After blowing up at last year’s race, I decided I was going to treat this like the training race it was meant to be. I’d gone out way too hard last year, so I did some calculations and figured out the pace I needed to run to turn in a respectable finish while still feeling used, but not used up.

The 50K course, at Rosaryville State Park in the Maryland suburbs of DC, consists of three 10-mile loops, with a couple of additional short sections to bring the distance up to 31 miles. I crushed the first loop last year, clearing the main aid station in 1:40 and change. I hammered through the initial miles of the second loop as well, only to realize halfway through that the wheels were already coming off.

I’d been in the hunt for a Top 10 finish up to that point, but didn’t have enough left in the tank to hold my pace.

So this time around? Better strategy and smarter running. Run the first loop in 1:50 and reassess. If I was feeling good, the plan was to run the second loop at the same pace and reassess again. If I was feeling good at that point, I’d push the third loop. If not, I’d do the best I could.

That plan would’ve gotten me across the line in about 5:30, roughly 12 minutes faster than the previous year.

But like last year, when the start command came, I threw all that out the window and drilled it.

Hanging with the fast kids

Over the past few months, the term “fast-kid miles” has become a bit of a joke among my running friends. In our weekday runs with the roadies organized by the local running store, a few of us have been putting in some hard tempo miles and the occasional round of speed work or hill repeats.

And on weekends, the crew has been dividing up into two packs, with the faster runners pulling ahead to put in some harder trail miles before regrouping in the parking lot for post-run snacks and drinks. Once everyone gets back to the trailhead, there’s the usual joking around about us front-runners being “fast kids.”

I still don’t feel like a fast kid quite yet, but after this year’s Rosaryville 50K, I do feel like a faster kid, at least.

When the crowd of about 75 runners dashed off the starting line at Rosaryville, I looked around and realized that Sara, Mike and I were amid the front-runners as we blazed down the brief road section. I lost track of where I was in the pack as we turned onto the main single-track trail loop, but I did know that Sara and Mike were only one or two runners behind me at that point and that we were all running well.

I looked down at my GPS watch to find that I was way ahead of my planned splits, that I was on pace for a roughly 5:00 finish. And with a bit of cocky recalculation, I decided that I’d stick with that pace for as long as I could. What could go wrong?

In fairly short order, I was back at the main aid station with 10 miles under my belt. The girl was there, waiting for me to come through and helping out at the aid station; as I blazed through the aid station and looked at my watch, I shouted out to her “Yep, I went out too hard again!”

I’d been planning to hit that aid station at 1:50, but came through about 11 minutes sooner. Oops.

What I think about when I think while I’m running

As a brief aside, I’ve got a deep appreciation for ’70s muscle cars. Have I told you that before?

Runners often have a mantra, something they repeat in their heads as they’re pushing through a tough point in a training run or a race. Other have things they visualize when they’re not otherwise occupied by the random thoughts that inevitably pop up during an hours-long run through the forest.

Lately, I’ve been visualizing those ’70s muscle cars. The epic car-chase scene from “Bullitt” in particular. In that scene, Steve McQueen chases down the bad guys in a high-speed pursuit through the hilly streets of San Francisco. McQueen’s in a fastback Ford Mustang, while the bad guys are piloting a jet-black 1970 Dodge Challenger.

The cars go airborne over the tops of San Fran’s hills. Rear ends swing wide and tires squeal as they slide through sharp turns at speed. Wheels grip for purchase as the driver threads through cars and pedestrians. No white-knuckled, fear-gripped clutching of the steering wheel here. Completely at ease with the speed and danger.

Barely controlled, but still in command. I like that. It’s like live jazz when it’s at its best. On the verge of turning into a hot mess, but still beautiful.

I found that place on the second loop.

I fell in with another runner, a roadie who recently embraced trail running, and we talked races and places as we set a fierce pace on the rolling course. We blazed through the last three miles of the second loop, clocking splits in the low 9′s without missing a beat. The conversation was easy and I was on autopilot.

In my head, I was seeing a Dodge Challenger swinging wide through the turns.

Back at the main aid station at the finish of the second loop, I looked down at my watch again. 3:21 and change — a full 16 minutes faster than this point in the race last year. And I was still feeling good.

Holding on for dear life

As I left the main aid station for the third loop, I knew it was going to be a tough 10 miles. You can’t run that hard on trail over 20 miles and expect that the last 10 are going to be easy – I can’t, at least.

For the first couple miles, I found myself dragging a bit. The mile splits turned over on my watch and I saw 11:38 and 11:19. Unacceptable. Time to dig deeper.

I was pretty much solo on the trail at this point, having left the couple guys I was shooting the breeze with – they dawdled a bit at the aid station while I set about the business of getting my water bottle filled and getting back on the trail. So I decided to see whether I could catch anyone up ahead.

Finding any extra speed was tough, as the temperature was rising and the heat of the day was starting to take its toll. But once I was  counting down single-digit miles, I started getting faster, not slower.

I rolled up about a half-dozen runners over that last loop, folks who had gone out even harder than me during the first two loops and were paying the price on the third. I still had no idea where I was in the field, but figured I was somewhere in the top 20.

With plenty of water left in my bottle, I passed through the main aid station for the third time without slowing down and yelled out “how much longer to the finish?!”

When I heard there was less than a half-mile to go, I got my foot into the gas pedal for the final push. I was alone on the paved road, and off in the distance, the finish line looked pretty barren.

As the finish line clock came into focus, I could see that I still had a shot at a sub-5:10 finish, so I found that last gear and did a high-knees sprint up the hill to the line, with a handful of spectators cheering from under the picnic shelter.

I made a bee-line for the refreshment table and, as I sucked down a tall cup of Coke, a couple of fast kids who’d long since finished the race, Brad and Keith, congratulated me on my finish. I wasn’t sure why, until I had my wits about me enough to look around the finish line area.

There was hardly anyone there.

Two places makes all the difference in the world

After changing into fresh clothes and wolfing down a burger, I hung out at the finish line and had a couple of beers while I waited for Sara and Mike to finish. They crossed the line about an hour after I did, with my friend Rob coming in shortly thereafter for his first ultra finish since a back injury sidelined him more than a year ago.

We had a good time telling race stories for a while before I poured myself into my car to head home, not knowing where I’d finished in the field. I knew that I’d crushed my previous course best of 5:42 and had run a new 50K personal record, but I had no clue how many people had finished ahead of me.

A couple days later, initial results came out. I’d finished 12th in the field. That was awesome.

Then, a day or so after that, the race officials updated the results.

As it turned out, I’d finished 10th. My best finish at any race distance ever.

That still blows my mind a bit.

Rosaryville is a small, local race. A few of the fast kids turn out for it, but most save their powder for other events. Either the Catherine’s FA 50K where I’d volunteered at an aid station the day prior, or the Catoctin 50K the weekend after.

Still, a 10th place finish at any event is a huge validation of all the work that I’ve put into building both my speed and racing confidence in the past year.

It was entirely unexpected and thrilling to finish that far up in the field. But even better, I finished the race with the itch to keep going.

We were 90 minutes away from the start of the Comrades Marathon, and whether out of a sense of excitement or a simple desire to pass the time, the impromptu group had formed up outside the race corrals.

It started small at first, with only a dozen or so runners singing traditional Zulu songs. But as runners arrived at the starting area, passing through the glare of the spotlights shining up at the old Pietermaritzburg city hall and into the shadows of the darkened street, they peeled off in ones and twos to join the group.

Some produced whistles they’d stashed in their running gear, while others pulled out vuvuzelas from who knows where. But most were content to let their voices be their instrument, so long as they could share in the joy of raising their voices in song before starting their 89-kilometer journey to the coastal town of Durban.

For nearly an hour, they sang. The songs were entirely unfamiliar to me and the handful of western runners who’d made the 8,000-mile journey to South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal Province for “the Comrades.” But one was familiar: Shosholoza.

A traditional miner’s song originally sung by Ndebele men traveling by train from Zimbabwe to South Africa’s mines, the song has become known as the country’s second national anthem. The meaning of the title resonates with runners. It doesn’t translate well to English, but loosely equates to “go forward,” “make way for the next man,” or “make your road, forge ahead.”

Those of us getting ready to make our own 56-mile running journey could definitely get behind those sentiments.

My own journey to the starting line had been a challenging one, as it surely had been for many of the 16,000 other runners gathering at the starting line. So before the race had even begun, I found myself riding a wave of unexpected emotion as my fellow runners filled the street with their song.

I was glad I’d learned the words before I left the U.S., because when the field of runners joined as one to sing Shosholoza again just before the 5:30 a.m. race start, I jumped in and sang along.

Downhill – but definitely not easy

Rolling through an aid station amid a sea of runners from around the world.

My Comrades journey began with a decision to do a dream-list race as a consolation prize.

I’d entered the Western States 100 lottery for the first time last fall in hopes that the lottery gods would smile on me after my first two 100-mile finishes. Western States is the grandaddy of U.S. 100-mile races and if an ultrarunner tells you it’s not on his dream list, he’s probably a liar. The chances of scoring a slot in the field of less than 400 runners is damned tough in any given year, as I soon found out.

So after being closed out of WS100, I thought to myself, “I’m going to do something else epic in June instead.” Enter Comrades.

First  run in 1921 as a way to commemorate South African soldiers killed in World War I, Comrades is one of the oldest – and by far the largest – ultramarathons in the world. Today, typically around 20,000 people register for the race, with about 16,000 showing up at the start. Known as “the ultimate human race,” Comrades traverses 56 miles of road from Pietermaritzburg to Durban, alternating direction each year. The route from Durban to Pietermaritzburg is the “Up” route, in which runners contend with a net gain in elevation.

This year, however, was a “Down” year, with a net loss of elevation that fools the unfamiliar into thinking that it will be the easier of the two routes. But with about 4,500 feet of ascent and 6,000 feet of quad-burning descent over 56 miles, the Down run is no joke. I learned later that veterans of the run call the Down run the tougher of the two, by far. Whether Up or Down, runners pay the price for underestimating the run, as somewhere between 20 and 25 percent fail to complete the race in the allotted 12 hours.

