I opted to run Bighorn after losing out on both the Hardrock
and Wasatch lotteries. Fortunately
Bighorn hasn't needed to institute a lottery system yet so it was just a matter
of registering early enough to secure a spot after learning of my lottery disappointments. The only real reservation I had about running
Bighorn was trying to cram in enough training through the winter to be ready
for a mid-June 100. I pretty much sacrificed
another ski season to get in consistent weekly mileage and made sure to get in
at least one long run a week from Dec on.
Amazingly, I got through the entire winter and spring putting in
consistent 65-85 mile weeks, never got so much as a sniffle, and ran every day
from late Jan through to race day. On
top of the consistent weekly training I managed to squeeze in a 48 mile
adventure run across Zion National Park in May with my regular training partner,
Jake. Beyond that I opted not to race
any early season races and put all my eggs in the Bighorn basket for a few reasons: First, I wanted to avoid the up and down periods
of taper and recovery which disrupt the consistent training I feel I need to be
successful at the 100 mile distance. Second,
I am incapable of lining up at the start of a race and not giving 100% effort. Third, because of that effort, the demands of
ultra-distance racing are such that I can only handle one or two efforts a year
and adequately recover. Fourth,
distances of less than 100 miles don’t hold much mystery or allure anymore.
My taper was
uneventful but slightly different from the past few races as my coach, Howard
Nippert, changed up the schedule to a 4 day rotation with some solid longer
interval sessions than we have historically done. Usually we work on shorter turnover intervals
like 200’s-800’s but he gave me a bunch of longer 1 to 2 mile repeat
workouts. My body seemed to respond
really well to these and I was seeing consistent improvement in my paces all
the way through to race day. I headed
out for Sheridan, WY on the Wed of race week with Timmy Parr from Gunnison and
we took a leisurely couple of days to get up to the Thursday packet pickup. After leaving our drop bags we drove out to the
start and ran the first few miles of the course to shake out the legs. With an 11 am start time it was easy to get a
full night’s sleep and it was more of an issue of filling the hours before the
start. I actually managed to get a bunch
of work done before we had to drive out to the start for the pre-race briefing
and 3.5 mile carpool to the actual start line.
We caught a ride to the start with my friend Adam Schwartz-Lowe and his
friends from Minneapolis. Little did I
know that the hour Adam and I spent killing time before the start was just the
pre-cursor to the next 20+ hrs we would share together.
The race start was uneventful with Adam and I jogging
together on the road just behind a large lead pack of about 20 runners. We quickly came to the trailhead and began
the long ascent of the Tongue River Canyon.
While the early climb was mostly runnable, we mixed in a good bit of
hiking and passed the first few miles to the first aid station with easy
conversation. I had to stop briefly to
reload some Perpetuem in one of my bottles and quickly got passed by 3 runners
or so. The climb out of the first aid
was about 3 miles long, pretty steep, and packed with about 4 or 5 false
summits. I caught up to Adam about 1/3
of the way up and we hung together until we topped out on Horse Creek
Ridge. After a short and sweet descent
to Sheep Creek we climbed briefly to the mile 8 aid station. We left the aid with one other runner and the
3 of us set an easy pace on the rolling uphill to the road crossing at Camp
Creek Ridge. Somewhere in that stretch
we caught the lead woman and the 4 of us cruised the last bit of downhill into
the Dry Fork aid station at mile 13.5.
Dry Fork was only one of 3 aid stations with drop bag access
so I needed to spend a couple of minutes reloading my pack with gels and
Perpetuem for the next 16.5 miles. It
took me a little longer to transition than I would have liked and I left the
aid about a minute or so behind the group I came in with. From Dry Fork the course generally went
downhill in a rolling fashion for the next 6 miles. They were mostly uneventful miles and I caught
back up with Adam at some point in that stretch. We came into and left the next aid station
together. We shuffled back and forth
with a few other runners on the long rolling 7 mile stretch to the next aid
station. This was some of the best running
on the whole course with generally smooth singletrack, expansive views, amazing
wildflowers, and a great mix of terrain.
I’ll come back to Bighorn for this stretch of running alone. We pulled into the 26.5 mile aid at Bear
Camp, did a quick bottle top off, and dropped steeply into the Little Bighorn
Canyon. I took it pretty easy on my
quads through this stretch and pulled into the 30 mile aid at Footbridge with
my legs feeling exactly as planned, like I had made little to no effort thus
far. I figured with a long 18 mile climb
ahead of us that I would probably reach the mile 48 turnaround with my legs
feeling relatively intact for a good thrashing on the inbound. I spent a couple of minutes reloading my pack
for the long stretch to my next drop bag, paused briefly to get my weight
checked, and headed out of the aid in lockstep with Adam.
