – but I might have had a chance at the top ten or fifteen.  On that day I would have been mentally strong and happy.  I would have waved at the photographers, maybe clowned around and flexed the muscles on my thin arms.  Instead I could barely smile.  When the pain came I gritted my teeth and forced my way through it, but I couldn’t float above.  Half way to Anthony Wayne I realized that my strategizing was already lost.  I slowed, and on the way into the Camp Lanowa my legs cramped in a strange way behind the knees, hamstrings and calves betraying me together.  On the way out of the aid station the volunteers cheered and clapped.  They told me I was doing great and to keep up the good work.  Secretly I wished they would stop cheering.  I felt so worthless, and I wished they would turn their backs and shun the useless creature before them.  I covered my mouth with my hand, hoping they wouldn’t see my expression.

By mile thirty I was walking.  It was by far the easiest section of the course, on a paved road of all things, smooth and only slightly uphill.  The runners I had passed earlier passed me back.  One asked me if I was okay, and I told him I was walking back to Anthony Wayne to drop out.  He told me I’d feel better in while, and to keep going.  Another told me it wouldn’t last, and a third told me he’d see me again when I caught up.  Then a young guy gave me a chunk of ice he’d kept in his hat, to cool my hands and face in the growing heat.

It was the kindness of the other runners that finally broke through my sadness and shame.  These were the people who were facing the same struggle I was, and that commonality allowed me to hear and feel their support.  In their presence I was not alone.  I began to jog behind a trio of European runners, letting their energy pull me up the hills and over the rocks.  I felt like the end car of a freight train, no longer responsible for my own motion, but filled with the inevitability of that movement.  I was no longer competing, but I was running.

By the return to Anthony Wayne I felt a small measure of strength again.  Many families and friends of the racers were there, cheering on their runners and laughing and smiling.  Amazingly my own family came running across the parking lot, looking beautiful and clean and not at all like the beaten down lot of us who’d been running for eight hours.  I told them that I would be slow on the last ten miles, that it wasn’t a good day for me, and they said they would meet me at the end.

Amazingly, I beat my family to the finish.  They were at the park, playing, when I came across the line.  Alone, I bent over and buried my face in my hands.  For so many, this would be a moment of victory, a chance to celebrate the accomplishment.  I stayed bent over and let the anger and shame and sadness wash over me for another minute.  I felt the pain and exhaustion in my bruised and broken body, then I straightened up.  I walked through the finish festival to a pine tree and lay down on my back in the shade.  I thought about the race and the pain, my failures and my partial recovery.  I thought about mental strength and emotional weakness.  I thought of what Christopher McDougall said: “If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four-hour run, you ain’t getting them.”  I asked myself why I felt the way I did.  At first there were no answers, but slowly I gained a modicum of understanding.  I felt like I'd been led on.  I was ashamed that I fell for it.  I felt betrayed, and I felt embarrassed to see my raw ambition paraded so publicly about.  I looked in at the core of my self and saw the shriveled, seething mass.  It stank of base arrogance, petty selfishness, and foolish wounded pride.  I recoiled from it.  It was my worst self, but I couldn’t escape it.  It was part of me.

In the end I knew that nothing had changed, not in the ten hours of the race and not in the week before.  I was the same person, living the same life, albeit much more bruised and scraped and sore now.  Only my perspective had shifted.  That morning Bear Mountain had glowed crimson in the sunrise; now it glittered green in the afternoon light.  Soon night would fall, and it would loom ominously in the gray dark, but it was the same mountain.  I was getting to see a different side of my life from the one I usually enjoy, a darker, more ominous side.  I would have to get used to its presence, but I knew I had to stop letting it consume me.  If spite and anger weren’t enough to fuel me for fifty miles, they certainly wouldn’t sustain me for months or years.  I would have to find the freight train of runners in my real life and join in, become part and parcel of that support and inevitable motion, and refuse to allow the unstable rocks a place in my foundation.

By the end of the day my wife and son had lifted my spirits.  Together we dragged my body back to the truck, and I followed them home.  I began to mentally rebuild the veneer of civility.  I began to take back my right to feel good about the better parts of who I am and how I conduct myself.  I began to prepare for the difficult part.

Postscript

As always, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the volunteers at the start/finish and the aid stations, particularly to the girl at Camp Lanowa who kept me focused on taking one section at a time and to the woman at Tiorati who sunscreened my burning skin.  Without these people, and without the organization provided by The North Face, I wouldn’t have been able to start the race, much less finish.  My thanks and my wish of blessing for each of them.

