Western States 100 Mile Endurance Race

If you’re friends with me on facebook, you probably already recognize those words.  Justin had his SECOND 100 mile race last weekend.  I’ll give you a minute to process that and wonder what on Earth a human being would be running 100 miles for….

Ok so for the details-

This was his second 100 mile race.  His first one was in November 2013 and was called the Pinhoti 100 and the race covered the majority of the Pinhoti trail in Alabama.  I blogged about that race here.  This time, the race was in California.  Justin flew out a couple of days before me so that he could acclimatize to the elevation change.  The race was through the mountain ranges in California and there was lots of elevation changes.  Since the elevation in Alabama is basically sea level, he needed to get his body used to the changes in elevation before the race so that his lungs could do better.

I flew out to meet him on Friday.   Our favorite travel friends, Bonnie and Andrew, met us there from their home in Colorado.  Justin and his running buddy, Jeremy, picked us up at the airport.  Jeremy is in the same running group as Justin is-it’s called “Birmingham Ultra Trail Society” but is nicknamed “BUTS”.   Jeremy offered to come out to California to pace Justin during the race.  Let me explain pacing really quick. 

For these 100 mile endurance races, runners are allowed “pacers” after a certain mileage.  Basically that means that you can have a friend run with you for as long as you need it.  In the Pinhoti race, Justin had 2 pacers, our friend Rob and Justin’s brother-in-law, Aeron.  They were great during that race and extremely useful, but the downside was that they weren’t ultrarunners (and ultra runner is someone that runs over 26.2 miles).  For Pinhoti it wasn’t a big deal and Rob and Aeron definitely helped get him across the finish line within 27 1/2 hours.  But Western States is different.  The course is significantly harder and there were less aid stations that Justin could see his crew at.  Quick tutorial on aid stations-there are several spots throughout races like this where a group is there for whatever you need.  If you need more water, or your head covered in ice water, or food, etc….that’s what the aid stations are for.  During the Pinhoti race, I was the only person in Justin’s “crew” that went to all the aid stations to meet him.  I had everything he would need laid out for him.  I would replace his GUs, change his socks and shoes while he sat down, assisted him in changing shirts, hats, basically whatever he needed.  At Western States, they still had tons of aid stations, but crews could only access a handful of them.  Which meant that Justin was running a ton by himself with no familiar faces. 

This is why it was crucial to have another ultrarunner pace him.  Jeremy started running with Justin at mile 55.  You can imagine at that time that he was spent.  He needed someone to make decisions for him: tell him when to walk, when to run, let him know what his pace was, talk to him nonstop to keep him awake, and encourage the crap out of him so he wouldn’t quit.  Other ultrarunners know how it is and they know exactly what to do and what to say to keep you going.  Jeremy had already run two 100 mile races himself so he was definitely experienced and knew exactly what Justin needed and when he needed it.  Justin later told me that had Jeremy not been there, he was certain he would have quit because of how difficult the course was. 

Oh I forgot to mention, runners have 30 hours to complete the race and Justin finished in 29 hours, 35 minutes.  It was that close.  He hated it being so close to the cutoff too, but he did the best he could and between the elevation, the difficult trail, the lack of sleep and the fact that he started having some bad stomach issues that lasted from mile 10 until mile 100, he was just happy to finish. 

So anyway, here’s some pictures of the race:

Justin and I woke up at 3:30am and I walked with him to the start line (that was literally feet from our hotel) to pick up his packet.  We came back to the hotel room to get Bonnie and Andrew and Jeremy and then we all walked to the start line around 4:30am together.

I think the final count was 390ish people from 25 countries that were doing the race.   Only 296 people finished the race though.  It was that hard.

 

This was at the start line.  See that gigantic mountain in the background?  Yeah the runners ran up that in the first 4 miles.  About 2,500 feet of elevation gain in four miles.  That’s like running straight uphill for hours folks.  INSANE.

This is Bonnie, myself and Jeremy.  We were on our way to the first aid station that we were allowed to go to which was mile 30.  We stopped at this cliff because it overlooked another aid station below it and we were just seeing if any runners had come through yet.  We loved our shirts too :)

This is where we were camped out at mile 30 aid station waiting on Justin to arrive.  There’s a lot of downtime being a crew member of these races.  You don’t have any cell service and even though there was a website that was tracking Justin and when he came into each aid station, it wasn’t updating very quickly and we didn’t have service to access it.  So we had a lot of waiting and wondering when he’d get there.