The Comrades organizers are damned serious about that 12-hour time limit, too. Just before the clock strikes the 12-hour mark, a race official steps onto the course, turns his back on the runners streaming toward the finish line — fully half the field finishes the race in the last hour or two — and raises a starter’s pistol.

At 5:30 p.m. on the dot, the official raises his pistol, fires a single shot, and members of the Springboks national rugby team — barrel-chested, super-sized dudes — step forward to block the finish line. Those on the wrong side of the line are done. Period. No, you can’t cross the finish line unofficially. You’re done. Go home.

Runners on the wrong side of the line collapse. They clutch the fence in the finisher chute and slowly lower their heads in defeat. They raise their arms to the heavens and question fate. They burst into tears.

Ouch. That was not going to be me.

But I relished the opportunity to dance with that threat.

Inigo Montoya was right

Cape Town's Table Mountain, shrouded in early morning clouds, as seen from Lion's Head Mountain.

And and and. Oh man, there’s so much to tell. With two full weeks in South Africa, there’s no possible way I’ll be able to capture it all here. I haven’t even begun to talk about all the things the girl and I saw and did in the 10 days before race day.

Like the great Inigo Monotoya said, “let me ‘splain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”

After 24 hours of traveling — mostly flying, but also some with some sitting-on-the-tarmac and some opposite-side-of-the-road driving thrown in — we made it to Cape Town, on the southwestern tip of South Africa. There, we hiked the mountains around the city, took a self-driving tour to the Cape of Good Hope, got a solo tour of three amazing wineries and ate both world-class gourmet meals and street food that were equally mind-blowing.

From Cape Town, we flew across the country to Durban, where we caught a lift to a private game reserve near Hluhluwe in KwaZulu-Natal Province, where we spent four days living out of ridiculously luxurious tents and making two game drives each day with expert Zulu rangers and trackers, with plenty of time for relaxing and enjoying the gorgeous South African winter weather in between.

Yes, we got this close to the elephants on our game drives. No telephoto lens needed.

Lions, cheetahs, elephants, giraffes, water buffalo, zebras, white rhinos, hyenas, jackals, baboons … the list of animals we saw up close and personal goes on and on. Sure, you’ve probably seen a few of these, maybe most of them, in zoos back in the U.S., but there’s something beautiful and powerful about seeing them up close and in the wild.

Put another way, when a curious elephant walks up and nudges the front bumper of your Range Rover with his trunk — hard — you’re too captivated to even consider how potentially dangerous that moment was. The same goes for when a pack of five well fed lionesses walks past your vehicle just after nightfall, the air still rich with the smell of blood from their nearby kill.

In the weeks leading up to the trip, I was shocked to find out how many of my friends and acquaintances had been to South Africa before. How did I manage to miss that fact over so many conversations? In any case, they all got a similar look in their eyes upon finding out I was making the trip. And almost universally, they called South Africa one of the most beautiful places they’d ever seen.

After experiencing the sights of Cape Town and safari, it was easy to see why. The view of Table Bay and the city center of Cape Town from the top of Lion’s Head mountain as the rain clouds parted is a scene that will stick in my memory for years to come, but it was just one of many unforgettable moments. And still ahead was the trip back to Durban for the race itself.

Raising a glass at Rivets

How to describe Durban? Well, if Cape Town is uniquely California in its vibe — think of a cross between San Francisco and Carmel — Durban is a lot like Detroit if it were a seaside East Coast honky-tonk. Generally rough around the edges, definitely dangerous in parts, and as blue-collar as any shipping port city can be. Not the kind of city you wander and explore, but fascinating in its own right.

The Hilton hotel, though, was firmly in the center of all things Comrades. The race expo was across the street at the Durban Expo Center, and the finish line was just up the road at Sahara Stadium Kingsmead, the local cricket ground (a new, glitzy stadium to the north played host to the 2010 World Cup, which first introduced the brrrrrrrrrrt! sound of the vuvuzela to the Western world).

Double Scotch, neat. With a 20 Rand tip for the bartender. Thanks, Phil.

After arriving on Friday afternoon, we checked into the hotel and headed to the lobby bar, Rivets, so that the girl could triage work email and I could order a double Scotch, neat.

I don’t make a habit of knocking back whiskey in the afternoon, but this was a special drink. I’d ordered it at the suggestion of my friend Phil, who first planted the seed last summer that led to this trip. Phil had run Comrades last year not long before we spent some quality trail time together in the Shenandoahs and I hung on his every word as he described the Comrades experience.

The girl raised an eyebrow at my choice of beverage until I explained the back story, at which point she teared up and said something about Phil being a really great guy. She’s right.

So as requested, I raised my glass in the direction of the Indian Ocean, tipped the bartender with the 20 Rand note that Phil had sent over with me, and headed over to the expo to pick up my race packet.

After that, we did a little bit of sightseeing and a whole lot of pre-race relaxing. Time usually drags on in the hours before a race, but it flew by in Durban and before I knew it, the alarm clock was going off at 1 a.m. on Sunday and I was stumbling around the hotel room to pull on my gear and head down to a wee-hours breakfast in the hotel lobby before boarding the bus for Pietermaritzburg.

Shosholoza, Chariots of Fire and a rooster’s crow

The start of the Comrades Marathon is as quirky as the race itself.

After boarding the 2 a.m. bus to Pietermaritzburg with dozens of other keyed-up runners from around the world, we arrived in the city center about 3:30 a.m. and offloaded, wandering over to the starting area to hang out and get our heads around the 56-mile journey that was to come.

Shortly before 5:30 a.m., the runners had all crowded into their respective starting corrals. As I entered mine, I ran into a couple of new friends we’d met while on safari, Bill and Lin, an older couple from Colorado who were in South Africa to run their first Comrades as well. It was great catching up with them and so nice to have a couple of familiar faces in the enormous crowd.

The starting line was chilly and I was glad for the $15 fleece I’d bought at the mall in Durban, but still, we all found ourselves huddling together to maximize body heat in those last few minutes before the start. In those final minutes, the spirit of Comrades was already becoming evident. As our singing runners kept the tunes rolling, other runners were sharing gear amongst themselves.

A container of Vaseline was making the rounds, as was a roll of toilet paper that Bill and Lin had brought just in case. As runners in the center of the corral shed extra layers before the start, they handed them off to others nearby, who passed them to the edges and threw them over the corral fences so no one would trip over them in the rush of the start.

(A couple miles into the race, in fact, I shed my fleece and balled it up to throw it to the roadside, only to have another runner grab it and hand it off to another runner, who in turn made sure that it ended up on the shoulder and not in the middle of foot traffic.)

I’ve never seen anything remotely like that at a U.S. road race.

With the 5:30 start time drawing near, we pressed ahead toward the starting line and the ceremony began with the singing of South Africa’s national anthem, followed by Shosholoza. This time, I found myself caught up in the emotion and sang along with the rest of the 16,000 gathered runners.

Following Shosholoza was the theme music from “Chariots of Fire,” which almost always strikes me as overly cheesy, but seemed fitting in this setting somehow.

And because Comrades is quirky, the Chariots of Fire theme was followed by something so out of left field, it almost seemed like it didn’t happen. The race officials played a recording of a person imitating a rooster’s crow. That person was Max Trimborn, who on the occasion of his eighth Comrades Marathon in 1948, was so keyed up at the start that he bellowed out a lusty “cock-a-doodle-do!” at full volume.

The race organizers loved it so much that they asked him to keep doing it at Comrades runnings year after year. Finally, they made a recording of it that’s still used today.

So with Trimborn’s crow and the loud blast of a cannon — no mere starter’s pistol would do at this race — we set off at a trot in the predawn darkness.

The first half: ‘A tough marathon with lots of hills’

The "Down" run is really only down in the second half. And that's where it starts to hurt.

I’d heard it said before the trip that Comrades is a combination of “the Boston Marathon, the Tour de France and the 4th of July all rolled into one.”

As an event that’s practically a national holiday in South Africa, the Comrades Marathon gets full live TV coverage from gun to gun — 12 straight hours of broadcast on South African television, and people tune in around the country throughout the day.

They want to see  first man and woman cross the line at around 5:30 and 6-ish hours, sure. But they also come back to the race at the very end, to see the moment that the course-closing gun is fired.

Having seen it myself, it’s a moment that’s every bit as thrilling as watching a winner come speeding across the line.

Still feeling good enough to throw two thumbs up well into the race.

Beyond those watching on TV, a reported 500,000-plus people come out to watch the race in person, lining the course in a human chain that stretches nearly unbroken from Pietermaritzburg to Durban. I’ve never experienced that level of crowd support before, nor will I again outside of the Comrades course, and the sheer energy of it pulls you toward Durban like a tractor beam.

I went into the race blissfully ignorant about the course itself. Other than knowing it was a Down year, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about the course profile. There is a course tour that happens on the Friday and Saturday prior to race day, but I didn’t make it a priority amid other things we wanted to see and do.

So one of the things I didn’t know is that despite being a Down year, the first half of the race is “a very tough marathon with lots of hills (up ones, that is) and is certainly not ‘down’,” according to Denis Kennedy, who’s finished 20-plus Comrades races. I read his 2009 race report after I was back in the states. D’oh.

There are five major hills on the Comrades course that punish runners on both the Up and Down courses. Like Boston’s Heartbreak Hill, each has a name that is burned into the minds of those who have contended with the course or dream of doing so. On the Down route, the batting order goes like this: Polly Shortts, Inchanga, Botha’s Hill, Field’s Hill and Cowie’s Hill.

Of those, Polly Shortts and Inchanga come during the first half of the course. Polly starts at mile 5, a roughly 400-foot climb over about a mile, while Inchanga starts at mile 26, a roughly 450-foot climb over about 1.5 miles. That’s not so daunting after contending with a couple of mountain 100-milers, but it’s no excuse to be stupid. Go hammering up either climb and you’ll pay the price in the back half of the course when the serious downhills start taking their toll on already tired legs.

The climbs at Comrades aren't steep, but they're long and punishing nonetheless.

This first half of the race went by in a blur of sights and smells. While the scenery quickly became repetitive — the rolling fields of eastern South Africa quite honestly can start to look the same after only a few miles — the crowds of spectators were so intense that it was almost difficult to take it all in.