I would also like to acknowledge Dave and Paul, who, in the midst of their own tough moments, let me walk along with them, and Ryan, who may have managed to run every step.  My memory will always keep the images of them, along with the aforementioned European trio, the guys blaring heavy metal from their truck outside Anthony Wayne, the matching red shirt family, the passing cyclists, my buddy Chris and his family who found me at the finish festival, the pacer wearing heart emblazoned socks to match her runner, the hiker who made way in honor of his own many competitions, the WTC girls at Queensboro, and Karen Holland, who called out my name as I closed on the finish.

In Sickness and in Health: The lateral stabilization chain

The Glut Med – IT Band – Knee – Posterior Tib – Lateral foot chain

I’ve had left IT band issues for years.  They’re never major enough to be debilitating or really limit my running, but they’re always there, always tight, and always a little painful on the outside of my knee.  I’ve dealt with them in various ways – stretches for the TFL and piriformis, foam rolling the quad and hamstrings and the IT band itself, heat, ice, and, rarely, rest.  Everything I tried worked from a palliative point of view, but the ache in my leg now is evidence enough that none of it was curative.

Olivia is an orthopedic physical therapist, which makes me a bit ashamed to admit to chronic injuries.  You’d think that 24/7 access to an orthopedic specialist would render me immune to injury or at least keep me on the fast track to fixing my core problems, but it doesn’t often work that way.  Also, my problem is sadly worse than just the IT band.  The left knee, pulled by the tight IT, aches.  The left foot has chronic pain on the fifth metatarsal.  And the posterior tib that stabilizes that ankle has failed and become strained repeated.  Unfortunately I have a bit of a thick skull, so having one person identify my problem, the glut med, and proffer a solution isn’t enough.  Apparently, I need several.

Luckily I think I’ve finally gotten the message.  It started with a column on IRunFar from Joe Uhan.[1]  Joe talked about IT band pain and lateral foot soreness and “running narrow”.  I read that column just about the same time that I noticed the pain in the outside of my left foot.  I tried a few of the drills, but soon let it drop.  Then an Endurance Planet podcast from Tawnee and Lucho ID’d an article by Robert Camacho bashing foam rolling.[2]^{, [3]}  No foam rolling, really?  Sacrilege!  Fine, I’ll bite.  The article mentions that a weak glut med can fail to stabilize the knee, causing the TFL to kick in instead (tight TFL?  Check).  The TFL inserts on the IT band, so as it tires the body can start to stabilize the knee by tightening the IT band (tight IT band?  Check).   This is a poor solution, however, because the IT band can’t tighten and loosen dynamically.  It just stays tight (knee soreness? Check).

I started googling glut med and running and soon came to the Gait Guys’ You Tube channel, specifically the three part series on “The Problematic Cross-over Gait” (yes, cross-over is synonymous with Joe’s “running narrow” problem).[4]  There was a lot of discussion of the glut med controlling the stance leg while the lateral abdominal controls the striding leg, the point being to keep the hips level and the spine neutral while running.  I tried to understand, but it was hard to see.  Luckily, the sidebar showed a link to another one of their videos, this one on correct single leg squat form.[5]  The visual is perfect.  With good form, the shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle of the stance leg are in exact vertical alignment, and the hips are level.  To achieve this, the stance leg glut med has to contract powerfully and dynamically through the course of the squat motion to prevent the stance hip from sticking out to the side, and the lifted side lateral abdominals must contract to prevent the lifted hip from dropping.  It finally made sense.  Running narrow or crossing over isn’t an issue of the foot drifting to the middle, it’s a problem of the hip shifting to the outside long after foot strike.  The key to fixing my IT band issues, and probably the knee, foot, and posterior tib issues, is to keep vertical alignment of the foot, knee, hip, and shoulder. 

Sweet!  Except, how the hell do you do that?

Back to my wife, who patiently explained, probably for the fourth or fifth time, exactly what it takes to strengthen the glut med.  So here’re some of the exercises for glut med strengthening:

1) Clams.  Lie on my side with the shoulder, hip, and ankle in alignment and the knees forward (via hip and knee flexion).  Keep the hips stacked vertically with no rolling in the torso.  Lift the top knee while keeping the feet together on the ground, if effect spreading the knees by contracting the glute med.  Two sets of fifteen, morning and evening, and at lunch if it won’t create too much of a scene at work.

