Strava link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2854089637
There are no guarantees in life, and certainly not in ultramarathons.
I ambitiously registered for the Tunnel Hill 50-miler in February 2019, despite never completing a run longer than the one full marathon I had under my belt (the Marquette Marathon in late 2018, where I decided upon finishing that I never wanted to attempt another marathon). Over the course of 2019 I took my training seriously. I piled up miles and completed four additional full marathons, finishing each one faster than the last. In early October, a month out from Tunnel Hill 50, I set my marathon PR at the Sleeping Bear Marathon just under 4:10 and I felt strong at the finish line. I recovered quickly and I felt ready.
But one week after Sleeping Bear I overdid it on a training run. I ran a faster than necessary 13.1 and developed some knee pain. Instead of easing up when it started to hurt at mile 6 I pushed through it. Unfortunately, that pain persisted well beyond that run, and aside from a very cautious 10k jog the weekend before my big event I ended up halting all training in a desperate attempt to rest my knee.
When it came time to hit the road to Illinois (about a 10-hour drive from home) my knee still hurt quite a bit, but not enough that I wasn’t able to jog on it. I was uncertain about my condition and capacity to complete the Tunnel Hill 50 Miler, but I was registered. I made the long drive to southern Illinois.
Ultra Eve:
I arrived at Vienna High School at dusk on Friday night for packet pick-up and spaghetti dinner. There I met Habacuc Rico, who I had been in touch with via a Facebook running group, and after collecting our race packets we carb-loaded via spaghetti dinner. Then I went to my AirBNB, which was a thirty-minute drive from town, and prepped my gear. My starting outfit included Nike Next% shoes, Injinji toe socks, performance pajama pants under my trusty board shorts (what else is there to wear?), a technical t-shirt, the Tunnel Hill 100/50 hoodie, a Patagonia R3 fleece hoodie, a thin pair of gloves, a thin beanie and baseball cap, and my Nathan running vest stocked with cliff bars, GU, 2 liters of Gnarly sports drink, cell phone and ear buds, KT tape strips for on-the-go blister care, and my car keys. I wore my familiar Garmin Vivoactive watch on my left wrist and new Coros Apex, with impressive battery-life, on my right.
I also packed a drop bag (my first time ever utilizing a drop bag in an event) with a pair of Brooks Ghost 11, a second Patagonia R3 fleece (they’re so warm and fuzzy!), extra KT tape, and my headlamp. After posting the above photo on Instagram (because ultrarunning and social media are made for each other), I hit the hay.
Race Day Morning:
The 50-Miler start time was pushed back to 9:00a this year to help avoid congestion at the aid stations, with the 100-Mile runners starting at 7:00a. Cutoff time for the 50-mile event was the same 1:00p Sunday cutoff for the 100-Mile race, which gave me a generous 28 hours to complete the race.
I stopped at a grocery store for thrown-together but safe and proven breakfast foods including multi-grain bread, a banana, cashews, water and coffee. I parked near the start line and sat in my car for a while to stay warm. It was around 30 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny, perfect running weather but chilly to stand around outside without a jacket. At about 8:40a I emerged from my vehicle and ventured to the start line, wincing with each step due to acute jolts of knee pain. I tried stretching to loosen my hips as I chatted with Rico and other excited 50-Mile runners. I was thrilled to briefly met Lazarus Lake (see documentary film “The Barkley Marathons: The Race that Eats its Young”). Judging by the photo, I don’t suspect he was quite as thrilled to meet me.
I started my GPS watches as we ticked off the seconds to 9:00a and we were underway! We jogged a lap around the parking lot before running southward onto the Tunnel Hill State Trail. Seconds into the run my knee was screaming “Nope! Nope! Nope!” and every step made me cringe. About 0.2 miles into my first ultramarathon I had to stop and walk. This was going to be a long day.
I was mildly frustrated (at myself, because I’d failed to listen to my body during training), yet I couldn’t help but smile. Whether I would ultimately finish or not, the day had come and I was here – in the midst of an ultramarathon! The worst I could do now was a DNF (did not finish). I had successfully avoided the DNS (did not start), which was my first victory of the day.
