Last November I decided to get out of my comfort zone and do something big. Until then, I had raced distances from 15-110k with up to 5600m+. I had run through a night, but never through a full 24h cycle. In fact, I’d never run more than 15 hours at a time. So I’d never once doubted my ability to complete a course, because all of my basic needs (namely sleeping and eating) were still being met. To put it another way, while I’ve always loved pushing the limits of performance (how quickly can I cover a distance) I had never challenged the outer limits of my physical/mental/emotional capabilities. It was time to take on something I wasn’t sure I could finish!
Almost a year later I stood in the deep black of the Canfranc valley in the Spanish Pyrinees, shivering with cold, a pack bursting with mandatory gear on my back, and the familiar start-line noise of crowds and ACDC. I always feel immense relief when I start a race. Suddenly there is no pressure: all there is to do is put one foot in front of the other, and eat. Eat a lot.
I chose this event specifically for the elevation profile and for its technicality, almost more of a mountain climber’s race than a runners, for the fact it runs slower than many 100 milers. In short, because it scared the shit out of me. It was going to stretch and distort the horizon of what I imagined mountains could be, what I could be.
Before the sun, before even the full moon raised its pockmarked face to spread a yellow glow on the night and the peaks – while I still floated in a suspended bubble in the black, we traversed ridges, held fixed cables as we shimmied along cliff edges, thousands of feet of empty sky below, just one step away. We scrambled, hands on stones over two passes and a peak. It was better that I couldn’t see the consequences of a mistake. I was in the white orb of my headlamp. Just move forward.
At some point way too early on, my stomach shut down and I was reduced to a crawl to cool my core temperature. I lost 45 minutes on one climb. But I fixed the problem, and I got back to the work of relentless forward movement and ruthless eating. On one descent, we heard a clattering rumble above us and had to step aside so as not to be swept away by tumbling rocks. The valley was thunder. The moon, scarred and sage, continued to look on.
Very little was runnable in the first 50km and in retrospect, this was the part I most enjoyed. Even on the 50% gradient grass slopes were an impossible mess of lumpy loaves that asked you to trust and then twisted your ankle. And that tufted alpine grass is slick as ice. Amongst this sea of slippery grass were many hidden rocks – one I found with my tailbone in the first of five or six falls.
The second was a superman dive on a short bit of runnable singletrack where I kicked a rock. Thank the mountain gods it was dirt and not stone that I landed on, drawing only a trickle of blood.
I climbed strong, passing people on the uphills, and then being passed again on the downhills. I was not born with the power to float, as it appears some of these Europeans were. I was also in unknown territory, and trying to save my quads if possible.
As the red-orange sun crept up the horizon at dawn I gained the long, mostly runnable ridgeline to Moleta. The giant moon seemingly in the valley, 360 degrees of jagged, layered, and rugged peaks, a cathedral of rock everywhere I looked, and a sea-green abyss dropping below me on both sides. I wept as I ran. I don’t know why, but the tears came, and they didn’t stop for the whole length of the ridge as I ran, scrambled, lowered myself over ledges or tricky sections, and scampered up a rock tower. Maybe it was relief, maybe the beauty, maybe the comradeship I shared with others; maybe still it was the sunrise, or my mathematically improbable luck to be right there in the moment of space-time drinking in the world with a body that allowed me to.
The tears and sobs passed and that feeling of gratitude cannot be recreated. But I went on enjoying the experience all the same. After 50k, the sun was out, there was more water on the course, trails were a little bit more runnable, and all in all I was lulled into thinking I was through the worst of it. Part of my cooling strategy was to continually dunk myself in streams to keep my core temperature down so I could keep pushing. But what I learned is that while this can be done for 5, 10, maybe 15h, there comes a time where your feet become prunes and very quickly a bed of blisters. So it was that as I reached 17h or so – still 45’ off my pace, but not having lost anything additional (and over an hour longer than I had ever run in my life)- I realized the entire bottoms of my feet and heels were massive blisters, and it was too late. The next 9.5h (as it turned out) were utter agony.
Stepping gingerly (and therefore slowly) does not result in less pain, but it’s hard to remind your brain of this. So I lapsed into much slower paces for long periods of time in the sun on ridgelines and tufted lumpy grass – stuff I should have been running hard. This caused me to hemorrhage another 45’ or so before I rolled into the large aid station at Candanchu where I ceremonially changed my shoes and socks (it was already hours too late).
The last 18k broke me. A 1000m climb started quite well until we arrived into a cirque of peaks, a wall of rock 180 degrees around us. I could not fathom how we would get over it. I pushed to stay with the groupetto I was with of about 7 guys. I dug deep, telling myself that after this pass we’re basically done. Hands on the hill, heart in my throat, crawling, and hauling gels out of my sticky vest as I panted in the dying light. As the elastic stretched, we reached the pass, and I saw we actually still had 300m of climbing to the actual summit. Dark fell, the elastic broke, and so did my will.
As the headlamps disappeared up the mountain, I couldn’t believe I had been moving at that pace. They were gone in an instant. I stopped to layer for the final push and sort my headlamp out. I thought of dropping out, but I’d still have to get all the way down to the ski center which was just as far as the finish. By the time I reached the 2 exposed bolder moves and the scramble to the summit, I’d regained my determination.
The descent was rocky, slippery, winding, and pretty sketchy for legs and ankles that had 23h, 90k and 8500m+ in them. The final aid station, suspended in the black valley, was run by costumed and jovial (maybe slightly tipsy) volunteers. Regrouping with some running buddies, I slathered vaseline on my feet, downed a delicious fried egg with cheese and set out for the final 10k, determined to match the split I had written on a piece of paper and covered in tape, and sweat and gels.
I pushed and wheezed my way up the final climb, repeating “pain is only temporary; pain is only temporary.” I was objectively fast, and I was surprised to reach the pass so quickly. Then it was 130 switchbacks and 1100m-, where I had always vowed to vaporize whatever was left in the tank. I don’t know where it came from. I don’t know where the will or the gas came from, but I flew down that hill. It wasn’t just a good finish for me. It would have been a good finish even if I’d gone 5h faster. I blew by 4 people on the way down.
I’m deeply proud. My first jump into truly ultra distance, nearly 11h more than I’ve ever run, and nearly 3500m more than I’ve ever climbed in a single shot. I made three big mistakes, two of which I’m not likely to ever make again. And I stepped way the hell outside my comfort zone. Objectively, my training and my body permitted me to move quite smoothly through unimaginably (for me) rough terrain.
10 days out and my feet are still swollen and blistered, my forearms creaky with tendon inflammation from 26h40’ of hauling myself upwards with poles. But I’m smiling.
explore, travel, run 