Around mile 18 or so, I started to hit a low point that lasted for about five miles. I wasn’t feeling bad physically, but my head just went kind of sideways. It seems that even in the midst of a race as exotic and exciting as Comrades, it’s still possible to run aground on a bad patch. It came at a point where there was little in the way of crowd support — a rarity on the course — and it was all flat to rolling asphalt ahead for miles and miles.

But within a few miles, I started seeing crowds of spectators again, including kids. Dozens, no, scores, of African kids lining both sides of the course, each grinning from ear to ear, with arms outstretched in hopes of getting a high five from a passing runner. I picked up on that energy and rode it like a wave, working the edge of the roadway so I could high-five as many kids as possible along the route.

Many were shouting “USA! Hey, USA!” I was confused about why at first, until I remembered that I was wearing a Team USA shirt and star-spangled do rag — international Comrades runners are encouraged to wear their home-country colors because it energizes spectators to see so many visitors from around the world running South Africa’s “hometown race.”

Especially touching was the moment at mile 23 when we passed through a crowd of children from the Ethembeni School, a schoolhouse for the children of KwaZulu-Natal Province who have physical challenges. For what seemed like an eternity, we passed children who were deaf, blind, missing limbs, suffering from Down’s Syndrome, confined to wheelchairs.

Kids are fundamentally the same, though, regardless of their physical challenges or where they are in the world.

As with the other children on the course, the students from Ethembeni were all hoping for a high-five from the runners passing through, and seemed to find particular joy when a runner slowed down to give each an extra bit of attention while running by. I found myself both thankful for my own blessings in life and for the fact that these children had a facility like Ethembeni where they could get the attention they need.

That energy drove me up the Inchanga climb and down the hill into Drummond, marking the halfway point of the course.

The second half: ‘Hey, USA! Good job, broo!’

With a USA T-shirt and American flag do-rag, the pro-USA cheers were nearly non-stop.

For all of the amazing crowd support during the first half of the course, the second half made it pale by comparison. Starting at the halfway mark in Drummond, the roadside was three and four deep with spectators more often than not. Hanging out, cheering, drinking beer and having a “braai” — the South African word for barbecue — the spectators weren’t just out there to cheer for their runner like we see at U.S. marathons.

They were out there to cheer for anyone, for everyone.

And so after a while, I got so many shout-outs that I could’ve easily started thinking my name had been changed to “USA.”

“Hey, USA – well done!”

“Hey, USA – good job, broo!” (White South Africans pronounce “bro” as “broo.” Good to know that bro is a universal thing.)

“USA! Hey, USA! Tell Obama I said hi!”

“USA! Hey hey! Yes we can!”

Because the roughly 240 U.S. runners who’d made the trek to South Africa for Comrades were all doing our best to show the flag — literally — it was pretty easy to find one another on the course. Soon enough, I started running into more and more American runners on the back half of the course.

Just before mile 30, I fell in with Kip, a police officer from Connecticut who was running Comrades as his first ultra. We were both feeling the cumulative effects of the downhill running that was getting more serious during the second half of the course, so we made like Cheerios and stuck together.

As we crested Botha’s Hill, another American runner spotted our gear in the crowd and started running with us. Roy, from Sheboygan, Wisconsin, was friendly enough and soon we had a good three-way conversation going that was helping the miles to click by easily. As I glanced at the back of his shirt — Comrades runners wear bibs on both front and back — his last name seemed familiar.

“Hey, Roy, your last name sounds really familiar.”

“Yeah, I’ve been around some.”

“Are you Roy Pirrung the ultrarunner? Past 24- and 48-hour U.S. record holder?”

“Ah. Yep, that’s me!”

Turned out I’d been sharing miles with an ultrarunning legend. Roy was running his first-ever Comrades because he’d finally found room in his aggressive annual competition schedule to fit it in.

So the three of us hung together ’til about mile 35, at which point Roy kept sailing along at his making-it-look-easy pace and enjoying the day, while Kip and I started to fade back a bit as the long descent down Field’s Hill started to do a job on our already thrashed quads. The Field’s descent drops roughly 600 feet over about two miles. Again, not the cruelly steep descents of a mountain ultra, but nonetheless the kind of long grinding downhill that will burn out a set of already tired quadriceps muscles.

After Field’s, Kip and I ground out the last long 1.3-mile climb up Cowie’s Hill together, then leapfrogged a bit over the final miles on the approach to the outskirts of Durban itself. All along the way, we kept getting “USA! USA!” cheers from the crowds and we did our best to respond, whether with a “Thanks!” or a wave or a point when we were too tired to muster up the energy to shout back.

After one such exchange, I said to Kip: “Hey, do you feel like you kinda have to respond back? I mean, we’re kinda ambassadors in a way, aren’t we?” Turned out he’d been thinking exactly the same thing.

… And two bonus hills for good measure

At the finish line, with the bronze medal of a sub-11:00 finisher.

After Cowie’s, there are still two named hills to go. I would’ve known that if I’d really studied the course profile. But, well, we’ve already been over that.

Neither are particularly rough in and of themselves, when considering the elevation profile, but the gentle ascents of both 45th Cutting and Tollgate Bridge felt insurmountable at 50 miles into a 56-mile race. Still, knowing that I was into single digits provided enough incentive to keep moving forward.

By this point, Kip had faded back and I was running solo again, so I started chatting with other runners at random simply for distraction’s sake. No one was much in the mood for conversation at this point, with one exception.

With about two miles to go, I struck up a conversation with an African runner who was with the South African military, as it turned out. He’d been over to the U.S. on a program with our National Defense University, so we spent a few minutes geeking out on military topics before we decided to save our wind for the final push to Kingsmead stadium and the finish line.

I could hear the roar of the crowd inside the stadium as I turned the corner to the final road that would bring me home. Entering the stadium, I was blown away by the sheer number of people packed inside — there had to be around 25,000 people inside, both in the stands and on the cricket field itself.

Since I won’t be running the Olympic marathon any time soon, this is as close as I’ll ever get to finishing a race in a stadium full of cheering spectators, and holy crap, what a thrill.

After the first turn, I heard someone shout my name and looked up to see the girl hanging over the fence and waving furiously. I let out a “Woop!” and waved and pointed as I kept on motoring toward the finish in hopes of coming across the line before the 10:30 mark. Finishing under 11 hours would garner me a bronze medal regardless of the particular time, but finishing under 10:30 seemed to be the mark of a decisive sub-11:00 finish.

That’s yet another fascinating aspect of the Comrades Marathon, by the way. It’s the only race I’m aware of that draws such numerous distinctions among its finisher medals. There are six different medals in all, ranging from gold to copper and awarded to runners based on their finishing time.

Goofing around at the finish line while watching runners stream in ahead of the 12-hour course cutoff.

A sub-11:00 finish earns a runner a bronze medal, while finishing between 11:00 and the 12:00 cutoff garners a copper medal known as the “Vic Clapham” medal (Vic Clapham founded the race back in 1921). Up until 2003, the cutoff had been 11 hours, so I wanted a bronze medal, to signify that I could finish Comrades not only under the more generous 12-hour cutoff, but under the original and more stringent guideline.

The funny thing about the Comrades medals is that they’re really small — not much bigger than a piece of Honeycomb cereal, actually. But when one is dangling from your neck at the finish line in Kingsmead stadium, it seems enormous.

My 10:29 finish time was good enough to put me at 5,877th in the finishing field. For those keeping score at home, that meant that about two-thirds of the starting field of 16,000 had dropped, missed an on-course cutoff or was still out there slogging it out behind me but ahead of the 12-hour finish line cutoff.

Over the 90 minutes that followed my finish, I nursed a beer and ate some lentil curry as I watched finishers continue to stream into the stadium and across the finish line. Another 6,000 or so runners finished in that 90-minute time span, for just under 12,000 finishers in total. I was there to see the course close down at the 12 hour mark and wow, was it even more heartbreaking than I expected.

It was just past sunset as the girl and I left the stadium to head back to the hotel so I could get a shower and more food. And as I limped the couple of blocks back to the hotel, we saw a few more runners still gutting it out on the course, determined to run, hobble or walk to the stadium, even if they couldn’t actually cross the finish line itself. That’s a level of determination I’m not sure I have.

Reflecting now on the experience, just over a week later, I think there’s a lot of truth to the sentiment expressed by many Comrades finishers, who say that the race “changes you.”

I wouldn’t say that it changed me in quite the same way that my first 100-mile finish did. That one shifted my perspective on how I see ultrarunning, how I see myself and how I look at life in general. But still, something feels different after Comrades that I can’t quite put my finger on yet.

Early in the race, I met a South African who’d racked up 40 Comrades finishes, based on the data listed on the race bib adorning the back of his shirt. He’d long since earned the right to wear the green bib of a 10-time Comrades finisher and had been wearing that same race number for the past 30 years since it had first been permanently assigned to him.

In other words, I was in the presence of a salty Comrades veteran.

As I passed him, he looked up and saw my USA running gear. He called out “Welcome to South Africa! What do you think so far?”

In response, I told him that I was loving my first-ever Comrades race experience.

“Well, when you finish this run, you’ll only be half a man, you know that?”

“Why? Because I’ll still need to run the Up run?”

“Exactly. So I’ll see you back here next year, right?”

Yes sir, I suspect you will. I suspect you will.

What I learned from the Bull Run Run 50-miler? That I don’t bounce back well from bad races.

For about a month afterward, I didn’t want to write about running, didn’t want to read about running, didn’t want to run, period.

I had a choice in the matter on the first two, but not running wasn’t an option. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.

Besides, I had the Country Music Marathon coming up just a couple weeks after BRR50, a pacing gig at the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100-miler two weeks after that, and the Capon Valley 50K the week following.

And my goal race of the season — the Comrades Marathon 89K in South Africa — was looming large in early June.

So I leaned hard on one of my favorite Robert Frost quotes, one that got me through some of the toughest times of the past few years:

“The best way out is always through.”

Did ol’ Hank really do it this way?

My frustrating BRR50 finish was still stinging when the girl and I flew out to Nashville for my second road marathon of the year, the Country Music Marathon. There, we met up with a huge group of my coworkers who had all signed up to run the half-marathon and spend a long weekend checking out Nashvegas.

