The 2019 Leadville 100
Demon Debates and Dragging a Fridge = DNF
I’m back for my fourth shot at the Leadville 100, and I don’t feel great. My winter was beset by injuries and distractions, my training has been lame, and I’m not in the best shape. My only option at this point is to think positive. I did run a marathon in June that was notably faster than I’ve managed for over a decade; I now have run the whole course, and I’ve finished a different mountainous 100: hopefully I’ve learned a thing or two.
So I need to stop dwelling on the lack of mileage under my belt, the extra weight I’ve been carrying since December, the stiffness of my ankle from a nasty sprain in February, and the acute ache in my sacral area — maybe a broken tailbone? — due to the collapse of a picnic table I was sitting on at a family gathering two weeks ago. I have a giant knot in my shoulder that I blame on travel and sleeping poorly the last couple of weeks. Basically, everything hurts, but not in a screaming, obvious way. Maybe it’s all in my head.
We have a larger group this year, which feels a little hectic around the cabin. My son Sebastian and my friends Paul and Rob are here, along with Rob’s girlfriend Lisa and Paul’s friends Frankie and Jeff. Another friend, Kathy, opted for a nice quiet hotel room. My run is not the sole focus this time: Rob, who paced me last year, is also toeing the line. Our crews are coordinating with each other. This all seems simple enough, but it somehow feels complicated.
At the gun I shuffle off, establishing a decent pace down the hill and out of town. I feel stiff and a little achy, the tension-knot feels like a rock at the base of my neck, and there’s a variety of minor pains around my hips, knees and ankles. My mind is full of negatives: don’t hurt yourself, don’t fall, don’t go too slowly or too fast, don’t forget to drink enough water, don’t think negative thoughts. STOP THINKING LIKE THIS. Don’t think “don’t think negative!” Be positive! Less than an hour in and already there are voices in my head: this does not bode well. But don’t be negative.
Upon making it onto the pavement at the bottom of the hill, my thoughts are all over the place; not at all on the run. Get your head in the game. The paved road has made me less vigilant and suddenly my body is violently jarred as my foot comes down into what turns out to be a mini-pothole in the road. This hurts in various places, particularly all around my tailbone region; my nerves are jangled and my heart rate spikes. I experience a flood of adrenaline and a flood of negative thoughts.
I’m like 5 miles in and already a mess. F**k.
Around Turquoise Lake I manage a solid pace, passing people and trying not to get flustered by all the people passing me. In spite of best efforts to be careful, I twist my recently injured ankle a couple of times and stumble a lot. Here’s a fun exercise: while running rocky single-track in the dark, try not to think about falling down while not allowing the phrase “don’t fall down” or even just the word “fall” to repeat in your mind. And then don’t fall down. I was not successful at this exercise. Essentially I trotted along with the words DON’T FALL DOWN DON’T TRIP DON’T FALL DON’T FALL NO DON’T FALL DOWN repeating in my head until — yep — I fell down.
F**k.
I hit the ground harder than seemed warranted by my modest pace, and my first thought — profanity aside — is that’s it, I’m done. Not even 10 miles in. I try to override that immediately with a barrage of positive observations like I did not hit my head, my gloves saved my hands from getting scraped and my ankle is not re-sprained. I’m fine! I’m awake now! The guys behind me immediately hoist me to my feet and ask if I’m okay; one of them tells me to sit down and do a systems check. Good advice. I sit on a handy rock, telling the 3 or 4 assembled guys that I will be fine and to continue on. They go. For the first few seconds of a crowded morning, I am all alone, and realize that this is the first “systems check” I have performed all day.
The results are not great. First, the fall slammed my knee onto a rock, and it hurts. I don’t try to look at it, but I can tell there is some bleeding. Not a big deal. My bad ankle is hurting; my sacrum area and all muscles and nerves radiating from it also hurt. Okay: pain. Moderate concern. My gut seems reasonably okay. My stomach: questionable. I feel like nutritional intake might become major issue. Later. Yellow light. This is not yet something I can address. My brain…oh. Red flashing “Check Engine” light. My head is not in the game. This is what’s been “off” so far.
