My Hellgate experience this year began with much checking of forecasts, packing, and re-checking of forecasts. With temps expected to be between high 20's and mid to upper 30's, and some type of precipitation forecast, determining the exact weather seemed to be like nailing a block of jello to the wall; it just wouldn't stick. With that in mind, I decided to go loaded for bear in the gear department, with several clothing options depending on how things turned out.
I had really been hoping it would snow the whole time, but come the Thursday before the race, it seemed it wouldn't be so. I went to REI and bought, in addition to a massive stash of sports food, a Marmot Precip hooded rainjacket. I'd had my eye on this lightweight jacket for almost a year as part of my gear list for the not-to-be CTR bikepacking race, and chose it over the almost-equally-awesome-but-slightly-more-expensive Patagonia Torrentshell because I like the way the Precip jacket's hood stows better than the way the Patagonia's did. It's the little things I guess. I call particular attention to this last-minute purchase because it turned out to be an extremely essential part of my kit, and because I cannot praise this jacket's good qualities nearly enough. It kept me warm and dry through 16 hours of snow, sleet, freezing rain, and finally a 6 hour stint of good-old-fashioned cold liquid precipitation. At least it did until my metabolism slowed to a crawl... but I'll get to that later.
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| The Gear Pile |
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| It all fit into these two duffels - sleeping and recovery gear in the left duffel, drop bag is the right duffel |
I arrived at Camp Bethel just in time for the pre-race briefing, which included an overview of the course, some recommendations for crew, assigning rides to runners, and some extremely biased raffle drawings. It was great to see a ton of friends and familiar faces - unlike MMTR, this race briefing felt very intimate and, well, SPECIAL.
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| Horton checks the weather forecast one final time |
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| Charlie goes over the Map of the Course with some folks. |
After the briefing, I got changed in my car, brushed my teeth, and closed my eyes for a few minutes before getting up for the Great Hellgate Caravan. I had elected to wear the following items:
- Salomon
Crossmax 3 shoes with light Smartwool socks and plenty of Bodyglide
(this worked out amazingly well, no blisters despite getting the feet
wet within the first 3 miles and staying wet the rest of the race)
- CWX knicker tights with Under Armour base layer jockey shorts. (I would have been OK w/ longer tights but I don't own any)
- A
light base layer T, with this year's MMTR Patagonia finisher's shirt,
and the Marmot Precip tucked into my pack (this would come on and stay
on as soon as the precipitation started to fall)
- Brooks softshell mitts with various liner gloves
- Thin
beanie cap with a Buff twisted into a secondary beanie over it. Later
on I added a Headsweats visor, which really helped keep the rain out of
my eyes.
I got a ride with Mike Dunlop (2 years in a row! Mike is the Man!).
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| Blearily pulling into the Hellgate Creek trailhead parking area. |
I sat in the nice warm car for as long as possible, only hopping out briefly to deliver my drop bag and to check in with Horton. When the crowd started to move off towards the starting "line", I emerged and shivered my way down with them.
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| The crow at the start | | |
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| Getting ready |
Say your prayers, folks... and we were off at 12:01AM. I took it really easy for the first few miles, remembering how I went out too hard at Masochist and how much I regretted it during the last portion of that race. We got our feet wet at the big stream crossing around 3 miles in; last year I was able to keep my feet dry but there was no avoiding it this year. Luckily, my wool socks kept my feet warm, event though they stayed wet for the remainder of the race.
I breezed through the first aid station, not even stopping. I was carrying a small aid station's worth of food, water, and medical supplies in my pack, so stopping at the first aid was not a point of concern. The massive climb from right after aid one up to aid 2 is one of my favorite sections of the race. Even though the sky was blotted out by thick cloud cover, you could still see a trail of headlamps above and below you as runners seemingly ascended into the sky on the wide gravel road. I turned my headlamp off and enjoyed the ambiance for a while.