2) Side leg lifts (vertical at the beginning, lying down as strength improves).  Stand on one foot with the foot, knee, hip, and shoulder in vertical alignment.  Orient the lifted leg so that the foot points forward and the hip is slightly extended, such that the lifted foot toes are next to the stance foot’s heel.  Lift the foot to the side and slightly behind without rotating the leg or trunk.  Make sure the hips stay level throughout.  Same sets as the clams.

3) Single leg squats.  Watch the linked video for form.⁵  Essentially, the shoulder, hip, knee, and foot stay vertically aligned in the sagittal plane and the hips stay level.  Don’t let the stance hip shift out to the side, and don’t let the lifted hip drop.  Lower the butt down and back and the knee forward over the second toe, making sure that the stance knee doesn’t protrude forward beyond the toe or shift either inward or outward, then return to the fully upright position.  Focus on keeping the lifted side hip level with the stance hip – refuse to let it drop.  Same sets as the first two exercises.

As of now I’ve been on this program for exactly half of one day, so I can’t really comment on the results, but I have a good feeling about it.  Of course, if you have a glut med issue you’ll want to get a diagnosis and program from your own specialist, but in the mean time this might be a place to start.

---

[1] See Joe’s post at http://www.irunfar.com/2013/03/going-wide-the-role-of-stride-width-in-running-injury-and-economy.html

[2] http://www.enduranceplanet.com/atc-are-we-overdoing-it-with-the-foam-roller-strengthen-glute-med-to-fix-your-itb-from-marathons-to-ironman-plus-run-ragnar-with-us/

[3] http://breakingmuscle.com/mobility-recovery/your-it-band-is-not-the-enemy-but-maybe-your-foam-roller-is

[4] Come on, you can search You Tube as well as I can.  “Gait Guys” and “Cross-over” will do the trick.

[5] Fine, I’ll give you the link for this one.  It’s important: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2hX4qry5jY

First Footprints: Watchung Reservation, November 26, 2014

1:30 pm, and my reactions aren’t done.  There is little a chemist can do to speed the work in the lab, so I pick my best friend and first option – heat.  The vials go in an aluminum block at 40 C, slightly over my core temperature, much warmer than the ambient air.  I have a few hours to wait before the endpoints are reached.

The day before Thanksgiving - I’m not supposed to be here anyway, a vacation day placed on the books long before.  I leave the building, step into the frigid outside.  Rain and sleet pelt my face, but I don’t pull up a hood.  Moments later I’m in the rented Chrysler, climate control set to 75 degrees, engine pulling me along the busy, slushy streets.  Soon we climb, leather-wrapped steel beast and I, up the flanks of the Watchung Reservation, skidding dangerously if slowly up the unplowed roads to the head of the Sierra and History trails.

Changing clothes in the driver’s seat of a car is always a bit entertaining, even more so mid-week in cold weather.  I toss slacks and shirt to the back seat; drop loafers into the passenger foot well.  Replace them with shorts, tech shirt, merino wool long-sleeves, trail shoes.  Add a shell, wool cap, and gloves for warmth.  A camera for the moments. 

A deep breath and I’m out in the snow.  The cold isn’t as bad as I thought it would be.  The snow on the ground holds together.  It doesn’t immediately soak my feet, and I’m glad for the reprieve.  I snap a photo of the trailhead then run through the image.  Frozen water and iced tree limbs, the bridge over Blue Brook’s unnamed tributary.  Rocky steps up the embankment.  Drooping branches, weighed down by the snow.  White planks of the swamp-passing boardwalk.  Glistening bushes, covered in ice and thorns. A laurel tree, holding fast to green, snow-covered leaves.  I snap photo after photo, until the freezing wind on bare legs reminds me that I’m here to run, not to attempt, however futilely, to capture the first beauty of winter.  I stow the camera in a pocket and run onward.

The trail drops down to Blue Brook, skidding along a slippery path.  I practice the sliding gait of the mountain goat.  At the bridge I turn left, eschewing the crossing.  Crossing leads to miles of rocks and swamp and memories of bruised, battered feet.  Instead I climb the steep ridge back to the Sierra trail.  A fork greets me at the top.  I muse on the road less traveled by; how can you tell which it is, when yours are the first footprints in the snow?  I plunge down the rightward path, downhill and away from the cozy seat of my rented car.  Whether less traveled or not, this is the path to longer running.

