Pre-race: I chose my sister and brother-in-law to do my crewing. This is a point to point race, meaning it started in Heflin, Alabama and ended in Sylacauga, Alabama.. a 100 miles away. So whoever was going to crew me had a long night and a lot of driving to do! I chose my good running friend Tony to pace me. I don't need a pacer for speed ever, just someone to babysit me when I'm falling asleep and mostly to entertain me! Tony is always so fun and happy and upbeat, I couldn't of asked for a better pacer. I headed over Friday after my clinical hours at the hospital. Thanks to the time difference, I did get an extra hour. The finish line changed this year to the beautiful Lake Howard with the smooth Sylaward bike trails for the finish. Packet pick up was there at the finish. I got my stuff, left some drop bags and made my way back into Sylacauga to check into the hotel. I met my sister and brother-in-law for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. We hashed out all the last minute details on timing, locations, food, pacing... everything. After a beer and a quesadilla we headed back to the hotel to turn in early. I chose to ride the bus to the start line, which was an hour and a half away, so I had to be up at 4 am.
Piles of drop bags lined the pickup area
Lots of runners checking in!
Sister love hotel shenanigan's!
Race day: I woke around 4 am, grabbed my gear and headed out the door. The bus ride was long, but the sun rise was beautiful! After arriving at the campground start line, deep in the Talladega National Forest we all unloaded and headed for the start line. Nothing fancy, just a "go".
We had a feisty bus driver who straight up made me feel like I was back in grade school. Literally threating me, almost daring me to take off my mask and see what she would do. Ha!
I took the bus ride with Rich and we caught up on race stories to make the time pass quicker.
#68, I would quickly memorize this number as I had to shout it in and out of every single aid station
The start line. Over 200 runners, only 28 other women out there besides me. I am so thankful the weather was so warm! I do much better in the heat than the cold.
I had been given advice to avoid the "conga line" and start in the front. I decided to be a little more conservative and start in the middle. It definitely could of saved some time to rush out front, but in the end it didn't make a huge difference for me. The first 6 miles to aid station #1 were sluggish and I tried to pass people and find a rhythm. I started out with my pack about half full of tailwind and water. I wanted to be as light as possible, as long as possible to avoid shoulder and back pain later on.. so I stopped for some water and a cookie at the first aid. My crew was going to wait and meet me at mile 42, Cheaha Lake. So it was nice to have familiar faces of ASR at the aid station crewing for another member at the stations before Cheaha. R.P. made sure to check on me at each aid station until I met my own crew.
The foliage was indescribable. The colors were just electric. Pictures will never do it justice.
Aid station 2, 3 and 4 ticked off well. I chit chatted with runners and enjoyed some of the most beautiful foliage I have ever seen! Aid 4 was mile 22.71 and I was perfectly on pace with my time chart breakdown. My pace chart had times for a 27 hour as well as a 28 hour finish. Looking back I realize I never scheduled any time for aid stations.. so my overall time was off, but my pace stayed pretty spot on. I checked Garmin and my overall moving time was 27 hours on the dot!
Then, I headed out of aid station 4 through a 5 mile section to Highway 434. I'm not sure what happened in this section, whether there were some long climbs or I was running low on calories.. but I lost my mojo here. I got 20 minutes off pace and I felt pretty down. I finally reached aid station 5, Morgan Lake. I had a drop bag here. I grabbed some food and hat and took off again. The food rejuvenated me and some nice downhill helped me pick up the pace. At this point I was ready to be at Cheaha and see my sister.
If you look at the top of the picture, you will see runners crossing over the top of the waterfall to get to the aid station on the other side! It was beautiful!
