First Fifty

Full disclosure: I am… an old fart. At forty-five, it takes real effort to get out of bed every morning; I limp around in agony while my joints and lower back get with the program, and until the caffeine really kicks in I’m little more than a useless graying zombie underfoot.

In spite of that, I’ve run about a thousand miles of trails and climbed more than 138,000 feet this season. I tested my form with the surprisingly nasty and challenging Seven Sisters run in Amherst in April, I’ve done a dozen or so 10K trail races, a couple of trail marathons and some gnarly and epic training runs in the White Mountains. Bear Brook Trail Marathon was probably the hardest test to date, twenty-nine miles of unrelenting trail torture; that race had me digging deeper and feeling worse than I’ve ever felt before – and yet, strangely, perversely, failed to turn me off running as could well have been expected. My last training run a week before the VT50 was an unsupported 50K on the AT and dirt roads which ended up a total disaster. I couldn’t eat right, couldn’t drink, so fell apart halfway through and limped home wondering how on earth I would manage one-and-a-half times that distance.

When you commit to eight or more hours of running, you’re really looking to test all your thresholds. There’s the basic physical and physiological side of things: am I in shape for this? Can my creaky old body hold up to that much effort? Do I have the engine to do this? There’s the emotional and mental side of things: can I find the determination to go on for that long without going crazy/getting bored/giving up when things start to get ugly? There’s the nutrition and hydration to worry about: can I cram enough food and water on board – and convince my body to make use of it – to replace the gallons of fluids and thousands of calories being burned? Only one way to find out…

A 4AM start to the day is nobody’s idea of a good time, but I had a date with Mike Silverman at Mt. Ascutney, so into the darkness I went. The VT50 has to be one of the best organized events in the Northeast; add to that a beautiful Indian summer morning with temps in the low 50s and conditions could not be better. With my wife and faithful dog at my side I helped wave the bikers off on their adventure, then got myself settled in the first third of the pack at the starting line. Gun went off at 6:30 as planned.

I usually take a while to get warmed up, but this race day was different – I started out feeling great, and my goal pace of 10 min/mile felt about right. There’s a decent climb a few miles in, and walking that was a good chance to remind myself that this was all about endurance and pacing, not about racing or pushing hard at all. I fell in with a couple of other runners who were going at my pace, and I tried to stick to my pace while adapting for the relentless up-and-down nature of the course. Yeah, in hindsight I definitely made the rookie mistake of pulling one too many sub goal pace miles in the first half just because I felt good; I got to pay the price later.

There are a lot of dirt roads on the first 10–15 miles of the VT50 – way too much for my liking. Particularly the extended stretches that lead up to the final climb to Garvin Hill at mile 18 are a pain in the neck – or, rather, the quads. I run in Inov-8 245's which have a 3mm drop and precious little padding – they’re basically one step up from the New Balance and Merrell minimals that I used when I first started running trails. The Inov-8s are exceptionally nimble and comfortable on classic New England single track, but they don’t offer much shock absorption on hard-packed crushed blue stone, and my legs were starting to feel it. Given the relatively modest overall pace, I had expected my body to hold out a little longer, but I was becoming acutely aware of the warning signs, so after cruising through the Skunk Hollow aid station at Mile 12 I decided to downshift for the final stretch of the climb up Garmin Hill, walking most of the way while chowing down one of the two Pro Bars I’d brought along as comfort food and calorie bombs.

The views at the aid station on Garmin Hill at Mile 18 are to die for – breathtaking 360 panorama of Northern New England at its prime, spectacular foliage colors and mountains all around. The volunteers here were as friendly and helpful as at the other nine aid stations, and they had plenty of quality nosh and liquids on hand. I refilled my Osprey pack’s 1.5l bladder and downed some ginger ale and a couple of sandwiches. With the sun breaking through the morning mist it was starting to get seriously warm, which would turn out to be a real problem a few hours down the road. I had peeled off my sleeves (which I then proceeded to lose while runing) but decided against taking off my top to avoid the chafing that I’ve suffered in the past with a sweaty hydration pack against a bare back on a long run. I had been slightly ahead of schedule when I reached Garmin Hill, but with the slow climb and a three minute break I was pretty much back on schedule. Time to go.

From Garmin Hill the mind games began for real. There were the obvious “next aid station” goals, and the constant mile-by-mile pace goal. Ten minutes give or take a minute is a convenient chunk of time to wrap your mind around; it’s only a fraction of the run, but substantial enough to indicate some kind of progress. There were also virtual milestones like “half way at 25M” and “50K at 31-and-change” to mull over. Lots of time to mess with basic math. I was thrilled to hit the half way mark at almost exactly 4 hours and 15 minutes, half my goal time of 8:30. So far so good, but I was also acutely aware that I would not be able to sustain the required pace for the remaining half of the race. It then took some concerted effort to convince myself that it would be okay to slow down as required.

For a while I fell in with Vivian from Sharon, who was a spectacular runner to follow, setting a great pace. But at Margaritaville at Mile 26 I stopped to take a breather and get my shit together, and Vivian took off before I was ready to follow. A few miles earlier I’d caught up to a good friend and his son who were biking the course together, and we would leapfrog for the next 20 miles or so, which offered some welcome diversion from the relentless march of miles. I’d encountered the first bikers already around mile 10 – clearly riders who had bitten off more than they could chew – and I’m guessing I passed a dozen or so bikers overall, swapping places with some of them several times along the gnarlier bits of rolling single track.