The Sierra trail drops back to Blue Brook, then turns away.  I abandon it, cross the footbridge, and climb up the Northern embankment.  On the climb I find my legs have little strength in them.  Is it the cold, or the trace of flu haunting my lungs?  Have sleepless nights, courtesy of job stress and life, robbed me of my vigor?  I patter onward, maintaining cadence.  I realize that the slow pace doesn’t bother me.  If nothing else, the short strides and light footfalls protect me from the uneven ground hidden beneath the snow.  I act and react, act and react, constantly recalibrating my position on the trail, climbing upward to the ridge.

The weakness persists on the Northern ridge.  I realize, despite the joy of running in the snow, that I’ve been moving tensely, worrying about a slip or fall.  I focus on relaxing.  I focus on spreading my toes in advance of the footfall, preparing to catch the ground rather than stab it.  Subtly, my pace increases and my effort drops.  I start to float over the sodden ground, then fly.  I soar over fallen trees, dodge past leaning thorns, splash through slushy puddles, glissade down steep embankments.  The distance ticks by in an effortless stream.

At Surprise Lake I pause, struck by the singularity of an empty bench by the water.  On warmer days this is a place to rest and reflect, a place to let the mind wander.  A place where children sit while parents fish, or where parents sit while children play.  Today it is abandoned and covered in ice.  It is forbidding and unwelcoming, alone.  I imagine my spirit perched beside it, a fair partner, unrealized, then I run onward.  A piece of me, however small, stays behind.  Somehow this place, frozen and silent, seems just about right.

Another climb and I’m back to the car.  A meager half dozen miles, a few hundred feet of climb.  An entry in my log book that wouldn’t garner a glance by its metrics, but a run that, shrouded in snow and mystery, holds a special place.  It’s the first run of this winter.

I drive back to the lab, chat strategy, attend to business.  My feet are still cold.  The reactions, heated, are predictably done.  I work them up, record the data, purify the mixtures.  I place the products in a freezer, awaiting further use.  They cool, and my feet warm.  Balance, however boring, is restored.

I look out through the window, the landscape dark but for the few streetlights.  I finish my reports.  I will leave now to go back to my family.  A part of me, however small, sits on a bench overlooking Surprise Lake.  I feel strung out. 

This weekend I will return to the trails.  I imagine that the snow will still shroud them, despite the many footprints placed in the interim.  I will wear spikes to make sure I don’t fall.  I will run with happiness and joy, and I will search, however futilely, for the part of me, left behind.

A side note on food

In “Eat and Run”, Scott Jurek mentions a raw-food dish derived from Lacinato kale, avocado’s, tomatoes, lemon juice, salt, and vinegar.  The full recipe is apparently available in the book “Raw Power”, but as an experimenter in the kitchen (and a cheapskate!), I’ve avoided buying the book and instead created my own recipe for kale guacamole.  It turned out remarkably well.  Here’s what I used:

½ pound Lacinato or tuscan kale, finely chopped (note: if your hands aren’t tired, it’s not chopped finely enough)

1 table spoon sea salt

Juice of two lemons

2 table spoons rice vinegar

Mix these ingredients into the kale, press, then let the mixture age while you prepare the guacamole

4 avocados, diced

1 and ½ cups tomatoes, diced (preferably a mix of roma and yellow heirloom)

2 shallots, finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, pressed

Juice of two limes

Diced jalapeño to taste (note: children don’t like jalapeños)

Add these ingredients in a large mixing bowl, then add the kale.  I use a pastry blender to homogenize the mixture.

I serve the resulting guacamole with celery sticks, red and yellow pepper slices, and carrot sticks.  It works best as an hor d’oeuver or side rather than main fare.  The dish is vegan with a high fat/carbohydrate ratio and reasonably high calorie density, ideal for low-inflammatory recovery from a long, intense cardiovascular effort.  It is not a complete protein, so it should be served as a side to a grain/legume or meat-based dish.

HURL Elkhorn Endurance Runs, August 2nd, 2014

I started putting on sunscreen in the dark.  It was 4:30 in the morning, the pitch-black dark pierced only by the headlamps of other runners and the headlights on the cars of occasional latecomers.  The stars glittered above us, Cassiopeia in her chair, the Big Dipper pouring out its water, and Cygnus the Swan, son of Neptune, flying his endless, tireless journey.  I focused on Cygnus.

