Thursday, June 13, 2019

Laurel Highlands Ultra 2019 Race Report: Part One; Why This Race, Why Right Now?


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