Subject: Olander: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Awesome From: Bob Metzger Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2002 16:57:38 -0500 I hadn't run this fast in weeks. I was in a tunnel, illuminated by soft green-blue lights, which peridically dimmed and swirled, and some semi-musical white noise filled in my ears. I was aware that I hadn't slept in 36 hours - but I was sure this wasn't a dream, or even a hallucination such as I had enjoyed one week earlier while I was beating 100 miles of the Superior Hiking Trail into submission. No, this was real, albeit also surreal. I sweating, running hard in between moving walkways on which people were standing, many of them watching, some even pointing at us. I was wearing a backpack, and pushing a wheelchair. In the wheelchair sat a woman, and stacked high in her lap were a large travel bag, a purse, and a briefcase. In the purse were two medals, one for winning the USATF National Masters Championship for 50-54 year old women, and the other for placing 6th overall among all USA women at the 24-Hour footrace that had ended six hours earlier. In the briefcase, in a weatherproof notepad, were notations of the time that she had passed my selected spot of ground in Olander Park on every one of her 95 laps around the lake, and three rolls of exposed film chronicling the event. Of course, you all know that the woman in the wheelchair is my wife, Chris Markham. I had the privilege and pleasure of crewing for her, payback for the fine crewing job she had done for me the previous weekend at the Superior Trail 100. Many more of my friends were also participating or crewing at Olander, so I had the privilege and pleasure of visiting with and hopefully providing some support and joy for them as well. We were hoping Chris could achieve 100 miles at Olander, so that we can enter the 2003 Western States 100 lottery together, and I was also optimistic that Chris could compete well in her age group. And, as you may already know, she did both. We had gotten off to a bit of a rocky start Friday evening, as airport security busted me for a tiny swiss army knife that we had in our blister kit. After some discussion about security policies, running for 24 hours, and other probably trick questions, for a fee of $4.60, they mailed the knife home for me, and didn't lecture or otherwise humiliate us. Our Detroit flight and connecting twin-prop puddle-jumper to Toledo were both on time, so we arrived at Olander Park about 8:00, thirty minutes prior to the advertised end of packet pickup and prerace dinner. To our surprise, the salad and pasta was being cleaned up just as we approached it, but once they realized we were latecomers, they graciously gave us generous portions of both. We saw many familiar faces, and exchanged lots of hugs and kind words. We also made arrangements for me to meet up with Gordon Chace in the morning to set up Crew Central at the park, and for Chris to get a ride over to the park later in the morning with Jamie Huneycutt and Tim Whisler, for whom I had also offered to crew. Gordon and I homesteaded a nice little plot about 0.2 miles from the scoring tent. We made a very sturdy L-shaped table out of four cardboxes and duct tape, unfolded some chairs, strategically placed some coolers, and were ready to go. Chris' and my rental car was parked nose-in, with the trunk a few inches from the box-table. Before long, another of my crewees, Christine Crawford, showed up, and parked her car opposite us, on the other side of the ashpalt path that would be the race course. Chris, Jamie, and Tim arrived in Tim's car, which was then positioned with its trunk a few feet from the serving table. Kevin Kepley then arrived, and squeezed his cooler, chair, and little grill in between Tim's car and ours. This cozy setup would prove to serve the six runners and me very comfortably for the next 24 hours. The event started about 12 minutes late, as the prerace briefing and introductions took quite longer than anticipated, with all the famous folks in attendance. The gun went off, and Yiannis Kouros looked like he was fired from it. The crazy thing is that he didn't look substantially different anytime I saw him during the next 24 hours. The weather was quite warm and muggy, and I wondered about the pace that a large number of runners immediately fell into. Oh, well, I thought, it's the national championship, I guess that's what I should expect. I tried to snap photos of Chris, Christine, Jamie, Gordon, Kevin, Tim, and many of the other familiar and/or famous runners on these early laps, hoping that I'd be able to do the same in the latter stages, too. I was also very diligent in recording Chris' splits. and monitoring her fluid and caloric intake. This was to prove to be a formidable task, especially as she churned through 11 and 12 minute laps for the first couple of hours. I was a little concerned about the heat, but Chris isn't generally as affected by it as I am, so I figured so long as she was eating and drinking, she would be ok at that pace. Besides, I had predicted 110 miles for her, based on her four previous 24 hour efforts, all in the 89-99 mile range, and this was pretty consistent with that number, allowing for a latter hours slowdown. Chris was though marathon distance in about 4:55, and 50K in about 6 hours. Again, this was consistent with my predicition for her, and she claimed to be eating aid station food, but I feared she was not eating enough. I was sure that she, Christine, and Jamie were among the top 10 women, but I could not verify that as computer problems prevented standings from being posted. So, I just kept writing dowm Chris' lap splits, and bothering all my charges with questions about how they were feeling. I knew Tim, Gordon, and Jamie were very experienced, so I had to be content with badgering only