I was relieved at the thought that this was merely meant to be a long training run on the road in preparation for the Comrades Marathon and an excuse to eat and drink my way through one of the South’s great cities. My goal was simply to run easy, log a sub-4:00 finish and leave enough in the tank to enjoy the rest of the weekend.

The weekend turned out to be awesome.

We had enough people on board to make renting a couple of houses for the weekend a cheap and easy option, so we spent the night before the race wrapped in running-nerd conversation over a home-cooked meal of pasta and salad, along with a couple of beers.

We had the most amazing fried chicken ever at Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, and caught a show at the legendary Grand Ole Opry.

But the marathon itself? It kinda sucked.

The first half of the course wasn’t too bad. The hills were small, the bands along the course route weren’t bad, and the small group of 2,000 or so marathoners had around 18,000 half-marathoners and associated spectators to keep the on-course energy high. But when the half-marathoners peeled off to head to the finish line at mile 13 and we turned left to begin the second half of our race, it got, well, ugh.

The bands were fewer and more lackluster. The hills increased. The spectators all but disappeared. The heat of the day kicked in. The one saving grace to the back half of the course was that the girl rushed across the city center a handful of times to be at as many of the late-course aid stations as possible. And I realized that while I wasn’t struggling in any way, by mile 16 I was bored to death and ready to be done.

I ran a 3:56:32 — right under 4:00 as planned. When the girl found me in the finish area, she asked how it was. Despite having finished exactly as I’d planned, I was nonplussed.

“Eh, it was ok.”

In the back of my mind, I was still wrestling with that poor showing at Bull Run.

The magic of MMT

Between being over-scheduled in other parts of my life and suffering from a bad case of feeling sorry for myself, I’d only run three times between BRR50 and the Country Music Marathon. And between the marathon and my pacing stint at MMT100, I logged only another three runs.

I just wasn’t feeling it. At all.

But when we loaded up the cars for a massive caravan out to Virginia’s Fort Valley for a weekend of crewing, pacing and volunteering at MMT, I could already feel the dark clouds of the previous month beginning to break apart.

Arriving at the Caroline Furnace Lutheran Camp that plays host to the start and finish of the 100-miler, we were greeted by dozens of VHTRC friends and upon seeing the finish line I was reminded of all of how amazing it felt when I arrived there last May after completing a journey of 100-plus miles through the Massanutten mountains.

Over the next 40-plus of non-stop, nearly sleepless action in support of running friends and strangers alike, I rediscovered the joy that had been missing from my running over the past four weeks.

Our weekend running crew pulled split duty over the weekend, providing pacing and crew support for Tom and Jimm, while at the same time running the kitchen that served the small pop-up city of 400-plus runners, volunteers and spectators. It was a logistical operation of impressive proportions and we pulled it off in style.

By the time I left the camp to head up to the Picnic Area aid station (mile 86) to meet Tom for my pacing leg, we’d already welcomed and fed a large group of finishing runners and had a great time hanging out watching the fast kids come in. But I was most excited about pacing, as I had the honor of running with Tom over the last 15-plus miles to the finish line, to bring him home to his first MMT100 buckle.

Looking a bit bleary-eyed after pacing Tom through the last 15 miles of MMT100.

I met up with Tom at just before 10 a.m. on Sunday morning and for the next five hours we trekked through the mountains. I led him through the last two climbs of the course, Dry Run and Jawbone. He was in a black place for much of that last section and wasn’t doing much talking, but I knew that we’d get him across the finish line ahead of the 36-hour cutoff.

Still, it took some doing. At one point during a stop on the Jawbone ascent, he asked: “How hard is the back side of Jawbone?”

When I responded, I lied straight to his face.

“Dude, it’s hardly rocky at all. Totally runnable.”

I think he may still be mad at me for that. But it did get him up and moving again.

Once we cleared the Jawbone descent and got back onto the fire road for the final four miles to the finish, Tom found a reserve of energy that was truly impressive to see. I told him we had a strong chance of finishing well under 35 hours if he could find some speed for the last few miles and, sure enough, he dug deep and found an extra gear. At one point he was running at 9:30/mile pace and I had to back him off a bit.

“Dude, how fast do you want to be running right now?”

“Why?”

“Well, we’re running 9:30s.”

“Oh. Okay. I’ll run this for a little while longer.”

As I peeled off and Tom entered the finish line chute, I thought back to what my first 100-mile finish felt like, in that same place a year prior. There’s a photo of me from the finish line where I’ve got this huge, huge smile on my face.

That’s what running is supposed to feel like, and by the time Tom finished, I was feeling that way again.

Proving it to myself

Hammering down the road toward the finish line at Capon Valley. (Photo by ultrarunnergirl)

So I felt like I had my mojo back. So what. I needed proof. Enter the Capon Valley 50K.

I’d run Capon Valley two years ago, but hadn’t been back since. It was a late addition to my race schedule this year, an afterthought that only came up because it happened to coincide with Beth’s birthday and we’ve gotten into the routine of celebrating running-group birthdays at races.

In hindsight, I’m so glad I entered.

Capon Valley was my first mountain race back in 2010. I had a great time, but mountains had their way with me and I finished in a respectable but by no means speedy 6:32:13.

This time around, I went into the race with no particular goal in mind. No more fixating on setting new personal records on non-goal races. This was a training run, a day to play in the mountains with friends. The one goal I did allow myself was to see how much time I could shave off my previous finish — just enough incentive to go fast.

The day couldn’t have gone better.

I ran with a heart full of joy from start to finish. I dodged a few wrong turns early on that would’ve added miles and frustration to the day. The tough 3.5-mile uphill section that got the best of me back in 2010 was like nothing this time around. I put it in low gear and did the climb, done and done. And then bombed the downhills on the back side of the course and enjoyed the feeling of flying.

I crossed the finish line at 5:38:20, putting me 41st overall of 196 finishers, cutting nearly an hour off my previous course best, and giving me a new personal best at the 50K distance. Translated: A huge confidence boost.

Over the few hours that followed, I took a quick shower, devoured an amazing plate of barbecued chicken courtesy of the local Ruritan club that organized the race, and had a few beers with VHTRC friends I’d seen the previous week while volunteering at MMT. It was as close to a perfect day of running as I’ve had in ages.

Off and on throughout the afternoon, my thoughts would occasionally drift to the big race coming up, to Comrades, and I knew that the 16,000-mile round trip from northern Virginia to South Africa would be worth it, that I’d not only finish, but finish strong. And happy.

Setting a fast pace on flat ground near Centreville before the day warmed up. (Photo by Bobby Gill)

The day after the race, the girl asked me: “Did you go out too fast?”

“No … I mean … I was running hard, yeah, but I felt like could have held that pace.”

I hadn’t looked at my splits yet — didn’t want to — but I thought that I had run the first 20 miles of the Bull Run Run 50-miler at a smart pace.

In hindsight? Not so much.

When I could finally bear looking at the Jeckyll-and-Hyde difference in my performance over the first and second half of the race, the evidence was there.

When I hit the Bull Run Marina, 21 miles into the race, I was on pace to finish in 8 hours and 45 minutes — a full 90 minutes faster than my 2011 finish. I’m faster than I was last year, but not that fast.

And as I was leaving the marina, I knew it. The unseasonably warm temperatures predicted for the day were already climbing at 10 a.m. and as I picked up pace I started feeling tired and a little dizzy — the beginnings of a mild case of dehydration that would dog me for the rest of the day.

The next 30 miles were going to be hard earned.

‘Instead, I’m gonna eat this popsicle’

The Bull Run Run Nine - the Lottery Gods smiled on us and we all scored spots on the starting line.

After fixating on the weather report in the taper-crazy days leading up to the race, I knew weather would be a factor. The day would start in the high 40s, but was predicted to reach the high 70s in the afternoon. That kind of warmth and accompanying humidity is tough early in the spring when runners aren’t acclimated to it, so the wiser course of action would’ve been to go out easy and build speed based on what the day would allow.

But after a season full of new personal bests, I decided that my goal was to break the 10-hour barrier. My previous best on the Bull Run course was a 10:12 and even coming in a couple minutes under 10 hours would’ve been a great new PR, but I wanted more. I wanted to break 10 hours decisively.

So while I spent the hour before the 6:30 start goofing around and catching up with friends, I got serious when the race got started. I set out at a fast pace and found myself in a pack of runners who I knew were 9-hours-and-something finishers, so I settled in with them for the initial out-and-back northern section of the course.

The course was dry and the trails are mainly flat in that initial 16-mile section, so we were flying along without too much trouble. As the first few hours slipped past, I found myself sweating hard with the extra effort, but didn’t pay it too much mind.

By the time I reached each of the first three aid stations, I should’ve finished off the 20 ounces of sports drink in my handheld bottle, but still had at least a third left over at each aid station.

Mistake.

Why run a downhill when you can eat a popsicle instead? (Photo by Bobby Gill)

Fortunately, I was eating well and keeping up with my electrolyte intake; I started with one electrolyte tablet per hour, but quickly switched to two when I knew that I was sweating more than usual.

Still, when I stepped out from the marina, my legs were starting to feel a little rubbery and my head was feeling a little loopy. Yikes.

I backed off the pace considerably at that point, taking it easy and trying to pull it together. But when I got to the Wolf Run Shoals aid station five miles later — 26 miles into the race — I knew I was cooked.

An aid station volunteer asked me if I wanted a popsicle and at that moment it sounded like the most amazing thing in the world.

“Yes. Yes I do.”

I ambled out of that aid station, bright orange popsicle in hand, and saw a section of sweet downhill that, on any other day, I would’ve enjoyed running. Instead, I said the hell with running and enjoyed my popsicle instead. I saw Bobby Gill out taking pictures on that section and told him as much.

“Hey Bobby! I know I should be running this downhill right now, but instead, I’m gonna eat this popsicle.”

He probably thought I’d lost my mind.

A well-timed washcloth

After a couple of slow miles grinding through the rolling hills that are a hallmark of the southern section of the course, I hit the aid station at Fountainhead Regional Park. There, I stripped off my T-shirt and grabbed a cold, wet washcloth from an aid station volunteer and draped it over my head. The blast of cold was just what I needed to perk me up and keep me moving.

I was headed into the toughest part of the course – the three-mile section at the southern terminus of the Bull Run-Occoquan Trail known as the “Do Loop,” which is full of short-but-steep climbs and descents, but beautiful views of the Occoquan River and Sandy Run.

