Getting Ultra Clear On Ultrarunning
How I found my way into the lunatic fringe of the running community
I stumbled across ultrarunning by chance. Just look at my knees and elbows, and you might think stumbling is exactly how I entered the sport of ultrarunning.
I’ve got plenty of scars because I’ve fallen down a lot.
I started on a BMX bike, then developed a lifelong obsession with skateboarding, followed by mountain biking and eventually ultrarunning.
Falling comes with the territory and could be one of my secret powers, but it’s not. Getting back up is my secret power; I am good at it.
I never planned to be a bona fide ultra runner, though there was a clearly defined moment when I decided to run an ultra; this epiphany occurred halfway through a book I was reading.
Back in the summer of 2009, I picked up a book about a hidden tribe of superathletes about to embark on the greatest race the world had never seen. The book, Born To Run, changed my life in some meaningful ways. Most notably, I decided to run an ultra.
It’s not like I was a couch potato who decided, after reading an inspirational book, that he’d slide into a pair of huaraches and run 40 miles. It was nothing like that. I was about a decade into my journey of being a cyclist who had gone from a 2+ pack a day cigarette smoker to arguably one of the hardest road cyclists in the Roanoke valley. A feat I often downplayed, but it’s true, and I was proud of myself nonetheless.
I finished Born To Run in the summer and reread it that fall, deciding it would be my training manual for the Holiday Lake 50K++ ultra trail race scheduled for the day before Valentine’s Day that winter. Back then, you had to print your entry and mail a check to get into most races, precisely what I did for Holiday Lake.
Now that I was committed to running an ultra and doing all the training needed for the undertaking, I was beside myself. Two emotions stood out above all others: fear and excitement.
Fear, because I had broken my hip four years earlier in an epic mountain bike crash. Broken hips and running don’t mix very well. But I was lucky and eventually got cleared to run again, which I did, albeit a year after I was given that green light. The hip injury was as debilitating mentally as it was physically.
So, I was afraid — afraid my 36-year-old body couldn’t handle running an ultra. But you only know once you go. Failure was a real possibility at Holiday Lake. That genuine prospect of failure created excitement that trumped all my fears and motivated me to see if I could get it done.
Two days before the race was set to take place, Appomattox, Virginia, received a foot of heavy snow. I worried the race would be called off. But the race director, the original Mountain Masochist himself, David Horton, wasn’t about to cancel anything. In fact, he made a point of not allowing snowshoes and reveled in our inevitable suffering and impending slower-than-usual finish times. This was ultrarunning!
Anticlimactic responses to finishing challenging events have historically been my reaction, and this was no different. A couple of days later, after nearly six hours of post-holing through the snow, I completed my first ultra. I was stoked but not overjoyed.
Being incapable of suppressing thoughts of how much faster I would have been if there hadn’t been any snow on the course, I signed up for another 50K five weeks later! I didn’t care about recovery; I wanted a trail that wasn’t covered in snow.
I ran Terrapin Mountain 50K a month later and about an hour faster than Holiday Lake. Now that made me happy.
After my second race, I talked with a group of ultrarunning vets who congratulated me with high fives and a dose of reality. They conceded that while a 50K is undoubtedly an ultra, most seasoned ultra runners tend to agree for a trail race to be true ultra, it’s gotta be 50 miles or longer. And I see their point. Hell, a 50K is only five miles longer than a marathon, which is basically a training run. Who was I to argue? It just makes sense.
There was a race some of the guys and gals were going up to West Virginia to run at the end of August, The Cheat Mountain Moonshine Madness 50-Mile Trail Race. It started at 9 PM, and it was 50 miles. Perfect!
The five months separating me and Cheat Mountain gave me plenty of time to recover and squeeze in another 50K tuneup race before the big event.
August came and went without a hitch. When I was handed my finishers award that morning, it wasn’t lost on me. I’m an ultra runner. I finished the year with three 50K’s and two 50 milers, which got me thinking about earning a buckle to go with the belt I’d been tucking those ultra finishes under.
I’ll never forget thinking, “Why do they give belt buckles to 100-mile race finishers?” Then I remember thinking, “Who the hell cares? I want one!”
Hundred-mile buckles take work, but one thing’s for sure, they’re like those potato chips nobody can have just one of.
