Western States 100

I gave it my all. I ran (or at least started) with some of the best ultra runners in the US as well as Mexico, Canada, England, Japan, Korea, Sweden, Germany, France, Africa, Australia. I was the only runner from Missouri. I came in 151st place of 432 people entered. This put me in the 35th percentile. Very happy. Beat Dean Karnazes by 100 miles!

Ben Holmes, my pacer who accompanied me from mile 62 to the finish line, was a huge help during the night hours. He would continually slip just out of sight so at each turn his light would disappear making me psychologically want to push to get him back in view. He let me pass when I felt good on the down hills, which I discovered is my strength, and he kept nudging me on the climbs and flats when I was losing steam. At No-Hands Bridge, the 97-mile mark, I told Ben I didn’t want to finish over 27-hours. He made me run the last up hill stretch to ensure my request was fulfilled and it worked. Awesome pacer, good friend. Not many people can say this after going through a night like we did together. Many thanks to Bad Ben.
Many, many thanks to Bob Miller as well. Bob had the good luck of drawing an entry in the Western States lottery. Luck turned on him when he blew out a knee. He gave me the entry! What a gift. Bob loves this event so much that he made the trip from Michigan, the last four years, at his own expense, just to work as a volunteer Race Manager. This year, he was awarded the “Friend of the Trail” award by the race committee which I know he is very proud of. For the four hundred plus runners, there are in excess of 1,500 volunteers and Bob tops the list. I think he worked 40 or more hours from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. What a man.
Immediately after finishing I had blood drawn voluntarily to determine CPK levels. A CPK is a blood test that measures creatine phosphokinase (CPK), an enzyme found predominantly in the heart, brain, and skeletal muscle. When the total CPK level is substantially elevated, it usually indicates injury or stress to one or more of these areas. They use it to diagnose heart attack or the extent of muscle damage caused by trauma. An average persons CPK is 61 to 224. Mine was 25,200. 74 of 102 runners tested were under 25,000. The lowest was 1,900 and the highest was 119,600! This makes me pretty average I guess. Side note: From what I understand, if you were to hand my CPK report to a Doctor who didn’t know that I had just run a 100 miles, he or she would most likely conclude that I just suffered a heart attack. My sodium level was 136 which is normal. I guess the 20 or so electrolyte capsules I ingested did their job. I spoke to the Doctor running the study, who is also an ultra-runner and he said I should be healed enough to enter another 100 miler I’m considering in August. This is called Cascade Crest 100 and is significantly tougher than Western States. We’ll see.

Lessons Learned:
My only real mistake was eating. I didn’t take in enough calories going into the canyons and it cost me time even though the reports don’t really reflect it. I told Ben at Michigan Bluff “I left my silver buckle (sub 24-hour finish) on the climb up Devil’s Thumb”. By the time I reached the finish line, I retracted that statement. I just wasn’t fit enough to do this race in 24-hours, end of story.

Eating cost me time at night too. I stopped mixing my meal replacement powder in my bottle. Big mistake because the solid food, provided by the race, had no appeal whatsoever. I would get nauseous every time we pushed hard. This was compounded at aid stations. When you drive your legs for this many hours, the blood keeps pumping even after you stop. So upon entering the lighted aid stations, from the dark trail, I would stop and the blood would pool in my legs causing me to get light headed and even more nauseous. Well intentioned volunteers would be in my face trying to get me to eat and my brain just couldn’t deal with it. I would eat a little soup, grab some fruit, a piece of hard candy, take off and do well for only a short burst. Then would come another low where I would struggle to the next aid station only to repeat the process. If I had kept my meal replacement bottle full, I would have just kept sipping without having to digest the solid foods while running in this depleted condition. Lesson learned: Stick to the plan, that simple.

Only other lesson looking back is I could have trained harder for the up-hills. This is where I was passed the most. Overall though, I ran a good race and things came together nicely. No excuses, this was about the best this 42-year old man had to give on that day. Good race. I’m happy and proud of my finish.

My placing:
At the second aid station, after the biggest climb, mile 10.5, I was in 171st place - no problem. I was going out slow as planned. My own definition of running a smart race is to pass people more often than getting passed at the end of the race and it worked. At Eldorado Creek, the half way point, I was in the lowest place of the day 179th. I attribute some of my slowness to altitude in the high country which seemed to make me uncoordinated in this rough and very rocky section. A lot of stumbling and stubbed toes. Not a good excuse since everybody else dealt with the same conditions but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. It was in this stretch that I had my only fall of the race. Five minutes out of an aid station (can’t remember which one but it was getting warm) I fell and landed on both water bottles causing the tops to pop off. Subsequently lost all my water. This made for a long conservative stretch to the next aid station. Because I was sweating and not replacing fluid, I held back from peeing because I didn’t want my weight to drop too much when I got weighed by the medical people. When they did weigh me, I was down only two pounds. I stepped off the scale and immediately ran over to the weeds for much needed relief.