This is a highly sobering moment. This sport is at least half in your head, and there’s some troubling sh*t going on in mine right now. I get back on the trail, walking at first in the attempt to complete my diagnostic assessment while still covering a little ground. I start repeating things to myself like Trust your training, trust your body, trust your friends to be there at May Queen with your sunglasses. Trust the universe. I get running again and make reasonable time through the aid station. I’m hoping the fall was a sufficient smack upside the head (fortunately not a literal one) that I am now awake and present. I jog carefully up the single track, thinking that when I get to Hagerman Road, theoretically, I can run.
Nope. Something is still off. Running seems really hard. It’s still early morning but I feel like I’m behind and must catch up. I push myself up Sugarloaf with the mantra run what’s runnable. There’s a lot of arguing going on in my head about what actually constitutes “runnability.” This is a reasonably clear gravel road with room to move around other people and relatively few hazards, but it’s also a big climb. I promise myself with every hiked step that I will make up for it on the descent, and on the paved road beyond, which is unquestionably runnable. I pick up momentum going down, but there are concerns. My right knee — the one I banged up earlier — feels wrong and hurts, and there seems to be an associated pain developing in my right quads, which is amplifying as I go pounding down towards Powerline. While I’m worrying about this, I come down entirely wrong on the other foot, drastically rolling my left (injured) ankle.
The degree of negativity is alarming. I mean, WTF? Who let all these assholes into my head?
The effort required to keep from falling brings me to a momentary standstill. My internal opposition party explodes with commentary: you’re injured, you should stop. Your ankle is sprained; your quad is torn. Something’s wrong with your stomach. This is not working. Not your day. The really insidious voice — that guy way in the back — adds if you had just fallen on your face you could just lie there and be done with it. Stop. Quit.
The degree of negativity is alarming. I mean, WTF? Who let all these assholes into my head? I expect to have some low and pathetic moments, but this is very extreme and way too early. This is making it so much harder than necessary. I feel like I’m dragging a refrigerator behind me. Unacceptable. Time to lose the fridge.
It has become a lovely day, sunny and bright, getting a little warm. I blow through Outward Bound earlier than any previous attempt, which, considering I was a little late through May Queen, means I have been hauling ass the last couple of hours. Not that far off my absolute best case scenario. So all the nasty little voices in my head can shut the f**k up now. My crew is set up on pipeline, and I manage to run — or at least not-walk — almost all the way there. I’m very glad to see them. I guzzle an electrolyte drink and change into short sleeves. Everyone is upbeat and psyched, which keeps me from whining about the litany of aches, pains and problems I have experienced so far. Again, wtf is my problem? None of the pains are extreme, and I am well on my way to a PR to Twin Lakes. My crew sends me off feeling better, but still achy and beset by doubts and concerns.
I am in and out of the Half Pipe aid station in a couple of minutes, and I’ve totally sold myself on the runnability of the next section. When I discover that I require walk breaks every half-mile or so, and that the Mt Elbert climb is considerably harder than it was the last couple of times I did it, I go back to my earlier strategy of planning to compensate for every not-run step on the way back down. Past the mini aid station, I shift gears and start running, but there’s a long line of people on the single-track ahead of me, and some of them are walking. This part of the trail is very skinny; it takes some doing to get around this slow-moving group. Inevitably I come up on another one. Eventually I fall in with some people going about the same speed as I am, but as a group we continue to run into walkers who we can’t pass until there’s a reasonable spot for them to step out of the way.
I’m frustrated. I want my ability to do this to be about my ability to do this, not hindered by there being so many walkers ahead of me. I recall all the runners I stoically allowed to blow past me in the dark along Turquoise Lake, as I thought smugly that many of them would burn out early. I was correct, but now that I’m ready to run, my smugness has come back to bite me: the tired people are now an obstacle. I regret every single opportunity I did not take to pass people on wider parts of the course. The sense of urgency is growing toward panic. The knot in my shoulder has become unignorably painful. I try to push all this negative thinking out of my head. We will soon emerge onto a jeep road, and I can pass anyone I want on the descent into Twin Lakes.
Why can’t I just be happy?