The improbability began two days earlier.  I climbed a ridge in the back of Beehive Basin with my dad and my wife on our last backpacking day before the HURL Elkhorn 50 Mile.  I told them about a video of Kilian Jornet running down Grants Swamp Pass in the Hardrock a few weeks earlier, how he had dropped down hundreds of feet of near vertical scree in a matter of seconds.  Then I gave them my best impression and ran down the steep slope back to camp.  After watching my descent, my dad told me I would win the race.  I mentioned that I hadn’t been in danger of winning a race since middle school, but his confidence wasn’t fazed.

At packet pickup the next day, race director Steve Engebrecht handed me my bib, embossed with a bright red number 1.  I told him he couldn’t be serious.  I said that number 1 should be reserved for a returning champion, but Steve told me that in all his years directing the race he’d never had a winner return to run again.  The course was too hard.  Pause.  Wicked grin.  Chuckle from Steve and another veteran, Scott Blum, who was volunteering this year instead of running.  I tried to join in the laughter, but the joke was clearly at my expense.

In the dark before the race I rubbed the gleaming line of sunscreen over my neck and arms.  It disappeared into my skin, becoming part of me, becoming, along with my shoes and sleeves, headlamp and handheld, a final piece of armor wrapped around my body to shield me during the coming day.  Around my muscles and tendons I had wrapped the countless hill repeats and pounding intervals; around my mind the exhaustion of endless long runs.  I hoped, as Scott Jurek says, that the work would protect me during my most trying moments.  I hoped I had learned how to suffer.

As the 5 AM start approached we clustered around to hear Steve Engebrecht’s last minute advice.  Without fanfare he drew a line across the dirt of Crystal Creek road with his foot.  “This is your starting line,” he said, and we all stood back.  No one wanted to commit hubris this early, but moments later we surged forward with Steve’s “three, two, one, GO!”

I ran the Crystal Creek ascent next to a tall man with a red beard and a woman with the quickest

cadence I’d ever heard on a runner.  His name was Eric Gilbert, and she was Becky Wheeler.  I asked Eric if he planned to win, but he said no.  Becky asked what time I was shooting for, and I said maybe eleven hours if everything went well.  She dropped back, apparently thinking of a longer time for herself, or perhaps thinking I’d committed my hubris already.

I took the lead on the single track climb up the flanks of Casey Peak.  Most runners dropped their headlamps in a box at the top of the road, but I kept mine and used the extra light to accelerate by the others in the predawn gloom.  I crested the ridgeline alone and dropped down into Casey Meadows, yip yip kiyee-ing a heard of black cows off the trail.  I chased four elk across the meadows, heard the chirping of early morning songbirds, and startled a grouse into flight.  The wilderness thrived with life, both hidden and visible.  I relished the life around me.  I had come home to Montana to see my family, reconnect with the wilderness, and enjoy these mountains.  I cherished the opportunity to run on these trails with all the wild things, predator and prey, and to pretend to be a predator myself.  On the climb toward second ridge I heard clattering on the scree above me, evidence of large animals obscured by a dense stand of lodgpole pine.  More elk, or mountain goats, or maybe a moose?  A bear?  I didn’t know.

As I ran the words of better runners echoed in my head.  On the descent to Teepee Creak I heard Sally McRae talking about quick stepping down the steep technical tracks of the Western States (quick feet quick feet quick feet).  Kilian Jornet described the mountain goat descending, weight over its back feet, front feet stretched forward (center mass center mass center mass).  Scott Jurek – “Flow downhill like water” (momentum momentum momentum) and Caballo Blanco – “Don’t fight the trail” (easy light smooth fast easy light smooth fast).  On the climb to Elk park there was Yassine Diboun’s voice “if you have to hike, hike like you’re late for work” (late for work late for work late for work) and the advice I got from Krissy Moehl “start running before you get to the top of the hill, and keep running after the next hill starts” (start running start running keep running keep running!).  As I worked up the switchbacks the sun broke over the saddle behind me, bathing the sky and ground in pink and orange.  I turned for a moment, awash with its glory.

I ran alone through Elk Park and past Tizer Lake.  The climbs were relentless, steep, and rocky.  My energy ebbed away, and I felt my like stomach was liquefying.  Just before the highest point of the first half I heard runners talking behind me, and on the descent to Elkhorn Ghost Town I heard the clattering of Eric Gilbert’s feet on the rocks.  I stepped aside to let him pass.  He looked so strong running by, and I stumbled in his wake.  At that moment I was sure I would never see him again.