As stated above, I didn’t do much good in the canyons which is why I remained in 179th place to Foresthill which is mile 62. This is where I saw my CREW (Cranky Runner Endless Waiting) for the second time. My crew consisted of:

Ben Holmes (Bad Ben) http://www.psychowyco.com/ Race Director, 22-hour 100 miler, Inspiration, role model, Grandfather, friend to my family and the best pacer a person could ask for.
Tracey Perry - My extremely supportive, understanding, smokin hot trophy wife and most of all a terrific mother to our kids.
Angie Hilderbrand - Kid watcher, driver, photographer, shopper, navigator and the coolest mother in law on the planet.
Ty Perry (T-bone) - My three year old runnin buddy and aid station bell ringer.
Miles Perry – My eight year old best buddy, soccer star, future ultra runner and radical mountain biker.
Kaylan Perry – The sweetest 11-year old person in Aspire (top 5% gifted student program). Reads 1,000 pages a month!

Seeing my family, picking up Ben and heading into some very runnable down hills collectively made for a much needed boost. I think this is why many say the race really starts at Foresthill.

My best placing of the race was at the 90 mile mark where I was in 137th place! Unfortunately this is also where I took time to make myself puke and eat (in that order) which cost me ten places putting me back to 147th upon arriving at the 93.5 mile aid station. In the last 6.5 miles I was passed by 4 more runners, faded a little but still happy.

Summary:
This race was everything I hoped for and expected. It was the hardest, most exhilarating, brutal, spiritually touching occasion of my life. May sound like an exaggeration but it’s actually an understatement because I can’t come up with words that describe the total experience. The experience is much more than the 27 hours of running. It started when I ran my first four mile race several years ago. It was called the Trolley Run, held in Kansas City and I ran it with James Herrmann, a GENESYS co-worker and friend. James and I later decided to attempt the Chicago Marathon and talked Scott Schoettley, another coworker and skiing friend, into joining us. We could hardly imagine 26.2 miles at the time. I ended up being beat by these two OLDER ENGINEERS! That’s what really what started all this. I just couldn’t handle it.

After many marathons and ultras, I signed up for my first 100 miler scheduled for February of 2005. Unfortunately, I suffered a stress fracture in a 100k (63 mile) race called Bandera in the Texas hill country the month before. After three months of recovery, I took what I learned from that experience and started the training process over again. Ran more marathons and ultras with friends Mike Gase, Jim Schinker, Pete Leon, Casey Yunger, Phil Dean, John Fralick. I still had a hard time imagining running 100-miles but went ahead and ran my first (25 hours and 22 minutes) in February of 2007. This was a big confidence booster but I still struggled to wrap my head around running 100-miles through mountains and canyons in the heat. Nor could I mentally grasp the training regimen I put together which included 10 ultras, half a dozen marathons and many 30 to 40 mile weekends. This is the coolest thing about this sport, the discovery.

Discovering what your very own human body is capable of is where the magic is. Discovering at mile 45 that you feel invincible when just 10 miles back you thought you were going to die. Discovering over and over that no matter how bad it gets, it gets better again. Discovering over and over that you can do more and more if you keep pushing and be smart about it. What more is there to discover? What is the next goal? Sub 24-hour 100-miler? Absolutely. Knowing what I know now, I can already imagine it so it’s even closer than that first Chicago Marathon was.

Diet made a big difference:
Thanks to an Iron-Man, Ultra-Cyclist friend as well as my best man, Gary Michalek, I began reading several books on nutrition. Started a Vegan diet on May 1st 2005 for general health reasons and the hope it would improve my running. Learned, after more reading, about the benefits of Omega 3 fatty acids and introduced limited amounts of wild game, fish and fish oil into my diet. With the additional guidance of Dr. David Black and close friend Stephanie Simkins http://simpwholenutrition.com/Home_Page.php, I greatly reduced grains and refined sugars while increasing raw whole foods, nuts and good old fashioned water. Even started eating chia seeds. The same chia that the chia pets are made of. What a whack job, granola boy, right? This diet brought huge, not entirely expected, improvement to my running staying power, recovery, sleep quality and overall feeling of alertness, energy and wellness. Don’t know if it’s right for everybody but it’s been big for me.

Interesting notes:
According to plan I passed a lot of people in the second half of the race. Of all the people who passed me though, most were women. This reinforces my belief that when the going gets really tough, the women just seem to have more grit than the men. Truth hurts.

My weight was never more than two pounds over or under my starting weight which was great. However, my left kidney was in pain for a few stretches which I think was due to processing so much liquid. Need to talk to Dr. Black about this.

I worked on the perfect playlist for my IPOD to get me through the race. Included a huge mix. I have really enjoyed listening to the White Stripes during my last few races. However, nothing sounded good in the arid, hot, mountains except for the Grateful Dead. Oh well, no complaints..

Why do it?
The attraction - trail running is the most basic, simple and primal form of moving and just being that I know. It makes me feel very human while at the same time animal in nature. It’s often very hard but rewarding at a deeply personal level. Everything becomes magnified while I’m pushing along the earthen trail and the feeling lasts well beyond the end of a run. I appreciate everything more. I appreciate people, things, pain, water, the sweat in my eye, my lungs, legs, shoes, a mosquito bite, everything. Connections with people become deeper and more meaningful whether these people are running with me or just in my thoughts. It simply can’t be explained unless experienced first hand. I know it otherwise just sounds like craziness but there are moments, cruising down a single ribbon of trail, under the canopy, when I just know I’m the luckiest man in the world. In these moments I often feel I have begun to discover a life secret that nobody else can begin to know. I like to tell Tracey that I’m trying to become my own hero.