When we get onto the road, I start really running, anxious to make up not only the walk-breaks during the climb but the traffic slowdowns of the last couple of miles. There is plenty of room to pass, but the road is steep and full of loose rocks and gravel. I manage not to think the words “fall,” or “crash,” but somehow just thinking about my injured ankle seems to result in at least three pretty severe twists of it. My right quads are definitely screaming, but I am not clear on what they’re saying: are they saying serious injury and you’re making it worse, or just ouch?
I successfully remain upright all the way down into the aid station. I have beaten my PR to this point by more than 10 minutes. I should be happy about this, but I’m just stressed and panicky. Why can’t I just be happy? Somehow I still feel behind and generally terrible. Last year I had less time, yet I made the round-trip to Winfield and back. Just barely, though — there was sprinting involved. I don’t believe sprinting is feasible today, but I try not to admit this. I’m FINE. I’m doing great. No fridge. WTF? My crew is excited, happy, upbeat; Rob has come and gone, apparently feeling great, and I, too, seem to be right on track. Freshly supplied for my journey, I head out, pretty encouraged and ready to tackle the pass. My last couple of trips up and over have proven to be less difficult than anticipated, so I’m hopeful that I will be pleasantly surprised.
Cruising up the mountain, I am starting to feel really good. Finally. It’s kind of hot now, and I am sweating like crazy — a good, cathartic type of sweating, like all systems are finally working properly. My head clears, my breathing is fine, and I’m making good time. Again, though, there are a lot of people ahead of me who are moving slower, and each maneuver to pass someone requires a burst of energy. There must be a lot more people in the race this year. After a couple dozen fuel-burning accelerations, I fall in behind a group who are moving slower than I’d like to be but not so slowly that I feel like mustering the energy to push past them. We trudge along single-file. Things seem to be going well.
I realize suddenly that I have stopped sweating: my head still feels clear and breathing is easy, but my energy is flagging. A debate breaks out amongst my inner voices, who have been so lovely and quiet for a few hours. Proposition: you should push on to Hopeless without resting. The affirmative side insists that this will get me over the pass faster. The negative team argues that I am getting dehydrated and stupid, and blundering onward just because I arbitrarily decided where rest is allowed will probably cause me to drop dead.
This, I have to say, is a compelling argument.
I cut the debate short and abruptly sit down on a log, drink all my remaining water (not much) and finish what is left of my Tailwind; it seems that I forgot to refill either of these things at Twin Lakes. How could I forget THAT? Onward. When I finally arrive at Hopeless I consider blowing right through the aid station, as a nice young woman has already run out to meet me, taken my pack and way over-filled my water. But someone asks what I need, and someone (yeah, okay, it was me) says I need a chair. The volunteers produce one of those very low-to-the-ground camping chairs, and in spite of misgivings, down I go. There is virtually no chance that I can get out of this chair without assistance.
Once I’m down there, another volunteer offers to bring me a number of items, and I request some ramen noodles, and wait, and then sit there eating them, like I’m in a funky restaurant (with llamas). The waiter comes by to ask if I’d like anything else, and I stupidly sit there thinking about what else sounds good, like I have all afternoon to hang out.
A runner arrives and loudly asks a volunteer a lot of questions about cut-off times. When’s the Winfield cutoff? What about inbound at Twin Lakes? The woman tells the guy he should not be worried, he’s “way ahead of the game.” This snaps me out of my leisurely al fresco dining experience in a way that eating ramen with my fingers out of a Dixie cup, somehow, did not. How long have I been sitting here? Oh sh*t. “Way ahead of the game” is rather overstating the case: “probably okay” seems more accurate. I request a hoist and it takes both hands and some serious effort for the nice woman to haul me up. My legs protest — they thought we were done.
Once I get moving again, I try hard to ignore my overwhelming sense of impending doom. I am still ahead of where I have been in previous races, but both my body and my brain have shifted into recovery mode and are resisting cranking back into gear. The over-filled bladder in my pack is ridiculously heavy; I consider stopping to dump some out, but decide maybe the extra water will force me to rehydrate, which would be a good idea. I spend the remaining climb to the pass psyching myself up for the descent. It has never taken me too long to get from the top into Winfield. It’s fine. I’m fine. Trust.
