Hah!! 
Hey, why not? I pay good money for the pleasure of mucking out my horse’s stall and paddock, toting hay bales and shavings bags and five-gallon water buckets, hauling and dumping into storage containers 50-pound grain sacks, grooming a thousand-pound beast – and I pay it every month. Quite impressive, the upper-body strength you can develop from pushing a manure-filled wheelbarrow up the ramp into the muck truck.
Whatever floats your boat, baby!
I think the google add placement at the bottom of the page is funny:
#1 - Marathon Training Secrets
#2 - Easy Possum Control
Ha!
Tomorrow is the big day. Wish me luck.
Take a very short walking break every five minutes. This advice is not to save you suffering but to help you run your best time. Go.
Luck, although I fear we won’t know how you’ve done until you’ve had a week to recover.
Run well, my friend.
Syclla, somehow I missed your Kooter addition to this thread last month, but as always, I love your writing. Hope the run goes well!
I’ve thought of you and your challenge several times this week, each time sending good luck vibes your way. I look forward to hearing about it soon.
May all your spirit companions be helpful ones…
Scylla, I just found this thread, and wanted to say I thoroughly enjoyed your posts. I hope everything went well out there today.
Ow. Just “Ow.”
9 hours 45 minutes and change. Top third of finishers.
I’m wrecked. Completely and totally wrecked.
I’ll write about it later. I had honest to God real active hallucinations for a spell. Not the mild running fantasy fugues, but like monsters and tormentors and such.
It hurt really really really bad. I don’t think I’ll be doing this again.
Thanks to all the well-wishers. I appreciate it. I sent “Ed the Head” my number, but didn’t see him.
You’re still alive! We’re so lucky that you did this and lived to tell the story. I look forward to reading about your amazing experience.
Congratulations!
Man. 9 hours and 45 minutes. 50 freaking miles. I’m going to run a marathon within two years, but they’ll have to come up with some pretty dire threats before I even contemplate trying to repeat what you did.
Great writing, though.
Scylla: It is now 11 pm here. I get off work at 7 am. You’ve had thirty and a half hours to recuperate. So get up and write me something to read at work. Got it?
Congratulations on the finish - under 10 hours is great!!
Having something like this behind you gives a great sense of accomplishment, so I envy you this latest achievement (meant in a nice way). And I look forward to the write-up.
I wake up at 4 am, and after eating and other necessaries, I shower. In the mirror I am as lean and formidable as a half-starved timber wolf. Narcissistic? Yes, but I am going to try to run fifty miles today which is an entirely narcissistic enterprise. Every day I do 200 pushups, 200 navy seals crunches and fifty pull ups before running. Gone is the showy weightlifting muscle of youth, marbelled with fat like some prime steak. I’ve come a long way in the six years since the birth of my daughter.
When the surgeon entered the operating theatre to bring her into this world, the last thing I said to him was “Be at your best,” and I mumbled it to myself over and over again in my trepidation.
Days later, with my new family at home, I came to realize that such advice was better directed inward. In an earlier post, I called myself “dead.” Not really accurate, but I didn’t care much about myself or anything else. I was just going through life without much feeling or desire. I was making money at work… and that was pretty much the sum total value of my existence.
So I decided to better myself. Today was to be a plateau, a milemarker in the physical and spiritual self-improvement I set about 6 years ago. So I engaged in a little narcissism, told myself that maybe I was pretty tough and I got dressed.
This is what I wore and carried:
No underwear (it will chafe,) but lots of bodyglide. Black bike shorts (in lieu of underwear,) black Underarmour streaker shorts, black underamoour cold gear shirt, black underarmour tshirt, old sweatshirt to throw away after I got moving, black gloves, black knit cap, white underarmour socks, and my Nike Air Pegasus running shoes-nicely broken in, wristwatch, Runner’s Id with medical directives and contact numbers… in case.
Around my waist goes my empty camelback pack. Instead of water it carries, keys, money, ID, credit card, eight power bars, four energy gels, sunglasses, cell phone, Advil and Tylenol, my GPS (carried always since I got lost in the woods in Spring.)
I eat and am out the door. It’s about 22 degrees.
