Why Ultrarunning is More Than a Hobby

(Photo: Misty Dawn Herron)

At 71 miles in the dark at Javelina 100, I came down the rocky hill into the Jackass Junction aid station feeling uncharacteristically a mess.

My body felt like lead all day and was grinding to a halt, and I was only 30 minutes ahead of cutoff.

I know what to do to reset and get back on course and decided to invest a moment in sitting down to stretch my back before moving on. 

I found an empty chair in the med tent and sat among the dead-looking runners waiting in silence for the shuttle.

But the moment I sat, I knew something was up with my body.

I’m so single-mindedly focused on moving forward in an ultra that I excel at tuning out physical problems like blisters, unhappy quads, and exhaustion.

And I finish.

I don’t drop.

So it surprised me to suddenly consider dropping.

If you haven’t been here in an ultra, you will.

And more than anything in this crucial moment, you want to know the right thing to do - drop or keep going?

Your race hangs in the balance.

Everyone says “listen to your body” but how do you do that? Lots of things hurt but isn’t that normal?

And how do you separate what your body is saying and from what your mind could be tricking you into?

Could you finish? Should you finish??

You’re confused and don’t know what to do. The clock is ticking and if you’re going to go, you’ve got to go now.

Almost on impulse, you drop. Going on would require fighting against your body…this seems like what you should do for it.

The confusion clears and you feel better.

But after the race, you bounce back so fast you start thinking…you didn’t have far to go. 

You should have pushed on. You could have finished.

You feel all the regret of making a wrong decision you can’t get back.

But the problem isn’t actually that you got it wrong. It’s that you didn’t know how to make this all-important decision in the first place.

Listening to your body is a nice idea but too vague, especially when you’re tired. Your body’s naturally going to feel the miles and no matter how much it complains, you can still push through and finish without injury. That’s ultrarunning.

A better solution is planning how to make this decision so you feel confident making it and standing behind it.

That means setting clear criteria that make this critical decision foolproof.

Sitting in the med tent, my decision was clear. There was a lot going on with breathing and speed, but it came down to a set of repetitive injuries - right hip, left quad - that started a year ago in the way I lifted 90-pound Buddy dog multiple times a day.

I got so used to working around the hip and quad, I limped into Superior 100 and No Business 100 like it was normal. My less-than-ideal recovery after No Business combined with all the running at Javelina strained these muscles to their absolute limits.

Running downhill at Javelina to the start/finish fast enough to make cutoff felt like it would finally rip every thread of these muscles apart and clearly met one of my few drop criteria - no catastrophic, career-ending injuries.

A week and a half later, I’m slowly rehabbing hip and quad - and still limping - but making progress.

I’m glad I made the decision I did, and even more glad it was clear.

Make it clear for yourself too.