Bear Brook Trail Marathon 2014
Ultra running is not so much a race against others as a test of self.
Having to get up at 3:30AM is always a bit unsettling. But doing so to head off to run a trail marathon comes with its own set of nerves. Saturday morning my dog looked at me like I was crazy as I scrambled around in the semi-darkness to make coffee, toast a bagel, fry up some eggs and double check my bag o’ stuff. I was in running shorts, so she figured we were going for one of our usual adventures somewhere in the Upper Valley — maybe a couple of hours on the Appalachian Trail before breakfast. But not today. She eyed me with disgust, disappointment and disbelief when I headed out the door to leave without her.
Bear Brook State Park sits near Allentown just East of Concord, New Hampshire. Acidotic Racing puts on a trail marathon in the park that has become one of the secret gems of the vibrant New England trail runners circuit, the kind of event that old hands rave about with a glint in their eyes. “Oh, yeah, you should definitely do Bear Brook.” It features a beautiful, extremely runnable and well marked course, staffed with great volunteers at the aid stations, and you’ll be sharing the trail with a challenging but not too intimidating field of friendly fellow trail runners from as far afield as Colorado.
Bear Brook is also notorious for the assault of deer flies on poor defenseless trail runners. The organizers give out special glue patches that are supposed to sit on your hat and suck in the nasty little critters — they even have a prize for the runner who comes back with the most flies attached. Problem for me was, I never, ever run with a hat, so I don’t have one. My friend and fellow runner Mike generously gave me his spare right before the start, but as it turned out, someone forgot to bring the flies this year, so we got away with the scare.
Next challenge: hydration & nutrition. I’d brought a small Camelbak and a handheld water bottle, but I really wanted to ditch the backpack if possible. I drink a lot on long runs, and my performance drops precipitously if I’m unable to drink as needed along the way, so the question was: could I bring enough nosh and water to make it from aid station to aid station? Ultimately, I ditched the pack, and with two sticks of shot blocks and a cliff bar on board I was set to go. The aid stations were about 5-6 miles apart, and things worked out, but only just — had it been hotter, I would have wanted a second bottle with me.
I don’t really believe in warming up for anything ultra — the first few miles do the job just nicely, and the only reason to run around the parking lot before the race is to burn nervous energy. So at 6:30 I joined the field of 150 at the start, and Ryan Welts took a selfie with all of us in the background to mark the start of the race.
As expected, Jeremy Merritt, my Upper Valley running buddy, took off with all the hot shit superstars right from the start, a small group of them blasting down the trail like a blur. As we began the ascent of the Catamount Trail less than a mile in, things shook out pretty fast — nothing like a steep, technical climb to split the rest of the field apart. After the first aid station, about four miles in, I settled comfortably into a group with a handful of other runners and tried to assess their mettle. The big, overbuilt guy in front of me didn’t look much like a trail runner — his stride was too heavy and labored, and he struggled mightily with even moderately technical sections. I guessed he was a triathlete and would have a tough time with this course, and sure enough, after I’d used him as a pace rabbit for a few miles, he stumbled, and I moved on up to two other suspected roadies who excelled on the flats but dealt poorly with the relentless climbs and descents on the trail.
Pacing has always been my biggest challenge on long distance events, and I was startled when I caught a glimpse of Jeremy not too far up the trail. My immediate reaction was that I must be pushing an entirely unsustainable pace. Jeremy has had a good three-four minutes on me at our local 10K trail circuit races this season, and he’s put in significantly more long distance training miles than I, so I expected him to beat me by a good 10 minutes or more at Bear Brook.
Still, I’m enough of a vainglorious idiot to take the bait, and feeling surprisingly comfortable around mile 10, I decided to try to keep up with Jeremy after the aid station at mile 12, where the course embarks a pretty four mile loop. A group of five of us ran most of that loop together, and when Jeremy didn’t just ditch us, I figured he must either be hurting or holding back for a big push later on.
On a solid climb near the end of the four mile stretch, Jeremy and I dropped the other three from our little group, and as we stopped briefly at the aid station at mile 16 to refuel, I felt a rush of energy and decided to just go for it. In hindsight I should have been more conservative, but the five miles that followed were both the highlight and the turning point of my race.
Shortly after leaving the aid station at full steam I was passed by a young wiper snapper who appeared out of nowhere and flew right by me. Pushing hard along a mile of technical singletrack along a lake, I caught up to another runner, only to stupidly add half a K to my race when I followed him the wrong way through the camp ground as he missed the turn. Even with that little snafu the sensation of really pushing it was euphoric. One long, screaming downhill was amazing to hit — I usually can’t descend worth shit at any speed, but the slope was just gentle enough and the footing firm enough that I could let it rip and allow gravity to deliver for me.
But all good things must come to an end, of course, and as I hit the desolate landscape of clear cuts and twisty singletrack (it looked like something out of Sauron’s back yard) the initial rush from mile 16 was rapidly fading. Running alone, I had no choice but to take things down a notch and start playing mind games to maintain a steady pace and not succumb to the temptation to slow down even more or walk on the minor climbs. I was becoming acutely aware that I had burned through more than just a temporary surge of extra energy and had instead foolishly dipped well into my reserves. Since I was still only at mile 18 or so, I had to face the fact that things were about to take a turn for the worse.
I kept looking back over my shoulder, and even though I didn't see anyone closing on me I still forced myself to continue pushing until I reached the final aid station. My strategy was to take a decent break there to get my shit together and allow my body to recover a bit before the final push. The aid station at mile 21.5 finally appeared, and orange wedges never tasted so good. I poured a couple of bottles of water over my head and while I thoroughly enjoyed the refreshing sensation, I knew all too well that my body would take it as a sign that the ordeal was over, and I’d have a serious domestic dispute on my hands when I willed it to start running again.