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| The little white dots are headlamps! |
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| This runner yo-yo'd me a couple times; I decided to snap a shot of the pool of light created by her flashlight. |
I cruised into aid 2 feeling pretty good. I'd tackled the big climb by alternating spurts of jogging and walking, trying to conserve energy while moving at a decent pace up the gently-graded hill. However, upon leaving aid 2 and dropping into the first moderately rocky section of the race, I noticed some twinging in my left shin - a familiar agitation of the tibular anterior tendon (the thing that flexes your foot up and down). Ruh roh. It was way too early in the race for things to get real, so I altered my stride a little, slowed down some more, and that seemed to make the minor pain go away.
The next section of the journey dropped us out onto a very familiar intersection, the one near the bottom of the climb to Camping Gap. This place, where the singletrack descent plops you out onto a dirt road, is also featured in Terrapin Mountain (and possibly Promise Land, I can't remember). I caught up with Mike at this point, and tagged along with him for a while.
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| Mike does the death march through the haunted forest |
At this point, around 2AM, we started to get some sputtering precipitation. I left my raincoat off for most of it, as it was frozen precip and was not getting me wet. However, after a while I noticed that the little flakes were morphing into little drops; the Marmot Precip jacket came on and stayed on for the rest of the race.
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| Snow! |
We trudged on up to Camping Gap. For some reason, this climb seemed to take much longer than it does during Terrapin... Maybe because it's at 3AM?
At any rate, I reached the Camping Gap aid station, got some snacks, and made moves in the general direction of Aid 4. I was still feeling decent at this point, keeping a nice slow pace and trying not to irritate the tendon in my left leg.
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| Night time! |
Aid 4 had been moved a little bit due to the Blue Ridge Parkway being closed, which led to a bit of mental gymnastics to figure out how far I had to go in that segment. It came a little sooner than it normally would have, but the section between AS3 and AS4 was still long and pretty tough. When i finally arrived, I took some very welcome hot broth and a few more snacks.
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| Happy faces at Aid 4! |
After leaving aid 4, I eventually reached the Blue Ridge Parkway. It had been snowing steadily for some time now, and there were about 2-4 inches of fluffy white stuff on the ground. This made everything super scenic! I had left my clear-lensed glasses in my drop bag, because the forecast had implied that the precipitation wouldn't start until almost daybreak, so I kept getting snow in my eyes. I switched from my headlamp to my flashlight, which helped me see better (a trick I learned in the fog on top of Bird Knob at MMT earlier in the year). Having the light not coming from directly above your eyes can really help you see!
I caught up with a few folks trudging up the snow after crossing the BRP.
I shambled my way down to the Jennings Creek aid station (AS5), where my drop bag was waiting for me. At this point (around 28 miles) my legs were starting to feel tired, but the long downhill leading into this aid station was a gently sloped one, so I was able to make decent time and feel OK. After learning an expensive digestion lesson at this aid station last year, I avoided the temptation to eat the heavier greasier breakfast food and instead opted for lighter fare in the form of pancakes (yum!) and more broth (mana).
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| My drop bag! Boy was I glad to see this little guy. |
I grabbed a visor from my drop bag, ditched my headlamp (finally!) and grabbed a few more bars and gels. I left the massive collection of extra clothes and spare pair of shoes alone; despite having had wet feet for the past 6 hours or so, my feet were not in any pain - not even a hot spot! This shoe / sock / lube combination was working out really well for me.
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| The fire - NOT FOR RUNNERS (at least that's what I forced myself to think). |
I left the aid station at a moderately paced power walk. My shin felt fine on the uphills, it was really only on the downhill sections that it began to throb. This next section had a lot of gravel road, and what felt like a lot of uphill. However, dawn had finally come, and the snow had stopped, so there was a cessation in the mental beatdown.
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| Following the Runner in Red up the hill coming out of Jennings Creek |
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| Visor up, hood down! Brain levels at 50% zombie. |
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| Trails! |
I arrived at AS6 feeling pretty beat up; I took a few Aleve and a 5-hour energy to deal with the growing agony in my left shin and to try to perk up my waning energy levels. This seemed to work, and I zipped along through many miles, passing a few people. Towards the end of this section, the rain started. Nevertheless, I was feeling great, and rolled into AS7 in good shape. My drop bag was waiting for me again here, and I re-loaded my on-the-trail food cache that I was carrying with me in my pack.