I drive to Boonsboro, undergo the briefing (which seems to me remarkably similar to when I talked to the clown before going bullriding,) hit the Porta potty and just like that, it’s 7 am, the race has started, and I run to catch up!
The first two miles are straight uphill. Many of the more intelligent people engaging in this pointless race are conserving their energy by walking. I am not one of the more intelligent people, so I run.
At the top of the hill we turn into the Appalachian trail where we will be spending the next three hours or so, and I am in for my first surprise. It’s narrow, and so rocky you must watch every foot lest you fall. For fifteen miles I climb mountains and negotiate perilous switchbacks near scenic views that I can’t look at. The gowing is slow and more strenuous then those same miles would be on normal terrain.
So far, spirits are high. It’s early and fun. About two hours in I come to my second surprise. We start to pass some of the people who opted for the 5 am start.
For this particular ultramarathon, if you don’t think you can make it in 12 hours, you have the option of starting at 5am instead of 7am.
As we start to pass them, I can’t help but do a little math.
It is literally impossible that any of these people are going to finish the race. With some of them, you could have told them that right at the start just by looking at them.
Those words I wrote sound like I’m looking down on these people for making a bad decision or not being up to the task or biting off more than they could chew. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Most of these people have a story to tell. You don’t have to listen to them or ask them in order to hear that story. To run with them, in the middle of the woods, ten miles into a fifty mile race they will never finish is all you need to do in order to hear it.
I passed a man with some horrible birth defect. His legs were crooked and his ankle had an extra right angle bend. His spine was curved like a C, and his arms were long and crooked and gorrilla like.
I don’t know what the name of that birth defect is, but I’d seen it before. I’d seen people hobbling down the street on arm crutches with it, or riding chairs. What I have never seen is a man with it, gamely trying to run 50 miles over rough terrain.
There’s no question in my mind that he couldn’t help but know he would not finish. There are time cutoffs you must make at various points. Even with his two hour head start he probably would not be making the first of these. I remembered something I had written earlier in this thread.
It’s not what you do when it matters that defines you. It’s what you do when it doesn’t matter at all.
I remembered something else I’d read once, and I got home and yesterday looked it up.
That man reminded me of that, and I hoped that my being out there meant that maybe I too, was a dreamer of the day, with the will to make them come true. To me this is a test of that possibility.
We pass some more. Some are just old. Some are just overweight. About half of them though have some kind of issue or problem or handicap, something they’ve refused to capitulate to, and they are here, and that is all that is important. Later in the race, I will pass still more of these people, the people that commons sense shouldn’t be here, shouldn’t be doing this. Later still, some of them will pass me and be waiting at the finish line long before I get there.
In a normal road race, the wheelchair racers go first and you never see them. The walkers, the plodders, those with birth defects or medical problems start at the back and you never see them.
For this, there were no wheelchair racers because of the trail. The challenged racers started two hours earlier, and we get to see some of them and run with them.
They are disproportionately represented here. I guess doing something like this is more important to somebody with a problem than somebody without one. I guess normal people don’t do these kind of things and most of us have some kind of problem and have focussed on this race as a way of dealing with it.
I also guess that someone with a disability like that might resent me daring to identify with him or her. But I did, and I do. It was kind of neat, and a guy out there with a metal leg running fifty miles is exactly the kind of pointless but noble exercise I was seeking. Do it because it’s pointless, because it’s stupid and difficult. Do it because you have something to prove.
After the final switchbacks we come down to the old C&O canal towpath where we will running 30 or so miles. It’s nice and beautiful and peaceful and flat and level. The field has strung out and you can run without being impeded. I stop for a full two minutes at the rest stop at the beginning and quaff power gels, and gatorade, refill my bottle and decide to make time.
There’s not much to say about this part. I still feel good for a while. I run. I pass Antietam, the B&O railroad, Harper’s Ferry, The site of the Battle of Maryland Heights and other such places. Time passes.
Five hours into it, and I’m at the mile 27 food and water station. I feel like I’ve run about 30-35 miles because of the difficulty of the Appalachian Trail. I fuel up and make a bad decision. I will continue to push myself and try to make time to the 38 mile stop where I will have a friend waiting. He is not just any friend, he’s the surgeon who delivered my baby that day, and we have become the best of friends.