And then he finally showed up and my nerves were much better.  We were expecting him a little sooner than he showed up but that was when he told us about his stomach issues and that they had been holding him back.

 

He had to get weighed in at each aid station to make sure he wasn’t losing too much weight.  There were definitely medical precautions in place to make sure these runners were being safe.  I think you were only allowed to lose about 5% of your body weight before they would pull you from the race.  At this 30 mile aid station, he’d lost about 2 pounds.

This is the aid station crew helping Justin out by filling up his water.  When he was done with their help, he came down to where we had camped out and were waiting on him.

We had a chair ready for him to sit in so that we could get everything ready for him.  He sits down at the aid stations at the beginning of the race, but once runners get towards the end, they won’t sit down because they know if they do, they won’t get up. 

Jeremy is taking off his shoes while I get baby wipes out ready to wipe down his feet for him.  Bonnie was getting his pack ready by removing any trash he had and stocking it with GU, sports beans, and other snacks.  After staying at this aid station for a whopping total of maybe 5 minutes, he got up and was off again.  We packed everything up and left to grab lunch and then to meet him at the next aid station at mile 55.

This is a screen shot of the online updates we got (when we had service at least).  Folks at home were able to use this website to check on his status and once we got to aid stations that had service, we used this to figure out when he would come into the station we were waiting on him at.

These are of Justin coming into aid station at mile 55.  At this point, the sun was about to go down.  This was also when Jeremy changed clothes and put on his bib and started running with Justin.  Pacers had to wear bibs with their runners numbers on them.  Pacer bibs were yellow and runner bibs were white.

This is Justin at the actual aid station stocking up on some food and getting weighed in again.  I think this aid station he was only down 1lb because he was drinking so much water.

So proud of my babe!  This is when he came to our spot and at this aid station he changed shorts and we stocked his pack with even more GU, sports beans and electrolyte pills.  He stayed for maybe another 5 minutes and then him and Jeremy were off.  Bonnie, Andrew and I had to walk kinda far to our car after this aid station because the shuttle that was taking crew to and from the aid station stopped running.  So frustrating.  But we made it back to our car and headed to the next and final aid station where we would see Justin that day, mile 62.

**These pictures are very dark because it was 10pm at night**

This is Justin and Jeremy at the aid station getting some food.

 

First pic is of Justin and Jeremy walking from the main aid station to where we had stuff setup for them.  This was the last time Justin sat down.  I think he’s drinking chicken broth in that picture.

After mile 62, me and Bonnie and Andrew went to our hotel to go to sleep.  The plan was to meet them the next morning at mile 95.  Well, just like when I was crewing Justin at Pinhoti, I got like no sleep at all.  I was constantly rolling over to check his status via the website.  Once I saw them come through mile 80 at 4:30am, I called Jeremy to ask the status.  Justin did well overnight and even picked up his pace a bit so I waited about an hour and then texted Bonnie and told her to start getting up because they had starting running a little quicker.  We all got ready and got some breakfast on the way to the aid station.  We got to mile 95 and waited for them to show up. 

Jeremy was chowing down on some bacon from this aid station.  It was hard to sit next to them cooking this kind of food!  They had eggs, bacon, pancakes, various soups, etc.  Luckily at this aid station they actually had food for crews too.  I drank two big ole’ cups of hot chocolate while I was here because it was really cold when we got there but warmed up significantly in a pretty short period of time.

A volunteer was helping out at the aid station after she was done pacing her runner so she helped Justin by filling up his water pack and putting it on for him.  He also got a “sponge bath” of ice water on his head by another volunteer.

They were probably at this aid station for maybe 3 minutes before they were off again!  We were originally planning to just go straight to the finish line to meet them but on the way to the 93 mile aid station, we noticed that we could probably get to the aid station at mile 96 so we drove there and waited for them.

We were glad we made it to this station because the views were GORGEOUS!

Making their way to the station.

 

Maybe a whopping 2 minutes at this aid station and then they were off again!  There was one more aid station but we didn’t want to risk not getting to the finish line and finding parking so we skipped that one and headed straight to the finish line at 100.2!

