Badger Mountain 100-Mile Challenge: Inspired by my friends

One of my new year's running resolutions for 2012 was/is to volunteer at more races. Trail races are typically low-budget affairs that rely heavily on passionate swaths of volunteers who come out to make possible the amazing feats of their running compatriots - whether by checking in runners at the start line, manning aid stations, or serving as a direct support crew to individual runners. Since I've run more than my fair share of races at this point and reaped the benefits of the unbelievably awesome local running community, I figured it was high time to wear the volunteer's hat for a weekend!

It was with this mindset that I agreed to crew and pace for my good friend George last weekend at the Badger 100-Mile Challenge outside of Kennewick, Washington. (Yes, 100 miles. On foot.) It's only a few hours' drive from Seattle, but the terrain couldn't be more different from what we Cascadians are used to running through. My typical trail run is through tall, dense forest, a cocoon of bright green moss and ferns and pines. Kennewick is a barren, treeless desert of dirt and dust, exposed ridges, scattered with tumbleweeds and sage.


George was not the only running buddy of mine tackling this beast of a race; I knew several other folks, mostly through the Seattle Mountain Running Group (SMRG) I've been bumming around with a lot lately. By the end of the weekend, I'd know many more, and far more intimately. This being George's first 100-miler, and George being the kind of awesome friend everyone was eager to come out and support, there was a small entourage of us out to crew for him - Jenn, Glenn, Topher and myself. I'd never even been to a 100-mile event before, so aside from being excited to support George's accomplishment, I was psyched to get to witness firsthand what a race like this does to the minds, bodies and spirits of its runners.


The race started at 7 a.m. on Friday in steady rain and 50mph winds. After a steep initial climb, the 60ish starting runners faced long miles ahead along exposed ridges. We managed to miss George at the first crew-accessible aid station (CREW FAIL!) because he, and the other runners, were all booking it so hard to get off those ridges and away from the miserable weather. It wasn't until mile 22ish that we saw George and many of the other SMRG runners come through, and were able to dole out clean clothes, homemade cookies, and bottles of thick, goopy Perpetuem to keep them going.


Topher's old school VW bus made for the perfect movable aid station, with a dry spot for our running friends to get the fuel they needed before moving on. Our runners' clothes had already gotten so soaked that our crew's first mission was to cruise into the nearest town to find a laundromat and some high-powered dryers. The next few aid stations went by in a flash - amazing how all of Friday flew by, as we drove and parked and waited and made bottles of Perpetuem - and repeated. Fortunately for our runners, the rain let up in the afternoon.

Most of the runners were approaching the turnaround point at mile 47ish around sunset on Friday. Amazingly, at this point, most of the runners we saw were still in great spirits - awake, energized, positive, and confident. I wondered about whether my presence was actually of value to them; everyone seemed to be doing just fine! Usually, the dropout rate for tough 100-mile events like these is right around 50%, but seeing all the smiles and good humor as the runners trickled in to that aid station, I wondered if anyone would be dropping at all. Where was all the misery and soul-reckoning I'd heard about at these events? I was proud of and excited for all the runners I knew out there, and duly inspired.


Our man George, happy as a clam. Photo by Glenn Tachiyama.
Finally, night fell. The aid stations have a different feel at night, with their quiet, unassuming presence tucked away on the sides of mountains, the party lights, the Dixie cups of chicken noodle soup, the stoves fired up for ultra-grub like pancakes and quesadillas, the folding camp chairs set up to support the slumped bodies of increasingly fatigued runners. It was a really neat experience to hang out at these aid stations through the night, staring into the darkness and watching for the tiny, bobbing light of a runner's headlamp in the distance. The lights of Kennewick lay out below us, a blanket of stars above us.


The white line on the right side of this image is from the headlamp of a runner.
Glenn jumped in to pace George (essentially, run alongside him, ensure he stays awake, moving, and on course - a job that's part babysitter, part designated driver, part coach, and part therapist) from mile 47 on through most of the night. Because most of the aid stations for that stretch were not crew-accessible, the rest of us took the opportunity to curl up in our vehicles and catch a few hours of shuteye.