As I start down the steep side, though, a whole symphony of alarm bells go off. NOT FINE. My right quads are simply not cooperating. It feels like my knee might not engage — like with each step there’s a significant chance that my leg will just collapse. This is not conducive to bombing down the mountain. Not to mention the fact that the harsh winter has left a lot of mud and loose rocks, making the trail quite a bit more technical and less stable than expected. Also, there are a LOT of people coming up, and it’s really hard to work up to even a slow trot when I have to step around all these people. The wave of panic is rising.
Inching down a large, almost vertical rock surface, my feet slide out from under me and I fall backwards. I fleetingly believe I’m about to bash my head on the rock and die. Instead, I practically bounce off the enormous water balloon I’m wearing on my back. My shoulder whacks painfully into an adjacent rock, but my head touches nothing, which makes me laugh. Surprise! Not dead! A couple of decent humans help me up. Now I’m really slow. The fall has reactivated all that pesky normal-person caution that makes running down treacherous scree fields nearly impossible. Eventually I get into the woods, and am able to pick up the pace, anticipating the end of this really steep part and the relatively runnable stretch ahead.
But “runnable” has become a meaningless concept. I can’t seem to run more than a few steps at a time. The damn debate teams fire up again. Proposition: you CAN run the rest of the way into Winfield. The affirmative team argues that I’ve run this several times before, and in fact once I’m off the single-track there is a road that is not only runnable but sprintable, and just last year I sprinted it the whole way! And it wasn’t that hard! And I have a bigger time cushion this year! Very valid points. But the opposition has a powerful rebuttal: I feel terrible, my leg doesn’t work, I’m carrying like 80 pounds of water, and a sprint of any distance seems pretty much out of the question today. I’m in no condition to pull off even a focused jog from here to Winfield.
This is not an orderly debate; there is a lot of shouting. Hopefully none of it is actually issuing from my mouth, because there are hundreds of people coming the other way. I blame every single one of them for slowing me down.
Why are there so many people? And why were they so f**king nice to me at Hopeless? They should have slapped the ramen out of my hand and told me to get my ass moving. And why is it so hot? Why are you such a f**king loser? $%&(@#$^$92! $*#&*%&@$(@*$&*! F*****K.
Even my inner voices seem to be shocked into silence by this tirade. I worry that I’ve been shrieking profanity at all the oncoming runners (actually, let’s be honest: do I care right now? I do not). Whatever; the debaters have finally shut up and I resolve to simply go as fast as I can, whether it turns out I can sprint or not, get in and out of Winfield, and then deal with the next thing. I’m not naming the next thing, because obviously it involves crawling 500 miles up a f**king wall.
The trail from the bottom of the hideous descent to the road is about five times longer than I remember, more uphill and much more difficult. I finally emerge onto the road and begin what is going to have to pass for a sprint right now; this sprint involves some walking, but it propels me into the aid station, where I stand for a few seconds looking wildly about and then just proceed around the cones and back out to the road. No rest, no aid, no sitting. In spite of being the hugest loser who ever lived, I’ve arrived a few minutes earlier than I did last year, and, as I keep reminding myself, last year I did make it back to Twin Lakes in time. Never mind the sprinting.
I start to think that maybe, after all, I might be okay. I’m finally heading the right direction. I finally don’t hate all the people coming the other way — and there ARE still people coming the other way. I work up a decent trot and join a few others who are on a mission to get over the pass. I can do this! … Maybe. Some people have picked up energetic pacers with fresh legs and probably no nasty voices in their heads. I try to stick with these people, but they’re awfully fast. My lower back is killing me; my left ankle and right quads as well. My shoulder, where it whacked into the rock, is also hurting. But I’m still in the race. Even here at the back of the pack there are a daunting number of people in my way — not that I’m breaking any speed records here, but now that I’m actually moving I’m continually coming up behind walkers and have to either slow down or muster the energy to get around them, which, on this extremely steep and skinny trail, is a LOT of energy.
In spite of how very much this sucks, I am starting to get really happy. Winfield is behind me, I’m kind of cruising, and I’m more than halfway up the hardest climb of the course. Still some daylight, not really cold, not raining. And there’s a giant snail! He’s kind of a cartoon snail, who stands (if snails stand…) about 7 feet tall, has red eyes and he’s smiling. I am delighted — I’m almost at the top of the pass (a very high point!), I suddenly feel awesome, and now I’m hallucinating a happy snail! This is the icing on the 12,600 foot tall cake.