Just like I did at the Pinhoti finish line, I bawled like crazy when he crossed the line.  Y’all have no idea the training and hard work he put into this race.  Time away from me, away from Carter.  It was very emotional.  He even told me he got emotion seeing me at the aid stations toward the end of the race. 

Getting that buckle!!!  So most races you get a medal at the end.  He did get a medal, but the pride and joy of 100 mile runners is the belt buckle.  He was devastated at Pinhoti when he crossed the finish line and I had to tell him that they didn’t make enough buckles and they would have to mail it to him.  This time, they had his buckle there and waiting for him!

We stayed at the finish line and waited for him to recuperate for a little while, but then he wanted to get to the hotel so he could attempt a bath and then lay in bed.  This is what a bath looks like after running a race that big:

  

He did the same thing for Pinhoti.  Since he was incapable of standing on his own two feet (you would be too if you ran 100 miles and hadn’t sat down in 30 hours) we had to put his chair in the shower and let him just sit in it to bathe.

It was an intense race and to be honest, it almost as much of an adrenaline rush for the crew as it is for the runner.  After letting Justin bathe and rest for a little bit, we got in the car and headed to San Francisco.  It was only a 2 hour drive from the start line so we decided to stay an extra day and explore San Fran!  Jeremy actually met up with one of his friends that lives in Sacramento and left with him after the race so we said goodbye to him and of course thanked the dickens out of him for his help to Justin.  We dropped off Bonnie and Andrew at their hotel (it was a different hotel than ours) in San Francisco and then went to our hotel.  We ended up not leaving because we were both so exhausted.  Justin was obviously more exhausted than me and he needed some sleep.  I will say though, I’ve never been that tired.  I’m 22 weeks pregnant and got about 7 1/2 hours of sleep between Friday and Saturday.  Once we ate a quick dinner in our hotel, I was asleep by 8pm and Justin fell asleep shortly after.

The next day we met up with Bonnie and Andrew again and explored the city. 

At breakfast the next morning.  I was IMPRESSED at how well Justin was getting around.  His feet still hurt, but he was fine.

This is called “the painted sisters”.  You probably recognize it as the home from Full House.

This is the crooked road, which is also famous, however I’d never heard of it or seen it, which surprised my friends and husband.

And of course I had to take a belly pic :)

 

After exploring the Golden Gate Bridge, we headed to Fisherman’s Wharf and explored Pier 39. 

The last picture is at a beach and I honestly can’t remember which beach or where it was at.  Pretty sure it was close to the Golden Gate Park.

We flew home the next day.  Justin is shockingly fine y’all.  He clearly trained for this run much better than he trained for Pinhoti.  That’s not to say he isn’t hurting, because he is.  But to be up and walking around the next day was impressive to me.

So congratulations to my amazingly inspiring husband on completing his 2nd 100 mile race!!!

Pinhoti 100

If you are friends with me on facebook, you’ve already seen most of these pictures and know how our weekend went.  If not, allow me to demonstrate just how insanely crazy my husband is.

Justin and I are both runners.  We love running and have been doing races together ever since I moved to Birmingham to be closer to him.  However, about 3 years ago, Justin decided to try a different side of running.  Trail running.  Ever since he entered into this trail running world, he has never looked back and despises running on a street or sidewalk.  Over the 3 year period, he has begun running more and more trail runs and increasing the length of his runs.  He has done numerous 50k trail runs and has even done a handful of 40 and 50 milers.  He discovered the Pinhoti 100 a couple of years ago, but decided to actually sign up for it this year.  For a little over a year, he’s been training for the 100 mile race that went from Heflin, AL all the way to Sylacauga, AL through a series of trails, mainly the Pinhoti trail. 

He trained for a year and the big race was last weekend.  Let me give you a little background on how the race worked.  It started at 6am Saturday morning and the cutoff time was 30 hours which was 11am Sunday morning (keep in mind that time changed during the night while the race was going on).  Throughout the 100 miles there were 18 aid stations set up.  At these aid stations, runners were provided refills of water, food, sport drinks, etc.  Most runners would change socks or shoes or shirts or something like that.   Runners had “crews” that followed them from aid station to aid station having everything ready for them so that their pit stop was of minimal time.  Think of the pit stop for car races.  Racecar drivers pull into their pit and their crew works as fast as possible to get everything needed for the car to go further.  This is what these runners crews were in charge of.  From mile 1-55, I was Justin's crew.  I met him at every aid station and had everything ready for him that he would need.  These aid stations were usually about 5 miles apart, so for me, it consisted of a lot of waiting for him to reach an aid station when he only stayed at the station for 30 seconds-2 minutes.  Then I drove to the next aid station and waited for him to get there again.  This is what I did from 4am to 8pm for him while he was running.