Prior to the knee injury I had expected I would be able to through-run the first 30 miles, and possibly more, with a pace of 12 minute/mile or better, and I felt that a sub 12-hour finish was possible. Alas, things were not working out that way. But, relentless forward progress…
The knee pain faded when I walked, and I took time to swing my legs and massage my hip flexors to try and loosen things up. I tried jogging again and made it about a quarter mile. I walked, jogged, walked, jogged, drank Gnarly and snacked for the first four miles. There were other participants walking, so I was not alone, and I appreciated my decision to sign up for a flat rail-trail course with a super-generous time limit. Even in those painful first four miles I resolved I would finish this thing no matter what, even if that meant I had to walk the entire way. 28 hours would be plenty of time to walk 50 miles, as long as I kept moving (at the time I didn’t anticipate how painful walking would feel after walking for a dozen hours). I did my best to live in the present and I enjoyed the scenic hardwood swamps, bridge trestles over murky rivers, and conversations with other runners to keep my mind off the knee problems.
At around mile 6 the trail entered a clearing and the sunlight imparted encouraging warmth. Despite the slow progress, I was making progress, and with every step finishing seemed more possible. I maintained a positive attitude and fortunately discovered that I was finally able to maintain a jog. I trotted down the path almost continuously from miles 6-13.5. By this time, many of the 100-milers were coming back up the trail and exchanging encouragement with them gave me an energy boost. I noticed something in their faces that I don’t recall observing in shorter events – a sort of keen madness burning in their eyes, matched with subtle grins betraying an awareness and acceptance of the inevitable pain awaiting. They are loving every second of it, and so am I! These are my people! I thought, with a degree of enthusiasm that should have raised red flags. Pain cave ahead! I can’t wait!
I arrived at the southern turnaround point, at the Barkhausen Wetlands Center, in about three hours. Rico was there with another runner, Oscar Molina. I took a moment to sit, shake gravel out of my shoes and stretch my feet. Then I continued with them as we turned north toward Tunnel Hill. We employed a jog-four-minutes-walk-for-one strategy back to the Karnak aid station, where I fueled up on a bacon and cheddar sandwich and potato chips.
I was able to continue jogging most the way to about mile 18, when my knee pain caught up with me again. Oscar taught me a new IT band stretch, which relieved some of the pain, but from mile 18 we walked. I can’t blame it all on my knee. My calves and quads were already feeling tired, probably a bit deconditioned from ceasing training for nearly three full weeks prior to Tunnel Hill. The knee pain also altered my form enough to cause additional stress on other parts of body, I believe.
Rico and Oscar were great company. We talked and laughed and held our spirits high despite none of us feeling we were performing up to what we felt we had trained up to. Sometimes you have off-days, and sometimes those just happen to be on a race day.
We marched steadily forward, striving to hold a pace below 20-minute miles, through the next eight miles and just beat the sunset back to Vienna, which was the 26.8-mile mark. I realized I had completed the marathon distance of 26.2 miles in 7 hours and 19 minutes, my slowest ever (marathon cutoffs are often 6 hours 30 minutes). We were more than half through the miles, but I knew we were all looking ahead to well over half the time on the course. Assuming we all finished.
I fueled up with a cheeseburger and dug into my drop bag for my headlamp, additional Patagonia fleece (very fortunate to have packed it), and Brooks shoes, which I changed into for the larger toe-box since my toes had begun to pinch in my Nike shoes. I had a hint of a blister on my right pinky toe and wrapped it in KT tape before setting off again. Rico, Oscar and I set off again at nightfall. I attempted jogging but it was futile – not so much my knee anymore as my upper calves had tightened and were sore, balls of pain bunched up behind both knee caps. Rico was able to jog and went off ahead. Oscar kept with me.
When I think back on Tunnel Hill 50 it feels like I ran two distinct races – the day portion and the night portion. The daylight half featured varied scenery, a chance to interact with many other runners, and a roller-coaster battle through knee pain that kept me alternating between walking and trotting. The daylight race was certainly a physical challenge, but through it I remained confident I would ultimately leave Vienna with a belt buckle.
