Vermont 100 Pacer Report - excerpt -
7/21 & 22/2012 Pacing the VT 100
My runner, M, staggered into 10 Bear just before 10pm. She was swaying dangerously as someone helped remove her Camelbak and aimed her for the scales. I knew she might arrive in rough shape but I was unprepared for the immanent potential of this degree of quagmire. I guess I'd thought that if someone looked this bad, they'd have already dropped out.
I refilled M's water as the medical folks began to interrogate her as to whether her posture was normal. She was flopped over to the left, listing like a stricken ship. Her mast had snapped. "Yeah, they've been telling me I was leaning since the Highlands Aid Station." Nonplussed. In fact, she seemed annoyed that her back was sore. Otherwise, she was alert, drinking, eating, and functioning relatively well for someone who had already run 70 miles. I'd been geared-up and ready for well over an hour, so as soon as she was all set, we headed out with an unconvinced nod from the med people.
Within about two minutes, her headlamp died. She'd just put new batteries in, turned it on, and it worked for a few seconds, and then -- dead. Huh. I was wearing one headlamp but had packed an extra, spare batteries, and a small flashlight. Between her own small flashlight and my backup headlamp...we were off, for real this time. I asked if she wanted to take advantage of what little flat area we had. "Nope. We're walking," she said.
And walk, we did. It was a brisk walk, and I even trotted alongside some of the time. Uphills, of which there were many, were far less brisk, and she often paused to stretch, doing so more and more often as the hours wore on. I was feeling quite well, but M was, of course, beat. This was her first 100 miler, and she said it was to be her only one. She'd done many 50 milers before, but never anything like this.
M seemed like she was trying to ignore the leaning thing, although I could tell it was messing with her balance. A couple of times she literally almost collided with trees because she could not seem to look up very well. At one point, the stars were so glorious that I shut off my headlamp for a few moments to gaze. I said something about their awesomeness and that she ought to at least take a quick peek. "I don't need to look up to see stars. I can see stars already, just looking at the ground," she replied. Total ultrarunning moment.
Except for the relentless list, she seemed to be doing well. Forward motion was relatively steady. I tried to stay tuned-in to how she was feeling without being too involved. Because of her extensive experience, she was a pro at managing her fueling and hydrating. I'd come prepared to remind, suggest, lightly monitor and generally assist, but she was all over it. She drank water, sometimes coke, took S!caps, ate hard candies, some soup, etc. At one point she downed a 5-Hour Energy shot thing, and I gave her one of my gels when she once ran out of candies. It was interesting to see another way of doing things.
For the record, I carried the following items, all of which fit quite comfortably in a fabulous borrowed-from-Mindy Nathan Intensity pack:
- 70oz reservoir with three Nuun tabs, which I refilled when it got low with straight water. (Three was too many for me, especially since it was cool out and I wasn't really exerting/sweating. I'd do two next time in these circumstances.) Still tasted kind of Nuuny. And I had probably almost a liter left at the end, meaning I drank about three+ liters of Nuun water, plus several cups of straight water at each of 6 aid stations.
- Two headlamps - wore one for about 7 hours, and M wore my other for the same period.
- Flashlight - did not use
- 3 extra AAA batteries - didn't use
- granola bar - didn't use
- 4 powerbar gels - didn't use except for the one I gave to M.
- handful of fig newtons - didn't use
- small bottle (10oz?) of chia seed gel/water. Drank almost all of this.
- very lightweight hoodie - didn't use
- TP - didn't use
- three Ibuprofen pills - used all three.
- Benadryl - didn't use.
At aid stations, I drank plain h20 as mentioned and ate mostly PB&J and sometimes cookies, both of which were pretty gross. But the other options were generally tired-looking fruit, crisps, oreos, hard candies, m&ms, sometimes chicken broth or ramen soup, and so forth, so I went for the least gross option. I suppose I could have eaten the non-gross contents of my pack but taking it off was too inconvenient/I was too lazy!
My stomach often growled adamantly between aid stations. It was very "feed me, Seymour!" about the whole thing. Not sure why it was so voracious. Maybe it was just confused. One theory is that maybe it wanted something more complex-carby instead of all the sugary stuff. Even the PB&J was probably mostly sugary crappy bread and HFCS jelly. Meh. Who knows. I should probably just go to the trouble of eating, my own stuff next time. That said, my stomach was fine but I really wasn't exerting myself enough to adequately test my system of fueling.
Back on track -- The hills, seriously lengthy ones, started pretty much right after 10 Bear and kept going. I'd read about this on the website. Something about the last 30 miles being pretty difficult. Indeed, I did not envy M's already having done 70+ miles here. Go ahead and picture it: We were on trails, alone, in the woods, in the dark, hiking up several hundred feet of hill, with one of us careening dangerously toward the occasional maple tree. The other looks on helplessly and says things like, "looking great!" and "I'm sure we're almost there!" and tries not to cringe in sympathy.
The course, of which no map had been made available beforehand, led us along many dirt roads as well as on some forested trails and fields. It was pretty well marked by green glow sticks and yellow pie plates nailed to trees.
We did go off course once sometime around 1:30am. We were on a dirt road an missed a turn off into the woods. When I realized there were no glowsticks around, I told M to wait while I ran ahead to see if there was anything glowing that would come into view. Down a hill, around a corner, nothing. Back up. Back, back, back, quickly, maybe a quarter of a mile. Finally I see the turnoff that we missed! Drat. I started running as fast as possible back toward Mary. A lone truck came along and slowed down next to me. I felt suddenly very small and fearful, very nowhere, and very alone on the back roads of rural Vermont.
"Excuse me, but I believe you may be off course...?" inquired the people within. I thanked them and told them I was presently fetching my wayward runner for just such an occasion. They offered to go up ahead and tell M to come back. I thanked them, was relieved that they were non-threatening, and kept running toward her, envisioning them coming across my rather folded-up, leaning tower of a friend and stifling a variety of gasps. I hollered a few times but was still too far to hear.
Finally we reconnected and headed back to the turnoff. I apologized a bunch for the error and felt very n00b. She claimed that it was no big deal and fortunately didn't seem to see it as any sort of setback. But I still felt badly about it.
I wondered if Val and George may have passed us while we were off course. Surely any minute now... I was getting pretty concerned. At one of the next aid stations, I asked if they had been through. They hadn't. They were still back there somewhere. I hoped deeply that everyone was okay.
I'd been dealing with a messed up lower back for several days before this event but had just barely managed to somehow get it together. I was pretty sure it would be fine but thankful that M didn't seem concerned with the possibility that I might not be up for 30 miles. More background info: I'd offered to volunteer for 18 miles, but The Pacer Guy had asked me if I'd be up for 30 instead. I explained my lack of experience and asked a bunch of questions. He connected me with M, and we emailed a bit to see if it seemed like a good match, and she even said that inexperience was no problem and pace certainly wouldn't be an issue. She also said that if I had to drop for any reason, that she'd be fine with that.
Dropping out on my runner would be the last thing I'd ever want to do, but knowing that the option was there made me feel a lot better about the commitment. I'd only done that distance once, after all, so there are still many unknowns. Charging forth, M and I confirmed with The Pacer Guy.
------ continued at
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