Starting at mile 40, runners were allowed “pacers”.  What this means is that each runner was allowed to have a friend run the course with them to keep them going and encourage them.  A lot of runners had a crew of 5-6 pacers so that no one pacer had to run for too long.  My poor husband only had 2 pacers.  I got Justin from mile 1-55, then our friend Rob took over so that I could go to a hotel and go to sleep.  Rob ran with Justin from mile 55-68.  At mile 68 (which was around 11pm) Justin was alone until he met my brother-in-law at mile 85 (around 4 am).  Aeron ran with him from mile 85-100 where I was waiting at the finish line.  I was wishing Justin had more pacers, but he seemed to do just fine with just the two.  Here’s some pictures of the race:

The two pictures above were actually on Friday.  Justin and I drove to each of the aid stations and plugged their locations into a GPS so that I could easily find them again once Justin was running and I was alone.  The pictures were at aid station 7, my favorite.  It was at Bald Rock at Mt. Cheaha and the leaves were GORGEOUS and so were the views.  Cheaha is the highest point in Alabama so obviously the views showed it.

The finish line was at Sylacauga High School which was across the street from a recreation center.  This center is where packet pickup for the race was and I wanted Justin to take a picture next to their sign that said “Welcome Pinhoti runners”. 

We woke up around 4am and got ready to head to the start line.  This picture was taken at 4:30am on the way out of our hotel.  The start line was in the middle of NOWHERE!  We had to drive down a one lane dirt path in the woods for about 9 miles to get there.  I took the below picture on my way out of the woods after dropping Justin off.  So scary!  I thought for sure either Bigfoot or the Blair Witch was about to come get me!

 

I went to the hotel and took a shower and checked out while Justin was running.  We decided I would meet him at aid station 2 because he didn’t think he would need anything at the first aid station.  So after leaving the hotel I went to AS 2 and waited on his arrival.  While there, I had my own little accomplishment!  I finished the entire Old Testament.  Scripture, footnotes, biographies…all of it.  I read every word!  Only took me 2 1/2 years to do it :)

The below pictures are of the kinds of food that was at most of the aid stations for the runners.  You’ll notice it includes a TON of sugar.  That’s what they needed for these long distance runs.  Sugar and caffeine.  Some of the aid stations had hot foods though.  Hot dogs, ramen noodles, egg sandwiches, etc.

 

Below is of Justin as he was getting into AS 2 which was a little over 13 miles into the race (he’s the one in red):

He stopped for maybe 30 seconds at that aid station.  The next one was 5 miles down the road at mile 18.  So I packed up all the stuff I had into the car and drove to AS 3.  I wasn’t expecting Justin to come as soon as he did.  He had obviously picked up his pace and I am lucky I saw him in enough time to get my phone ready to take a picture! 

He took a little longer of a break at this aid station because he changed his socks (he did this frequently so that his blisters would be minimal).  Still, he was only at this aid station for about 3 minutes.  I always popped open that chair at each station in case he wanted to sit down for a minute.  Most of the time, unless he was changing shoes which required sitting down, he chose not to sit because he was afraid he wouldn’t get back up.  I get that…I guess.

No crew was allowed at aid station 4 because of its remote location, so I had to go to AS 5 (mile 28).  This was a gorgeous aid station.  There was a lake next to it that was surrounded by trees and their beautiful fall leaves.  This shows you how many people were at each aid station:

He got into AS 5 around 12:15pm.  I was hoping he would eat at this station, but he didn’t.  He rarely ate at all.  I didn’t go to AS 6 because no crew was allowed there either.  This provided me enough time to drive back to town to get lunch and then come back to meet him at AS 7 at Bald Rock.

Again, Justin is in the red shirt.  Pretty scary that the trail was on rocks so close to the edge of a dropoff.

He stayed at this aid station a little bit longer than his normal 30 seconds-1 minute too.  He changed shoes and decided to finally eat.  He ate 1 hot dog and some noodles.  At this point in the race, he was an entire hour ahead of where he thought he would be.  He was doing excellent!  It was 3:15pm at this point…he’d been going for over 9 hours.  I don’t see how he does stuff like this!  This station was at 41 miles.