As I lingered and drank more than I should have, savoring the blissful feeling of not running for a change, Jeremy came storming up the end of the Hemlock Trail. I’d squandered my four minute lead on him while vegging at the snack bar, but it was good to see him all the same — Jeremy has a contagiously upbeat attitude about racing, and even when he’s in pain and pushing it, there’s a mischievous twinkle in his eye that says, “Let’s do this shit!” It’s always inspiring. He downed some Coke, grabbed some nosh, then picked up the trail again. As another runner approached the aid station, I realized it was time to face the music, and I reluctantly set off down the trail behind Jeremy.
Firing on a single wheezy cylinder I quickly resigned myself to finishing at my own pace, operating squarely in survival mode. My body was making it quite clear that, as far as it was concerned, this foolish adventure was over. It was shutting down and closing shop, and I had to work hard to make anything productive happen that involved my legs. Let me put it this way: every couple of weeks I have to help load my daughter’s 1200 pound horse on to a trailer to get him to one of her riding competitions. If 1200 pounds of horse decides it’s not in the mood to get on board, then you’re pretty much stuck waiting for it to change its mind. Pushing him is like ramming your head against a semi-solid wall of warm, soft fur: entirely futile. There’s a fine art to coaxing and convincing a stubborn and defiant horse to take those steps up the ramp and into the trailer, and by the time it finally happens you’re thoroughly exhausted. That’s about how I felt after hauling my aching carcass the first mile down the trail. My stubborn legs had to be urged to take every single step. And then another.
But to my surprise, I found myself catching up with Jeremy again, and before long, we were side-by-side. Pooling our reserves and commiserating allowed us to make better time than either of us would have done on our own. The trail here was fairly non-technical, so each step could be completed on autopilot, the mental energy instead expended on making that step happen at all. I still figured the only reason I was anywhere close to Jeremy was that he was hurting worse than me, and I started running through scenarios of how to best get both of us to the finish line in one piece, even toying with the notion of then somehow finding the resources for a final sprint to beat him if it came down to it.
Suddenly, however, Jeremy started pulling away from me, not so much accelerating as simply showing a little more determination and ability to make progress than I. Scanning my dwindling inventory I found absolutely nothing to counter with, and I was perfectly content to let him have it. In fact, I would have felt much worse if he’d faltered and faded, leaving me to walk away from him.
But with Jeremy and his aura of awesomeness disappearing down the trail, I was now left on my own to deal with my predicament. I had set two goals for the race: a time around 4:30, and a top 20 finish. I knew it would be totally demoralizing to check my GPS, as I’d realize just how far I had left to go, so I wasn’t sure about my time, but according to the volunteers at the last aid station I was sitting in 8th place, so I figured I could afford to let a runner or two pass me and be more than content with a top 10 finish. As I faded and struggled with cramping hamstrings and that dreaded narrowing of peripheral vision that’s the body’s way of telling you to just curl up and die, I slowly resigned myself to simply finding a way to finish the race gracefully. Actually, scratch that, how to finish the race. Period. I could no longer deal with the distraction of the upbeat fast-paced music that had served me so well for four hours, so I yanked my ear buds and tried to concentrate on the grueling task at hand.
The wonderful course designer, Ryan Welts, had faced a challenge for this year’s race: some logging work had put the usual marathon course out of commission, and there had been two options for re-routing: a slightly shorter version with a gentle if somewhat boring finish, or a slightly longer version with a brutal finish that would take us back over the two steepest climbs right before the finish. Ryan was kind enough to let the participants make the decision by posting the question online, and idiots that we were, we’d all done the macho bullshit thing and responded, “Bring it, boy,” because that kind of bravado comes effortlessly when you’re sitting behind a screen imagining how awesome you’ll be out there on the trail. It was a terrible awful no good choice. The added distance was one thing — taking a 42K marathon to 46K and change puts it in a whole different realm of mindfuckery, demanding the strategic skills or brute force to power through a critical extra 20-30 minutes of pain. But Ryan’s revised design also put two 200 foot climbs in the last couple of miles, and facing those with nothing left to give was enough to make a grown man cry. Indeed, those last seven miles from the final aid station to the finish seemed endless, relentless and quite unforgiving (except, of course, looking back on my splits, I didn’t actually give up that much time struggling along at what felt like a snail’s pace — the toll was largely psychological).
By the time I hit the first of those final ascents back over the Catamount Trail my hamstrings were cramping so badly I could barely complete a stride, and while the climb itself came as a relief for the hamstrings, the descent was excruciatingly painful, awkward and dangerous. On the very last section I managed to clip the edge of a waterbar and went full Superman down the trail; luckily I was punch drunk enough from exhaustion that I just kinda bounced with a bit of road rash and could get back on my feet.
After crossing the finish line (in 6th place and a time of around 4:40), the brief rush of exhilaration from the friendly crowd quickly subsided, and my body was hellbent on revenge. My breathing had been messed up for miles, and now I couldn’t decide if I wanted to pant like a puppy or stop breathing entirely. I couldn’t sit, stand or lie down, and after drinking a couple of bottles of ice tea my gut promptly joined the rest of my body in surly rebellion and sent me to a corner of the parking lot to hurl. I reconnected with Jeremy, who had finished a minute or so ahead of me, and then I was alone to get to grips with the morning’s effort. There was that brief moment of head shaking and disbelief: nobody made you do this, you brought this shit on yourself — what were you thinking? Then the slow and reluctant acknowledgment of the accomplishment, along with the nagging suspicion that, however awful it might feel right now, I’d be back for more before too long.
