Hi. My name is Bailey Thomas. I am 13 years old and in eighth grade. I live in Evington, VA with my Mom, my Dad, my baby sister Ellie, and my (slightly) annoying brothers Cooper (my twin), Sean and Brodie. I just recently got into running and I'm here to share with you the very memorable story of my First Big Race. Parts of it were kind of a let down but I assure you that it made for an adventure that will definitely make a lasting impression.
My parents always run on Wednesdays. They have a whole group of people they go with and they all go to Candlers Mountain on the Liberty University campus. I went while I was training for Iron Mountain and when the days started getting shorter I started going again. This was because they run in the evenings and in the winter, when it's dark the whole time they always run the same route so my parents knew I would be okay if I was by myself. But I ran with my Dad and wasn't really ever by myself anyway.
Anyway the week before Christmas on a Wednesday evening my Dad asked me if I wanted to run the 25k at Holiday Lake and I said I would. So when we got home that evening (after going to La Carreta like we do every Wednesday) my Dad and I made a training plan for myself and him. I was going to run Holiday Lake 25k and he was going to run Highland Sky. We invited my brother Sean to join us and he agreed. Cooper wasn't able too, due to an ingrown toenail that prevented him from running. Our training plan had us running three times a week. We had Tempo Tuesday, the 6 mile Wednesday run, and a long run that was either Saturday or Sunday. We averaged about 20 mile weeks with highs of 25 and lows of 18. Sean dropped out in the first week due to weather (he doesn't like the cold) which left me the last Thomas kid standing. For the second week we were at the beach. (In December. Crazy, I know) We didn't have enough time for long runs so we ran a run between 2 and 5 miles every. Single. Day. I was going to bed after eleven and waking up around 7:30. Not a lot of sleep for a vacation. Sometimes I would be up for hours before my brothers and cousins woke up.
After about 8 weeks of running it was the week before the race and I started tapering. I knew it was going to be cold but I was excited. A lot of my parents friends were running and I was going to be the second youngest runner out of 360. There was one 11 year old boy running, but I didn't mind. He would be good competition. I even requested for him to be in the same wave. My Mom and her friends Chelsie Viar and Wade Stout were running an aid station. I would see her at mile 4 and 50k runners would see her at miles 4 and 20. She was getting nervous about the weather, it was going to be freezing, raining and snowing all day. My original goal had been 3 hours but with the weather I wasn't sure I could do it. However I still wanted to run and I was still excited. We went to my aunt and uncle's house on Friday, the night before the race. My Mom wasn't going to let Sean and Brodie and the baby come and since Cooper wouldn't stay back with them she asked my cousin Ivy to watch them. She said sure. That meant Ivy and her mom Sue were both coming, Ivy to watch the kids and Sue to come help at the aid station. I found out later that my parents were considering not letting me run but their friend Michael Newhall, who ran the course that evening, convinced my parents to let me run. (Thanks Michael)
That evening when we got home I packed up all my stuff set an alarm for 4:20, as we had to leave at 5 and I like to be able to hit snooze. I went to sleep and when my alarm went off I kept hitting snooze until I heard Sue and Ivy arrive, then I knew I had to get up. So I woke up and grabbed my bag and what I thought was everything on the floor beside me, though I realized later I forgot my buff. I went downstairs, grabbed some Biscoff cookies, or as I call them airplane cookies, as the first time I had them was on a plane. I then filled up my water bottle and my travel cup with coffee, something I started drinking the year I started eighth grade, though I still drink it heavy on the creamer. The weather had been pretty bad the night before and my dad had to help both Sue and myself across the icy driveway. After that me, my parents, Sue and Cooper all squeezed into my Dad's two row truck, the only vehicle my Mom felt comfortable taking in the road conditions. We were driving down the road, Cooper probably trying to sleep, My parents having a worried conversation about the weather in the front row, and myself giving my Aunt Sue a detailed description of Cobra Kai, the world's best TV show. We were doing these things when my Mom got a text message from Rhonda Sprouse, a fellow runner. She was stuck on the main road getting into the Holiday Lake State Park! My Mom was worried but my Dad said we had to keep going, to get aid to the runners. We reached the main road but it was still so blocked up that we kept driving to a shortcut my Mom remembered. We were driving up a hill and I was on Season 2 of Cobra Kai when all of a sudden we started sliding back down the hill. The whole road was covered in a sheet of ice! My Dad shooed us all out of the car (and later made fun of how long it took Sue to get out).