At Greenall’s at Mile 31 I found myself falling apart big time. My pace was off, I was having a hard time staying focused, and I was fearing the “terra incognita” that lay beyond: I’d never gone beyond 53K before, and this was where the shit got very real. Thankfully, the wife of my friend and fellow runner Doug Hardy was waiting for him at the aid station, and she managed to take my mind of my misery for a few critical minutes. After a bladder refill (turns out I really wasn’t drinking enough in spite of forcing myself to chug relentlessly) and some deep breaths I took off again. My quads were now making it very clear that this ridiculous running shit would have to stop – I had to do an awkward and unsightly walk-trot-hobble to get back into the rhythm of things, but with every climb and descent the pain would just increase. At some point around here my right ankle started complaining badly, too. I rarely if ever have joint issues when running; knees, ankles, toes all usually hold up to the punishment just fine; it’s my muscles, motor and mind that cave, so this was worrying me a bit. I opted to use the novel pain as a distraction from my general misery, and I also decided to flaunt the ban on ear phones and fired up a book on tape to keep my mind off things for a while; nothing like a little Game of Thrones gore and intrigue in one ear to get over petty stuff like roots and endless climbing.

I somehow made it to Fallon’s at Mile 36, where the wonderful, amazing, incredible volunteers offered me ice to go with my water refill and all kinds of comfort and aid. Absolutely overwhelming care and attention when it mattered the most. Those awesome trail faeries also revealed that my Garmin was off by almost two full miles – to my advantage, mind you – which meant that Linda’s aid station at mile 40.2 was a mere four miles away. That was where I hoped to hook up with my running buddy, Jeremy, who had offered to pace me those last, tough miles to the finish. Not that he could make the pain go away or recharge my batteries for me, but he is an incredible spirit on the trails, and I knew his enthusiasm would get me out of my funk.

But, alas, when I got to Linda’s there was no sign of Jeremy. I was too cooked and exhausted to really be troubled by it; at this point I was completely absorbed with fantasies about the finish, visualizing the last climb up and over the foothills of Ascutney Mountain on the STAB trails that I’ve run and biked before.

The last hour or so had been at a plodding 12–15 minute/mile pace, and my 8:30 goal time was of course long gone; I briefly toyed with a sub 9 finish, but even that prospect dimmed as I had to walk ever longer chunks of the course to spare my quads further pounding and punishment.

As I trotted out of Linda’s all alone I knew I was going to finish, I just didn’t know exactly how or quite how long it was going to take me. In the midst of all that gloomy brooding, I saw Jeremy bounding up the trail towards me, all smiles and crazy waves, like something out of a fever vision. He’d assumed he missed me at Linda’s (optimist that he is, he figured I’d run faster than expected) so took the shuttle to the final aid station and ran backwards from there to find me. It was a brilliant move on his part, but in my fog and misery I had a hard time expressing just how relieved I was to see him on the trail when I so very badly needed the boost. We started off down the trail at a decent pace, and Jeremy tried his hardest to convince me that the final aid station was “just around the corner.” Before we made it that far, however, we came across Mike Tegart cheering us on at the bottom of a hill with his magnificently loud cowbell; he ran with us for a mile or two, before bailing out at the final aid station to head to the finish. I knew from biking the VT50 that the final aid station is a mixed blessing: on the one hand, it means there’s only a little over three miles left to go, which sounds pretty manageable; on the other hand, it also marks the start of some fairly gnarly climbing and technical stuff – the kind of thing you don’t want to contend with when your legs are shot and you’re struggling to lift your feet off the ground.

I was feeling completely drained at this point, and couldn’t hold anything down. Tried some ginger ale (my new go-to drug of choice at aid stations), but it didn’t work, nor would water or solids of any kind. With the building heat I was feeling dizzy and faint, so had to lie down for a minute or two to get my bearings back. Without Jeremy there to urge me on, it would have been very tempting to just curl up and call it quits. I finally staggered back to my feet, and together with other pacer-runner pairs we started walking up the steep climb on the back of Mt. Ascutney. After some loops across fields of waist-high fall hay the course dropped us on the STAB trails, and that’s where we came across a train of five or six runners being paced along at a decent clip by an enthusiastic and extremely motivated coach/pacer/lead runner. For some reason I was convinced that this was my ticket home, and I dug deep to pick up the pace as the train of runners chugged by. It was glorious to be running again, and the endorphins helped mitigate the pain from my quads enough that I ran well and fairly fast for a mile or two.

About a mile before the finish, the wonderful express train broke apart, and I was back to struggling with finding my own pace. With Jeremy whooping and hollering at everyone on the trail as only a true-born Steam Donkey could, I rounded a corner and caught a glimpse of the tents at the finish line and heard the sound of music and crowds. That, of course, seals the deal: you can taste the finish, and even though part of you is already shutting down in anticipation, you put one foot in front of the other. Then you curse as you realize that the trail winds its way down the slope for much longer than you want to go, but then you see the finish line itself and the wonderful people lined up to cheer on the finishers, and it’s like a magnet drawing you those last few hundred yards in spite of yourself.

I crossed the line and proceeded to collapse in a corner of the Worthy Kitchen tent, unable to eat or drink anything for who knows how long. I was surrounded by a handful of good friends who made sure I was okay and allowed me to just lie there while I tentatively rebooted the entire system one bit at a time. My legs were cramping a bit and I was feeling extremely dizzy, but eventually I got back on my feet and could limp back to my car and head home. Laughing at the masochistic madness of it all, I stopped at a supermarket on the way home and allowed myself to binge on chocolate milk and fresh fruit.

Nine hours and 33 minutes or something like that. The time really, truly doesn’t matter at all. I started and I finished. I think it was about as hard as I’d expected, I had to dig as deep as I’d feared, I discovered some new, dark places out there past 35 miles that I can’t say I want to revisit any time soon, but I also proved to myself that I could go the distance. More than anything, of course, this was a run in memory of Chad Denning, and a celebration of the crazy, wonderful world of trail running that has brought me to places and people for which I’m exceptionally grateful.