The night race was also intensely physical, as I walked through far more pain and bodily discomfort than ever before. But in contrast with day running, the final 24 mile-push through the night was much more of a mental struggle. Darkness stripped the visual aspect to a monotonous stream of headlamps piercing the night, and limited views of the crushed limestone trail and surrounding rock formations and tree branches illuminated by our own headlamps (obscured through the foggy condensation of my breath). We slogged through the chill night at about a 21 minute/mile pace, and each mile stretched the clock. We had completed the daylight portion of this ultra in just over 7 hours, but at this pace we still had an estimated 10 hours to go. That seemed like a dagger in the heart. Officially, we had about 21 hours left to complete the race before cutoff, but there was no way I wanted to be out there for that amount of time.
Oscar and I promised each other we would finish. And without his company I honestly don’t know that I would have continued. Knowing that if I quit, he might quit too helped motivate me to set thoughts of a DNF aside. We marched northward (away from the finish line) through increasing pain, reminding each other how awesome it was going to feel to cross that final timing mat and be handed a finisher’s buckle. We also chatted life, and played some music through our phones for a couple miles until our batteries gave out in the cold.
I consumed as many pickles as I could eat and refilled my hydration bladder with Sword energy drink at each aid station. I hoped the salt would help with the increasing knot of pain I felt behind my knees.
We passed over the Breeden Trestle as a close-to-full moon rose in the starry sky. Oscar and I agreed to break for a few minutes every three miles (i.e., every hour or so) to stretch and clean out our shoes. We never lingered long, as we feared stiffening up. The thought of seeing the famous tunnel for which the Tunnel Hill State Trail and ultra was named kept us moving northward. We were both quite ready to hit that northern turnaround, but it was still a few miles, which is to say a couple of hours, ahead.
We were awestruck by the 100-mile runners that were passing us. They were still running hard, 85 miles into their race as we were 35 miles into ours. I think I have the ability to someday finish a 100-miler, but if I had been in the 100-miler for this one I would certainly have dropped down to the 50-mile distance. In addition to the spaced-out (geographically, and I assume mentally as well) runners, we caught the glowing green eyes of white-tailed deer in our headlamps from time to time. We also heard coyotes yapping in the distance, and I’m pretty sure I saw the silhouette of an owl swoop silently over our heads.
We ascended very mild (2% max) incline to Tunnel Hill. It was impressive to run through it, and it had a cave-like atmosphere in the night. I briefly imagined myself as a National Geographic spelunker in some remote corner of the world. When we passed through the tunnel we were met with a major aid station. They offered cheese quesadillas straight off the griddle and we indulged in a few slices. I drank some ginger ale and munched on a few other snacks before we pressed further north. It was another 2.5 miles to the northern turnaround, which represented another hour of walking in the direction away from that finish line. That was mentally difficult. My legs were screaming, and the bottom of my left foot started to feel like it was broken.
When we reached the turnaround, my Coros Apex displayed 40 miles. 80% of the way there. 10 miles to go. I employed the mental trick of imaging a familiar 10-mile training route from home, and imagined my progress along that route. Oscar and I bumped fists every time we chalked up another mile, but we were pretty quiet that last ten miles. We only dreamed of finishing, and we pressed on through the dark in tight-lipped misery toward that end. The night was also getting really chilly, adding another layer of discomfort. Plumes of steam condensed in the light of my headlamp with every breath. My calf and foot pain increased with every shuffling step and I was starting to really feel the mental exhaustion. We hit the Tunnel Hill aid station for a cup of hot coffee and munchies before passing back through the tunnel.
The five miles from tunnel hill back to Breeden Trestle was one long, seemingly eternal slog. My feet were sliding over the trail and I felt fortunate that I’d chosen this race versus a technical course. It was difficult enough to press on like a zombie without having to worry about negotiating roots, rocks, mud puddles, river crossings, ascents and descents.
At Breeden Trestle we took our last long (5 minutes-ish) break. My watch marked 44 miles – we had a 10K to go until the finish line. That seemed, logically, like a doable distance. But that also meant two more hours of walking. We agreed we had to quit thinking in terms of time. It was too disheartening.
