Laurel Highlands Ultra 70.5 Miler
Saturday, June 8, 2019
Ohiopyle to Seward, PA
PART ONE
Pre-Race
Last summer I got a pretty big surprise when right at the
start of a newfound motivation to train hard I found out I was pregnant with
our fifth child. Though I consider myself a planner this baby was not what we
would call planned but I can assure you she was always meant to be here.
However, her coming made some things more difficult, like re-qualifying for
Western States.
Quick synopsis: I got into Western States with ONE ticket in
2012 when you could still qualify with a 50 miler. I got injured soon after and
went back and forth about even traveling to California. In the end I went and
tested myself against the mountains finishing in 28:30 hours my first hundred.
But I felt I didn’t relish the moment and the history like I would have liked,
I didn’t train how I would have liked and I didn’t race how I could or should
have, thus my ever growing desire to return to Western. For years I’ve
qualified but not ‘won’ the lotto. For years I’ve run Hellgate in early
December to qualify. This past year, 27 weeks pregnant, Hellgate wasn’t a truly
safe or viable option.
But I needed a qualifier. Sure, some could point out that I
could defer due to my being pregnant, but that wasn’t what I wanted, to push
off to 2020 requalifiying to not even be able to consider running Western again
until 2021.
Already in the Georgia Death Race lottery for 2019 I had to
withdraw as my due date was one week after. I started searching out every
qualifier on the Western States list of qualifiers. With more than a quarter of
the qualifying period already up by my due date I looked for east coast ultras
starting as early as June when I came across one of only a handful of
non-hundred mile qualifiers on the east coast, the Laurel Highlands Ultra, a
point to point 70 mile trail run in June.
My brother lives in Pennsylvania, every time we travel to
visit we drive under the pedestrian bridge for the Laurel Highlands Hiking
Trail, I’d looked into the race before but it always falls so close to
Highlands Sky we’ve never really considered it. Until now. The website had a
link that said the paper application would be available in the fall of 2018. I
started visiting the website and that specific link a few times a week in
August, then every day, then a couple times a day, to just leaving the link
opened and refreshing it. This went on for months, during this time due to
other circumstances I had all but given up running for the duration of my
pregnancy.
Only a few people at this point even knew of my intention to
gain entry into a race less than three month past my due date, one of these people
was Bethany Williams. It was actually Bethany who messaged me on Tuesday,
November 20th to let me know the application was up on the site, I
mailed mine after holding onto it fully filled out for 24 hours on the 21st
knowing it was perhaps crazy.
I heard nothing back, the website said a few weeks after that
applications postmarked after the 27th wouldn’t be accepted so I
assumed I was in, I checked my bank account to confirm the check was deposited
but received no other word.
At about this same time I got really swallowed up in dark
spaces. I was struggling with being pregnant and was pretty convinced I wouldn’t
run again despite sharing that with on one. I figured I had had a good run, but
now it was all in the past. I started to plan and think of other things to
focus on. Occasionally it would slip out what I had applied to do but there was
a part of me that never really thought I would attempt it, yet I liked the idea
that it was an option. I started to convince myself that I didn’t care about
running, ultras, Western States.
Then baby Ellie finally arrived on Tuesday, March 12th. She
was perfect. But little else was. She had a rough case of jaundice, latching
issues, and together we struggled through that time to nurse. I got mastitis
ten days after she was born. The P.U.R.P.L.E. crying was very real. Sleep
deprived and having that very common new mother guilt of purely failing, with
number 5 no less, that time took a very strong hold of me. I could tell Todd
was worried about me. He checked on me and helped me every chance he got, but
it was hard, harder than I imagined, harder than I thought I could work through
right then.
On April 1st 2019 Todd told me to get dressed and
go run, I thought it was an April Fools joke, I told him no thanks. He wouldn’t
take no for an answer. He told me Sean would come along and just to go for a mile.
I reluctantly agreed. I thought I would enjoy the time outdoors and a walk with
Sean would be nice.
We started out our front door and Sean took to a running
stride, I just settled in alongside him. And we ran, slow but steady. A quarter mile in my sweet son told me I was
running great for not having run in months and for just having a baby, I’m not
sure if his dad fed him these lines but they worked. The running didn’t feel
bad, in fact, it felt good. We ran a mile. I didn’t think about whether I could
or would, I just did.
The next day Todd made me go again, I ran with Bailey, 1.5
miles. Two days later I ran two miles solo. On that solo run I felt like me, I
felt good and whole in a way that I hadn’t felt in months. I had given up
running in my mind but not in my heart. It is part of me.
Todd started saying words like ‘training’ and ‘race’ but I
wasn’t quite ready to translate those words. The first week was just about the
running, how naturally it felt; like returning home.
It’s just as bad as it is in the movies. You feel awkward
and cumbersome and like no one really wants you there. Take my first trail run;
I went alone with just my phone and music. Not fifty yards from my car I took this
terrible fall. Perhaps my worst ever. But I refused to leave, desperate instead
to prove that this is in fact where I belong. Knees and elbows covered in blood
I ran five solo trail miles that day and started to really wonder, COULD I GO
QUALIFY FOR STATES AT LAUREL HIGHLANDS?
The only option is to take that wonder and go forward. I had
only a few weeks to train, my trail footing was shakey and I fell on trails
often, my ankles had no stability, my calves no real strength, my legs no
speed. Every run was a mini lesson or reminder about life and trail running.
Every time I laced up I was exchanging time with my baby so it all had to
matter and be worth it.
I got one training run over 13 miles in, it was the best
long run I could have done I believe. It was at night, on the AT with Chelsie
and Gina just five days after a homicide on the AT. EVERY thing about this run
scared me, I considered bailing, instead I told those girls about the death
grip my fears held on me the morning before the run. And then I showed up. I
kept reminding myself that it mattered greatly to just show up. Keep showing
up.
After the long run I was sore and tired, but it went on for
days until my head ached and my arms were tender, and then I got the telltale
red spot and realized I had mastitis AGAIN not just a drastic case of delayed
onset muscle soreness. It was worse this second time, and I had to take days
off I didn’t feel I could take off. With the week of the long run being 34
miles total I had to back off and make sure my body was healthy.
The second run after my second infection I was running along
with the kids at Blackwater on a Wild Wednesday run and I got this overwhelming
wave of doubt. You can’t run a trail 70 miler with this little pathetic measly
training, you can’t run for twenty hours and not get another bout of mastitis,
you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. Todd was out there hiking with the kids. I
told him I wasn’t. I COULD NOT go to Laurel Highlands.
He’s a very bright man. He said NOTHING. Boy was that the
best possible thing for me to hear right then, I took a side trail and went
back out alone to think and breathe. I thought all the things, of all the people
who believe terrible things about me, of how much I can’t stand to let people
down, how I can’t stand the thought of failure, how I didn’t really care about
running Western States right then and wasn’t sure I ever would again.
With all that heaviness like a vice on my heart I asked the
Alexis deep inside, to find her why, her honest to goodness reason for WHY she
would attempt this. And it was simple, as so many things really are, I was
curious. I was just so curious if I could, if I could go and do my very best
and see what happened. I just couldn’t imagine NOT trying. Even with the low
mileage and the risk of more mastitis I just wanted to know if I could.
And in a way it is about States, and it is so perfectly
summed up by a Theodor Roosevelt quote I found on the WSER website when I was
flying to Squaw in 2013;
“It is not the
critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or
where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the
man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and
blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually
strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who
spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph
of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while
daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid
souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
I wanted to be the man in the arena. I wanted to dare greatly.
To be continued…
-Alexis
