#bighorn100 | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

careycuprisin · 6 years ago

Text

Mudpocalypse, the Sequel: Bighorn 2018 race report

https://youtu.be/_z-igfDoaug

Running a 100-miler is an exercise in narcissism.

Everything is about you — your feelings, your problems, your grit, your triumph, or your defeat. It’s like being Donald Trump, but for a limited time. Most ultrarunners are crazy, but we’re otherwise contributing members of society who care about other people. We would get creeped out if the narcissism of the 100 didn’t end quickly after the race was over.

So as I get day-by-day further out from my Bighorn finish, and as my legs slowly recover and I regain the ability to get in and out of my car without groaning, it’s nice to feel the narcissism of the race slipping away. It’s time for me to do the dishes. It’s time for me to feed the cat. It’s time for me to go to work. Others make demands of me again, like in normal life. It’s a good feeling.

Only one more bit of narcissism is left: this race report.

The start,waving goodbye. I’ll see you at Dry Fork!

I knew from my past attempts at Bighorn that it would suck and that I wouldn’t enjoy it. So I needed as many things to motivate me as possible. Chief among them was that if I finished, I wouldn’t have to come back next year to do it again. But also, I held out the hope that I might be happy. I thought about the two years of Bighorn swag in my closet — t-shirts, socks, windbreakers — that as a DNFer I hadn’t allowed myself to wear, and thought I’d be happy putting that stuff on. I thought about the big belt buckle, a staple of 100-mile races, and how good it would feel to own one of those like most of the people I hang out with in my running club. I thought of all the people who encouraged me and how they’d be happy to see me get this done, and how that would make me happy also.

I started the race determined that nothing that happened in the first half would matter at all, vis-a-vis my happiness at any rate. I would just focus on steady progress, ignore my splits, stay as warm and dry as I could, and remember to eat and drink. No highs or lows. So when the rain started I said “Meh.” When it became obvious that the trail conditions would be exactly as shitty as last year, I said “Meh.” When it started hailing, my answer was “Meh.” There was a brief moment in the climb up to Jaws when I thought about how good my feet were feeling that I slipped a little and felt a little bit happy, but I caught myself quickly and went back to “Meh.”

Arriving at Jaws in the rain I was a bit wet and cold, but nowhere near as bad as last year. I was generating heat and was far from hypothermic. I had been running with a cheap ($4.50 at REI) poncho instead of a jacket as my rain protection, and it had been working beautifully. Although I took a good long time at Jaws to change clothes and to eat and drink, I never considered dropping. After all, once I left that aid station it would be the Second Half of the race, and as such I could allow myself to be Happy. I was lucky enough to be getting the chance for an almost exact do-over of the 2017 conditions at Jaws, and I was doing everything right this time.

Next, I slayed the bad memories of 2016 where my race basically came apart below Spring Marsh on account of profound exhaustion. My trip from Jaws to Footbridge this year was slow because of mud, but I was feeling steady and moving well, passing a lot of people. I had a brief physical low point just before the aid station because of nausea, but I got into Footbridge suspecting that for the first time at Bighorn I was going to be able to run the rest of the course back to Dayton. I was happily surprised to see Joe C. from the Salomon Run Club crewing for Eric L. in Footbridge, and happy to see Eric run through in the lead of the 52-miler. Go Eric!

As I headed out, I briefly asked an aid-station worker what the cutoff time was at Footbridge, just to get an idea of how far in front of that I was. Here’s what I remember her saying: “Ten a.m. here, and 3 p.m. at Dry Fork, then three more hours to Dayton.”

I was nowhere near the cutoff time in Footbridge. An inconsequential bit of chatter, it seemed.

Several times during my weekend in Wyoming, the question came up of whether Bighorn is worse in the hot years or in the wet years. My own opinion is that both are very bad, without advantage to either one. The heat will kill you in a cardiovascular way, bleeding your energy, making you slow. The mud will kill you in a musculoskeletal way, beating you up, making you slow. There have been no easy years in my three trips to Bighorn, and I have enormous respect for anyone who’s done it in either kind of year. I’m very willing to argue about this with anyone, so hit me up if you disagree. I love to argue.

Back to the action. I managed to get up the Wall in good shape. It’s a brutal climb period, but especially brutal at mile 70 when it’s coated with mud. I got to Bear Camp and just continued rolling - a bit more hiking now than running, but that’s to be expected at that distance.

Another quick aside: I give the award for the Best Mud to the 50-yard section just to the Footbridge side from Bear Camp aid station where the mud was mid-calf deep. It was simply the most spectacular mud on the course. Texture, color, quantity and quality. Anyone has a problem with that, you can take it up with my manager. I don’t want to hear it.

So at this point, I’m moving well (enough), I’m Happy, I’m done with the Wall. What could go wrong? Well, sprained ankles, bear attacks, bees, diarrhea, lightning, chafing… OK, a lot could go wrong, but that’s not what did go wrong.

I kept looking at my watch and thinking about getting to Dry Fork before 3 p.m. As I got slower, it started to grow as an Issue. My sleep-deprived mind slowly became consumed with calculating how many minutes per mile I would have to run in order to get to Dry Fork before the cutoff. And remember how that aid-station person back in Footbridge said that I had three hours after the Dry Fork cutoff of 3 pm to finish? Or, at least, remember that that’s what I heard her say? (She may have said no such thing.) Well, it started to dawn on me that I’d need more than three hours to run from Dry Fork to the finish.

