My 7 Maddest Races
A final post on running. For now.
I am posting this the weekend I should have been competing in my eighth consecutive Cat’s Tail Trail Marathon. The car accident put me off my training, and my enthusiasm with it, and once I realized that the ticket(s) I’d bought to see IDLES in NYC were for the same weekend, I decided to take advantage of a place to stay in Brooklyn instead. I am posting from my old Borough.
It’s a shame to beak this streak: the Cat’s Tail is a race I typically view as my late-season fun/reward race, one I go out to enjoy more than to compete (even against myself). Of course for many people, the idea of covering 26 miles of technical mountain terrain, scaling four of the Catskills’ 3500+ft peaks, and enduring some 7000 ft of elevation gain (plus more in descent), all within the 10 hour time limit, sounds neither ‘fun’ nor ‘enjoyable,’ let alone a ‘reward’. To them – to you? – I refer back to my last article on running, (Baby) Don’t Fear The Ultra, on which I extolled the virtues of the long, inherently hard off-road event or challenge as something truly enjoyable and rewarding once you discover it.
I ended that article by stating, “I’ll detail my fave/maddest/hardest events, both long and short, on a final – for now – forthcoming running post.” This is that post. It is indeed the last of my series of running posts, at least for now. While I appreciate that many of you come to Wordsmith for pop culture, the running series seems to have attracted its own small but dedicated set of readers, which is appropriate as some of the madder races I am about to recall likewise attract a small but dedicated – and arguably just a little bit crazy - set of runners.
I hope my memories entertain you and possibly inspire you. I have consciously not made this a list of my “best” events, because to do so would be even more ego-driven than what still follows. Instead, I have tried to include only the events that offer life lessons as opposed to just running experiences. Still, I guess all of them reflect a certain amount of drive, dedication and… yeah, maybe a little lunacy.
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1) THE MADDEST. Ezakimak 5k, Mammoth Mountain, CA, April 15, 2017.
In early 2017, shortly after my Wilson Pickett biography was published, I was invited to participate in the prestigious Los Angeles Festival of Books at the end of April, all expenses paid. I immediately took the opportunity to book in with my Burning Man friends Gwendolyn Alley and family on the preceding, Easter weekend, at my fave ski mountain, Mammoth, up high at the north end of the Sierra Nevada range.
In researching the trip, I discovered that there would be a race up the Kamikaze bike trail – a blue ski run during winter - at sunset, after the slopes closed on the Saturday. The distance was 5k, and the elevation gain would be 2000ft. My regular training run up Mt Tremper covered the same elevation gain in slightly less distance, so that didn’t put me off. In fact, the only race I’ve ever won was up Mt. Tremper. (It was a small field, and I felt like I had undue home advantage.) Nor was I worried that this was a man-made ski slope rather than a somewhat natural trail; the only race I’ve ever finished second in was a run up my local ski slope, Hunter Mountain’s own long blue run.
But those Catskills uphillers were in summer, on grass, topping out beneath 4000ft. The Ezakimak – Kamikaze spelled backwards, of course – started at 9,000 ft elevation, well above the point of altitude sickness susceptibility. Additionally, we would be ascending on a hard-packed surface of snow and, possibly, ice. To compensate for these extreme circumstances, and no doubt to attract a large field (138 people would finish the race in 2017), the challenge was open not just to runners, but to people on snowshoes, fat-tire bikes and cross-country skis. As such, it was not just a race to the top, but a race to determine the top way to the top.
I wasn’t sure I should enter. For the first half of 2017, I’d hired Dick Vincent as a coach to get me through all of the Manitou’s Revenge ultra, and to break four hours if possible on the Escarpment Run. His training plan had not called for this diversion.
But when I checked in with Dick, he was gung ho. “These are the crazy races you’ll always remember,” he assured me. “Just go out and enjoy it.”
So I did. And given that I was participating just for, y’know, fun, I did what everyone does on a Saturday at a ski mountain in great conditions: I skied hard, all day. And when the day ended I tried stretching my aching quads, changed into some form of winter-ish running gear, and joined a disarmingly youthful, overly fit crowd who seemed quite comfortable with the task at hand. (Mammoth Lakes is one of the top running towns in the U.S., a place where Olympians train, in part because of the elevation and the copious hills.) Sure enough, when the gun went off, that crowd set off at furious pace across the 100 yards or so of flat corduroy which led into some tree cover.
