Run Amok 100 Miler

November 9th 2019

100 miles, one week after a 50 miler, 3 weeks after coming off of being injured for 12 weeks. What was I thinking or was I even thinking at all?

How did this even happen? My wife has been wanting us to do a race together the biggest problem is we don’t do the same distances. So Run Amok put on by Awesome Sauce was the perfect foil for us, it had distances from 5k all the way up to 100 miles. I signed up long before taking 12 weeks off to heal up my heal. Once I sign up for a race it’s really hard for me to back out.

So the weekend before I had finished the Natchez Trace 50 Miler in 12:15 in which I walked about 75% to 80% of it. So my walking was on point. Now could I just keep that up for 100 miles? I wasn’t worried about time cut offs, 55 hours to finish, nor elevation, about 10k, nor was the course very technical. So the biggest issue would be to keep my head in the game.

So a little back ground on how this event works. It’s a 6.65 mile loop part of which is about a mile long out and back. So a roughly 4.5 mile loop, which boarders a lake, and 2 miles on the out and back section. There are two aid stations; the start finish, which you must hit each loop to get your bib marked, the second is at the beginning and end of the lake loop. So my plan was to do 2 loops and then restock, then rinse and repeat for 100 miles.

The 50 miler the week before I hadn’t spent too much time organizing my nutrition, I knew what I was going to use and what order I was going to eat things in so no big deal. Side Note and shameless plug: If you all aren’t using or haven’t tried Spring Energy you’re missing out on some serious gut changing performance stabilizing nutrition, this has been a game changer for me and thus the foundation of all my racing and adventure runs. Get the 'Sample Pack' then use 'JackS' at checkout for a sweet discount. Okay back on track. So Friday morning before heading out to Hamilton Bay State Park I lay out my Spring Energy making sure I’ve got enough and to aid in the ‘I don’t have to think about it’ category in the middle of 100 miles and the middle of the night. What I did was to pair up Speed Nut with Hemp, Long Haul and an Almond Gold bar I get from Costco until I ran out of Long Hauls. Then the Long Hauls became Power Rush until I ran out of the SN w/Hemp at which point those switched to Speed Nut with caffeine, I had enough of this to finish out 16 loops. The other part of the plan was for electorates in which I would refill my water bottles every other loop one with water and the other with Electroride, when looking at how much I had I knew it was going to be close as I had about 6 or 7 to start with. Nutrition planning done, now I just needed to figure out staging.

Another big concern I had was pre-race breakfast. I’ve gotten so use to my eggs and sausage in the morning not having those before the race was a bit of a worry. I was assured that the hotel would have those items for us in the morning, I brought my own just in case.

Race morning came with me waking up and heading down to see what breakfast the hotel would really have, I was smart to have planned to bring my camp cooking set up and food. The pressure was then on to leave in enough time to get to the race, cook, clean up and gear up for the race. Arriving at the race with a little less than an hour to get ready was a bit stressful. At 5 ‘til 8 I was rushing to be 90% ready. I everything ready for the first 2 laps, but had left several things undone. I’d have to deal with those at time went on. The race is about to start and I’m still sitting at the car 30’ away. I make it to the start in time for Courtney to give her finial instructions and to answer somebody’s question about how the loop thing works and how many loops you have to do for the 100 miler. Then we’re off, I run for a bit to get out from the crowd knowing that I’ll be past once I start walking, but that’s okay as I’ll have gotten a chance to settle in to my rhythm. Once settled my mine began to roll over all the stuff that didn’t get done before the race started like my wife’s poles needing to be set up and having my nutrition organized and my clothes set up such that wouldn’t be damp when I needed them later at night. Oh well, poles won’t take long and everything else would just have to be as it was.

So the course. The hardest part, aka most technical section, was on the out and back. Going out was a short sharp decent followed by a climb at was a bit rocky. Once past those the course was really runnable, for those who were running. The end of the out and back near the lake loop had about a ¼ mile of black top. Now you’re on to rolling single track that was almost free of obstructions and fairly flat. You could go either way on the loop it didn’t matter until your last loop if you were doing any distance under the 100, then you had to go right on your last loop to find your turn around sign and then head back to the start finish. So first I went left following Forrest, then 2 rights and then one more left just to be sure. Yup the easier direction of travel was to go right at the start of each lake loop. The climbs where more gradual going this direction. Six loops in and I knew this was going to be a mental race. I had also figured out that by the time I hit 70+ miles those technical sections on the out and back were going to be tough. So I kept my head down and kept on going never stopping for more than a couple minutes at time and not sitting down until I absolutely necessary. At one point I rolled my ankle a little, just enough to hurt a little but not enough to stop me.

At times it got to be kind of funny as Forrest and I would roll in to the start/finish at the same time and I’d be ready to go and he wasn’t quite ready yet. He would catch up to some of the time. One of the things I learned was that if my heal began to hurt was to do some toe crunches while walking, this seemed to eliminate most of my foot pain so when my other foot began to get sore I did the same thing. It wasn’t until the end of race that I figured out that the reason my other foot was starting to hurt and throb a bit more was because it was swelling from having been rolled, so the crunches didn’t work out so well on that foot.

Food wise outside of my Spring Energy I ate 3 burgers, a lot of bacon and when the sun came up I had a breakfast of eggs and bacon this ended up being my longest break. It was great I’d come to the top of the lake loop and ask Courtney if when I got back I could have a burger and it was there waiting for me. It was that way for anything I needed and it was that way for every runner. All you had to do was ask Courtney for whatever it was you where wanting to eat and she have it for you, if she didn’t have there she would figure out a way to get you what you wanted.

I sat down maybe 5 times the entire race for maybe 5 minutes each time, this was at night when I needed to give my feet a small break and needed the mental time to figure out what I needed on the next loop(s). It truly came down to a mental thing, did you have enough grit to keep going repeating the same course over and over. For me to never stop moving and just get it done was huge, I’m not sure how I would have done if I had taken a break longer than I did. Several 100 milers stopped at some point during the night to sleep, which is totally okay. The hardest part of this race was staying in the game.

28:30 hours, 15 loops and an out and back later I was done. I had walked 90% of this course and managed to keep a good clip going the entire time.