DFL: Losing to Win

I have a politely contrarian nature, so I tend to try things that don’t make a lot of intuitive sense. To wit, I run long races in fundamental defiance of my physiology and a gross lack of athleticism. With ancestors who spent most of their time slaughtering the members of other Highland clans, I am not graced with the long, lean muscles of the endurance runner. I do have a fair bit of the stubbornness of my Scots-Irish forebears however, and that would prove to be far more of a factor in this race than most I’ve run.

The Chesapeake and Ohio Canal One Hundred Miler consists of approximately ninety-eight and a half flat miles and three half mile sections of running up and down hill. I registered for it, along with my friend and training partner, John Dailey, thinking it would be a fast one hundred and my best chance to run one hundred miles in under twenty-four hours. Even barring a sub-twenty four finish, a flat race with a thirty hour cut-off seemed generous and a good chance for me to really step up my game. They say pride goeth before a fall. Thus far, whomever “they” are, they seem to be right.

Some background to explain my hubris may be in order. In October 2015, John and I ventured to the Kentucky/Virginia border for the Cloudsplitter 100 (John ran the 100 mile version and I opted for the 66 mile option). Cloudsplitter is certainly one of the hardest races in the Eastern half of the US. It rained for the entire race (almost twenty nine hours in my case), the air temp hung between 42–55 degrees, and I bent my trekking poles pulling myself up, and mud-skiiing down, hills. At certain points I found myself yelling obscenities at the trail for daring to ascend when I was theoretically traveling down off the mountain. All that is to say, one hundred well maintained, overwhelmingly flat miles in Maryland seemed like a minimal drama proposition after the Hatfield and McCoy running tour of the mountains around Elk Horn, Kentucky (side note: Elk Horn is a great little place full of awesome people and I enthusiastically recommend the race and the town).

John and I drove up to Harpers Ferry, Maryland from coastal North Carolina on April 29, 2016. Holding true to our communal ethos as what I refer to as “Team Cockroach” we eschewed “healthy food” that so called “elite” runners eat in favor of whatever struck our fancy at a number of fast food places and convenience stores. Brownies, Chik-fil-A, a meatball sub, buffalo pretzels, and a Coke played a significant role in my pre-race nutrition. Stop judging, this worked for Cloudsplitter, a race actually sponsored by Moon Pie. For C&O? Well, just remember this part kids, you’ll see it again.

After an en route trip down memory lane, since John grew up near the race location and wanted to check out the house in which he grew up, we arrived at the Econolodge, a fine spot for the generally undiscriminating ultra-runner. I would stay there again even though (or maybe because) I felt like I was immediately transported back to 1983 by the underlying odor of regret and Kool Menthols.

Post check-in, and after pondering the incredibly sticky lobby floors with the cleaning crew, we headed to Race HQ at Camp Manidokan, a retreat owned and operated by the Methodist Church. We got the race brief and had the best pre-race meal I’ve ever had, with multiple types of pasta and flavors of sauce. To some, the Garlic Pesto Cream sauce may have seemed a questionable choice before running one hundred miles, but as a member of Team Cockroach I laugh at such weakness. And eat another brownie. And some cookies. Again, remember this (we call this foreshadowing). After the usual pre-race chat with returning race veterans and advising 100 mile virgins to “start slow and taper off from there”, we headed back to the Econolodge to finish prepping.

Pre-race night is, more often than not, spent obsessively prepping my gear; trying to anticipate what I will need, at what point, over 100 miles. I pretty much pack and repack everything while asking John if he thinks various things are good ideas or not. This jacket or that one at the 60 mile aid station? Spare headlamp in an aid bag or should I pack it (remember that foreshadowing thing)? Then John drinks beer and I finish whatever buffalo flavored/chocolate thing is available to me and we set multiple alarms and sleep.

In a rare turn, I slept well and since the race didn’t start till 7:00 AM we slept in till 5:00 or so. Hot showers, coffee, and 750 blessed calories of honey bun and a Monster Rehab (Energy + Tea + Recovery, people. Zip it, health freaks) later we were off to the races. Lots of racers camped at Manidokan (I had planned to do the same but John recommended a hotel at the last minute due to rain. Agreeing was pretty much the last good decision I made that weekend). We parked, turned in drop bags, and pretty much stood around waiting to get started.

