Date: February 3, 2018
Distance: 0 miles (yet!!!)
Purpose: to see if I got in or not
This day would be the day that "the can" stopped being kicked
down the road. It would be the day of the random lottery held at the finish
line of the Wasatch 100 at Soldier Hollow Golf Course outside of quaint Midway,
UT. I had done some research and had figured that about 2/3 of all the people
who entered the race actually got drawn for the lottery. Although the odds were
definitely in my favor, I didn’t sense I would be drawn, or at least I hadn’t
gotten myself too emotionally invested into the race at this very early point.
No reason to get wound up about running 100 miles until you absolutely have to
and know that you will be running it.
Becky and I went up to Soldier Hollow on an unseasonably
warm mid-February morning. We wanted to experience the drawing first hand. It
turns out that the drawing was actually held at the finish line of the race,
which is at Soldier Hollow Gold Course outside of quaint Midway, UT. It was a relaxed atmosphere of ultrarunning
veterans, their supporters, wondering bystanders, and long-time race officials.
Names and numbers were pulled from the desktop “golden spinning wheel of stress”,
as I called it.
Then after about 30 minutes of hearing other people’s names
and cheers, it happened. In an instant and out of the clear blue to me - my
number was drawn. Becky was of course very happy and cheered. Even some kind
but totally random neighbors cheered on the announcement. So I cheered too…for about 5 seconds, and
then a pit in my stomach started to build up.
What had I done in entering my name?
What was I thinking in the first place?
What would this mean for the way I spent the next 7 months
of my life?
Did I really want to run the Wasatch 100?
And most importantly…
Why on Earth was I running a 100-mile race?
After arriving home from the drawing that afternoon, I
really began grappling this last question. I had done 5K’s, 10K’s, half
marathons, full marathons, even a 50K ever since I discovered distance running
at age 18 with Travis back at the Deseret News 10K. In each of those cases, I
had a clear purpose of why I was running the race. In doing anything in life,
it is always important to understand “The Big Why.” Why do I go to work every
day? Why do I believe what I believe? Why do I dress the way I dress. Everyone
has a “why” to each and every action, whether they are conscious of it or not.
Running is no different. Why do I run? More specifically, why would I run 100
miles? In no particular order, here are some reasons I can think of for running
the famed Wasatch 100:
· To scratch an itch, to check a box, to fulfill a
dare.
·
To stroke man’s almighty Ego.
·
To escape responsibility, duty, chores, or
life’s monotony.
·
To experience something hard together with good
friends.
·
To test your limits and see if you can conquer
an extreme physical, mental, and emotional challenge so you have confidence to
do hard things in the future. Very hard things.
·
To prove something to yourself by going beyond
yourself.
·
To prove something to other people in your circle,
especially the cynics and doubters.
·
To look cool with the latest “hi-tech” running and
mountaineering gear, thereby vaulting yourself into the cool club of
ultrarunners of the Central Wasatch.
·
To become as healthy as possible by whatever
definition of health you choose: resting heart rate, percent body fat, VO2 max,
fast mile, weight loss, muscle gain, etc.
·
To make your wife/husband/significant other love
and care for you more.
·
To experience the runner’s highs.
·
To experience the runner’s lows.
I had a feeling I would run for any combination of these
reasons over my training period. But I still knew that I needed something
different, something stronger, something more organic, to be able to motivate
me to run one of the hardest races in the runner’s world. Because I already knew
early on in this process that all these reasons would not sustain me later on
in the training season when the soreness set in and the temptations to waiver
from my training plan would pile up each weekend. I searched my heart for true answers. I needed a concise mission statement to live
by and govern my running life by. Yes, I was interested in seeing what my
mental and physical limits are, a curiosity, obsession, some would even call it
an unhealthy addiction that all distance runners have to some degree or another.
But there was more inside of me driving me to do this, I
could just feel it.
Then I remembered what Uncle Heinz once told me prior to my
first marathon in his thick German accent and laser stare: “the secret to
distance running is to not think about distance running while you are distance
running. “ I had tried this secret out in marathons and had found that he was
indeed correct. At some point in the race, distance running is a mental game,
if not anything else. You have to keep your mind focused on other thought
patterns besides each step you take or each tenth of a mile ticked off or each
hour that passes or each muscle that hurts or each person you are passing or
that is passing you. If you only think about these surface reasons, you will
eventually fade out of the run. And you won’t enjoy it. You need to go to
another, more beautiful mental state. For me, the beauty itself, as found in my
surrounding mountain environment, would be the motivation.
So…after much pondering, this is the best race purpose I have
articulated:
I am doing the Wasatch 100 to
explore the extremes of my body, limits of my mind, and new facets of my heart,
while simultaneously exploring known and unknown beauties of my beloved Central
Wasatch Mountain Range, all by my own power.
This is why I am running the Wasatch 100.
I knew I would need to run a long run each week from this
day onward until September 7, 2018, topping out at least a continuous 50 mile
race. What follows is a log of all my significant Wasatch 100 (W100) training
runs, meaning any run longer than 10 miles (with a few notable exceptions) that
was on the mountain trails. In other words, lunch time runs, treadmill runs,
stair climber sessions, stationary bike sessions, even dreaded (but so
necessary) track speed workouts are considered more maintenance runs and do not
merit white space on the blog. Why keep a training log? There are several
reasons that come to mind.
1. Perhaps one day it will be valuable to me to see
that I could do something hard and that it can give me confidence to take on
hard things again.
2.
Perhaps one day it will be valuable to my
children, grandchildren, etc to see how I did something really hard.
3.
To catalogue via word and picture in one single
location the beautiful peak summits, the stream crossings, the fun trail
link-ups, the (oft-times illegal) alpine
watershed lakes swims, the wildflower bursts, and the ever-changing trail views,
all native to my home range of the Central Wasatch – a range I first started
exploring and loving when I was 9 years old, as far as I can recall. I have a
lot of memories on these trails over these 3 decades of exploring them. I’ve
wanted to get those memories down on paper for some time now, and training for
the W100 is an excellent excuse to do so. I know a good blog has good pictures.
Unfortunately, so many of these trips are left without pictures because I
either forgot my phone, my phone was out of battery juice, or I was just too
spent to stop and take pictures while on the run. I admit I am a poor
picture-taker; I want to be better at this. Because a picture is worth 1,000
words. An experience, however, is worth 1,000 pictures. So mathematically, a
written experience is worth 1,000,000 words, right? But I know that in today’s
too-busy paced, too-distracted world, many people don’t want to read or don’t
have time to read my 1,000,000 words about each mountain running experience. I
get it. My feelings aren’t hurt. For me, writing itself is a value-added
experience of life, especially when writing about my own adventures. I must get
the writing bug from my late Mother, who was an incredibly passionate and
creative writer. Having said all this,
I’ll try and add relevant pictures to the blog entries wherever possible to
keep it interesting and easier on the eyes!
4.
To help me live in the moment by forcing me to
pay attention to each training run on this journey to just get to the starting
line of the real journey of The Wasatch 100.
So without further delay, let’s talk about Buffalo and
Antelope…
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