Chris, Christine, and Kevin with frequent, probing questions about what was going into and coming out of their bodies. It was becoming clear early on that the weather and pace were having a very severe effect on a lot of very experienced folks, and I wanted to do my best to see that none of "my" people had any problems. Kouros was amazing. You probably saw the results already - he ran nearly 35 miles more than anyone else. To put that into perspective, the difference between 2nd place and 20th place among men was only 33 miles! While every other runner stopped at some point, walked at some point, and looked bad at some point, his stride and facial expression never changed. Early leaders and highly regarded runners like Jody Lynn Reicher, Kevin Setnes, and Rudy Afandor either retired long before the 24 hour mark or sat out for extensive periods of time. As this drama unfolded, I was pleased to see Chris staying strong, and hitting the 50 mile mark at just over 10 hours, as we had hoped. She was experiencing some nausea, but we seemed to be keeping it in the tolerable range. Jamie was in about the same shape as Chris, and they were staying within a lap of each other, mixing in good stretches of walking with their running. Christine became very nauseous, and wound up sitting with me on the wrong side of the serving table a few dfferent times during the event. Tim and Gordon each ended up taking extended breaks in their cars, and Kevin heroically limped and cussed his way to his 50 mile goal before packing up and heading home. I got in some sprint sessions, running back and forth to the main aid station again and again to pack bottles with ice and water, and then stuff them into the Crew Central cooler until they were needed. I also made five separate trips to the nearby grocery store, which was blessedly close enough that I never missed a single one of Chris' splits! Chris made 100K in about 12:50, and I relaxed a bit, as I felt this was a very, very good omen. It was still hot, in spite of the late hour, and still humid as could be. And then, to add insult to injury, the skies opened up. Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and rain fell in torrents. I slammed closed the car trunks, covered up the few items that were exposed, and crawled into the back seat of the rental car, keeping one eye on my watch to make sure I was ready for Chris. I donned a poncho, and went back out a minute or so before I expected her to show. Runners slogged by, some grumbling, others expressing hope that the rain would at least bring some cooler temperatures. But all it seemed to do was make more of a mess for everyone. In fact, the only positive thing I saw from it was that it washed away the vomit that one runner had deposited directly in front of the box-table a few hours earlier. Once the storm seemed to have passed, many runners changed clothes and/or shoes. I helped Chris changed between the cars. She was also badly chafed, and in a good amount of discomfort. Her pace had also slowed, and I gently but firmly told her what she needed to do. She got going again, and did pick up the pace a bit. I reminded her that she would get a nice psychological lift around 6:30 when dawn broke, but that it was important to stay on pace in the meantime. She had been holding steady among the top 10 on the leader board for many hours, and she was first in her age group. But I knew that the night hours have given her the most trouble in the past, and I wanted to do everything in my power to help her get through them without losing focus, confidence, or enthusiasm. Chris held the pace she needed, and held her place in the standings as well. In a tough field of 160+ competitors, she was in the low 30's. She was consistently in the bottom half of the top 10 among women, and holding steady at the top of that 50-54 women's age group. Despite all the moisture in the air, the sky finally brightened around 6:30 or so, and with five and a half hours to go, Chris had covered 84 miles. You could see most every competitor brighten a little as well, and many started running with renewed energy. It looked like fun again. This also meant that Chris had a number of other women now hotly pursuing both her and that same 100+ mile goal that she had. She recorded her 90th mile pretty much as hour 20 came to a close. She completed her 91st lap, 99.3 miles, at 22:27 into the race. I took care of her at Crew Central, and as she took off towards the 100 mile split mark, I took off in the opposite direction with a camera. I pased the mark, walked backards taking photos as she approached and crossed it, then glanced at my watch to see 22:39. I then ran back around to Crew Central with my camera, announcing to every person, tree, shrub, and bird along the way that Chris had gotten her hundred. The birds fled, the people smiled wearily, and the trees and shrubs remained expressionless (unlike the ones along the Superior Hiking Trail). When the finish noises sounded, Chris was in the shower, having done as requested by race officials, and not undertaken a partial lap if it were not important to her placement or PR. She had completed 95 laps, 103.645 miles officially, and had about 10-12 minutes remaining on the clock when she gathered up her clean stuff and got a head start on the single-occupancy shower. She was 8th among all women, 6th among US women (Jamie was 5th, and Christine was 10th!), and first among masters 50-54 women. Her reward (and punishment) for this was two trips to the awards table at the impressive cermony that immediately followed the race, not to mention a white-knuckle wheelchair ride through the blue-hued bowels of the Detroit airport, and the chance to enter the Western States 100 lottery as my buddy. *************************************** ** Bob Metzger ** Lakeville, MN ***************************************