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| Aid Station 7- Bearwallow Gap |
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At this point things start to kind of run together in my memory. I know that my leg hurt; my right knee also started to lock up. The rain became constant, a steady soaking thing that combined with the temperatures in the mid-30's to make for some pretty miserable (read: epic) conditions. Thanks to my rain jacket (which remained waterproof through it all!) and my nice wicking underlayers, I managed to stay warm coming into the second-to-last aid station. I'd been sitting about 30-45 minutes ahead of the cutoffs at most of the aid stations, but with my caffeine-and-painkiller induced blitz, I'd somehow managed to gather enough time that I was more like 60-90 minutes ahead of the cutoffs.
I came into Aid Station 8 moving; slowly, but making progress. Unlike last year, where at this aid station I was barely able to take a bite of any food, this year I relished the opportunity to chow down on some hot food. I ate a quesadilla, which the chef generously offered to stuff with pulled pork, and washed it down (literally) with some hot black coffee. Warmed by the food, I set off mentally prepared to spend an eternity getting to the next aid station.
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| Aid 8 - Under the Bridge! |
I remembered this next section between aid 8 and aid 9 clearly from last year - a long downhill on a gravel road, followed by three singletrack mini-mountains (a climb followed by a descent), followed by an interminable flat section. Last year I was able to truck it down the gravel road, but this year my legs were in such bad shape that I had to stop and walk (downhill!!) occasionally to relieve the pain. On the three mini-mountains, the uphills were fine but the downhills were concertos of mincing tiny-steps; luckily nobody was around to see how much of a sissy I was being. The rain was continuing, causing the singletrack trail to puddle up with cold water and mud.
For some reason the last aid station came quite a bit sooner than I was expecting, which is always a welcome surprise. They didn't have any hot food, but two runners who had blown past me on the last section of trail turned around and, lo and behold, it was Mike and Joe!! Hurrah! Misery loves company, and the three of us charged up the last 2-1/2 mile climb in good cheer. Said good cheer deteriorated gradually over the 45 minutes of the climb, until near the stop we were death-marching together in silence.
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| Friends make death-marching a little more tolerable! |
At the top of the hill, I told Mike and Joe to go on without me - the best I could manage on the downhill at this point was a truly pathetic shuffle-hobble, and they could move better than I could. They left and I continued on in some pretty heavy discomfort. The last 4 miles of the race took forever, with several runners passing my. Because my legs hurt too much to let me run, my body temperature dropped. Towards the end, I gave up even trying to run and just walked... and shivered. After taking a phenomenally long time to cover the last couple miles on the smooth gravel road descent, I finally limped my way into Camp Bethel. As I rounded the final corner approaching the finish line, Jeff came cruising by and cajoled me into running into the finish ("Horton will never stop giving you hell if you walk it in!!"). Thanks Jeff!
After stumbling into the lodge, I semi-deliriously accepted my finisher award and socks from Clark, and then went into the bunk room, dumped my wet stuff, and sat down for a few minutes, shivering and shell-shocked. After a few minutes of whimpering and generally feeling sorry for myself, I managed to pull it together enough to take a lukewarm shower, and then curled up in my sleeping bag for the 45 minutes it took me to stop shivering and to feel warm again. After, I got out of bed and ate a sandwich, shooting the breeze with a few folks before going back to bed for some real sleep.
Did I do better than last year? Yes; time-wise, I beat last year by about 50 minutes. Could I have done better? Yes; I think if I hadn't gone so hard after taking the anti-inflammatories, I wouldn't have been so miserable in the last few miles and could have hung on a little better. Should I have run that 50k fat-ass in between MMTR and Hellgate? Probably not; I am pretty confident that little local club race is a good part of the reason why things got way too real too quick. Am I happy that I ran Hellgate again? Absolutely; I will do it again in a second if the Race Committee deems me worthy.
