I ran my second Ridge Run on August 10th, 2019. I had high hopes for putting down a personal record, but it did not go well.
I spent much of the summer of 2019 in Bozeman. In one sense this was great. I trained by running in the Bridgers. I climbed Baldy on Wednesday mornings and ran the Foothills Trail and even Saddle Peak and sections of the Ridge quite a few times. I was in good shape when I got to Bozeman in late June and I got steadily stronger. But one thing started eating at me. I had my times from Saddle Peak heading south from race day in 2016, and I was slower than those times. I felt I was in better shape and better acclimated, but I was slower. I was slowly closing the gap and in my last Baldy run I matched my race time downhill from Baldy to the M parking lot. But I had run only 8 miles and 4000 vertical, and I was just matching my race time.
With one week to go, I could feel this start to gnaw at my psyche. I didn’t want to just complete the race, I wanted to meet the goal I had set for myself. I was expecting to run the race in 5:45, and I didn’t want to let myself off the hook. Even if I wanted to, it wasn’t clear that I could. I mean, this is me. Like many of us who race, we don’t just go out on a lark. We put in months of effort, we have goals, we push ourselves to meet those goals.
I could sense the coming sleep issue, but I didn’t know how to correct it. When I first started racing, I dealt with getting lousy or even no sleep the night before races. The first half marathon I did was in Rock Creek Park, Maryland where I lived for many years. I trained in Rock Creek Park. I knew my times on every segment of the course. So I filled my head with expectations for every mile time, for how I would speed up on every hill climb and recover on the following downhill. I went to bed that evening mulling over these details and didn’t sleep a wink. It was so bad that I found myself out walking through my neighborhood at 4 am, trying desperately to calm the adrenaline that was coursing through my body so that I could get even an hour of sleep. It didn’t work. I showed up at the starting line with 0 hours of sleep. I held on to my planned pace for the first 4 miles, but then the exhaustion was just too much to bear. I was running with a friend, Eric. I said to him, “Eric, go on without me, I have to slow down.” I was bummed. I finished the race, but it was a miserable experience. That taught me a few things. First, and most importantly, was don’t get into your own head. Focus on anything but details of race day times. You’ll run the times you run on race day and whatever they are, you’ll do better if you don’t dwell on them.
Second, have a plan if an adrenaline rush hits. My go-to plan for race evenings has become get everything together early on race day evening, hang out watching tv or chatting with friends, take melatonin before bed. After all that, if you still feel an adrenaline rush coming on as you are getting into bed. Head to the couch with a book. Lie there reading until the book falls on your chest. With any luck you’ll pass out for short intervals and over time the adrenaline rush will slowly recede and you can get hopefully 5 or so hours of solid sleep. I always feel like if I can get 5 hours before a race, I am ready.
There was a stretch of years in my 50s when I was competing in 6-8 triathlons and running races a year. Racing got to be so second nature that the pre-race adrenaline problems became a non-issue. This is what it was like in 2016 for my first Ridge Run. I just slept all night and felt great on race morning. But I’ve been competing in fewer races lately. Part of it is that the informal triathlon and running race group I had been part of has long since disbanded. Training for these races takes a lot of time and people slowly fell away as their lives evolved and filled with new responsibilities. And we all got a bit older, had more injury issues.
The evening before the race, we had friends over. Maybe cooking and chatting with buddies would work its magic. But I hadn’t gotten my gear together before our friends came over. Big mistake. Folks left around 10:30 and I spent the next half hour getting organized. I could feel the adrenaline rush beginning as I gathered my things. I took melatonin, grabbed my kindle and headed to the couch. I was in for a long night. The kindle dropped to my chest plenty of times, but each time I awoke. I didn’t have a watch on, so I got up now and then to check the time: midnight, 1:30, 2:20. That was the last time I got up. I finally fell asleep shortly thereafter. The alarm went off at 4. I figure I had a solid 1.5 hours of sleep. That was way better than none at all, but this was a big race. How it was going to impact me, I could only guess.
My friend Kevin and his 2 dogs drove me to the starting line. I was pumped up on caffeine feeling pretty good. Race starts are always exciting. And here we are deep in the Bridger mountains at first light on a gorgeous morning. I was in luck. The forecast promised fabulous weather for my second Ridge Run. No smoke, no heat, just cool comfortable running weather.
I had requested the 3rd wave this year and the organizers had obliged. Of course, I had the whole set of race times at various race stages from 2016 in my head. Even on 1.5 hours of sleep I still wasn’t letting go of my hope to best my 2016 time and hopefully run 5:45. My first time-check was at the top of Sacajawea. I felt I was moving well, but my watch told a different story, 1 minute slower than 2016. I told myself I’d make it up. We worked our way across the west face of Sac, I had forgotten just how rough this stretch of the course was. The east face was a sheer cliff, so we stayed just below the ridge scrambling through loose scree. When the ridge went higher, we scrambled uphill, when the ridge dropped lower, we scrambled downhill. We made it across and then down to the foothills trail and I got my second time check and again I was a little slower, just 30 seconds this time. More time to make up. I got to Ross Pass a full 4 minutes behind my 2016 time, frustrated, but still feeling good. Okay, recognition that I wasn’t going to put down a 5:45 time was setting in, but I could still break 6 hours.
The Ridge Run website states that the first part of the course with its climb up Sacajawea is the hardest section. I beg to differ. From Ross Pass to the top of Saddle Peak is about 5 miles with about 3500 vertical feet of climbing. On top of that, we have already been going for nearly two hours. The climb up the Wall of Death was the beginning of my undoing. I was moving as fast as I could, but I was getting passed regularly. First one person, then one group, and they just kept catching me and passing me. I was getting tired. I had burned up whatever energy was in that 1.5 hours of sleep. Atop the Wall of Death, I moved along the ridge dragging as I traced its vacillations up and down. By the time I could see the ski lift at the top of Bridger Bowl that marked the 10 mile point I was “Dead Man Walking.” I just wanted to lay down and take a nap. If there weren’t so many people running on the trail, I’d have laid right where I was. I got to the aid station, sucked down some Gatorade, ate an orange slice and kept moving. But really, I just wanted to sleep. That sleep that I could not find for most of last night, I was ready for it now.
Saddle Peak, with its 600 feet of prominence, was ahead of me. In 2016 I passed a steady stream of folks climbing that beast. By the time I started up Saddle Peak this time so many racers had passed me that only the stragglers were left. I was out there pretty much alone. I had been moving at 40 minutes a mile for about the last 3 miles when I finally crested Saddle. Then something good happened, I got a second wind. I was back from the dead. The sense that I wanted to lay down and sleep went away. I’ve read about ultra-runners having stretches of races that they can barely go on, but then they find their reserves. My reserves were kicking in. I was feeling better. Okay, I still wasn’t moving fast, and I wasn’t going to make up all the time I had lost, but maybe I could at least enjoy the rest of the race.
I slogged along the 7.5 miles from Saddle to the finish. This was terrain I had become intimately familiar with. I slogged up Bridger Peak, made my way to the aid station atop Baldy, where my daughter’s boyfriend Chris was helping out. He greeted me with “how’s that 1 hour of sleep doing for you?” I corrected him, “1 and a half hours.” I told him my tale of woe and kept moving. I crossed the finish line in 6:45:08. I was embarrassed, I was exhausted, I was glad to have finished at all.
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