My mind was thinking like this: “It usually takes me just over three hours to run from the start of the race to Dry Fork going uphill, but that’s when I’m trying not to run fast because that’s stupid at the beginning of the race. So now I’ll be going overall downhill (faster), but it’s at mile 80-something (slower), but I’ve got more distance to run along that stupid flat road to Dayton (slower), and I’m no freak like Alberto who will be putting down 9-minute miles on that road after 95 miles (slower), so UNLESS I GET TO DRY FORK AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, I’M SCREWED AND I WILL MISS THE CUTOFF AT THE FINISH.”

So here I was, having done so well through this whole race, at a time when I should have been feeling Happy about finally finishing Bighorn and never having to sign up for it again, at a time when I should have been feeling grateful for being able to do this (if not fast than at least respectably well), at a time when the clouds were thinning and the sun was peaking through and I could take off all the wool layers I’d put on at Jaws and revel in the crisp mountain air… Instead I was convinced that I was running too slow, that I had to run FASTER, or it WILL HAVE ALL BEEN FOR NOTHING. No buckle, no celebration, no congratulations, no hundred-mile burger at the Sun, no wearing the Bighorn socks, and the worst thing: having to decide whether to come back for another attempt next year.

Let me tell you that these thoughts made my very Not Happy as soon as they entered my mind. “This is a shitty situation and I would rather not be in it” was how I put it to myself.

The weather at Dry Fork on the way out reflects my Not Happy feelings on the way in.

Now let me explain why all of this is somewhat funny, if also sad and pathetic. I knew that the overall cutoff time for Bighorn is 34 hours. The race started at 10 a.m. the previous day, so any adult human who could add and subtract would know that 24 hours from the start was 10 a.m. on the second day, and that 34 hours from the start was 10 hours past 10 a.m. on the second day which would be…. 8 pm. The number of hours from the 3 p.m. cutoff at Dry Fork to the cutoff at the end of the race is therefore 5 hours. Even if I scraped out of Dry Fork at the very last second I would have five hours to get to Dayton. Not three. Five whole hours. More than enough time. And I was going to get out of Dry Fork before 3 p.m. so I’d have even more buffer. Missing the cutoff time was never a real danger.

THIS is where a pacer would have been helpful. Someone to do this basic math for me and tell me to chill out and enjoy myself.

If I had not been afflicted with end-of-hundred-mile-brain, I would have noticed things around me and realized my mistake. No one at Dry Fork, when I got there, seemed desperate to get out, as I was. People on the trail were chatting with their pacers and weren’t weeping softly as I felt like doing. “Why are these people not worried about the cutoff?” is what I should have asked myself. Instead, I assumed the worst of them (a weakness of mine) and chalked it up to them not caring. I figured they all knew they would be cut off but because they were probably so earnest and uncompetitive, they didn’t mind. I told myself that they hadn’t chosen to drop because they were stupid and satisfied with merely ‘running it in’ to ‘challenge themselves’ even if everyone in Scott Park would have packed it in and left by the time they got there. “These back-of-the-packers just plod along for vacuous reasons and I despise them because they have no competitive fire and they live for participation trophies. They all suck.” What can I say, I’m a misanthrope and that comes out at the end of 100-mile races, who knew?

The ironic thing is that I was the stupid one; the only person who was wrong about the cutoffs. Also ironically, at the same time that I was showering contempt on my more-functional race-mates, I was the one throwing in the towel. Because I ‘knew’ I wouldn’t finish, I took time to sitting on the side of the trail, contemplating the beauty of the Bighorn Mountains but also feeling sorry for myself. I walked when I could have jogged and jogged when I could have run.

Even when I got to the Tongue River Road and the last flat 5 miles of the race, I just plodded along, hoping that my wife and dog would have realized that I failed and would have driven out to pick me up in the car. Even when I saw Heidi and Pele, I didn’t notice that they were happy, I was just disappointed that they were there without the car. I kept walking, and walking, surrounded by other runners, feeling Not Happy. It’s hard to believe now, but I got to Dayton and took Pele at the corner of Scott Park and jogged along the fence with people cheering and complementing Pele (“Beautiful dog! Nice pacer!”) and ran around the corner and under the big FINISH banner, and still thought I hadn’t finished. Heidi said she’d go pick up my buckle and I said “Great, if they’ll give one to you.” She came back and handed me a buckle and a finisher’s hoodie, and ONLY THEN did I start to get a little suspicous. “The cutoff time is 8” she said. “Huh,” I said. “Well then, I guess I finished.”

Pup licks! Along the Tongue River Road at mile 98.

Finishing Bighorn with Pele.

Now that it’s been a few days, the intellectual knowledge that I actually finished Bighorn has finally set in. But the emotional satisfaction hasn’t arrived yet, and I don’t know if it ever will. Emotions aren’t rational after all, and I wonder if spending those final hours of the race feeling that I failed are replaceable by feelings of Happiness and Satisfaction just because my intellectual brain knows I finished.

At any rate, I am happy that I don’t have to sign up for the Bighorn 100 again. I’m still kind of a cranky grump about 100s generally and I’m not excited to ever do another one. However, the Bighorn 18-mile sounds FABULOUS! I think it’d be fun to run from Dry Fork to Dayton down that beautiful huge hill feeling fresh and able to run fast. Or even the 52-miler, a good solid day in the mountains for sure, but nothing too crazy. Getting this 100-mile monkey off my back feels great; like I again have no obligations in mountain running and can pick and choose what I choose to do because it sounds fun. And if it doesn’t sound fun, I can say “Nah.”

These are the same pair of shoes from the starting-line picture above. Now destroyed!

The 100-mile buckle!

#trailrunning #bighorn100 #rockymountainrunners #wyoming

1 note · View note