The Tortoise and the Hare

When the tortoise and the hare face off in an ultramarathon, the tortoise almost always wins. In the past two months, I have completed two timed ultra-distance races where I played the role of both animals: The Cornbelt 24-hour Ultra in Eldrige, Iowa, and the Hawthorn 12-hour Ultra in Terre Haute, Indiana.

The Cornbelt is as simple as it gets. Each runner has 24-hours to run as many miles as possible around a 1/4-mile track. Since I've experienced some serious nausea issues during my past few ultras, I decided that my only goal for this race was to run the entire 24-hours at a slow and steady pace without getting sick.

After the first marathon, I was in 5th place. Since I was running slower than normal, I felt great and had to exercise a lot of restraint to avoid the temptation to follow the leaders who were running much faster. I could not be concerned with them. My goal was clear and it did not include running to win.

Most of the initial leaders slowed down as the day wore on. I was in 3rd place at the 50-mile mark and moved up to 2nd after 70-miles. Still, I was nearly 2-hours behind the leader and was determined to stick to my plan ... slow and steady.

An interesting thing happened after the leader crossed the 100-mile mark. He started getting sick. I knew what that was like and was thrilled that it wasn't happening to me. He went on to reach 106-miles, but then dropped from the race. The hare had met his fate.

I pressed forward and logged my best ever time for 100-miles at 19:44:22. By the end of the race, I covered a total of 116.65-miles. The tortoise had won.

The Hawthorn 12-hour Ultra was run 6-weeks later. My confidence after winning the Cornbelt caused me to foolishly set a goal of not only winning the race, but setting a new course record of at least 70-miles.

I was feeling great and was leading the race by a comfortable margin until I started getting sick at about 53-miles. I tried to work through it, but my stomach had shut down, was purging anything it could, and I was well on the way to critical dehydration. The strategy of the hare was reaping it's fruit. I walked my way to 62-miles but felt absolutely horrible.

Interestingly, the 2nd place runner for most of the day was also starting to crash. He told me afterwards that he was about to quit until he had heard I was having issues. He pressed forward to finish with just over 68-miles thinking he had won the race. However, there was a true tortoise out on the course who kept almost perfectly steady splits all day long and came out of nowhere to win with almost 69-miles. It's funny how simple lessons can be so difficult to learn.

In two months, I will face my seccond attempt at the Leadville Trail 100 (my first attempt ended at 60-miles). When I am standing at the starting line in Colorado staring down a 100-mile run at altitudes up to 12,800-ft, hopefully I will listen to the wisdom of the tortoise and avoid the pitfalls of the hare.