I meet two girls who are running close to the same pace. We run together for a while and we chat. They tell me that they’re going to walk a little and I run on, still feeling strong.
I crash all at once at mile 34. I had felt tired and sore, but nothing that led me to expect what was happening. I was dizzy and nauseas and weak. I could barely lift my legs.
I slowed to a walk. A minute later I stopped and leaned on a tree. Then I sat down. Shit! I pushed to hard. I understood what was happening. I had read about it before. I was “bonking.” Bonking simply means that your tank is empty. I had never experienced this before, being completely used up, but here I was. You can’t eat or drink enough to carry you through this race beforehand, and you’re body can’t consume enough of itself to sustain you. You must eat. You must drink, and you must do so in prodigious quantities.
Apparently I hadn’t.
I tried to chew a power bar and couldn’t make saliva to mush it up enough to swallow, I sucked down a little gatoraid from my bottle and started walking. A few minutes later I started to gag, but held onto my power bar. Slowly I forced myself to drink my whole bottle of fluid, most of a liter, fighting the nausea the whole way.
The girls I’d talked to before passed me, as did a lot of other people. A few minutes later I started to feel a little better and began to run. A few minutes later I started to feel worse but kept running.
Everything hurt, everything was misery.
Somebody once told me that when things get as bad as they can possibly be, when things hurt as much as they possibly can, when everything it at it’s worst, than that’s it. It doesn’t get any worse.
Or, more concisely, when you hit rock bottom, you can’t get lower.
If you can deal with it, and handle it, you will succeed that’s all there is to it.
Things don’t get better, but they don’t get worse. It’s misery, a sufferfest, but it’s not getting worse.
I make it to mile 38, and see my friend. He asks me if I want to quit.
“No.” I say. “If I quit then I’ll have to come back and finish another time, and I don’t ever want to do this again.”
I smile and he takes my picture, and frankly I don’t remember too much, but I am off and running a strange pattern: Ten minutes of running, a minute of walking. Later the running drops and the walking increases. The suffering remains the same regardless as I slowly break down and begin to fail. I am right there at the edge of failure, the whole time. Everything my body has to offer it is giving. During every rest, I eat and drink, and a few minutes later I get the energy to run a few more minutes. The only thing that is changing is the duration of my running and resting periods… and one other thing.
My knee is failing. I have a bad knee that I compensate for. I’ve kind of learned to live with the ache, because it aches every day. It was scoped when I was seventeen. Now though, it’s beginning to refuse to bend, and when it does, it buckles and I stagger and almost fall.
My shoulders hurt from rotating my arms for so many hours. My abdomen and back ache. My neck hurts. My eyes hurt from the salt crust of dried sweat. It really really sucks, and I still have ten miles to go.
Then something interesting happens. I run into one of the girls I’d talked to earlier. She is gagging at the side of the path. I decide to stop and help her, using this as a convenient excuse to rest. She gets up immediately and starts to walk, and tells me to go on, she doesn’t want to keep me.
“You’re dehydrated,” I say. “Here. Drink this.” I give her my water bottle. She takes a sip and tries to hand it back. “You need it. Drink the whole thing.” She talks and tells me her story. It’s the same story I had 6-7 miles before. She drinks my whole bottle under protest and hands it back. “You’ll start to feel better. Stop and drink a lot at the next stop. Carry water and don’t run until you’ve digested it. You’ll make it. I can see it. You look better already.”
“I do?”
“Yes.” And I leave her, and I run strong. I said this was interesting, and it is. By helping her, I felt better, I felt stronger. I guess if I was able to help somebody else it meant that I must be ok. If it wasn’t true beforehand, it was true now. By helping somebody else I made myself ok. I made myself stronger.
That sounds trite, and moralistic, like something you read in a children’s book, fairy tale or see on Sesame Street. The fact though is that it was true. I was stronger and felt better by helping her. Probably it was just because I wasn’t focussing on my own misery and suffering.
