Virgil Crest 50 Mile Race Report

                                                        Mile 36. Photo by Jen Sperduto

 

Running the Virgil Crest 50Mile felt like coming home. It’s hard to describe how I feel about completing this race again this year. It’s truly an amazing race. The aid stations, volunteers and race director are all incredible. The course will challenge any runner. It’s beautiful beyond a doubt. The first 36 miles were a slow painful and doubtful experience. The mud was everywhere. Up to my ankles for a lot of the day. I tried to lose myself in the beauty that abounds on this course but it was hard to look at anything but where to successfully put my next step without falling on my ass. Fall on my ass I did. Six times. Not painful falls. More like a little kid sliding down a soft, slippery mud hill.  I had the normal thought I get on a difficult run of “why I am doing this again?” I felt from the get go I would be battling the cut off times all day. I had doubts of finishing the race early on. Everything changed for me at mile 36. I think the best way to explain it is acceptance. I decided right after a hot cup of soup and a nice chat with my awesome, supportive wife that I was going to run the remaining miles with a different attitude. I stopped worrying about cut offs. I stopped bitching to myself about mud and how much better I would be doing on firmer ground. I just stayed in the moment and I ran. A dominate thought in my mind was this is who I am. This is who I chose to be.  For all the pain and discomfort that can come from the experience of an ultra marathon it doesn’t hold a candle to the quite moments alone climbing a monster hill when you really find out who you are. It’s in those moments my mind becomes clear and I feel an unexplainable closeness to God. I like to remind myself in those moments why I chose this wonderful way of life.  I am a seeker. In those moments I am defined. I was overwhelmed with this feeling at Virgil Crest. I describe the feeling to my wife as God punching me in the stomach. I swear I can FEEL Him smile. I had that at mile 36 and it stayed with me the rest of the race right to the finish line.

I completed the Virgil Crest 50 faster than I did last year with a time of 15:47. I crossed the finish line in a dead sprint and I felt strong. I wished I was running the 100 miler. A wonderful thought to bring with me to the starting line of the Oil Creek 100 in eight days. The feeling I had at Virgil Crest has stayed. It feels almost like a state of half dreaming and awake. I am bursting out of my skin waiting to toe the line at Oil Creek. I know it will be challenging. I know I will have my down moments and like every ultra I have ever run something will go wrong. But I also know I am going back to the trails where my dream began. The place and the race I chose to challenge myself with an impossible run in the hopes of knowing God again while teaching my mind and body what it means to go beyond what I thought possible. I’m going back to Oil Creek and I am running 100 miles. When the moment comes, and I’ll know it when it comes, I am leaving everything on those trails.

A Return to Virgil Crest

With my daughter Emily after the Mahlyon Mahem 50K.

I'm on my way back to beautiful upstate NY today to run the Virgil Crest 50 Mile Ultra Marathon tomorrow. I completed this race last year and I remember it as one of the most difficult races I have ever done. The course has 10,000 feet of elevation for 50 miles and the most difficult section goes up and down a black diamond ski slope twice. Many of the climbs remind me of my adventure running the Brazil 135 Mile Ultra Marathon.  I've thought a lot about this race during the last few months. I’m registered for the Oil Creek 100 Mile Trail Run in 15 days and I promised myself I would only return to Oil Creek if I complete Virgil Crest with no major issues. I’ve lost around 17 pounds and though it’s a slow go the weight IS coming off. I haven’t had bread, wheat, flour or sugar for three months and I’m losing about five pounds a month. I’ve been back training with my amazing coach Lisa Smith Batchen for the last few months and my perspective on running has changed a lot this time around. I feel in many ways I am a more mature runner. Less stressed for sure. I don’t feel like my training is all about one race. I see myself in it for the long haul. I’m taking it as it comes and if I’m not ready for one race there will be another. I honestly did not think I would run Virgil Crest or Oil Creek this year and I was OK with that. But … here I am. Mentally, I am just beginning to feel ready and that’s exciting. I have hopes that I will continue to run ultra marathons for the rest of my life. I still find myself feeling like a little kid as I am out there for a race or dreaming about one on a long run. There are so many amazing experiences to be found out there on the trails. I recently ran the Labor Pains 12 Hour Run and completed 40 miles on a very hot and humid day. I contemplated stopping several times. But I gutted it out. When I told my wife I was going out for one more loop after 35 miles the pride I saw her in eyes gave me goose bumps.  It was a moment hard to describe.  I looked like hell and I was hurting BAD. The humidity was brutal and I just wasn’t having a great day. But I told myself if I do not finish the run I would not run Virgil Crest. So I kept on moving. Few things in life can ever compare to making the woman you love proud. Especially when you feel like a battered gladiator doing it.  I did not listen to music until the last loop of the race. I was saving my favorite running music for the last loop. It’s the songs I listened to in Brazil and at Oil Creek. It’s very special music to me that brings me to another place in my mind. In between the songs my daughter speaks to me and encourages me. When I heard the songs I have run too for so many miles my heart and my spirit soared. I turned a corner and a runner heading in to complete the race raised his water bottle to me in a salute. The look in his eyes I have seen before. It said we are still here. We are different and today we are special. Today we are finishers. I picked up the pace and I began to cry. I hit the trail to the woods and I lifted my own bottle to the sky and looked up. I saluted my Friend who I spend most of my time thinking about when I run. I yelled as loud as I could and I felt completely free. Connected. Loved. I finished that race in a full out dead sprint and almost puked at the end. But all I could think about was the salute I received from a fellow warrior on the trail and my own.