I knew it was 8 miles away and the toughest section of the course. I also knew it got dark 4:45 pm and that it would be very close to dark by the time I headed down Blue Hell. So I just kept on pushing. I caught up with a couple of guys who had a great pace climbing up Cheaha. For those of you that don't know me, I am a TERRIBLE climber. I make up my time on downhills. I can run like a maniac down a mountain. So I decided to push really hard and keep up with the lace of the runners in front of me. Before I knew it we were at the top! We made it to Bald Rock. Of course it was so foggy, and it had rained off and on all day.. you couldn't see anything at the top! The wind was blowing like crazy, but it wasn't cold. It had been warm all day and the rain felt good. So, here I am at the top of Cheaha, and it was almost dark. So I got out the light weight head lamp my brother-in-law gave me and headed straight down Blue Hell. If you have never experienced Cheaha or Blue Hell, let me just say... it is NOT something you wanna do in the dark. Especially not the foggy dark. It is about a 1 mile, straight down of bouldering and scrambling and if you didn't have a light with you.. I cant imagine how much harder it would of been. Luckily I move very quickly down, so it didn't take me long to reach the bottom. I was so very happy to see my sisters face waiting for me at the bottom of the trail! I was about 20 minutes later than anticipated so she was ready to see me too. I made my way over to their truck and we started hashing out what I needed and anticipating what I should take. First things first... the bathroom! I had terrible diarrhea again this race. About 4 times in the first 30 miles! So I took several imodium which eventually helped. Next, I had to change every stitch of clothing on my body. New sports bra, shirt, underwear, shorts and head wrap. I chose to keep my shoes, even though they were soaked because they were working well and I knew there were water crossings coming up. I had experienced foot pain on the top of my left foot early on. I tried to ignore it but it got worse. So I decided to throw a compression brace on and hope for the best. This would turn out to be a great choice, because my foot felt pretty good the rest of the race. After a full change of clothes I killed some Mellow Mushroom pizza, a turkey wrap a donut and coffee! I felt great! I took my poles with me, which turned out to also be a great idea, because the climbing started after Cheaha.
Lamar keeping me going with the coffee.
Crew selfie!
Getting the compression sleeve on that foot was a game changer.
This is a photo of Bald Rock at the top of Cheaha during the day. It was foggy and misting rain and almost dark when I reached this point in the race, about 4:45 pm.
I passed so many people the next 10 or 12 miles! I was moving super fast. I knew I would see my sister again at Adams Gap, mile 55. When I left Cheaha, they headed over to the finish to pick up Tony and meet me. So I had 2 aid stations to get through. Those miles went by pretty fast until the last mile up into Adams Gap. It felt as though the climbing would never stop. It was tough! But I knew I would get to see my crew shortly!
Glad to see my crew!
I got more coffee, I swear my brother in law is a saint for bringing the jet boil and keeping me in coffee all night! My nausea started early in the race, so by this point food wasn't great, but I needed it. Nothing sounded good, but I took a muffin and managed to eat some of it. It was about 9:30 pm, and despite the nausea I still felt really good. There was service road ahead and I was ready for some run/walk. This section- I was alone for most of. It was a little eerie at times, but the wind and the night sky and the sounds of owls and other animals were very soothing. I kept moving forward, just trying to put one foot in front of the other. I thought about my friend Arabelle who I had paced on this same section the year before. I remembered how cold it was the year before and I was so thankful it was warm this year! She was at another 100 this year in Kentucky, so I said a little prayer for her. I knew I had two more aid stations and 13 miles to Porters Gap. This was 68.5 and where I would pick up Tony. Knowing you will have someone to run the rest of the race with is a pick me up. So I pushed as hard as I could to get to Porters. I stopped at both aid stations to try to force something to eat down. Nothing sounded good. I had tried broth, noodles.. it all made me gag. It is kind of a blur now, but one station had hot instant mashed potatoes. I ate the shit out those things! It was like a new, renewed runner when I left that station! Finally, something I could eat! My headlamp batteries pooped out at some point and i had to use my cell phone for a light for about 5 miles! Eventually I made it to Porter. My sister was there and Tony was getting ready. I think Porters is where I had the mashed potatoes from heaven!
Picking up Tony!
It was at least 1 am by this point. My sister and brother-in-law were headed back to the hotel for a 2 hour power nap, and since they safely handed me off to Tony they were comfortable leaving. They had planned to meet us at the finish line around 11 am Sunday morning. I knew we would be more exposed at this point in the course up on the ridgeline so I took my windbreaker, a headband and got new headlamp batteries. We took off from Porters and I knew I only had 50k to go, and this 50k would be with a friend. I was so excited.
6 miles to Pinnacle. Pinnacle is beautiful, and it is also very high up! The climb to the top seemed like 100 switchbacks. Tony made it seem like an easy climb as he reminded me of Coosa, H9 and Duncan Ridge.. I mean.. once you climb those in the heat of August... nothing seems hard. We finally reached the top and man was there a party up there! This was the coolest aid station ever! All lit up with disco lights and glowing colors, popping music and a lively atmosphere. It was just what I needed to keep my spirits up. They all knew Tony, and welcomed him to the aid station as they called him the mayor of Columbus.. ha! If you know Tony, you know he is the friendliest guy in the world and this is why they refer him as that. Like running with a local celebrity! They had bacon here, good crunchy bacon and I ate a little, but my stomach was still not having much anything. I did get some coke down. I was surviving off my sour patch kids honestly. I had packed 2 boxes because I knew I would need them. I ran most of that race with sour patch kids as my fuel!
