I didn’t think I would ever do something like Cactus Rose 50. In fact, I used to complain about DRIVING 50 miles. But then…I also didn’t used to think I could do 50K and that has proven to be a somewhat regular occurence for me…whether in training or at races. But, 50 miles is more…MUCH more. It’s 19 miles more than a 50K! I had never run this far before and when you are entering a world of unknown limits and abilities it’s almost a given that you will have doubts.

My doubts surfaced as a belief that I may not be able to finish. I had trained hard, I knew I put the miles in…but mentally, I was not there. In fact I wasn’t there even at 4:59am when I toed the line!

Then I heard “GO!” and everything snapped into focus like a flash of light. Many of my miles training were done with runners MUCH faster than me. People like my friend and running mentor Ty Reagan. Others that have been runners for many many years…some of which did this in college…competitively. What that translated into when I heard the word “GO!” was an eagerness to go out with the lead pack.

(As an aside, I have found that what works for me is to push myself close to my limit early in a race and see how long I can hold it. It’s what some would consider a dangerous or fool-hearted strategy for races but “pacing” has just always allowed me to fall into a rhythm that I can’t seem to break out of.)

Running with the lead pack is fun…albeit hard work. It’s great to hear the elite runners talk back and forth about different races, training regimens and gear during the race. Maybe the only reason I held onto their pace for 8 miles or so was that I was enthralled in conversation with what I consider to be “the greats”. In fact this distraction helped me get up and over Lucky Peak without even realizing I had done so. Predictably however, when they got bored of talking to each other and settled into race mode, my distraction was gone. I realized I couldn’t hold the pace I was running or I would surely “bonk”. So I backed off.

The first aid station I stopped at was 10 miles in. I had planned this from the start as stopping 5 miles into any ultra is kind of silly in my opinion. The aid station was after a long stretch of fairly flat course so needless to say I was feeling pretty good at this point. I said “Hello” to my trustworthy crew (my wife Courtney, fellow ultramarathoner Billy and his wife) threw down a couple dates and went on my merry way. It was still dark at this point in the race and I had really only trained 2-3 times in the dark. I chose to wear one headlamp while holding another in-hand. This lit up the trail well but as the course got more and more technical, my lack of night running started to show. I was constantly missing on my foot placement…finding the sharpest rocks at times to decide to strike on. Just as I’m deciding to slow my pace again I hear “THUNK”. One of the sotol plants on the course had a stalk hanging over the Jeep road and I hit it perfectly on my headlamp at full speed. Had I not had it I may have knocked myself out completely! OK, THAT was a sign…time to slow down and get ready for the hills.

The next part of the race was one of the gnarliest hills on the course “Ice Cream Hill”…which sounds so sweet and tantalizing…until you’re climbing a 200 ft vertical over just a half mile. Luckily for this hill…just on the other side is a nearly equal descent that you can pretty well bomb if you have some downhill running experience. I took this opportunity as the sun was coming up to tap into my hours and hours of training at the Hill of Life back home in Austin. Ok…back down…but that was just a taste of what was to come and I knew it.

I barreled into the next aid station still feeling pretty good but definitely primed for the challenge within a challenge that was next. 5 more climbs and descents…all very technical and literally back to back. When you look at the profile for the course it shows ZERO valley which is very accurate. As you crest a hill, heart racing…near redline…you descend again with just enough time to regain your confidence that you can keep on-pace…then another climb. Luckily these are broken up by an aid station at Boyles but not before you must climb Sky Island…a slogfest (at least for me) that includes a 300 foot vertical in less than a mile. That’s about a 7.5% grade over a mile of rock strewn, Texas Sotol covered trail. At the top I felt like all the wind had been let out of my sails but I knew the next part was going to recharge me…a fast, fun downhill section followed by the Boyles aid station halfway up the next climb.

I got to Boyles and was feeling….good…but not great like I had been earlier in the race…the climbing and descending was starting to take a toll on my muscle endurance and I was slowing. Courtney showed me my entry times for the aid stations up to that point and the time between stations was starting to lengthen. If I couldn’t hold onto pace I felt I was in danger of a steady slide into “Bonkville”. I fueled up with a PBNJ, gels, a half a can of Redbull and some M&Ms (which made me so happy…it’s the little things) and was on my way again.

Time to hammer down…I sent myself on a kamikaze ride toward the Lodge to finish out my first loop. A couple more climbs and then a nice smooth descent onto the last Jeep road that leads back to the start/finish line. By this time I was starting to see the elite runners on their second loop and was motivated by their friendly comments as I passed… “Good job”, “Looking good”, “Keep it up” passed back and forth between our mouths in a way only trail runners (even ones competing against each other) can convey.

Loop 1 DONE! 4:12 at the halfway point! I had reached a personal milestone and the “red mist” had caught me…

I fueled up again and (knowing if I stayed too long I would think too much about the other half that was to come) busted back out of the chute on my start of Loop 2. This loop I was familiar with…having run the relay a year earlier. So I knew the hardest part was going to be the next 10 miles. All those climbs and descents…the rollercoaster of heartbeat and emotion I had to do over again…and NOW…not later. I just decided to put my head down and go to work.

By the time I got to Sky Island the second time around I was feeling the effects of having done these hills twice in a row. I needed FLAT trail…even the descents started to wane on me and what was earlier an entertaining chance to bomb the hills was now just a nagging sting in my quads and knees. I started to get nervous again…those thoughts of not finishing creeping up from my subconscience…playing tricks on me. The Sotol was back too…ripping deeper into the wounds I had incurred earlier in the race. Keeping a consistent pace had become nearly impossible.