I joined in. Halfway through that hundred yards my heart rate was already in the red zone, with nowhere to go but heart attack. I slowed slightly, and just as well – as we emerged from the tree cover, the extent of our challenge revealed itself: a three-mile solid climb to a summit lodge blinking light a lighthouse in the sky.
That uphill section was something of a death march/shuffle/ride/ski, depending on mode of transport. Running was largely out of the question for me, and by the looks of this picture I took about half-way up the climb, for everyone else behind me too.
Nonetheless, the climb became quite entertaining as skiers overtook cyclists, who overtook runners, who overtook snow-shoers, who overtook skiers, who overtook cyclists again, all depending on the degree of incline at any given moment.
Throughout, I kept my phone at hand for what I hoped would be the perfect photo. This is it, and tell me now, if you had to run a race on a Saturday evening after a full day’s skiing, wouldn’t it be worth it to witness this?
I got to the summit in 53:48. In other words, at what would be a normal walking pace, all things being equal, which they weren’t. Amazingly, I finished in the top 25% of competitors, and second in my ten-year age group. (I cannot find an official results page to confirm whether the m/f winners were runners, skiers, fat-bikers or snow-shoers.)
At the summit, we got a token for a beer - I chose the alcoholic kind - and then a free ride down in the gondola, after which it was a drive back to our rental and and dinner with wine because Gwen is a wine buff and when at Mammoth… Easter morning brought with it the kind of horrendous headache one should expect from a day’s exertion like that, and skiing was something of a wrench. But every year, as the winter temps dig in, and I don the Ezakimak long-sleeve souvenir shirt, I have no problem recalling Dick’s words: “These are the crazy races you’ll always remember.”
2) THE FASTEST. The Onteora Mile, June 12, 2017
If you’ve ever run, for fun or exercise or to get away from Millwall, you have probably run a mile. It’s 1760 yards, or 1609.34 meters – four times round a track with a few more steps for accuracy. Theoretically, it’s nothing fancy.
But when it comes to racing that mile, is there anything tougher? Shorter distances are pure sprints. Longer distances allow for a certain comfort zone. Running a mile flat out, almost regardless of whether your “flat out” is a four minute or fourteen minute mile, is enough to send the heart rate spiking into painful overdrive. It doesn’t help that our own annual one-mile race on the Kingston track takes place in the middle of June, in the evening, at a time of year and day where heat and humidity are at their most oppressive.
That June 2018 I was competing hard for the age group in our Onteora Running Club, which includes the Onteora Mile amongst its ten Grand Prix races. I’d won my group a few times in my 40s, but that was before Donald ‘Mac’ Thurston showed up at the races. I love Don, he makes a mean vegan chili and he’s a good guy, but I don’t like running against him. He’s a weird force of nature – for many years he had no training plan other than to run races at the weekend, often both days. This flies in the face of literally ALL coaching advice, and yet he’d repeatedly ace the pack, at least in his age group, often finishing in the top 3 overall to boot.
Still, that June day I was feeling good…Until Don told me at the start line that a year or so earlier, he’d run a 5:30 mile. “It was a one-off, someone was really competitive with me and we drove each other to our limits,” he added, sensing my unease. Caveat noted. Still, the last time I’d run a 5:30 was in NYC on the Fifth Avenue Mile, which conveniently goes somewhat downhill, back in my thirties. In 2018 I considered anything around 5:45-6:00 topnotch.
My intent then, as always, was to run the first three and a half laps strictly according to my training, and only take it to the bank – or empty the tank, either metaphor works - on the last 200 meters. But Don went out faster than I’d intended and I wasn’t going to let him take the extra Grand Prix point without a notional fight. So I stayed in his slipstream. I knew I was running faster than intended, or than I thought I could, but somehow it felt doable. On the fourth lap I stayed that one step behind him throughout, and then, as we turned the last corner and headed down the 109.36 meter straight, Don found that extra gear, as he does, and peeled away. I crossed the line a very long second behind him – at 5:33.
I was astonished. I may have come second to my age group competition, but I had no idea I still had that speed in me. I have never come close to such a speed again, and I never will. Don went on to win the age group that year, though we took our friendly battle to the last race. I remain grateful that on that June day his pace pushed me beyond what I thought I was capable of. There’s something you learn about yourself in moments like that.
3) THE SURPRISING-EST. The Hastings Half Marathon, March 25 2012.
