Beast of the East 50, Owen Thornton
Finishing my first 50-mile race was a real accomplishment. I never thought I’d be able to do it until much later in life, maybe 10 years from now or more. Going farther than what was comprehensible, farther than imaginable, was amazing, and I knew I wanted to do more. I wanted to keep racing and being out on the trail, something I didn’t get to do much at home.
Most of my running, if not all of it, was on the track and roads. This made the experience of running in a trail marathon all the more challenging and rewarding. During my training block, I started doing more hill work, like going up and down hills for 45 minutes or doing hill repeats every Monday, which became routine. 14 x 200 uphill or something of that nature just became a part of my schedule. I also started reading more about nutrition and hydration, and experimented with different types of energy gels and drinks during my long runs.
Distance running was an escape, and running was becoming my sole purpose in life. It was running or nothing. Running was starting to define who I was, and I fully embraced it. I found myself looking for more races to participate in, and I even started traveling to different states to run in new environments. In December and January, I found a nearby race in Crowders Mountain State Park (actually Kings Mountain State Park) along Crowders Mountain, Pinnacle, and Boulder Overlook. This three-time repeat course of out-and-backs and weird loops would add up to a total elevation gain of 10,000 feet, something that I thought would be a little scary, but nothing I hadn’t done before.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into, though. Nowadays, I train on Crowders Mountain every week by driving 50 miles out and running around a bit, then driving home every Saturday, maybe even twice a week. Nothing says trail running like running the hardest course you ever had run all the time. This trail ended up being one of my hardest runs, and I didn’t feel great. It was just hard. But I was determined to keep pushing myself and to embrace the challenge.
Leading up to the race, fear struck me again, and the nerves ran wild as the date came closer. Every race is a little different, and at least for this one, I was not really getting nervous until a week before yet. Of course, when the time came, I started to freak out, get antsy, get a little mean, nervous, angry, and all of the above. This time around, we would be able to drive to the race in the morning from our house, but that did not change anything. I was still nervous. I still felt like a bit of a misfit. I felt young and still did not feel like I had much of a résumé compared to the others. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to go out front.
Just like the Barclays, we started at the very bottom of a long incline, which is actually 2 miles of roughly 800 or Sophie, and we started at the bottom, touching a metal pole. I don’t know what you call one of these poles, but it was the one that looks just like the one from the Barkley marathons. Like glass was sending us off at 7 am in the morning, into a humid, Appalachian trail-like weather where the humidity wrapped around you and the rain poured down. And of course, it did rain, and it rained a lot, for hours at a time trenching through my new Solomon vest and my brand new Hoka Speedgoat for, and what was worst of all was my cotton T-shirt sagging down and trapping all of the heat and humidity into my body, as well as the trees that kept the sweltering heat of a pool against my warm skin.
In April near Charlotte, North Carolina, the weather can either be very, very cold, in fact, near snow weather, or it can be 80 or 90°. While it was not crazy hot here, it felt like it because of the humidity. Poor man’s altitude, North Carolina is perfect for it, always super humid and just awful. It makes great training, though, since the sweat never actually evaporates off you, so you never actually cool down, and you just become a slick little seal with water all over you, salty water at that.
I started the first 5 miles or so with Miller Groome, who will actually be pacing me at the Endurance Hunter Hundred, and I will be pacing him at Hellbender. Miller is an amazing mountain runner. From the moment I watched him climb those hills, there was nothing else like it. He was at home with them, good with them, efficient, knew how to handle them, and knew how to run on them. I admired it and thought of him as a mountain goat when I watched him fly by me at 30 miles in, way ahead of me. In our first 5 miles, we got to talk together, and of course, I asked, thinking he was very young, how old he was and if he was in school, and of course, he was 30 years old, a nurse, into his career, and well beyond his “younger years.” Of course, he was still young, but when I asked him what college he went to, I was pretty embarrassed. To be fair, I had been staring at the technical trails and ground to make sure I didn’t fall on my face, but I guess that’s not too good of an excuse.
I first got onto him because I was going like crazy down the technical descent of Crowders Mountain, specifically the Rock Top Trail, which is notoriously difficult and technical. I use it to finish every one of my long runs today because it is just steep and awful, with a nice 12% grade for nearly a mile or so. It truly does test both your endurance and mountain climbing skills and, most importantly, your efficiency, and I feel like it has taught me quite a bit. The rocks make you want to fall, and the incline makes you want to puke, most specifically later in the race. But I love to fly down this, I love to go down as quick as I could take it, and honestly, I paid for it so badly later on, my quads hurt so bad, and everything was just falling apart as the race unraveled. I really should not have hit every downhill as fast as I possibly could take it, but it was fun to do so while it lasted.
Miller eventually was able to go away on the head as his mountain endurance and aerobic pace were probably so much bigger than mine. He was able to continue rocketing on ahead and finishing about 80 minutes ahead of me, creating a new course record, while I did break the old course record in third place, finishing in 10 hours, something that I was proud of but did not match up to the competition of.
Around 25 miles in, a guy from Georgia came running by me. There wasn’t too much support out in the course, but there was the support of the runners, and this guy said good job to me. And while I love to hear good job, it does not feel great when you hear someone’s footsteps coming up behind you, and you cannot match the pace of it. It is demoralizing and it sort of just hurts inside. But that’s okay. The miles went on, and I passed through the Sparrows Spring access, the main access point of Crowders Mountain State Park, and it was fun to see my parents, my mom, and my sister, or a little dog puppy that we got back in September, even though I have to say we didn’t really have the time to have her. We had our second, but I did not spend any time there. I never spent any time at aid stations. I carried everything on me and I never stopped.
Wrapping around for the second time, I was probably 30 miles in, and I was just feeling awful. The quads were falling apart, and I was having to hike real slow up the hills, and these hills were always nasty. There’s nothing nice about them. Even though this probably is nothing like some of the exotic courses around the world, it was definitely something way more technical and way more advanced than where I was at my trail running experience level. My experience was so low compared to the extent of what I would encounter on this trail, and mostly it was just having to deal with the pain of up and down hills and managing nutrition, throwing up gels, and carrying way too much weight on me. I was still learning, and learning I was. I remember coming through the aid station at mile 47, or at least I thought it was 47, but it was only 45, and I realized I had to run all the way to the next aid station going over a crazy Rocktop ascent where I knew my quads would be torn apart, then rap back around to the same aid station again, then go back out to the aid station I just came from to finish the race, a four-time ascent of technical trail, a to Thomason of Rocktop Trail, and two times of running straight downhill on a gnarly rocky path that had little to no places to put your poor little feet.
We were nine hours and 30 minutes in, and I just wanted to break 10 hours. Well, actually, no, I did not. I did not think I would make it. But as I reached the top and started to go down the 1.5-mile gravel pathway, I started clocking nine-minute miles, then 8:50 miles, and I was just desperate to reach sub-10 hours because I was starting to think I could, or at least I thought I had to try to reach it even if it was impossible. So I did it. I raced to the bottom, and lo and behold, I made it in 10 hours and 15 seconds or so.
I came in third place, 20 or 30 minutes behind the second place and will be behind the first place, Miller. We ended up talking and becoming buddies after the race, and it was really rewarding to run with these two guys, and it was a really great day. This race was not one that I found spectacular, but rather one that showed true grit, running through a place with not much scenery but a lot of value to those around the Charlotte area. I was able to push on, make things work, and work with what I got, and at the end of the day, at least I got a good place to get training runs in, and now I run there every weekend for my long run, even if I hated it the first time, even if I swore I would never come back. I came back, and now I love to crush miles on Crowders. Best, Owen.