Party at Pinnacle!
We headed out from Pinnacle and marched on to Wormy's. It was windy but not really cold. We wore our light jackets just in cast though. At some point we took them off because it was just so warm out! I would like to go back and see this section in the day because I know it is beautiful. I could see the city lights in the distance as we crossed the ridge of the mountain. The miles ticked by, we told stories and sang songs... just putting one foot in front of the other. We saw the sunrise over the mountains very early, you could see the first glimpse of daylight by 530 am. It was beautiful! This is the section we saw the most hurricane damage in. The race directors had done an amazing job clearing out hundreds of blow downs throughout the course. But up here on this ridge, there was no way they had enough time to clean this section out. There were literally hundreds of trees ripped straight up by the roots. It was just mesmerizing as we ran at all the devastation. We worked our through about 2 miles of tree obstacles and then we made our way down the mountain.. and finally found ourselves at Mile 85, Bull's Gap. This oasis had my sister and EGGS! She surprised me showing up here and it was awesome! And for whatever weird reason, eggs sounded amazing and I ate a whole plate full of them! And that protein was just what I needed to get through the next 9 miles.. all service road and all in the sun. It is November, but we were sweating bullets!
We finally began to see the sunrise!
We waited for hours for daylight to break through, happy people!
I was very excited to see my sis! I was also getting super sleepy by this point.
We knew I had blood oozing from my shoe, but we knew removing my shoe to check it would be a terrible idea. We would just wait until I finished to see the damage.
Got Tony loaded up on Fireball for the last push. You can see my plate of eggs in the corner! Eggs from heaven!
Headed out, for 9 miles of forest service road!
Those 9 miles were long but we moved well. I had some 12 and 13 min miles which were good considering I was over 90 miles in. We finally reached the last aid station! Watershed. My sweet sister was there too to cheer me on! She surprised me being here, I didn't think I would see her again! She snapped an awesome pic for me here!
I was so so so happy to be so close to the finish!
Tony and I quickly browsed the food, I knew I had to have something to finish the last 5 miles. Tony got a burger and I scarfed down a bacon and egg burrito. Who knew eggs would be the thing my stomach loved? It was amazing, and gave me the energy for that last push. The finish line was within reach! I knew I would be over 28 hours. But at this point I didn't care. I had plenty of time to beat the 30 hour cut off. The Sylaward trails were amazing. I was able to run almost all of them, straight into the finish! There was a huge crowd at the lake to cheer me on and it was just incredible! We took all the finish line photos with my awesome buckle, then I went and sat down, for the first time in over 28 hours.
My friend Cary Long snapped this, and I didn't even know it! This was right as I came into the finish!
Got that buckle!
It was a long, dark night and I was so thankful Tony was there to help me push through in great spirits!
Official finish pic with the buckle!
Finally getting a seat! This is when we decided to check out the feet...
It turned out all the bloody feet damage was blisters. Running in the rain did a number on them, followed by many creek crossings.
Not official until you have the bumper sticker!
What an incredible race. It was everything I hoped for and more. It was beautiful, gorgeous mountains, climbing, technical, pure blissful trail!
A few things I didn't mention:
* my feet were trashed. They were bloody blistered. I ran in the rain for hours and then crossed multiple creeks, so they stayed wet. I didn't realize how many nasty blisters I got until I took off my shoes.
*I charged my watch and my phone during my run. I use a small portable charger and just run with it.
* I use Black Diamond Carbon poles, they are light and collapsible.
*I run in an Ultimate Direction vest that holds the poles right up front! It also has a crazy amount of pockets.
*I took an insane amount of Advil, 800 mg every 4 to 6 hours.
*I also took 4 Imodium over the first 50 miles to curb the diarrhea.
*Nausea stayed the whole race. I tried tums, salty food, broth, everything I could think of for the nausea but the only thing that ever worked was my sour patch kids. This will continue to remain a staple for me. Although those eggs at the last couple of aid station hit hard!
*207 started. 105 finished, 102 DNF'd. Almost half the field! After seeing the numbers, I feel even more proud!
An epic race... for sure. Now.. onto 2021.. I need another qualifier ❤