The next crew fail came in underestimating George's pace yet again. He and Glenn powered through the night, passing many other runners, and gaining speed as others were just starting to slow down. They blazed in to the aid station we'd parked at to nap around 2:30 a.m., a few hours ahead of when we were expecting him. Jenn traded places with Glenn to pace George for the remainder of the race, while I waited for another runner friend of ours, Ras, to come in so I could hop in to keep him company for the remainder of the course.

Running through the night is a crazy thing. My only other experience with it is the Ragnar Relay, but that's never more than a few miles before you hand off the baton to the next runner. I joined Ras at around 4 a.m., and for the next 8.5 hours, we were out on that course together, battling fatigue and steep hill climbs and the sheer emptiness of a race course that had dwindled down to the smallest handful of determined athletes. From there until sunrise, we only saw one other runner. We made our way over jeep trail after jeep trail, hill after hill, until the sun came up. That sun felt good.


This was Ras's second 100-miler, and though he was definitely hurting from long, unexpected stretches on pavement, he kept in great spirits. We shared amazingly lively conversation over the sunrise, through winding vineyard trails, along the highways, up and down more and more mountains. It was cool to spend more time getting to know Ras, since he and I have run a lot of the same races, but had never officially met before last weekend. (...Although he's made guest appearances in my photo albums before, given that we have similar climbing paces; the clicking of his trekking poles was the soundtrack to my ascent at Angel's Staircase last August.)


Ras + my shadow at the top of Angel's Staircase, August 2011 - Little did we know it wouldn't be the first time we'd share mountain summits!
While trekking along a seemingly endless stretch of road, we stumbled on a group of 7 or 8 runners, walking the opposite direction as us. They'd gotten terribly off course in the middle of the night and were trying to find their way back to the aid station we'd just come through. They all had hamburgers in their hands - apparently picked up along the road while lost - which they gnawed away at, eyes glazed over like zombies, as they stared confusedly at the two of us. These things happen at ultramarathons, I guess. We wished them luck and continued onward.

We saw George and Jenn at one of the later aid stations, along an out-and-back portion of the race; they were a couple hours ahead of us on the course, but it was great to see familiar faces. By the time we rolled into the final aid station, Ras's wife Kathy jumped on course for the final few miles.


The final few miles were probably the most scenic of the entire course, at least that I saw, with sweeping views of the valleys below us, and a highly runnable trail that seemed to give many of the exhausted runners new life in their legs. Amazingly, I'd soon learn, ALL of the runners I knew doing this race MADE it to the finish under the 32-hour cutoff. Pretty impressive, given that only 34 of the original 60+ starting runners finished. Later, stories trickled in of other runners dropping, due to turned ankles, muscle cramping, hypothermia, and feet so swollen that shoes had to be cut away with scissors. I attribute the finishers' achievement to their relentlessly positive attitudes, their tenacity, their training, and the running community camaraderie we're fortunate enough to have out here in Washington. Everyone had families, friends, crews, other runners, pacers and a team of exceptional volunteers rooting for them, and everyone rocked it!

So, after all that, am I more excited or less excited about someday trying to tackle a 100-miler myself? More excited, to be sure. Perhaps not this race in particular (the terrain didn't sing to me; the course markings still need some improvement), but I've got buckle envy, for sure.


Photo snagged from fellow Kansan, and 2012 Badger finisher Jeff Webb
I've got some work to do, but I have a pretty constant source of motivation from the people in my life out here - a huge congrats to all the runners at Badger this year, and a big THANK YOU for inspiring me with your superhuman accomplishments and triumph over a punishing and merciless mountain challenge.

To every woman who's ever beat me in a race

Today was my first day coaching for Girls on the Run at a local elementary school. First of all, AWESOME. Could I imagine a better opportunity to blend my passions to do something small but hopefully good for the world?!

Second of all, in preparation for the season, one of my co-coaches and I met up for tea last night at an old haunt on Capitol Hill. Unsurprisingly, some of our conversation drifted to our own experiences running. She's someone who's been running her whole life, and has loved it from day one. Although, by all appearances, I seem to be one and the same, the truth is that I'm not. I ran track for two miserable years in middle school, and pretty much hated it. When I picked up running recreationally on my own again midway through high school, I still pretty much hated it. Although I subscribed to Runner's World and desperately wanted to be one of those endorphin-crazed running devotees, I was an impostor for many, many years before the real love kicked in.