The 3.5 mile stretch out of Footbridge to the Cathedral Rock
aid station is the most technical of the entire race and climbs pretty steeply
in spots. I began to feel pretty woozy
in here and had a few dizzy spells that kept my pace and effort in check. I tried to push fluids and sugar as much as
possible through here and I am not sure what the issue was as it wasn't too hot
that late in the afternoon. It didn't
take too long to get to the next aid and I downed a couple of cups of Pepsi in
the hopes of perking up a little. It
didn't make too much of difference over the next 6.5 miles to the Spring Marsh
aid station but I increased the frequency of my gel intake to 1 every ½ hr
instead of every 40 minutes and I think that helped eventually. The stretch to Spring Marsh was a tough mix of
technical rolling trail and I was stumbling a bit through here. Adam and I continued to match pace and came
into the aid together. I took a minute
or two longer than Adam getting my bottles refilled and eating some soup but
caught up to him somewhere along the climb to the Elk Camp aid. I made too much of an effort at keeping my
feet dry during this stretch since once Adam and I got out of Elk Camp it was
pretty much a mud and standing water fest to the turnaround at Jaws. Despite the horrendous footing and shoe/soul
sucking mud we made pretty quick work of the 4+ miles to the Jaws trailhead
turnaround. We ran into the leaders a
few miles from the turn and it was cool to see that the gap wasn't huge meaning
we were running a really solid race. We
came to the Devil’s Canyon Rd crossing (and course high point) sooner than I
expected and it was another easy but wet mile to the aid. We pulled in to Jaws just a little over 10hrs
elapsed and got ourselves ready for the next 8 hrs of night running ahead.
After restocking my pack, organizing lights, downing a cup
of soup and a coke, and throwing on a light jacket I headed out of the aid. Adam was quickly on my tail and we began the long
descent back to Footbridge in the twilight.
The next few hours back to Footbridge were mostly uneventful. We each had to stop to deal with various foot
issues and nature breaks but we always managed to end up running together and
pulled in to Footbridge in lockstep. We
both stopped to deal with our feet and change socks. It was pretty chilly down at the aid and we
had our longest stop of the race there.
I was getting pretty cold by the time we were ready to head out but I
figured a light jacket and brisk uphill hike for the next hour was sure to
bring back the warmth.
We left
Footbridge together but the cold had sapped some of my energy and I found
myself falling behind Adam a bit on the early part of the climb. We came to a more runnable section and I
tripped and fell pretty hard. Adam
stopped to check on me but I told him to go on and run his own race and that I
would be fine. It took me a minute or so
to get myself back together and start moving.
I continued to eat pretty consistently through this stretch and my
energy began to return as the climb got steeper. My light began to fade and I reached into my
pack for the spare I was carrying only to find that I wasn't able to turn it
on. It was in some weird lock mode and I
didn't realize until the awards breakfast the next day that I had to keep the
on button depressed for several seconds to unlock it. I figured there was still a few hours of
darkness left but if it came down to it I could switch my semi-working light to
the reading LEDs to survive.
Fortunately, I soon caught back up to Adam and was able to use the light
from his setup to provide additional illumination for me. We knocked off the 3 mile climb from
Footbridge back to Bear Camp in about an hour and moved quickly through the aid
onto the rolling 7 mile stretch to Cow Camp.
We made pretty good time and did a lot of running over the
next stretch. Despite how well we were
moving there wasn't a whole lot of carnage in front of us to pick up (although
we did run down a couple of folks) and we even got passed by Tom Remkes, who
was absolutely flying through here. We
came into Cow Camp as it was getting light and readied ourselves for the 6 mile
grunt back up to the Dry Fork aid station and a chance to dump all our
nighttime gear at our drop bags.
After rolling along through a lot of runnable terrain we
finally came to the last steep climb up to the aid station. At one point we looked back and were
surprised to see a couple of runners not too far behind. I was amazed because we had been moving so
steadily and were on such a fast pace for the course but it turns out the front
of the field was amazingly deep and strong this year. We got into the tent at Dry Fork in the
bitter cold of dawn, swapped out our lights, etc… and readied ourselves for a
strong 17+ mile push to the finish. We
were still moving well as we climbed out of the aid and topped out on Camp
Creek Ridge with the sun finally peeking over the mountains and bringing much
needed warmth. We pretty much hammered
the next 4 miles or so back to Sheep Creek Aid clicking off sub 10 min miles
and reeling in a few runners along the way.
After a quick bottle fill at Sheep Creek we headed up the
last climb to Horse Creek Ridge. I still
had really strong climbing legs and quickly passed Tom Remkes on the short
grunt to the ridge. By this point Adam
and I had decided to finish together barring a major implosion by either of us
so we hung together on the long steep downhill back to the lower Sheep Creek
Aid station. We could both smell the
barn and with less than 10 miles left we didn’t need to preserve our quads for
much of anything so we made good time heading down to the aid. Amazingly, we were still in a group of 4 or 5
other runners and got passed by a couple of them on the run in. I think we passed one or two others on our
way out from the lower aid station on the awesome singletrack section along the
Tongue River. After a very long 2 miles
from lower Sheep Creek we finally came to the trailhead and the last 5 mile
stretch of the Tongue River Canyon Rd.
As we rolled along the road out of the aid station Adam’s
friend Denny met us on his bike and accompanied us for the long dusty run in to
the finish. The road really kicked my
ass at the end and I didn't have a whole lot of legs left after the hammering
descent from Horse Creek Ridge but Adam and I matched stride for stride toward
the finish. Eventually we came to the
pavement marking the outskirts of Dayton, crossed the bridge over the river,
crossed the highway, ran past the Elk statue, turned into Scott Park, and ran
the final few yards to the finish. We
crossed together at 22:23:50 elapsed in a tie for 9th overall. Not only was the race a monster 100 mile PR
for me but it was also the first time I've ever broken 24hrs in a 100
miler. I am glad I got to share such a
strong finish (and every other step of the race) with Adam. I look forward to returning to such a well run and fun event, just hopefully not during a "mud" year.
