The Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run
101.3 miles
Friday, July 12, 1996, 6:00 a.m.
Hardrock is an extreme trail run which goes thru one of the most beautiful mountain ranges in the world, the San Juans. The course itself ranges from vertical cliffs with a narrow trail on top to high open meadows to boulder fields. Elevation ranges from 7,680 to 14,048 feet; several bio-zones are passed thru during the run, and much of it is above timberline. Views of over fifty miles are the norm up here, and the omnipresent water from snowmelt and daily thunderstorms creates a multitude of wildflowers bisected by raging streams. The total elevation change of 66,000 feet is equivalent to going up and down Everest starting at sea level. Some of the grades on the course are over 25%, and going up the inclines covered with talus and scree requires all four limbs and some rudimentary rock skills. Temperatures this year ranged from the mid-80's Friday afternoon to the mid 20's early Sunday morning. The logo for the run says "Wild & Tough" at the bottom, but along with the the danger was a sometimes lush, sometimes austere beauty that was compelling and spellbinding.
I arrived in Silverton eight days early, awed and a bit intimidated. Last year was a tough one for me physically, a time of major knee and kidney problems, and my confidence ultra-wise took a major nose-dive. But months of just hiking with my two dogs brought me back, and here I was entered in Hardrock, feeling fragile but strong. I discoverd that altitude would not be a major problem for me, as I seemed to acclimate very quickly. I pestered all the experienced mountain runners there with questions, especially Charlie Thorn, my host, who was in charge of marking the Hardrock course. I did make one major mistake, going with my usual Mini-Mag lights instead of a powerful head-mounted light, but by the time the run started I understood fully that patience would be the key to finishing.
When we finally started the early miles of the run went well for me; I was averaging a shade under three miles per hour, putting me about mid-pack in this extreme terrain, and I was snapping pictures of elk and wildflowers and ridgelines with the camera I was carrying in my backpack. At the aid stations, which averaged eight miles (and therefore 3-4 hours) apart, I would drink four cups of water and eat 2,000-2,500 calories worth of food. The exertion required here was incredible, and if I saw something on the table that could be chewed or consumed whole it went down my throat. I ran many sections with people, talking most of the way, and as people began dropping out and the field thinned I felt pretty stable. Pulling into the Grouse Gulch aid station (42 miles) at 9:00 p.m. on Friday, I was met by my first pacer, Brian Scott.
My quads were pretty trashed at this point, so it was basically walking for the next fourteen hours, trying to keep up a 2.5 m.p.h. pace, not an easy task on these mountains. My eyes got real heavy several times, and the sleep deprivation caused me to see all kinds of imaginary things, giant beetles scrambling in front of my path and huge prehistoric birds swooping down on me, all the monsters that lurk in the deepest recesses of your mind, just waiting to come out during a vision quest like this. Brian, a truly patient guy, pushed me very little and pulled me a lot, and after we scaled a few rock faces together I attacked the subsequent ones with much more gusto and confidence. Once my eyes closed while we were on a narrow ridge with a sheer dropoff of hundreds of feet, and when my lids went up I freaked out a bit. But when we pulled into the town of Ouray and the aid station at 57 miles, it was almost dawn, and the drowsiness abated for awhile.
Exactly at noon on Saturday we pulled into Telluride and the aid station at 75 miles; Brian went off with his family and Carolyn Erdman became my pacer. She, like Brian, was very supportive and pulled me along at my target pace. It had been a long time since I could run, but I was on schedule to finish, and other than getting hung up on a rock face for awhile when our climbing lines turned out to be poor choices, all seemed good. Night fell again; we were doing ok picking out the reflective trail markers, and I thought that all I had to do at this point to finish was avoid a major blunder.
Gradually, incrementally, horribly, Carolyn and I had more and more difficulty picking the markers out of the darkness. We would find one in the beam of our lights, go to it, then search all over again for five or ten minutes before finding another one. This wasn't real trail, more like bushwhacking, and you couldn't proceed without the markers. Our pace decreased dramatically, and by the time we arrived at the 89 mile aid station I could feel panic establishing itself in my gut. Worse, I had dressed too light for the sub-freezing temperatures up here, just a t-shirt under my shell, and when my mind began to get sluggish I knew I would have to get my metabolism up to avoid hypothermia. I started to move around as quickly as possible while we were locating the markers, and I warmed up enough to maintain my core temp, but I was getting distraught at how long we were taking.
Carolyn's calmness and strength helped, but I could feel myself starting to lose it emotionally. When we got to the final aid station, Putnam Basin, 6.4 miles from the finish back in Silverton, I had a shade over two hours left to make the 48 hour time limit. We had a hellacious climb ahead of us, then a ledge that was all big rocks; I hadn't been able to run in twenty hours now, and even if I could re-start my quads, most of the remaining trail was dangerous and only borderline runnable. I could feel the life-force draining out of me, but I had risen from the ashes before during ultras, so I emptied my water bottles to lighten my load and asked Carolyn to run the 6.4 miles as fast as she could in the dark, while I tried to follow in her wake.
The stars were incredible this night, but with no moon it was still frighteningly dark. After the long climb, which ate up a lot of the two hours, we came to the miles of rock, and Carolyn hoisted anchor and took off. Somehow my quads were rebounding, and I was matching her pace, in fits and starts. I fell almost two dozen times during that stretch, hooking my feet on talus or slipping on scree, and Carolyn would yell back and ask if I was okay when the crash was particularly loud. Once I went over the side of the ledge but somehow managed to hook my left elbow around a sapling before going too far down the ravine. I would feel raw, primal fear when I lost sight of Carolyn's light, then relief when I caught a glimpse of it again.
Three miles from the finish we came to Mineral Creek, 20 yards across with water up to my waist; I grabbed the rope and walked across, and when Carolyn followed we were out on the only road portion of the 101.3 miles. I finally asked her what time it was, the first time I had done so since leaving Putnam Basin. It was 5:24 a.m.; I had 36 minutes to do the last three miles, and in a nano-second I understood that Carolyn had pulled me over the rocks much faster than I could have hoped for. I knew that the hands of the gods had been on my shoulders the last hour, and I once again had a chance to do it. We took off down the highway, in the neo-dawn, getting down to a 9:00/mile pace in seconds, and the tears began flowing from my eyes as my legs got stronger and the pace quickened. I missed a turn in town and had to backtrack to find it, then ran a block too far and had to go back to get on the road leading to the finish at the Kendall Mountain Ski Hut. Carolyn was screaming at me from behind, telling me which direction to go, but I was laughing and crying at the same time now and I couldn't hear a word she said. I was down to a 7:00/mile pace now; just as in my wild dreams over the previous months, completing Hardrock had come down to a supreme effort at the end, and it was exactly as I had envisioned it, not just the pace but also the sensations and emotions.
I went across the line in 47:50, beating the 48 hour limit by a scant ten minutes. I dropped my pack and gloves and started hugging and kissing people , and when Carolyn got there I couldn't stop holding her and screaming "we did it!" over and over again. The tears were gone now; what infused me now was an incredible lightness of being that permeated my body and soul. Three hours later, at the awards ceremony, after all the finishers got called up to the stage and thunderously applauded, I tried to let Brian and Carolyn know how much I appreciated what they had done for me. But they kept thanking me for getting to share the experience, and I knew that words couldn't convey what I was feeling anyway. The next day, after saying my goodbyes and getting on the bus for the ride out of town, I started crying again, and I knew that only the streams of liquid going down my cheeks could truly represent what Hardrock meant to me and how profoundly happy I was now.
Joel
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