My dad kept trying to get up the hill and the rest of us just kind of stood at the side of the road and watched. All of a sudden a woman came down the hill from where her car had crashed in the trees after she had made it just a little bit higher up the hill and then lost control of her car. She came down the hill and told us that she was in the first wave of the 50k, which started at 6:30. Looking at my watch I could tell that it was too late for her to make it to the start on time, which made me nervous because that meant I had just a little over an hour to make it to the start or I would miss the race too.
After a couple minutes other people started showing up on this hill too, probably because the main road was blocked. By the time they got there my Dad had turned his truck with a trailer attached to it sideways, to prevent it from slipping down on the ice. Luckily that meant nobody could come up the hill and get stuck like we did. A lot of the people when they saw that this road was blocked too just turned and went back. But some of them, namely the ones who knew us and were helping at our aid station, stopped to try to help get us unstuck. They decided that they had to get the trailer off the truck. It was while I was standing by the side of the hill watching them attempt this that my Mom told me I wasn't going to be allowed to run. I was pretty frustrated but I understood that the conditions were dangerous and that they didn't want me to go out there alone.
While I was standing by the side of the road digesting this information another friend of ours showed up. Nate Sherwin. Now by this time my Dad and some other guys had managed to get the truck to one side of the road and the trailer to the other. This is important because when everyone let Nate get by he actually managed to make it pretty far up the hill. This was exciting to everyone because that meant that if we hooked the trailer to Nate's truck then he could probably make it to the aid station! All was not lost! So Nate went a little bit further down the hill and while some people shoveled dirt under his tires so he wouldn't slip and others hooked up the trailer to his truck. At this point my Dad told us that some of us needed to get in the truck too, so that we could go with Nate to help the aid station get set up. That included me, since I was part of the aid station crew now. Yay.(I do enjoy helping at aid stations and have been doing it since I was a little kid).
Me, Mom, Sue and Cooper all climbed into the back row of Nate's truck where we realized that his daughter Reese was there too. Although it was slow going we managed to make it to the top of the hill. After that we drove along a road that butted up right next to the course. So as we drove we saw almost every 50k runner who started go through our aid station without us there.
So as soon as we got there we knew we had to get ready fast. So even though Nate and Reese were supposed to be helping our friend Blake at aid 3 we convinced them to stick around for a little while and help us set up. While we were there somebody told us that the people who were supposed to be at aid 2 couldn't make it and so all that was there was water. So now we had to slow these runners down and let them know that there might not be anybody there at aid 2 so if they needed anything they had better stop here. But so many runners don't need anything at aid 1 and just kept on running. So we didn't have time to stop them before they went through.
Before long we were out of 50k runners on their first loop. We had a little while before the 25k runners showed up. During this time my Dad, Steve Higgins, Scott Judy, his daughter, Chelsie and Frankie Viar, Wade Stout, and other aid 1 helpers showed up. We also used this time to reorganize the aid station. (Mom was pretty sure that the direction the canopies were facing was causing runners to try to go the wrong way).
At this point I was tired and grumpy and asking myself why I woke up before 5 if I wasn't even going to run the race! Things got worse for me emotionally when the 25k runners started showing up. I knew that it wasn't mine or anybody else's fault I wasn't out there but I couldn't shake the feeling that I had somehow failed. It was the low of the day for me when the 11 year-old boy showed up. He was in my wave and I wanted to know if I would have outrun him or not. But instead I tried to hide. I figured if I had known he was running, he would have known I was running. I knew there was no way that he could have known I was the 13 year-old no-show, It seemed like a much bigger possibility in my head. So I put my hood on, ducked my head down and tried to look older. Which is hard when you're less than five feet tall. (By a fraction of an inch. I'm not that short).
Now I'll admit it but after that kid left I was extremely jealous. I was not mad at my parents but I believe my Mom thought I was. I went and cried for a while. I was definitely not taking this as well as that woman by the side of the road was. But after I got the tears out of my system I was ready to be a productive part of the team.
But it was too cold for that and I stood by the fire. I would've brought warmer clothes but my clothes were for after the run and I'd expected it to have warmed up by then.
Around 11 my Mom got a text from my cousin Ivy, who was home with my younger siblings. The power was out at our house. Later I realized that tons of people lost power but at the time I was thinking, as I'm sure you understand, "why is the universe out to get me?" Valid question.