7:00 AM rolled around and we were off. We had to run a lap around a wet field. I was glad I had gaiters on to keep my feet somewhat dry. Once around the field, it was downhill for half a mile and a right turn on the C&O for a twenty mile out and back. John and I were together throughout this twenty miles and the next ten and were moving really well, averaging about 12:00 minute miles. We would have been moving faster but my culinary indiscretions of the previous 24 hours beset my innards at mile 1.4 and 13.9. As fellow ultra-runner Forrest Gump would say, “That’s all I have to say about that.” Just realize this would be a theme for much of the next twenty nine hours. John had been patient throughout my alimentary ailments, so I met a personal goal of sticking with him for 6 hours or 30 miles and at 6 hours and 15 minutes/31 miles I gave him a fist bump (because I am a real man and that’s what we do) and he took off, leaving me to contemplate the “why?” of ultramarathoning. At this point I was well on track for a sub-24 hour 100 mile. I was really excited because my only previous 100 mile time was 27:05 and a sub-24 would be a great improvement. This is the pride before the fall part.

Once on my own I slowed waaaaay down. It was about 1:15 PM and I had plenty of daylight. No problem. I wasn’t even thinking about time cut offs and really never paid a lot of attention to them in the pre-race briefs because I figured it would never be an issue because: I. Had. This. Race. On. Lockdown! Since I pretty much had this thing licked, I walked a fair bit for the next ten miles. Someone who likes bad analogies would say this was the initial stumble over pride as the fall began.

There were a lot of hikers headed in the opposite direction. They were participating in a variable distance hike from Georgetown to Harper’s Ferry. That was interesting as I had never seen a hiking race and thought I might check that out with our impending move to Arlington. Those folks seemed equally interested that there was a 100 mile race going on. I made the 40 mile Noland’s Ferry aid station at around 4:30 PM. I saw John as he headed back from there, he was about 3–4 miles ahead of me and still moving well. I really was not having any real problems other than my guts and that was subsiding at last. Things were still looking good as I stepped off from Noland’s Ferry towards the next big objective, the return to the start/midpoint/finish at Camp Manidokan. I was cruising pretty well approaching mile 50, running 15 minutes and walking 5, just as John and I had trained for the previous 18 months or so. The leader, Olivier LeBlond (even his name sounds fast), came towards me at that point. He was at mile 80. Whatever. Show off.

And then the wheels came off.

Night time is always the worst for me. You’re generally alone, as racers have stretched out at that point. It was dark, rainy, windy, and cold and I thought it would never end. Thoughts of quitting started forming in my mind. Nothing firm, nothing pressing, just the idea that perhaps quitting actually WAS an option. I was tired and and alone and bored and my knees were starting to be a bit grumpy. I was reaching the point where I started asking every runner I met how far it was to the next aid station, just in case the last guy I met had been hugely wrong and it was NOT really another three or four more miles. All desperate pleas to the contrary, it was another three or four miles every time. The Aid Station folks were superb though, and did a great job of boosting my spirits, or poking me in the pride enough to get me back on the trail. I finally reached the miserable half mile uphill climb to the Camp Manidokan Aid Station. I was wet and cold so the kind folks there offered me a blanket. I declined because comfort and light form the tractor beam that sucks you into the Aid Station Death Star.

Igot to Camp Manidokan around 11:15 PM. As I sat, the Race Director Lance Dockery (who is a genuinely awesome dude) chatted with me and hooked me up with a really good quesadilla while I changed clothes for the last forty miles of the race. I asked him how I was doing on time.

“Well, the cut off is midnight, and it’s 11:28 now, so you made it, but you might be a cutting it a little close on the 6:30 AM cutoff at mile 80.”

Just a minute here. I was thinking about this race as having forty more miles and a good thirteen and a half hours to complete it. Mile eighty? Cut-Off? 6:30 AM? It had taken me almost 7 hours to cover the last twenty miles. The notion of diminishing returns is a critical one in ultra-marathoning for mortals and I am very, very mortal. It was starting to smell a bit like panic at Camp Manidokan. I had beat back the voices in my head slyly urging me to call it a race and go sleep in the car, but now they were resurgent and my nearby 2007 Prius seemed more and more like a palatial spot for an extended nap. So the pride thing happened again, and I took off walking. Half a mile down the hill, I hit the C&O Canal tow path for the sixty-first mile and started running. I essentially didn’t stop again.

My headlamp illuminated the misty rain, making the trail seem like I was running through phosphorescence. That, and the notion I had of just how relentless I needed to be to make up lost time, made the next thirteen miles pretty weird and feel somewhat desperate.