Too bad I don’t remember much of those views.  From Fountainhead to the return trip through Wolf Run Shoals, those 11 miles were pretty much a blur. Other than seeing Sara and Beth at the Do Loop aid station — they were starting their turn through the loop as I was finishing mine — there weren’t a lot of highlights.

By the time I reached Wolf Run Shoals aid station for the second time, at mile 39, I knew I needed to take a few minutes to rest and regroup. I ate some food, had a couple of cold cups of soda for the sugar and caffeine rush, and hoped for the best. But within a mile of leaving the aid station, I was feeling dizzy again and knew I needed a bit more time to pull it together.

So I sat down on a log, put my head in my hands and closed my eyes. Focus. Focus. Focus.

After a couple minutes, I felt stable enough to start moving again, so I set out at a walk and fired up the iPod. A welcome blast of electronica — The Chemical Brothers’ “Galvanize” — filled my ears, I found a fresh burst of energy, and started running again. By that time, some cloud cover had rolled in and a cool breeze started blowing — just enough to take the edge off the heat and the dizziness.

The tunes and the breeze got me through the Marina aid station, but it was my friend Denise that got me through to the finish.

About a mile after the Marina, I looked back to see her approaching. She’s one of our regular Saturday running crew and I knew her company would be a welcome addition over those last few miles, so we fell in together for the final push to the finish line at Hemlock Overlook Regional Park. The last time we finished a race together was the HAT Run 50K back in 2010, so it was fun to be able to do that again at Bull Run.

She was running strong and was in contention for a new personal best on the course, so I got the hell out of her way and let her set the pace. And in the approach to the finish area, we trekked up the last hill and realized that she might pull off that new PR after all. We ran hard across the field and up the brief paved section to the finish line, where we crossed at 10:31:25 — a full three minutes faster than her previous best.

The price of overconfidence

At the finish, I changed into fresh clothes, tried to eat and rehydrate without throwing up, and reflected on how the day had gone.

Basically, the first 20 miles were great, the middle 20 sucked hard, and the last 10 weren’t too bad.

The race was meant to be a shakeout run for the Comrades Marathon — the 56-mile race in South Africa that would be my centerpiece race of the spring/summer season. It definitely was a shakeout — it showed me exactly what can go wrong when you underestimate the conditions and get overconfident on a well known course.

Meta moment: I let this entry sit, written and unposted, for nearly two months while I sorted out how I felt about the race. The fact that this one went so sideways on me really got inside my head. My reflections on this race and the running I did in the weeks that followed led to the post immediately following this one.

The Umstead 100 consists of eight 12.5-mile loops through Umstead State Park, near Raleigh, N.C.

“Would you rather play naked Twister with Dick Cheney, or punch a baby in the face?”

This is the stuff great pacer-runner conversations are made of.

Toni and I were just starting loop 7 of the Umstead 100 miler. She was 75 miles in, with 25 left to go.

It was just after midnight, and I’d already paced her through one 12.5-mile loop. We’d spent the previous loop catching up on how her race had gone up to that point, assessing how she was feeling, and going over what needed to happen to get her across the finish line under 24 hours.

She had about nine hours to cover 37.5 miles at the start of loop 6. That’s a totally reasonable proposition for an ultrarunner if that were the task in and of itself. But with 62.5 miles already in the books, it’s a different story.

Fifteen hours into a run, already sore as hell, the sun long down, the rain still threatening a return, and a tough night ahead. It’s enough to leave you feeling like the last Cheerio in the bowl, looking for someone else to cling to.

You know you’ll make it if you’ve got someone else to float with. My job that night was to be a Cheerio. One that could help bring home a sub-24 finish.

Paying it forward

Toni gets focused before the start of Umstead 2012, as Bob chats up a random stranger.

Last year, Toni ran Umstead as her first 100 miler. Besides Bob and Stan, the two veterans in our running group, she was the first of us to attempt a 100-miler.

I was signed up to run the Massanutten Mountain Trails 100 the next month, so while I couldn’t be down in Raleigh, N.C., to see her run the race, I was eagerly anticipating post-race stories in hopes of getting any last-minute intel I could in advance of my first 100. Toni paced me for a section of MMT and it was clear that her 100-miler experience had paid dividends, as she seemed to have an innate understanding of what needed to happen to keep me moving forward through those mean-ass mountains.

Trouble is, she finished Umstead in 24:12:12. That’s a respectable-as-hell time for that race, yes. But it was just over 12 minutes shy of a sub-24 finish. And that fact ate away at her for weeks and months afterward. The burning question: Could she have run sub-24? What might’ve gone differently had she dealt with a blister sooner, eaten better earlier in the race, name your variable.

We were all determined to see Toni go sub-24 at this year’s running of Umstead, so she probably had one of the biggest — and loudest — crews ever to step onto the trails at Umstead State Park. Bob and Sara rode down with Toni on Friday, while Tom, Beth and I drove down Saturday morning in one car, with Denise and Stan in another.

Seven people crewing one 100-mile runner might seem a bit much, but we really went for the party. How often as a grown-ass adult do you get to pull an all-nighter, drinking beer and goofing off with friends new and old?

We’d already stuffed ourselves silly on North Carolina barbecue at a local joint outside of Raleigh, we’d settled in to camp chairs at one of only two aid stations on the 12.5-mile loop course and had a prime spot right on the race course as it passed through the aid area. All we had to do was hang out and enjoy the weather as we waited for Toni to roll through after each loop. The rains that had plagued the runners all morning stopped by the time we arrived, so we had it super easy.

As we settled in, one of us – I forget who – said it best as we opened a few bottles of beer and busted out the junk food: “Toni’s really lucky to have us.”

Eight loops? Eight!?

Rocking my Freedom gear for pacing duty - you gotta keep your runner entertained, after all.

The Umstead 100 organizers treat runners, pacers and crew equally well, which is to say like gold. We all felt so spoiled as we each rotated through our pacing duties. While I waited for Toni to finish up her fourth and fifth loops, I grabbed a couple of cheeseburgers from the main aid station and knocked back a couple of beers from our cooler.

I was only planning to run loops 6 and 7, after all. Running 24 miles after having a couple of beers … what could go wrong?

With Toni due to arrive soon, I changed over to running gear and caffeinated appropriately for the long night ahead. To keep the entertainment value high, I opted for the star-spangled running gear that I wore for the costume party-and-snowstorm that was the Halloweeny 50K last October.

Just before 9 p.m., Toni rolled through at the end of loop 5 and it was time to head out. I grabbed my Camelbak and set off at an easy pace, doing math in my head and running through my mental checklist with Toni.

I found myself thinking back to the questions that my pacers all asked of me during my two 100-milers last year and was glad for the fantastic job they’d done in not only getting me through my races, but teaching me the what’s what about being a good pacer.

That first loop flew by (for me, anyway), it being only 12.5 miles. I took the opportunity to get a handle on the course, where to encourage Toni to walk, where to push her to run, and what the aid stations had to offer a tired, cold and hungry 100-miler.

She was setting an impressive pace even at that late stage in the race, so I knew the seventh loop would be about helping her keep that momentum through what would be her toughest section, the wee hours of the morning where the finish line still seems far away and the night seems really goddamn long.

Where I’d turned up the obnoxious energy on Bob and Beth at the Burning River 100 last summer (JAZZ HANDS!), Toni seemed like she needed something different during that seventh loop. So with the usual sorts of pacer-runner conversation all tapped out after loop 6, we got silly on that next loop.

“Oprah Winfrey, Hilary Clinton, and the Octomom. Marry one, fuck one, kill one. What do you do?”

Hey, folks, this is what passes for deep conversation at mile 75.

All the while, we stuck together like Cheerios.

We walked the uphills, we ran the downhills, and I nagged at Toni to push the pace on the flats that made up the majority of the Umstead course. At the halfway point aid station, I bugged her about eating, and showed her the magic that is chicken noodle soup in the worst hours of a 100. (She’d done the same for me after all, pushing watermelon and oranges on me when no other food looked remotely appetizing at mile 95 of MMT.)

As we were wrapping up loop 7, she was still running strong, but I could see the hurt starting to show. The walk breaks were longer, the gels tasted nastier, her morale was lower.

Nearing the turn to the start/finish aid station, she asked me: “Will you run the next loop too?”

38 miles instead of 24? Sure why not?

‘Okay okay okay okay …’

A crew shift is never pretty at 3 a.m.

The runner is shot, burnt and beat, ready for the sun to just please come the hell up. The pacer is damn near as tired after standing watch for three to six hours, ignoring his or her own needs in the interest of keeping their runner rolling. And the crew is sleep-deprived, bored, grumpy and cold.

When Toni and I rolled in, it was no different. The crew was to the winds. Sleeping, helping other runners, getting a car unstuck from the mud, you name it.

She motored through while I changed batteries on our headlamps and tried not to be grumpy as hell with the crew. I’d been in their position a few times, after all, and knew it was simply lack of sleep that had us all firing on a few less cylinders than usual.

With my Camelbak refilled and fresh batteries in our headlamps, I dashed back out of the aid station, sprinting up the hill to catch up to Toni, who was still setting a great and consistent pace as she began her eighth and final loop, 87.5 miles in the bag.

She was hurting at that point. Seriously hurting, and doubting whether she had it in her to finish sub-24.

But after a bit of foggy-headed math, I knew that if we pushed hard she’d still get in under 24 hours.

So we kept rolling, and negotiating along the way.

“You can walk this hill, but you’ve gotta start running when we get to the top.”

“I’m not ready to run yet.”

“Then we’ll run when we get to that tree.”

“Okay.”

Early on in that loop, we ran into our friend Bill, who was on his seventh loop — part of the fun of a loop course is seeing friends multiple times on the trail — and we briefly caught up with him on how his race was going. His enthusiasm gave us both a shot of energy and we kept setting a great pace.

Toni was getting more and more ragged as each of the miles clicked by, but she showed no signs of letting up on the pace. That sub-24 goal was still firmly fixed in her sights and it didn’t take much to get her fired up each time she’d start walking.

“Hey, there’s some more people up there to catch. Wanna?”

“Okay.”

