My First Attempt At Zane Grey 50

A few years ago I heard about a crazy foot race near Payson. Allegedly, runners started in Pine, following the Highline trail along the Mogollon Rim all the way past Christopher Creek. Over 50 miles. There were stories of runners coming into aid stations with broken bones only to continue running through to the finish. This story was accompanied by statements like, "people who do that are just plain nuts," and "those guys are all type A personalities and this is their outlet." When I heard these stories I couldn't relate to the mind of anyone who would willfully subject himself to such punishment, yet that's where I found myself yesterday.

The Start

At 5:00 AM I found myself starting down the trail from Pine, on my way to the 260 trailhead past Christopher creek. Other than the standard issue butterflies in the stomach, I felt good. My legs were rested and I actually had a pretty good sleep the night before. There were over 120 other runners joining me on this trek across the wilderness as we left the start with headlamps aglow. The large group of runners quickly became clusters and then, as the trail narrowed, evolved into the inevitable conga line. I knew going into this run that it's important to keep from getting stuck too far back in the pack, or it could be a while before you could pass and make up lost time. Right away, a small group of us began our first ascent on the way to Geronimo, chatting the whole time.

It wasn't three miles from the start when I got hit with my first wave of nausea. I was almost a mile from the first big climb and there was just a small group of four or five runners at the time. I was leading the group and I suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to pull off the trail and hurl. This is always a hard thing for me to deal with. Do I just slow down and push through it? How bad is it, really? Whenever anything goes wrong in an ultra, especially this early, I begin to barrage myself with self-assessing questions. It's like a big flowchart in my head that I use to analyze my state to come up with the right solution. Unfortunately, I'm still new enough to running ultras that I don't have all the answers and many times, I end up at the same result -- push through it. So, that's what I did.

The situation improved dramatically over the next five miles, but my stomach never did settle. I wasn't able to get any gels/waffles/etc into my system, so I relied on my slurry mixture of EFS and CarboPro. I've used that mix long enough to know how far I can get with it. One 20 oz. bottle carries roughly 400 calories with that mix, so I wasn't too concerned about dropping into a calorie deficit as long as I could keep drinking. Before I got to the Geronimo aid station at mile 8, I glanced down at my bottle and noticed that I had only gone through a third of the bottle. I figured I should have been at least halfway through the bottle.

Geronimo! (8 miles)

Everything but my stomach was still firing on all cylinders when I pulled into Geronimo, and I was able to get some coke and water down while shedding my sleeves and headlamp. The stop at Geronimo was quick; I think I was in and out of there in just a couple of minutes. The next climb didn't seem as bad as I remembered from my training run on that trail and it seemed that I was at the top before I realized how far I had gone. Much of this part of the trail is a blur to me, but I know I was about halfway to Washington Park when the next big wave of nausea hit. This time I slowed myself to a fast hike and tried to slow my heart rate a little, which was abnormally high. I continued to run downhill and on the flats, but my climbing speed was greatly decreased. It wasn't long before it began to subside to the point where I could run a little faster and could resume power hiking the uphills. 

Washington Park (17 miles)

When I pulled into Washington park, Pat and Michelle were there waiting for me. I told them how I was feeling when I was at Geronimo, so that was almost the first thing they asked me when I arrived. The news was a little better this time around. I had managed to down a Stinger gel a couple of miles before Washington Park, and it didn't seem to have a negative impact on me. I was also able to finish off my EFS/CP and I felt like things were improving. After refilling my bottle and my pack, I was back on the trail. My crew really had things together!

This section is where things really started to fail in the energy department. I was still sticking to my strategy of power hiking the uphills and running everything else, and that had worked very well to this point. I noticed at about mile 19 that my criteria for an "uphill" was quickly expanding to anything with more than a 1% grade. This wasn't a good sign. A few times I caught myself power hiking over flat ground when I could see the people in front of me pick up the pace. What in the world was happening? The harder climbs turned my legs to lead and I would have to continue walking when I reached the top to give myself some time to recover. I was actually so spent in this section that I almost forgot about my stomach issues.

Hell's Gate Canyon (25 miles)

I walked into Hell's Gate Canyon. I was spent. My legs were turning over just enough to keep me from falling over and I was quickly losing steam. I decided I was going to get in and out as quickly as possible, but my first attempt at drinking some water changed my mind. It took me a full two minutes to get half a cup of water down. That's when I realized just how messed up my stomach was. I grabbed a cup of coke and broke my rule of not sitting at the aid station. I sat for another couple of minutes trying to regroup while I drank the coke to try and easy my stomach. After a few minutes, I decided to get my butt out of the chair and back on the trail. I stood up and immediately felt lightheaded. It passed. I had been at the aid station for about 5 minutes now and was having serious doubts about my ability to complete the next leg to Fish Hatchery at mile 33.

I was at the point where I knew I needed encouragement. The aid station workers, bless their hearts, weren't all that much help in this department. My running partner, Deron, from earlier in the day couldn't be too far behind so I decided to wait at the aid station for him. He would surely tell me to suck it up and keep going. And if he wasn't going to continue, I wouldn't either. I needed the moral support. Ten minutes or so later, I was starting to feel good enough to take a whack at the next leg. It was then that I heard the ham radio guys say that they could see another runner coming. It was Deron, and he was in rough shape.

Deron came into the aid station and we immediately started talking about our options -- DNF or press on? I had hoped that he would come in with a smile on his face and the decision would be easy. After discussing it briefly, Deron said, "You know what? I'm done." and with that he pressed the stop button on his Garmin. "Hang on! Let's talk about this a little." I said. Over the next few minutes, I convinced him that we could just take it really slow to the next aid station and see how it went. Worst case, we would drop at Fish Hatchery. He agreed to this and we began to leave the aid station.

Jim Pierce, one of the ham radio volunteers and all around great guy, said as we were leaving, "Just make sure you can make it to 33. We don't want to have to come rescue you." I sort of laughed at this because I had signed up for 51 miles. 33 shouldn't be this difficult. Deron and I started up the hill out of Hell's Gate Canyon at a real slow pace. I'm sure even my Garmin was getting annoyed with me, but it was all either of us could manage.

The return

We continued on for what felt like a mile or more when the naseau came back with a vengeance. I told Deron I thought I was going to puke and he smartly decided to get well in front of me. After dry heaving once or twice, I proceeded to lose everything from the last couple of hours ...and it was a lot! I really felt bad for that Manzanita bush ...and my shoe. I tried to sit down on the side of the trail, but my hip flexor cramped and I resorted to stretching out across the trail and puked again. I knew I was done.

Discussing the DNF with the crew.

We both decided to call it and head back to Hell's Gate Canyon aid. I don't know what happened after we left that aid station for 33, but I'm almost convinced that they relocated it -- that hike back seemed to take twice as long as the hike out. Along the way we passed several runners who either thought they had gone the wrong way or knew something was wrong. Honey came the closest to talking me into continuing, but Jim's words kept going through my head about being sure I could make it. And I was anything but sure.

After making it back to the aid station, I sat in the chair with the worst sense of defeat I've felt in a long time. It's never easy to DNF a race. Especially one that I had trained for and felt really good about my ability to complete. The questions and second guessing always swirl in my head for hours and days afterward. I regret the way things turned out and I wish I could rewind the clock and do something, anything, differently.

There's always next year, and I will be back.