I pulled into Equestrian defeated…though I didn’t let my crew know intentionally, they could see it too. All that was entering my mind at this point was, “You’ve run farther than you ever have…the rest of the race is going to be unknown territory”. This, in hindsight, was a thought I should have tried to expel from my mind the second it surfaced…but I didn’t…I let it fester. Perhaps the only thing that kept me going was my crew thinking for me and pushing me back out onto the course.

The next 5 miles was the darkest 5 miles I’ve run in a good while. I had just finished climbing and descending those 5 hills and now here’s that god awfully named, “Ice Cream Hill” in front of me! I climbed it with a sense of acceptance that this was where I was going to bonk…I just knew it. It took me probably twice as long to climb it as when I raced the relay last year. I got to the top and figured, “I’m not going to finish, I might as well check out the view and enjoy where I am”. In that fleeting thought…and with a glance out over the horizon an epiphany came to me… “I’ve just run nearly 40 miles and I’m STILL GOING…maybe not at the pace I was before but it’s still one foot in front of the other”. I picked up my pace and went to bomb the downhill on the opposite side.

That wasn’t a great idea…

My legs were screaming…I could feel my quads at the limit of their endurance…my IT band was starting to “talk to me”. NOT GOOD…I’ve had IT band syndrome before and the symptoms created an immediate lump in my throat. Time for self-preservation I thought…I started to slow…even walking some of the smaller hills. Just about that time I started doing something else that is a sure sign your confidence is wavering…I looked behind me. When I did I saw Lise Plantier barreling down on me. Another shadow in an increasingly dark moment. I pulled myself together…started running again and held off a pass for as long as I could. Just before I hit the next station at Nachos she passed me. I was becoming a sputtering, smoking heap as I screeched into the station.

My crew surrounded me…they had everything I needed including my yoga mat laid out at the station. I collapsed on it going straight into Pigeon Pose to relieve the pain radiating from my IT band. Just then…another runner’s unfortunate defeat became my inspiration. Courtney told me that two runners had just bowed out of the race at Mile 40. One of them had been holding the place ahead of me…another was a 100 miler. All I could think was…”I’m not hurt enough to bow out, I need to get myself together and finish this thing. If those other runners felt this way they’d keep going”. Just then, Billy came to me with some more inspiration…telling me that it’s been an epic run and he’s enjoyed every minute of it…and that I was so close he KNEW I was going to finish it.

10 miles…this was it. The point where your mind becomes the catalyst for your success and your body is just there for the ride. My nutrition to this point was spot on…I felt a little sick from all the gels but otherwise was fresh, full of energy and functioning. Time to tell my body what’s gonna happen and not let it make me quit! We did the math and figured the pace I needed to accomplish my goal…I started my GPS which was off the entire race until now so I could stay on track. I took off for the next aid station…realizing quickly that I was going to need to run intervals if I had a chance at staving off the IT band soreness. It seemed to work…run a little…walk a little. Over and over…push it till it made me tear up…then back off. The frustration of this moment set in when I realized this was where most people make up time. Good shady singletrack…a relatively smooth Jeep road and a flat pasture I should have been able to bomb thru. This section was SO runable…but I didn’t have much run left in me at this point. Rather than focus on what I couldn’t do I thought, “I’m doing this…not fast but I’m doing it”.

At the 5 mile mark I again collapsed under the pain from the IT band and my quads straight onto my waiting yoga mat. Everything hurt…I didn’t want to continue…but I knew there was less than 5 miles to go. There were several crews there…all in good spirits. Some women were right next to us telling us how amazed they were at the performance of the runners. I stored those little compliments deep in my psyche, drank what must have been a gallon of water, fueled up one last time and jumped back out on the trail. The trail again goes into the pasture and I resolved to force myself to run all the way thru it and back into the singletrack before I’d let myself walk again. As I pushed thru the field my crew was honking at me from the Jeep road. I couldn’t let them down. I was GOING to finish.

One last hill and it’s all downhill from there. Lucky Peak…the hill that I COMPLETELY didn’t notice in the beginning of the race was now my only barrier to success. I ran intervals throught the next section…counting down “…only 4.5….only 3.5…only 2.5…have I already gone over Lucky Peak?” Nope…2 miles to go and there it was grinning at me. “OK…all you have to do is get to the top” I thought. “Don’t worry about how fast…just do it.”

Getting to the top of that hill felt like the finish to me. So much so that I forgot I had to keep running. “Oh yeah” I thought as I started to run again. This time though…there was no thinking involved. It was a mile until I’d finish my first 50 miler. Pain was gone, insecurity was gone…it was just an afternoon jog at this point. I started to pick up my pace. As I got closer and closer I could see the Jeep road open up…every turn I thought, “This is the chute…no this is…no this is”. Then finally…there it was! I looked at my watch…I was running an 8 minute mile…where the HECK was THAT the last 10 miles??? People were cheering…I picked it up more. Then just a hundred feet to go I hear, “You just broke 9:30…on your FIRST 50…you should be REALLY proud of yourself!”

I crossed the finish line and was handed a medal and lo and behold…a 5th place trophy??? What felt like a failure the last 10 miles was just the reality that I had left EVERYTHING on that course and gave it my all. And heck…my all wasn’t THAT BAD! I basked in my success for an hour and then slowly hobbled to the car. What an amazing feeling!