Coming out of the halfway point aid station, we had just 5.5 miles left to go, but a quick glance at the watch proved that it would be tough to get there. After a quick pit stop, we had the conversation.

The full Umstead crew at the finish line, a little less than 24 hours after Toni's journey began.

“Toni, you’re going to need to run 11-minute miles for the next three miles to get your sub-24. Can you do that?”

“Okay.”

And she did. I don’t know where she found that next gear, but she did. She dug deep. And it was awesome to see it happen.

We hammered through those last few miles, and caught up to Bill again as he was finishing up his seventh loop. He was psyched to see us and picked up his pace to run the last few hundred yards, to see Toni earn her sub-24 finish.

She knew she had it, too, and was starting to get choked up at the realization that she was going to hit the goal she’d worked so hard to get these past few months.

It felt like we were flying as we dashed up the last hill to the finish line. I was encouraging her at every step, but all she had left in her for words was “Okay.”

“Okayokayokayokay.”

She crossed the line at 23:57:17.

At the finish, she promptly collapsed into a camp chair, where the race organizers presented her with her sub-24 buckle.

It’s a gold buckle with the Umstead 100 logo, and the words “100 MILES, ONE DAY.”

Few people can say they have one, and I’m proud that I was able to help Toni earn hers.

Nearly 500 runners lined up across a field for the Braveheart-style mob start of the HAT Run 50K.

In the four years that I’ve been running ultramarathons, there is only one race that I’ve managed to fit into my ever-expanding calendar year after year: The HAT Run 50K.

I’d be hard pressed to pick a single race as my all-time favorite, but the HAT Run would definitely be in my Top 5.

There’s no one thing that makes it an obvious choice, but the combination of a lot of little things make it a race that I eagerly anticipate each spring. I love the familial vibe, the Braveheart-style mob start, the cool finisher swag, the always-freezing creek crossings, the combination of short-but-steep hills and runnable field sections that caters to my preferred running style. All of the above, really.

This fourth running of HAT was particularly special because it fell on a noteworthy day — my friend Sara’s birthday. (It also gave us the chance to belatedly celebrate Tom’s birthday, which had passed earlier in the month, on a weekend when he was out of town.)

This year, it was a Birthday HAT Run and we decided to do it in style.

Chocolate cake, pink champagne cupcakes, champagne to drink out of red Solo keg cups and, of course, birthday hats for everyone.

Oh, and there was this 31-mile race beforehand, too.

Slip slidin’ away

The day got off to a bumpy start, thanks to a wrong turn on the drive up to Maryland’s Susquehanna State Park that had us rushing to pick up our race bibs and get prepped for the run amid a hard rain that seemed as if it wouldn’t let up any time soon. We huddled under the starting-area pavilion and tried to make light of the foul weather.

“Mud fest? Hell yeah! Bring it!”

“I wonder how high the creeks will be. Maybe above the knee? That’ll be awesome.”

I didn’t have the usual benefit of a baseball cap to keep the rain out of my eyes, as the 10 of us who were celebrating Sara’s birthday by running 31 miles  opted for multicolored bandanas as birthday hats, each embroidered with the same turtle that’s been sort of a running icon for Sara these past few years since she started running ultras.

The race started just as we wandered over to the starting line, so with a quick “Yikes! See you guys later!” I dashed off across the field to get a good spot toward the front in hopes of not getting jammed up amid the main pack — with 450 runners on the trails, things were likely to be crowded well into the race.

With an initial loop of 3.6 miles and two identical loops of 13.7 miles, the HAT Run course feels like it flies by pretty quickly. I’d lost track of my buddy Tom in the rush off the starting line, but he caught up with me early in the first loop. We chatted briefly and then he powered on down the trail, leaving me in his wake.

Another race with Tom out front early. That meant good incentive for me to set a fast pace in hopes of catching him at some point later in the race. I wasn’t sure whether that would happen, given that I’d run a road marathon the Saturday prior, but I felt like I at least had a sub-6:00 run in me, if not a new personal best.

For that first loop, though, I knew I needed to let Tom go on ahead and run my own race.

The trails started getting soupy as the rains continued over the first five miles or so and many new-to-trails runners were taking the downhills tentatively, so I spent much of those first two loops yelling “On your left!” as I bombed the descents, kicking up mud and having a blast. I was wet and muddy, I had great tunes on the iPod and I felt totally in my element.

I ignored my watch for much of the first half of the race, running by feel and enjoying the miles as they clicked by. But as I cleared the start/finish aid station at the end of the second loop, I checked my time as I passed the 17.3-mile mark. I cleared the aid station at roughly 3:12, which I knew was on par with how I’d done last year, when I set a new personal best on the course.

(Turns out I was three minutes faster this year, I learned later. Tom had cleared the aid station about five minutes ahead of me, but I didn’t know that at the time either.)

The rain had stopped by then, but the temperatures were still cool and the skies overcast — perfect conditions for a hard run on the third loop, if it weren’t for the muddy trails, which were sure to be slippery as hell.

41 seconds faster

I left the aid station feeling rock star strong and I knew I had a sub-6:00 finish locked down, even if the trails were a muddy hellhole for the third loop. But did I have a new personal best? Maybe. That one wasn’t quite so clear.

If I could keep my pace in the low 11s, I knew it’d be close, so I decided to go for it.

One of the things I love about the HAT Run is that the first two loops blend together mentally, so that by the time you’re hitting the final loop you’ve only got 13 miles and change left. If you’re feeling good at 17 and have got something left in the tank, you can really open it up on the last lap without too much worry about a potential death march over the last few miles.

As expected, the mud did provide a bit of a curve ball — the uphills aren’t normally too tough at HAT, as the climbs top out at about 300 feet, but those short-and-steep ascents are a bit tougher when you’re losing your footing in the mud. Still, I was happy with both my pace and how I was feeling, so I kept rolling up runners throughout the loop.

Over miles 25 and 26, I picked up the pace on a really runnable flat section and was surprised to see that I’d clicked off two back-to-back sub-10:00 miles. I still hadn’t seen Tom, but figured he’d probably finish about five to 10 minutes ahead of me if he’d kept up the kind of pace he was setting at the start.

I hammered through the remaining miles and started doing some rough math in the last half-mile before the finish. If I sprinted a good bit of those last few hundred yards, I’d be on pace to at least match my previous best on the course, if not clear it by a few seconds. So I got my foot into it and took my pace up to 7:30/mile, eyeing the finish line clock the whole way up the last incline to the finish.

As I cleared the line, the clock read 5:51:28. 41 seconds better than my previous course best. A cheap PR, but I’ll take it.

Stumbling along with my finisher’s premiums in hand — a shockingly-bright-orange ball cap and an emergency “space blanket,” each emblazoned with the HAT Run logo — I bumped into Tom.

“How long you been done?”

“Dude, I just finished.”

Turned out that he’d come in about 37 seconds ahead of me in his first running of the HAT course. He’s gonna crush this one next year when he’s got the benefit of some course knowledge under his belt.

Of cupcakes and champagne

Tom and I wolf down some chow at the HAT Run finish. The green tuxedo T-shirt that Tom's wearing was his birthday present from the gang this year. Yeah, we're like that.

With the rest of the gang still out on the course, Tom and I wandered over to the pavilion to wolf down some food. One of the best parts of the HAT Run is the post-race food spread and this year was no different. There was plenty of hot food, including hot dogs, jambalaya, ramen noodles and other assorted goodies.

I can cheerfully report that ramen noodles and jambalaya go together just fine in the same bowl. That might only be true if you’ve run 31 miles before doing so, admittedly, but that mix was just fine by me thank you very much. And a hot dog on the side? Yes please.

After a quick change into warm and dry clothes, Tom and I met up with Kelley’s husband, Jay, and Stan’s wife, Helen, to watch the rest of the crew roll in. Once everyone was finished, fed and warmed up, we headed back to the cars to kick off the birthday celebrating.

Between Tom and Denise, we had a full spread of birthday dessert goodness, including pink champagne cupcakes and chocolate bundt cake, with champagne to drink — out of red Solo cups. We are a classy operation, after all.

The rain was still coming down in fits and starts, and the temperatures were hovering in the low 50s, but that didn’t stop our celebrating. (Sara spent the celebration wrapped in a military poncho liner retrieved from my trunk and a paper birthday crown — I’m not including a photo of that here because she’d probably have me killed if I did.)

We got a few odd looks from folks leaving the race, but a couple other good friends, Gary and Jeff, showed up to join the festivities. As we sat around goofing and telling trail stories, I thought about why I love the HAT Run enough to keep coming back year after year.

Like I said, I think the course is ideally suited to how I like to run races and my improving times each year are a reward all their own. But what I really enjoy most is that sense of community and camaraderie that the race organizers have somehow managed to preserve even as the field has grown to around 500 runners.

It’s one of those races that just feels like home.

God, I don’t know what I’d do.

A little over five and a half years ago, I felt the itch to go run during an otherwise lazy day watching the waves on Cape Cod.

Those first couple miles hurt like hell, as I recall. And when I got done, I wanted more.

More time, more miles, more of that feeling you only get when you’re out on the ragged edge — that gray and scary area between what you thought were your limits and the discovery beyond.

Back then, two miles was the outer edge of what I thought I was capable of doing. Now, anything less than four or five miles feels like a waste of time. Like, why bother lacing up the running shoes for something so short?

But a few seemingly unrelated incidents this week conspired to remind me that every mile matters. That every second you spend pursuing the passion that in so many ways defines your life is meaningful in the moment.

Dancing with a DNF

Heading into the week, I was feeling cocky after coming off the heels of yet another in a string of personal bests — in this case another sub-6:00 50K that crushed my previous best. The Rock ‘n’ Roll USA Marathon (previously known as the National Marathon) was to be just another training run. The plan was to go easy, running just hard enough to bring my friend Sara in to her first sub-4:00 marathon.

But then the freaky aches and pains started.

It started with my right I.T. band, the same one I’d injured last winter. It felt tight, sore and achy. Then the pain shifted to my hamstring in the same leg, first lower and around the knee, then higher and in the mid-thigh area, then back to the knee for another round.

Oh God. What if I’d injured myself on that last 20-mile training run when we spent the morning horsing around and blowing off a serious case of spring fever?

Had I pushed the mileage too high too quickly as I continue my transition to more minimalist trail and road shoes?