The Hastings Half was bizarrely, my first ever proper UK race because, as detailed in my other posts, I didn’t become “a runner” until I’d moved to the States. It was now 2012, and I had been training for my second Boston Marathon, which was less than a month away, and the trip back to the UK deliberately came at “taper” point, when I could and should ease off the pedal. I entered the Hastings Half because I’d already planned to stay for the weekend with Tony Page, a few miles down the road, and some of his rowing club friends were doing the event too. But also, I entered because the half marathon is – or at least was, when I ran more of them – my favorite road distance. Instead of running at 95% capacity as you do on a mile, you can cruise at around 80%. The only downside is you have to keep that up for 13.1 miles, though on the upside of that downside, it is only half the distance of a marathon.
And as it was all just for fun, a last long-ish training run before Boston, I broke my cardinal rule of racing and allowed myself a full glass of wine while out at dinner on the Friday night. When we got back, Tony put me in the “spare room”: a mattress on the floor that had just enough space for my body amidst all the Subbuteo pieces. Perhaps because I felt no pressure, I got an amazing night’s sleep.
The morning arrived sunny but cool. Warming up, I felt great. I’d long harbored a goal to break 90 minutes on a half marathon, and had come perilously close a couple of times, so I decided I would give it a shot, but only if it felt right half-way through. Yet the course in Hastings is an odd one, befitting of the town’s seaside perch: it involves climbing hard from the seafront, running the middle section through lightly undulating hills at the top of the town, and then engaging in a truly steep descent before a last couple of flat miles on the promenade. Such a course meant that trying to judge pace was a lost cause; there were no two even miles in a row.
Only when we hit that lengthy home stretch did I calculate that a sub-90 minutes was within my reach – if I could keep up the pace. Fortunately, I’d gotten talking with someone else on a similar goal, and we pushed each other along the sea front. It must have been hard work, but I don’t recall particular pain.
I broke 1 hour 30 minutes with 35 seconds to spare. It was exhilarating. Later in the year, I’d break 1:30 again, but the Hastings Half remains my fastest half-marathon and as with just about all distances, now that I’m 60 it will stay that way. A week later, I ran a trail race in Yorkshire fresh off the train in Manchester after a late night with Orbital; I was clearly in the running zone. I paid the price of not tapering properly at the Boston Marathon itself, but that was okay, it was the heatwave year of mass DNFs and medical treatments, and just finishing was a success. As such, I look back especially fondly on this Hastings Half, knowing it taught me a lesson I would do well to remember: that if you take it easy, chill the heel out and allow yourself no expectations to the point of having a glass of wine the night before your race and bedding down on your mate’s floor… you just might surprise yourself.
4) THE TIREDEST. The Boston Marathon, April 19, 2010
It took six marathons, seven years and a lot of bonking before the stringent age group qualifications for Boston caught up with my own abilities. I’d allowed myself a tear of joy at the finish line of that qualifying run in Burlington, VT in the spring of 2009. But when, in Boston itself on that weird Monday morning that is Patriots Day in New England, I stepped into the shower around 5am, I found myself close to crying for a different reason.
I’d done the right thing and booked a hotel near the finish line in downtown Boston way in advance. And I’d gotten to Boston and gone through the whole ‘Expo’ thing in time to check-in at 4pm… only to find mayhem: the hotel had overbooked. This threw my meal plans off, and tbh, I made the fatal mistake of eating too much that day based on the erroneous supposition that I’d be hungry the next. But what really messed with all my planning, my training and my best of intentions was the room itself (once they found me one), which had a mysterious noise that sounded like air conditioning turning on and off.
It went through this process, all night long, every 30 seconds or so; no matter how I tried, I couldn’t locate the source of the problem, I couldn't sleep through it, and there was no point asking for another room. So when I got on the bus to the start line at stupid o’clock and told the person I sat next to that I hadn’t slept the night before, this wasn’t the usual, “I only got 4 hours but it’s okay because it’s race day.” It was, “I didn’t sleep, I feel frazzled and upset and tired and frustrated and I want to cry about it.”
I didn’t feel much better over the first half of the race either. Boston starts with 5 miles of downhill that kill the quads but also sets runners off too fast for the rolling hills that dominate the second half of the course, including the infamous Heartbreak Hill on mile 21, just around ‘bonking’ point. So I ran cautiously; my goal was to put my own heartbreak behind me, not have to walk, and fake a smile at the finish line. I’d already digested the fact that no one but the elite of the elites runs fast at Boston.