My moment of joy and triumph as I reach the top of the pass is tragically short-lived. It’s almost dark. As I start down towards the aid station it becomes painfully clear that downhill is much more of a problem than climbing. My right leg is just not cooperating. I hope that I am just tired from the uphill battle and disoriented by the twilight. Even a reasonably steady jog the whole way should get me there before the cutoff. Every time I tell myself I pulled this off last year, the Demon Debate Team bombards me with all the reasons why I can’t do it now: my leg is wonky, my ankle is messed up, I’m pathetic, there’s a lot more water crossings to navigate this year, I’m a loser…this trail is way longer than it was when I came up…
I keep looking at my watch. There is now a debate about whether this is helpful. Knowing the exact time seems like it would push me (Look!), but not knowing leaves me room for hope (Don’t look!). The affirmative team is still trying hard: you’re closer than you think! You can still sprint after the water! You’re doing fine! But the rebuttals are fierce and continual: there’s at least another mile before I even get to the water; it’s almost 10:00; there’s way too much water and it’s going to be really cold; your ankle; your knee…the fridge….
And then a whole new level of negative takes over: YOU SUCK! YOU CAN’T DO THIS YOU WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THIS YOU WILL NEVER EARN A LEADVILLE BUCKLE YOU SHOULD GIVE UP YOU SHOULD GIVE UP TRYING TO RUN 100-MILERS YOU SHOULD GIVE UP RACING COMPELTELY! GIVE UP. YOU’RE A F**KING LOSER. JUST STOP! GIVE UP RUNNING FOREVER!
This is so over-the-top awful that I am startled back into reality. It is as if Godzilla crashed in on the debate and started destroying everything, both teams scattering in all directions, screaming. Boom. Debate over; voices gone. Here I am, alone on a dark trail; absolute silence. I feel like I just woke up and found myself here. My task is to get to Twin Lakes as fast as possible. The current time is irrelevant: just run. If you can’t run, walk as fast as you can. Just go. My friends are waiting. Maybe I can still make the cutoff. Just GO.
I keep pushing down the mountain, but my hope for a miraculous recovery and victorious sprint gradually fades — it has crept past the cutoff time, and I am only just getting to the river. As I’m flailing through it I manage to stab myself in the ankle with my trekking pole. On to the next large water crossing, and then the next. And another. I’m cold, and feeling increasingly hesitant about plunging into the icy water, each puddle/pond muddier and seemingly colder than the last one. I am counting but can’t remember how many there are: Six? Eight? Is this the last one?
This is a brief distraction from grappling with the muddy, cold fact of another DNF. I am once again — after four years of training and effort — NOT getting a Leadville buckle. I am vaguely sad, but oddly not really emotional at all. The few people around me seem to be in good spirits: DNFers relieved that they’re almost done for the day, their pacers encouraging them along, their friends coming out to embrace them. I start looking toward each oncoming headlight, hoping the next one will be my son or my friend. My feet are freezing and everything hurts. There seem to be dozens of puddles and I realize that no one on my crew is stupid enough to stomp through these things unnecessarily; they will be on the other side of all of them.
I make my way through the dark meadow, reconciling myself to the day: this is how it went, and this is how it ends. I feel cold and blank. It is hard not to grasp each and every little happenstance and mistake, lament, blame, curse the unfairness of it all.
Sifting through all this cold muck, I am also coming up with nuggets of pure gold. I get to do this. I love being here. My legs are still moving; my body is still (more or less) whole and capable. I have had a truly beautiful day and I have wonderful people waiting for me somewhere up ahead. I get to take a hot shower and sleep in a bed tonight. There’s no tragedy here: it’s all okay.
One of the headlights waiting in the meadow speaks to me in Paul’s voice. I have been feeling philosophical, but now I experience a pang of emotion. Here is my friend, out here in the dark at whatever-o-clock — after flying to Colorado, being here for days, getting up before 3am to begin crewing and supporting me, and now dressed and ready to pace me into the wee hours — and now that I have proven to be the world’s lamest loser all his effort and hopefulness and kindness has been for nothing. I feel the tears coming as I fall into his arms and blurt out “I’m SO sorry.”
