The Lake to Ocean 100K has long been my favorite race and this year just cemented that feeling further. It was an unexpectedly wonderful experience given I came into the race with very low expectations.
I have been battling a hip injury all spring which has become progressively worse until the orthopedist told me to take 6 weeks off running and do physical therapy. This came as a huge disappointment as I had spent months ramping up mileage to be ready for the Wickham 200 which I was now forced to miss. But nothing was going to prevent me from toeing the line on the shore of Lake Okeechobee yesterday. Andy Mathews and I are the only two runners to start every year of the race, and we kept the streak alive for #7 in 2021.
I set my goals really low. My C goal was to make it to where the trail enters Dupuis Reserve at the 3 mile mark. If my hip was already acting up, I would call Becca and have her pick me up and call it a day. B Goal was to make it to the first aid station, Powerline, 15 miles and drop there if the hip had become a problem. The “A” goal was to nursemaid my hip through 62 slow miles all the way to Hobe Sound Beach and collect my 6th buoy (the L2O finisher’s award) and remain one ahead of Ron Hines who I knew was a lock to finish and earn his 5th. In fact, Ronnie ran strong all day and was first overall male.
I intentionally walked out of start and positioned myself at the back of the pack. I could not afford to run at the front with the leaders, not even for a mile. I was convinced keeping a very slow but steady pace was the only way to keep my hip in check and make it to the finish. Within half a mile I was in step Ariel Bernstein and Andy. A few minutes later we gathered up Mark Cudak and Brad Lombardi and the 5 of us moseyed around the dirt roads and entered Dupuis Reserve amidst a lively conversation. Ariel soon pulled ahead, and I learned later, that through a well-executed race strategy she passed every single other runner to become the first female overall winner at L2O. A stellar performance.
The four men stayed together through mile 6, all hanging back for their own reasons, but then began to separate. Brad and I shared a couple more miles together in Dupuis, but I then ran alone for most of the rest of the race. Coming up on mile 10 I was focusing on keeping my posture upright and eyes up on the orange blazes on the trees. Luckily, I heard an odd hissing and looked down just in time to see a 9-10 foot gator laying across the trail a few paces in front of me. It did not take me long to see and use the hastily devised workaround through the grass the 12 runners before me had blazed. I did stop long enough to get some decent video of the monster hissing at me, agitated by the steady stream of humans who had interrupted his morning.
I came into Powerline feeling really good. My hip was holding up and I was running halfway decently. It was very weird coming into the aid station though. In every previous year, I had come in amongst the lead pack and there would be 2 dozen cars and numerous crew cheering everyone on. This time, running towards the back, I came into a ghost town. 4 cars and 4 or 5 people including my daughter Becca who was crewing me. I got myself together and headed out for the 7 mile leg to the back entrance of JW Corbett.
The 9 mile third leg of the course, through the heart of JW Corbett is wickedly difficult. Twisty, winding, rooty, uneven ground in the midst of a sauna has laid runners low again and again. At about the 25 mile mark, my left toe caught a root causing a shiver of pain up my bad left hip and I tumbled to the ground clumsily. This was exactly the event I had been trying to avoid, anything that aggravated the hip to a pain point that might mean worse damage. I walked the next mile trying to shake it off. I made several attempts to break back into a jog, but each time I told myself the hip hurt too much. By now, the heat and humidity was beginning to cook me. The lack of running the past 5 weeks was painfully obvious in how weak my quads were beginning to feel. I told myself, this was it, I was done. This was the smart decision I had promised myself I would make if it arrived. I decided to walk the next 4 miles to the entrance of Corbett where Becca was waiting and drop the race at the halfway point. I decided I had just enough time walking in to listen to the end of the audiobook I have been reading the past week.
Five years ago, Andy had convinced me to try the audiobook version of “The Boys in the Boat”, a story about the University of Washington 8 oar rowing team that rowed for gold in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. It is a fantastic story of courage, fortitude and persistence; qualities I think carry over to ultrarunning. I remembered driving down the road, pounding my fist on the dashboard as the boys competed in races leading to the Olympics. A week ago I had decided to pull it out again very nearly finished it on my Friday drive to Jupiter.
One of the highlights of the book are the quotes at the start of each chapter from George Yeomans Pocock, a leading designer of racing shells in the early 20th century and integral to the University of Washington’s success. His quotes are fantastic motivation pieces and I found inspirational. As each one was read, I would mentally translate rowing to ultrarunning and find the meaning in it for me. Chapter 17 ended with the boys sitting in their boat at the start line of the gold medal race in Berlin with all the odds stacked against them. I knew Chapter 18 would be a blow by blow of the race itself and I was eager to hear it. But first, it led with another Pocock quote:
“Men as fit as you, when your everyday strength is gone, can draw on a mysterious reservoir of power far greater. Then it is that you can reach for the stars. That is the way champions are made.”
That struck me with the weight of an anvil. I immediately broke into tears and my chest heaved. It was as if George Pocock had reached across 85 years of time and was speaking directly to me. I have what it takes to push past this injury, I have what it takes to keep moving in this heat. I will keep running and I will jump into the Atlantic Ocean before midnight. I found my reservoir and I used it. And with that, I was running again. As the boys charged past the German and Italian boats to the finish line in front of 75,000 fans and Adolph Hitler, I yelled profanities and invective at the Fuehrer with no one else within a mile of me to hear it.
I came into the aid station, told the story and halfway broke up again. I took my time as RD Jeff Stephens, Andrea Moxey, Amy Mathews and Becca put me back together. I made good time through Hungryland and at Beeline Highway picked up Leo Acosta questing after his first buoy. We ran about 3 miles into Loxahatchee Slough together, but separated soon after that. There were a million active snakes in Loxahatchee including a black racer who guessed wrong on which way I was going and inadvertently cruised over my foot and between my legs as I ran by. The resulting high-pitched scream was decidedly un-manly.
Becca was absolute money as my crew all day, she has been doing this for close to 10 years now and pretty much an expert. She met me at the final aid station, “The Zoo” just past Riverbend Park and put me together one more time as I got race updates on the leaders hours ahead of me. I had over 5 hours to cover the last 15+ miles and knew I could just about walk the whole segment and still make the 18-hour cutoff. But I kept pushing forward as best I could. I crossed A1A ahead of schedule and ran most of the last couple miles to break 17 hours. I trotted down the sand and stepped into the ocean at 16 hours, 53 minutes. Jeff hugged me by the surf and told me he had already put a red buoy in a box for me, the last color in the collection. A spot on the shelf awaits and I hope to see a new color in 2022.
This was my worst finishing time at L2O by several hours, in absolutely ideal running conditions (by L2O standards), but I am every bit as proud of this finish as any of them. It served as a reminder for me of what a great metaphor ultrarunning is for life, something I have treasured since my first 100M in Vermont nearly 13 years ago. I return to “real” life Monday, knowing I have what it takes to push through all the obstacles and challenges life may throw at me. And if things get really rough, I still have the Pocock Reservoir to draw upon.
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