Because of the weather Brenton had been letting people start whenever they managed to get there. That meant people were starting up to two hours late and so that meant we had to stick around for two extra hours for all the runners to come through. But once they did the roads had luckily cleared up and my Dad had managed to get the truck to the aid station. So we moved the trailer from Nate's truck back to my Dad's. Then we all loaded back in and I continued to tell Aunt Sue all about the wonderful world of Cobra Kai. (you should watch it). When we got back to the house our power was still out. So we made plans to meet Sue, Ivy and my Uncle Sylvan for dinner at a Mexican place. Sue and Ivy left and my parents were left to trying to figure out why I was sitting around looking utterly depressed. After I told them they told me that we would just go out and run a loop in a few weeks when the weather was better. Re-moralized I went to get ready to go.
` We were driving in the car and we got a call from Sylvan that the restaurant we were going to go to was closed due to weather. So we went to Olive Garden instead. I can't say I was unhappy with this newest development. I like my Mom's homemade Mexican but I dislike most Mexican restaurants. I have grown to accept La Carreta but only because my family goes at least once a week. So I was personally fine with Olive Garden. I can't say my brothers were of the same opinion.
We went to Olive Garden and our group was big enough that we got this area that was basically it's own room. Because my parents probably felt bad for me and also because it was free my parents let me get a Coke. Just thought I'd mention it.
After dinner we went to Sue's house because no matter how many times my brother Sean asked we still didn't have power. The next movie we were supposed to watch for Movie Night was Die Hard II. However when we went into the basement my cousin Ivy said "My Mom says we're not watching Die Hard tonight." She was very surprised when the adults came downstairs and turned on Die Hard II. (She would like to be known as an adult too, as she is 20).
Even though I hadn't run and it was before 7 P.M. I had still woken up really early and I was exhausted. So despite the action packed movie I still fell asleep. I woke up less than a half hour later and managed to stay awake for the rest of the movie. After John McClane blew up an entire plane full of bad guys and won we all kind of stopped watching and it was basically over, though Die Hard III automatically started. Sean asked about 2 billion more times if we had power yet. We didn't. Luckily for me I was about to get a piece of very good news.
We had turned off the TV and were heading upstairs when Mom got a text from the race director;
"Please let Bailey know that she has until next Sunday to finish the race."
As you can imagine I was very excited and we started looking at the weather and seeing which day had the best weather so we could decide when I could run.
Despite how many times Sean asked Mom and Dad said the power was still out when we got home close to 10 P.M. Knowing there wasn't much I could do in the dark I read for a little while and then went to bed. I was able to sleep much better than I'd hoped knowing I still had the promise of a Holiday Lake 2021 finish.
The next morning when I woke up my Dad was just about to plug in a generator a friend had given us to power the fridge when the power came back all on its own. We were all very happy for this, as we were having people over for dinner that night.
Later that day we decided that looking at the weather and my non-demanding schedule, my Mom and I could go run my loop Tuesday morning, provided Ivy watched the boys again. She agreed.
When I went to bed on Monday night my parents told me not to set an alarm. Normally I wake up at 6:30 A.M. on schooldays. (I like to have all my school done by 10:30). But with no alarm set I slept in to almost 9. Ivy was already there and my Mom made pancakes. At about 9:20 we pulled out of the driveway, and I brought school stuff in the car though I didn't do as much as normal. That's okay because normal has me two or three weeks ahead of my twin brother.
We got to the camp a little after 10. I was nervous but excited. I was ready. The conditions were better and I was ready to go out there and break 3 hours. It was gonna be a 10:17 pace but my Mom said I could do it. And I believed her. We went over to where the start normally is and my Mom wanted to get a video of me starting.
And this is where the real race reporting begins.
When Mom told me to go I took off, ready to run a 3 hour pace. I could tell almost immediately that I was going up the hill too fast but I didn't want to say that to her. I thought slowing down there would be accepting defeat. We kept running at this pace and eventually I settled into it and was fine. We turned onto the trail and I was struck by something almost immediately.
There was going to be a lot of mud.
About two miles in we passed the first of what I'll call new creek crossings. I had been out here a little over two weeks ago and I did not remember this. When we finished our first mile at a 10:41 I was disappointed. I knew that meant due to the conditions I wouldn't get my goal. But my Mom helped convince me not to give up and that it was all in the adventure. I wanted to believe her, and I did. But that didn't stop me from telling her that I felt slow. She said we could do it in 3:15. I nodded along but in my head I believed that all I had in me was 3:30. That stupid extra mile!
Going up the hill into aid 1 we were confronted by a very surprising problem. In my memory that hill had been a fairly dry section but to my surprise there was a freaking river running straight through the trail! There was one part where we had to walk through a twenty foot, freezing cold, six inch deep puddle! We made it through and climbed the hill into aid 1.