He says — of course — that there’s nothing to be sorry about, and I know this, but I’m not surprised by this turn of emotional events. I saw this so sorry state coming; I’ve been here before. I AM sorry — so, so sorry — but this is just one of the early stages of DNF Grief: sorry for myself. Yes, I’m sorry I dragged other people into it, but mostly I’m sorry I didn’t manage to do the thing I wanted to do, sorry I let myself down, sorry that instead of being happy and insanely proud of myself, I have to process these particular painful feelings. Again.
This time, though, the tears are gone almost immediately and the so-sorry phase is over. I’m not that upset. This year there’s a major consolation: Rob. Rob is reportedly doing great and well on his way to Outward Bound — good news in itself, but also his plan had involved not having a pacer from OB to May Queen. I make the suggestion, but this idea has already been discussed and decided: Paul will pace Rob on that segment instead of me on this one. He is looking forward to it. He has not come all this way for nothing! As we trudge back to Twin Lakes, something is gnawing at the edge of my consciousness; something disturbing.
Deep down I am wondering: did I just…give up?
A lot of what happened doesn’t matter, but the answer to this question does. If I just quit, then I am not who I thought I was. My body was not cooperating, but I could have — should have? — pushed through all that. Or did I imagine these ailments? Was I can’t run downhill really I don’t want to do this anymore? This is agonizing. Almost invariably after a race I will believe that I could have done at least a little better, but this is not just a couple of minutes one way or the other in a marathon. There’s a stark difference between a Leadville buckle and a DNF. It’s the difference between I did it and I didn’t do it. Or I couldn’t. Or the difference between I fell short and I quit. And I was doing well — better than ever — for 45 miles, yet I felt like it was going badly almost the whole way. What happened?
By the time we arrive in Twin Lakes all I can think about is getting the wet stuff off my frozen feet. I am thoroughly chilled. Paul and Sebastian get me wrapped up and replace my footwear while working out next steps with Lisa and Jeff. That this whole endeavor has not been focused exclusively on me this year is a bit of a relief at this point, but now I am just a logistical problem: I need to be taken back to the cabin, while Lisa and Paul are worrying about getting set up at Outward Bound before Rob arrives. The parking situation here has evidently been a nightmare, and rather than being coddled further I am now required to carry stuff and walk at least half a mile to the car. The fact that this is not particularly difficult adds further fuel to my anguish: I’m pretty much fine. WTF?
Back at the cabin I am troubled that it’s not that hard to walk up the stairs. In the shower I note that the wounds on my knee are deeper and more numerous than I had expected, patterned oddly with parallel, scratch-like cuts along the underside of my kneecap and one at the top. It looks like a talon mark, as if a large bird of prey had tried to snatch off my patella. There is a little bit of swelling and it hurts, but mostly, it seems, from the cuts. I expected more of a scrape on my left shoulder, but I can hardly find the spot where I whacked it. I do not find incontrovertible evidence of a race-ending injury, and I go to bed feeling tormented. Did I just give up? WHY WOULD I DO THAT? I have been trying for FOUR YEARS to finish this race, and I was well on my way to doing that: WTF happened?
In the morning, I feel like possibly the least exhausted person in the house, which seems lame. My legs are sore but seem fine: again, WTF? Rob is well past May Queen and we head down the hill to the finish line. I’m excited for him but also dreading how it will feel to watch people finish as a spectator. It is a little after 8:00, and the crowd is just starting to grow. I find myself vaguely emotional for each finisher coming in, but some sting a bit — people I saw out there; people I ran with; people I passed. They did it! I did not….
In spite of misgivings, I can’t help going farther and farther down 6th Street. When Rob crests the hill, flanked by Paul and Frankie, I am at least as excited as everyone else. Rob is hurting but moving pretty well. I run out and give him a hug and then turn around and am hit with a brutal emotional sucker punch — there it is: the finish line. Everyone is jogging along with him, escorting him to the finish line. I can’t do this. I have not earned a victory jog up 6th Street. I have not earned a celebratory line crossing. I don’t get to do this; I don’t deserve it. This feels like being stabbed in the chest — sharply, physically painful. Once again Paul is there to catch me; I have a very quick and fully supported sob and then we run up the hill. Then congrats, photos, showers and naps, the awards ceremony, dinner and sleep. The next morning is a bustle of sorting and laundry and packing, and we all head off in different directions.