Was I bound for another round of physical therapy in Farouk’s House of Pain?

I backed off the mileage for a few days and let my body rest up after what had been a few weeks of hard-effort miles, but still didn’t feel quite whole going into the race.

I wasn’t going to cop out on Sara, though.

So with around 20,000 other half-marathoners and marathoners, I toed the line for my first road marathon since October 2010 and found myself enjoying the rare opportunity to run alongside such a massive crowd of endurance athletes, around 20,000 in all.

As we made our way to the starting line 10 minutes after the lead pack had begun their 26.2-mile journey — the field was that big — we set out at a fast clip and made quick work of the first eight or nine miles. And then the unseasonably warm temperatures and humidity settled in like a hot, wet blanket over the asphalt of DC.

Within minutes, Sara and I were both sweating buckets and our stomachs were doing back-flips. When Sara started backing off the pace at mile 10 and told me to go ahead, that she wasn’t going to get her sub-4 marathon that day, I totally got it. I was fighting off a wrenching intestinal cramp even as she was telling me to go on ahead, to not wait on her.

The last mile of a race is always the best, and most painful.

As I approached the 13.1-mile mark, where the half-marathoners would turn toward their finish line and the marathoners would continue the second half of their race, I seriously considered dropping.

I felt like crap.

It was only a training run.

I had a 50K coming up the next weekend.

My knee and I.T. band had been bothering me all week.

I felt like crap.

Sure, I could just stop and log my first DNF. No big deal.

I was at peace with it, all Zen and shit.

But as the half-marathoners made their turn to finish, I thought “fuck it, keep going.”

So I did.

And somewhere during mile 13, I found a porta-john and made a quick pit stop. And afterward, I felt a million times better. My stomach settled and I was ready to run.

So I thought, what the hell, let’s go for that sub-4 anyway. I’d have to make up some time to account for the pit stop, but it seemed doable.

And over the next 12 miles, I made it happen. Heat, shaky stomach, sore legs … whatever.

Despite the pit stop, I ran negative splits between the first and second half of the race, thanks in large part to a few fast miles at the end of the race.

What wall?

I was running a 7:20 pace during the last mile, and crossed the finish at 3:58:39.

Remembering the last mile

I felt cooked in the hours immediately following the race and could think of nothing but inhaling some much-needed food and crawling into bed for a nap and, later, an early bedtime.

But on Sunday morning, I felt great. My hamstrings were tight, but I had little soreness to speak of. The nagging pains that had been bothering me in the days leading up to the race were nowhere to be found, in fact.

And to be honest, I hadn’t been giving that much thought until I checked the (not electronic) mail after work on Monday evening.

In the mail was a card from my friend Phil, who I got to know during the Shenandoah Trifecta last summer. Phil is a hell of a runner who was training for his first 100 miler at the time — the legendary and scary-tough Leadville 100 in Colorado — and who had run the Comrades Marathon in South Africa not long before those glorious days of running in the Shenandoah mountains.

It was Phil’s praise of the Comrades experience that led me to enter that race as my goal event of the spring/summer season and his tips in the months since I registered have been a huge help all along.

But for all that advice, it was the simple “Good Luck” card that he sent that meant the world to me. It came at a time when, amid a hectic few weeks on both the work and home fronts, I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the planning required for Comrades.

And it was all the more meaningful when I read his new blog entry that he posted later in the evening, the one in which he shared what it’s like to be forced to walk away from a guiding passion in your life.

See, Phil has a hip injury that pretty much means he’s done running. Forever.

I can’t even imagine what that would be like. Or I don’t want to, maybe. But his post eloquently captures what that means, how it feels.

A few nights ago, lying in bed, it occurred to me how strange a feeling it was trying to recall the last mile I had run.  And why would I want to remember the experience?  Is it because if I never forget that last mile and am able to memorize it in excruciating detail, I will always be able to, in some sense, hold onto running?

It’s a situation beyond his control, but it serves to remind me that even the basics matter.

Train smartly. Recover well.

Push yourself, but be kind to your body.

And remember that every mile matters, that every moment spent pursuing your passion is meaningful.

He can’t run anymore, but I can. And I’m going to.

And I’ll raise that glass of Scotch at Rivets, Phil.

“This is me breathing,” he says as he slides a magazine into his pistol before heading out the door. It’s a simple action, but in that detail you realize that this is the moment when he feels most at home, most comfortable in his own skin, doing what he does best.

Maybe it was the fact that the music that accompanies that scene – Joe Strummer’s “War Cry” – was in rotation on my iPod at the time, or maybe it was something more. But regardless, my PR-crushing run at the Hashawha Hills Trail Run 50K made me think of that scene, as the run felt as natural as anything I’ve ever done.

This is me breathing.

I felt strong at Hashawha – stronger than I’ve felt at an ultra in a long time. It’s probably got something to do with the fact that I spent a dedicated two months resting up and healing up after a demanding 2011. I still ran, but cut my mileage back to roughly half of what I usually do on a weekly basis.

Our club president, Alan, presents me with the Most Improved Trail Runner award for 2011. (Photo by Quatro)

But more so, I suspect this new confidence came at least in part from being named the VHTRC’s Most Improved Trail Runner of the Year for 2011. I’m lucky to be a part of one of the biggest and most talent-rich trail running clubs in the country and I was blown away by that kind of salute from such an amazingly accomplished group of trail runners.

At the awards ceremony, I was chatting with my friend Sophie, who paced me at the Grindstone 100 last fall, about what running two 100-milers in 2011 had done for my running overall. I didn’t realize this until I said it out loud, but knew that it was true even as I was saying it: I’ve gotten to a place with my running where I can take on a 50K and truly get after it.

To run without fear.

To know that you’ve got what it take to not simply finish a 31-mile run, to not just play it safe and know that you’ll finish respectably. But to go out and truly press hard against the edges of what you think you’re capable of and test your limits.

What a difference a year makes

Last year, I went into Hashawha Hills broken.

I was still fighting a couple of nagging injuries, and I’d had a rough encounter with the Massanutten Mountains the week prior on a training run for the MMT 100. I got tore up and spat out, and felt like 170 pounds of chewed bubble gum, physically and spiritually.

So last year, the race in Westminster, Md., was an event that served as a confidence builder for the tougher events that were to come on the 2011 calendar after making it through in one piece and in a respectable amount of time.

This time around, it would be a an early-season leg stretcher, a chance to play with my running tactics and take a few risks on a course blessedly free of rocks, roots and long climbs. With nearly 4,000 feet of elevation change total over two loops of 15.5 miles each it was no joke, but still a course that favors the bold.

We toed the starting line in mid-30s temperatures with 20mph-plus winds, a mix that left us all eager to get moving and warm up. So when the digital clock rolled over to 7:30 a.m., every one of the roughly 100 runners went off like a shot, even the ambling back-of-the-pack crowd. I quickly found myself looking at the backs of a few friends — Pete, Stanley and Beni — as they went out hard.

I knew that at least Pete and Stanley would hold a fast pace throughout the race and that Beni would turn in a strong performance as well, so it was tempting to get my foot into the gas and go after them. But I reminded myself of one of the early pieces of running wisdom I received along the way: “run your own race.”

So I resisted temptation and let them motor on ahead. My plan was to run a tactically sound race, not waste time at the aid stations, and take calculated risks wherever I could.

Within the first 10 miles, I reeled in Beni as she eased back to a more conservative pace, but there was no sign of Pete or Stanley. I suspected that they were only a few minutes ahead of me, but it was hard to tell on that twisting, turning course. The last time I’d seen them, on a quick out-and-back section early in the race, they were about a mile ahead of me, but who knew whether they’d pulled ahead or faded from there?

Not fade away

I reached the aid station at the start/finish line – which at mile 15.5 marked the start of the second loop – at 2:46 and change, which put me on pace for a finish in the mid-5 hour range, exactly as I’d planned. The Girl was there to meet me at the aid station, but made sure to shoo me back out onto the course – she’s already figured out that I dawdle at aid stations.

During that brief stop, though, she asked me how I was feeling. Through a mouthful of PB&J and a section of banana, I said – as much to myself as to her – “I feel out-fucking-standing.”

But as I headed back out onto the course, I had three big questions:

1. How badly would I fade during the second loop?
2. How far the hell ahead were Pete and Stanley?
3. How soon, if ever, would the godawful wind stop?

I set a fast pace heading out of the aid station and, soon enough, I was nearing the 20 mile mark. Looking up one of the many short-but-steep hills that plague the Hashawha course, I saw Pete just ahead of me. I barked out a loud “ooh-rah!” – Pete’s a former jarhead like me – and motored up the hill to catch up with him.

As we caught up on how the last few hours had gone, he told me that he’d gone out harder than he’d planned on the first loop, caught up in the excitement of his second ultramarathon. But he was still running strong with 10 miles to go, so we rolled up the next couple miles together at a fast but comfortable pace.

After a few miles, though, Pete pulled off the trail to make a pit stop and told me to not wait on him.

So I didn’t.

Picking up the pace again on a nice flat section, I noticed that my mile splits weren’t too far off from where they’d been during the first half of the race. It wasn’t very likely that I’d be able to run the second half as quickly as I had the first, but I had a feeling I could get close. And I decided to go for it.

Unafraid.

There were a couple of tough miles during the last 10 and I watched in frustration as my splits topped 12 minutes. But I knew I still had gas in the tank and kept pushing. I was eating well at the aid stations and a welcome injection of hot chicken noodle soup with about an hour left in the race provided a welcome boost of both electrolytes and morale.

After the second trip through the 2.3-mile loop at the northeastern end of the course, a tough section that required runners to run across some open, rolling fields where the wind was blowing hard and the traverse across a few just-steep-enough hills made for awkward footing, I knew the last five or six miles would be easy by comparison.

I got mugged at the Hashawha Hills 50K.

And with about three miles left to go, I could finally “smell the barn” and I put the hammer down. Those last three miles were my among my fastest of the race; as I rounded the turn toward the finish line, I looked down at my watch to find that I’d clocked an 8:41 in the last full mile. I laughed to myself, shook my head and sprinted the last few hundred yards to the finish area.