I laid on my back on the surface of Breeden Trestle and stared up into the stars. Everything hurt. Badly. But I managed to see the beauty in the night sky, and appreciated my ability to still be in it at this point in the race. This, after all, was the type of experience I had been seeking when I decided to run an ultra. It was time to embrace the suck. 6 miles to go. Oscar and I joked about the course being billed as “flat and fast,” because we certainly were not moving fast. Eventually, in extreme exhaustion, I kept slurring that mantra into “fat and flast.” The garbled expression gave us something to laugh at.
It was a struggle to stand up, and my calves had tightened while resting. I knew if I stopped moving again I would probably not make it through. Oscar was getting desperately cold. If there had been a warm ride at that location, I think we would have succumbed to the temptation to throw in the towel. Fortunately, we were miles away from an access road with no option but to move ourselves onward toward the Vienna.
We walked, somehow, for another hour and began to ask 100-milers coming the other way how far it was to the next aid station. “2 miles,” they’d respond. We walked for what felt like another mile or two and asked again. “About 2 miles,” they’d respond. You’ve gotta be f*ing kidding me! Ahhhhh!!!! Worries crept into my thoughts. Chiefly, my unreliable key fob, which I was carrying in my vest pocket, and which frequently locks up in the cold and prevents me from starting my car. I desperately hoped I would not have to deal with that this night.
At long last, we heard highway traffic and passed an underpass, beyond which was the final aid station at Shelby Road. There was a fire pit, which I allowed myself a 2-minute maximum break to hover over to warm up. A volunteer lent Oscar a red blanket, which he draped over himself like a Superman cape. My watch was over 48 miles, but we were informed it was 3 miles to the finish. Learning about this “bonus mile” was akin to being whacked in the back of the knees with a red-hot paddle fashioned out of barbed wire.
Just past the Shelby Road aid station we passed a man stopped on the course, rubbing his calves out and carrying a couple of makeshift walking sticks. It was Rico. We waved and pressed past, afraid to stop or slow down. 16.5 hours into the race (putting us at about 1:30a), with only about 2 miles to go, I still did not feel confident I’d finish. I felt on the verge of stumbling, or seizing up with debilitating cramps. We reached the underpass marking the one-mile-to-go mark. From there the oncoming 100-mile runners were saying “congratulations” instead of “good job” or “keep it up.” This was going to happen. I did a little math and announced to Oscar that if we pushed for it, we could hit sub 17-hours. We pushed as fast as we possible could in the final mile. Still, we fell short of a 20 minute/mile pace. The finish-line arch and timer came into view. The big red numbers displayed on that digital timer were 16:59: and some odd seconds. We pushed hard (speed-shuffling!) and crossed that line. We crossed it! Thank God!
Being handed that heavy, beautiful metal ultramarathon belt buckle instantly became the highlight of my running career to date. I didn’t cry, or feel overly emotional. I was just relieved, still sore and tired. I picked up my drop bag. Oscar’s wife picked us up in their car and dropped me off at mine on the far end of the parking lot. I charged my phone up and checked my official time. 17:00:01. One-second short of a sub-17 hour effort. Seventeen hours is the cutoff for a full Ironman triathlon, which I’m considering doing someday. I can’t imagine missing the cut off by 1 second. Fortunately, Oscar and I finished with nearly 11 hours to spare, thanks to the generous cutoff afforded by the Tunnel Hill 50 Mile event.
Despite toeing the line injured, I was able to complete my first ultramarathon – not something I will ever take lightly. Silver lining about having to run it all through a mild injury, is that it was probably better mental preparation for what the second half of a 100-miler may be like than if I’d had a relatively easier go at it. After a few days of rest, I began to resume training for the next level… Shout out and thank you so much to the race directors, amazing volunteers, fellow runners and to Oscar Molina in particular for your support and friendship, without which I really would not have stuck it out to complete this race. I was also fortunate with nearly optimal autumn weather, that my gear performed well, and that I mostly avoided blisters, chafing, illness, and any serious injury.