Another Leadville has passed and I still have no buckle and I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
I am increasingly anxious to review the race info stored in my Garmin, but the little and very specific charger cord has unfortunately been lost in the crewing shuffle: whatever secrets may be in there will remain hidden until I acquire a new cord and download them. I have only race splits and memories to examine for clues — as if somewhere in this data I will find The Answer. My splits confirm the objective fact that after May Queen I hit every checkpoint earlier than last year, all the way to Winfield. My climb from Twin Lakes to Hope was my fastest recorded time on that leg, even including my way-too-long stop at the aid station. I was slower from the pass to the turnaround, but still arrived earlier due to my time cushion. The much dreaded return climb put me at the top later than last year, but only by a few minutes; again, slower, but not significantly. I obsess over this data. It must mean something. When I finally get a new charger, I find that my Garmin reveals more details but no new information. I was increasingly slow going downhill. I already knew this. None of these data points are going to tell me why.
I need an explanation. As it is, I’m left with the nagging suspicion that just I gave up. I wimped out,no excuse. I QUIT. This doesn’t square with my memories, though. While I remember the arguments of the Demon Debate Team, I can recall only specific instances of defying them, of not giving up. I review each low moment, each debate, each self-defeating thought, and every time I distinctly remember overcoming it: I kept moving. Still, I slowed way down and missed the cutoff. Why? I have the eerie feeling that I know the answer to this, but I can’t quite access it — like a word at the tip of my tongue that refuses to come to mind, just lingering there at the edge of consciousness.
A week or so after I get home, I go to see my sports medicine guy. I show him the still very vivid talon marks on my knee; I tell him how my right quads hurt a lot on the downhills and my leg sort of seemed mysteriously unreliable. And oh yeah — the picnic table thing. My whole lower back hurts, and most of the stuff connected to it (that is…everything…). Also there’s an enormous knot in my upper back. As I list these various issues I’m explaining why none of this had any impact on my running, because I feel like I know that problem was…something else.
He interrupts to inform me that while my tailbone is not broken, several of the ligaments attached to it are sprained, and my pelvis is torqued because I hit it at an angle. As he says this I experience a slo-mo memory of pulling my right leg upward as the table collapsed, scraping my Achilles as I went but thankfully pulling it clear before it got caught underneath; this action twisted and tipped me back and to the left as we crashed to the ground. I recall the pain being deep and severe and yet hard to pinpoint — like bone pain, but not right on the bone. And here the doc is telling me that the rather comprehensive pain in my back turns out to have been legit. And that extremely uncomfortable tension knot in my shoulder is not stress but the result of my neck getting jammed up in the same accident, which added to my discomfort and disrupted sleep thus increasing my stress and fatigue. And my SI joint being twisted made my gait uneven and caused some of those mysterious aches and pains.
But wait, there’s more. The doc moves on to tell me that when I fell on the trail my knee hit the rock at a lateral angle and it, too, is sprained; he pokes the spot where the injured tendons attach to the troublesome quads (ouch) and goes on to explain that this would have caused my knee to become unstable. Wait, what? My leg really was unstable? Confirmation that I had actual injuries that legitimately affected my running is incredibly validating, but only for a second. Yes, see? I really could not run downhill! I have a note from my doctor. I have an excuse. That is, I have an excuse if I want one, and of course part of me — that part that sponsors the Demon Debate Team — does want one. Part of me wants to be a blameless victim of circumstance with a valid, plausible explanation for why I was unable to do the thing I was trying to do.
If you really don’t want to see something, even if it’s sitting right in front of you, it’s quite possible to not see it.
But there is the affirmative team, too, and many other little voices as well, who reject the medical exemption on the basis of other evidence. The uncomfortable truth, that I knew going into the race yet had been squirming to avoid all along, is simply this: I did not train enough for this race. All those stretches that seemed mysteriously longer and so much harder than I remembered did not change at all; I did. I showed up heavier and weaker than I should be in order to cover this course fast enough to make the cutoffs.
