The 100 Mile Race that Happened...

Kindly excuse any thoughts from your mind that suggest running a 100 mile race is simply an amplified 5k.

If we're rating difficulty and hellishness, it's third behind war and battling cancer.

This past weekend I went along to support my dad as he tackled the Pinhoti 100.

As I've been back at school and my theatre and creative writing friends have asked why my voice is gone, I cringe that I have to attempt to give a short explanation when the explanation isn't short at all.

"Ya, this sounds crazy and it is. But my dad was in a 100 mile race this past weekend so I was up all night and in the weather with that..."

Here's the dirty details of the unique adventure:

The 8 hour drive to Sylacauga, Alabama was spent strategizing, throwing away those strategies, and wondering who would be up for the night shift.

There's a joke of sorts in the ultrarunning crowd that goes, "If you can run 30 miles, you can run 100." Not many of us are laughing at these insane distances but the ultrarunners belly laugh and nudge each other and pass along the look that just says, "True."

Ultramarathons are any race over 26.2, the distance that Phedippides ran to the city Marathon to tell them that the Greeks had defeated the Persians in 490 B.C.

Get me straight here, marathons aren't easy. The mechanical locomotion of leg bone, muscle, and ligament isn't pleasant to endure. Anyone who runs even a little knows the stiffness after a "great" run.

But ultramarathons truly take running back to its roots.

A guy ordered by his superior sprinting across wild terrain that many of us won't even see before we die with a vital mission: to relieve his people of wartime life and bring the joy of victory.

Phedippides didn't have a pacer. He didn't have aid station with grilled cheese, soup, and a change of shoes and socks. He didn't even have socks. He had armor.

He had his mind and his muscle and he had the choice to give up and die of dehydration or continue and be a hero.

100 mile races are this intensity.

Pinhoti took place in Talledega State Park in Alabama.

In mountains in fog in rain in mud in creeks in cascading rocks in cold in solitude.

It's a blessing to run during a 100. Most of the time you're dodging tree roots, climbing with your hands, or hoping you'll make it to a bathroom soon but usually not making it.

And still, ultramarathoners have tried to put some element of comfort into these events. Although that word is almost a cuss when you're there.

"Keep moving. Drink this. Change now. What else? Don't sit. Dry off. Get out there."

The script for the crew.

How it works for the crew:

You get people who let comfort roll off their backs to watch someone they love run their feet flat (like literally) for 30 hours and stay up all night to help him change out of his drenched and muddy clothes and push aside every instinct that screams to not let him go back into the dark woods alone.

These people drive from aid station to aid station. And wait.

Wait with all of the other crews and pretend it's a party as you swap other crazy running stories and comment on how bad the weather is this year.

How it works for the runner:

You wonder if you can do it then you start.

You deal with your broken body because you're only at mile 65 when your IT band stings.

You search for the little reflective flags in the trees and reduce yourself to a moving and eating object. Emotion and a weak mind don't belong to you anymore.

My dad started out at 7am Saturday morning and our crew saw him for the first time at 13 miles then again at 20. He didn't look so great. He was already slurring his words.

The rain had been steady at this point and we wouldn't see him again for 20 miles. We should've made him change.

The fog was at it's thickest around 5pm. We hadn't seen him since 11:30am. It was already pitch black. I was going to jump in with him when we saw him next so I was psyching myself out. I would only run for 5 miles but I hadn't experienced these intense trails before. I had no idea what I would encounter.

But my dad had to show up first.

As the hours went by, myself and another crew member wandered out away from the aid station and crowd onto the boardwalk that reached indefinitely into the woods.

We were worried now. A pacer for another runner had just finished telling us about the hardest part of the race: miles 60-65.

"If he doesn't have a pacer then he probably won't make it. The elevation change is crazy with those switchbacks. And at the time of the night that'll be (around 3am), it's easily hell."

I turned away from her and charged out onto the walk to call out for my dad as the realization came over me that I was the only one on our team who was anywhere being able to take that.

Another job the crew has is to yell and cheer the other runners on and to let them hear human voices as they come a little closer to some kind of civilization after being survivors for however many hours.

I yelled a lot at that aid station.

As another crew member and I trudged through the fog, our flashlights only created a bright wall in the heavy mist.

He finally came through.

Of course my mom didn't want me to run that 20 mile stretch later. She wasn't even comfortable with me on this 5 mile stretch. I told her, "Either he stops now or I'm going with him."

I felt love take over in that moment. "Of course I'm pacing my dad 20 miles through wilderness I've never seen. It's what'll get him finished."