My family met me at the Elkhorn Town aid station.  My son rang his cowbell, and my sister raised her hand for a high five.  I collapsed on a cooler, gratefully accepting soda from the aid station crew.  In a moment I had four people massaging my legs, my parents each taking a calf, my wife on one quad and my sister on the other.  I told them that I felt terrible, that my stomach was flipping out.  I thanked them for being so nice and supporting me.  They gave me a moment, but then my sister bent down and looked straight into my eyes.  “Quit thanking us and get out of here!”

I left the aid station in third – Eric Gilbertson had left as I arrived, and Adam Parkison had passed through while I sat on the cooler.  I followed their footprints in the dust past Elkhorn Cemetery.  I thought of Geoff Roe’s essay on racing, not just running, and I measured the length of their strides in the dust against my own.  To my surprise I discovered I was gaining on them.

I found Adam at the first crossing over Elkhorn creek.  He was splashing water on his head, overheated and trying to cool down.  I went one step further, lying down in the icy water and rolling over, drenching myself.  It helped.  I passed Adam on the steep climb up Queen’s Gulch, dropped him, and soon I saw Eric pounding up the hill.

I passed Eric just before Leslie Lake, but he stuck with me when I tried to pull away.  We ran together for three miles before he dropped back.  I tried to widen the gap, ignoring the screaming of my sea level trained lungs as we climbed near 9000 ft elevation on the shoulder of Crow Peak.  I bounded over rock fields, followed distant signposts through meadows of waist-high grass, navigated crisscrossing animal paths deep in the forest, always looking ahead for the next trail marker.  I got lost in the maze, backtracked, found my way, got lost again, rediscovered the route, and soldiered onward.  A mental haze descended as I traversed the woods.  I kept looking for the Tizer Creek aid station and listening for the chatter of the volunteers, but time and distance seemed to stretch boundlessly, as if the journey would never end.

I was so grateful for company when Scott Blum greeted me at Tizer Creek that I lingered, and soon Eric Gilbertson arrived as well.  We left the aid station together, and a minute later we heard cheers for another runner.  Was it Adam, recovered from the heat?  Or Brian Story, who’d run smartly and conservatively over the first half, reeling us in?  Had Becky Wheeler’s quick feet carried her through the field to our heels?  I quickened my pace.

Over the final thirteen miles I put a minute per mile on the field.  Ignoring pain, exhaustion, dehydration, sugar depletion, and all the hallmarks of every ultra runner’s race, I pushed and pushed and kept pushing.  On the climb back to Elk Park I chased down a multitude of 50K’ers, trying to encourage them as I went by.  On the descent to Teepee Creek I used every trick I’d ever learned for downhill running and blazed down the switchbacks.  With five miles to go I found my sister, who’d hiked in from the road to pace me.  She’d had no information since my third place exit from Elkhorn Town, and she was preparing to tell me how many runners where ahead of me and how much time I had to make up.  Instead, she saw me in first, and she began jumping up and down and screaming.  She was super pumped, and she fed me that energy all the way to the finish.  We flew down the single track, blew past the aid station unchecked, and hammered down the road to McClellan Creek Campground.  There was my son, furiously ringing his cowbell.  There was my wife, yelling and waving.  There were my parents, chasing after me to the end.  I ran under the finish banner at 10:22:52, overcome and with tears in my eyes.

From my spot on a chair by the finish I cheered the other runners across the line.  A few 50K’ers, then Eric Gilbertson, finishing second overall and winning the master’s division.  Becky Wheeler, first in the women’s race and setting a new master’s division course record.  Adam Parkison, nearly overcome by the heat in Queen’s Gulch, charging home in seventh.  A multitude of others whose names I didn’t know, but whose courage and tenacity glowed brighter than the afternoon sun.  As I sat there I thought about running and about winning, and somehow it didn’t make any sense.  Had we really been competing?  Or was the competition a mere marker on a trail toward the mountains, where we could run free?  I didn’t know, but I did think that next year Steve might have his first returning champion.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the tenacity and decency of the volunteers at the HURL Elkhorn endurance runs.  Volunteers at all ultra races go above and beyond the call of duty (just ask Joe Grant!), but usually the aid stations are supported by easy road access with motorized vehicles.  Most of the stations in the Elkhorns are accessible by foot only.  Above and beyond by this measure means backpacking in the night before, carrying gels and bars, bananas, potatoes, and a hand-pumped water filter, then waking early in the morning to purify enough water from the stream to cool a full race of runners.  Doing these things with bright smiles and raucous cheering, the HURL volunteers epitomized the wonderful spirit of Montana and the race.