As I collected my finisher’s award – an awesome ceramic mug – I found myself itching to go log a few more miles. Instead, I checked my watch to confirm my finish time and was psyched to find I’d finished in 5:36:18. Good enough to put me at 29 of 91 finishers – the top third of the field.

I’d only dropped five minutes in the second half of the course – the equivalent of about 20 seconds slower per mile. That’s about as close to even as I could’ve hoped for across the two 15.5-mile loops, and the finish time was both a new personal best for the course and the 50K distance overall. I’d trimmed nearly 50 minutes of my previous finish at Hashawha, and about 6 minutes of my best 50K time ever.

(As it turned out, Stanley was just a few minutes ahead of me most all day, clocking a 5:29 to finish two spots ahead of me in the field; Pete logged a 6:02, a new best at the 50K distance for him in only his second ultra.)

In hindsight, I’d like to say that I was shocked by my finish time, but I wasn’t. I knew what I was capable of doing on that course, and I did it. Period.

What did surprise me, though, was how I felt later in the day, and in the days immediately following. By all rights, I should’ve been hobbling after a run like that, but I wasn’t. When treating a race as a training run for a longer event, the advice goes that you should feel “used, but not used up” at the finish.  That sounds about right for this one.

So what to make of this new-found confidence in my running? I’m not sure yet. Not sure where it came from, not sure what to do with it.

Other than to keep running without fear.

This is me breathing.

It’s 40 miles of rugged single-track trail in North Carolina’s Uwharrie Mountains, the kind of race that veterans say “runs like a 50.” Rolling hills, stream crossings, roots, rocks – a little bit of everything.

Add in the fact that it falls in the first weekend of February, making it one of the first major East Coast races of the year, and Uwharrie can be a tough day.

Especially if you haven’t run more than 25 miles a week in the last two months.

Unlike the last couple winter seasons, I decided to play it smarter this year and ease back considerably for a month or two, to give myself a chance to heal up after a huge 2011. I didn’t want to repeat the mistakes of 2009 and 2010, both years that ended in injuries worthy of a few months in physical therapy.

So after the Magnus Gluteus Maximus 50K in mid-December, I backed off. I knew Uwharrie would be coming up fast, but decided to trust that the base fitness level I’d built up over the course of training for two 100-milers in 2011 would see me through.

It’s only 40 miles in the mountains. What could go wrong?

Driven to distraction

Stan and I at the race start. Photo courtesy of a crazy German guy who overheard Stan and I talking about Solyndra and parachuted into the conversation.

I was mentally exhausted in the few weeks leading up to race day. It had been an especially chaotic time at work and it wasn’t even certain that I’d be able to get away long enough to drive down to North Carolina for the race.

After logging a few hours of work, I was able to bolt out the door and hit the road for Asheboro, N.C., but the five-hour drive was punctuated by a series of stops to answer emails or take calls. I normally use a long drive to a race to get my head focused, but that wasn’t happening this time around.

Between work-related fires, I thought back to my first encounter with the Uwharrie Mountains in 2011. With an I.T. band injury and a day full of rain and mud and cold, I’d logged a 9:33:52 and had a blast on the course. I was hoping for a new personal best on the course this time around, but wasn’t sure whether that’d happen given how under-trained I was going into the race.

In any case, I knew I’d have a great time — the Uwharrie crowd is always very friendly and welcoming. And despite technical trouble during registration that stopped a few of our usual trail crowd from getting in, both Stan and I had managed to score spots on the starting line, so I’d begin the race with some good company.

One blast with the flamethrower later, the starting-line bonfire was in no danger of going out. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Johnstone)

After wolfing down some pasta (and two desserts! and two beers!) at the pre-race dinner Friday night, we crashed early and met up Saturday morning at the starting line, where a redneck dude jump-starting a bonfire was a welcome discovery amid near-freezing temperatures and skies that were once again threatening rain.

Most people use kindling and a lighter to start a fire, but this dude was not messing around. He dragged out a propane tank, attached a line with what looked like a flamethrower nozzle and lit it up. Sure enough, it was a flamethrower. Every guy who was on hand to see that fire-starting exercise had the exact same reaction when he fired up the blowtorch:

Ooooooh. Totally badass. I want one.

After a brief delay as we waited for some stragglers to arrive via the shuttle vans transporting runners to the starting line, we were off on a brief section of road meant to spread the runners out before starting the first long climb of the day, up a rocky ascent that would take us up to the Uwharrie ridge line for our day in the mountains.

And even in that first few hundred yards on the road, I knew my head wasn’t fully in the game.

The Uwharrie Blues

The first 15 miles pretty much flew by as I enjoyed the feeling of being on a course that was familiar after my visit last year. But I soon started losing my mental focus. You wouldn’t know it from my mile splits, but starting at about mile 16, I found myself in a serious funk, my head distracted with thoughts of work, unfinished projects at home, you name it – anything other than the race I should’ve been focusing on.

There was a brief respite of fun just before the mile 20 turnaround, courtesy of two trail goofballs who’d brought out harmonicas and their sense of humor to welcome the runners to the halfway point of the race.

At the turnaround, I found myself feeling overwhelmed by the chaos of the aid station, as friends and family shouted to their runners, volunteers worked to fill bottles, and 20-mile entrants celebrated their finishes.

I headed back out quickly to escape the madness that at any other race would be a welcome sight, and soon encountered Stan on the trail as he was making his way to the aid station. We muttered greetings to one another and griped about how we were feeling. By mutual agreement, we determined that we just weren’t feeling it that day.

Looking a bit worse for the wear on the return leg of the race. (Photo courtesy of Carolina Snapshot, who I was too cheap to pay for the non-watermarked version of this photo)

There’s something about the turnaround at Uwharrie, though. Or maybe it’s out-and-back courses in general. But either way, I felt a new burst of energy at the thought that I was on my way home. Yes, technically I was only halfway done, but the next 20 miles were pointed toward home, rather than away from it. And that makes all the difference in the world.

As I continued to cross paths with 20- and 40-milers making their way to the turnaround, I spent the first mile letting folks know how much distance remained between them and the aid station.

If they’re anything like me, there’s a huge morale boost that comes with knowing you’re less than a mile from the next aid. And if they’re not and weren’t interested in knowing, well, too bad. I was feeling good about the fact that I was headed back and decided to be overly helpful.

The brief adrenaline boost of the turnaround aid station had faded by mile 25 or so, though, and the noise was starting to creep back in. I knew I had a few more gears despite being undertrained, but I just couldn’t cut through the noise in my head to reach them.

So I decided to drown the noise out with some of my own.

I fired up the iPod and, with White Zombie running at full blast, there was no room to think about anything other than putting one foot in front of the other as quickly as possible.

Within a mile or so, I reached a group of three guys who were setting a solid pace and I decided to latch on to the back and ride their momentum. With my music and the noise in my head both running at full tilt, I didn’t offer any kind of significant greeting, but they didn’t seem to mind (other than occasionally looking back in an apparent attempt to figure out what the hell I was listening to at such high volume that they could hear it beyond my headphones).

The hill at mile 39, shrouded in fog. (Photo courtesy of Shannon Johnstone)

Other than the occasional drizzle, the rain held off for most of the day and the temperatures steadily rose throughout the afternoon. By mid-afternoon, I had shed my gloves, vest and sleeves and was running in just shorts and a T-shirt – a rare treat in what should have otherwise been a cold and miserable early February day. With the rising temperatures, a fog settled that gave the forest a strange look and I was reminded of what I love about the Uwharrie National Forest – it’s got a weird beauty all its own.

The last few miles of the Uwharrie Mountain Run are a mix of everything trail runners love and hate about their sport. There are long runnable sections free of rocks and roots, where you can open it up and really fly – as best you can with legs thrashed by relentlessly unforgiving mountain terrain.

And then there’s the last mile or so. It’s a section that should be sweet, sweet downhill, with just enough grade to make for an easy descent. Except for the rocks. Scores and scores of loose rocks just waiting to roll and twist the ankle of an unsuspecting runner.

By that point, I was ready to be done with the run, but had to slow down and take it easy through that tough section, muttering to myself the whole way down, and occasionally hearing runners ahead of me and behind me doing the same.

This beats a finisher's medal any day.

But at the finish, I collected my second pottery finisher’s award courtesy of local artisan Michael Mahan and the thrill of a new personal best washed over me. Despite having gone in woefully under-trained, I had cut 16 minutes off my previous finish at Uwharrie. And as I stumbled over to the food table to get some warm soup and a hot dog and whatever else might be warm and edible, I heard someone call out, “Hey, Rob!”

I looked over to see one of the two guys I’d run most of the course with at last year’s Uwharrie Mountain Run. Like me, they’d come back for more and had also set new personal bests that day.

After a quick change into warm clothes, I hopped a shuttle back to my car for a dash to Bojangles for another round of food. Sweet tea and BoBerry biscuits won’t cure cancer, but they’re pretty much a life-changer for a calorie-depleted ultrarunner.

From there, it was back to the hotel for a quick shower and a nap before Stan finished his day on the trail. And because my stomach clearly was in charge for the rest of the evening, we headed out for Dinner Part II, a quick trip down the street to the Blue Mist Barbecue restaurant for what ended up being some of the most amazing barbecue I’ve had yet.

I am reminded yet again of what makes Uwharrie a perennial favorite among the VHTRC and, already, people are talking about getting a big group together to make a huge club showing at Uwharrie in 2013.

I know I’ll be there. Wouldn’t miss it.

Number of miles run: 1,519.45

Total feet of elevation gain: 165,358

Ultras finished: 13

Road races finished: 3

Cases of Ilotibial Band Syndrome: 1

Months spent in Farouk’s House of Pain: 2

100-milers attempted: 2

Number of stormtrooper helmets seen while hallucinating: 3

Rockstar pacers: 6

Magic quesadillas consumed: 2

100-milers completed: 2

Days volunteered at aid stations: 2

100-milers paced: 1

All-night dance parties: 1

Time spent running: 322:39:53

Number of runs logged: 102

Course and distance PRs: 7

Consecutive days spent mountain running: 3

Days spent running in costume: 1

Bonus miles logged: 5

Pairs of shoes destroyed: 5

Number of states run in: 8

VHTRC memberships renewed: 1

Moments of unbridled joy: Too many to count

Thanks for a great year, 2011.