Every time I take on new adventures I learn things. The bigger and more challenging the adventure the more you learn. The first time I took on an ultra distance run, I was alone on the Finger Lakes Trail, I learned a lot. Now taking on a much different more complex challenge I stood poised to learn even more.

When you set off to go on any type of adventure ideally you have a plan. You make the best plan you can to try to have the best outcome you can. You also try to think about what you will do if things don’t go according to plan. Think about back up plans and contingencies. I don’t think you want to dwell to much on that because you want to focus on being successful not dwell on possible failure or challenges. But at the same time you want to try to be prepared. It is a bit of a balancing act.

I think we all know that plans are great but they are only goo until you reach that first difficulty or obstacle that requires a change. Then a lot of the plan can get thrown out the window. You can try to stick to the basic concepts of the plan but specific details like pace and times can quickly become meaningless. It wasn’t long into my 100 miles that my planned for pace goal was pretty much out the window.

One aspect of my 100 mile journey that I found to be more of a challenge than I planned for was fuel consumption. For all of my runs and races that will take me longer to complete than a road half marathon I really prefer to try to eat actual solid food as opposed to gels and things like that. More specifically I like to try to eat whole foods. That is my preference. That is what works well in my body and how I feel myself on a daily basis as much as I can. I like the taste of the whole foods I have been using and they feel better in my body. They don’t cause me any issues.

What I learned is that as hard as running 100 miles is, it might actually be harder to eat 100 miles of running energy’s worth of solid foods. I thought I had a good mix of foods to use that would allow me a variety of tastes and nutrient combinations so that I would not get sick of my fuel and would have plenty of options. That was not really an issue. What it really came down to is that eventually you just don’t feel like eating or think about eating, because you feel like you were just eating. It really is something you have to mentally prepare for and maybe force yourself to do. I was not as focused on that during my race. It was easy to not think about eating because I never really felt hungry. I would just eat whenever it felt right while I was running and then grab an extra piece of food or more at an aid station. As it turns out that casual approach wasn’t quite sufficient for my body. It seemed that my two big crashes at aid stations were primarily due to not having enough calories/sugar in my system.

My take away from this valuable lesson is for next time, because lets face it as my friend said you know there will be a next time, even if I don’t know when it will be is that I will need to plan to use a combination of solid food so I don’t feel hungry like I need to eat and something more easily consumed without making me feel full or too full like gels or liquid fuel. This is something I have Ben thinking about although I don’t know when I will begin to experiment with it to se what works best for me.

I expected the night portion of the race to be a challenge, but I had no idea how hard it would actually be for me. Being in the dark for that long wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. What was hard is that during that period of the race that is when exhaustion really set in for me. I could walk but my eyes and my brain were ready to go to sleep. I could keep my legs going but often found myself staggering around not making much progress. It was a struggle just to keep my eyes open. Things may have been different for me if I hadn’t suffered through a really hard crash right before that point in the race where I could literally barely move, but it’s hard to say. I will need to think about strategies to help myself stay alert and awake. Taking more caffeine or something else to force myself awake will need to be tested.

I learned a lot about what the human body is able to overcome physically. If someone told me how I would feel at mile 65 or so I would have been pretty sure I would not finish. If you told me that 16 miles later I would have a very similar experience I would never expect to be able to finish the race. I would have thought it was impossible. I would not have thought that the human body could come back from being inoperable and in a state of being where I couldn’t even take a drink of water on my own and I would recover and run 35 more miles. I would have thought that if I reached that state I would have to drop out of the race. My crew taught me that you can get back into the race after such a low. My crew taught me something I could not have learned on my own.

On top of the physical recovery if you had told me prior to the race that I would experience that kind of situation I would not have been surprised if I would have quite. I would have expected to hit a very hard mental low, wondering how I would ever finish the race, even if I recovered physically I would have so many doubts about being able to finish once I was able to continue. But that never happened to me. My mind stayed strong. My mind and my will were able to remain focused onm the goal and determined to finish. Before you do something it is easy to say the words that you are not going to quite and tell yourself and others that you will finish no matter what, but you never truly know how you will respond to a given situation until ou are in it. So now I can tell myself I know how I will respond to that kind of pressure. I will stick with it and I will persevere.

You learn so much about yourself on this journey. You learn about your physical body and what it is capable of and what it is not. You learn what things cause you pain and what things are not as bad as you thought. You learn what you can endure. You learn about yourself mentally too. You learn where your fears and doubts lie. You learn where they start to creep in and how you can overcome them. You learn that you can push through more than you ever thought. You learn that even in the toughest time you can keep your mind in a good place.

You learn more about the value of friends too. I knew I had a solid support system and crew. I knew they would be there to cheer me on. I did not know they would volunteer to jump in and run extra miles with me and take care of other runners as well. Pushing themselves farther than planned even as I was pushing myself. I knew my crew would always be there with words of encouragement and support. I did not know that I would find them literally physically supporting me as my body shut down and I was on the verge of collapse. I didn’t know they would be called on to revive me physically and bring me back from the verge of having to drop out. I didn’t know they would be there to safe guard me. I didn’t know they would be there to push me and get everything possible out of me when I didn’t think I could give any more to this race. I knew I had a great group of people surrounding me for this 100 mile attempt but I didn’t know all that they would put themselves through to make sure I was able to accomplish my goal. I am eternally grateful to them. I literally could not have done it without them. They mean the world to me. There really aren’t words to express how much all the people who were with me at Pine Creek 100 mean to me.

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