Postscript

I wrote the piece above with the hope of publication in Ultrarunning Magazine, which caused me to gloss over or leave out entirely some memorable events in favor or brevity and flow.  I’ll cover those here.

This is the first race where I’ve really used crew and a pacer.  Laurie’s pacing exploits (friggin’ awesome pacing exploits, that is!) were covered in some detail, but I’d like to enshrine in memory the importance and joy of having my family running support for me.  Crew access was limited to Teepee Creek and Elkhorn town, but that didn’t stop us from taking full advantage.  My mom and MJ hiked in to Teepee Creek aid station in the dark and met me when I arrived there at 6:45 am.  Their presence was inspiring and heartwarming, but more importantly at that early juncture was their willingness to take my headlamp, shirt, and sleeves.  This allowed me to run the first ten miles of the race warm and well lit without having to worry about carrying extra weight on the eighteen-mile stretch from Teepee Creek to Elkhorn.  The advantage of the light, in particular, allowed me to outrun my competitors early.

The other key strategic decision I made, also possible only due to my family’s crewing, was to carry a single 20 oz handheld during the first half of the race.  This setup was perfect during the cool morning, allowing me to carry minimal weight and run shirtless and even hands free as soon as the bottle was light enough to tuck in the back of my shorts.  There was no way that was going to work in the afternoon heat, when the aid stations would be 75 to 90 minutes apart, the temperature in the upper 80’s, and the climbs on south faces with full exposure to the sun.  My family gave me a lot of things at Elkhorn town, importantly the aforementioned encouragement and leg massages.  What I didn’t mention is that my wife also handed me a hydration vest with more than twice the water capacity of my handheld.  The two bottles in the vest allowed me to stay hydrated internally and externally during the hot part of the race. 

The “external hydration” component is critical and worth describing further.  I didn’t drink much more than 20 oz of water between the aid stations in the second half of the race because I wasn’t particularly thirsty and I didn’t want to become hyponatremic.  Hyponatremia (defined as low blood sodium levels, which can be race-threatening at a minimum and life-threatening in the extreme) happens when an athlete drinks too much during intense exercise.  Antidiuretic hormone, which tends to be up-regulated by the sympathetic nervous system during exercise, limits fluid loss via urination.  Simultaneously, loss of sodium in sweat leads to net sodium depletion, which in turn leads to confusion, loss of muscle control, and ultimately seizures if things go too far.  Strangely enough, sodium ingestion during exercise is not associated with an increase in blood sodium levels in the short term, so salt tablets won’t save you.  What will save you is using the extra water bottle to squirt water on your head and chest and down your back, keeping your head and shirt wet while you run.  As a heat-control method this is even more effective than sweating, since the water is cooler than your body temperature.  It’s not quite as good as rolling over in Elkhorn Creek or diving into Leslie lake, but it’s far more portable and has the advantages of being less time consuming and of leaving your feet dry.

I’d also like to write about the impact of altitude and the importance of downhill technique.  In short, altitude killed me in this race.  Never have I walked so much runnable terrain, and never have I felt so limited by my breathing.  Compared to the Cayuga Trails 50 I ran in June, the Elkhorns were a bit more technical and had slightly more vertical change, but are run at an altitude that is about 7,000 feet higher.  Put that together and I was 85 minutes slower.  I don’t have great advice for anyone about how to handle this (other than not moving to New Jersey!), but don’t underestimate the difference in oxygen availability at sea level compared to even moderate (8,000-8,500 ft!) elevations.

Downhill technique, on the other hand, won the race for me.  I essentially ran even with or behind Eric Gilbertson on the flats and ascents, but I put serious time into him on the two descents to Teepee Creek, early on from the Casey Peak ridge and late coming down from Elk Park (in fairness, he did beat me on the descent to Elkhorn town when I was in my worst low of the race).  The interesting part of this is that I suck at downhill running.  I only consider it a strength because almost everyone else sucks even worse than I do!

