It all started about four years ago when Christy Beth opened her second Fleet Feet store in Nashville. I have some friends, Scott Bell and Jobie Williams, who had either just completed or where about to go do Pine to Palm 100. During the soft opening they had painted one wall in the back with chalkboard paint and on it was written ‘Write down your goal.’ So I wrote ‘I want to run 100 miles within 5 years. In the first couple of years I forgot about what I had written always training for the next long run race and slowly increasing my race distance. Two years ago I started to put my eye on picking a 100 miler to do and start digging into what the requirements were to qualify for one.
Early in this four year time period I had read an article in Trail Runner Magazine about a guy name Tom Green who had suffered a traumatic brain injury and some of the races he had run. He is an East Coast runner from what seemed like Virginia. So the article had mentioned two 100 milers in VA, Massanutten 100 and Old Dominion 100. It was hard for me to figure out if Old Dominion what type of terrain this race was, the most I could figure out was that it maybe ½ road ½ trail and I thought it was loops, loops aren’t my thing. So I began to consider Massanutten 100, early on I did a quick check just to see what it was all about and then let it sit for a few years. Later I decided that when I did my first 100 this would be it because it was in my home state of Virginia, but it would take another year before I tried to pull the trigger on the race.
A couple of years ago I was trying my hand at 50 milers. At this point in time I had done only one and finished well, at least that was what I thought. Lookout 50 miler the first two times I ran it was short of 50 miles by about 3 or 4 miles, it wasn’t until my 3rd go at it that the course had been changed to make it a true 50 miler. In this second year of going to Lookout 50 miler I had been encouraged by some friends to go out to California and run the North Face 50 Mile Endurance Run. So I did both that year getting some advice from friends Scott Bell and Joel Meredith about running two 50 milers so close together; there was 13 days between the end of one race and the beginning of the second one. Following their advice I finished both reasonably well, the times for both races where fairly close. I was pretty stoked, I thought that if I could do both I would be well on my way to being ready for a 100 miler.
The next season, early in the year, a friend convinced me to attempt my first 100k. It was close and cheap so I thought why not. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into. It was my first and to date only DNF, Did Not Finish. It was a looped course that I would have to run 3 times. It had one brutal climb. But the hardest part of the whole thing was a cold thunderstorm that hit hard on my third and final loop. I was SO unprepared for rain! The last time I had to make the climb I was getting very cold to the core and lighting was flashing at tree top level as I was climbing on a very exposed section of the trail underneath power lines. While made to the aid station I was unable to complete the last 8 miles to the finish.
Discouraged I decided to make an attempt to complete the SCAR in the summer. SCAR is the Smokies Challenge Adventure Run, the course is the Appalachian Trail (AT) through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Not really knowing what I was doing I ended up adding about 1.5 miles to the overall course making it distance about 73 miles with over 18,000+ feet of climbing. It took nearly 30 hours but I got it done. So I felt better about attempting Massanutten 100, which became the goal 100 miler at this point.
Last fall I attempted my second 100k. The race was Cloudsplitter 100k in Norton, VA. It was a great race and I’ll probably go back and do the 100 miler at some point. Done. I had my qualifying race for Massanutten completed.
At this point I read through everything on the race website making sure I had done everything to be considered for the race. I had, but registration didn’t open until January. So I waited. January comes and I’m a day or two late with my application but I had a few days before the last day to apply. I applied. I look at the information of the other runners and see that several applied but did not meet the requirements for entry, so while I was fairly certain I would get in I didn’t want to count my chickens just yet. By the end of January it was official I was in.
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