(But goodness am I glad I stuck it out!)

The funny difference that my co-coach and I discovered was in what we say to people who have tried to run but don't enjoy it at all. Her advice is, "Stop running. If you don't love it, you never will. Find something else you actually like to do, and do that instead." My advice is, "Run more. If you don't love it yet, you aren't running far enough." Because for me, the first few miles are (still!) almost always miserable. It takes me that long to warm up, to get into a groove - and of course, it took me several years of running regularly to get to the place where 5 miles could feel like a warmup instead of a workout. And those same several years are how long it took me to go from being someone who detested running to someone who genuinely embraced it.

Even the minutes or hours leading up to a run I've promised myself to do can be excruciating in their own way; given how much I love this sport at this point, it's surprising how much mental energy I sometimes have to drum up to get motivated to just get out the door.

So what is it that keeps me motivated? Here's an incomplete list of a few things:

• Food/supporting my eating habit


• Endorphins, stress relief, happiness


• To find creative flow and generate ideas that only come when I'm running


• General health, well-being, strength, and longevity


• Community, and the friends I've made running


• The unique joy of exploring beautiful places on foot


• Personal challenge, pushing my limits


• Inspiration derived from other talented runners


• Competition, wanting to continually improve myself


• Hoping to inspire others when I can


• To experience humility

It's that last one that stuck with me on my post-GOTR-practice run today. Every step, every hill, every mountain, every acceleration, every bit of force that ripples up my quadriceps, even every injury...remind me that I am small and human.

Ultrarunning, in particular, is a world dominated by (relatively) older folks. On the one hand, I feel extraordinarily grateful to have discovered this sport in my twenties. Although I don't have the advantages of college track/cross country experience, or the featherweight boons of the traditional runner's body, what I do have going for me are the years in front of me. Ironically, for the world of athletics, my youth is probably the greatest detriment of all to my running right now. I feel like the equivalent of an uncalloused foot...for as many hard runs as I've dragged myself through in training and races alike, I'm still pretty fresh and tender in the grand scheme of things.

I have the deepest admiration for so many of the women kicking my butt at these races, who are often close to twice my age, and understand more than I do yet just what a mental game this sport is. A single tough hill climb still has the ability to ravage my self-esteem, to push me to the brink of despair. I look forward to someday, I hope, being as mentally tenacious as so many of these women are. They inspire me. And perhaps that sense of being reminded just how small I really am, but how much potential there is for me to grow, is one of the greatest motivators of all. So to all of you, those who've passed and reduced and left me in the dust, I thank you!

I hope that, in much simpler words - or perhaps without words at all - I'm able to impart some of the love and awe and contentment I feel when I run to these little girls whom I've been entrusted with coaching for the next couple of months. Pay it forward!

Figuring out this life

Fall in Seattle is nice.
I don't often share things online that I write in my own journal, but I wrote the this a couple weeks ago, and I think it's worth a share (if you can stand the long-winded navel-gazing that these self-indulgent entries inevitably feature).

Nov. 4 - I don't have enough time and energy to tackle everything in my life that I want, to pursue all the paths that entice me. Every time I meet or read about someone on one of those paths, I think, "Yes! That's the thing I want to devote myself to!" I read a great novel, I want to be a novelist. I read Sedaris, I want to tell stories about my life that make people laugh. I stumble on an interesting blog that generates revenue, I'm sure that's what I'm cut out to do. I run a trail race, and suddenly running is all I care about excelling at. I go to a good bluegrass show and I'm obsessed with picking my banjo. I read an interview with a successful young entrepreneur and I'm sure I want to start my own business.

My parents can attest to the fact that this extreme enthusiasm for mimicry started early in my life. A visit to the circus inevitably inspired a homespun version in our basement in Kansas when we got home in the evening. I'd rope in my stuffed animals, my dog Sasha, my hula hoops. I taught myself to juggle plastic bowling pins, practiced enough gymnastics to pull off one-handed cartwheels and front handsprings. The rodeo, the Olympics, the carnival...anywhere fun and exciting my parents took me, I took home with me and recreated in the basement for an audience of two.