I hit the 73.4 mile Lander Road Aid Station somewhere around 3:30 AM. I was smoked and had questions about my ability to make the next 6.4 miles in three hours. Again, the Aid Station folks were amazing. They were positive and encouraging but relentless about keeping runners moving. I had never had pierogies at a race before. (Note: pierogies are the best race food ever.) I took some in the pocket of my vest and started off running again. Run fifteen, walk five was over. I just ran and ran and ran for about a mile, which is when my headlamp went out. There was no dimming, no flashing, no warning. My light was just out and I was walking in the dark in a down pour and the spare I meant to load up from my drop bag at the 69.2 mile Brunswick Aid Station was…wait for it….in my drop bag at the 69.2 mile Brunswick Aid Station. I am an Eagle Scout. I am a career Marine. And I didn’t pack my extra light. Awesome.

Around mile seventy-seven, providence arrived in the form of John Dailey, with whom I’ve run enough miles to know by both silhouette and gait. He was six or seven miles ahead of me at this point, and unlike me, had packed his spare headlamp. He gave me his extra lamp and I was off again, running to make up lost time but now even more pessimistic about the outcome.

I made the 79.8 mile Noland’s Ferry station at about 5:55. I was thirty-five minutes ahead of cut-off and simultaneously stoked and completely bummed. Part of me had hoped I would miss the cut-off so I could stop without actually quitting. But I didn’t and the Aid Station Crew was as unsympathetic about my whining as the folks at Lander Road had been (though a bit more pessimistic about my chances), so at about 6:05 AM I stepped off again into the wet, misty dawn with a couple of guys in the same boat. They were optimistic, but I was convinced my efforts were completely Quixotic at this point. The next cut-off was at 90.4 miles by 9:45 AM, I was running (though it may have been faster to actually walk), and the beautiful spring greenery that lined the tow path had been transformed by the night long deluge into a verdant, never ending tunnel of leaves that had the Misfit’s “Green Hell” on repeat in my mind. Thanks for that, Glenn Danzig.

A sub-twenty four finish seemed like a fool’s errand now. Figuring I would get there about 9:00, during the entire 6.4 miles back to the now 86.2 mile Lander Road Aid Station, I was practing my quitting speech. I worked out plausible excuses for quitting. I contemplated how I would tell my fellow Marines about being bested by the distance. And then I was at Lander Road. At 8:10 AM. With an hour and a half to make 4.2 miles to the 90 mile Brunswick Aid Station. Sonofa….

I tried to get the Lander Road Crew to enable me to quit. “I don’t know if I can make 4.2 miles in 1:35 the way I’m moving, what do you think?” I said. “Well, give it a go. If you time out at least you got some more miles in,” they said. Seriously? What do I have to do for you people to give me an excuse here?! So I and the other guys in my boat took off again at 8:15. They were out of sight before long. I was alone and checking my watch every minute. I was moving as fast as I could, trotting at about 17 minutes a mile. The winner had been done for more than twelve hours at this point. And then there it was at 9:28 AM; Brunswick Aid Station and mile 90.4. Critically, it was the last cut-off other than the finish line back at Camp Manidokan. The guys there were filming everyone and were super encouraging. Here is where I learned I was competing for a singular honor. An Aid Station member, who I now know was Paul Encarnacion (director of the below YouTube epic), told me seventy-four runners had dropped out along the way, I was the last guy still in the race that could still finish and...I was currently DFL…Dead F#ckin’ Last.

So off I went, buoyed by the guys at the Aid Station, daylight, a reprieve from the rain, and another pocketful of pierogies and grilled cheese. I ran, keeping at about a 17:00 mile for ten more miles. I closed with the lady in front of me and might could have caught her, but something told me to stay DFL, more out of respect for her efforts than anything. I turned right at the uphill cut-off, followed by Paul and the crew from Brunswick. They were awesome and super-encouraging. Camera notwithstanding, I didn’t bother trying to look like I had not just been destroyed.

RD Lance Dockery was waiting at the top of the hill to hand me my buckle as I crossed at 29 hours, 35 minutes, and 29 seconds. John Dailey had kindly moved the car to the finish line and had a handshake and a cheeseburger waiting on me. I was indeed DFL, but to get it done I had more or less run the last forty miles without a break after covering sixty before that. It is the proudest I’ve ever been to finish a race in last place.

We headed south from there, intending to drive a bit, but after forty-five minutes I kept falling asleep every time I looked down at the GPS. We ended up getting a hotel and passing out for the better part of 17 hours, waking only to eat pizza, which is pretty much why I do this sort of thing.