When we reached aid 1 we kept right on moving, myself being disappointed that there was no actual aid station. My Mom said that the miles between aids 1 and 2 were pretty fast and this was where she started pulling away from me for the first time. Looking back on it I think I had a good time running through that section but at the time I was having a discussion in my head about whether or not I was this slow because I had tapered too long. I had been tapering for 9 days and I don't think that's too long. I think I was looking for an excuse to be slow.
We reached what was supposed to be the first creek crossing but was the third or fourth of the day. However the two that were always there were HUGE. Last time I had been able to jump the first one. As soon as I saw that I knew it wasn't a possibility. I waded through it and my feet were so cold. But it had been so muddy that day I think there was where I gave up on keeping my feet dry. We ran and the distance between those two creek crossings is terrible. It's just long enough that your feet finally start drying off and then bamm! You see the next creek crossing! When we got there it was really big. It was so high that it came up to my knees and it was moving so fast that my Mom has a video where I almost fell down wading through there. When we got out of there my feet were so cold I got that feeling in my feet like pins and needles except it was just because of how cold I was.
After that we ran pretty steady to aid 2, though there was a spot or two where I had to walk and at one point my Mom's Garmin was acting funny. We got to the aid station, again not really and aid station because no one was there. She was messing with her watch and we went of down the road that was usually a pretty fast mile. I glanced down at my watch and saw that my time was 1:34 I was pretty happy. Even though it wasn't exactly halfway I still thought it was pretty close to my goal time. All was not lost!
We got to the bottom of the hill and turned onto the section after it. It was fairly muddy and it had some of the most not-yet-melted snow I saw on the course. The thing about that section is it has a lot of ups and downs and on one of the downs we found what I counted as the 5th creek crossing on the course. Running up the hill after that towards powerline I thought about how much mud had been out there. I felt way more tired than I had expected to and it was taking a lot of strength to keep pushing through.
As we started on powerline I was starting to come more to terms with that days run. I knew that these weren't really conditions I had trained for and that all that mattered was that I do my best and push through to the end. I thought I was moving steady and I was just doing my best to keep my mind occupied. But then my Mom said something that changed it all for me. "We've slipped a little bit in time."
Something I inherited from my mother is that I am very emotional about my running. If it's a good day its a very good day and if its a bad day its a VERY bad day. When I heard that our pace was slipping I did the very thing that you should try not to do when you hear that. I let our pace slip even more. I started to fall behind and my throat closed up and I tried really hard not to let the tears fall out of my eyes. I had to remind myself that for me running is like 75% mental and if I really want to keep going I can do better. Sounds cheesy but it usually works. So we ran down powerline, past the IT balloon and the forgotten Valentines bear. We came off powerline at about 10 miles. I had about 7 miles left and 1:40 to hit 3:20. I though I could do it.
I got my Mom to distract me by telling me a story. In her usually motherly fashion she told me a story about a time she did poorly in the first half but came back strong and passed my Dad, Blake, and Grattan getting a pretty good time. She used this story to encourage me and push me straight through aid 3. But after we went through there I was slowly losing more and more speed. I was getting further behind then ever. And I was questioning my life choices. And, in an effort to prove I'm just as totally insane as my parents, I was having a lot of fun. Weird, right?
The closer we got to the big bridge the muddier things became. I was running what I thought was as hard as I could and I was steadily getting further from my goal. We reached the beginning of the Lake Loop section and I was just doing my best to have fun. I had been drinking well but I hadn't been eating and my stomach literally started growling. I ignored it for a while but once we got past the BRTR bridge it grew to persistent and I stopped to eat a Biscoff cookie.(The most awesomest snack ever). I fell behind to where my Mom was up ahead in a little cove and we couldn't see each other. I wasn't worried but I knew she would be so I tried to catch up before she noticed.
It didn't work and soon I saw her walking ahead waiting for me up ahead. I caught up with her and let her know that I had fallen behind to eat. She said that was fine and I should have been eating more anyway. From there we ran/walked through all the little coves around the lake. We came out at the end and started looking around for the directions to the extra mile and we couldn't find anything. Eventually we found a sign for it.
In the trash.
Pointing into a brick wall.
So we decided it might not be the best idea to follow that sign. My Mom said I should be okay because I do have what's technically a 25k distance. So she got a video of me running through the finish line. And then we got pizza and went home.
I was very glad that I got a chance to get a finish at all and even though it kind of seemed like the world was out to get me for most of it, it was definitely an adventure and I had a lot of fun. I guess I finally proved I'm just as crazy as my parents! Me and my Dad are planning my next race and maybe soon this won't be my only race report!
-Bailey
