"What It's Like to Run a 24 hour Race" - Philly Urban Ultra

Philadelphia Urban Ultra 24hr Race - July 19&20 2014
And so the day began... 

(pre-race freshness)

At 4:30am, just over 18hrs in the race, I limped out of the gym at Lloyd Hall: it had been transformed into a rest area for the once 160 deep field of 24 hour Ultra runners than had been whittled down to maybe 60. The rest had quit or maybe just hit their personal goal and gone home.

Either way, the gym was practically empty, save a few runners trying desperately to get an hour’s sleep before returning to the course.

This was my second rest. The first one had worked wonders and I decided that the returns on the rest outweighed the time lost.

(yeah, soooo excited)

This time I was wrong. The shudders hit me the moment I stretched out on the hard gym floor, using my duffle bag as a pillow. Uncontrollable shaking. It took me a while to get it under control and it poisoned the rest.

I hit the course and transitioned from a walk into a run. It was a poor imitation of the form I had 18 hours earlier, brimming with excitement. It was now an ugly shuffle.

(the start line)

So I shuffled, this time not refreshed from the rest. Just exhausted, stiff, hurting.

What lap was I on, I wondered?

How many times had I passed that unfortunate dead bird on to the left of the path on the other side of the loop? 6? 7?

What time was it again? 4:30am. I must be on lap 8.

How far had I run?

63miles roughly. I was less than one mile from my personal distance record.

How long would this lap take? 3 hours?

Would I have time to do another? Could I do another?

Just this lap, I reminded myself. Only think about the lap you’re on.

(feet @ 26.2 miles)

The course was a ghost town. I didn’t see any runners ahead of me and none behind me. That nervous, friendly chatter of the clustered group when we started at 10am the prior day was long gone. This is what happens in Ultras.

You begin as a tribe.

You end alone, even if there’s someone crossing the finish with you.

When does the change happen? I think around mile 35. In my mind, that’s when it gets serious. After 35 miles, at least for me, the novelty of the race is gone. It becomes work. You fight with managing your nutrition. Your body cannot process much more than 300 calories per hour while running. I burn somewhere around 800 calories per hour on a run. This means each hour it’s a deficit of 500 calories IF I eat. This is just one of the challenges of endurance races.

The second is this: after 35 miles, you don’t want to eat. Salty things tastes saltier. Sweet things taste impossibly sweet. Your favorite snacks are inedible.

Fluids: this was my biggest problem 2 months earlier in Florida. While I drank nearly 40oz per hour of water and electrolytes, it wasn’t near enough and I got overheated and dehydrated forcing me out of the race at the 50-mile mark.

Since then, I spent many runs measuring and calculating my sweat rate so I would know exactly how much fluid I was losing and how much I should drink. It’s an entirely individual measurement. Fluid and salt replenishment in Ultras is simply NOT a science. There are only general guidelines because it varies so much from person to person.

I had a plan to drink 50oz/per hour and I was on that plan. As for food: I was just as disciplined, eating every hour on the hour regardless of where I was.

The other thing about that 35mile imaginary line: the endorphins are gone. You feet are getting really tied and sore from the pounding on the pavement. The field is spread out. Many of them have quit. In this particular race (a loop slightly short of 9 miles), you’ve now seen the course, so there’s no excitement in seeing anything new, save the human landscape. 35miles is where I always think: shit is getting real now. Now is where the work starts.

Sometime before 5am I broke my personal distance record. There was no cheering. Not even from me. There was no one around and I was shuffling on the grass parallel to the cement path, trying to give my knees a break without stepping on a branch or a root that might cause me to turn my ankle.

I had done it. I was now in the undiscovered territory. Wasn’t that a Star Trek movie, I wondered? I thought so.

What time is sunrise? It’s overcast. Will I even see it? Will I ever stop sweating? It’s still so humid. Everything from this point on is a bonus. All personal record. Cool. Except I was so sleepy. I kept nodding off and weaving. I decided to stay to the outside of the path, especially on the second half of the loop. That way if I veered I wouldn’t tumble down the embankments and into the river.

(don't trip, sleepy)

I was so tired. Why were these miles so much longer? Where WAS everyone?

Running Ultras in the mountains is much easier for me. Your attention is required for every step. There is an abundance of scenery. You’re getting somewhere and the highs and lows of the race have a visual soundtrack.

Road Ultras, this being my first one on a loop, is harder in many ways. The pavement destroys your feet. The scenery is on repeat. You’re never getting anywhere. You don’t really pay attention to where you step. You can check out when you feel like it and go home.

“What’s it like?” is a question I get asked a lot. That and “Don’t you get bored?”

First the boredom. Simply: have you ever been bored when you fought a physical and mental battle simultaneously? Probably not. Boredom doesn’t play into it.

What is it like?

Physically: there are highs and lows. More lows. They come when they feel like it, for an unpredictable length of time. The only certainty is that how you feel will change at some point, for better or worse. You just don’t know which early on, but late it’s always worse.

Ultra running is not about doing something while in pain. It’s about doing something that’s painful willingly and for a hell of a long time -despite the pain. It’s a certainty that it will be uncomfortable and painful, and while this can seem like a lonely experience, you just have to look at the faces of other runners to know that it’s not just you.

Mentally: After 5 or 6 hours of running, it’s almost all a mental game. Your physical ability to continue is directly tied to a good mental plan and execution of fuel and fluid. After many hours you want to start doing stupid things. It’s a guarantee. You know this and have to prepare to not deviate from essential plans like food and fuel.

For example, you’ll eat something you never eat or drink too much or too little, or abandon part of your gear or decide you don’t need sunscreen. It’s never-ended the small stupid things you’ll be inclined to do out of exhaustion.

Your rational mind gets replaced by the visitor rational mind. It SEEMS like the same brain, but it’s not. The visitor encourages dumbs things, tries to convince you to quit, resets all your goals, convinces you of things you never would have agreed to the day before (or after- hence the weight of race-regrets).

So knowing the visitor will come and blocking him out is essential to success. You just have to follow your original plan that now seems bad, and tap into that primordial reserve that will keep you moving when everything wants you to stop.

When I finished lap 8 it was after 7:30am. My GPS told me I hit 71.4miles. I didn’t have time for a final lap. I told the timing tent I was done for race. They congratulated me. I didn’t feel victorious. I was barely awake and my feet were trashed. I had reached my goal, but not my stretch goal of 75 miles. That was ok. At least, in that moment it was. I knew the next day I would beat myself up for not hitting 75. The next day I wouldn’t remember exactly how I felt at the moment and I’d tell myself I could have pushed through for a partial lap.

At that moment though, I needed to lie down for a bit, and a hard gym floor in bright sunshine with that duffle bag pillow sounded pretty much like heaven.

 PS: Can't wait to do it again. 

I know.

I'm sick.

PPS: "Why do I run Ultras?":
As simply as I can possibly explain: distance running gives me an opportunity to profoundly understand myself better and my place in the world. It becomes the "ride" where I receive certain gifts of knowledge, insight, and experience, that cannot be gained anywhere else for me.