Shortly I leave the canal and have eight miles left to run on a road. Forty-two miles are behind me. I go back to suffering. I think about the Princess Bride “I heard it. It was the sound of ultimate suffering so it can only have been the man in black,” says Inigo Montoya. I am wearing black and it feels like ultimate suffering, and it just keeps going on. It never gets worse, it never gets better, like a whole body toothache.
And I chose to do this.
I start to actively hallucinate. Those two guys from “Wagon Train” are sitting on my forehead mumbling something… Giant pinecones filled with television static come rolling towards me… I don’t see God, or childhood friends, and nobody says anything intelligible.
I pass a man, and he is mumbling “I don’t know why. I don’t know why.” Over and over again.
As I pass, I say “Ours is not to reason why…” and he gives me a strange puzzled look, like I’m weird or something.
A minute later, I realize that it was me that had been mumbling “I don’t know why. I don’t know why,” and not the other guy, and answered myself as if he was talking. I was weird. I laughed out loud. Somebody else laughed, or maybe that was still me.
A sign says “4 miles to go.”
This is just ridiculous.
There’s a water stop and I pull myself together. I consume beverages and food, but it only buys me a couple of hundred yards before I’m back in the Pit of Despair (another Princess Bride place.)
After my next walk I have physical difficulty breaking into a jog. My body just doesn’t seem to be able to do it. Finally, I transition and decide that this is it. A little over two miles to go. I’m not stopping or walking again.
This turns out to be an easy promise to keep. I am suffering just as badly walking as I am running… so I might as well run
A sign says 1/2 mile to go. I turn and begin slogging to the finish.
And I almost get hit by a car!
Some person is somehow on this road by accident trying to make a u-turn. I’m not even aware that they are there until the brakes screech and I’m looking at the bumper, a few inches away from me.
49 1/2 miles to get hit by a car. That would have sucked. I ruminate on this idly as it takes me aproximately a thousand years to reach the finish line.
I cross in 9 hours forty five minutes and change. I get my finishers medal, and ask where the bus is, and get right on it, feeling neither elated, nor triumphant, nor anything else. It just is.
Five minutes later, I’m still at the bus looking out the window. I see the girl helped. She has her arm around two other girls who are half carrying her to the comfort station. I wonder if she made it, or if she got picked up. I never find out
At 4 am my wife wakes me up and asks if I’m ok.
I wake up and I am drenched in sweat like I’ve never been before. The sheet is soaked, the comforter is soaked, the pillow is so wet you can squeeze water from it. I’m dripping. The stench of my sweat woke her up.
I feel fine, if vaguely alarmed. I go to the bathroom and I pee blood.
This is somewhat alarming, but I really feel ok. I lay a towel down on the bed, and go back to sleep. The next day I am really really sore, and hungry. I get on the internet and read about a phenomenom called a “nitrogen dump.”
This sometimes happens when your body gets put through tremendous stress and has to get rid of copious amounts of poison in your system (fatigue poisons in my case.) I learn that it sometimes happens to people when they do things like run 50 miles. It also happens to drug addicts. Apparently, it’s a good sign.
The peeing blood isn’t necessarily a good thing, but apparently that happens to.
Today I feel fine if still a little sore.
And, that’s how that happened.
Never again.
::applause::
I don’t believe you. I think you’ll start wondering if you can do better next year. Hell I’ve thought about doing it again and I hate running. But then I remember how much I don’t like to run and forget it.
FWIW my father recomends running for X then walking for a minute, Run for X, Walk for a minute. I think he says 10 minutes of running but I don’t remember for sure. The walk though is supposed to be around 4 MPH and not slow.
So if you’re not back next year I think you’ll be back the year after.
Serious reply:
Well done sir.
Well done indeed.
Silly answer:
However I have one question, shouldn’t your spirit animal have been a groundhog?
I completed a 24 hour track race by walking one straight on each quarter mile lap. It worked great, I beat a bunch of people who I think were really fitter than me.
Congratulations, Scylla!
Congratulations!
Heh-heh. Kind of glad I waited until today to finally open this thread. I’m wise to the ways of Scylla’s posting.
This thread had a lot of relevance for me, although I’m not much on running and not sure if my knees could take it if I wanted to.
Sir, what was the deal with your daughter? Stuff like that is my ultimate nightmare and I don’t recall seeing anything about this previously.