However, I’d also heard all about the Scream Tunnel at the halfway point, where the race passes the all-girls Wellesley College. Reputedly, these female undergrads line the pedestrian fence, offering free kisses with appropriate signage. Sure enough, I heard the screams from a good half-mile away. Given everything that had gone wrong this last 16 hours, I had every intent of losing a few more seconds to take advantage.
Not my video, but the year of my race: it gives you an idea of what the Scream Tunnel brings to the Boston Marathon.
Yes, like many male runners, I was married – which is why one of the girls’ signs read “Kiss Me, I won’t tell your wife.” Others read “Kiss Me, I’m Irish,” “Kiss Me, I’m Muslim” (for real), and “Kiss Me, I’m Gay.” This was all pre-#Metoo, and pre-Covid also: innocent, good-natured and, for us male (or gay) runners, massively appreciated. I partook freely, without ever losing more than a few seconds. And you know what? Those girls energized me. Their sheer enthusiasm – and their shrieking - made me feel like a Beatle. And when those hills kicked in, I felt, “This is what I do. I run hills. I can handle this.” I completed the second half of the course in the exact same time as the first half and crossed the finish line 80 seconds behind my PR, just under the 3:30 mark that automatically qualified me for the next year’s Boston Marathon. I finally allowed myself those tears – and now they were for all the right reasons.
I use this experience continually as a genuine life lesson... Because, every now and then, often for reasons we can’t explain, we have a truly shitty night’s sleep. When that happens, I turn my mind back to April 2010 and figure that if I could run a full marathon at BQ pace on no sleep, I can get on with the subsequent day’s work/travel/tasks on no sleep likewise. We humans are amazing; sometimes we just don’t realize what lies within us.
5) THE BADDEST. Manitou's Revenge, June 26 2021.
As referenced on a previous post, Manitou’s Revenge is ludicrous. It’s 54 miles or so of Catskills Mountains yo-yo like elevation, 15,000 ft of climbing all told, pretty much the entire course “run” on “technical” terrain that’s a euphemism for “one misstep and you’re on the deck.” Widely considered the most brutal course of its type on the eastern half of the States, nobody in their right mind would take it on. Every year, 100 or so people not in their right mind nonetheless line up at 5:15 am – any 5:15 is a good time of day for Who fans – to see if they can finish within the designated 23 or 24 hours or so.
Me, I’m rarely among them. I did half the course a couple of times as a relay team, and I successfully completed the whole event in 2017, but even allowing for it being in my home area, the training commitment and the sheer toughness typically feels like more than I want or need in my life. But in 2021, I figured I’d do it a second time. And I felt properly prepped and trained up until about three days beforehand, when I looked at the weather forecast. In amongst the familiar hot sunny summer weather, June 26 promised lower temperatures, cloudy skies – and uncommonly high humidity hanging around, oh, 90-100% for the duration.
The trade-off between heat and humidity is a tough one. Heat is oppressive, but humidity is the hidden evil. Don Thurston quotes a number – 150 – at which the combined heat and humidity goes beyond the body’s ability to cope. So if it’s only 70 degrees out – as it was on the mountain tops that day – but 80% humidity, as it also was, you’re screwed.
Additionally, rocks trap humidity, which is why people have pebble trays around their plants. And because the clouds hung low and heavy over the Catskills throughout, then rather than dry out after the usual morning humidity, the regions’ multitude of rocks simply got wetter. When, after 30 miles already and well into the afternoon for most of us, we got to the hardest part of the course – the Devil’s Path, which tackles four of the Catskills’ 3500+ peaks in rapid succession with impossibly sharp, angled rocks, hand-over fist climbs and dangerous descents throughout – it truly looked as if it had just been raining.
By this point, several people had already dropped out through dehydration, though that part of me felt okay-ish – I was pounding the S(alt) caps. But on the Devil’s Path, I found it impossible to get a grip. Every time I tried to move faster than a crawl, I felt in danger of falling. The fact that I kept catching up and then falling behind a competitor who had decided to merely hike this section was not lost on me. For the first time in any race, I wished I had brought poles.
At the top of Plateau Mountain, where the Devil’s Path flattens at 4000ft for a while and at which we soon take a left turn for the last 14 or so miles south, I caught up with my friend Chris Gallo, who being younger than me and more of an ultra-marathoner than me, is typically way ahead of me. He was taking a rest, looking absolutely shattered. There was no aid station within an hour’s distance either way for him to drop out. Fortunately, he persisted until the end, though the fact that he finished a solid hour behind my own slow time tells us all something about that day.