If I watched a game show, I'd make up my own version at home; pretending to ask my parents questions for a school project, I'd interview them individually about their favorite and least favorite things, then challenge them against each other later in game show format to see who knew whom best. If I visited my dad at his office at the Kansas City Star and he took me down to see the massive, noisy, ink-stained printing presses, I'd draw up my own family newspaper by the end of the week. I kept up the W Family Gazette for an impressive number of issues, flying down the stairs in excitement to deliver my product to the hands of my parents, crying out "Hot off the press!" and charging them a quarter apiece for their issues.

Believe me, I treasure this quality in myself. Creativity and a constant hunger for learning and trying new things certainly keep life interesting, and usually pretty darn fun. But it's not without its frustrations, too. My journal entry from two weeks ago continues:

I exhaust myself! I can't decide. Not that my decision needs to last forever, of course, but nothing's ever going to happen in my life if I spread myself too thin. I can't do the New York Times crossword every day, prepare great meals, read at least a book a week, keep up on current events, maintain my blog, have enough time for all the people I love, volunteer regularly, make time to write in my own journal, continue working on my Dutch, take web design classes, teach myself a half dozen programming languages, run 50 miles a week, keep the apartment clean, work on transitioning to a high-raw diet, do yoga, lift weights, ride my bike, meditate and develop a stronger spiritual core, build a photography portfolio, travel regularly, submit more of my writing for freelance publication, hike, snowboard in the winter, write letters to friends, maintain a social life that involves going out at least a few nights a week, stay in touch on Facebook, work and earn enough money to afford living in Seattle...and still get enough sleep! It's ridiculous, now that I've written all that down, how much I actually expect myself to do in my day-to-day life. Obviously, I have to make some choices.

And those aren't even the BIG goals. Those are just the average daily life goals, the stepping stones to the big goals. Big goals are things like: summiting Mt. Rainier, running a 100-mile race, publishing a book, making the world a better place in a really big way...

So, where does that leave me? The two weeks in Holland gave me the incredible gift of time for reflection on what passions continue to stoke my fire the most - and (surprise!) running and writing both emerged high. I've been looking into volunteering with local chapters of several nonprofits (you know, in my copious amounts of free time!), and I've been torn between 826 Seattle, a center that offers youth after-school mentoring, tutoring and writing workshops - and Girls on the Run, a program that helps young girls feel empowered and develop healthy habits and self esteem through running.

I use my deliberation over the volunteering choice as a metaphor for the greater internal debate - whether, at this point in my life, to make running or writing my bigger priority. Neither passion, obviously, will ever fall completely out of my daily life - but I've been doing a little of both for many years, and I'm ready to do a lot of one of them for awhile to see what happens. I'm fortunate, of course, that I've been able to do a good amount of writing in my working life so far - this debate is really about what my "after-work" hours will look like (until, of course, I can figure out how to get paid to run all day and then write about it!)

With this question nagging at me since I've been back in the states, it's no wonder that the following quote jumped out at me from a book I've been reading, Matt Fitzgerald's RUN: The Mind-Body Method of Running by Feel. Deena Kastor, America's fastest and most accomplished female marathoner, said to Matt in an interview that in 1995,"I didn't feel like I had done everything for my running. I felt I had much more potential and I didn't want to walk away from it. I could open up a bakery or write a book at any time in my life, but I wanted to make sure that I got that running fever out while I was still young and energetic enough to do it."

And guess what? That spoke to me. I met Deena at the 2008 Chicago Marathon, after taking an impromptu solo road trip and obtaining a press pass to chat it up with the elite runners. She was softspoken, kind and every bit as inspiring in person as when I'd read about her in articles.


Deena, right before my starstruck-fan ambush.
So I'm doing it. I'm taking advantage of my youth and energy, and making running my top priority for 2012. My plans include: (hopefully) snagging a coaching spot with Girls on the Run, volunteering at as many trail runs as I can fit into my schedule, running higher mileage than ever before, training for my first 50-miler, qualifying for Boston, and above all, logging my second totally injury-free year in a row! Cheers for finding both form and footwear that work for me.


Three beautiful fall runs, three different pairs of shoes...can you tell I'm turning into a junkie?