Yes, I broke my arm in October and sprained my ankle in February — and those injuries probably contributed to what happened — but rather than carefully rehabbing and getting back out there as soon as it was feasible, I just, kind of…didn’t. I ran, but not that much. I continually thought “next week…” until the race was only a couple of weeks off. And all that time, and during the race, and the weeks after, I contemplated this phenomenon like it was some puzzle I could perhaps solve by thinking hard enough, and when I figured it out it would go away and I would magically be ready to run Leadville.
If you really don’t want to see something, even if it’s sitting right in front of you, it’s quite possible to not see it. You look all around it, focusing especially on tiny little details, so you can turn completely away from the thing, and you can go on not seeing it for quite a while. Eventually, though, even if you have not looked — even if you have not stared directly at it and seen it and said yup, there it is — you will become aware that there’s a thing right there that you are deliberately avoiding. You know it’s there, and you can probably kind of see it in your peripheral vision, and probably you know what it is.
Or maybe you don’t do this, but I do. And for many months before this race — even during the race — I had that sense of something being right there where I should be looking but I refuse to look. While I intended to be training, I in fact sat around, ate a lot of crap, drank too much, binge-watched random shows on Netflix, played endless hours of computer solitaire. When it became uncomfortable to put another zero in my running log, I stopped keeping the log. When writing in my journal drifted toward nothing but variations on “I did nothing all day,” I stopped writing in my journal. When I started to routinely fall short of even easy to attain goals, I stopped setting goals. I slept a lot, but not well. I was always tired. I convinced myself that I was running as much as I could.
I would not look at the thing.
But obsessively analyzing what had gone wrong out on the Leadville course made it impossible not to just face this thing that was right in front of me, and finally see it. Yup, there it is. Depression. I had been depressed for many months, and I was depressed during the race. This is what derailed my training. This is what impeded my race. This is the refrigerator I was dragging along the trail.
Depression is a slippery beast. It’s most insidious trick is to convince you that it isn’t there. Acknowledging that it is there is hard. Even after this epiphany I found my mind rooting around for something else, something better, to explain what happened — something less embarrassing, something less lame, something cooler. I don’t want it to be this accursed illness that has plagued much of my life; I don’t want there to be an accursed illness plaguing my life. But there is. A lot of factors contributed to this DNF (for example, I really believe there were too many people in the race) but I think all parties agree that you can’t run 100 miles without focus and determination, and depression disrupts both of those things. I may very well have been able to finish, in spite of my inadequate training and assorted physical issues, if the problem had been almost anything else.
I know some people will consider “I’m depressed” the very definition of a cop out, an excuse. I’m not going to argue with those people, although they are wrong: it’s a perfectly valid excuse in the medical sense. I would define it more accurately as an explanation. Depression is not just sadness, and it’s not just an attitude problem that can be overcome by deciding to have a better attitude. I wish.
If I’d had pneumonia for six months and tried to train and then run 100 miles, I would probably have had a similar result — inadequate training and an inability to go fast enough to make cutoff times — and no one would be likely to argue that I just gave up. But more importantly, I myself would not have been out there wondering whether my difficulty breathing was maybe just my imagination or a deep, irreparable character flaw, rather than a real, physical illness.
Unfortunately, though, some of the aforementioned doubters are in my head — the Demon Debate Team. You could say they’re part of the disease. These people (both inner voices and real live humans) are an enormous factor in my extreme aversion to just seeing and acknowledging the thing, and it makes the thing worse.
Getting better requires effort and courage and patience — you could say grit, guts and determination — just like an ultra, but without a finish line. I’m working on it.
Once I saw the huge stinking monstrous thing that had been right in front of me all this time, I could not unsee it. This is why people go to such lengths to not recognize certain uncomfortable truths: once you admit it’s there, you have to deal with it. You have to do something about it. The 2019 Leadville 100 was not the only casualty of this bout of depression, and I have a lot of cleaning up to do, amends to make, things to repair. Unfortunately this monster doesn’t shrivel and disappear as soon as it’s acknowledged, and there is no instant remedy. Getting better requires effort and courage and patience — you could say grit, guts and determination — just like an ultra, but without a finish line. I’m working on it. Running helps, and so does writing; I intend to do a lot more of both as I set my sights on next year and the bright, shining LT100 buckle in my future.