It should have gotten easier after the Devil’s Path but the time taken navigating those last few treacherous miles had put me far behind schedule, which meant more hours in darkness, with only my headlamp for company - a lamp that was so weak it forced me to keep up or drop back with others. For the final descent down Mt Tremper – my home mountain for over a decade, remember, a mountain whose every twist and turn I know meticulously – I wobbled like an ugly drunk on a long, long walk home after missing the last bus. Indeed, I barely covered that downhill at walking pace.
Unlike 20% of those who set out that day, I did finish. In 19 hrs and 15 minutes: it was a long day (and night). As with most of us who weren’t among the leaders, it ranked as one of the worst experiences we’d had on these mountain races. In fact, it sucked so bad, was such an unpleasant day out, that six months later… I decided to do a full 100k race (my longest to date) on an easier course in Virginia just so I would have the chance to run more of these long miles than have to wobble on them. As I keep stating, some of us are what you might call crazy, but we call… mad?
6) THE LEAST RUNNING. Cat’s Trail Trail Marathon, Oct 1, 2022.
Perhaps the race I’m most proud of is the one I didn’t race. Didn’t even run. Not a step. And excuse me if you’ve heard this one before, but it merits inclusion… Having often wanted to do the Palace Foundation’s Marathon March – at which CPFC fans walk a road marathon round South London to raise funds for the club’s charity – I secured a first-ever exemption: permission to do the course on the Cat’s Tail 26-miler instead, a week later than the official March and a continent away, and was sent sponsorship forms, a tee-shirt and all. To ensure I had something to strive for, something I could include in pitch e-mails and get on a Palace podcast for, I determined to walk it in the allotted race cut-off of ten hours.
This was no easy goal, and despite putting in some serious training, I wasn’t sure I could do it. I’d need to cover the course - steep climbs, descents and endurance included - at a standard flat road walking pace. But I brought the poles this time, and they helped enormously. By striding hard and deliberately, endeavoring to not stop at all and yet never breaking into the slightest jog, I made it through in 8:32, ahead of quite a few runners, and with a smile on my face. The next day I felt golden. And the Foundation was $1500 better off. (Thanks all.) Who says you need to run a race to run a race?
7) THE DAFTEST. The Jay Peak Trail Running Festival 33-miler, Sep 23, 2023.
At the end of 2022, I fractured my patella, falling – not on the mountains, as would seem logical with all these exploits - but off a one-foot high stage, totally sober, carrying a keyboard and therefore unable to break my fall. I didn’t run for the next four months. For much of that time, I was in a brace, wondering if I would ever be able to run at all: there was a lot of pain and stiffness and Physical Therapy involved, which additionally required considerable dedication at my own end to get me properly back on my feet. But when you’ve had those sleepless marathon experiences, you do learn commitment to the cause, and it was going to take more than this particular fall for me to lose the one activity I most love.
Once I was able to run again it was obvious that the roads were not going to be my friend for a while. Their repetitive stress was hard on that knee, and pace, as a result, was almost impossible. The trails, however, despite the occasional rock descent that I now needed to pause and hike down rather than yake the old leap-first-and-look-later approach, were much more inviting; they undulated, offered me the range of movement that would better serve recovery, and they are also inherently slower. Somehow, I worked up my base fast enough to complete the 30k Escarpment Run at the end of July, barely three months after running my first half-mile again, and still under five hours.
With that in the rearview mirror, I could gear up for the Cat’s Tail a couple of months later, and when I headed up to Vermont to see my older son around Labour Day, figured on a decent trail run or two to keep in training. But then I made the fateful mistake of checking what events might be taking place and my eyes were drawn to the Jay Peak Trail Runs Weekend, with a Saturday full of 5ks, and a Sunday which offered a 1, 2, or 3-loop haul up and down and around the ski slopes.
This is where we came in, isn’t it – on the ski slopes. And as a parallel to Mammoth, Jay Peak is not only my fave mountain on the eastern seaboard - Campbell and I have had many a happy day out there – but I’d argue that objectively, too, it’s the best the east has to offer. I booked a nearby campground for the Saturday and Sunday nights and plotted my event. The 11-miler seemed a little too easy to take the further journey north. The two-loop, 22-miler was a perfect fit, however, its distance slotting right inbetween that of the Escarpment and the Cat’s Tail. A better training event I couldn’t ask for..