Here’s the thought experiment:  Go to the top of your favorite hill.  Imagine dropping a soccer ball at your feet and watching it roll down the slope.  It rolls slowly at first, then accelerates, then really starts to fly.  By the time that it gets to the bottom, it’s probably be moving at a completely uncatchable pace, maybe faster than a car on a freeway, possibly even faster than an airplane if your favorite hill is more fun than mine!  The ball would also be caroming off rocks and bouncing off trees, and if you ever found it again it would probably be scarred beyond recognition.  The thought experiment tells us two things.  First, without providing any propulsive effort, we should be able to accelerate downhill to an unbelievable pace.  Second, if we do that completely uncontrolled, we’ll end up scarred beyond recognition.  If we ponder that for a moment, we realize that downhill running is entirely a balance exercise.  Gravity provides the power, and our legs are responsible for keeping our motion headed in the right direction, over the rocks and around the trees, essentially by making small lateral adjustments.  The common mistake we make as runners is stepping out in front of our bodies and forcing eccentric contraction through the quads to slow us down, giving us more time to make those lateral moves.  This, naturally, SLOWS US DOWN, and has the side benefit of trashing our quads.  I’ve spent a lot of time over the past year teaching myself to descend while keeping my footstrikes under my center of mass, which prevents me from using my quads to slow down.  This naturally means that I have very little time to make the quick adjustments in direction.  To accommodate for that I use the trick of increasing my cadence to the 110-120 strides/minute range, far above what I use for running flats or climbs.  The larger number of footstrikes gives me more opportunities to correct my balance and adjust direction; in essence the larger number of footstrikes gives me a larger number of opportunities to avoid falling.  It also allows me to keep each footfall light, spreading the increased downward impact over a large number of steps, further saving the quads.  I’m still not great at this (seriously, take a look at  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQbEaiHPI9k, and note how Kilian drops about 400 ft in 45 seconds without ever planting his feet at all!  Also note how Kilian puts about 30 seconds on Tim Olson and Julie Chorier, two world class trail runners, on this one descent), but I’m good enough to run away from the more typical competition on extended technical descents.

Lastly, a side note on food:  I grew up eating fairly large amounts of zucchini, on account of the facts that it is green and grows well in my parents garden.  I did not, on the other hand, eat it entirely willingly.  Zucchini, while cooking, transforms from woody to soggy in a matter of moments and has neither attractive flavor nor texture in either form.  I’ve enjoyed zucchini genuinely twice in my life, once during a French cooking class (don’t even think you can repeat the wizardry shown by that chef) and once at the Moosewood Restaurant in Ithaca, NY.  The Moosewood cooks proffered up a stew of beans, various vegetables, and, shockingly, zucchini!  More shockingly, the flavor and texture were amazingly awesome.

I haven’t attempted to recreate the Moosewood recipe directly, in part because I’m sure I would fail and in part because it’s probably included in one of their available cookbooks.  I have, on the other hand, taken on the task of making palatable zucchini-based stews.  The effort yielded a tasty concoction, which I made twice for my families and in laws while home in Montana.  The result, as described below, naturally substitutes yellow squash for my green nemesis.

What I used:

½ cup red quinoa, simmered for 10 minutes with 3 cups water

1 cup black beans added at 10 minutes

1 cup garbanzo beans added at 10 minutes

4 cloves pressed garlic added at 10 minutes

2 medium size yellow squash, cut along the midline and then diagonally to ½ inch chunks added at 20 minutes

20 mint leaves, finely chopped, added at 20 minutes

2 nectarines, diced, added at 20 minutes

20 fresh basil leaves added at 20 minutes

simmer until 30 minutes

salt and chilly infused sesame oil to taste

The recipe essentially involves simmering a large pot of water and adding ingredients every ten minutes over a 30-minute period.  If you’re a fast chopper, it literally takes 30 minutes to complete.  If you’re a mere mortal in the kitchen, or if you have a three-year-old demanding half your attention, I’d suggest getting a start on chopping the yellow squash, mint, and nectarines (substitute 4 black plums if nectarines are out of season) before starting the water.  The resulting stew provides a complete protein, courtesy of the quinoa and beans, so it can be used as a main dish on a low effort day.  On an intense training day it serves as a tasty side to something with higher calorie density.  Makes 4 servings.

One last question: is it any good?  I can only tell you this; my farther-in-law, David Tudor, had two bowls.  That’s right.  An Iowa farmer turned Montana machinist asked for a second serving of a vegan, low sodium stew.  Consider yourself warned.