My dad and I headed out just 5 for now. Thankfully the rain had let up a bit and so had the fog.

It was awesome.

When we finally figured out where we were supposed to enter the trail (those red marker flags are TINY), we "ran" down a "path" of cascading rocks, I slid down a mud cliff towards the river and climbed back up (wrong way), and passed a good amount of other racers.

Awesome.

Then it was scary again.

The rest of the crew wasn't at the aid station and my dad wanted to go onto the other 10 miles ASAP. He went, "See ya in two hours!" and I was left without my crew in that 3% area of no cell coverage.

"Taylor!!!"

I turn around my mom is poking her head out of a mini van that's not ours...what the heck...

My dad's car which we had been driving all around the mountain that day had died five miles ago.

Luckily, another one of our crew members had a car and lent it.

I was almost really stuck. Especially after my mom said they almost left after they didn't see us. No wonder they missed my dad.

After that incident I tried to sleep on and off as it was getting late. So the next thing I remember was waking up at 1:15 and yelling, "When will we see dad?! When is he coming through??" I was supposed to start the 20 miles soon.

Not for another hour.

But it got scary again.

I nicknamed this "aid station" Hell's Train Station.

Some background info before this last anecdote:

The runners have to make it to these aid stations by a certain time or they are dropped out of the race; a precaution to make sure people are within the 30 hour limit.

Hell's Train Station was peculiar and eerie because it was unmaned (no race volunteers) but still labeled as a time check in point.

"That doesn't make sense."

What else didn't make sense was the fact that there were only four other crews waiting for their runners, we only saw about 3 racers come through, the "aid" was only a table with water, no lights...did we miss something?

The train screams through on the icey rails and we hope the blue flashes in between the cars are the beams from my dad's headlamp coming out of the woods.

Not yet.

We've waited for three hours.

"This isn't right."

There's no way my dad ran 10 miles in two hours at this point so no chance of us having missed him. We were waiting for him at about mile 60.

There's no way it's taking him this long either. The cut off time is in 15 minutes. 2:30am.

The other crews are ancy too. One man is looking for his wife, one woman her husband, my mom her husband, me my dad. Some race volunteers showed up after 2:30 to walk the woods.

"This isn't right."

A second train shrieks through more violently than the last.

"Someone stay here and let's go to the next aid station. If he's not there, check the one before this, if he's not there, pray."

I'll totally own that my bossy get 'er done kicked in but that's what needs to happen when you find yourself on a rescue mission instead of a part of an organized event.

We left our crew guy, agreed to check on another runner for another crew, and drove three miles to the next aid station.

Our driver parked the mini van in the mud.

"Get out of the seat we can't stay in this mud."

I floored it to back out.

Back on the pavement we saw a flat tire.

Recap:

4am

missing, exhausted, cold dad

two dead cars

left crew member

no cell service

Our driver was checking on my dad but I saw him hobbling towards the van.

"Dad!!"

I guess you could say I felt like a little girl again.

"Get in the car."

Only after my dad got in did he ask whose car he was in. "Your car got towed at mile 40, that's why they were late. They almost left me. This is Mr. Waldy's van."

My dad said he had been at this aid station for over two hours. He hadn't made the cut off time at check point 11 so they dropped him and drove him here. That's why he didn't come through Hell's Train Station.

He had been shivering under a towel telling people to drive to Hell's for hours and no one went. I lost a little hope in humanity at that moment.

You don't toy with life like that.

Our last problem was fixing the flat and getting our other crew member back.

The communal sigh after both of these actions were completed was perfectly descriptive of everyone's mood.

He didn't finish

But I didn't have to run 20

We didn't have to stay up another 9 hours

But didn't get to cross the finish line with him

The hotel seemed very fake at 5am after the adventure. The other tennants had no idea 100 mile races existed and we had just been intimate with my dad's seventh one.

A few hours later life abruptly went back to normal with a waffle breakfast and watching my dad, a little down, hobble around.

8 hours back to Ohio after my parents got their car fixed and I was back in class Monday morning.

I'll let y'all draw your own lessons from this. But now you know a little more about something you may not have thought was possible 10 minutes ago.

Will he do one again? Who even knows.

Would I? Let's try half that...

Why do we do it?

I think back to Pheidippides. He had something great at stake. We feel like that too. We want to explore where cars can't go and feel things that only a choice few do.

60/100 feels great. An accomplishment. With room to go forward even more. And that's what it's about.