And then, in the days leading up, I did some more calculations. I’d be done with the 22-miler by lunchtime. If I wasn’t going to drive home straight away, what would I do with the rest of my Sunday? Campbell wasn’t going to be with me, and I wasn’t even staying at the Jay Peak hotel with its various restaurants, bars and even a cinema. Doing the 3-loop, 33-miler would not only keep me occupied through the afternoon, but get me a groovy hoodie as a prize. I noted the race directors’ claim that this was the hardest 50k on the east coast, but hey, Manitou’s is the hardest 50-miler and I’ve put that one to bed a couple of times. I upgraded.
But I hadn’t listened to my body, which had now started properly racing again and was in desperate need of a massage. I felt all out of whack down my left side, the one with the arthritic knee especially stiff, that stiffness not helped by the fact that for race day, I had a short night’s sleep in my tent and a 6 a.m. race start which had meant a 4:30 a.m. alarm call. Still, I was committed: the rules made it clear that opting out after two loops (or one) counted as a DNF.
The course was as crazy as advertized. The initial 2000-ft ascent took us around the edge of the ski slope, up through some woods where the occasional flat was compensated for by an exposed mile-long climb in the middle so steep I was advised not to look up. At the top, where the aid station was populated by especially cheerful volunteers whose all-day shift in the sunshine is thanked again here, we were sent straight down a double black diamond. If you know anything about steep ski slopes, you may know that when not covered in winter snow, they’re all nasty small rocks and boulders just waiting to twist your ankle. I had brought my poles, and having wisely used them on the ascent, held on to them for balance through this sticky section. Eventually, tired of folding and unfolding them, I used them throughout, as the race undulated, turned, went up hill and down, round and about, eventually down through another section of woods where we picked up a number of casual weekend family hikers, down to a main road and back up to the lodge. It was a long first loop. But it was fun: I chatted with people and got my share of props for being… old?
On the second loop I knew I was stiffening up. In hindsight, using the poles on the downhills was causing me serious damage; I was doing too much arm extension that I just wasn’t used to. But I smiled, continued to make contemporary friends, chatted with and thanked volunteers, and tried to enjoy myself. When I made it back to the lodge the second time, now around that lunchtime hour I’d previously considered far too early to quit, I just wanted to … quit. I knew I should quit. I knew that setting out on the third loop was insane. But I’d signed up for it, I was fixated on the hoodie and besides, I had never posted a Do Not Finish and had no intent of starting now.
That third loop was agony. It was also now extremely hot; despite being on the Canadian border at the end of summer, there’s this called global warming and the sun was beating down. Put it this way: at the top of the long climb round the outside, I finally bit the bullet and tried pickle juice. (To my surprise, I loved it.) By now, the clock was also somewhat against me, and I couldn’t afford to dawdle. Mentally, I was losing it as well, even managing to somehow circle round in a confusing section of criss-crossing trails and double back on a same aid station, adding at least half a mile to my total…
…By which reference you know I finished. And with 40 minutes to spare, which put me third from last. But when I stopped at the finish line… I stopped. My left side had seized up completely. Literally, it felt like there was an iron girder running down the left side of my body and that nothing would bend it. I laid down best I could alongside some other finishers, all of whom seemed to think I was a superhero, perhaps because I was also, to them… old?
And I felt it: I couldn’t stretch, couldn’t walk it out, could barely make it to the shower we’d been offered at the hotel. Shopping for my dinner at the lodge was agony, getting in the car even more so. At the campground, I was confronted by the reminder that I was on a hill, the toilets and showers further up it; it’s safe to say I pee’d outside the tent that night instead.
I couldn’t walk properly for days and weeks. The race had cost $100 to enter; it cost almost 3 times that much in massage fees to get me moving again. As far as hoodies go, this one was expensive!
But the massages worked, and at the end of September, I lined up for that 7th consecutive Cat’s Tail, my 3rd ultra in as many months. I didn’t tackle it much faster than when walking the year before, but as noted right up top, it’s my reward run. After a couple more weeks to get over the aches, the cost of the massages, and the reassurance that I had not completely destroyed my body in the process of upgrading from the sensible option - the 22-miler - to the illogical one – the 33-miler - the sheer madness of the event, the masochistic joy of my fellow competitors, the enthusiasm of the volunteers, the encouragement I got along the way – not to mention that hoodie and a lovely wooden VT-shaped finishers souvenir to boot - made it seem worthwhile. Only 25 of us had finished that race. Only about 30 of us had been crazy enough to take it on to begin with. I can’t wait to do it again.
Previous running posts at Wordsmith:
As you know, Tony, I love your running posts. There’s a great downhill energy in the prose!