AS 8 wasn’t too far away from 7.  It was at 46 miles.  He changed his shirt at the last aid station because his college team, Auburn, had a game that night and he wanted to be wearing his shirt (Auburn beat Arkansas that night). 

AS 9 was another one I couldn’t go to, so I took that opportunity to go back to town to check into my hotel for the night and drop off my bags.  I also ate dinner and met up with our friend Rob who was about to start running with Justin at AS 10.

The above picture was at AS 10 which was mile 55.  This is where I said goodbye to Justin so that I could go back to my hotel and sleep worry non-stop.  I slept very very little.  I was up every hour texting either Rob or Aeron (who was going to meet him at mile 85) or checking the live website that was showing when runners got into certain aid stations.  The website wasn’t updating very quickly though.  I remember waking up and seeing that he was at mile 76 around 1:20am, but I didn’t see anything after that.  I kept my phone on through the night in case Justin needed me.

I woke up at 5am and took a shower.  Justin called me FINALLY and said he was at mile 91.  I started freaking out telling him to slow down because I still had to drive from Talladega to the finish line in Sylacauga.  He assured me I had plenty of time.  The entire race, Justin was completely fine.  He looked great, was talking well and never seemed to hit “the wall” that runners hit when they just can’t go any further and need help.  I could tell he had hit the wall when I talked to him that morning.  He was freezing and exhausted and could barely talk.  I did my best to encourage him and told him that I loved him and would see him at 100.  I got off the phone and quickly got ready and left the hotel to head to the finish line.

Justin expected to finish at 9am, but ended up finishing at 8:25am.  It took him 27 hours and 25 minutes to run 100.6 miles.  I can’t begin to explain how proud I was to see him cross that line.  I cried so hard.  I’m tearing up right now thinking about it.

 

Love love LOVE this man.  I don’t know anyone else that has the courage and dedication to run 100 miles.  He is such an inspiration to me.

 

Proud finisher!  He could barely move after he finished, which is completely understandable.  He sat in the chair I brought for an hour or so.  I left him so that I could take Aeron back to his car at mile 85.  When I came back, he had managed to get up out of the chair, but as he says “I walked over to the grass in the field, but then I fell and was never able to get back up”.  When I got back, I found him laying the grass.

 

Eventually he began to try to get up so he got on all fours (above right picture), but then he got stuck here too and couldn’t move.  This was hilarious! 

He had planned to take a shower at the rec center before heading home, but he wasn’t able to do it so we got in the car to drive back to Birmingham.  He couldn’t bend his knees, so this is how he had to ride in the car:

 

He knew he needed a shower, so we had to do our best to make his shower as comfortable as possible.   Hence:

He took a good 45 minutes shower just sitting there.  He finally got out of the shower and I helped him get to the bed where he pretty much stayed until this morning.  His feet look HORRIBLE.  Blisters covering every inch of both feet.  Shockingly, he seems ok this morning.  He was able to bend his knees finally and he started walking around the house a little before 8am this morning.  He definitely has a limp, but he is able to walk and he says he feels much better.  I’m very thankful for that!

What blew both Justin and myself away was the support that came from facebook.  We have a small group of family and friends that wanted me to keep them up to date with Justin’s progress and I didn’t always have time to call everyone that was interested, so I just put his progress on facebook.  Those updates and pictures got a ridiculous amount of likes and comments.  Everyone on my friends list was now following Justin’s race via my page.  We both ended up getting a ton of friend requests of friends of friends that wanted to see the updates.  People were commenting that they were enjoying following along with him…people that I barely know.  The pictures and status’ I put up ended up getting hundreds of likes and comments and we were just in awe that anyone cared that much!  I took advantage of it though…when I came back to the hotel Friday night, I put up a status asking everyone to either write on Justin’s wall, send him a message or text giving him encouragement for the part of the run that was in the middle of the night.  Justin ended up turning his phone on during the stretch of run that he had to do by himself between midnight to 4am and his phone blew up with texts, voicemails, facebook posts, etc of everyone encouraging him.  He said that helped him a lot!  So if you were one of the ones that did that, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart.  You played a part in helping him finish this race!

So congratulations to my amazing husband who ran 100 miles this weekend.  Kinda makes any run I do from here on out inconsequential!